Scenario IV

[chicom]

You are well into a SHTF situaton, society has collapsed, you are running out of food from your initial lager. Game hunting has produced less than desirable results. What do you do?

You know of a family-community group that resides in your AO and are fully prepared but not tactically or defensively proficient.

Your foodstuffs will last approximately one more week and it is the onset of winter. What can you do to see your family through till spring?

[freehunter]

Offer food for protection.

[chicom]

Would that be a protection racket?

[MiamiARFan]

Choices are kinda limited. (depending on your moral compass that is).

Barter is the honorable thing to do, protection, training and firearms to assist, keep safe, supplement food stores. Although you have apparently not been that successful up till now in putting food on the table. :P

If they don't feel threatened and don't have sufficient stock to assist you in bridging the gap until winter is over, you won't have many choices.

1. Move
2. Take what you need
3. Create demand for your services

I know the survival instinct will cause people to take desperate actions in desperate times, but I will not lower myself to becoming a predator. I would move to somewhere that I could either supply what was needed or barter my services to obtain what I need.

Hopefully my preps are well rounded enough and won't put me in this position.

[E`omer]

So if a group stashes too much weaponry and not enough food ,they are setting up to be preditors without realizing it .

[chicom]

So if a group stashes too much weaponry and not enough food ,they are setting up to be preditors without realizing it .

Could be. Hunger is a mother of a motivator.

[Gunfixr]

I would agree on offering protection. It may be a racket, but not really if you don't force them. All bartering under such circumstances is sort of a racket, as each member of the exchange is desperate to get something they don't have that the other wants, and since the other is in the same position, they know it. Hunger is a great motivator, and if my kids were starving there isn't much I wouldn't do. If I must be a predator, I would rather steal in the night than just take by force of arms.

[yugoshooter]

Humans will do what they have to do to survive! No one can say what they will really do until that time comes. In desperate times we all have it in us to do what we have to, so I dont think any of us can say they would NOT take food to survive, its built into man to to do what we have to! It would be my last choice but I will admit if it came to feeding my family then all rules of humanity go out the door. It saddens me that we have to even think about this :( :freedom:

[site59]

This is Assuming we are in a long term Every Man for Him Self World.

If this family had food but no weapons or way to protect them selves, it would seem that they didn't prepare to well.

I would first ask them who's stupid idea was it to not have weapons and them I will take their items.

[DirtPirate]

Hunger is a great motivator, and if my kids were starving there isn't much I wouldn't do.

Exactly.


I'd actually been thinking of this kind of scenario...and wondering...."at what point does the average Joe (me or you) HAVE to become the predator"???

If any of you have read "Lights Out" off of Frugal's...maybe you'll understand what I mean. I kept thinking while reading that story that anytime a person or group forces their will upon another person or group...then they are a practicing "dictatorship".
At what point...is it doing "what's right" and at what point is it simply survival? And if it's "survival"...are you predator...or prey?

Can you simply sit back with your preps...defend yourself and your group...or do you have to get involved with the world around you...and when you do...who the hell says that YOUR morality is right to be "imposed" onto others?

I think that in a survival scernario wherein the world has fallen to pieces, at some point you will be faced with the likelihood of being backed into a corner...and you will have to become the predator (at least for a time) in order to survive. It could become a kill or be killed world...and frankly speaking...if you do not have the killer instinct...then you probably would not survive. Maybe you could in a large group of like-minded folks that had a common goal and an agreed upon management structure, but alone...or in a small group...I really think that you will face the change...and the question is...can you be a predator today...and not tomorrow?


To answer the question purported by this scenario...I would likely starve to death and not stoop to becoming the predator...but if I had to...for one moment look into the eyes of my starving child...all I can say is...if you have food...and (after trying to barter/negoticate in good faith) cannot/will not share....then...ashes to ashes...dust to dust...

:rifles:
Capisce?

[hiker]

Another tough situation.
1_During the summer I would garden and can or dry the produce and hopefully have enough put up for the winter.
2_Barter with the other people with goods (medical), knowledge, and protection from the bad guys.
3_Work for your food, cut wood, tend to the animals, etc. I know this sounds like #2 but the panhandlers creed ( will work for food) my come into play here.
4_Lastly and something I really don't want to do, is become a predator myself. Now, that being said most people will do anything to feed their family. But IMO that is the quickest way to get people to ban together, hunt you down including your family, turn on you and get killed.

[Gunfixr]

Certainly if you become the predator and get known, you may be hunted. But at the point of becoming a predator, you are trying to survive by hours or days, not weeks or more. I do think that even if any of us were forced to be predators, there would still be a difference between us and most predators. I am not calling it right, but there is a difference between those who use force to survive and stop at attaining that goal and those who just use violence because it is convenient or they can get away with it. As DirtPirate mentioned, if it cannot be bartered or bought, it could be taken. The true predator will start by taking, and skip the trying to barter or buy. I am sure those of us with families, especially children, have thought some about this, or should. Those children are the future of such a destroyed civilization. They need to live and learn from our mistakes.

[Superman]

I'd have to say barter my services. If I knew I could offer them protection...and maybe even train them to protect themselves I would think (or hope) I would become a welcome member of the group.

Just don't give them quite as much knowledge as you have yourself...don't want them to think they don't need you any more...then you wold become the hunted by your own pupils.

[NECROMONGER]

There are cities full of the people who's fault this SHTF thingy happened and are also at fault for the decay we are seeing that prompted us to prepare for SHTF, and you are saying you can't find meat?


Yep I AM saying what you think I'm saying!


There is a lot of meat in a mans thigh and if you cook the meat REALY well done, it will be safe to eat.

Butchering skills are NOT needed for humans, just cut the legs off at the thigh and the arms off at the shoulders and you have good meat!

This is a good way to thin the population of predators( They will be the healthy ones in urban areas because they take advantage of other people, witch will help you sleep at night after hunting them).

[yugoshooter]

Yea but then you get mad people disease :rofl: :freedom:

[chicom]

Necro, my associates and I stand aghast at your proposal.


Note the WTF stares on their faces.

[url=http://www.freeimagehosting.net/:47f4c]http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/bedb0bd380.jpg[/url:47f4c]

[MiamiARFan]

There is a lot of meat in a mans thigh and if you cook the meat REALY well done, it will be safe to eat.

Butchering skills are NOT needed for humans, just cut the legs off at the thigh and the arms off at the shoulders and you have good meat!



Hope you're not speaking from personal experience here.

[MOlivo]

There are cities full of the people who's fault this SHTF thingy happened and are also at fault for the decay we are seeing that prompted us to prepare for SHTF, and you are saying you can't find meat?


Yep I AM saying what you think I'm saying!


There is a lot of meat in a mans thigh and if you cook the meat REALY well done, it will be safe to eat.

Butchering skills are NOT needed for humans, just cut the legs off at the thigh and the arms off at the shoulders and you have good meat!

This is a good way to thin the population of predators( They will be the healthy ones in urban areas because they take advantage of other people, witch will help you sleep at night after hunting them).


Uhhhh...?.....Um...

Or...You could just retreat to a foresty area...and hunt animals...and not be a cannibal... :P

[Ciggy322]

Game hunting has produced less than desirable results.

The way hunter-gatherers survived was not by hoping game would be plentiful in their area, but by migration to where the game WAS. If a herd goes north, YOU go north. Wherever the food goes, you go. If someone else went there too, either cooperate or fight, as the case may require. Supplement by fishing and foraging where possible.

[Ciggy322]

This is Assuming we are in a long term Every Man for Him Self World.

If this family had food but no weapons or way to protect them selves, it would seem that they didn't prepare to well.

I would first ask them who's stupid idea was it to not have weapons and them I will take their items.

If the items are any good. Chances are if they're poor preparers, the items are rancid, stale, infested with maggots, etc., because they didn't rotate stock or take other necessary precautions.

"I have fifty tons of wheat in sacks, and I live in a flood zone." Well done, Skippy, a few less sandbags to fill.

[Ciggy322]

Yea but then you get mad people disease :rofl: :freedom:

TruDat!!!

[soberups]

IF we are already into a SHTF scenario, and IF someone as well prepared as myself is at the point of starvation, that means that probably 2/3 of the sheeple out there are already dead. I would feed on them before I would become a criminal and take from others by force. Its kind of a moot point though, because if the group that still has food isn't tactically proficient or prepared, someone else will already have ripped them off at gunpoint.