As many of the read­ers know, I have joined a meetup.com group for pre­pared­ness.  I joined for a cou­ple of rea­sons.  First, as a “lone wolf” I was look­ing to con­nect with like mind­ed peo­ple to hope­ful­ly teach and learn from them.  The sec­ond rea­son I joined, admit­ted­ly, was to pos­si­bly become part of a group that could bind togeth­er in the event of a nat­ur­al or man made dis­as­ter.  I thought that this might be a good way to build trust­ed rela­tion­ships and if things went south, no mat­ter what type of event, I had a trust­ed team to work with to keep each oth­er safe.

In any sur­vival sce­nario at the very onset of a sit­u­a­tion it is you against the sit­u­a­tion, nat­ur­al or man made.  Depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion at hand, you may want to bug in.  I can­not think of too many sit­u­a­tions in a sub­ur­ban sur­vival sit­u­a­tion where I would bug in, except for a very bad win­ter sit­u­a­tion here in the north­east.  How­ev­er, if the sit­u­a­tion war­rants you bug­ging in it may be a sim­ple solu­tion.  How­ev­er, if the sit­u­a­tion war­rants you bug­ging out and pulling out one of sev­er­al plans of exe­cu­tion to get the heck out of Dodge, well, what to do and with whom?  Before I joined the Meet­up group, I know it was just me.  After, I think it might still be just me.  Not because there are un-trust­ing rela­tion­ships.  Hon­est­ly, I think every­one in the group that has been there once or more than once has been skep­ti­cal of every­one else they have met, a lit­tle bit.  I know I have.  I’ll open up, but I will not open up all the way until I get to know you and your inten­tions.

That said, in sub­ur­ban and urban sur­vival sit­u­a­tions, alone or with a team/group of like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als, there will be peo­ple, refugees, and locusts all around.  There may be con­fu­sion, peo­ple milling around, LEOs, etc. all over try­ing to keep the peace.  If bug­ging out in a vehi­cle or on foot, I would think stay­ing calm and col­lect­ed would be a pri­ma­ry goal of you and/or your team.  Oth­er traits with or with­out a team that I think might be impor­tant might be per­sua­sion and barter (an area I have not giv­en as much thought as I would like).  Anoth­er trait would be trust.  How quick­ly could you gain the trust of some­one dur­ing or after a SHTF sit­u­a­tion?  I am not sure it would be easy, and I am not sure it would be hard, but you and your group would have to be care­ful not to be fooled by those whose trust you are try­ing to gain.

I guess my point here is that depend­ing on the SHTF event may depend on whether or not you may need a team to coor­di­nate with. I have been per­son­al­ly obsess­ing over whether or not I require a team to work and coor­di­nate with.  I have a lone wolf men­tal­i­ty, but am smart enough to know that I do not know every­thing and that I can­not be tech­ni­cal­ly secure on my own if I had to be.  There are just TOO MANY peo­ple where I live and on my way to my BOL.  Con­verse­ly, I think that peo­ple here would stick to the main and back roads loot­ing and for­ag­ing for man made goods and if I could make it to the for­est, I would be safer there if bug­ging out to my ren­dezvous point or BOL.   But, in a for­mer post (I for­get which one) I iden­ti­fied that I real­ized that I do not think I would be the only one in the for­est or on the trails get­ting to a BOL.  In fact if enough peo­ple have read Scott William’s book Bug Out, many of the trails I would be fol­low­ing would be full of peo­ple who are at least tem­porar­i­ly in their own BOL’s, unless of course it is win­ter, then who knows.  I know that sev­er­al of the trails on foot I would take can be full of snow, deep snow, and with quick­ly chang­ing weath­er pat­terns. Not some­thing I would be look­ing for­ward to…

I am not sure I have not just been ram­bling here.  I am tired and fight­ing a cold.  I was think­ing about the Meet­up group I belong to, and the spot­ted atten­dance that I have seen there.  There have been some expe­ri­enced prep­pers that I believe have thought the group has been a bit rudi­men­ta­ry for them.  And, of course I thought they were a per­fect fit for the group because of their expe­ri­ence.

Oh well, the stu­dent con­tin­ues to learn either way…