I don't know about you but what scares the hell out of me isn't some group of violent looters hitting the countryside. Sure it's always a possibility but one with an easy upfront solution that won't necessarily keep you awake at night rethinking it over and over until old age clouds your brain.
What will break your heart is turning away those non-violent but desperate hungry people you cannot help.
I imagine those are the ones that will haunt you forever and keep you second guessing yourself well after things improve.
Imagining yourself or more importantly your loved ones in the same situation might help you to harden your heart, or then again it might only make your guilt that much the greater. There is no easy answer for this problem and honestly I don't think there is anyway to really prepare yourself for it either. If there is I certainly don't know it or as things stand now am unable to figure it out completely.
Hell, I can't even run off the stray cats that show up at my barn and eventually I end up feeding them. What would I do if it was a 10 year old child?
The only chance I can see with being able to minimize the emotional pain for me personally is to have room and resources set aside or available that actually allows me to help such people. I think this is as important an area of prepping as any other. You must count charity into your plans. You must allow and plan for a surplus to help as much as possible.
Only then will you be able to look yourself in the eye ten or twenty years down the road and say...
"I did everything I possibly could".
Certainly you cannot take in everyone but you can plan on doing something. It's a risk yes but if you have some plans for helping strangers who come up begging you just might make a difference. This is one of the many reasons I push gardening and other production to the point of a surplus. In a grid down situation this would enable you to carry some extra hands and put them to work. My guess is there will be plenty of refugees willing to trade their labor for room and board. In fact my faith in humanity tells me there will be more of that type than the violent looters but I guess we will see.
The advantage of having a year round surplus is that giving charity out, even to those you cannot take in permanently, isn't necessarily reducing your own stores. If you are sure you are producing a surplus and not just constantly living off what you have accumulated pre-collapse you have a luxury that might just save lives and your own sanity to boot.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
Rule #1 FAMILY COMES FIRST,
ReplyDeleteRule #2 Family Comes first,
Rule #3 See #1&2.
A sad but true fact. I will help some folksnow, we gave a girl we knew from several years ago with baby clothes last week. After the ship finally rolls over, that's it. Sorry St. Peter, I guess I go to Hell!!
Rob - Well I hope to produce enough surplus that just perhaps I will be saved from making those choices or at least from having to make it the same way every time.
DeleteMaybe.
I have needed help with stuff so many times and the drive by farmers just go by and look, that is one reason I gave them that name. I really won't have much trouble running them off.
ReplyDeleteSf - Well I was more thinking about the refugee families not the locals. I might help my neighbors though they have always been rather square and fair when dealing with me personally. I don't always agree with their practices but I think most of them will make it without begging.
DeleteI appreciate the sentiment here and I consider such things as well, but the thing to remember is this: 52or53% of the people in this country voted for this situation the last two presidential elections. That's most if not all the blacks and a very large portion of whites that brought this down on us all.
ReplyDeleteYour stray cats didn't.
Once you start feeding the strays ( not referring to cats here ) they will keep coming back...... and they'll bring friends.
Matt - Well reasoned comment and you are correct. What I hope to do more than anything else is maybe take in a few I deem worthy if at all possible. I figure I will have the room and land to do it if I have the surplus to make it until their own labor kicks in.
DeleteI might handle simple charity like Rawles recommends and sending it tot he local churches. One of the few things he promotes that I do agree with.
Oh I would add that contrary to my grumpy exterior I really am a very forgiving person. Even an Obummer voter that sincerely told me they see their mistake would be given a chance y me believe it or not.
DeleteYeah I try to be as well, but there is such a thing as reaping the consequences of one's choices.
DeleteIf I have to suffer as a result of someone else's choices, then perhaps they should as well.
I realize that you are referring to specific situations, while I am speaking in generalilities
DeleteMatt - Well I think your points are valid even unto specific circumstances. I guess I see children as about the one true victim group left. I would judge a teenage girl in the same light as a teenage boy honestly and one who was voting age I might actually judge one more harshly than the other if I knew their politics but children I don't know. Turning them away would effect me for life I think even though I knew I had to do it.
DeletePP, are you OK? You're awful agreeable tonight.....
DeleteHeh I got to rant about Robin Williams so I got all my grumpiness out for the evening :)
DeleteI am less sanguine than you about the dangers of looters in the countryside. Particularly during that period of semi-collapse, similar to what you see in some of Mexico's rural areas.
ReplyDeleteBut the issue of what to do about the neighbors starving eight-year old little girl who is raiding your tomato patch is ignored by the guns and ammo solves everything prepper crowd.