Over the past cou­ple of weeks a read­er and some­one I cor­re­spond with via email wrote a cou­ple of posts for the blog that have had some good com­ments asso­ci­at­ed with them regard­ing ethics and gear.  You can find them here if you have not read them:

• The Case for Non-lethal Defense
• Share and Share Alike

Both posts are well thought out and com­pre­hen­sive.  If you have not read them you should.

That said, the eth­i­cal ques­tion of shar­ing resources was pre­sent­ed, and I am hon­est­ly torn as to what I would do.  Many say they can­not turn away a child, some say that they would and some say they would not share resources.  It is hon­est­ly a quandary, because those with no ill inten­tions I may want to share with.  It is real­ly hard to tell at this junc­ture.  Sev­er­al things are cer­tain, how­ev­er that every­one should take into con­sid­er­a­tion.  I have a few points below that I would like to make, based on what I have learned over the last year or two that could help you to pro­tect your sup­plies as well as ration them if you do plan on shar­ing them with oth­ers. Here it goes:

• Do not keep all your food stor­age in one place in your home.  I know it is hard to think about.  You are prob­a­bly say­ing, “then where the hell do you think I should keep it, I don’t have unlim­it­ed space.”  None of us do.  Hypo­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, here is the log­ic.  Let’s say some­one comes to your door… They want food.  You feel bad, and you go to the pantry, the per­son or peo­ple who asked force their way into your house, go to the pantry, and it is full…  What do you think hap­pens?  Food goes out the door.  Sec­ond sce­nario.  You have your food and food stor­age in sev­er­al loca­tions of your home.  Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, peo­ple asso­ciate food with the kitchen.  Again, the would be recip­i­ent of your food sees your pantry is near­ly emp­ty because your food is stored all over your home and cached.  Now all you have to deal with are the intrud­ers in your home, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly all your food going out the door at once.  The oth­er sce­nario is that you are not home, it is bro­ken into and the intrud­ers find your com­plete back­up food sup­ply, and it is quick­ly tak­en from your base­ment…
• If you do share, do not do it in the open.  Do not give the per­son at your door a 5 gal­lon buck­et of food and send them on their way.  Seri­ous­ly.  If you do that, what is to say that oth­ers did not see some­one com­ing to your door with noth­ing, and leav­ing with some­thing, no mat­ter what it is.  I don’t care if it is cold out and you gave them a coat.  They left with some­thing.  Now it looks like you have some­thing, and you may have tar­get­ed your­self.  I know in my neigh­bor­hood in NJ, chances are I am not the only one enter­ing my home or leav­ing my home when I do.  There is ‘gen­er­al­ly’ some­one else on the street when I am.  I have to believe that in the event of a SHTF peo­ple will be milling around for a while and then they will leave or go back into their homes to try and fig­ure things out.  If I were to share resources with some­one, I would tell them to leave, do not come back for some deter­mined peri­od of time, and at that time tell them where to pick up the buck­et, bag, or what­ev­er I am leav­ing for them.  Also, do not use more than one drop spot more than once.  Peri­od.  Used once, now some­one knows where the drop is and they may watch it think­ing you are going to drop more there for some­one else.  You do not want them to take some­one else’s resources if you do plan on help­ing oth­ers, nor do you want to get jumped or have the oth­ers you are help­ing get jumped in the process…
• If you can, share resources as an anony­mous per­son.  i.e. per­son­al­ly, to me, share your resources when no one else knows it is you shar­ing them if you must share them with oth­ers.  Maybe you know the church up the street is dis­trib­ut­ing small amounts of food to those in need.  Cache your food, and dis­creet­ly make sure the per­son in charge of the church or the dis­tri­b­u­tion gets a note that they can find your buck­et of food or oth­er resources in a bush behind the car near the cor­ner, or some­thing like that.  Shar­ing anony­mous­ly will pro­tect you and your fam­i­ly.   And you can always direct peo­ple to the church or oth­er resource.

These are just a few points I have learned over the past cou­ple of years lis­ten­ing to pod­casts, read­ing books, etc.  And, hon­est­ly, liv­ing in an apart­ment near the city makes it tough to break things up.  Trust me I know.  And, it cer­tain­ly is eas­i­er to take an inven­to­ry of your preps if they are all in one place.

That said, you can still be a good per­son if it has hit the fan, you need to just think thor­ough­ly before act­ing on being that good per­son, because being a good per­son when oth­ers are des­per­ate can put you and yours in harms way…