Looking to the Future – Security

The next article in our series ‘Looking to the Future‘ is Security.

Up to this point and before you start going out and about your only security requirements will be to keep low and avoid people looking for some food and water or an occasional visitor. Hopefully, you would have been spared the hordes looking for food because there is no real defence against that. Your main defence mechanism being obscurity.

Now of course you are going to be out and looking for opportunities to trade. Food items may be scarce but you have prepared and have chickens, for example, whilst most do not. At this point of lawlessness there is no legal recourse if someone was to take your chickens by force. It would be up to you to enforce basic morals, one way or another. Once people start getting together they will quickly fall into the have and the have not’s and where they were ecstatic before just barely making ends meet they will soon look with envy at your daily eggs while they consume their millionth tin of beans. Some of them will not have much to trade with either.

Now although I am of the belief that most people are honest and decent I do understand that circumstances will be different from where they are now. People will have changed and will likely have done things that they would not have done before an event. Until things settle down and relationships are built, friendships made and alliances formed you will need to protect yourself from others. This is not so much a new requirement as security has been on your list of things to consider for a while now but revised requirements as obscurity was your main tactic up to now. As before when the type of leader you have is changing you also need to refocus your security requirements to meet the changing circumstances. With no obscurity you need to activly police your property and goods with force if necessary.

This means that where before you fenced in the animals to keep them protected from predators or let them to roam so they did not look like they were farmed, you should look at fencing them in to emphasis that they are property. It also means that you will need to police your crops and your property. You should also continue OPSEC and ensure that your true situation and defences are hidden and that you are careful when you take others on to your property. Don’t show them your hidden caches, your full arsenal, your defences or your hidden sniper nests although you should allow them to see you and your group have arms.

Where before you would avoid people when you were out and about and take care not to be seen now you are not so bothered because you need to define your territory although you still take care with first contact so as not to cause an incident by accident. Nervous people do not like surprises. Set up signs on the path to your house that inform visitors to shout on the way up.

The idea now is not to hide and survive but to meet and interact with others to sell your wares and trade for items you do not have. This is less like the security we need to prepare and survive an event and getting closer to the security we currently have. The main difference is that there are no law enforcement agents to help you if you are abused by others. You need to make sure that you are able and willing to police your own property at this stage in a kind of frontier justice situation.

In conclusion you will need to rely less on obscurity and more on showing you are prepared to aggressively defend yourselves while at the same time trying to make yourselves look unthreatening. The way to do this is to be trustworthy, honest, good natured and friendly up front whilst showing that you will not be pushed around. The sort of person that they will want on their side as the community starts to expand.

Next up is Justice.