One of the greatest assets to preppers is that they are self-reliant and able to independently operate. However, it is also their greatest vulnerability. No matter how tough, how well-trained, how well armed, or how well prepared an individual is, there is only so much one person can do. Numbers matter. As an individual, you must eventually sleep and can’t stand guard indefinitely. You can only be at one place at one time. A second set of hands on nearly any labor intensive task is better than one. If sick or injured it is very difficult or impossible to provide prolonged self-aid or surgery. If directly confronted by an organized and numerically superior force, the odds are decidedly against the individual. You can only accurately fire one weapon, at one target, at one time. Further, your best odds of survival if attacked by superior numbers would be to try and escape, but even then it is pretty easy for a larger number of pursuers to head you off and corner even the craftiest of evaders. As such, for any realistic, long term survival plan, one must build a prepared community. A community is the foundational bedrock of a society and a nation. The community is where the individual can truly make a difference and build a better life. Today’s article is my appeal to you to take action to improve your life, to create new and better communities, and to take back our nation. I will provide each of you with the template to not just resist, but triumph. Each one of us has the ability to change the status quo in the present day and no longer be at the mercy of the state, which at one time, represented us as citizens. Make no mistake, survival is a long term struggle against both nature and tyranny that comes with sacrifice, but we can overcome the odds best through collective action.
Man is neither designed nor equipped to be a solitary animal. Individually we are weak and vulnerable and would have long ago become easy prey and gone extinct if it wasn’t for banning together. Since the earliest prehistoric times, man has grouped together in bands and tribes to survive. Modern man is no exception as we live today more interconnected than ever. This interdependency has allowed us to specialize, to survive, and to even have leisure. Man was designed with neither the long claws and fangs of apex predators nor the acute hearing and swift speed of prey. We don’t come with fur to protect us from temperature extremes and have long since lost our immunities to many parasites commonly found in food and water. Man’s greatest asset, his mind, combined with strength in numbers has demonstrated that he can overcome nearly any extreme and challenge. This maxim is as crucial for survival today as it was ten thousand years ago when small bands of Ice Age hunters and gathers grouped together to fend off ferocious predators and take down massive game.
Communities and villages sprang to existence out of the mutual need for security and distribution of labor. Someone always needed to tend to the fire and be on the watch for predators so that others could safely sleep. While some hunted the others cooked and farmed. In modern times, these families became bands, then tribes, and then nations. As nations grew, man’s greatest threat ceased to be lions and tigers, but his fellow man. Nation state violence led to the need to collectively organize in even greater numbers or risk being numerically overwhelmed by a neighboring nation. Internally, the rise of nations led to the rise of brutal tyrants and the further need organize the masses in resistance in order to escape slavery and death at the hands of the king’s mercenaries.
Today, the modern prepper faces all of these challenges. At the most local level, the prepper must find a way to accomplish the daily tasks of a subsistence existence. The chores of simply acquiring and preparing food and water, staying warm or cool, maintaining shelter, and creating or fixing the means to accomplish the former are enough to rapidly overwhelm anyone. However, the prepper must also provide for his common security against potentially large bands of hostile people and what appears to be an increasingly hostile government. Individually, or at least as a family, it is certainly possible to scratch out a subsistence level of existence as long as you are never confronted by a hostile group. However, it is simply not realistic to believe that one could independently sustain for the long term when faced with hungry bands of violent, armed, thugs or a hostile, state sponsored tyranny.
As previously stated, I don’t care how prepared you “think” you are; if you are trying to subsist with just a handful of people, an organized group of basically trained thugs with a proclivity for violence will quickly overwhelm you and certainly seize whatever preps you have stored. This is not a situation of maybe, but an absolute. The preppers that fail to learn and internalize this are living in a fantasy world. Preppers that ardently stick to their small groups in remote and isolated areas only delay the inevitable. This paradigm may be best illustrated by how law enforcement represents a small percentage of the population, but effectively controls the masses by being able to quickly mass and achieve local (tactical) numerical superiority against any resistance. Individually, there have been literally millions of people arrested that were tough, prepared, and well-armed, but I can’t think of any in recent memory that have successfully fought off a determined attempt at seizure by the police. Sadly, government has never proven capable of leaving individuals alone and hungry mobs have never shown the proclivity to take the moral high road and starve when the option to loot for food existed. Eventually, preppers that failed to organize BEFORE a collapse or crisis and build communities will each be independently identified, targeted, and wiped out by thugs or hostile government forces.
The solution to this is not a new one. It is as old as mankind. Like minded individuals will once again need to band together to collectively survive. This is and will be an essential, critical, FACT that preppers must accept. Preppers need not build communes or cede their independence, but do need to build communities. These communities need to be aware, prepared, and organized in a manner that they are effectively self-sustaining and self-governing. It is equally essential to also build the population numbers in a concentrated manner that will change the voting demographic so that elected representatives will not only properly represent, but be of the same mindset of their constituents. We have seen some of these successes in Montana and Idaho, but are failing to coalesce in an organized manner nationwide. Only by achieving, at minimum, at first, tactical numerical superiority in targeted regions will free, independent, liberty minded individuals be able to live a life of freedom with liberty in something more than their imagination.
Communities built around self-sustainment are by their very nature resilient to natural disasters, grid failures, and crime. By locally producing food, water, and power a community can almost completely eliminate the major vulnerabilities of today’s societies. The society is healthier, happier, and more connected. By once again localizing industry, the community can build, fabricate, or repair nearly anything and have a vibrant localized economy. Further, by having a large pool of like-minded citizens, the community can fend off both political and physical attacks. One threat can be defeated through the ballot box and the other through tactical numerical “superiority.” To illustrate this point, 100 groups of eight preppers could disperse across the 50 states (two groups to a state). These small groups have zero political influence or protection and could be rounded up and wiped out in a single night by either hostile thugs or government forces operating in groups so small local law enforcement could field them. However, if you combined these groups in one area, you would have the local tactical strength of upwards of 800 people. This is a sufficient number to not just swing, but control elections in smaller districts, install a like-minded sheriff and deputies, and present a unified defense requiring at least a battalion of military regulars to engage with any chance of success. Imagine getting back to a time and place where instead of fearing police, the local police actually acted to “defend” the locals and keep the peace with the full weight of the people and the law behind it. Imagine a place where you could walk down the street and not be filmed, photographed, tracked, and fined for violating one of a seemingly infinite number of overbearing regulations. Now consider the literally millions of like-minded “preppers” that exist in the cities, towns, and the rural expanses of America. If the media is to be believed, tens of millions of these people are already organized under the nebulous title “Tea Party.” By concentrating these numbers we not only make being prepared and living free mainstream, but the lifestyle sells itself. Don’t waste your strength and try to fight the numbers in states like California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. Let those states wallow in their own filth, debt, and ever increasing taxes. Instead, take charge and opt out of them. Stop paying into those defunct systems and move away. Concentrate in places where we can control the elections, the schools, the local law enforcement, and ultimately empower our way of life. To use the cliché, “if we build it, people will come” is justified. As we set ourselves apart and demonstrate a workable better life, more and more people will turn away from their current unsustainable, rat race existences and seek something better for themselves and their families. People want this and are thirsty for leadership, but to date, few have stepped up. If we lead, the masses will follow.
The model outlined above is feasible, suitable, and something that could be quickly accomplished in the near term. Much debate surrounds the “optimum” prepper retreat location, but it is unnecessary because few states truly fit the bill. Further, most of the debate is academic because true survival will not come from hiding and hoping tyranny will overlook you. Instead, we must recognize “prepping” is not just an action but a way of life that must be protected and nurtured. To truly survive, we must come to terms with reality and engage in an effective course of action with a chance of long term success. We must change the debate and public perception of preppers. We need to show the public we are absolutely no threat, peaceful, and reframe ourselves as a persecuted minority requiring protection, much like the Amish or Mennonites. To effect this we must concentrate our numbers in specific localities. The best prepper locations to concentrate at first will be areas of low population density, but ample natural resources. Further, it is only reasonable to first target locations within states that predominately tend to support freedom, liberty, and independence or in short, support a prepared lifestyle and are not burdensome with respect to taxes and regulation. This means that an ideal state probably will not have a large, leftwing, urban center like New York City, Philadelphia, or San Francisco that disproportionately biases the elections. That immediately rules out states such as California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York. You would also want to avoid locations with staggering debt or other lingering problems that would be materially detrimental to building new communities. Out west, states such as Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming offer the best options to concentrate. Idaho has long been recognized as an ideal redoubt and is already demonstrating that this model works. Not only have local and state leaders been elected, but representatives at the federal level have been elected and are now insulating Idaho from many of the problems facing the rest of the nation. In fact, businesses are also moving to Idaho. Gun and ammunition manufacturers in particular have found Idaho a great place to set up business.
In the east, West Virginia may well be on its way to becoming the prepper redoubt of choice. West Virginia’s topography is well suited to the defense and has a very low population density. There are entire areas of West Virginia that have zero electronic emissions. The federal government has also recognized West Virginia’s suitability for surviving an apocalypse and has built various “hollow mountains” throughout the state. Unlike many other potential redoubts, West Virginia is a realistic location to bug out to from most areas along the East Coast and is not prone to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, or large earthquakes. It is also well protected from potential nuclear blasts and is not seen as a high value target for terrorists. Further, West Virginia really doesn’t have any major metropolitan areas that will spill millions of refugees into the surrounding hinterlands. The climate is very suitable for growing a variety of crops and the state is rich in natural resources that range from salt and coal to timber and natural gas. West Virginia tends to not be heavy on regulation and the people are generally conservative minded and live already as semi-preppers. West Virginia also has the potential to be a leader in alternate energy. It has endless ridgelines for wind and solar power as well as many streams and rivers suitable for various scale hydroelectric systems. West Virginia is an outdoorsman’s paradise, yet is still located close enough to eastern population centers that it will have increasing influence. Given the low population density and the affordability of homes and property in West Virginia, it would be relatively easy for preppers in the mid-Atlantic to relocate and take up residence in a few targeted counties such as Hampshire, Hardy, Mineral, and Grant counties in the eastern panhandle. By concentrating in these counties and gaining a strong percentage of the voting block, like minded preppers could essentially establish a food hold in the heart of the mid-Atlantic and establish their own model community. Note that it is not necessary to even gain a voting “majority” in these counties because the influence of a well-organized and active electorate will be more than sufficient to sway, skew, and control any local election. Further, voter turnout; especially at the local level and during primaries, tends to be extremely low so it would be possible to not only oust incumbents on tickets, but stack the local and state governments with our candidates. From those initial gains, we could fundamentally change how local and then state governments operate in the near term and demonstrate a better way of living to the nation. Ultimately, we will fundamentally change the thinking nationwide and to this end, achieve our goals of independence, liberty, and sustainable living.
I challenge each of you today to disseminate this message as widely as possible, to as many people as possible. Sow the seeds of liberty and freedom again in people’s minds. Let them know that they don’t have to accept the status quo and can change their situation now. There are no longer empty frontiers to escape to and waiting till the SHTF will be too late. We must pick our ground wisely now so that we can stand our ground later. By doing something as simple as moving your state of residence (even if that doesn’t mean you physically move) so that you can (and must) vote in Idaho or West Virginia, we absolutely can improve our lives and the lives of others. Follow my lead and begin the process of stacking the deck in these two states where as little as a hundred votes can control the officials elected at the local and state level. Idaho and West Virginia are not the end, but the beginning. From these two localities we can expand our communities to the surrounding regions and states, but we have to begin somewhere and we have to begin now.
By Guiles Hendrik
November 3, 2013
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