"I can't wait for society to collapse ..."

submitted by neolib from i.ibb.co

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[–]Musky 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Imagine the scenario.

Society collapses and you have 300 million hungry desperate people, and you're one of a handful of scattered settlements doing well where the people are bound to the land, sustenance farming. You have to defend yourselves 100% of the time, the multitude of others just have to get lucky once.

Put yourself in the position of the 'bandits,' you just have to pick off the 'good guys' one at a time as they're vulnerable. You can go wherever, you can snipe one and come back a few months later to get the next. They're stuck on that same plot of land being fat, juicy targets.

Essentially what they'd have to do is reform society immediately and it's not going to be their lone wolf I am king scenario. They're going to end up being bitch boys in some militia if they don't die outright, trading their wives and daughters to their warlord for protection and it's going to be worse than the society they cheered the collapse of.

It's really not a good thing if you think about how it's likely going to play out.

[–]Zapped 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I guess it depends on how society collapses. If it's just the breakdown in government and economy, there will be another to takes its place. If it's a natural or man-made global disaster, then there will be much chaos. The major cities will be a nightmare for the first few weeks and months. The rural areas will carry on. Life will be harder for most, but people are communal in those situations. The gangs will stay within, or close to, the urban environment.

[–]Musky 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

It's not just going to be gangs as they exist today. The most godly and moral people you can think of will still murder & rob you to keep their family from suffering and dying when it comes down to it.

I think the rural people will go first. They're not as self sufficient as you'd think. Without electricity and fuel and running water to irrigate their crops, mostly it's just a plot of poorly defensible land that plenty of urban people are going to end up targeting.

You basically need a compound with an arsenal and the people to man it and to work the land with old fashioned methods. We'd need to recreate fiefdoms.

These people who think a few guns and a deed to a property that won't be worth the paper it's printed on without a government to enforce it are so badly misunderstanding the logistics of the situation that I think it will be their undoing.

But that's why I think prepping is for suckers. If the shit truly hits the fan they'll die off quick and be little more than loot drops for the rest of us.

[–]Zapped 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No doubt there will be lawlessness, but if what you are saying comes true, then, within a couple of years, almost all of the good people will be gone and the bad people will then starve. The migration into the western U.S. had little to no law enforcement. They also had to deal with American Indians, Mexican raiders, and gangs of outlaws. I am not suggesting that life would be easy, but humans find ways survive, and they know it is beneficial for us to share common survival goals. I would estimate that about half the people in the rural areas around me could live off the land if they absolutely had to. Not so much for the city folk around here.

[–]Musky 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It's not that good people couldn't survive, it's that the average person that is looking forward to the end of civilization is completely underestimating the reality of the situation.

Most of the people I know with rural properties are engineers who just wanted a ranch to retire to. They can't cook, they don't grow their own food, they don't have animals besides pets, but they think 20 guns and 30k rounds of ammunition will see them through a societal collapse.

I believe that hubris will work against them if they actually find themselves in a survival situation.

[–]Zapped 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I got you now. I agree with that. I am in an area where most families have been here for generations and still have skills to live off the land, so I have a different perspective on people who own big land. Most of them are generational around here. Real working farms and such.