There are several different prepping strategies some more popular than others.
I would like to break them down here and perhaps propose some more and also get some other ideas for other types of strategies if anyone has some not listed.
Rural homestead retreat---- Most popular obviously is a rural homestead with plans to hunker down and defend the retreat and grow food. Whether bugging out to this retreat or currently living in it is essentially the same strategy. Though if bugging out to this place you would obviously have a few different plans in place to actually get there and you would want to have your stuff there already not at your "city" house.
Hopefully if this is your plan you have hundreds of buckets of LSF and lots of ammo and other supplies and a solid group as we all know that we can't do it on our own. I would argue that for this strategy to work best you would want to be as far away from population as possible. Dark sky areas would be ideal. Having all possible supplies would be necessary.
Lone Wolf Bug out---- Bug out to the forest. Rambo survival skills. Don't trust no one, survive until dawn.
This is going to be a hard one for anyone willing to be honest with themselves. But there are a lot who will do it. Hopefully if you fall under this category you have the RIGHT gear and skills and also some caches. But when it comes down to it those who take on this strategy will most likely end up becoming looters.
Looters---- While this is not an acceptable strategy to loot and steal from others it will be or at least become a major strategy of many post shtf. If this is you repent and prepare. Though I would say that in a WROL complete collapse even the best of us as preppers will need to venture out 6-12 months from a complete collapse to scavenge for fuel and supplies and such. As an example what if you broke your garden hoe or really wanted some dental floss ect. I am not promoting looting as such but we will all have to do some scavenging. If that upsets you I will tell you that I am prepped to the max and it is not my intention but I do realize that it is what it is and the rules of this new post shtf world are going to be way different from what we are now. Not saying in any way that we are to put morals and convictions aside. There is a difference between scavenging and looting.
Joining a farm--- A good idea if you have nowhere else to go is to immediately after an shtf collapse type trigger would be to join / bug out to a rural farm. This is very similar to the rural homestead retreat except in this case you scoped out this farm as an ideal place that you would love to own as a prepper farm but you don't have the cash to even think of buying such a place. But you do have stored near buy at a storage facility a lot of necessary long term collapse supplies such as seed, ammo, gear, medical, weapons and food. It would be best if you had a EMP proof vehicle with the ability to load up your stored goods at a storage facility near by and drive them to the farm of choice. Hopefully this farm will take you in and you will be an asset to their survival and they to you. In many cases this is a better idea than hunkering down in many preppers current locations so give this one some thought.
Urban Survival--- Honestly I don't know much about this as a strategy as I personally think it wouldn't be much of a strategy at all. You will most likely need to join a large gang and kill lots of innocent people in the above situations. Get out of the cities is my recommendation.
Surviving in a small rural town--- Not to many towns will do well in a collapse, but some are very strategically located. I personally have plans to move to an area with a very low population that has a small town that I think will do very well in a collapse. I also know of other towns that will do fine and survive. This is not a bad idea as long as you pick the RIGHT town. And there are very few that I personally would say would be the right place to be. You will need to apply many gray man strategies in the first 6 months until they begin to restructure. I would recommend that part of your preps for this if this is your route would be to have a lot of useful items to add to the town to give you an edge within the governmental structure that is rebuilding. You will want to hold these items secret until any martial law is over and any tyrant type personalities are dealt with. You may even want to help the town rid the nuisance of an evil war lord by learning some sniper skills. Some items you will want if this is your plan is a whole bunch of SEEDs, grain seeds, potato seeds, ghuillie suit, spotter scope, sniper rifle, lots of ammo and hidden caches, your own LTS food and of coarse everything else that consists of prepping, maybe a way to mass filter water. If you can start a business as a general store or gas station or feed store as this will give you an edge but you better be prepared to immediately educate local authorities and even perhaps relocate your goods until after things start to upturn.
War Lord---- My wife has had me take two completely different personality tests recently trying to understand me better. Turns out both types on the two tests are very rare. And the two together are somewhat of an enigma to some of the people who are obsessed with these things. All in all I guess I have the personality of a war lord or bat man LOL. So while I personally have no intentions of becoming an "evil" war lord post shtf I have been thinking about the towns or areas surrounding me and also the place that I plan to move in a couple years, several states south. While making any kind of order where I am would be very difficult as there just isn't enough supplies to do so I do feel that if we get to the mountainous area I hope to move to there is a chance to create some sort of county wide (non-martial law) unity of the people. They do have food, cattle, sheep, water, tons of deer, hay, grain, ect. But people would have to work together. And roads would have to be blocked. Many of the local farmers are in their 60/70s and I'm sure their children would make it that way so at the road blocks they would need a list of potential names of people to let through for the first 30 days or something. If I do get to this place I will have a lot do to plan an strategize for the salvation of the people around me. That is my goal. More than just survive, but to help a lot of others do so. Of coarse I am not going to go door to door pre-shtf and say hey I'm a prepper and you should be too. Opsec will be used. Perhaps I get into the town council and become a voice now and assert some sort of power roll later. I use term power lightly as I am not the type to lord it over others. In fact I would not allow a tyrant to rule post shtf anywhere withing 50 miles of my location!
Some other areas that this might work- Northern Maine, Ozarks, remote mountain farm towns in Oregon, some of the "redoubt" locations though I don't promote their ideals due to forest fires. Very rural texas towns, Northern Michigan aka daUP. (I grew up in MI LOL) In other words- all areas that would be very rural farm areas that you would want to be in a collapse anyways.
Lone Ranger--- Lone ranger is kind of like lone wolf yet with a purpose. He is the opposite of the looter. His mission is to find looters and take them out. He may have a small gang of noblemen. These are probably veterans that would rather kill bad guys as that is what they are good at and would rather not farm. They will have as their reward supplies from the looters as generally the looters will not leave survivors to return the supplies to. Also later they will become known to local towns that are rebuilding as an offensive strike against those who are enemies and thus they will have some help from local towns as trust is built and towns begin to flourish. They may even be able to move between towns and unite them and provide information/communication.
Currently my status would be bug in at my rural retreat. Though I have problems like soil quality and crappy coastal water the place I have is stocked and is better than the other options above. But I do plan to move a few states south to a very rural mountainous area and start another rural retreat and perhaps figure out some way to organize the locals within the entire county and town hub. Not a war lord, well at least not what we think of as a war lord but that is my personality type!!! HAHAHa
Let me know what you all think.
What is your strategy?
Do you have another type of strategy that I did not list?
I would like to break them down here and perhaps propose some more and also get some other ideas for other types of strategies if anyone has some not listed.
Rural homestead retreat---- Most popular obviously is a rural homestead with plans to hunker down and defend the retreat and grow food. Whether bugging out to this retreat or currently living in it is essentially the same strategy. Though if bugging out to this place you would obviously have a few different plans in place to actually get there and you would want to have your stuff there already not at your "city" house.
Hopefully if this is your plan you have hundreds of buckets of LSF and lots of ammo and other supplies and a solid group as we all know that we can't do it on our own. I would argue that for this strategy to work best you would want to be as far away from population as possible. Dark sky areas would be ideal. Having all possible supplies would be necessary.
Lone Wolf Bug out---- Bug out to the forest. Rambo survival skills. Don't trust no one, survive until dawn.
This is going to be a hard one for anyone willing to be honest with themselves. But there are a lot who will do it. Hopefully if you fall under this category you have the RIGHT gear and skills and also some caches. But when it comes down to it those who take on this strategy will most likely end up becoming looters.
Looters---- While this is not an acceptable strategy to loot and steal from others it will be or at least become a major strategy of many post shtf. If this is you repent and prepare. Though I would say that in a WROL complete collapse even the best of us as preppers will need to venture out 6-12 months from a complete collapse to scavenge for fuel and supplies and such. As an example what if you broke your garden hoe or really wanted some dental floss ect. I am not promoting looting as such but we will all have to do some scavenging. If that upsets you I will tell you that I am prepped to the max and it is not my intention but I do realize that it is what it is and the rules of this new post shtf world are going to be way different from what we are now. Not saying in any way that we are to put morals and convictions aside. There is a difference between scavenging and looting.
Joining a farm--- A good idea if you have nowhere else to go is to immediately after an shtf collapse type trigger would be to join / bug out to a rural farm. This is very similar to the rural homestead retreat except in this case you scoped out this farm as an ideal place that you would love to own as a prepper farm but you don't have the cash to even think of buying such a place. But you do have stored near buy at a storage facility a lot of necessary long term collapse supplies such as seed, ammo, gear, medical, weapons and food. It would be best if you had a EMP proof vehicle with the ability to load up your stored goods at a storage facility near by and drive them to the farm of choice. Hopefully this farm will take you in and you will be an asset to their survival and they to you. In many cases this is a better idea than hunkering down in many preppers current locations so give this one some thought.
Urban Survival--- Honestly I don't know much about this as a strategy as I personally think it wouldn't be much of a strategy at all. You will most likely need to join a large gang and kill lots of innocent people in the above situations. Get out of the cities is my recommendation.
Surviving in a small rural town--- Not to many towns will do well in a collapse, but some are very strategically located. I personally have plans to move to an area with a very low population that has a small town that I think will do very well in a collapse. I also know of other towns that will do fine and survive. This is not a bad idea as long as you pick the RIGHT town. And there are very few that I personally would say would be the right place to be. You will need to apply many gray man strategies in the first 6 months until they begin to restructure. I would recommend that part of your preps for this if this is your route would be to have a lot of useful items to add to the town to give you an edge within the governmental structure that is rebuilding. You will want to hold these items secret until any martial law is over and any tyrant type personalities are dealt with. You may even want to help the town rid the nuisance of an evil war lord by learning some sniper skills. Some items you will want if this is your plan is a whole bunch of SEEDs, grain seeds, potato seeds, ghuillie suit, spotter scope, sniper rifle, lots of ammo and hidden caches, your own LTS food and of coarse everything else that consists of prepping, maybe a way to mass filter water. If you can start a business as a general store or gas station or feed store as this will give you an edge but you better be prepared to immediately educate local authorities and even perhaps relocate your goods until after things start to upturn.
War Lord---- My wife has had me take two completely different personality tests recently trying to understand me better. Turns out both types on the two tests are very rare. And the two together are somewhat of an enigma to some of the people who are obsessed with these things. All in all I guess I have the personality of a war lord or bat man LOL. So while I personally have no intentions of becoming an "evil" war lord post shtf I have been thinking about the towns or areas surrounding me and also the place that I plan to move in a couple years, several states south. While making any kind of order where I am would be very difficult as there just isn't enough supplies to do so I do feel that if we get to the mountainous area I hope to move to there is a chance to create some sort of county wide (non-martial law) unity of the people. They do have food, cattle, sheep, water, tons of deer, hay, grain, ect. But people would have to work together. And roads would have to be blocked. Many of the local farmers are in their 60/70s and I'm sure their children would make it that way so at the road blocks they would need a list of potential names of people to let through for the first 30 days or something. If I do get to this place I will have a lot do to plan an strategize for the salvation of the people around me. That is my goal. More than just survive, but to help a lot of others do so. Of coarse I am not going to go door to door pre-shtf and say hey I'm a prepper and you should be too. Opsec will be used. Perhaps I get into the town council and become a voice now and assert some sort of power roll later. I use term power lightly as I am not the type to lord it over others. In fact I would not allow a tyrant to rule post shtf anywhere withing 50 miles of my location!
Some other areas that this might work- Northern Maine, Ozarks, remote mountain farm towns in Oregon, some of the "redoubt" locations though I don't promote their ideals due to forest fires. Very rural texas towns, Northern Michigan aka daUP. (I grew up in MI LOL) In other words- all areas that would be very rural farm areas that you would want to be in a collapse anyways.
Lone Ranger--- Lone ranger is kind of like lone wolf yet with a purpose. He is the opposite of the looter. His mission is to find looters and take them out. He may have a small gang of noblemen. These are probably veterans that would rather kill bad guys as that is what they are good at and would rather not farm. They will have as their reward supplies from the looters as generally the looters will not leave survivors to return the supplies to. Also later they will become known to local towns that are rebuilding as an offensive strike against those who are enemies and thus they will have some help from local towns as trust is built and towns begin to flourish. They may even be able to move between towns and unite them and provide information/communication.
Currently my status would be bug in at my rural retreat. Though I have problems like soil quality and crappy coastal water the place I have is stocked and is better than the other options above. But I do plan to move a few states south to a very rural mountainous area and start another rural retreat and perhaps figure out some way to organize the locals within the entire county and town hub. Not a war lord, well at least not what we think of as a war lord but that is my personality type!!! HAHAHa
Let me know what you all think.
What is your strategy?
Do you have another type of strategy that I did not list?
