Ruminations on SHTF Strategy

Get lost!

Not being tense but ready.
Not thinking but not dreaming.
Not being set but flexible.
Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement.
It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.

-- From Tao of  Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee

Ruminations on SHTF Strategy

Like so many Preppers over the years, we have pursued a distinct SHTF strategy. I'd like to share our thinking for your consideration.

This strategy is built around the notions that a) S will HTF, b) it's very difficult to foresee the actual conditions that will pertain when it does, and c) we may be driven off or separated from every material possession we have accumulated in its advance.

Our strategy centers around several key elements:


Subsistence Environment

We have sought out an environment in which it is possible to subsist comfortably with neolithic technologies. Were we to become separated from our every material possession, it would be possible to thrive from local resources, given adequate skills.

This underwrites all the rest with a fail-safer option... under no scenarios in which we remain free and able do we perish for lack of sustenance.

An important aspect of this area are abundant water, and wild forage, fish and game. The world is a garden, and likely to become even more so, post collapse.

By not relying on domestic plants or animals (to which one is bound and beholden), we are less of a target for others.


Social Distance

Our chosen environment is sparsely populated, and requires both knowledge and material resources to venture beyond its sub-urban centers.

This buffers us from pandemic SHTF,  the initial paroxysms of social unrest and, likely, from predatory individuals and groups preying on concentrations of survivors and other resources in the towns.


Mobility

Sailboats are the only vehicles on this planet with unlimited range. (Paraphrased from Tristan Jones).

Without access to fossil fuels, we are able to access resources, networks and safe havens across a wide area. When a location becomes untenable, we  have a chance to shift ourselves and all we possess out of harm's way or to where resources are more abundant.

If need be, we can shift out of the region, entirely, to any island or coast in any hemisphere.


Knowledge Base

Skills toward a reasonable life post-SHTF are many. We feel that their on-going acquisition not only enhances our future chances on our own terms, but increases our value should we fall into the hands of others. 

This seems especially true of medical skills under field conditions. Or hard-won sailing related skills. Or local foraging knowledge. Or field chemistry. Or...


Shorter-Term Stores

We carry enough stores to see us through what seems a reasonable period to tackle post-SHTF learning curves. These especially include the demographic situation (who's left, where they are located, and what is their character), any transition left to master full subsistence, and relocation allowance should our situation seem untenable.


Longer-Term Tools

These are the material possessions which can increase efficiency in meeting our needs.

Examples include our sailing vessel and gear, manual wood and timber working tools, weapons, food processing gear, and books of knowledge not yet mastered.

While we cultivate the skills to reacquire all these from natural and scavenged materials, having them in hand frees us to focus elsewhere.


Live It Now

Living the strategy gives us a head start on vital learning curves.

It questions while there's time to remedy answers we don't like... How independent are we? Can we move as we like? Can we improvise? How long do particular stores last? Is our tool set adequate? What knowledge do we wish to acquire? What are our priorities?

We're perhaps fortunate that our strategy very much embodies how we would like to live, anyway. It's inexpensive, good fun, and a healthy lifestyle.

So why wait for S to HTF?


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Two strategies we consciously avoid:


Bug-Out Refugee Status

Many strategies begin and pretty much end with a Bug Out Bag (often geared for 72 hours). When SHTF, the thinking goes, we grab our Bug Out Bag, pack up the car and git out o' Dodge till things get 'back on track'. Went camping as a young 'un... I'll get by.

Problem is, 72 hours is just the leading edge of Collapse. Roads clog. Got fuel?

Running the gauntlet of a SHTF exodus from any urban center is a daunting prospect. 

Dare you leave your family to scout resources or terrain? Do you have relationships with resident locals along the way? Can you protect yourself and yours from bandits? Or even desperate Mr. Jones and family, there, who got out with neither BOB nor blanket? How about a hundred of him? Or a thousand?

But the burning question is, where are you going? And are you prepared to survive - much less thrive - once you get there?

Some good SHTF advice: Don't be a refugee.


Bunker Down

At the other end of the strategic spectrum - and at first glance more attractive - is the Bunker strategy. This is usually a camouflaged, fortified combination of living quarters and warehouse.

Downside is that, camouflage or no, folks have likely heard about it. When push comes to shove, it's going to have its attractions for desperate people. Not being mobile affords them plenty of opportunity for figuring out the chinks in your armor. The bastards can grind you down by attrition or burn you out and naked into the open.

Warehoused stores are finite, and have a shelf-life. Sooner or later, we've got to emerge from our walls and try our hand at gardening, hunting or forage. Once we do emerge, we'd find ourselves behind on the learning curves for how to live outside our bubble.

It seems to us that the sheer investment in this strategy can tempt one into staying on past that moment when, as Willie Nelson says, ya gotta know when to walk away, know when to run. It's gotta be tempting to 'make a stand', rather than to retreat and regroup.

Theory of warfare generally equates immobility with defeat. What does that tell us?

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The Big, Bad Picture

Should SHTF on our national or global scale, I expect all domestics nuclear plant to go LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accident) for want of industrial level support. This means that the Northern Hemisphere is going to be heavily irradiated in short order. This will especially be true in certain wind- and watersheds.

Missing from our strategy is relocation to the Southern Hemisphere on the far side of the Equatorial Convergence Zone (hemispheric wind divide). We have the means, but...

Good idea, but it means trading our present life and friends for a shot at a future life with unknown peoples, among whom we would be refugees. We'd trade a good chunk of what learning curves we've climbed to begin at the bottom.

As we age, the potential for return on such an investment is diminishing. If we had made that move as young sailors, maybe. But now?

We'll likely accept what comes to us and make our stand here, in our home waters.