Just a scenario that could easily happen and this gives you the chance to think outside the box
The end of the world arrived, with barely a whimper. Fully half of the population was wiped out by an unknown disease. A further 20% died from diseases and starvation because they were too weak to survive.
You yourself had bugged in but you were too late, your family had already contracted the disease and you all lapsed into a coma. You awaken two days later in a weakened state and found your family dead.
After you recover a little you wander out to find that there are hardly any survivors in your area and they are barely keeping themselves alive scavenging from houses around them. They have started to work together and some have set up a little community at the local primary school. It has a small farm associated with it and they have several chickens, rabbits and a goat. They are starting to pull themselves together and seem to be working well as a team but they have no real idea of what to do.
You have all your preps, enough food and water to last you a decade, as well as a communication system that you have just used to contact other preppers the other side of the country. They have invited you to join them there. They have a smallholding with several chickens, ducks, goats, sheep and have access to deer country. You have already met some of them and you know they know what they are doing. It’s a long trek, 500 miles, the reports are that the main roads are mainly clear but you have to go past several major towns and there will be some blockages.
What will you do?
this is a good one ,for me I would hide nine years of my preps,and turn up with one years of stuff ,so if it went bad I could bugger off
Go with Plan A and go to the pre collapse arranged prepper colony, if they are still alive then I would stay there, if they had succumbed I would salvage and save as much of their kit as possible and take it back to the school house group.
What a dilemma!! & how fortunate for myself to have survived! Some variables will impact on the decision process – like, is the disease still rampant in my local area? What about at the other end of the country with the prepper colony? What about areas in between? 500 miles is after all a long way to travel in a densely populated country still containing 21 million desperate people. There would be no Plan A to go with, as the prepper colony 500 miles away was not pre-arranged and the invite only came PSHTF over the radio. 10 years of preps is not going to fit in my rucksack or my vehicle come to that and then there is the high risk of attempting to transport it 500 miles unmolested! Most of the 10 years of preps/food would have to be left behind if I was to attempt to reach the other prepper colony. The lure of a self contained, clued up colony is high, but the distance is large and the risks high. The local survivors are also a tempting prospect as they are now pulling together and are in the process of forming the nucleus of a survivor community. An added advantage is knowledge of the local terrain that I would have and also probably knowledge that some of the survivors may have. My prep knowledge and skills could easily be transposed onto the fledgling community, resulting in an increasing chance of success locally. This mindset all us preppers have – means we can evaluate for the needs of the situation. Therefore further skills and materials can be readily identified from within the survivor individuals and the surrounding environment.
A problem with all this is TIME.. The time it will take to forge the fledgling survivor community into a working group. Whereas the pre existing prepper community should be up and running a lot easier…
Some more variables are – the environmental & population location that I and the local survivors are at and the same details for the prep colony. This will have a significant bearing.
Another variable is the people themselves.. While a prep colony sounds fantastic and it should well be, there is always that niggle about human nature and a lot of alpha males all with their own correct opinion. The hierarchical set up of the prep colony may give some indicators of this. It could be that “too many Chefs spoil the broth” and some preppers might leave the party to set up elsewhere. I would hate to make a long dangerous trip to be faced with a disintegrating colony. Nevertheless, if any preppers remained at the colony, which would be very likely, then the chances of success are still higher than with unprepared folks. This still has to be weighed against the distance risks though.
Another option is to avoid people and the probable risk of disease contamination all together. This is where the isolation principle and bugging out at some point to a secluded area with ample resources (if it all possible in the UK)kicks in. This might be wise due the historical examples of pandemics making repeated comebacks in subsequent years when the cold winter weather has receded. This could be a smash tourist industry theme for Scotland’s Northern Wildernesses. “Come ta Bonnie Scotland, where if the Cold Winter or the Pestilence don’t get ya, then the Midges will be next in line for to go.”
In my conclusion, I would have to weigh all the variables, but the 500 mile trip is fraught with more immediately threatening danger. I would probably cautiously check out the local survivor community and try to gauge the calibre and attitude of the individuals. I would also be taking note of materials & resources available to them. I would not identify my base to them, unless they were recognisable faces. This could then pose a further immediate problem of security and so would have to be handled carefully. I would then weigh up my best option between the two (or three earlier on if going for solitude) If my local area was near large population centres, I would not have been staying around in the first place.
So basically, without any other variable affecting the initial choice, I would weigh up the local one first before taking a big risk in travelling 500 miles across very potentially dangerous and now unknown terrain. I reserve the right to go down the isolation route. This has its advantages & disadvantages and could end up being a lot harder to get by with no back up of a group. Regards, TL.
If attempting to stay & help the local survivor community, I would also use the radio to invite more local prepper survivors or farmers to join or work with the local community. The radio could be a very useful tool to this end.
i’d check out the local community and see if I could work with them, if not, I would stay on my own and go “lone wolf”…
tend to agree with TL, 500 mile journey is just too dangerous- plus you’d have to leave most of your food behind. Even if you were lucky enough to have a years supply- thats an awful lot of material to haul 500 miles. Also agree with BB- no need to reveal your complete stash.
IMO, best bet try to make friends with the locals. Maybe set up some kind of council leadership to make important decisions. Get to work building a fort, or some sort of reinforced compound that could serve as a keep.
Much agreement with a lot of the above, revealing your full stores would be idiocy even if you knew many of the locals; let’s face it you could be good friends with your next door neighbour before an event only to find he/she hates you or turns to jelly if bad guys come round the corner and hands over all provisions. And that was my first thought, the ‘preppers’ would be ready for raiders, but the locals whose iron will may have previously been no greater than moaning about the government down the pub, and is now a person facing armed and desperate (or plain nasty) raiders; what will they do ? Fight to keep what they have or cave in at the first sign of violence ? If I had just handed over all of my (currently very poor) stores and the bad guys had stolen the lot because none of my new friends would stand up, I don’t think any of us would like to have spent money before the event just to give it away and go hungry ourselves. As for the 500 mile trek, well great for those like me that don’t have much in the way of stores if I could make it, but like all things it has to be judged on what is before you on the day.
Mind how you go.
For me, this choice would, of necessity, be a simple one. I needed my family to survive – to complete daily tasks even. For them in return, I would have been the guiding light, the adviser/director. A journey of any distance, never mind across 500 miles of what would be hostile territory, could not be considered.
I would look upon the local group as an opportunity for me, to receive, hopefully, the aid I need, in return for an advisory role and the prepping knowledge I would have.
Any release of stores that I have, would be on a trickle, as required basis, if I could arrange it that way, while ensuring that no-one died from the lack of it. Immediate access to 10 years worth of stored supplies would not encourage the learning process!
I would maintain comms contact with the prepper group and depending on how well the school group advance, it may be possible, when the situation has stabilised and if the school group has sufficient skills to offer, for an joining-up to take place at a later time.
If I were able-bodied, the whole scenario would need a re-visit as that would change everything really.
interesting senario assuming I had 10 years preps and the family had died it would last a lot longer and personally if everything looked OK then I would stay local and help out the new community but keep in contact with the other prepper group. over time i would be continually evaluating how things were going and start organising myself for a move with my prep’s if the need arises. longer term the 10 years supply would be hidden and used sparingly but as time moves on the population would drop even further due to lack of food and all the services would eventually fail causing more to suffer due to bad water lack of heating etc. With the population dropping even more making the long trip less dangerous BUT would you be welcome after a longer period of time whilst the prepper group have worked hard get everything setup
Also if the local little community worked would it then become a target?
definitely plenty to think about
easy choice for me if my wife and kids were dead
i would go and give all my stock to the school group and the take my very head clean off!
you see if my family have died then i already have died
there is no answer to that one. some of us would carry on even if we are the last human left alive, I wont give up until the last breath has left my body, we are a long time dead.
From the number of survivors in your scenario, running the gauntlet of a 500 mile trek to regroup with another survivor group would be too risky for me. There is advantage to be had from staying local but remaining connected through the radio with the distant group(s) though.
There is advantage to be had from the establishment of smallish dispersed survivor groups in terms of isolation of pest and disease, less demand on natural infrastructure, more manageable social structure etc.
But, I’d withhold the extent of my preps from the local group until I was completely certain that it was functional and sustainable. Regrouping with the distant group would be plan B in case the local group failed.
Its simple for me….work with whats real join the local group and privately evaluate it before commiting your resources to it…if the groups a lame duck without potential then you can opt out again hopefully taking some of the better members with you, 500 miles might aswell be timbuktu.