Strategies for post-apocalyptic life. (non-political thread)

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 8:52 pm

When people stock up on guns and ammo for "disaster situations", what's actually their plan?
Are they just going to paranoidly sit in their homes and shoot at passers by? That doesn't seem like a very good plan, you're just going to run outof supplies eventually, even bullets. I doubt you could make them yourself, it's just not a sustainable strategy.

i used to hear a lot of "When the ★■◆● hits the fan, all you need is your gun and ammo".
But i don't understand that mentality. To me, it seems that the most valuable thing to have when the ★■◆● hits the fan is OTHER PEOPLE. Don't have a shootout with your neighbour trying to steal eachother's food. Instead, cooperate, farm, and make some more food!
Create a community, build it as big as you can as fast as you can, inter-link with neighbouring communities for trade and sharing intel on roving gangs of psychopaths,
Recreate a law & justice system like we had. Basically the goal is to try to re-create society ASAP, society is good! It's just a question of priorities until you get there, concentrate on this or that, build this first or that first. But the goal is surely to just build back up what was lost, right? Re-create society, right?
Doctors are nice. Education is nice. Cheap plentiful food and water is wonderful. A Law & Justice system, yes good. Safety is nice. The ability to see a stranger and not instantly worry they're gonna gank me, that's Society baby. I'd rather not go without these things if i can help it, i mean why would i chose to? that's dumb.

Why does everyone buy guns/ammo? Are they trying to protect themselves from an invading army? That seems like a really unlikely event, a natural disaster would be much more likely.
When people talk about this stuff they DO talk mostly about protecting themselves from natural disasters, yet all they talk about is guns. Like it's all about guns. Guns guns guns.
But shouldn't it be about people? People are more useful than guns. Your neighbour will be more useful to you than a gun would, so isn't this where we should be concentrating our efforts and strategies?

So when people talk about buying guns and ammo to prepare for The Apocalypse(tm) - what actually is their plan? Do they even have long-term plans?
Maybe their plan is to start a gang of wandering psychopaths - maybe this strikes them as a good idea? It seems pretty ★■◆●ing retarded to me, but hey that's me.

So, what's the plan DBB

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 9:46 pm

All good points, but you seem bent on sticking "preppers" with a gun-nut mentality. I've heard it, and they're out there, but it's not the case with any of the few folks that I've encountered. Society IS a wonderful thing. Anyone with half a brain who's thought it through knows the benefits of society. I've thought about it a lot, personally. In a "★■◆● hits the fan" situation rebuilding society is the primary goal, but it will necessarily be accompanied by the need to defend yourself and your property from people who do not share that goal, and who's reaction to the breakdown of societal function is looting, stealing, and even killing to get what they need/want. If society should happen to crash it will be Louisiana all over again, except worse, depending on the scale. Law enforcement will be overrun, food will disappear off of the shelves in the first day, and out of the usual pantries in another week. People with any kind of real preparation will statistically be a minority (single-digit percentages). Always nice to hope that level heads will win out, but realistically it's a stupid plan. Frankly if society as a whole were a little more fail-safe, and people were more willing to work together and do right by each other, I wouldn't feel the need for a firearm...

Check out Nutnfancy on YouTube if you want a good example of someone who is level-headed but prepares for the worst. He has a few interesting
"philosophy" videos on the subject.

EDIT: I would ask, also, how much would you and your neighbor see eye-to-eye in a high-stress, survival situation? Now how about your other 5 neighbors? It sounds great, but I'm fairly certain my neighborhood would devolve into a war-zone, and it isn't even that bad of a neighborhood. I can count the number of neighbors that I feel I could depend on, on my block, on one hand.

Still, in my mind, the overruling goal IS to reestablish a social structure and "rule of law", as Nutnfancy calls it. You and I may have some disagreements on just how easy it may be to do this (limited resources, unreasonable people, conflicting interests, ...). I would hope we could bind it together as much as possible, but what if it boils down to feeding your family for the duration of a crisis or feeding people who have refused to take precautions for a day? I would call that a serious conflict of interest. I might not even want to venture association in some cases if this could be a possibility. What do you think? Do you have a handle on the possible reality of this? Optimism has it's place, but sometimes there is just no way...

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:03 pm

If there is some sort of global cataclysm, I feel like it'd be best to just get wiped out during it, because ★■◆● it if I'm going to live without the Internet for years.

Isaac · Post by **Isaac** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:07 pm

If my business purchased an asset in the year the world ends, can we expense it? Can we expense all of our assets?

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:18 pm

Yes, Enron, technically once the world ends it is no longer illegal, so if you can keep from being audited until then you are scott-free!

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:53 pm

If you and your neighbor are going to be "sharing intel on roving gangs of psychopaths" then you must realize you and your neighbor will need something to make those psychopaths behave in a civil manner when they roam your way. Guns will help you get that done.

Two things I've heard that ring true for me.
The skin of civilization is only 7 meals deep and the only things you truly own are those you can carry at a dead run.
I figure if one of those things I own is a good gun then I get to stop running and rest more often than others.

I do usually have enough ammo on hand to fight my way out of town and hunt for a few months. I don't have any other preparations, extra stored food, water etc. but I think I'll be able to see the feces moving toward the fan in time to load up the family and truck and move away from large groups of people who think government will provide for them.
They are going to be the 'zombies' for a few months if we have some kind of economic disaster that shuts down the supply of food etc. and I'd just as soon not be around them while they figure out they should have been looting food and water in those first few days instead of big screen TV's and famous shoes.

I imagine 6 months into it the system will reboot in some sort of FEMA experiment mode and eventually I'd come back toward civilization to test the water.

That is the only kind of disaster I can imagine would happen since I don't believe in Mayan fairy tales.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:41 pm

Will Robinson wrote:If you and your neighbor are going to be "sharing intel on roving gangs of psychopaths" then you must realize you and your neighbor will need something to make those psychopaths behave in a civil manner when they roam your way. Guns will help you get that done.

cookies would be more effective. Guaranteed. Guns will just frighten them and/or piss them off. Not a good thing for psychopaths, as a rule.

Two things I've heard that ring true for me.
The skin of civilization is only 7 meals deep and the only things you truly own are those you can carry at a dead run.
I figure if one of those things I own is a good gun then I get to stop running and rest more often than others.

I'll stand my ground on my land. It would take a good long run for more than a handful of folks to get down that peninsula and across those marshes.
My situation might be unique.

seriously, this whole discussion is ludicrous. 99% of us would be screwed, randomly.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:51 pm

callmeslick wrote:
Will Robinson wrote:If you and your neighbor are going to be "sharing intel on roving gangs of psychopaths" then you must realize you and your neighbor will need something to make those psychopaths behave in a civil manner when they roam your way. Guns will help you get that done.
cookies would be more effective. Guaranteed. Guns will just frighten them and/or piss them off. Not a good thing for psychopaths, as a rule.

Yup. I'd just let the blighters have their way. I'm sure kindness and cookies given to a psychopath would make him go away.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:53 pm

will said he wanted them to 'behave in a civilized manner'......I doubt anything would work for that, myself, but cookies or possibly Crab Louis would work as well as shooting at them.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:57 pm

callmeslick wrote:will said he wanted them to 'behave in a civilized manner'......I doubt anything would work for that, myself, but cookies or possibly Crab Louis would work as well as shooting at them.

Well there's your problem. You'd shoot at them, I'd shoot them.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:57 pm

pass the Crab Louis.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:59 pm

woodchip wrote:Well there's your problem. You'd shoot at them, I'd shoot them.

LOL!

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 9:33 pm

callmeslick wrote:will said he wanted them to 'behave in a civilized manner'......I doubt anything would work for that, myself, but cookies or possibly Crab Louis would work as well as shooting at them.

No. roid expressed incredulity at the notion that people think guns are a priority and suggested working with neighbors to be forewarned about "roving bands of psychopaths". I merely suggested that just knowing they are coming is an incomplete strategy and in fact one of the very best tools for dealing with approaching bands of bad people is guns.

For myself I said I'm getting away from large groups of people until the system reboots...effective locally governed marshal law at the minimum. I have two lovely daughters who deserve to see a long happy life...
My guess is the fishing gear is what will feed us most of the time but I still want to keep my options open if a big tasty deer wanders through...or an bunch of hungry two legged mammals that only know how to prey on humans...

If someone like Obama is in office and this scenario actually unfolded you know he won't let go of the federal level of marshal law until he milked it for every executive order he could or until someone pries it from his cold.. ..fingers. (sorry Secret Service please don't come jack me around for a silly hypothetical) I don't want a bunch of army boys under his orders trying to take my hardware from me so I'd wait until I saw commercial aircraft on routine flight paths, normal civilian looking traffic on hiways and heard lots of complainers bitching about local level government being slow to repair things on the radio stations before trying to roll back home.

The odds are pretty darn slim of major economic collapse capable of shutting things down like that but contingency plans are fun to chew on. Better entertainment than most TV these days.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 7:04 am

the Obama rant was hilarious, Will.....just couldn't resist, huh? Seriously, though, I find the whole thing being contemplated here as ludicrous, although, in the form of Doomsday Preppers, it makes for great TV. The fact is, if one goes through most scenarios, all the hyper dramatics will either be unnecessary or futile. A true nuclear event will lead to massive contamination, so storing your food and water doesn't help much, nor will hunting skills.
Most other events are going to be localized, at best, and not lead to massive areas of chaos, so authority will likely not completely break down.
Thus, my comments in this thread were WAY less than serious.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:25 pm

I find slick, that most of your scenarios are conveniently slanted. Whether or not full-scale prepping is absolutely necessary is a matter of debate. Being over-cautious isn't wrong. However nuclear preparedness is not so useless as you so foolishly paint it, and just because we don't expect to get hit by anything in the near future... Have you ever heard anyone say that life is non-linear? Our own government is prepared for fallout! Of course it's paranoid for us to do the same...

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 7:23 pm

I wonder why Homeland Security saw a need to buy over a billion rounds of ammunition

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 1:24 am

kill all zombies

</thread>

flip · Post by **flip** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 3:47 am

A simple bug-out bag, sturdy clothes and boots, good knife, a water purifier, tarp for shelter. Anything else your just storing up for someone else

. Oh yeah, antibiotics, got to have antibiotics.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 7:09 am

flip wrote:A simple bug-out bag, sturdy clothes and boots, good knife, a water purifier, tarp for shelter. Anything else your just storing up for someone else . Oh yeah, antibiotics, got to have antibiotics.

you realize, do you not, that probably the most likely wide-scale disasterous event most of us will ever see is a major outbreak of antibiotic resistant disease?? Otherwise, what earthly scenario are you prepared for with a bag of clothes, boots and a knife? A tarp? Hell, you could create one from cast off crap in most situations. As for me, I'll prefer a functional car and a bit of extra gasoline. More comfy that sleeping under a tarp, and likely to hold a bit more clothing, food and even weaponry, if one desired. Mine is 4 wheel drive, so I could off-road it as needed. Seriously, folks, I might agree with Thorne that some foresight isn't bad, but most potential scenarios seemingly have a complexity of issues that no one could prepare for properly. Might as well go with the flow, and use your wits in real-time.

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 8:49 am

So sayeth he who knows everything.

I doubt if the antibiotics would be for any “outbreak” more likely for the normal cuts and scratches one might imagine getting, living in the wild.

flip · Post by **flip** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:36 am

What Spidey said. Slick has obviously put no thought into it, he thinks he's gonna get in a car and drive away! LOL.

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 4:24 pm

flip wrote:What Spidey said. Slick has obviously put no thought into it, he thinks he's gonna get in a car and drive away! LOL.

where do you think you're going on foot with your knapsack, tarp and knife? Seriously? Hell, if I was in my Virginia home, I'll rather have a functional fishing rod, casting net and crab traps. If the bay or ocean water is uncontaminated, I'll eat just fine, if I have some canned veggies stashed(will toss
out tarp to make room).
Actually, I am having trouble conceiving of what sort of disaster you all are preparing for. Spidey says I know nothing, but I'll tell you this much, I can
smell panic over nothing when I see it.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 5:12 pm

Me? Drive up to Washington State and smoke enough legal weed and get so stoned out of my mind that I could care less that the end of the world might happen tomorrow

callmeslick · Post by **callmeslick** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:19 pm

tunnelcat wrote:Me? Drive up to Washington State and smoke enough legal weed and get so stoned out of my mind that I could care less that the end of the world might happen tomorrow

see? Here is where societies get rebuilt. If you can bring that stuff East, we can share, and you'll take care of the munchies with Crab Imperial, and Steamed shrimp. Now, we find someone with gardening skills(a Washington grower) and a moonshiner and we're off to a fine start. Except for the zombies, of course.

Edit--And a Merry Christmas to all. Heading west into a blizzard tomorrow myself, and that's as close to the end of the world as I figure I'm likely to see.

flip · Post by **flip** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 9:56 pm

Heh, well im obviously not gonna spend my life savings and to add the need for hooks and line seemed somewhat daft

. Most important is protection from the elements and get as far away from the crowds as possible, if that will be possible at all. Im moving light and at night if i have to. My stepdad became a marine, i was raised to be one.

i already have all the prep i need

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Dec 21, 2012 8:12 am

I plan on just becoming a zombie. Problem solved.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Dec 21, 2012 2:26 pm

Mmm, braaaaiiiiinssss.

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Dec 24, 2012 10:03 pm

Will Robinson wrote:
callmeslick wrote:will said he wanted them to 'behave in a civilized manner'......I doubt anything would work for that, myself, but cookies or possibly Crab Louis would work as well as shooting at them.
No. roid expressed incredulity at the notion that people think guns are a priority and suggested working with neighbors to be forewarned about "roving bands of psychopaths". I merely suggested that just knowing they are coming is an incomplete strategy and in fact one of the very best tools for dealing with approaching bands of bad people is guns.

Oh, i think i see what the confusion is, we're operating on different sets of assumptions.
To me, when the ★■◆● hits the fan, the most dangerous thing is not other people - The most dangerous thing is the natural world.
My first major fear is that no matter what happens - in the long-run we will all be running outof our precious food canned reserves. No matter how much people have stored up in their bunkers, it will eventually run out it's just a matter of time. Could be decades, sure - that seems a long way off, but it's still going to come around isn't it. I don't want to plan to stave to death in a decade, this is a terrible plan.

In the "blacks are gonna kill us all" delusional fucked up vision of the world that you seem to live in, i can see why you'd be scrambling for your guns.

The point of cooperating with other people, with my neighbours, is not primarily to fend off gangs of psychopaths. NO. The point was that with more people, you have more manpower, to make more food, to build better facilities. A man is not an island, it takes a village to raise a child, (*insert other truisms/cliches here*). If you need to get something done, it's better if you have more hands to help you do it, more brains to help you plan it, more eyes to help you organise it. More people is quite simply... better.
It's more mouths to feed. But it's at the same time more hands in the soil, farming. You get economies of scale.
I wanted to also point out economies of scale with military intelligence, but merely as a sidenote. What is the combat effectiveness of 1 person with a machine gun, vs 10 organised people with only 1 or 2 small handguns between them? They can maintain situational awareness and plan ambushes so much easier, with so many interconnected eyes.

I'm not just talking about working together with your neighbour, i'm talking about ALL your neighbours, your entire street, entire cities. You will rebuild city-states. THIS is what will protect you from gangs of psychopaths. Those gangs are an afterthought, the primary reason to get together is to produce food. Coz the only other option is to run out of food and starve. Even if you get killed by a heavily armed roving gang before you can collect enough people around yourself to be reasonably protected, at least you died producing a future, at least you had a hope.
Coz eventually those gangs are gonna starve.

Like i said in the OP. Gotta have those long-term plans, gotta have that exit strategy, that path upwards. A long-term plan to eventually run outof canned food, overhunt your area, and then STARVE is kindof... idiotic, no?
(you're not the only survivor, can your local game-meat really sustainably support the food needs of your local community? i guess that's a variable.)

Also, i'd like to point out that your plan Will, to wait for society to reboot itself, is selfish.
Who's gonna reboot society? Those who stayed behind to rebuild. Not you, though, you're gonna go on your hunting holiday and come back after all those OTHER suckers have rebuilt society for you.
So you're just gonna come back in a few months/years/decades and ask for your handout? Lame dude, lame.
...
and you'll likely be returning for your hand-out after over-hunting your local game supply, keep that in mind too. You likely won't be the only one trying to live off the land, the hunting stocks will likely be quite overburned. You should manage the stocks, try to optimise. You'll have to coordinate with your fellow neighbour hunters too, so you're all on the same page, so one of you doesn't ★■◆● the stocks up for the rest of you, and educate passers-by so that the negative effects of poaching is minimised. You know... FARM. And build facilities so that you can make more efficient use of the animal, using all of the animal without it spoiling, preserve the meat. Oh wait, this sounds kinda like we're rebuilding a society, oh no this is the last thing you wanted!
Do you see how it's inevitable? No matter what you do, the best strategy always seems to end up re-building society by accident. Why is that?

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Mon Dec 24, 2012 10:30 pm

Roid, I'm assuming we won't need to start from scratch and rebuild city/states from the ground up because the people at the top will still be in power...so the few months i choose to get off the grid is based on my guess of how slow they are to regain control. It took them days jst to get water to the hurricane Sandy victims...Katrina redux...

Sure I could stay and fend off hungry looters, compete with them for scavenged food and water, etc. but to what good end would that lead?
If I get out of their way I conserve ammo, spare them to their own devices and keep my family safer. It isn't selfish. I don't have an obligation to stay in the thick of it and shoot idiots i cant afford to feed, at least not as much as I am responsible for keeping my daughters safe!
Out in the wild we would be safer, much safer, and the people most responsible for creating the idiots circumstances can bear that burden.

If you want to discuss post nuclear attack, long term stuff then look for me moving south through Mexico. I'll be in one of the groups of roving smart people who never return to the 'new wasteland' assuming I'm not dealing with my own half life concerns....

And where the hell do you get the balls to inject racism into my comments?!? F you. I have no expectation that the racial make up of roving bands of idiots will differ from the current racial breakdown in the country. Your scenario in the original post doesn't suggest a situation where black people will be disparately affected. I'm concerned with violent thugs of all colors on an equal opportunity to either be shot by,or me to shoot, basis. Is your perception that all the people in dire straights will be black and all the whites will be better off and armed?!? That probably reflects your country better than mine.
Your ignorance of my america is showing again!
Come visit me for awhile before showing your ass again so you can at least know wtf you are talking about.

flip · Post by **flip** » Mon Dec 24, 2012 10:38 pm

Here's a picture of Roid about 3 years into the Apocalypse

EDIT: Found one of Ferno, TG and Isaac too!

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Dec 24, 2012 10:55 pm

Will Robinson wrote:Roid, I'm assuming we won't need to start from scratch and rebuild city/states from the ground up because the people at the top will still be in power...so the few months i choose to get off the grid is based on my guess of how slow they are to regain control. It took them days jst to get water to the hurricane Sandy victims...Katrina redux...

Days huh, hmm, it gets me thinking. I'm curious how long it would have taken for a group of hurricane Sandy victims to source their OWN water. It's just a question of tools, manpower, and organisation right? Get enough households together and they will probably have all that between them.
i know in hindsight we know it only ended up taking a few days to restore amenities. But what if it didn't?

Oh ★■◆● we're cutoff from society, lets wait and hope that rescue comes before we die from lack of the essentials.
-or-
Oh ★■◆● we're cutoff from society, lets MacGyver together the essentials right now. Bob nextdoor has a backhoe, Jim who lives on the corner is a civil engineer, if some other ppl on my street let me syphon some diesel from their cars, we might be able to dig a well by the end of the day.

....IT BEGINS

I mean, you know how sometimes an army will aide in civil matters during natural disaster situations, build amenities, organise rations, purify water, etc. They can apparently do anything, it's all very impressive. Well... what IS an army? It's just a group of well organised people, with various specialisations, no? How they distrubute resources is interesting too, From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Dec 24, 2012 11:31 pm

I guess what i'm asking/exploring in this thread, is how best to organise a group of people who find themselves suddenly cutoff from society, quite likely permanently.

Like... if suddenly the entire world was hit by a massive EMP, and everything electronic is destroyed (yes utterly destroyed, not just knocked out). Maybe also the water pipes are destroyed (lolwhat, how does that happen?! but it did, somehow. DEAL WITH IT HAHA). Most people are unharmed, but they suddenly find themselves with no amenities. So, you're in that sitaution, you're at home surrounded by your neighbours in the same situation, or you're stuck at your workplace, or whatever. So, what's the plan?

- Maybe the planet was hit by a surprise comet outof no-where. Floods and earthquakes have killed tons of people, perhaps most people are dead, the survivors have to make do.

- Maybe you and your whole neighbourhood, or city, (or whole country even? wow that'll be interesting) just got warped off to some unfamiliar yet habitable planet. Just the people, you're all literally standing there NAKED, the same distance apart from eachother as you were before the sudden warp happened. It's like suddenly all material posessions in society just dissappeared, a big reset switch. You're sitting in the dirt, naked, your hands still held out infront of you as if on a keyboard which is suddenly no longer there. You look to your left and see your neighbour sitting also in the dirt naked, but he has only one arm held up, i guess he was watching TV. He is also looking around, he seems rather dazed. You stand up, you see a lot of people all standing around, the citizens of your neighbourhood you guess. Wow, there's a lot of them, you never really thought about it while they were all hidden away in their houses, but now they're all scattered around the dirt. "Did this happen to the whole planet?" you wonder, but you don't know really, all you know is what you can see infront of you (oh, and your memories of course). Hmm, what do we all do now? What's the plan. Can we all survive this?

We'd better start punching some trees i guess.

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 12:45 am

Let's get this over with.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 10:29 am

roid wrote:I guess what i'm asking/exploring in this thread, is how best to organise a group of people who find themselves suddenly cutoff from society, quite likely permanently. .....

The details are all there in the history books and the science books. The slimy things crawl out of the water....they grow appendages...their bodies evolve to ultimately walk upright.....

Oh...ok, so fast forward...skim the industrial revolution era and all the decades since and you'll see how you can expect people to cobble together the infrastructure only this time they will have the advanced state of the art tools and resources to replicate what they lost in the apocalypse.
So no real need to dive into the details unless your a writer for the TV series Revolution.

But regardless of what tools they use the Alpha's will dictate the rules and enforce them with weapons. No matter how many people want to live in a new 'better commune' there will be plenty of quick to be armed Alphas among the whole. For example some will suggest it would be nice to develop alternative energy at a higher priority this time around but while the warm fuzzy kind of people nicely join together to pursue that the not so nice will get a refinery back on line and fuel the tanks etc and they will roll into your co-op farm village experiment and demand taxes and fealty be paid to them...

The opportunity to do it all over again 'but better' will have different meanings to different people and I expect the net result to look very much like the way we live now unless the apocalypse is limited to a select section of the globe in which case the way we live will look a lot like the way the neighbors who weren't destroyed live because they will likely swarm in and remake the place in their image.

About the only thing I can think of that might cause the whole population to band together for the common good is if their was an alien invasion that targeted all humans equally. And once that invasion was repelled we would all fall back into our sub cultures again just like when the Soviet boot was removed from the necks of the eastern block nations. They reclaimed their previous borders and their grudges.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 10:46 am

roid wrote:I mean, you know how sometimes an army will aide in civil matters during natural disaster situations, build amenities, organise rations, purify water, etc. They can apparently do anything, it's all very impressive. Well... what IS an army? It's just a group of well organised people, with various specialisations, no? How they distrubute resources is interesting too, From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Ok, you commie, you forgot one thing in your daydream, there. An army rolls in with supplies, and tools specialized for their purpose. That's one of the reasons for the size of any country's military budget. So they have training, supplies from an outside source, and expensive specialized tools. ... oh yeah, and they're organized... any one of them could be court-martialed or dealt with on the spot by a superior officer for putting his own interests above those of the mission. That's all it is, I guess.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 11:02 am

Another important distinction: an army is not a group of well organized people... it is a group of people that have been well organized by an external system. They are answerable for their performance in the field. Those under command are immediately answerable to superior officers in the field, and superior officers are answerable for the outcome of the mission at the mission's conclusion (effecting their military career). There may be times when it is the mission itself that motivates the men, and this is commendable, but when that is not the case there is always the military system of discipline to ensure that the mission is accomplished.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 1:18 pm

If there is an apocalypse, at first, we won't have armies to deal with, we'll have mobs if any people are left. And as time progresses, some smart, power driven, idealistic person will become the leader who will start organizing and instigating these mobs, so a sort of hierarchy will eventually form. It won't be long as more and more people join the cause before this leader forms a pecking order of sub-leaders to control things and an army of like minded survivors starts doing his bidding. That's all it takes to make an army.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 3:31 pm

Stop sippin' on the SKIM milk, TC! No one's talking about taking on armies here.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 4:31 pm

Just sayin'. How many people does it take to constitute an army? The only difference between an army and a mob is that an army is organized, has some sort of weapons and has a leader and hierarchy to run it effectively. A small organized group is far more effective than a disorganized mob. Although a crazed mob isn't something I'd want to run into in a post-apocalyptic world.

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed Dec 26, 2012 9:18 pm

Will Robinson wrote:
roid wrote:I guess what i'm asking/exploring in this thread, is how best to organise a group of people who find themselves suddenly cutoff from society, quite likely permanently. .....
The details are all there in the history books and the science books.

TL;DR.
Thus i started a thread asking for everyone's* opinions instead, we can't all have magical Lisbeth ★■◆●ing Salander high functioning autism +50 reading ability

. Simmer all that ★■◆● down for me holmes.

I hope you guys don't ALL define your lives by the greek alphabet, that'd be a bit heartbreaking to hear

When you say Alpha, you mean psychopath like we were talking about in previous comments yes?

I figured we might be a bit more enlightened thesedays. a bit more cultured. we may aim for higher things. Maybe we've all learned a thing or 2 about good strategies. ppl write very popular books about surviving zombie apocalypses, we can do this.
And hey, if it helps you to think about it this way, what if we go with your good ol' American "Guns-r-the-best" mantra: Maybe in post-apocalyptic life, guns would be so ubiquitous that everyone ends up figuring that it's in everyone's best interest to just get along and rebuild society peacefully instead of wasting time trying to dominate eachother like gibbering chimps. Does that help? I'd really like to diffuse this whole "omg violence" mentality you just can't seem to think outside of. COZ IT'S SUPER BORING. It makes for a super boring thread.

*i was expecting more interest though :-/ . Come on ppl, exercise those imaginations, release the words ITT!
(i do appreciate your participation Robinson, i just wish there were more voices)