Wyoming Survival: Building Your Tribe
Republished from my friend Tango1Papa’s new site, Wyoming Survival. -NCS
After fitness this is probably one of the biggest failures in the prepper/survivalist community. Alot of these people believe all they need is their food and guns. They believe they don’t need a team or a group or a tribe. They have their wife and 2 kids and thats all they need. They believe that letting people in will compromise their security. These people are destined to fail.
Let’s look at a few reasons you need a tribe/team/group.
Number 1 reason is you CANNOT be everywhere all the time doing everything. You have to sleep at some point. In an emergency situation you are going to be doing many jobs. More jobs than 4 people can cover. During an emergency security is our prime concern. We will need security while we are collecting water. We will need security while gardening. We will need security while our foraging. We will need security while we are sleeping. The only way to get this much security is with people. People you know and people you trust. These people are people you will have trained with. People you have had dinner with. People you spend your free time with. People you share similar interests with.
Another reason for building your tribe is skills. As much as I would like to know everything about everything its pretty much impossible. That’s where different people with different skills come in. We need as diverse of a skill group as possible. What skills should we be looking for?
I think medical skills are number one. Any Dr., EMT, or veterinary would be a HUGE addition to your tribe. People will always get hurt and you need someone with the skills to deal with them.
Ok I don’t want to sound like a crazy gun guy but next up would be multiple guys or girls with extensive firearms training and team tactics training. As the emergency extends, violence will become more and more likely. You will need people who are trained in violence and can train people in violence. You are going to need to train EVERYONE in your tribe the use of firearms. They will need to be armed at all times during any extended emergency. The people who are in better shape and are willing need to be trained in team tactics to help defend the group. They will need to be taught patrolling, camouflage, radio procedures, long range shooting, immediate action drills, ambushes, survival skills, tactical medical, and recon skills.
This is also where being physically fit comes in. I’ve seen TOO many preppers/survivalists who couldn’t run 25 yard and fight for 30 seconds to save their lives. They believe they will get fit after the collapse comes….. all they are going to get is robbed, killed, and possibly eaten after a collapse. If you’re overweight do yourself a favor and start cutting weight now. It’s not that hard. If you’re a male. Only consume 1500 calories as day. No beer and no fast food. I guarantee you after 7 days you will start dropping weight. Add in some cardio and strength training to keep muscle and build endurance.
Some other skillsets I would be looking for is gardening, canning, auto mechanic, carpenter, distiller, ham radio operator, gunsmith, blacksmith and so on.
So now the question is how do we build this group? This is probably the hardest part of all this. First off we start with our family members. If we are a family of four living together we already got a start on our tribe. After your family members start looking at like minded friends. Have them over for dinners. Start discussing the idea of a mutual support group. See how they take it. If they are receptive to the idea keep working forward with them. Start discussing food storage and emergency preparedness. Maybe take some classes as a group. Firearms classes are always fun. Do some other classes also. Canning classes or gardening classes. You need to spend as much time with your possible new group members as possible. You need to know before an extended emergency that you can even tolerate them for an extended amount of time. You need to see that your friends are a good mix with members of your immediate family. Can we put these two family’s together without them killing each other??
So what do you do if you have no family and no like minded friends? Well let’s talk about what NOT to do… do not join online groups! They are not your people no matter what they say online. Your tribe needs to be known, local, and offline! I can’t stress this enough. I’ve seen WAY to many groups fail because of thinking their online group was there REAL group. Most online groups/pages have FBI informants in them. You don’t want any part of that. You don’t need to get flagged. Another thing is that your tribe is supposed to be a support group for you in time of need. If they are 250 miles away they are of NO support to you. And do you really think they would leave their family to help someone they don’t know?? Probably not..
Really from my experiences the best thing someone can do to meet like minded individuals is to take local firearm training classes. You know when you meet people in these classes they take the subject seriously. They are also willing to spend money to become better skilled. Guys who use their own vacation time and spend there own money on classes are way more reliable and serious than guys who just buy supplies and talk about it. The last class I was part of I seen the most networking of students than I’ve ever seen. It made me happy to watch guys who have never met but live in close proximity to one another swap information so they could get together outside of class. That’s how building a tribe is done!
Ok now having said all that don’t just pull someone into your tribe. You need a vetting process. You need to know this person holds the same values as you do. You need to spend as much time with them as possible. You need to spend time with them that is rough if possible. Maybe a small unit tactics class like NC Scout’s Scout class or a field craft class with Badlands Fieldcraft. You need to see how this person acts under stress with lack of food and water. You need to see if they just give up and quit or they look at their team mates and keep going. Doing classes this rough really show people’s true colors. The vetting process should be about a year or more. Don’t just drag guys in because they shoot.
Building your tribe isn’t an easy process and it won’t happen overnight but if you keep at it, it will happen. Just remember my main rules with building your tribe. Known, local, and offline!! You follow those rules and you should be ok.
Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
About the Author: NC Scout
7 Comments
Comments are closed.
Related Posts
GUNS N GEAR
5
Some will get, some will not.
Good Luck.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tg34EcD4-HY
Side note…
“The vetting process should be about a year or more.”
And might i add, they gota bring somethingTo Lose.
Me…i dont want single people. They got Zero To Lose
I live in a high mountain valley in Colorado. I’m a hobby blacksmith, an engineer, a gardener, a mechanic, I’ve put a load of critters into jars or into the freezer, it’s just a way of life passed down from the family. I’m well aware of the inability of one man to stand as an island, however much I resent the fact.
Tribe is hard to build. I’m surrounded about half and half by the rocky mountain version of hillbillies and hippies. Our valley is very defensible, if we could work together, but it could easily turn into the Hutus and the Tutsi’s around here if we can’t work together. What sort of pressure do you see driving communities together rather than apart?
There are quite a few like-minded folks at my work. One sticking point is that even those closest in proximity to each other live at least five miles apart. Another sticking point is that if events dictated rallying, some would have to leave their home (supply base and preps) to consolidate on one area, leaving their places vulnerable. How have others overcome these considerations?
There are lots of good points here but, as in so many cases, the devil is in the details.
Anyone who has been in preparedness for more than a few months has probably had the experience of talking to someone he might believe is a kindred spirit. Once a person senses that the other person might be a valuable contact, it is necessary to take the discussion to a different level. When the person begins talking to his potential recruit, at some point it will dawn on the potential recruit that the recruiter is not talking about hypothetical preparedness issues, he is talking about steps he has already taken. Once that point is reached, “the cat is out of the bag,” and OPSEC is blown.
I have approached several people about getting involved in preparedness steps. While I made a few converts, the balance was tipped in the opposite direction. My biggest failure was in trying to interest a friend who was a neaby neighbor. I failed. He has passed away now, but his widow and his ne’er-do-well son still live down the block from me. I can be sure that if the balloon ever goes up, they will make a beeline to my home once their stores are depleted. Should I not provide for them, i do not expect that they will maintain any sort of confidentiality. I can expect a gathering of other neighbors who will be chanting, “Hoarder! Hoarder!” My home will be looked on as the neighborhood supply depot and, with their misdirected righteous indignation, I will have a mess on my hands.
So, let’s say that , in order to keep the peace, I begin sharing some of my stores with a select few neighbors who have arrived at the “supply depot.” How long will it be after I give them a bag of rice and a bag of pinto beans for those same neighbors’ adult kids to also show up with their children in tow? How about those adult kids’ in-laws? Just because I share with Ken and Barbie doesn’t mean that they will keep their source a secret from their parents and siblings. That is not the way humans generally behave. The result will be a Domino Effect, and a conga line leading to my door.
There are many levels of disaster to prepare for. Let’s focus on one involving a very serious level of social upheaval and violence. While the author mentions that one cannot expect help from a group member that lives 250 miles away, having a member of a survival group that lives just 8 miles away could prove useless if vehicles are not operable (EMP), or if the streets are beset with so much violence that attempting to traverse that 8 miles would border on suicidal. Of course, even then, that group member would be leaving his family unprotected and on their own while he attempts to come to another’s aid. How likely is that?
Only if a group is formed of like-minded individuals who have formed a strong bond and who are in easy walking distance from each other is there much prospect of aid from the others in the group. Exactly how many neighborhoods today would fit that bill outside of Utah, especially since so many people barely know their neighbors now?
Even if a group was formed, strong reliance and confidence in others would be necessary. Would several of them be like people my father spoke of in WW2 who would not fire their weapon at night because they were fearful that doing so would draw return fire? How many people in a loose-knit group would simply claim later that they had radio trouble and, therefore, did not respond to a Mayday call?
Groups are clearly the better choice. Lone Wolves will be easily gobbled up post-SHTF if the situation is truly SHTF. Yet, for a group to be cohesive and effective, not only will it need members with various talents and skillsets, it will need a designated retreat/location for the group to defend. That retreat doesn’t necessarly have to be a mountaintop Shangri-La. The “retreat” may well be one member’s home, but, if that is the case, this arrangement will require that others abandon their own homes and their possessions that were accumulated over a lifetime in order to engage in the organized defense of another member’s home. I envision a great deal of resistance to that idea in most situations, with many members–or perhaps their spouses–believing that “the time is just not right yet” to make that drastic decision.
Groups are the best choice but, as I said, the devil is in the details.
Other than the rare hen’s tooth “Blood Brother” who would take a bullet for you, family, and lots of them, are our, your, only hope against committing noisy suicide. And they have to be living within a short bike ride.
We tried from 2004 to 1. Meet your neighbors, 2. Work with your neighbors, 3. Decide how you want to live with your neighbors. What a fucking shitshow! We, ~10-15, met most Saturday nights at the local community center for meals and discussion. We did this for ~4 years, until I was sick of putting on “Joe’s Sat nite entertainment” for these assholes.
You can not manufacture “skin in the game” required for non-forced group cohesiveness. You just can’t.
To backup Chris’s point of “no single people”, I will never take in ANY single women, with or without kids. It’s just potentially too dangerous. What asshole will she drag back with her next week? it sucks. It’s morally wrong, but there it is. It’s my lifeboat, I’m the Captain.
4.5