Dealing with looters in a SHTF scenario?

If or when SHTF most likely it would bring out the worst in me, but in a SHTF situation having "the right thing to do" mind frame will definitely bring an end to your life. My group would consist of about 4 people give or take 1-2. All have knowledge of using various weapons. Each specialized in an area of importance (medical, electrical, agriculture, tactical), and of course all with basic survival knowledge. We would be a very mobile and stealthy group, stay no more then a week in one spot. Now if we were approached by looters we all know the world we live in now, we all know that the rules, laws, and morals are out the window and non existent to most. It's a dog eat dog world now and it's gonna be you or it's gonna be me....and I don't plan on dying anytime soon....so... Boom...

(Meat is meat right? lol)

Don't plan on just boarding up your house sitting on your supplies with a shotgun and hoping for the best. The best defense in this type of scenario is to create a community with like minded people.

If the SHTF and your located in a major urban area it might be the best idea to pack up your gear and hit the road while you still can, it might be your house and your property but think about your safety in the long term.

I myself plan on going to a small out of the way rural community somewhere deep in the Canadian Shield.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


This (OP) is really a pretty good topic....

-How confident are you in your capabilities to keep looters away?

Reasonably confident, but of course, it all depends on the situation, and numbers/armament, etc. of the looters. The last thing ANY prepper should want is a firefight. Personally, I think the BEST thing you can do, is NOT be anywhere too close to main urban centers. In such a scenario, people are largely on foot, and they will be hitting urban areas for supplies first, rather than roaming around the acreage in rural areas. Luckily, I'm in a rural area, but also close enough to town for convenience. Still though, even that town isn't really all that big. Plus, I'll have my family and friends there with me, as our place will definitely be the hunker down place if anything goes down. So, I'll have a gang of my own.

-If at all you do end up losing your belongings, how would you reconcile to the fact that you need to start all over again?

The MOST IMPORTANT thing you can have in a SHTF scenario is the knowledge and skill to provide for yourself, from hunting and fishing, to building shelters, etc. Nobody can loot that from you. It would suck, no doubt, but no choice if we lost everything.

-How do you deal with the possibility of being looted/losing loved ones to gangs of looters?

Do everything you can to prevent it. Staying hidden is likely the main tactic. Plumes of smoke, noise from a generator, etc. is likely something you don't want, at least when it's light out (when most would likely be scouting....can you imagine how DARK the world will be at night without power?).

Darkness is both your friend and enemy. They can't see where you are, but likewise, you can't see them either. Best warning system....dogs.

Originally posted by RussianScientists
Let's face it, if the shtf you will become looters yourselves.

You can't tell me that you have enough food for your entire family that will last all of you for a year or more.

If a massive solar flare struck the earth and wiped out the entire electrical grid and basically all vehicles; then there will be no traffic, there will be no gas stations with fuel, and there will be no electricity, and food stores won't have food because there will be no vehicles to bring it in.

Do you have a fire place and enough chopped wood inside to last through an entire winter? Do you have hand pumps to pump water from an underground source that you can protect from people who will come and purposefully dump poison and other things down it in order to get at you dead or alive?

Will you be capable of growing chickens indoors in a protected area for food? Or, do you have a very large pond or lake at your disposal that is full of fish that you can fish from without being picked off by a hungry sniper the moment you have gotten your limit of fish?

I seriously doubt that you have enough food to sustain yourself and your family for a year or more.

edit on 28-2-2012 by RussianScientists because: (no reason given)

I have roughly 3 years of food and close to 1 year of water. I have 6 cords of wood and a wood burning stove. No live chickens yet, but we are working on rabbits. Our go bags have more essentials (metal matches...yada yada) then ever existed back in the day when I traversed all in and out of the Grand Canyon. Your assesments may be accurate for some, but not all.

P.S. We have a dozen weapons and enough rounds to protect ourselves for the same lenght of time.

The two 125 lb Labs go without saying. As are the exterior cameras.

Originally posted by xXxinfidelxXx
reply to post by sk0rpi0n

 

Here's my proposal on how to stop people from looting other peoples' homes and small businesses: direct them to the nearest Wal-Mart lol. That oughta keep em away from the honest people.

edit on 28/2/2012 by xXxinfidelxXx because: (no reason given)

That will only last for a month, at most.

For the first few days you'll have all the retards looting for widescreens and sneakers, while the intelligent people go shopping for the real vitals.

All of this will last only a few weeks. Then the ignorant prats who wasted time on material possessions will either die of starvation or form gangs to go looking for what they should have been prioritizing to start with. By this time all the stores are completely empty.

The average store or supermarket only has enough stock to last for three days - under normal shopping conditions. Panic buying will render many empty within a day, looting will hasten it before the distribution centers are hit. It won't take long before the entire supply line is wiped out to the source.

As for the response to the OP, I think it all depends on where you are. Staying in a city would be lunacy in my opinion, many of the gangs and thugs would remain there because they have grandiose ideas of them being some kind of "king". Most would just see it as an opportunity to claim their own little gang land.

And a lot of them would stay where they know, and where they think they can get what they need. These people are not the most intelligent, and they'll waste time competing with each other over scraps while the intelligent people grab something for the journey and head out into the country to find or form a smaller community.

People would be far better off if they prepared to create their own community somewhere else, where the chances of being attacked are lower, and your ability to protect yourselves is better.

Look at the average apocalypse/zombie movie and you'll see that the survivors of the story almost always end up fleeing the cities. It might all be fantasy and fiction, but most writers soon understand that there are certain things a Human would need to do in that kind of scenario to survive. A storyteller wants it to be realistic, of course, and that leads to a lot of truths being told.

In a SHTF you CAN'T stay in your home unless you live far apart from others and can protect your land with many armed people.

My home is in a neighborhood and about 500ft from a main road, I wont be able to stay in my home in a SHTF event. I do have provisions, guns a lots of ammo, but you will be best if you leave your home and go to a safe building that you can protect against looters, etc.

If the SHTF event is BAD, I will invade the safest building I can find apart from the city or crowded areas, and I will look for people who would join me to have more man power, at the end of the day is all about taking care of my family.

You would want to use booby traps.........;et me tell ya, nothing takes out a group of shmoes with no knowledge of anothers residence like booby traps. Easy to engineer if you have half a brain. You can also use most household items commonly found anywhere and likely with stuff passed up on by idiot looters who don't know what the real value of an item can be.

Originally posted by BooKrackers
You would want to use booby traps.........;et me tell ya, nothing takes out a group of shmoes with no knowledge of anothers residence like booby traps. Easy to engineer if you have half a brain. You can also use most household items commonly found anywhere and likely with stuff passed up on by idiot looters who don't know what the real value of an item can be.

I have a laser engraver with 40watts of power the light beam is invisible, if the time comes, I will modify this machine to use it as a weapon, this 40watt beam will cut your skin like butter and I will be able to blind them or put them on fire from a distance and they will never know where the beam is coming from..........now that I think its scary.

reply to post by cdesigns


What's powering that laser?

I still think the best protection is going to be:

1) Dogs (as an alarm system)
2) A group of fellow armed people
3) Location (being away from the city)
4) Not advertising your location (with fire plumes, loud generators, etc.)
5) Barriers (like fences)

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by cdesigns

 

What's powering that laser?

I still think the best protection is going to be:

1) Dogs (as an alarm system)
2) A group of fellow armed people
3) Location (being away from the city)
4) Not advertising your location (with fire plumes, loud generators, etc.)
5) Barriers (like fences)

The laser machine is powered by 120v AC but its because it has servos and other electronics that requires 120V, the power supply that makes the laser work runs like a tube lamp inverter, from 120v AC to 24v DC and 24v DC to whatever it needs to turn on the laser.

Here is a video on how it works, all they did can be done more portable too. my laser power supply is very small. compared to them, maybe is better quality.



for continuous use more than 5min I will need to use water cooling, but for a few seconds of burst it will be fine.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
...-How confident are you in your capabilities to keep looters away?...

edit on 28-2-2012 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)

We won't keep them away. And they'll never leave. I nice pile of coyote food, strategically placed, should do wonders.

Originally posted by WatchRider

Originally posted by Silverkiss
I think the old saying "an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure" rings true when we think of going survival mode.
Keeping a low profile and attracting zero attention is the superior option. Dogs bark and not all guns are silenced.
Those are the types of sounds which would attract looters like flies.
So you manage to shoot the first looter over your walls, how will you stop the twenty marauders who sent the first guy as scout? They're likely to be all armed too.
Is your house fire-proof, because if the looters can't take your stuff, they won't just shrug and walk away.
Be realistic here, we can all chest-beat and tell each other how bad-*ss we are, but in all reality when the S hits the F best option is avoid almost everybody.

What sort of looters are you on about? They'd have to be batsht crazy too want to take on a fortress?!
Like most of the underclass they'll skulk off for easier pickings than risk injury.
Some of you seriously over-estimate opposition during SITX.
We are the folks who are ahead of the game. They'll be running around like wild dogs without preps or kit.
Look at the LA riots, guess where they didn't go? The armed homeowners on top of their property's waiting for trouble. It never came!
Same concept with looters during a TEOTWAKI.

Personally, I don't think anyone really is thinking of what will happen in a SHTF scenario. I am not trying to discourage people from preparing or doing their best to prepare, or even pick on you in particular, but I do see your post as illustrating a huge erroneous mind set that many preparers seem to have and that is that you will be dealing with extremely small groups of looters coming across your property or that somehow the massive population of the US is suddenly just going to kill each other or drop dead fairly quickly after society collapses. I don't think that is going to happen. and comparing looters in a SHTF situation, who will be starving to looters during riots, who aren't starving just looking to steal stuff, is a fallacy in my opinion.

First of all there will be an estimated 311 million plus people in the US alone by July 2011, according to census data. Those people are not just going to die off quickly in an SHTF situation. After all starvation is not a quick death and depending on the amount of body fat and muscle a person begins with,they can actually last for a while; definitely long enough to become a huge problem.

The thing is though many people will fight amongst themselves and there will probably be a lot of death when the supplies of stores start running out, not all of them are going to die and I would say probably not even the majority of people.

And, eventually I will bet you when you get to the point you have masses of starving people, they will probably begin to band together and move out into the country side. And you may have enough ammo for a few looters or even small bands of looters, but can you really store enough ammo and even have enough man power, to fight and defeat actual bandit armies rolling over the country side like locusts taking anything they want?

And if you think bandit armies are unlikely, well I will say they are actually the norm in history. Bandit armies are the reason that most early city states and kingdoms even were created in the first place, to protect the people from getting pilliaged and raped on a regular basis. And it could very easily become a problem again. All it takes is a couple of charismatic leaders/ warlord types and a mass of starving people and you got instant bandit armies. And the thing about starving people is they don't care, even if you have a small group of people with guns unloading into them if they are 30, 40 even a hundred strong they will overrun you.
Many of them won't even care, if they see other members of their group dropping all around them, because they are starving and slowly dying, a quick death would probably be a blessing and if they are one of the ones to survive the charge and overrun the defenders, well then they will at least get a small share of the spoils.

Like I said, I am not trying to discourage people from prepping or take away all hope, but I am giving preparers a warning of what very probably will happen in a SHTF scenario, especially a long lasting one. I would actually say the best advice and hope for preparers to survive a SHTF scenario will be to actually band together in large group; ie a community coming together to defend it's community or if you want just a small family sized group, then I would say the less conspicuous you are the better off you are, even if you have to dig down and live underground.

In any case bandit armies more then likely will be a problem in a SHTF situation and one I see many preparers over looking or not really discussing and it is something preparers should be thinking about.

reply to post by detachedindividual


lol I was merely joking and venting my displeasure at Wal-Mart lol. You took it too seriously.

Just a quick observation here.

Have been watching the latest trendy SHTF type shows, like "Doomsday Preppers" etc

I understand folks wanting to protect their friends and family and their stockpiles of food, but these shows seem to be glorifying/sensationalizing these folks as wanting to blow the heads off anyone who even dares step foot on their property.

Although I have the utmost respect for property rights etc, there is no reason to go unloading shotgun shells on someone until they present an obvious threat to you.

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by cdesigns

 

What's powering that laser?

I still think the best protection is going to be:

1) Dogs (as an alarm system)
2) A group of fellow armed people
3) Location (being away from the city)
4) Not advertising your location (with fire plumes, loud generators, etc.)
5) Barriers (like fences)

How far from the city? and what size city?

near me is Martinsville, VA then Roanoke, va and Greensboro at 60 miles ...

I can't see any place on the east coast where the "smokers" would not be roaming ....

LOTS. OF. GUNS.

Can't hurt to have a couple of attack dogs too... but not too many. You have to keep them fed.

Electric fence, maybe. And be sure that you have a lot of people to guard the place. Yes, that'll be more people to take care of, but stand your ground--make damn sure that they pull their own weight. Don't have a consumer that doesn't serve your people and your home somehow.

Landmines too.

And be sure that your people know at least the gist of weaponry and medical practices.

And thinking in a SHTF mentality, you always have to remember one thing.

STAY. FREAKIN'. PARANOID.

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n

-How confident are you in your capabilities to keep looters away?
-If at all you do end up losing your belongings, how would you reconcile to the fact that you need to start all over again?
-How do you deal with the possibility of being looted/losing loved ones to gangs of looters?

Thoughts?

edit on 28-2-2012 by sk0rpi0n because: (no reason given)

I worry about this too. I think I would be fairly capable in the early stages of this type of scenario, but as people become more and more desperate, I'm not so sure. If it were just me, I'd be a lot more mobile, and therefore more confident. But as a parent, I would be more likely to 'bug in'. Which requires a certain amount of security that I'm not sure I possess. Also, as a spouse of a military member, I am often 'on my own' for months at a time, which increases my fear of protecting my family. (Think, no sleeping in shifts, because a five year old can't exactly keep watch).

I have been entertaining the idea of setting up some caches of supplies in state parks along the way to my bug out location (but not sure of the legalities of that). I practically grew up in the woods, so I am pretty confident that we would survive if our supplies were gone. You reconcile the need to start over because you really would just have no other choice.

When thinking about losing my loved ones to looters, I become very angry. I would do everything in my power to make sure that didn't happen. If I had to abandon all supplies and my home to save my child, that's what I'd do. I would not make it easy on anyone who tried to hurt them.

A trusty German Shepherd
A nice gun... or three.
and some nice "Home Alone" style booby-traps should do the trick