What does Anarchy really look like?

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OnTheFence

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I watched loads of episodes of Doomsday Preppers (which is how I found this forum) and time and time again I've heard people referring to protection against "gangs" and "groups of marauders". In almost every real life breakdown of government (Somalia, Libya, Russian Civil War 1917-1922, Yugoslavia, Aghanistan, etc., etc.) the power vacuum where random gangs operate in a completely lawless environment is very short (months or less). The region rapidly is divided into zones controlled by different warlords operating fairly tyrannical ineffective banana governments.

These warlords will probably control armies ranging in the 1000's rather than roaming gangs of manageable numbers such as 30-100. While I can see some really dedicated Preppers being able to deter gangs of 30 or so. I really can't imagine hardly anyone putting up a successful defence against any sizable warlord that emerges.

On the plus side the kind of person that takes so much from people that they leave them with nothing to lose usually doesn't become a warlord in the first place, they usually get shot by someone they've really annoyed before reaching that size, so I imagine when the local warlord's cronies come knocking on the doors of preppers, the taxes they demand will be sizable but not overwhelming.

The local warlords usually aren't that great at keeping order so they'll probably be smaller criminal gangs there too that the warlord won't be able to do a very good job of policing. I guess having a well planned defence strategy could help defend against the criminal gangs, but I think your going to have to pay your protection money to the local warlord if your doomsday strategy involves staying in your house.

I think a better strategy might be:

1) Live off the land
If you don't have much but survival skill then you won't have much the warlords can take from you

2) Go out to see:
The guy I have the most respect for in Doomsday Preppers is the guy who has a yacht he can go out to sea for years on end, he had on board desalination plants and all. I think this is a good plan for anarchy as the first thing that goes when government breakdown is the navy I don't think the warlords will have a significant navy. I also think the dangers of piracy are over-exaggerated there's not going to be enough rich picking out there at see to justify going to the trouble of piracy.

3) Build an underground bunker, fill it with supplies hide and hope no one finds you.



In principle a forth option might be to start your own nation of preppers big enough to deter the warlords, but I don't think that's a very good idea. The warlords will probably be high ranking generals from the existing power structure that already have trained troupes that are loyal to them and access to a wide array of military hardware that its currently illegal for civilians to procure. I just don't see a grass-roots movement of amateur preppers ever being able to stand up against that level of force.
 
I'm concerned with the inner city ,street gang types . They are armed thugs with long arrest records. Opportunistic punks looking for the next free ride , spilling out to the rural areas. The cities grocery stores would soon be emptied.
 
As someone mentioned on another thread look at LA after the Rodney King deal . And the street gang compairason is dead on They live a SHTF life style already but the idea they would leave you along if you don't have anything to steal could be misleading they would kill or torture you for sport . Look at how they act in a civilized world and then take away all law and order . The best way to deal with roving gangs in a SHTF lawless world would be to let them know the hard way that if they enter your area they will lose numbers quick .
 
The thing about street gangs moving into rural areas is that I imagine for people with houses in rural areas there's a much bigger buffer zone to alert you that a bad guy is coming.

In a urban or suburban setting having groups of law-biding individuals walking past your house is normal so if you spent your time on edge watching everyone who walks past your house to see if they were dodgy or not, you'd die of high stress level, so you usually only start to get worried after someones broken in through the door or window, whereas in a rural setting where hardly anyone goes anyway, the instant you see a group of dodgy looking people entering your property from afar you can instantly proceed to pick people off.

Do street gangs today spill into rural regions (I mean really rural regions where there's large buffer zones between the farm gate and the farm house) or do they stick to their own "hood" for the reasons I speculated about?

I guess there's less police in rural areas.

Obviously in a minor disaster such as an earthquake where the government remains intact, street gangs would be the biggest threat, but in a major national collapse turning into a civil war I think rogue generals-turned-warlord would be a far more formidable threat and one that would have to be negotiated with rather than fought.
 
The gangs will go where the people are. Truly rural areas are slim pickings. Too much work for too little reward and too high a risk of getting lead poisoning. They'll concentrate on a populated area until they have bled it dry, then find another populated area, hitting the cities first, then towns. They'll have easy pickings in some parts of the country.
 

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