And with a fresh new week comes a fresh new post.
If you have not yet read the first three installments, I suggest you do so as it will be of help in understanding just where this is coming from.
This weeks post here will be talking about good neighbors and bad neighbors.
I would also like to thank The Rivrdog for linking to these three posts with his blog on preparedness, Paratus.
When you’re done here, stop by Paratus and read his essay about the questions arising from the process of getting yourself mentally prepared for situations such as those we’re discussing.
Title and key phrase “Who Will We Fight?”
We are sticking with the scenario from the previous essays of being hunkered down in your home with your family, awaiting the restoration of order.
You need to figure out who is and isn�t on your side. Who in your neighborhood is going to help you defend your shelter and who may try to take it from you, and likewise, who you would be willing to help do the same.
Sadly, a good number of neighborhoods these days are just a bunch of people living next to and barely tolerating each other. This does not make for good neighbors without good fences (which we discussed last week).
So, this may also be a chance for you to get out and meet some of your neighbors, hopefully to good ends if you have not already done so already.
You should probably start with the people living on either side of you, since they are the closest and then move to the people living across the street and then move onto the people in back of you.
Of course, some of us may have exceptions to the location of neighbors. Myself, I do not have anyone living behind me unless you count the little old lady that owns the two acres of rolling hillside between the back of my house and the front of hers. I suppose I could go and be friendly, but I think the occasional wave/returned wave will do for now.
This is not just a question of �Do you trust this person with your tools and/or lawn equipment?� It more follows the line of �Do you trust this person with your wife?� or, possibly more appropriately, �Do you trust them to be alone with your kids?�
The reason for these questions is that, in the event of a disaster or attack, your life and those of your family�s will be put at risk. You may need to depend on this person to cover your respective backs. Not only that, but if you are taken out of commission by an attack, you may need this person or persons to look after your family.
In the event of an attack on your shelter, such as the one we�ve been using, you will need to be able to depend on your neighbor/s to come to your aid in fighting off trespassers. A good, accurate shot is just one of the things your neighbor might need to be, but just getting them to just show up for the fight is usually daunting.
They surely don�t want to alert the trespassers who are currently attacking you that they too are occupying a place of shelter, food and water, and sometimes getting people to realize that once the trespassers get done with your house, they will probably move on to others in the neighborhood.
Of course, while scoping out a neighbor for this duty, not scaring the piss out of your neighbor is essential. You might also want to make sure that they don�t think of you as a loony or some sort of uber-survivalist.
I am not very much of a social butterfly. Nor am I any kind of social scientist, so you will have to just feel your way through these people and figure out if they are good candidates for help. Once you find a neighbor who is like minded, you can make up sort of a mutual agreement to come to each others aid.
Once an agreement has been reached, you can discus preparedness plans including, but no limited to, the things we have discussed in the previous posts. You can then move onto fires zones that with be both effective and also safe for you both so as to lessen the chance of friendly fire.
Hopefully, your agreement can be made with a number of your neighbors who will make these agreements with other neighbors, and so on and so forth until you have an entire unified neighborhood that will be a good, strong defense for any gang of trespassers who decide to venture into your area looking for easy pickings.
This type of coalition of neighbors will definitely lessen the ability of potential trespassers getting very far into your neighborhood, thereby lessening the chance that you will have to defend your home with arms.
Now, go make some friends.
If there are any social butterflies out there who have tips of this sort of neighborly interaction, feel free to share them.
Also, I open to any suggestions of topics for this series.
Next week we�ll cover getting the vehicle ready in the case of a terrorist attack at say, the mall.
You don’t have to have the graces of a social butterfly, or be the hostess with the mostest here.
There may already be a mechanism in place. As an “icebreaker” question, ask your neighbor if there is or has been a Block Captain.
The Block Captain program was set up as a nieghborhood-involvement anti-crime measure by most police or Sheriff’s departments, back in the days when they could afford to do a few extra things besides respond only to felonies-in-progress.
If there exists such a framework, try to reactivate it. You don’t need the input of the police for that. If there isn’t a framework, suggest that you might like to start one up. You are already doing the Block Captain’s work, why not adopt the title?
Once your close-by neighbors have agreed to meet, you need to present a good impression of leadership, without coming off so heavy that no one will want to cooperate.
Initially, talk about crime prevention things that all might do to make the neighborhood safer: exchange telephone numbers to formalize the network, keep several sets of eyes on that house where you think drugs are being sold, train everyone how to log suspicious events. Just the basics. All the while, keep the non-alcoholic beverages flowing and the snack bowls full. Make it look like you care; that’s an important part of being a leader.
When the group is mature, and can discuss heavier subjects, then bring up your ideas on armed control of the neighborhood.
When you bring them up, don’t be surprised if you lose a few people, and maybe all of them. City dwellers these days are terribly reliant on government authority, and less equipped all the time to do it themselves, by themselves.
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