TOTM July 2016- Survival Logistics

One problem with logistics goes back to something we were taught in basic training in the USAF back in the 1950's. Many times in extreme conditions, you will have to make a decision, doing nothing is just as much a decision as doing something. If you aren't doing anything to prepare or are putting it off, don't delude yourself and admit that you have made a decision not to prepare. Not a pleasant thought in this day of instant credit and instant pleasures, but joining the flock of sheep is a decision and if bad things happen in the long run,so be it.

 

When the suggestion of logistics or of that nature was suggested for TOTM, one of the members had these comments. I think these are interesting things to think about.

"And to summarize the above post of mine... in a SHTF situation, you need mobility, a team to assist in support of whatever is going on, ears on the radios, ears within whatever is going on local at meetings, gatherings and so on.... maybe a person or two that are plugged into the community that used to be and so on..... lots to chew on. But things you can think about and set in place now. Being involved in your local community meetings, your church, your outreach groups.... will give you insight and contacts to those that may be able to feed info later once things go to hell. The social butterfly knows much better what is going on, than the one sitting in the corner just listening.... they only hear what is nearby, vs the conduit of info coming from afar."

Do now to prepare for later and it is on a social level. Bases covered? Good idea? Bad idea?

 

I think it's a good idea, but tread carefully. Like being very low key and being super careful about opsec.

 

If you don't mind a few thoughts on this topic in a hit and run on your site...

At its most simple logistics is nothing more than planning - planning for every contingency one can envision, all the while recognizing you can't plan for every eventuality. With this reality in front of us plans should be modular allowing them to be mix and matched for the particular situation one finds themselves in.

I believe planning should be performed top-down but I see all too many attempt to perform it bottom-up. I'll provide an example ~ a person agonizing about which varieties of garden veggi's to grow when they haven't given any consideration to the viability of them surviving a particular type of calamity, let alone growing food in their current location.

Every plan needs a primary objective or goal. I'll share mine

My objective in the case of a catastrophic event (regardless the event) is to be prepared to survive the initial conditions of the event/calamity, keep my family and those dependent on me safe and protect the resources at my disposal to ensure our ability to continue to survive. Depending on the type of event that has occurred this may be for a period of time from a few months to a couple of years. During and subsequent to this time period would be the initiation of detailed action plans, dictated by what type of event has occurred. The endgame would be working towards developing a safe, sustaining existence within the framework of the environmental situation that exists at that time.

Obviously subordinate to my primary objective are many, many sub-goals that deal with the specifics of meeting our base needs of security, shelter, water and food. There are many secondary needs and these will vary for each individual based on the circumstances of their life, health, needs, wants, desires and so on.

Once a primary objective is formalized there is a need to perform a detailed analysis of the various types of events/calamities that might occur. You can't plan and prepare for something you don't fully understand. With this analysis out of the way you are clear to start developing responses to the individual events. Once your responses are detailed you should be able to discover where your responses overlap and consolidate these efforts (modular planning) and dealing with the exceptions to the rule. The very last part of this process will entail dealing with the minutiae of your efforts; things like the caliber your defensive weaponry, meeting medical needs when big pharma drugs are no longer available, how to process safe potable water, what you are going to pack in your BOB, how you are going to get a haircut, how to feed livestock throughout an entire year, – this list is almost endless. This is when and where you'll agonize over what seeds you'll want in your seed bank.

Just to provide you some idea of scale, my action plans run to several hundred pages in length with a few hundred more pages of obscure information.

This last comments leads me to what I would like to share next. Knowledge and skill in using that knowledge is your survival. I have amassed a vast digital library of knowledge of everything I can lay my hands on. This database is replicated across several external hard drives and a couple of DVD libraries. I have several laptop computers, back up batteries, solar chargers, USB DVD drives and copies of the digital library in protected storage in several locations.

The purpose of this library and the equipment to process it is three fold. First, no one can know everything. When I run into something I don't know I will have the means to study it. Second, in a severe enough event we will need resources for educating future generations and after a few years, if they survive the initial conflagrations, most repositories of printed knowledge (libraries) will degrade beyond use or recovery. Third, an offshoot of the last, in the event of my death and the loss of what I know the others in my group will have access to as much of my knowledge as possible.

I don't know, I feel as if I'm starting to lecture you and that was not my intent.

...

In closing I would like to share a few of what I call my hard truths of survival that should factor into your logistics. In no particular order they are -

You will have a limited number of people you can really trust to have your back in a catastrophic survival situation. You better know who they are before you find yourself relying on them.

Not everyone is going to survive the initial period of an apocalyptic event or disaster. You and I might be among those that don't survive. We may have family members or close friends that do not survive.

We won't be able to save everyone. In fact, the ability to save even a few will be severely limited.

No matter how detailed we get, our survival plan is inadequate. Stated another way, we can't totally prepare for the unexpected.

In a hard survival situation, if you have stores of resources, you must be prepared to defend them with force or have prepared for and be ready to abandon them.

You won't be able to do everything by yourself. There is a saying I've heard some preppers say that goes “to prep by yourself is to die by yourself”. While this isn't an absolute, there is more than an element of truth to it.

If your plans are formulated or depend on any one individual or resource for success, your plans will most likely fail.

Your survival plan had better include at least three levels of redundancy. The old phrase “better give me three, one to use, one to lose and one to keep” has more than just a grain of truth.

In a societal collapse situation, regardless the causal event, without a doubt the single greatest threat to your survival will be the human animal. There will be groups of people that intend to do you harm or kill you for the simple reason they can. There will be no reasoning with these people. Attempts to buy them off will not save you as they will take what you offer and then kill you. Then they will plunder anything you have stored or amassed.

No matter how well we try to anticipate what conditions will be like and plan for those conditions, we will not know for a certainty what things will be like until we are in the middle of them. We must be ready to adapt to changing conditions and modify our plans accordingly.

Beyond the human animals mentioned above, normally decent but desperate people will do unconscionable acts in the name of survival.

Your planning needs to be done before it is needed. If you wait to start planning until you are in a survival situation it will be too late.

Good luck in your planning and preps
Cordially,

foodgrower

 

@foodgrower well said

 

Agreed! The "Ol saying Best laied plans sure applies in SHTF situations, Glad to see as much good info here! People actually thinking things through and from all angles possable is a great plan for forming plans! One thing I would ad ( for Now) is practice using/ working through your plan(s) to see how well they work in a no stress controlled manor! You find things you thought were a done deal quickly fall apart! Plus, It;s also a good time to test your skills and gear under ideal conditions! I do this with all aspects including my transportation should a bugg out be needed!

 

That statement is what I think will hang up most people. Many are not able to step outside the box and look at things. Often I have read of other cultures doing something in a simplistic way that I had never considered. In our technological, machine driven society, basics and simplicity are often lost. I have found that often presenting a problem to my children and looking to them for how to ideas.

@foodgrower excellent post, glad you stopped by.

 

You might consider printing out all your info ,
In the event an EMP takes out electronics, your ahead.
In the event you want to give instruction to some one without electronics ,you are ahead.
In the event you need to add to or draw pictures modifications and such , a hard copy is easier to deal with in the field.
Paper and writing instruments are a good prep. letters notes signs warnings labelings, medical instructions ,ect,,
My food preps are in small portions, with 02 absorbers in each bag, so that I can give only a portion and not compromise the volume of reserve at all.
It also is a fail safe if a bullet tears through a bucket, and I don't know about it for a long time , it is not all lost .
My jobs in life mostly dealt with dealing with failures, so my mind set is out thinking possible failures .
Often what I was required to do was make repairs that would not fail or at least minimize the inevitable failure in the future.
If a manufactured housing had no bearing, and that was the point of failure, I modified and put one in.
I have even made repairs that had not failed yet to prevent serious failure in the future.
The more you understand how things can fail ,and you take the initiative and make repairs/improvements before you need them, you may be the only one that appreciates it , but the fact of the matter is ,when things get tight, you know what you can trust.

 

This has been a really good TOTM thread. It certainly gave me some new angles to consider.

I don't think I've seen firearms referenced much or at all in this thread and to me it's also a part of logistics. So with that in mind I sent two pistols and a long gun to the gunsmith last month. I had the pistols reliability tuned, Wolff springs installed all the way around and a trigger job on my main pistol. I had the rifle gone through, smoothed out and all three guns parkerized.
I consolidated calibers some time back and I consistently stock ammo. I hope I'm wrong, but I believe we're in for a world of hurt very soon.

 

@ghrit, Thank you for the invite. Any presence here will most likely be minimal at best, I just don't have enough hours in the day/week to get done what I need to do. It's only due to recovering from taking a 3mm slice out of my eye that I was cruising the web and ran across you guys. Besides, while you're old, mean and nasty, <g> I'm all that plus I don't play well in other peoples sandboxes. While I'm smart enough to know I don't have all the answers I'm too opinionated, stubborn and too old to change any of that now.

@Ganado, Hello and thanks

@Ura-Ki, You are entirely correct, too many people think if they know about something they are skilled in doing it. If you haven't done it, and can't do it to the point of teaching it to others, you probably don't really know how to do it.

@Motomom34, Hello and you're welcome

@arleigh, the database nears 490 gigs of data, impossible to print and/or carry. I can however stuff a laptop, solar charger and an external hard drive or two and a DVD reader in a get kit and not be bothered too much by the additional weight. The odds of my needing to access this database in the field is minimal at most. It is more intended when such time comes that re-establishment is beginning to occur. The multiple protected storage takes into consideration EMP. This may irk some as far as sharing goes, I'm sorry, but in the immediacy of a post collapse survival, if you're not part of my group I'm most likely not going to be taking the time to educate you nor train you. There won't be time for that. Most the data resources I have compiled are open source and freely available to anyone desiring to take the time and do the research. Putting it into practice is another thing entirely. On the topic of dealing with failures, you're right too many folks don't take into account Murphy.

Cordially,

foodgrower

 

Additionally I might add that what information one might have, would be worth something for barter if need be, post SHTF.

 

@foodgrower uou have close to 490 gig on one drive? or did I misunderstand?

 

@arleigh, I'm sorry, rereading what I wrote in response to you it could be construed that I was getting on your case. I meant no insult or slight to you. You did bring up some good points.

To somewhat clarify my comment about not taking time to educate or train someone, I firmly believe all too many folks, even folks that prep or prepare, completely underestimate how hard, difficult and dangerous post collapse survival is going to be. My lifestyle right now is predicated on being mostly self sufficient and we grow or raise nearly all of our annual food supply. The vast majority of my time is used in this pursuit and this is with the advantage of modern conveniences, cheap and plentiful energy, plenty of equipment and not needing to look over my shoulder every few moments worrying if someone is getting ready to ambush me.

Knowing how hard it is to live a mostly subsistence lifestyle now and having the benefit of a, shall we say a colorful past, I know how hard it will be to make it post collapse. I can guarantee there will not be any "extra" time if we ever get to that point and taking on a bunch of nimrods is not something folks busy with staying alive are going to have the time nor inclination to do.

@Ganado, yes I have nearly 490 GB of data compiled on many subjects. At first few I used 500GB drives but as the database grew in size I stepped up to 1TB USB drives. I continue to add to the database all the time. The hard part was sitting through writing most of it to the DVD libraries, which right now takes right at 100 DVD disks per copy. This DVD set was done to provide a mostly inert backup copy of the data that can only fail through physical damage to the media.

Cordially,

foodgrower

 

I appreciate your comments , I just figure on having certain hard copy , I'm one of those that prefer to draw on paper than to use CAD programs .
I'm rather a sloppy artist, but it's how I do l my drawing. perspective.

 

I have printed AND hand written copies of my notes and thoughts! I find that I can organise things better if I can access it in Book format. I would hate to have things stored electronically and loose them! I devide up my "books" based on needs I.E. Home, Food, Defenses, Water, transportation, growing, supplies, ect! I find when I need to remember something, it just sort of pops out at me this way! GOG, I like where your head is on the SHTF weapons prep! I did the same thing a few years ago, Solidified on standard cal. choices for all but one pistol and cut back the number that I would "take" vs what I have! I always look at what I can carry every day on my person, If I cant justify it, or it becomes superfluous, I put it away! I was actually surprised with me self that I took so long to narrow the choices down given my training and experience, It just goes to show you what happens when you try and over think something! LOL