The Dark Secrets of SHTF

Survival
The Brutal Truth About Violence, Death, and
Mayhem That You Must Know to Survive

By Selco Begovic

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 2018

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 2

 Table of Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................... 5
Part 1:................................................................................................ 7
The Difference Between Your Plans and Reality ................................ 7
The things that will surprise you most when the SHTF ..................... 8
The rude awakenings that you’ll have to face when the SHTF ........ 14
How reality will affect your skills .................................................... 20
Getting the truth about current events .......................................... 26
Signs the SHTF is happening for real ............................................... 32
Part 2:.............................................................................................. 38
The Shocking Reality of SHTF ........................................................... 38
In a violent urban survival scenario….. the violence is the easy part.
....................................................................................................... 39
Why many preppers will die ........................................................... 43
Why I missed the best time to bug out ........................................... 47
Going it alone… Some things to consider. ...................................... 51
What an "average day" is REALLY like when the SHTF .................... 56
What We Ate and How We Got Food ............................................. 66
What Hunger and Thirst Was Really Like ........................................ 74
Being in a city under siege .............................................................. 76
The reality of gangs when the SHTF................................................ 80
The dirty truth about water and sanitation when the SHTF ........... 82
When your loved ones get hurt or killed ........................................ 86
Dignity: Walking the line between human and animal ................... 89
When you survived but you are dead inside................................... 95
Part 3:............................................................................................ 101

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 3

The Truth About Death & Violence ................................................ 101
What you need to know about violence after the SHTF ............... 102
Common causes of death when the SHTF .................................... 109
The truth about knife attacks ....................................................... 113
What combat is really like ............................................................ 117
How terror is used strategically .................................................... 124
3 things you need to know about killing another person.............. 127
The consequences of killing in a post-collapse world ................... 131
About the Author .......................................................................... 136

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 4

 Introduction
There is that famous survival "rule of 3s" that goes something like, "You can
survive 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter (in harsh weather), 3
days without water, 3 weeks without food..."

But I never read any survival "rule" about how long you can survive, for
example, by eating grass or spoiled food in 1/3 of your needed daily caloric
amount, while you are under constant physical threat, while you are under
lot of stress because your kid probably has pneumonia and there are no
antibiotics, your rifle is not working, your roof is leaking on your head,
there is no eletricity and running water, and each day is hard work to fulfill
necessities for bare minimum of existence… necessities that you did not
even think about it while system was there....

There is no rule for that, and if someone gives you general rule about it he
is lying, because there can’t be rules determining how much a human being
can push on in hard situations that go for weeks, months, or years.

There is only you, your skills, your mindset, and the people around you who
will either help you or harm you (probably combination of both).

Generally speaking, people can adapt to the most difficult situations. The
problem here from my experience is actually that period of adapting.

In that shocking period of adapting you have far too many chances to end
up dead, or to make big mistakes, because the period when everything
goes from "normal" to "not normal" is pure chaos. Most of the people go
through it with their minds and actions in "normal" operating philosophy.

When "not normal" become your new normal, you are there.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 5

By reading other folks’ experiences, you can at least minimize that adaption
period because you can have a glimpse of how harsh, dark, and brutal a real
SHTF may look. You will know more of what to expect, and most important:

“Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones
learn from the mistakes of others.”
~Brandon Mull, Fablehaven

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 6

 Part 1:
The Difference Between Your
Plans and Reality
The things that will surprise you most when the SHTF .............. 8
The rude awakenings that you’ll have to face when the SHTF . 14
How reality will affect your skills.............................................. 20
Getting the truth about current events ................................... 26
Signs the SHTF is happening for real ........................................ 32

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 7

The things that will surprise you most
when the SHTF
April 12, 2013
I recently ran one of my newest courses, called “A Mile In My Shoes.” This
is where I take a small group of students to the city where I survived the
war and take them around and physically show them the realities of what
was faced. A lot of lessons are learned during the course and most
importantly (and what I hoped for) students come far closer to realizing the
‘reality’ of a true SHTF situation.
I thought I would share with you the ‘top 5’ surprises that the students
encountered, meaning things they had not thought about or realized
before the course but had to accept and come to terms with during…

1) How ‘Close’ the fighting will be.

This picture, taken very close to my house, was one of the ‘front lines’ for
some time. One side was in houses on the left of the alley, another side
(enemy) were in the right side houses.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 8

This seems INCREDIBLY close (and it is) but then realize, there were times
when the ‘dividing lines’ were even closer than this.
When you put that into the perspective then you can start to think about
new reality because there is nothing very static and sure when SHTF, one
day the house next to you can be completely safe, another day there might
be someone inside who wants to harm you, or simply you’ll never be sure
how safe and secure are your surroundings.
It is the most dangerous aspect of urban SHTF because you’ll have a lot of
people in a relatively small area and you’ll have a higher demand for (very
limited) resources because the ‘system’ is gone.
Now when you add to that calculation the fact that a lot of houses are
going to be being destroyed, you get to the point that you never know
anything for sure, where is someone and what intention they have.
That is especially important if you planning to survive urban SHTF alone
(lone wolf theory) so you can get a feeling how hard that’s going to be.

2.) The ‘Enemy’ will look, sound, and speak like you.
They may even have been your long-time friends but are now on the
‘opposite’ side. Fighting here was divided by all sorts of reasons, race,
religion, affiliation, heritage, politics, and often a big mix of all these things.
‘Sides’ were always changing as well. That’s just the ‘enemy’, when it
comes to Survival you will fight to get what you need or protect what you
have from whoever…
Having the idea that some foreign forces will invade your country, forces
that will look, act, speak completely different then you, and people from
your surroundings are mostly just fantasies, especially when we talk about
the USA.
That may be the case, but you’re going to have a lot of ‘local’ fighting and
surviving before that.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 9

Strong systems are going to have a “bigger and longer” fall, there are way
too many people and weapons in the US for some foreign force to choose
to invade and pacify the country… it is impossible.
What is possible is to “push” some country into the chaos, in order to turn
on themselves, suffer hunger, prolonged chaos and similar, and maybe
then to invade.
In the end, it all comes to you and people who want to harm you. The fact
that the people want to harm you were people who you use to know does
not make it easier.
Do not expect Martians or Russians. Expect people who look, act, and talk
like you, who want to survive just like you.
Again we come to the point that you will be forced to fight with your
neighbors and fellow countrymen for resources.

3) How “busy” an average day was

Fighting for survival is an all day, everyday task. You are constantly hunting,
scavenging, gathering, finding information, looking and checking things. All
while the most stressed you have ever been and under constant threat. All
while being hungry and thirsty.
There is no ‘day off’ or ‘break’. This is the big difference between a soldier
and civilian in war. A soldier has a job to do, and all his other needs are
taken care of. He can just focus on his one job. In a civil war, you (and your
group) need to cover all the tasks, all the time…
If you served in Army, you had clear orders, topics, outside of that you did
not need to think about too many things.
You had “backup”. Your job was to do tasks, and someone else takes care
of all the other things in order for you to finish your tasks successfully.
In SHTF you are the first unit, rear, and back up. If you fuck up and break
your leg there is no medical evacuation. If you did not find food (or any
other resources) there is no service who will do that for you.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 10

It is a hard time, and the day is full of “acquiring” things and finishing jobs.
Shooting at someone may look like a fun idea today, or romantic in some
way. It is maybe more romantic than to think about how to manage your
waste or bathe or lower your kid’s fever in the middle of SHTF.
You are everything when SHTF because the system is gone.

4) The level of the threat

In SHTF almost everything is a threat to you. Yes, easy to understand
threats like sniper, gangs, angry neighbors etc, but the lack of food,
complete lack of hygiene, level of contamination, risk of illness and injury,
being found, being informed on, being tricked, getting captured and many,
many, more make up a larger amount of threats than most ever think of.
Just start to imagine every ‘supply’ you take for granted (fuel, electricity,
water, stores, emergency services etc) being taken away and not knowing
when it will ever come back. Then imagine the worst person you have ever
known, someone you would not trust to help you in any situation. Now
imagine everyone around you is like that person. Then imagine everything
you climb on, through or over can hurt you, and that everything you touch
has the potential to make you ill… Did you get all that? If you do, you are
maybe about 40% of the way to imagining the reality…
The level of threat is going to be a BIG shock to you in the beginning. If you
survive that shock it is good because then you get yourself into the mode of
real surviving.
No matter how well you are prepared you will go through that shock. With
good preparation and the correct mentality you can minimize that shock
and make it shorter. That is the real point of preparing.

5) The reality of defending your assets

I know. All the points mentioned don’t bother you that much, as you have a
nice house, lots of supplies and you’re ready to fight. But how is your plan
working once your house or apartment looks like this…?

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 11

And inside like this…?

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 12

Anyone who is ‘fit’ must go out a lot to find things for everyday survival.
How you protect all your stuff when you are not home?
What about when one day a big group comes to ask you how you’re doing
so OK, and what you have there? To protect your stuff from them is a clear
death sentence. What will you do then?
You have to have the right mindset. It means the difference between
defending something and getting killed, and adapting yourself in order to
survive without it.
You have to accept the fact that maybe you’ll be forced to survive only with
your skills..
Understand that in SHTF, every house in the city is going to look like this, or
worse - not even be there. In my city, there are many houses you see like
this. You see them because they are made of stone or concrete. You don’t
see the wood buildings because they all burned down.

There are lots of new things learned.

There were many, many more things realized and discussed during the
course, and I want to say well done to the students for coming with such
enthusiasm and asking such good questions in the course.
Soon I will write more about the big problem of really ‘misunderstanding’
the reality so present in the preparedness community just now. Until then,
you can read more about the ‘Mile In My Shoes’ course here:
https://shtfschool.com/a-mile-in-my-shoes/
We are making these courses as affordable and accessible as possible. If
you want to join, you can either add your name to the waiting list, and as
soon as we have enough students we set the date for the next course, or
you can book a ‘private’ course for exactly the same price, all you need is a
minimum of you and two friends.
Trust me when I tell you there is not a course like this anywhere else, and
you will learn many things that you hadn’t expected when you join me on a
tour of the place I survived…

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 13

The rude awakenings that you’ll have
to face when the SHTF
October 20, 2016
For years I have been following news from the survival “realm” all over the
internet. One thing is for sure: every day in those years when I read survival
“news” I could conclude, based on the headlines, that the world is going to
chaos and end in the next week, next month or next year.
And still we are here discussing the same things. Yes, we have all the
comforts and commodities. Let’s say we are doing fine.
But now, for the first time, I have a feeling that the world is going to chaos
really soon.
Too many things are seemingly “moving” inside global calculations, and this
time we could be close to a “big one”.
No matter how much food, ammo, training, and skills you have, when SHTF
you are gonna be surprised. Most of us have been in the mode of preparing
for something that is not happening for years, and when it finally happens
there is going to be a period of a shock for the folks, and in that period a
LOT of people are going to die.
Since most of the folks who read my stuff and subscribe to my courses are
from the US, things that are written here are meant for them mostly, but
not exclusively for them.
Every now and then I get questions about similarities between the situation
in the US and the Balkans before SHTF. And I have read a couple of good
articles about the same topic lately.
Since I have a lot of people that I can call good friends, and they are from
States, I am going to point out some things about my Balkan SHTF and
possible US SHTF. There are some serious and worrying parallels, even we
are talking about two different systems.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 14

The System
“The people have always some champion whom they set over them and
nurse into greatness. . . . This and no other is the root from which a tyrant
springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector. . . having a
mob entirely at his disposal . . . .” — Plato
I have lived in a system and country where we believed that we are all
equal. Different nationalities, different religions etc. Melted all together to
make one “big and prosperous” nation, to be great and equal… united.
And then leverage of world forces simply changed, and suddenly we are
being taught that differences between us are more important than
similarities and “one nations”, old battles fron history are been taught
again, one group suddenly is more important than other and so on and so
on.
And then came “leaders” or saviors that led us against others. After years of
carnage, here we are again with almost the same leaders.
I have been through the war and met many folks on every side shooting
because they have been told that the other side is evil, and yet all sides are
the same at the end.
Rich are richer, poor are poorer. Nothing changed. Nobody learned
anything.

Big Circles and Small Circles (and your decisions)

Again and again, there is a big circle and small circle. You may have the
illusion that you are controlling things in a bigger circle, but it is only an
illusion. What kind of government you’re going to have and what kind of
politics they use in the next years is not up to you. You just have been
smartly led to believe that you can make the change.
It is like that…

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 15

In the end, it all comes to the matter of power and possession, and you are
a just small piece of everything, you are only a small part of the tool.
Over the years I have learned that it is more important to have one more
month of food stored or one more skill learned then to waste time on
worrying who is going be elected.
It is a waste of time because when SHTF they all gonna do the same more
or less. They will oppress people and take their rights and liberties very
easily.

Your Rights
Living in a society where you have certain rights and freedoms for years is a
good thing.
The bad thing is when SHTF and you lose all those rights in a single day, and
you find yourself so shocked that you simply do not know what next to do.
You had those rights for many years, it became totally natural for you to
‘own’ it.
Having lots of conversations with friends from the US, I concluded that the
majority of common folks simply do not understand that all your rights can
be lost in one day.
And not by the evil invaders from the space, or the Russians or whoever.
Your government can take it. All in one day.
The majority of folks simply do not see this as a possible option, and even
preppers there who understand it may look like ‘weirdos’ because of this
viewpoint.
Do not get me wrong, I would love to live in a country where I can buy
weapons easily, where I have rights to protect my home, where I can say
freely (more or less) what I do not like.
I like that very much. Actually I admire it.
What I do not like is feeling that most of the people think it is written in the
stone and it cannot be changed.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 16

In short, the things that I like most about the US is going to be the biggest
‘loss’ in the US when SHTF, and not only the US.
When SHTF there is going to be a lot of surprised people, a lot of shocks.

Your Perception of Future SHTF and the Prepper Movement in

the
I can not get rid of the feeling that a majority of people see SHTF as big fun,
shooting while drinking beer, with additional testing of all of their cool gear.
I see that in blogs, comments, forums, documentaries, movies…
I had more than one participant of my course who told me ”this is not fun,
it is hard, and not so pleasant”.
I had people who have been preppers for 30 years and never considered
the fact that when SHTF it is going to be smelly all around you.
There’s been a man who advises a skateboard as a ‘good’ transport through
SHTF city, a man who thinks that 30 brand new gold coins are going to get
him through problems on his bug out trip and so on and so on.
Now I am not mocking the people who stated all the above. What I do not
like is believing in “facts” that are not checked.
If you never been through SHTF you may not have the idea that it is not fun,
but quite hard and unpleasant. Where do you think people and dead
animals are going to be buried? Where will the garbage be taken, human
waste and everything else? A foul smell is going to be a constant.
Don’t you think offering someone a brand new gold coin for safe passage
won’t bring some “oooh maybe he has more of those interesting funny
unusual gold things with him” attention?
Why don’t you try to have 10 cheap gold rings in your pocket instead, and
offer on every “checkpoint”, one that you directly pull down from your
finger with the words “here take my engagement ring, just let me pass?”

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 17

Is a guy going to think “oooh, maybe he has more of those his engagement
rings in his pocket”?
Same things go with the trade.
Examples are numerous.
Common sense is something that is missing mostly in “mainstream”
prepper movements, and I understand that it is business, it is about money.
But folks, choose carefully what advice you are taking as a real.
For the average, beginner prepper, the USA looks like paradise. A place
where you can look and find the correct information, also look and find
correct equipment for future SHTF, but that also brings risk because there
ismore false and wrong information and mindset than right.
Personally, I like what can be found in the US because, in most of the cases,
I know what is good or bad, but for beginners, it is much, much harder.

Conclusion
It’s difficult to write some kind of conclusion for this very hard topic,
because it is wrong to put things right with a generalization:
It is going to be very ugly, much more ugly than my SHTF experience here,
simply because of the ‘fall’ when SHTF going to be bigger. The “distance”
between modern everyday life and life in SHTF for the USA is WAY bigger
than in my time. The majority of folks are “soft” and too dependent on the
system.
The ‘Survival Movement’ is big business, and it has become more (much
more) about selling items to make you believe that you are prepared than
about learning and gaining knowledge.
Wrong perceptions about SHTF (or at least not checked and “experienced”
beliefs) are rooted so hard, they have simply become the ‘accepted truths’.
A LOT of these ‘truths’ are simply false and there for earning money, not for
survival.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 18

A good thing is that you have much more options about choosing and
owning weapons, but this option can ‘bite you back’ if you have weapons,
but with the wrong mindset, ‘truths’ and knowledge, simply because a
whole bunch of bad people is going to have weapons too.
The majority of folks are not ready to bend the rules and adapt. There is a
lot of talk about adapting, but then suddenly you get the whole bunch of
folks who are thinking “I’ll do that” or “ I’ll never do that” instead of “I’ll do
what has to be done (adapt to the situation)”
Working with other folks. You need to work with other folks, to have
friends, group, connections-before SHTF. Survival alone is for really tough
mother… keys.
People prepare for SHTF, but not really, they are preparing for the
romantic, movie version of SHTF. They want to feel cool and comfortable
when SHTF, which is not a problem by itself. Problem is that they want that
at the expense of real knowledge and covering of real basics. So you have a
man who has a fancy and really cool rifle, but does not know how easy and
fast in a real fight it is to use 500 rounds, so he ends up without ammo in a
week. Or has a generator but does not have a clue how to light a fire, or the
differences between fuels for a fire in terms of heating, smoking etc. Many
examples…
Do not look for higher reasons for the situation. You may have political
options today, fractions, candidates, government. But when SHTF all that
are empty words from some other distant time. When SHTF you will have
yourself and people who want to harm you. That is it.
So folks, make sure you are preparing for the realities. I would encourage
you to start ‘fact checking’ your plans and preps today…

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 19

 How reality will affect your skills
July 7, 2016
Recently we held a physical Urban Skills course in Croatia. I was
exceptionally happy with how well the course went.
Students were there to learn various skills. Personally, I found a lot of skills
very important in preparing for SHTF, but what I want to highlight most, to
them, and all others is that the skills that they learned before and on this
course need to be set ‘inside’ SHTF circumstances.
What do I mean by that?
One of the big myths about SHTF is that your skills will work and solve
problems in SHTF in the way that you imagined. In reality, it is clearly not
like that.
As some of the students learned when SHTF (and we tried on the course to
bring conditions as close as possible to the real SHTF) every ‘learned skill’
worked differently. Here are just a few examples.

Water Collection
Skills ‘says’ that you need to collect water in several ways, for example, rain
from the roofs using tarps and similar.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 20

Then you need a container to ‘transport’ that water, like bottles, flasks and
similar.

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Then you need to purify it with gauze, pills, boiling or whatever mean suit
you…

But…
You cannot collect water because simply there is no rain for weeks. You
cannot set up tarps because you are hiding inside an abandoned apartment
for days while there are not so friendly folks outside on the street.

Traps
You set up some dangerous trap in front of your home with this you can kill
any approaching ‘enemy’…
But…
The amazing trap that set up for your scenario is simply a trap that will
‘injure’ the enemy in a way that he thought was thereby ‘chance’ or
‘mistake’. Let’s say he tripped on some shit that looks like it was there
because the building was destroyed weeks ago, not something that, on
reflection, he realizes was smartly set up by you, therefore he has no idea
you are actually there and are actively defending.

Trade

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 22

You have items that someone else needs and vice versa, you go find the
guy, exchange goods and all is fine…
But…
you end up waiting to wait for correct information for days, and then after
you get there, finally to the right place, you get ‘played’ by someone who
trades you packs of cigarettes with nothing inside.

Or even worse, he shot you in the back because you assume that he is
honorable.

Weapon
You have a most modern weapon and a bunch of ammo and you feel safe…
But…
You find out that on the 15th day of SHTF you end up with a club as your
primary weapon because you assumed that 1000 rounds would last for
months, or when someone attacked your home you forget to take your rifle
with you when you ran.

The reality is ALWAYS different

This list can go on and on for every item stored or every skill learned, but in
reality, things can and often do work like this. For all those saying ‘this can
never happen, events from the course prove otherwise. Reality proves
otherwise.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 23

One student asked me if it was true that I drank water simply from the
puddle of water. I said yes, with my shirt as a filter only.
Now that does not look like some skill for sure, not some survivalist
purifying water, but it is the truth. Even if you have the means to treat
water, are you confident in it? Have you thought about the water you really
will be sourcing…?

You need to understand that each and every skill you have will be
‘disrupted’ someway in real SHTF, so you will be forced simply to ‘shorten’
procedures.
Is it good?
No of course not, but it is much better than to be shot in the head while
you are setting up a tarp outside your home…
Skills are important, yes, but the mindset for knowing what skills to use and
when - that is all that is about here.
If you do not get a sense when and how to implement each skill, there is no
sense in knowing any of it.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 24

I am promising you, that every one of your skills will be performed in a
different way in real settings when you do not eat well, do not sleep good,
with a lot of fear from the known and unknown.
Make sure you are training for the realities, not the fantasies…

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 25

 Getting the truth about current
events
March 17, 2016
“In the last 48 hours, 4 people have died in a local hospital from flu
type “XYZ“. Hospital representatives state that there are no reasons
for panic, and they have formed a special committee, that will closely
monitor the ongoing situation and keep the public informed.
From our anonymous sources, we have found out that 4 more people
are in the same hospital, currently in a very bad condition. These
patients are suffering from the same type of flu virus. Our source
states “they (hospital managers) do not know really what’s
happening or how dangerous the developing situation is“.
Experts we have contacted, state that people need to protect
themselves with masks and avoid public places with large crowds.
Stay tuned…
Our channel will give you the latest updates about the situation…“

What Does It Really Mean?

Imagine this news shows on your local TV station, and background images
show people in biohazard suits carrying some heavy looking objects in big
black bags. There’s a man who is supervising the burning of a big pile of
something.
You are a prepper (obviously) and this news story causes you great concern.
You may conclude that it is time to get “out of Dodge“, go to your Bug Out
Location (BOL) wearing your masks or bio suit if you have it, ready to shoot
at whoever may try to stop you.
Nothing too bad with that - if you feel it is time to run, then you run, that’s
it…

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The likely reality to this ‘story’ though, is that 4 people did die from the flu,
but just like every year. A huge number of people dying from the same
annual flu, mainly older folks with chronic illness (not mentioned by media),
or patients in already poor condition.
The hospital really did form a special committee to make contact with the
media, simply because the media pushed the hospital staff really hard with
a lot of questions about ‘this situation’.
The “unofficial source“ in these stories is often some guy who wants to
have his piece of fame by telling the simple fact that there are “more
people in the same bad condition“ (just like in any hospital, anywhere,
anytime).
The ‘expert’ who the media contacted talked about simple and common
sense facts that “you should have a mask on and avoid public places“ if you
want to stay healthy, and protect against flu or cold or anything similar.
But if you put that statement with background pictures of people carrying
big bags in bio-suits, the same statement now has a completely different
‘sound’, yes?
You’ll likely find the background pictures were a couple of years old,
showing some dead cows being disposed of a local farm, because of a cow
disease.

You need other sources than the mainstream news.

The point of this story is not to tell you to ignore the news if you hear that
people are starting to die locally, but to think first about two key points:
1) Research or try to research what is really going on. Have your
sources, or know people (trusted) who have their trusted sources.
2) Understand that the media is usually not there to help us, they are
there in order to make more money, and nothing is cooler like the
big fat headline of ‘dramatic’ news.

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Sometimes reasons behind running such a story can be really simple and
“funny“, like selling 100,000 masks that someone have stored somewhere,
or to provide vaccines etc. Sometimes it is nothing, just a big ‘headline’.
And yes, sometimes it is gonna be real. If you do not have other sources
then yes, trust your instincts.
But please, do not “stay tuned“ in front of the TV waiting for the next
update… Go research on forums, ask friends, find sources… do something,
or bug out. But do not “stay tuned“ as popular media recommends it.

Timing, Places, Reasons and Examples of (Mis)Information

One of my fears and at the same time an essential ‘decision point’ when I
(and you) should go into full survival mode is not when SHTF, but when
folks realize that the sh*t Is really hitting the fan.
From that moment the rules are changing, and you can expect anything.
What does that mean?
It is good when you realize, as a prepper, that the SHTF ‘moment’ has
occurred, and act accordingly, even if other people did not realize that yet.
It is not so good when you realize this fact later, at the same time as the
general population.
I have seen people burning other people‘s houses, sometimes with people
inside, just because they like that: They had an expression of joy and
happiness on their faces, they wanted to do that for their whole life, but of
course they did not have chance for that, simply because system was there
to punish them hard even for trying to do similar things.
But they did that and similar things when they realized that SHTF, and there
is nobody to punish them.
They enjoyed it.
Do you want to be there when they realize that?
So, an example would be that you could (and should actually, as a good
prepper) realize that SHTF way before that kind of people begin to realize.

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Use of that timely information could save your life. The big difference
between you (prepper) and a nonprepper is that you should have that
information before them and react to it.
And you are most probably not going to get that information by using
“regular“ media, at least not in time to have an advantage over the other
folks, especially bad kind of folks.
You should plan to use the maximum information in the best time, to go
into the let’s say “stealth“ survival mode and leave the area, while there is
not yet a need to go to the ‘full’ survival mode of needing to do bad things
to achieve your objective.
At least that would be the most desirable outcome.

Everything is time-sensitive when the SHTF.

Information and misinformation have value, the value of it can rapidly
change depending on the timeline when you get it (or give it). Just to
repeat ‘valuable information’ is often very ‘time sensitive’.
Let’s say the story from the beginning of the article is true, in that a
pandemic is really starting, and you received that information before chaos
happened before everything fell apart, all city services stopped before
people start a stampede out of the town.
In that case, you could have enough time to easily leave the area to your
BOL or to even stop by the stores and buy everything that you need in case
you did not prepared enough.
You know that S. Is going to hit the fan in 3-4 days and you can be prepared
very well for that, and watch from your BOL how the world is going to sh*t
through the chaos.
Or you know that the pandemic ‘news’ is serious misinformation, you could
just go and buy a huge amount of face masks, and sell it to the folks who
think a pandemic is really happening if you want to make that kind of
money.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 29

In both cases, information is valuable because (again) you get it before
others did.

(Mis)Information, Rumors, Myths and Fear

Fear is a thing that moves people in different directions. It is a natural thing
and almost everybody has fears or gonna experience fear in some
situations.
In terms of SHTF fear can be coped with or minimized with things like
training, confidence (in your skills, preparedness etc), or simply some of us
gonna experience more fear than others.
One of the biggest fears that I experienced and saw other people going
through, during the SHTF was fear of the unknown.
That “unknown“ was many different things, but most of the time it was
induced by a lack of information or wrong information.
What does that mean?
It works on many levels.
For example, sometime after the SHTF, rumors started that poison gases
were used in some parts of the region.
You could not point out clear sources who were there or experienced it, but
everybody talked about it, and people feared this a lot.
As a result, in one period you could easily “conquer“ one building full of
folks by throwing in a smoke grenade only, they all just run of the building
in panic.
In some cases, people just set rugs on fire in order to make smoke.
Yeah, it sounds stupid now, but what do a bunch of civilians know about
poisonous military gases and how they look or work?
Fear is a big thing.
In your case it can be something else, do not underestimate the power of
misinformation and fear when you are thrown into the collapse.

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When SHTF, myths, and rumors take place because people use it as an
advantage. For example in a situation when information is planted that 500
armed people coming to your part of the town and that they will be killing
everybody they find.
Or like a popular myth, like “fact“ that drinking strong alcohol will help you
not to freeze in cold environment.
Local warlords used to plant rumors in order to take business from each
other in things like selling smuggled food or smuggling people out of the
town in exchange for gold.
In among all this, know you will also be strongly tempted to lie to yourself,
by telling yourself that everything is going to be OK, things are not going to
go to sh*t because the world cares what is going on, and little babies
cannot die because lack of simple medicines at the end of 20 century.
As a conclusion, false and real information are there before and after the
SHTF.
And it is weird, but sometimes it is harder to find good information in
“normal times“.
The point is that you need to follow what is going on, but not just run for
the information, rather to carefully choose and check every piece of it.
When SHTF you are gonna work based on small pieces and bits of info’s,
and errors are gonna happen, you cannot avoid it.
What you can avoid is your need to trust in some information simply
because you are too well prepared for that.
You are gonna know how to survive in the cold and be ready for that. You
are gonna know what are the poisonous gases and how they work, or
simply you are gonna have your small garden somewhere and you are not
gonna have a need to go and check some suspicious info about a guy who is
selling food somewhere.
Preparing is (again) the key, and in many scenarios Knowledge truly is
power.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 31

 Signs the SHTF is happening for real
July 3, 2018

How do you know if the SHTF is actually here? One of the cornerstones of
survival is how to recognize that a situation has gone so bad that the S is
truly going to hit the fan.

Basically, we are talking how to recognize that it is time to bug out or

hunker down because it is going to be bad.

I call it "survival mode" (no, it is not invented by me), and it means that you
at some point based on your own observations, feelings, the situation
around you, events, etc. going to are going to jump into that mode where
you gonna implement actions based on different priorities than everyday
life.

It is personal but it may include:

• no longer going to work and school

• bugging out
• bugging in
• using violence on "first shoot, then ask" philosophy

In short, you are putting into action decisions that you prepared for a long
time because S did hit the fan.

How do you know when the real SHTF has arrived?

One of the members of the Prep Club FB group asked a very good question
about this, and basically what she asked (in very shortened version and
paraphrased) was: "How am I going to recognize that it is time to leave my
job because the whole situation is going to s**t?"

The easiest (and pretty lame and lazy) answer is that you need to leave
your job as soon as you see something bad is happening around you, and
go home, bug in, bug out or whatever your plan is.

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But it is lame because something bad is happening all the time around us -
people being robbed or killed, folks losing jobs, cars being stolen, food
poisoning, protests, political scandals - not to mention terrorist attacks
happening more often and the migration crisis..

But you still need your job to pay bills. Your kids need to go to school.
Violence and bad things are always around us, but that does not mean
you'll have to quit your job and bug out. If you do that, you are achiving
nothing.

So we are actually talking here how to recognize the "big event", a real
SHTF event, when you need to jump into that survival mode and stop
worrying too much about your regular day-to-day life.

The real fun here is that there is no universal answer. There is no specific
point at which you will recognize it, but definitely, there are some things to
pay attention to.

Remember the two frogs.

A well-known story is about the two frogs. One is thrown directly into a pot
of boiling water, and of course, the frog immediately jumps out of the bowl
and runs away.

The other frog is being thrown into a pot of cold water and then water is
gradually heated to point of boiling ,and at the end, this frog died.

When the water is gradually heated to the boiling point, the frog does not
realize it is gonna die.

Most of us are frogs in a big bowl of water that is gradually heated to the
boiling point and let me tell you, that water is getting pretty warm.

You really need to be the well-prepared and smart frog to realize that the
warm (and maybe pleasant) water is going to be deadly boiling in a very
short time.

Get out while the "water is still pleasant"

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 I believe the term is "strategic relocation", or in other words, it is moving
to an area where the situation going to be better if SHTF.

It is not bugging out when SHTF. It takes very carefully planning. You are
looking for a new place to live, a job, a good enviroment for kids, natural
resources, and a good home, etc., today while times are still (more or less)
normal.

It is quite specific for each person based on the region where you live, job
opportunities, family circumstances and a lot of other things, but in
essence, a few things that I would look for are:

• smaller communities
• places where you already have some network (family, friends...)
• availability of resources ( land, rivers, woods, hunt...)
• reasonably far away from big infrastructure
• laws that allow you freedom (or absence of restrictions) like farming,
weapon carry, homeschooling etc.

Keep in mind that again it is not bugging out, it is living in circumstances

where you gonna have a much better starting point when SHTF.

You still have to work for a living, and the kids need school etc.

Signs that the SHTF has actually arrived

Since most of can not afford "strategic relocations" we are forced to stay
and hope to see on time that S gonna hit the fan, and hopefuilly jump on
time into that survival mode and act accordingly.

I am in the same position.

I am not talking here about obvious signs that something bad has
happened, because if you hear a huge explosion and there is no signal on
TV suddenly, no internet or eletricity, you do not have to be a prepper to

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 34

realize something bad has happened, and you are already in the middle of
it.

Here are some of the signs that the SHTF has actually arrived.

Freedoms and rights are disappearing.

You usually feel like your rights and freedoms are something written in
stone, and you may be right.

But in terms of signs of a coming huge SHTF, keep in mind that when your
freedoms and rights that are really important are taken away from you, the
S is going to hit the fan soon.

And again probably it is going to happen gradually enough that the majority
of folks will not go out on the street to fight for those rights, and also, it
may happen in a way that the majority of people will welcome it, under
some new laws that "save lives" or "keep them safe" or similar.

But the result is going to be same. Your rights and freedoms are gonna be
taken because you are gonna be easier to manipulate then.

Polarization, hate, and violence are on the rise.

I have mentioned all of that before, more then once, but prior to SHTF it is
going to be worse when it comes to hate because again, a lot of stuff you
cannot see clearly when you are in a state of hate or fear.

A lot of things can be moving in the background while you are coping with
disorder, hate, and violence.

Your access to information will be limited.

Your free access to independent information will be "shrunk".

Independent media will be harder and harder to find, or you will be fooled
and you will think that actually, you have access to free information while
in reality, it is junk, propaganda.

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The shutting down of free media and people who hold information will
disappear. These are some of the last signs, and again, most people will
welcome it. Independent media will be amost "demonized".

Watch the behavior of people in the know.

I will give you some examples.

I had a friend who worked for the secret police before the war. He ended
up in the sieged city together with me.

He did not have a clue that things were gonna get so bad, even with his
position and his access to the information. He simply was fed bulls**t by
people that he trusted.

On the other hand, I had a friend who, prior to the war was a smuggler of
different kind of things from Italy, such as marijuana, electronics, and
whatever was popular at that time.

He knew something bad was gonna happen, and he bugged out in time to
Italy.

In his "job" he had connections with people who "pushed" things for other
people who were pretty powerful criminals. Based on moving on those
"goods" and information, he simply concluded something bad was going to
happen.

The point here is to keep your ear to the ground and see how things and
events are moving around you.

Most probably you are not going to see things coming on TV on mainstream
media, but if you have a buddy in the police force who will let you know
that a lot of equipment is being delivered to them or a friend in some not
"legit" places who can give you good information, you can conclude a lot.

There is no specific advice here, but a network of friends with informations

from the right places is worth much more than a TV network.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 36

You may miss the signs. I did.
I have seen all the signs above, and I failed to run. I ended up right in the
middle of SHTF.

It is not only important to see and recognize signs. It is important to believe

that it can actually happen. Because after I saw all the signs, I just said to
myself, "Oh, it cannot happen here. Somebody somehow is gonna solve
everything."

It is very hard to trust in something that you did not experience before.
Only now do I believe that a lot of horrible things are possible.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 37

 Part 2:
The Shocking Reality of SHTF
In a violent urban survival scenario….. the violence is the easy
part. ......................................................................................... 39
Why many preppers will die .................................................... 43
Why I missed the best time to bug out .................................... 47
Going it alone… Some things to consider. ................................ 51
What an "average day" is REALLY like when the SHTF ............. 56
What We Ate and How We Got Food ...................................... 66
What Hunger and Thirst Was Really Like ................................. 74
Being in a city under siege ....................................................... 76
The reality of gangs when the SHTF ......................................... 80
The dirty truth about water and sanitation when the SHTF... 82
When your loved ones get hurt or killed .................................. 86
Dignity: Walking the line between human and animal ............ 89
When you survived but you are dead inside ............................ 95

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 38

In a violent urban survival scenario…..
the violence is the easy part.
October 23, 2012
When times are hard, people show all kinds of their characteristics, or
faces, or real face. Call it whatever you like.
That is another reason why it is not so popular write about the details of
that time. Some people did bad things and survived. Some people did good
things and died. Some people just acted strangely at that time.
People later do not want to discuss that, they do not want to remember it.
Over time, a man can really force himself to believe that he did not do
some things, even if he did them.
No happy gatherings of a group of people who survived all that, nothing like
big reunions with barbecue with cheerful talks about “how it was then“ and
drinking beer.
When we sit somewhere together, we do not talk about these times too
much.
If we really go into something from that time we usually lie to each other.
Everybody of us who survived has something particular that he does not
want to talk about or to remember.
Often this is something embarrassing or very bad or cruel that one did. It
made sense back then in a survival situation but today when you have food
on your table it is hard to understand… even for yourself.
I had a friend who was a pretty fearless guy when it comes to some tough
situations, fights, life and death situations, man to man combat until the
end, and hard stuff like that. He was easy with violence. But what he could
not stand was the time frame between the launching of rockets and
detonations when the rockets exploded.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 39

To explain it a little bit for folks who have never been in a war: there was
something like shelling by surprise from multiple grenade launchers. So,
you hear distant “bum“ sounds, some 15 or 20 separate sounds, deep
sounds, every maybe 1 second or less, by the time you hear maybe six of
these sounds of grenades launching, they are starting to hit already.
An explanation is too poor, words cannot explain it. But usually that kind of
shelling was used on an area like a street and the whole area within 200 –
300m in this street was a death zone. It was hard to predict what area they
had shelled before the grenades hit.
So, in real life, if you find yourself in the open at that moment and the
shelling area is where you are, you do not have too many chances to live.
Sometimes people jumped for cover and broke their arm or leg doing this
to find out grenades fell in a different part of the city. That few seconds
between first “bum“ and explosion where the grenades hit felt like an
eternity.
I could swear that it lasts for hours, not seconds. So many things to think
about in those moments.
Anyway, my friend could not stand those few seconds whenever he was
caught in an open area. Every and each time he would lose control of his
body functions (he sh*t and pee in his pants).
He would cry after that like a kid. He hated himself every time after that,
but he could not help it.
Feeling in your stomach when the grenades fall around you, is like you want
to puke and shit at the same time, a lot of people say that is because of
huge vibrations, but it is pure and a real sense of terror, and complete lack
control over your life.
And remember, he was no coward at all. Each and every one of us had his
horror moments when you just were lost, when you just surrendered
completely.
I have seen few times that people blow other man’s brain out with bullets,
and later even make fun of that. Then later those same people throw up

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 40

when they have to eat macaroni infested with worms, dead worms cooked
with macaroni.
For me maybe worst thing or thing that I hated most were some smells.
Constant smell of burnt things. Not ordinary smell of wood or coal fire but
the smell of a lot of things set on fire. Heavy and greasy smell that
somehow just go directly in your stomach, like a lot of dirty things are
burning but with very slow fire. There is nothing to compare it with today.
The stench of rotting meat of dead bodies came into that as well.
The closest thing would be like somebody set fire to a huge pile of city trash
today. But still, it is not so close to that.
Especially in the morning smell was heavy. Very often I just woke up and
had to vomit as soon as I smelled it. It was something stronger than me.
Actually, it did not have anything with the fact how strong or weak I was.

You have to know your breaking points.

Every one of us had own small breaking point, most of the time violence
was an easy part of our time when we tried to survive.
When you prepare for a possible SHTF scenario do not get lost in too much
technical stuff. Try to get to your limits. Try to know your breaking points.
I have a friend who comes from a troubled background and was involved in
some crime in his late teenage and early adult life. He is really nice guy
today but because of his past violence, blood and gore come easily to him.
But he has real problems when it comes to seeing or smelling poop.
I work in emergency services, so I took him along to some jobs when I knew
it would be messy in a very unpleasant way for him.
Turning around a homeless guy who is too drunk to move and has sh*t
himself and been lying in that at the same place for two days is special
experience… especially for someone who has a real problem with poop.
You get an idea of all of this. I think a lot of writing about survival today is
about gear reviews and buying another gun and that is fun, I know. But

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 41

going to places where it hurts you today… where you can push your limits is
time very well spent.
Do not expect to “overcome” all of them. Some things always get you but
knowing about this and being mentally prepared for it, makes big
difference in stressful survival scenarios when many things at the same
time test your limits.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 42

 Why many preppers will die
March 7, 2014
Survivalists and preppers are (or are supposed to be) by definition
something like smart folks, people who do not trust mainstream bullsh*t,
who follow their own path to be winners at the end.
Actually in reality, the truth is different.
We all like to say that we are special but just like everyone else we fall
under the influence too.

The biggest mistake preppers make

How many times you or some prepper you know built or formed an opinion
without even checking it? How many times have you bought some item and
stored it just because you think it makes sense, not because you know it
makes sense and you checked on it.
It is often an easier way to believe others and you can not try everything
yourself, of course.
One of the most stupid things or worst mistakes that you can make in
prepping is to become “mainstream”. Slap label of prepper on you and you
start to think you are smarter than others. You may think that preppers and
survivalists cannot be mainstream because it is not logical, but yes we can.
We gonna buy bag for BOB because someone said “it is best for BOB”
usually without checking who is the guy who said it. Or we gonna say “I
have the best gun for SHTF” because someone put a huge amount of
money for marketing it. If most preppers look at their storage they can find
items they know the theory of using it, but never used it.
The problem here is not buying these things. The problem is with how you
formed your opinion. Many survivalists think they know and they have a
plan but that makes them in reality less flexible to consider all options.
When SHTF and you realize quickly that you have completely wrong boots
(or weapon, or BOB or whatever) you maybe still can fix it if you act.

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Changing way of thinking (or plan…) is harder.

Here’s a story about a man I knew.

There was a man who before SHTF was owner of few cafes, pretty wealthy
man. He was involved in some crime business and you could hear from time
to time how he was involved in some fight, or he was arrested or served
some time.
Sometimes he was out of the country for months or year, rumors were that
he was something like a professional thief, specialized for breaking into
high class homes, jewelry and safes and similar.
Those stories were rumors only, but in his cafe in town all guests were his
crew, and going there for coffee was not forbidden, but also was not a
bright idea. If you entered there (probably) nobody would kick you out, but
atmosphere and faces there clearly would tell you that you are an outsider.
In short, he was something like a “tough guy” in the city. Weapons, secret
gambling, prostitution etc. The guy with his crew.
On first rumors of troubles he started to sell his cafes I guess in order to
leave the area, but he was too late. When SHTF, and groups and gangs
started to form, he simply gave his cafe to the leader of one group in
exchange for protection.
Later when that leader and group were destroyed he found himself
imprisoned for some time. A lot of people around were robbed and
tortured or killed.
He immediately agrees to write a statement that he is “selling“ all his cafes
to the leader of the new group, of course in exchange for the life and
freedom. They had it anyway, but they needed that piece of paper for a
time after the war.
After that, he was something like “lone crazy dude” through the rest of the
SHTF period. He was nobody.
He survived everything and after that, he needed quite some time, a few
years to prove that he was forced to “sell” his cafes.

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Eventually, the court gave everything back to him. Soon after that he sold
everything and emigrated somewhere, probably to a place with less chance
for another SHTF event.
My friend talked with him before he left the country and after some time
they touched on the subject that a lot of people wanted to know about.
Why did he go down so easy? Why did he not resist at the beginning with
his crew? Why did he not have his own strong group during SHTF? Things
like that.
He had the original answer: “Every time they were stronger than me, I
simply had to let it go”.

Things are not worth your life.

His story is not so unique, but I know much more stories about how folks
got killed because they refused to leave their home (and run) when under
attack by several people armed with firearms, while they were unarmed, or
armed with pistol or knife, clearly outnumbered.
I read every day on web sentences like “having this gun will save you when
SHTF” or “with this BOB you cannot lose when SHTF”. Of course, this is
marketing crap from people who want to sell you something.
Please do not get yourself killed, or allow your family to die when SHTF just
because you put your “perfect” BOB on, your “zombie survival” rifle in your
hands and went out to save the world.
Do not get killed because you “draw the line and here you stand your
ground” for example when they attack your home or your storage. Do you
really want to die just to hold onto things?
In the world of survival, a number of people are gonna blindly believe in
their equipment, or just blindly stay where is impossible to stay. They think
they are much higher from folks who are gonna take the smartest option
(however bad it could look).

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This is why many preppers will die. Regular folks will run but some preppers
take so great pride in their plan or equipment they do not make the right
decisions when it matters because of their ego.
I am not the dude who is living in a tree armed only with a kitchen knife and
a big mouth. I also have BOB, BOL, equipment, weapons, and plans.
But if I see that my SURVIVAL is in question I am ready to say f*ck it to
everything.
Sometimes to survive means not to win but to give up, and wait for the
next chance. Do not expect to be a winner all the time.

© Copyright Daisy Luther Media 46

 Why I missed the best time to bug
out
June 2, 2014
The best way to survive is not being close to any problems. During the
Balkan War, I missed my chance to bug out in time. I ended up surrounded
by the enemy army and trapped in the city for a year without power and
regular resources. Everyone was fighting for the little what was left. That
we were being shot at by snipers and artillery from enemies did not make
the experience any better.
There are many reasons why people fail to bug out.
There can be many reasons you don’t get out, like failure to recognize that
S. gonna hit the fan, blocked streets on the way out of the city, problems
convincing everyone to leave, or just some special events you want to stay
for.
I mention many times why I failed to leave the city before everything
became blocked. I simply did not see the signs, or even if I saw something
that looked serious to me, I assured myself that everything gonna was
gonna be OK in a short time.

Here is the mistake I made.

And of course, the media was there to tell us that everything gonna be fine,
nothing was gonna escalate etc. It was like that, but as the time goes by I
am able to see one more mistake that I made that contributed to my choice
of staying.
Actually, it was not really a conscious choice because I failed to see that I
had a big choice to make back then. We humans like to go with the flow
and that is what I did. There was no choice actually made, just years later
when your freedom is taken you realize you failed to make the right choice.

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So the big mistake I made was the fact that I was simply fascinated about
how events are unfolding in front of my own eyes. It was kinda
mesmerizing.
You know that feeling that you are going to be part of something big,
something that it is gonna be part of history books?
I had that feeling on some subconscious level I guess.
It was like being part of an event that goes like this:
• Day 1: Today we lost the ability to phone outside town, sporadic
shots were fired the whole day, on the TV there is no news from our
city, which is weird…
• Day 2: I just saw a tank on the street, went to check is there anything
left in the store to buy or take, but actually there was no store
anymore. The tank was slowly rumbling over the street, and a guy
who was standing next to me said, “They gonna ruin the asphalt with
that beast“ like that was important. That guy still thought in old
terms, as we all did. I think he thought that it is temporary, and
tomorrow city gonna need to repair that street because the tank
ruined it, and we all pay that through our taxes, and so on, and so on.
• Day 3: Our first neighbor shows up with a rifle and said “Ill gonna
shoot that motherf***er. “ I asked him, “Who?“ He said, “Anyone
who approaches my house.“
In the beginning, it was like being in a movie, but pretty soon we all were
like, “F**k, people are getting killed for real here.”
One day after another day, the events unfolded, one more dramatic than
the one before. It is a bit like slow collapse that we experienced now,
changes coming step by step, even in a short time. But it was all exciting
until one point and then it was too late.
This is what happened.

One day it was simply too late to leave.

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Now you need to understand that this was not the only reason why I stayed
in the city, it was not even most important. But still, it was one of the
reasons and one of the reasons that can be easily overlooked.
It is important to mention here, simply because I can see and read in many
places that lots of people still make similar mistakes. It is interesting for
them to stay and see what is going to happen.
For those of you who were part of some SHTF event, whatever it was, some
natural disaster or similar, you may understand what I am trying to say.

The SHTF won’t wait for you.

It is the fact that the timing of events is not going to wait for you. It is going
to unfold on its own, and at the end, it is simply gonna overrun you if you
are in its path.
You will be left behind to sit through the consequences or you will be
destroyed.
People often act like the world is spinning around them, and like nothing
bad is going to happen to them, while in reality, you and I are nobody in
bigger picture. When you get more experience as survivalist and prepper
you maybe even become arrogant and think you know what you deal with
and can stay and wait.
I was young then, and my blood reacted differently to gunshots, screams,
or hearing about attacks or defense, or pride and similar, so I can blame
that too. But still, it is easy to fall into the thinking of “staying to see what
happens.”
Oh, it was interesting for sure, especially in the beginning, before I realized
fact that people died in great numbers and that there is a huge possibility
that I could be killed too. When I still thought it would not be some big
event and very soon it is over.
Later it was all about trying to survive. It was like constant running for your
life. You become a very humble man if you almost lose all control over
things around you.

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And remember the saying: “May you live in interesting times.” Remember
that it is as much a curse as it can bring you excitement in good times.
So if you see that “interesting times“ are coming to your neighborhood, just
leave the area. It is much better to be “bored“ but alive somewhere else.

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 Going it alone… Some things to
consider.
February 17, 2017
It is very hard to survive alone when the SHTF, especially in urban settings.
I’ve written numerous posts about the advantages of having a trusted
group when SHTF.
Still, I get questions about how to actually survive alone when SHTF, or how
to be a lone wolf. Yes, some people managed to survive alone when the
SHTF, but in much lower percentage and at a much higher price (and
effort).
So, based on my experiences of what I saw, and what kind of folks survived
alone (and how), here’s some advice for all you lone wolves out there:

Mental Strength: Having a Cause

Being alone in hard times gives you many more chances to find yourself
without emotional or psychological support when you need it.
An SHTF situation will have a huge impact on your mental state and your
emotional strength. And since you are going to be alone, you will lack that
everyday small and big support from your family and friends in the group.
Do not underestimate the effect of this. If you forget, over time you may
well just turn into an animal, or simply get yourself in a state where you
going to make some basic mistake and end up dead.
I was in group during my SHTF, and I had support from other family
members, but still I had moments when I had doubts about everything,
when I was so deep down that I could not see and sense and reason to
move on, I had my own method for coping with that, together with support
from close family and friends.
What you can do if you are alone?

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Find yourself a cause and purpose in the chaos that will unfold around you.
If you are a believer, a religious man or woman, you may have an
advantage her, that can give you strength and sense in everything.
Other things help also, be sure to find out what helps in your case before
SHTF because remember – you are going to be alone with your fears and
doubts.
I knew a man who was alone during the SHTF, and he wrote every day in a
journal about things that happened around him. He told me later that he
started with that without any plan, over some time it became almost a way
to make sense of everything, to carefully monitor all that was happening,
and to preserve it in written form.

Mobility
I already mentioned that if you are planning to be alone when SHTF, you
need to be mobile, very much. So what does that mean?
It means that you need to be ready to move more, in any case, much more
then if you had a group.
Acquiring information, getting resources, scouting, etc. - it all comes to you
only. You are everything in your survival circle.
That can change a lot of things.
For example, how much firepower can you have alone in defending your
home against an invader? What about against 15 invaders?
It simply means that there is much more chance that you cannot defend
your home because you are one man. There is much more chance that
you'll be forced to leave (run) from your home.
It means is that you must be ready to have more. More than one shelter,
more than one secret stash with ammo, weapon, food, etc. More than one
option for almost everything.
You need more options because you are alone.

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It is simple- a lone wolf needs to pay attention to same things just like any
other group of survivalist, but much more and much deeper. Because you
will pay for your mistakes a much higher price, and usually only once and
then you are gone.

Skills
Every survivalist needs to have certain skills, group or no group. A lone wolf
survivalist needs to have skills too, but again on a much deeper level.
He needs to be an expert in at least one relevant field. As a lone wolf you’ll
be forced (especially in prolonged SHTF) to form some kind of alliances to
get stuff, or simply you’ll be forced to join (for shorter or longer period) to
some group.
When all your other valuables are gone (and you have more chances for it
to be gone because you are alone) you will have that precious skill as a
bartering value. Your skill will be much more important to you because you
are alone.
Choose today, before SHTF, some skill that you feel best suits you and learn
everything about it. Think about weapon repairing, gardening, medical
skills, herbal knowledge… Become a real master in it.
One more thing about being alone and skills. The simple fact that you are
alone requires from you much more effort and skills than having trusted
friends or group, and it goes like that for every aspect of survival.
It takes much more time to gather firewood, start a fire, and prepare food
for you alone, than if two or three men do that. Not to mention how many
skills have three men combined together comparing to one survivalist.
Let me give you an example, and it is a real life experience. If two
survivalists travel through an urban area and decide to spend a night or few
hours resting in some ruin it is easily, they choose a building, check it, and
take a rest with one man on watch.

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If you travel alone, you will look for building, you will do that with more
effort, it will take more time. You will look for a bit different type of
building because there is one defender (you), you will have to make some
traps (warning or killing) which will take more time, and you’ll sleep with
“one eye open“ and so on…
As I said, both examples are from my experience and my SHTF. Being alone
is not impossible. It simply requires more effort and skills.

Other People and You

You are a lone wolf, but you will still be forced to deal with other folks, that
is for sure. You will come into the situation where you have to cooperate
with other people, or to trust other people.
My survival philosophy when it comes to urban survival is that urban SHTF
means more people, and more people means more problems because
you’ll have to deal with them in order to survive.
That “dealing with other people“ when you are a lone wolf is much more
dangerous than dealing with them while you are in a group.
It is simply because you are more vulnerable and less protected.
For example, if you are going to ta rade deal it is much more dangerous for
you alone to make safe trade setup, as opposed to having you and two
more group members with you.
With that in mind, you may conclude that you’ll be forced much more to
avoid people because you are a lone wolf. It is simply safer like that. There
is the reason why most of the lone wolves who survived SHTF were kinda
weirdos who avoid people.

Aftermath and Consequences

Again let me explain through my experience and an example.
I survived SHTF.
I had PTSD for years, which drives my mind everywhere, from thoughts of
‘reasons for still being on this world’ up to the thoughts of writing the book.

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I can say that I am pretty much not capable of living a normal everyday life.
I cannot stand crowded places. In nice cafes I look for possible exits… in
exchange for this pain, I am completely sure and ready for another SHTF.
But again that does not give me the ease of living a normal life. I have lost
that ability a long time ago because I went through SHTF.
I forget the names of people, or streets or places. I even sometimes forget
when exactly my kid was born.
But I remember so clearly how grown-up people cried before they died,
gaping wounds and blood that always gave me “how much blood is there“
thoughts, the smell of a building on fire, the crackling noise of fire and the
glowing that mesmerized me.
And I remember much worse things. They are carved into my brain…
I am all that and I remember all that, even though I had the support of my
group of family members. We cared about each other, about the mental
state of each one of us.
I feel sorry for the lone wolf survivalist who will survive SHTF. He is going to
be a mess.
There is a reason why most of the lone wolf types who survived SHTF were
kinda weirdos who avoided people before and have a terrible time with the
aftermath after…
As you might conclude up to now, there is no magic formula about how to
survive alone when SHTF.
The rules of survival are mostly the same as being in a group, but much
harder or sharper in a way, with much fewer margins for error…

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What an "average day" is REALLY like
when the SHTF
Jan. 15, 2018
A few weeks after the collapse came, all aspects of our normal life changed
based on the new reality around us.
One aspect was "sleep cycle“- the time when we sleep and when we were
awake and active.
One of the most basic rules that jumped in was that most of the activities
got done during the night.
Some reasons for that were obvious, like danger from snipers. But also the
other reason (maybe even more important) was that over time it becomes
very important to hide your activities connected to gathering resources.
To explain it more, when you have a lot of people in a small area (city) and
you have less resources that are needed for that number of people, the fact
that you HAVE something (food, water medicines...) needs to be hidden
from people who do not have that.
The system (law, police, etc.) was out, and it was important not to give
reasons for people to attack you because you have something interesting.
So, anything connected with gathering resources (wood, food, trade...) was
finished mostly during the night.
Of course, violence mostly happened during the night too (violence that
included "close fighting.“)
Activities in your home and yard were possible to be done in the daytime.
For example, we would spend the day fixing our water gutter that goes
from the roof so it can go in a big barrel, but if we needed to climb on
the roof and fix holes with tarps or to "funnel“ it to the gutter, that needed
to be done in the night time.

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There was no "usual“ time to get up, at least not in hardest period. Even if
we did not have anything particular to do we would be alert during the
night time, simply because night time was full of different activities in the
city, and you needed to be ready.
In our case (because we had more than 10 people most of the time in the
house) we could do a schedule that meant not all of us needed to be alert
all the night.
During 24 hour periods of time, someone was always sleeping, others were
doing some job, but as a general rule nights were much more active then
days.
Messing up with normal sleep cycle was a problem alone, and it
contributed to the stress, feeling tired and stressed because you did not
have enough sleep or enough quality sleep was a normal thing.
Sometimes close detonation of shells would wake me up, sometimes my
relatives woke me up because it was my guard shift, sometimes we would
all be awake the whole night because of close shootings, and possible
danger.
Sometimes I would wake up by myself because that day I did not have any
particular duty to do, so I would stay home, checking things in the house,
maybe trying to fix some things.

It was so strange not to have bread.

Traditionally here (in Balkan region) we ate a lot of bread, and we eat it
with almost all food.
It is actually strange not to have bread on the table, no matter what kind of
food you eat, or what time of day it is (breakfast, dinner...)
It is a Slavic tradition from ancient times to greet dear guests with bread
and salt (and right after that comes alcohol).
I am trying to portray the importance of bread here, and then when the
collapse came, suddenly it became scarce (just like everything else).

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I believe it was the biggest problem when it came to meals, the lack of
bread, simply because we used to eat it a lot.
It was kinda a psychological problem for us too, not to have enough bread.
That was first biggest change.
Note: do not underestimate the power that food has not only in calorie
terms but also in psychological terms. Having and eating food that you love
makes things much easier. Store food in your prepper storage that you LIKE
to eat.
Second thing was that the usual "schedule“ of meals was lost.
It was very rare when we could all sit together to have dinner or breakfast,
simply because someone was sleeping or someone else was busy with
something.
For breakfast, we ate whatever was there in the moment. If the day was
good and we managed to find something like an MRE or canned meat it
was a good breakfast.
On bad days we usually ate "pancakes“. "Pancakes“ were locally picked
greens, mixed with water and very small amounts of flour (just to keep
greens connected). It looked awful and tasted awful too.
The greens that people picked from nearest hills were supposed to be
edible, based on rumors, or older people who had some knowledge about
edible plants.
Another favorite at that time was "tea“. It was a big pot that stood on the
stove, with water and local herbs inside, we called that tea or soup.
It was something like substituted for one of the traditionally favorite meals
in this region - soup. Just like bread, here it is a tradition to have hot soup
with your meal.
Just like with sleep cycles, the times of meals were messed up. Also, the
food that we ate for particular meals was messed up. We ate when we had
the chance, and we ate what was available in the moment. For example, in

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normal times for breakfast here, we ate sandwiches or eggs. It was
something to dream about during the collapse.
And yes, sometimes I simply did not have breakfast or dinner, or anything
for a whole day or night.
Note: very soon people (when they had all ingredients) started to make
bread in small pots right on the stove, it required not too much fuel and
time, it was easy to make it (with flipping bread in the pot).

There were no jobs but surviving.

In my case there no jobs you went to, because in that hardest period
system was out completely. There was nothing like regular jobs in places
that you worked prior to the collapse.
You could find a use for your skills if you had any, for example being nurse
meant I had some knowledge and skills, and it was pretty valuable actually
because I could trade it for food or other usable items.
When the system is out, any knowledge in some particular field is
important. For example being able to recognize a broken rib or infection,
and being able to help with whatever is available in that moment meant a
real value that you could sell.
An important thing to mention is that in some other cities in the region
where war was at the same time, some kind of system and government was
still there. In those regions, the government imposed something
like"obligatory working“.
It worked in a way that, for example, if you were an electrician in a city
company, the government could give you an order to work for free for
some other company, military unit, or whatever.
In reality, it meant that some armed group or fraction could simply mobilize
you and take you from your home.
My biggest skill in that time was my medical knowledge. Even when the
whole system was out, even when there was no medication, there was use
for my knowledge.

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There was no school for children.
There were no schools in that hardest period in my place. The system was
out completely.
There were some attempts from family members to try to keep up some
level of homeschooling, but pretty soon it was clear that we all had much
bigger and more serious problems than homeschooling.
Kids simply lost that period when it came to school.

The chores were endless.

People do not understand how much hard work is needed to get done
things like water, food, heat, security because the system is here for us to
take care of those things, so we do not have to.
We were ordinary city folks who did not have a lot of knowledge about
stuff like how to go find a tree, take it down, chop it into small pieces, and
bring it home somehow. Or how to collect water from rain, or bring enough
water from the river when that is impossible.
So we learned that, but it took us time to learn. We were not preppers in
any meaning of that word.
If you wanted to go to a hill close to your home and take down a tree for
firewood it was all night job for a few people.
The first problem was that we did it in pitch darkness. After that, the next
problem was to either to carry it in bigger pieces (and be slow and
vulnerable) or to chop it down into small pieces (and spend more time in
that place, which also was not desirable), or to leave someone to guard it
while others took down pieces, or to go all together and risk that someone
else took the rest before we get back.
As a carrying system, people often used homemade carts, very rudimentary
setups made from an old baby cart or a wooden box with wheels from a
baby cart, or similar. Or we simply would carry it on our back in bigger
pieces and chop it later in our yard where it was much safer to be.

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It was a heavy job.
Finding firewood was a constant job, so often while we were doing other
jobs, we would collect it on our way, things like wooden windows and door
frames from destroyed buildings.
Yes, there were days when we were good, we would have enough water,
food, and wood. We were good.
But usually, we were always missing something.
When the system is out, way too much time is needed to take care of
everyday needs.
If we had enough food, we did not have enough rain for water so we took
trips to the river. If we had enough water then someone had a serious case
of diarrhea and we were worried about that.
Not to downplay the physical threat, but preppers today usually focus only
on the physical threat, on fighting, weapons, and similar, while there is
much more to everyday survival.
One good example of the effort needed to get something done is trade.
In order to do trade, first you would look for information about someone
who had some goods, then you'd check and recheck that information, then
you'd take into consideration the risk of going there, then you'd make a
plan how many of us were going and what we are carrying there, and then
you'd go and do that trade.
It was a complicated and dangerous process.

Sanitation was totally different too.

Close to our house, between a destroyed apartment building (we used that
building sometimes as a guarding outpost or up-front layer of defensive
ring of our house) and our house was something like a small park.
It was boxed (hidden) from 4 sides and pretty safe to use as a toilet by
simply digging a hole in the ground.

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After few months we built something like primitive latrine there. It worked
for us during that time.
Toilet paper after some time become unknown, so we used what was
available, clean rags and water and similar.
If you look at it from today's perspective, we did not do too much for
personal hygiene.
It was a matter of taking quick sponge baths when we had time and means
for that and rare real bucket showers. But those were really rare.
When it came to our home, we did try to keep it as clean as possible. For
example, we used one room for sick folks, we did try to clean ourselves in
the yard and to take dirty clothes there.
Soap was possible to get in that time through trade, and in some periods
things like alcohol pads were traded, but again the biggest problem was not
having enough water for all our needs.
When you live for a prolonged period of time in those circumstances you
kinda get used to the lack of hygiene. You do not like it but you live with it,
and even make fun out of it. Psychologically people tend to get used to the
lack of hygiene, especially when everybody around you is in the same state
like you.
It was again a matter of having bigger problems on our mind.
For the minor problems, there were things like fungus infections, very
common simply because in some periods we did not have enough time to
keep ourselves dry and clean. Small cuts were usually solved with alcohol
(alcohol for drinking was more or less available).
Real problems were connected with bad food and water treatment.
There were days during the summer when it was almost unbearable
because of the stench that was in the city. A lot of bodies were not buried.

Many family members lived in one home.

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It depends, but the tendency was that when the collapse came, relatives
got together in the better house (between two families of relatives). So, for
example, your uncle and aunt would come and live with you if their house
was destroyed, or if your home was safer and better, or if you simply
agreed that it was better to have more manpower together.
In my case, through that period, not less than 10 people were in our one
house.
Usually, prior to the SHTF, living conditions and the number of occupants
per house or apartment were the same as in any other European country.
One difference was that traditionally (prior the war) we did bring to our
home parents when they got old, or too old to live by themselves.
For example, if you were living with your wife and two kids, and your
parents are 85 years old, and one of them dies it was common to bring
other parent to live with your family, to arrange room for him and to take
care for him untill his death, if you had a house big enough for that.
It was not the rule, but it was common as a part of the tradition. Yes, we
did have homes and pension centers for old folks where the state takes
care of them, but it was kinda shameful to leave your elders there.
I am pointing out this as an explanation why when the collapse happened,
people from the same family tended to quickly go together and form group.
Suddenly you were in the same house with your grand-uncle.
It was like that because strong blood tradition was present. It is not like
that anymore. That tradition has faded away.
As a general thought, at first look more people meant more mouths to
feed. But more people also meant more firepower, more working power,
more support... It is about the skills, will, and mindset of those people.

We divided up our responsibilities pretty traditionally.

Through the socialistic-communist society doctrine (in society before the
war) it was strongly pushed that females and males were equal in any field
of life, and people had that kind of mentality built.

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But when the SHTF, pretty soon a traditional way of life jumped in. Women
were staying home, taking care of kids and food, and men were going out
more actively.
It was not rule, but it was usual.
Usually, women were the ones who knew how to make food from
something that did not look like real food or to make it edible, or to
comfort sick or frightened kid.
Women were the pillar of everything.
I would say that we simply did things that each one of us was best in. It was
not democracy. The person (not necessary the oldest) who had most
organizational skills was in charge, simply because it make sense like that.
Duties were divided between other members based on skills, strength, and
sense of fairness.
But things had to be done if you wanted to be part of everything.
As I said, we were family, so we were closely connected from before, so we
did not have any big surprises. We were not preppers but we had that bond
from before.
People of younger age would do the guard job, but a man of 85 years would
not do that because we would do it much better then him. He would stay
home that day and maybe take care of fixing the tarp that needed to be
used for roof hole.
Note: There is a reason why I always advocate building your group way
before SHTF, because in that way you get to know folks that your life my
depend when SHTF.

There’s one task we did every day.

You could call it scavenging.
When SHTF in a serious way, you were simply always missing something. Of
course, you also missed important things, like food, water etc.

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But you also missed (especially if you are not prepper) a whole bunch of
small things that could make your life easier.
Some of those seem ridiculous. Like shoelaces, not only for shoes but also
for oil lamps. But then you need shoelaces of a specific kind because the
"bad kind“ kinda melted and turned off the lamp.
You were looking for a simple crowbar because it is a great tool for taking
down wooden door frames or similar. You needed small pot with lid on it
because you want to take fuel from an abandoned car by making hole in
the tank.
You were looking for spare batteries in abandoned houses, candles, wires,
ropes, soaps... anything that would make your life easier.
And it is a process because you need to be sure... Is that house empty? Is it
safe so it will not collapse on you (roof looked partialy collapsed maybe)?
Are you suspicious about booby traps because you do not know?
Simple things like a multitool (Gerber or Leatherman style) would make life
so much easier in those days.

I remember the homemade lamps.

In that time, for a light people usually used homemade lamps. A simple
glass with small amount of cooking oil, shoelace, and a tin bottle cap and
you have lamp.
It burned with a "dirty“ flame, with a lot of thick black smoke, but the real
problem was that it smelled bad. But at the same time, it smelled like
doughnuts.
At least it smelled like that to us in that time. We had a lot of hard times
sitting in the room, discussing something in very bad light, hungry,v but
feeling like doughnuts are almost ready for eating.
Then I was imagining doughnuts because of that smell. Now, whenever I
eat doughnuts I always remember those survival lamps.

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 What We Ate and How We Got Food
March 12, 2018

At the beginning of everything, most of the people did not have any
significant “stash” of food in their homes.
In other words, the majority of common folks had food a or couple of days
in their pantry and that was it. There were exceptions to that because the
process of collapse did not happen in a few hours (in terms of suddenly
there is no food in the stores).
When the chaos started, people looted stores after a short period of
everyone buying things in a panic. Still, the majority of folks did not manage
to get a decent stash of food from stores. Some did not want to believe
that they were gonna need a stash. Others did not want to go out and
participate in looting because it was dangerous. But I think the most
obvious reason was that all food from stores was taken very fast.
In beginning period of SHTF, events unfold at a very fast pace. Actually,
events go one after another so fast that if you find yourself lost in one
event at the end of several events, you ask yourself, “Why in the name of
God I did not go out and buy a whole bunch of food while I still could do
that?”

Gardening was difficult.

Yes, it was an option, but the percentage of food from a garden was low
because of a few reasons.
It was a city, without enough land for significant food growing, and the
second reason is that even people who had some land (small gardens near
houses) needed time to grow food there.
People usually did not grow food there in normal times, flowers, tea,
maybe some particular kind of tomato, salad greens, and similar.

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I remember going and checking gardens for tomatoes because people had
tried some new sort of tomato close to their home, not as a way to have
food, but as an attempt so they could see is if it was OK to have it
somewhere before they had a bigger piece of land for growing (before SHTF
in a peacetime).
So yes, gardening was an option, people used every part of the available
land, but that was not enough, and it was like you are checking every day
how your tomato is growing and you wait for it, but then you pick it and
realize you have food for only a couple of days.
We were not prepared at the time to use every piece of land for food
growing. It takes time to establish that.
Still, it was precious, and it was protected just like your home, in the same
way.

We survived because of MREs.

There was no schedule for food drops, at least no real schedule because it
was all based on rumors like, “Tonight they are gonna drop food from
airplanes.” If you asked, “Who told you that?” the answer was “a guy who
heard it from guy who heard…" So, of course, it was completely based on
luck.
Sometimes, it would “fall down” every second night, or you heard it had
fallen somewhere, it would be “I heard it from a guy who heard it…”
Sometimes it was 3-4 times per week. Of course, they dropped it, but that
does not mean we could find any of the food. Other people would simply
grab it before you.
Some folks headed for the hills every night in order to wait. People would
choose one guy from family to go up every night and wait.
If those food drops had any schedule there where they loaded planes (as I
understand later, the place was in an air base in Italy) it was completely lost
on us down in the city in the chaos and empire of rumors.

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You need to understand that in that time those planes were not the only
ones to fly, so sometimes we were out waiting for food but actually other
planes bombarded us.
But very early we learned to recognize the low humming sound of food
planes, distant but powerful.
Now when I look back, it is weird how we trusted some of that information.
For example, if we heard that food was gonna be dropped that night in
some particular part of the city, some small area of some hill, people would
go there.
A reasonable man would have thought, "Oh, so some poor ragged guy in
the middle of civil war and information blockade suddenly has info on
where several huge military airplanes are gonna do some operation?” Not
to mention the fact that the whole city together with all the hills looked to
those people in the airplanes like small dots.
It was nonsense. But we were hungry, scared, and in the middle of chaos
without any real information, so people trusted in a lot of things, especially
in good news.
Do not underestimate the power of rumors in hard times.
“Food drops” were performed for many cities in this area during the
hardest part of the war. They helped on different levels.
Even today I find one of the happiest sounds to be the sound of MREs
raining on a hard surface. I did not know the technical details (and still
don't) of how exactly that worked, but most of the things that were
dropped would break apart in the air, so on the ground, it would “rain”.
It was like a lottery to be in the middle of that rain because the MREs were
good stuff, and valuable, but some of the bigger stuff coming down could
kill people. (It happened with bigger packages).
MREs were meals all in one package: food, sweet stuff, matches, even that
hot sauce that was pretty handy when we want to add taste to some weird
food that we ate or to mask a bad taste.

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Foraging and hunting are overestimated in urban survival.
When it comes to foraging for plants, I know it is a popular opinion in some
circles that you can survive and live by foraging.
In terms of urban survival, it is, in my opinion, overestimated if you are an
average man.
Maybe it would work if you have lots of knowledge about edible plants, and
maybe if you have many resources of those plants and are in the
wilderness.
We were average urban folks. Our knowledge about edible plants was
limited to the one or two usable plants that could be used for homemade
tea.
For example yes, we used pine needles for tea. It sounds great today, it is
good healthy tea with vitamins and so on, but you can not live on it, it can
be in addition to your food, but not your main resource.
Older folks jumped in with their knowledge. They were folks that in those
times remembered WW2 and hunger, and people usually listened to them
when it came to what plant you could use for food.
Plants like nettle and dandelion were used, and in the worst periods,
people simply started to use any available grass mixed with small amount
of flour.
Eating plants and herbs in that time was not a case of healthy living. It was
a matter of not having anything else to eat.
It was the city, so hunting or trapping anything more complicated than a
pigeon was not really an option. The other reason was that it was city in the
middle of a war, so real trapping had its own complications like shelling,
constant noises, and similar.
If your situation is extreme, hunting or trapping can be about trapping
pigeons or shooting a stray dog.

We also scavenged for food.

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When the SHTF, especially in the beginning, some houses became empty.
People left or died inside (for whatever reason, for example, shelling). Then
folks would go through the empty houses and scavenge for food.
One memory from that time is the endless stench of rotten food (there was
no electricity for the fridges). In the beginning, you could find food in that
way.
If you were lucky sometimes you could find a bigger amount of food.
Sometimes you came upon a house where the ex-occupant clearly hoarded
food in the first days of rioting.
That period of time did not last for long. The stench of rotten food was
pretty much substituted with another kind of stench. Soon there were
more dead people then spoiled food in the city.
But even later, you would never know what you could find in destroyed and
abandoned houses. Maybe few cans of food hidden or forgotten
somewhere under the rubble, or in a destroyed fridge.
One thing interesting from that period (when it comes to scavenging) and
also very important in prepper terms is that I witnessed and was part of
something that I can call the transition of scavenging or maybe resetting
the values of goods.
It goes something like this:
First people ran riot on stores and looked for valuables like gold, money,
TVs, stereos, cars…then as they realized the situation, they looked for
weapons, fuel, then candles, batteries, and food, then they'd dig up some
gardens for few potatoes.
People needed some time to realize what was really important. It didn't
take very long but sometimes even a few days or a week is important.
I have seen people running from a mall with items that, in few days, would
become most ridiculous items to possess (and to take from a burning mall)
in the middle of a collapse, things like a TV or a laundry machine or a music
collection of a famous band.

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The majority of people could not imagine what was coming, so they could
not fathom that a bag full of AA batteries was gonna worth more than 50
laundry machines.
For example, the laundry machine was usable only to plug a hole in the wall
from shelling or to reinforce the door.
I am not advocating that you go out rioting and taking stuff from malls and
stores when SHTF, but let's say that if you find yourself there, think about
what is useful to take in prepper terms.
Here is one example: if the SHTF again here, there is parking machine in
front of my home that gives you an automatic ticket when you sin here
insert coins. As soon as I see someone busting it open to take money from
inside I will go and take the small solar panel from it (it is solar power
operated). While other people think about money inside, I am thinking
about solar power on the outside of it.

You stretched things to just keep your belly full.

Over time, it gets important to have some food, or in other words to have
your belly “full” of something so easiest solutions were to water food
down, or to mix it with plants.
In other words, we ate a lot of “soups.” For example, if we had a small
amount of meat and rice, but we have water and some plants, we would
make a big pot of soup.
In some cases it looked more like tea (a lot of hot water with a small
amount of food inside) but it solved the problem of how to make
something big out of small amounts of something.
When a situation is hard - when it is hard and demanding on both
psychological and physical way - you cannot really ration yourself. You need
to eat something, because of the simple fact that you can not operate if
you are not fed. So we ate a lot of very low quality food, and yes we were
always more or less hungry.
The food we ate was not tasty or good but it kept us alive.

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It was a matter of economic thinking. It was not about making it delicious
because we had scarce resources like wood for fire. and simply because
often it was impossible to make it delicious.
It was brought down to the level of getting your stomach full of something
so you can continue to operate one more day.

We cooked with fire the whole time.

We cooked with fire, a stove that used wood, and often an open fire in the
yard. It was a constant equation of heating and cooking with low wood
resources.
For example if we needed to get a fire for heating it was used at the same
time for cooking. A small open fire on the yard was used in weather when
there was no need for heating.

There was a black market for food.

There was a thriving black market for food and it was a matter that
changed all the time based what was available in the city at a given
moment.
For example if food drops that week were good you could find MREs
cheaper. Other times, all you could find was suspicious-looking meat cans
without manufacture or expiration dates on them.
Nothing was fixed and for sure on black market, not even fact that you
gonna survive the trade not to mention other things.
(Again, it was a matter of levels, so there were people who “owned” the
market (people with strong organizations, firepower, and connections).
Sometimes they dictated the “pricing” of food in the city, and sometimes
there were common folks who could offered you few cans of meat or two
MREs from their stash.
Sometimes you could run into a man who was offering you “powdered
eggs” but in a dark, not secure environment (you are trading with unknown
armed people for example), you needed to be sure it is not some useless
powder. There were scams and you needed to be sure who you were

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trading with, how secure the place was, and what you were actually trading
for.

Things to know about eating when the SHTF

There are options of foraging for edible plants and hunting or trapping
some animals in the city when the SHTF, but do not count on that as the
main resource for your food, not in the long run.
Acquiring food in urban settings comes down to the idea of taking food
from other people - either people that are not there anymore (empty
houses) or people that are still there (through the trade or attack).
All of the above options (just like lot of other prepper activities when SHTF)
usually are not fancy and romantic/friendly.
When scavenging through deserted places, you can get injured and that
injury can get complicated when there is no medical care. During a trade,
you can get scammed, ripped off, or simply attacked and injured or killed
because of the resources you possess in that moment or due to a lack of
careful planning.
By attacking other people to get food (if you find yourself that desperate or
if you wish to go that way) you are risking, of course, being killed.
In the end, it comes again to the idea that you need to be prepared very
well for SHTF with your stash of food or your small garden where you are
gonna choose what to have and how to use it in the most efficient way. You
should minimize the need to go out and scavenge, at least until, you figure
out some things.

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 What Hunger and Thirst Was Really
Like
November 15, 2018
Smart folks wrote a lot of studies about how hunger and thirst affect your
mind and body. I think majority of them never experienced it on the
longterm, so all that,while it is correct still cannot explain some things.
In most of the serious prolonged events, your problem is not going to be
being completely out of food and water, because those kind of problems
are easily solved by you ending up dead because of no water and food at
all.
The real problem actually is being forced to "operate" under the condition
where you have less food and water then needed and lower quality of it.
What that means?
It means for example that you need to combine crawling, hiding, and
shooting for two whole days without any amount of water or food, because
situation caught you without it.
Now you can say, "I will endure two days without water and food. I can do
that.“
For sure you can, but remember that you need to "operate" in a very sharp
way, under a lot of stress. You need to kill or be killed.
It is not like sitting in your armchair for two days waiting for water and food
to come.
And you need to add ALWAYS more factors that gets the situation
complicated.
For example you'll be hungry and thirsty for two days while fighting under a
lot of stres PLUS you gonna have case of diahrrea, or you gonna be
completely soaked because it's raining, or you gonna have some nasty cut...

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Another thing is that the quality of food plus the low amount of it over
certain period of time gets you into the situation that you are almost
constantly craving something.
It can be a simple thing like you are constantly need ingmore bread, you are
taking some amount of food each day ,but it is simply not enough, so you
are constantly actually hungry.

Hunger is also a psycological thing.

So over time, you learn somehow to „switch off" that feeling of craving all
the time, but it is like you are killing a whole bunch of other emotions
together with that feeling too.
So it does not need to be anything "tactical." You do not have to be
involved in fighting, you can be bugged in at your house for days or weeks
waiting for better times.
But with low amounts of food and especially water it will eventually kick
you. Even if you can stay low and hidden (without too much physical
activity) it will kick you psycologically and it can drive you to make some
stupid decisions, just because you want to go out and look for some
particular food somewhere.

We ate things that most people wouldn't think of as food.

It is a matter of levels. Sometimes I get questions over mail asking if we had
cases of cannibalism, and the answer is no. People need to realize that the
road to that extreme is very, very long.
There are many bad things to eat before getting to that extreme (even if
you are willing to go there) and people do not realize that.
I ate spoiled and old food of different kinds, expired food (cans of cookies
from military storages that were expired for decades), food with worms
(cooked together with those expired cans), grass that was boiled in water,
leaves from trees. We ate different kind of meat, pigeon for sure, and I am
quite positive cat meat once, and rat meat once probably.

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 Being in a city under siege
February 26, 2012
When the SHTF there might not be army outside shooting at you, but there
might be gangs who prey on you to get your supplies. Being under siege
feels like someone takes the ground away you walked on.
Nothing is like it was before. When you defend your home, you need to
have mindset change. Home is not a cozy secure place anymore. Home is
the place you chose to defend yourself and loved ones. You will feel very
different about the place you used as defensive base forever.
To stay protected or to try to protect against firing and shelling required
some skill, knowledge and in lot of the times good luck.

The violence was shocking.

I can say that at the beginning people acted very brave. But on the other
side that was not courage, it was more like lack of knowledge of how easily
a man can be killed. People went out like kids with water pistols only that
getting wet might be own blood or blood of friend on you.
I watched few times a man attacking another guy who is hiding behind
some cover. Attacker is just running towards the guy behind cover and
constantly shooting. The other guy behind cover just leans forward for
second, gets timing right, and kills the foolish attacker.
When you have bunch of civilians with lot of weapons, some strange
situations can occur. Remember I am talking about people that most of
them did not know too much about war, fighting, tactics, and everything
else.
We did not have some smart philosophy of street fighting, especially not in
the beginning. But as the time goes by, some of the obvious things get
figured out or learned if you like.

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If somebody wanted to attack someone who is inside house, most usual
way was to use RPG or hand greandes on some of the opennings to shock
people inside and create some shrapnel flying around.
Quite often, guys used human shields to get to the house. A lot of people
got killed because they thought it is not OK to kill some poor prisoner in
order to defend the house.
Imagine that three bad guys come towards you and they push two older
women in front of them. Terrible situations. After some time, most shot at
everything that looked suspicious… no matter what.
Most of the fighting in the city was like shoot and hide, fight while moving,
like fighting with shadows, they are everywhere, and each shadow can kill
you. You often fight people who you do not even see good, so to walk or
run lightly was the key.
Often you do not see enemy and shoot at whatever. Sounds bad but in lot
of the situations very good thing was to shoot at anything that looks even
close to suspicious, and in most of the situation not even stop later to
check.
You never know how well you hit. Just grab your stuff and move.
Move…
Move...
Move…
I remember that. Always on the run.

Psychology in urban warfare

Fear was one of the greatest allies of fighting, so if one of the groups
wanted to kill or expel other group from some street, position or building,
the usual method was to talk to them for hours over the megaphone
device.
Maybe from this perspective looks ridiculous but if you listen for hours or
days for one and same story how you are gonna be treated good if you

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surrender yourself, after some time a lot of folks are gonna start to belive in
that.
Or in other case you may listen for an hours what that guys gonna do to
your family and you if you do not surrender youself.

It’s hard to imagine how wrong things can be.

After watching a video of Syria and the people in Homs some memories
came back. Some dark memories hide deep inside of me. Not easy to get to
them. But this is one that came back.
My friend got caught with his buddy in one house, actually two of them are
left something like behind enemy lines, in basement of destroyed house. An
enemy group, some 150-200 men was doing sweep through that street,
robbing and killing civilians who had not time to run. He said to me that
they spend two days in basement, covered with all kind of junk, watching
outside through small opening, few meters from opening was a corpse of a
little girl, maybe 10 years old.
In order to see if somebody was coming to their basement, one of them
needed to be constantly at that small opening, watching. He said he
managed to watch atrocities that those people did to civilians and
somehow push that deep inside his brain, over the time, to put these
memories away. But to stare at a dead kid all that time, with her eyes wide
open, her blond hair, he almost lost his mind.
One of them had a pistol and few bullets, other one had a rifle , 30 bullets
and a homemade grenade (made from unexploded tank grenade).
They make agreement, if they see enemy is coming to the basement, they
gonna fire everything and blow themselves with that grenade. Nobody
came into their basement, though. A burned house was not interesting for
other guys. After two days, the enemy group just pulled back.
They survived the war, both of them. One of them became drug addict,
lived very fast for afew years, and died from an overdose.

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Other man is still my friend. He is in his mid 40s, prepared, armed, strong,
skilled. He has two kids, boy and girl, teenagers. Both of them know how to
shoot, and how to defend themselves.
I can only write stories here. The reality is a whole different thing. Once
things turn ugly, some things can feel so wrong they cannot be understood
or processed with normal mind.
Actually, there is no way to deal with that.
Sometimes with friends we can speak about these things. Sometimes we
laugh. Other times some of my friends are quiet for days, I do not know, I
have periods like that too.
I think none one of us is dealing too good with that, maybe pushing it away
from time to time, I have for example some periods when I am too
aggressive, easy to explode, rarely now, but I still have those times.
I hope we all never have to go through this again. But if the time comes, I’m
ready and you should be too.

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 The reality of gangs when the SHTF
October 13, 2011

To go out during the night and do things was dangerous. There were no
rules and you did not know what to expect.We needed to go out to get
things. Gangs and complete absence of any law was problem.
Constant shelling and snipers from enemy army was minor problem
comparing to gangs. I think every city has criminals, people who live on
edge of law, murderers, drug dealers, and those kinds of people.

In SHTF, the worst kind of people were in charge.

They formed very fast some kind of their own private army, in some cases
their number was in hundreds, they were drunk from feeling of endless
power, because of them you needed to be uninteresting, small, invisible.
They had everything: food, guns, luxuries, they owned black market. If they
wanted something from you, eventually they got that from you, your food,
house, your wife. It does not matter what.
The best chance for you was that they did not notice you. Your other
chance was that they see you have enough men and firepower so that what
they want is going to cost them too much.
If you expecting some kind of fair fight or honor in SHTF, forget it right now.
We just stayed away from them. There was not Superman or Batman in city
who saved good people from bad. If we met them it was shoot and run.
Most of the gang members are still alive. Some of them through that power
still have power today, some in private companies, some in politics.
To add more about gangs: Yes they even had their own prisons, houses for
fun, sometimes they abducted people for ransom, sometimes just for fun,
there was no rule.

Typical Gang Members During SHTF

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It is very important to understand who is typical member of gang in SHTF.
As I already said before, worst kind of people is in charge in SHTF. Usually
they take the lead, so you have then old criminals as a new gang leaders. Of
course you already figured they not gonna pay too much attention on
moral issue or fair play.
In most parts of the world we already now in peacetime have gangs of all
kinds. In SHTF, those gangs become something like private armies. People
joined them, it is easier to take stuff from other people then to find it in a
more “normal” way. So you gonna have normal folks who lost faith, lost
strength, and for them all that is left is to join gangs.
My point is to prepare you that in SHTF your first neighbor (who is now for
example car salesman) may be a very bad gang member. It was much easier
to be gang member.

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 The dirty truth about water and
sanitation when the SHTF
May 29, 2018
When there was no more running water, just like most other things
(especially when it comes to non-preppers) it was a matter of levels and
layers.
The tap water was going on and off for a few days before service went
completely off, so people had a few bottles of drinking water stored. But
of course, most of us thought everything going to be restored very soon so
nobody had considered storing big amounts of water.
When it comes to lack of water and being unprepared, the levels and layers
that I am mentioning meant that you first looked and asked for tap water
(clean) for drinking. Then collecting water from rooftops sounded like a
good idea. Then drinking directly from the river was good if there was no
other source. And then, finally, when there was no other source. you simply
drink dirty water even when you were sure it is quite dirty.
It was a matter of low resources, desperation, and of course low skill levels.
Our main sources were rain and the river.

How we collected rainwater.

It was not anything smart, especially in the beginning.
The gutter system normally took water from the roof through pipes into
the underground collectors and sewers. When we concluded that the
running water was not coming back, we simply sawed off a piece of gutter
and pushed it inside the main gutter that led from the roof system (on the
side of the house that looked inside the yard). Then we collected water
inside a barrel.

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We just used the water collectment system that was existing there already,
and just cut it off at a lower point, before the water was "lost."
Weredirected the water into a barrel.
It is actually pretty amazing how much water you can collect from the roof
during one summer storm. A lot.
When it comes to that system of water collecting our main problem was
lack of containers, because even if there is a huge amount of water to
"catch" from the rain, we did not have enough adequate containers for
that.
Probably if we were prepared in a smart way for that, our water problems
would have been easier.

We had to purify/filter water for drinking and cooking.

We did this in two main ways: boiling and filtering.
Filtering of the water was very rudimentary. We did not use any real filters,
and people did not know how to make anything too complicated.
The most complicated filter that I saw in those times was a slightly changed
version of a "bottle " filter with rocks and sand with added cloth inside.
We used cloths for filtering, or gauze. If water was visibly contaminated
(particles) we would repeat the procedure until the water looked satisfying
for us.
Boiling was a widespread method of making water drinkable, and often the
quality of stoves and fuel for it were "measured" by the time needed for
water to boil.

The rivers and streams were contaminated even before the

SHTF.
River and streams in cities were polluted (if we talk about drinking) before
the war because poor care was taken of it, and it was mainly because of
industry.

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When SHTF, that kind of pollution went down because of obvious reasons
(everything stopped working) but other kinds of pollutants were there. City
services did not work and many people lived next to that river (upstream
too). So it was polluted with everything, including bodies from time to time.
We drank it, sometimes even without boiling and filtering. I survived it, but
I was sick many times, probably because of that.

Cleanliness was very different then.

By the standards from before SHTF and standards today we were not clean
most of the time, because most of the time we did not have enough water
for that.
By the standard of that time (SHTF) we managed to use very small amounts
of water to keep ourselves as clean as possible.
Most of the time it was something like sponge bathing with a bottle of
water.
It was a joke at that time. Often people would say, "I just had shower using
wet napkin only (from MRE)"
Years later I saw a similar scene in a movie, and it brought memories back.
And actually it is a great thing to have a huge stash of those ready for SHTF.
When it was safe, we used the river for that, or people sometimes simply
get naked in their yard during the rain.

There were many sanitation-related illnesses.

Everybody was at least once really sick from diseases that probably were
caused by lack of hygiene, bad water and bad food.
Diarrhea, vomiting, exhaustion...
A lot of people had a couple of times heavy episodes of that, because
simply, the whole chain of hygiene was really bad and broken.

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Either you had problems with waste disposal, or bad water, or bad food, or
simply you lacked personal hygiene.
It was a constant problem.
Sanitation problems were solved in a way that people would just throw
away garbage from their own houses, as far as possible, or burn it when it
was possible.
Because the system was out (of taking out garbage from that point) the
result was that city was suffocating in garbage.
Diseases were inevitable.
Just like any other diseases they treated depending on knowledge and
resources. In essence, people would try to cover it with medicines if
possible and available, and with natural remedies.
Also, the sick person would be separated from other folks if possible.
Often method (and pretty stupid in that time because other bad factors)
was to just leave a sick man to clean on itself, without food or anything, just
a really small amount of water.

Latrines were important.

Very close to our house, through the destroyed building, there was small
piece of land, which was "hidden" from all sides. We used that as a simple
"dig a hole" latrine. Later we built something like primitive field latrine.
It was a simple hole in the ground covered with wooden boards, with
channels leading away.
It worked more or less, but we had the good luck of having that place with
enough "ground" close to home where it was pretty safe for spending that
time there.
Folks use toilet everywhere that was available. Inside toilets were mostly
out of use mainly because of the lack of water.
Of course. it contrubituted greatly to the city being a very dirty place.

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 When your loved ones get hurt or
killed
December 28, 2013
For a man to have a family means a lot of things. Family means a lot of
work and worries, but also a lot of happiness. A good family means support
when you are having problems or you are in some difficult periods of your
life of course.
When SHTF it can work in both ways, too, bad and good, but definitely
having a family will help you more than being alone.
There is one other side to that. During SHTF when anarchy and fighting for
survival means violence and you see people close to you get hurt or killed.
Lots of people here in my country have gone through that, including me,
and of course after first reactions that are common to all of us (grief, anger,
sadness…) we react differently.
How we managed to cope with the pain formed our whole future life.
It formed us, destroyed some, and even gave strength to few.
When you lose someone because of illness or old age or a traffic accident,
maybe you may accuse the bad health system or even God, but eventually
you will say “It is life, we are all gonna die, it is how it is supposed to be.”
But when you lost someone close because someone shot him during a fight
between two opposite groups (because they are different, or because they
hate each other, or just because one group wanted resources from another
group) it is different.
Or let’s just say that you are watching your close friend or family member
dying because you lack some medicine after everything collapsed. But you
know that there is medicine for some people there,and no medicine for
others, because of power, wealth, politic or religious reasons.
It can change your whole perspective of life. It can put lots of RAGE in you.

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And it is RAGE written in capitals. It lasts for years, and it can drive all your
decisions. It can consume you at the end.
I’ve seen (and still see) lot of people here with it.

Two examples of how people handled the loss

One example would be the guy who watched how his family was killed just
because they are different nationality from the killers.
He survived because he played dead, later he said that actually, it was not
about playing, he simply was shocked and paralyzed. He was 13.
He survived his wounds and grew up into a man whose mission is to
prepare for the next SHTF event, next war.
He finds his meaning of life in preparing for the next SHTF, but with lots of
hate and rage. He became obsessed with hating other groups of people, the
ones who killed his family. And actually, in the end, he became like them.
He is alone now, no family, just hate.
All his life has become about preparing for revenge. Rage and hate are
driving him. He keeps talking about a big day of payback. His mission is to
make other people lose their families like he lost his.
Another example is the man who lost his daughter who was 9 years old.
She suffocated inside burning house that other folks set on fire, and he
survived.
He had a period of hard drinking, and then after that he turned himself
towards religion. His life is now about love and forgiveness. He is in some
NGO that is trying to create a dialogue between victims from all sides. He is
alone too and obsessed with his mission.
I drink coffee with him sometimes. He is not really preparing for the next
SHTF event because he is believing in “nonviolent solving of problems“ and
similar.
Both guys’ stories are examples of how things can end up.

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I sometimes drink coffee with the hateful guy too. Where he gives me
“adrenaline“, the other guy gives me “peace“.
I like both of them for what they are but if you ask me now, I think that for
the future SHTF event, they will both run into major problems with their
ideas.
The first one is blind because of his hate, another dude because of his love.
I think (and that is only my opinion) that they both take wrong lessons from
their experiences.

There is another option.

It is not all about love and not all about hate. You may call me an idiot but
yeah too much love and faith into the people may (and will) kill you
eventually too.
As I said, I've lost family members and friends too, and I had my portion of
coping with that. And it was not perfect, I had periods when RAGE
“colored“ my life dark red and when all my actions were driven by it.
Luckily I overcame that. I have not gotten rid of my RAGE but toned it
down, so rage now. Probably it is not even possible, but I kinda learned to
control it. Sometimes it still controls me, but it is rare.
I like to think that love and hate are parts of life (rage too) and too much of
each one can misguide you actually. It is just me, maybe I am wrong. At the
end of the day, survival is about having options.
Use your love to form strong connections with your group. Use your hate to
have energy and motivation to reach your goals. But do not let any of these
emotions control you.
Have a good time with people close to you in the coming days. No matter
what your mission is, nothing is worth being alone.

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 Dignity: Walking the line between
human and animal
August 24, 2013
I want to talk about dignity and what it means in a survival scenario.
Before I talk from own experience, read the excerpt below from the diary of
Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin1 who describes what happened
after his unit freed the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the
second world war.
At the moment of his writing every day hundreds of people still died and it
was a place of pure horror.
It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have
no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was
not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and
thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick.
I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of
genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for
these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets
and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering
about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with
scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and
clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick.
At last, someone had done something to make them individuals
again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on
the arm. At last, they could take an interest in their appearance. That
lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
The importance of still being human and not become complete animal is
often overlooked part for people who prepare for long-term survival. I had

1
http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/Database/ReliefStaffAccount.asp?HeroesID=17&=17

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over one year to fight against becoming like rats around our house during
the war.

Expect to become more like an animal.

You can have all equipment ready for SHTF, ammo, weapon, gear… you can
even be perfectly well-trained in a lot of different skills and fields. And still,
when the SHTF, you can end up dead in the first days just because you
refuse to believe what's happening.
It is that state of mind when a man simply does not want to comprehend
the new situation. Or he is not able to.
It can be one quick life-threatening situation like folks attacking your home
and you just waited a few seconds too long to shoot some attacker, and
then you are dead, end of the story.
Or it can be the whole process of failing to recognize the new world around
you and new rules (or absence of rules) and then again you are just not
doing the correct things for the situation. And again, you end up dead.
An example would be that when SHTF you are trying desperately to have
and use power generator and light all rooms in your houses just because it
means a normal life for you.
That normal life is gone, and trying to bring it back in that situation usually
means more troubles.
Holding onto all comforts and behavior you are used to can be dangerous.
To make long story short, what I am trying to say is that you may be trained
and equipped like Navy SEAL member and still you can be killed easily from
some 70-year-old dude, with even older rifle just because you were
surprised when the SHTF with amount of destruction and violence and you
did not see that old dude coming (or being so evil).
On the other side, that old dude maybe lived through a couple of SHTF
events in his life, and he knows when it is time to act without hesitation
and mercy.

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There is still a fine line you have to walk between losing your human side
and becoming a pure animal.

SHTF is very dirty.

One of the things that changed a lot when SHTF is fact that everything
became really dirty.
It was something like a slow process. First people tried to keep it as clean
they could, but without all normal services, like garbage trucks, running
water, and all other community services that make normal living, soon it
simply became impossible.
Later all garbage was used somehow, but in beginning, it started piling up
everywhere. When you add to that ruins on the street, human waste and
dead bodies it was a very ugly picture.
After some time, we started to accept dirt outside and then it was a priority
to stay clean and keep clean only inside that small circle inside your home.
And when I say “clean“ I do not mean “clean“ like today. Maybe as clean as
we could be.

The smells were terrible.

For example, simply moving through the city in the middle of the night
meant that you needed to crawl, jump, hide, walk ,or run through all kind
of things, and very often some real nasty and dirty things.
Many times I was hiding on places so dirty that stench was almost
paralyzing. Once, in the middle of the night, I jumped behind some wall
because of sudden shelling, and when I jumped there I realized that I had
landed on a dead guy.
His face was smashed with the broken wall and partially buried. The place
there was so small that I had to actually lay on him for some 20 minutes. He
died probably when a wall from the house collapsed after some shelling,
who knows.

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Fire from the shelling was so strong that I actually loved that dead guy and
that place at that moment. I almost hugged him while I was trying to be as
small as possible because pieces of steel and rock were flying around me
just like some crazy rain, while my stomach was rising and floating from the
detonations and smell.
All I was saying at that moment was “thank you, thank you, thank you“ like
some magic words. And I even was not aware who did I give thanks to, that
dead stinky guy, my brain for noticing that small space, or God for saving
me.
Today years and years later I still carry that smell inside my nose. But I did
not move from there before the danger was gone. It is survival and luckily I
was already used to dirt enough to just stay with that dead guy.

Some people just stopped caring.

Some folks just stopped caring about cleanliness and hygiene completely.
So for them washing and cleaning become something like a not-wanted
luxury. They went complete animal.
They simply stopped caring about these things. I also knew some guys with
a look and smell so awful that even that dead guy smelled like perfume
store.
It was easy to surrender to stuff like that, I mean in trying to keep yourself
clean.
But it was stupid not only in terms of the hygiene and illnesses, but also by
surrendering yourself you admit that you do not care anymore. And when
you admit that you are only a few steps from becoming an animal with
what you do, too. People gave up on themselves.
For me being as clean as I could be was something like preserving one of
the last connections with “normal” life - with life before sh*t hit the fan,
when things like neighbors, breakfast, cars, etc, were just things we took
for granted. When it felt like things were always gonna be there
unchanged.

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Of course, I was aware that being clean is important in order to stay alive
because all of the disease problems, no doctors, no hospitals etc. But on
some psychological level, it kept me sane and it kept me a normal man.
Even in a survival situation, you need to still care about a few little things to
keep your dignity, to keep your spirit up, to not lose yourself. If you stop
caring about everything it is like a disease that eats you.
When I came back from trading or scavenging in the city, I would clean or
wash myself thoroughly in my yard before entering my house, again of
course, because of common sense, hygiene and diseases. But maybe even
more important, I tried to keep all the chaos and violence, the suffering
outside of my home on some psychological level.
I tried to keep everything outside of my home, like some ritual. I would
keep the clothes outside in a bag, my boots were in one corner, never
entering my room. etc.
One of my relatives wears pink slippers when he was home sometimes, he
would say that he just felt that everything is fine when he wears them. It
was spooky and strange to see him in pink slippers while outside world is
going to hell, but we all have some strange ways, I guess, to keep ourselves
sane. Maybe wearing those slippers after he was forced to shoot some folks
kept him sane, reminded him of some normal times when grandma wore
them in the evenings.

But sometimes you had to be an animal to survive.

On the other side, as I said in the beginning, if you stick too much to old
habits you are not doing the best for survival either.
So if I had to be an animal, I was an animal. It was about survival. For
example, there was a period when I ate just to survive, like an animal,
without paying attention to what I ate or how.
If I found some food, I ate it in a quick way, if there was some food with
worms in it, I would eat it in thedark, without looking at what I was eating.

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The point was (and still is) to be a man but to be ready to be animal if you
are forced to be animal, and that's it.
It comes down to being flexible and adapting to the situation.
I hope this helps to crush the idea some Hollywood or fantasy survival
scenarios show that survival is about being a complete animal. No, it is a
fine line to walk.
You can (and you should) have as many hand sanitizers, soap, disposable
face masks etc. as possible, but still end up dead if you are not ready to
accept fact that one day you might have to eat roast rat or pigeon to not
starve. You might be forced to “hug“ dead guy in order to survive.
When the next collapse comes, many people will wake up to reality and
struggle to be human like they were or become animals.
As a skilled survivalist, I hope you will walk a fine line in between. The
people who were walking that path were - and I'm sure will be in the future
- those who have the biggest chance to survive.

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 When you survived but you are dead
inside
April 7, 2013
Survival is not only hard on your body but can also kill you inside. So you
survive but you are a just empty shell. You all heard of PTSD (Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder) but I call this just being dead inside.
But it does not have to be like that. First, let me tell you about Alek.
I have known Alek for many years now. I met him during one hiking trip I
did with my survival group here. He was something like an outdoor
instructor. Later I heard from other folks that he went through some crazy
stuff during the war and that he was a member of one of the groups when
he was just 15 years old.
We never talked about that before. Anyway, that kind of topic here is very
unusual to discuss. Many have blood on their hands and it brings up bad
memories. If we talk about that period we only mention some funny and
stupid things like, “Do you remember the tree leaves we smoked as
tobacco, man?“
And we laugh.
But at the same time, we are remembering in our thoughts how someone
got killed or similar. You laugh because you don't want to cry.
We were spending the night in one of the mountain houses, some of us
brought families, others were alone. During the day, the kids spent time in
a small amusement park in the woods. He was there as something like a
park ranger.
The night time was for a big campfire, barbecue, and drinking.
One night, a few of us were next to the fire. Most people had already gone
to sleep. The other guy and I talked about hunting, rifles and stuff like that.
He was quiet.

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Suddenly he asked, “Do you remember that smell of a wound when a man
gets badly shot in the abdomen, or when he gets shrapnel in the same
place?“
We both went quiet.
I remembered the smell, but I did not say anything. I could almost taste the
metallic taste of blood and some hard and sharp smell that stays in your
nose, the smell of p*ss and sh*t too.
I smelled it a few times.
The first time when I smelled it, a shell exploded hitting the building
entrance behind me and some men from the neighborhood. A rain of
shrapnel was flying towards us. One guy got shrapnel, pieces of wall and
steel fence in his stomach.
And all kinda mixed up at that point of his body, I mean it was a just bloody
mess, like if someone put blades from boat motor engine in his stomach
and turn it on, all mixed up.
He was young and strong, so he screamed a lot and yelled. Later I figured
out that in fact I was almost deaf (from detonation) for some time and that
helped me to not listen to all his crying.
He grabbed one guy’s hands, and that guy had real hard time to get his
hands free again.
At that moment you just want to get the hell out of there because you can
die too, and nobody wants to look in a dead man's eyes who begs for help
you cannot give. Everyone just ran and hid. And he did not die fast. He was
screaming and crying, and asking “am I going to die?“ and we all just
wanted it to be over at last.
People mostly do not die like in movies. No heroic last words, messages for
fellow comrades, country, or similar. Mostly they cry for their mother.
After these pictures came back for seconds in my mind Alek continued
telling us his story:

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I remember that moment when I first saw wounds, big wounds and
mixed smell of everything, burnt flesh, blood, puke and sh*t and I
think I smelled something else that I think was pure horror. At that
moment my childhood was over, and suddenly I become a man. I was
15 years old.
I lost my father during one of the shellings and the local group took
me as their member. In that time they called that “courier”
(messenger) but it did not have too much to do with delivering
messages.
I was something like a mascot for a group, but very soon I went to do
whatever they did and I did not see anything wrong in all that killing.
Of course, alcohol helped and drugs too. One by one gang members
were killed, or “disappeared” but I stayed until the end.
Those guys were family to me. I did not even notice that most of them
were pure animals. Actually, I did not even understand that they
raised me into the same animal. They were great to me, cool guys.
To everyone else, we were something else. Monsters probably.
When it all ended, those from the group who survived disappeared
from the region in fear of revenge. I moved from that region and I did
not come back for ten year. Even then when I briefly visited the tow,n
I always looked over my shoulder.
I become interested in hunting and weapons. For years I was
searching for more and more “exotic” ways to kill animals, with
different kind of weapons. I traveled all around the world in search of
that.
Then I met someone, and I got a kid. Suddenly I found- or I thought I
found out - what is like when you have someone of your own,
somebody that really belongs to you. And I really wanted to belong to
them too, but it did not work.
She told me that I'm a “freak” and do not know feelings of any kind.
And she left. And At that moment I lost all interest for hunting. I could

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 not kill animasl anymore. Even shooting at the shooting range was
too much for me. I hated it suddenly.
I found peace in the woods. I am living practically in the woods,
without real friends and many contacts with other people. I am
spending my time in the city only for buying food, then again I am in
the woods. I think I found God in the woods.”
He had one more beer and went away. I was thinking about his words.
A few days later I discuss everything with a good friend and when I told him
about Alek’s words that “he found God in the woods” and how that gave
me the creeps somehow. My friend told me, “He surely found something in
the woods, but it is probably more devil than God”
I asked, “Why?”
He said that all his talking about exotic places and exotic ways for killing
animals in foreign lands were lies.
Yeah, after the war ended he left the region and spent ten years doing what
he learned to do best.
Killing, but not animals. And this time killing on contract and for serious
money. Rumor was that he was quite popular in that “business”, with some
terrible methods.
Everything else was true, he did have wife and kid. And yeah he did retire
and found something in woods.
To survive some big SHTF scenario and continue to live later in a “normal“
world is not so simple.
You can not just put a clear boundary between some periods of your life
and stop thinking about bad moments.
Imagine an earthquake hits your area and all the plates in kitchen fall down
and most break. You can quickly stuff them back into the cupboard and
keep them there but they are still broken. You can hide them and they are
still broken. Putting things away does not fix them.

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When we are born we learn to trust people. When you experience what
people can do or even what kind of animal you can be, it destroys this trust
and it is hard to rebuild.
It often stays with you for the rest of your life. You just try to live as normal
as you can and that's it.
But it is always there.
It is an everyday thing. For example, everything is cool and OK but then, for
example, something “kicks“ me back into that time. Some smell, maybe, or
a sound.
I was walking on the street a few weeks ago, and I heard the sound, it was a
mixture of whizzing and humming noise that was coming closer fast.
I almost jumped behind a car, and it was a sound of helicopter toy that 5-
year-old kid was “launching“ some 30 meters from me, in my direction. But
for me, it was sound of one of the improvized rocket-bomb devices that
were used often during the SHTF. I learned to recognize it and act at the
same moment. “But it was 20 years ago,“ you gonna say. Well for me it was
like yesterday. It is every day.
When you are taking coffee in some coffee shops and you “catch“ yourself
that you are watching other guests and assessing them.
“How dangerous is that guy?“
And, “He has 9mm Glock in that small bag.“ (We have lots of concealed
carry here. I do, too)
Or, “That dude in the black jacket has a butterfly knife in front pocket.“ ,
And “That guy is guarding his back while he is reaching for change he
dropped on floor – gun stuffed in his back-belt.“
Etc., etc.
You can say “get a life.“ I will say this is my life now.

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Do you think that you can go through months of collapse and a whole
bunch of life-threatening events and then come clean from all of that and
have a normal life?
You can’t. It is not romantic like that at all.
Telling others how it was and how it is gonna be again - helping in a way
that I find some sense in surviving all that, other than having my life. It's a
mission I feel good about.
Breaking some stupid myths about what SHTF is gonna look like helps too.
Everyone who wants to read this stuff is possibly one more person who is
gonna be prepared more tomorrow when things get tough again.
When Jay visited me to record the interviews for my online survival course
we visited places and talked for the whole week. I felt very down for some
time after that but he has a background in psychology and said it can help.
It does.
I slowly glue my broken parts together again, also writing this here today.
Writing is my treatment and for you who read this it is what Jay refers to as
“primary prevention”, that means exposure to real scenarios help to
prepare you mentally what can happen. It is a win-win situation.
Just never forget your mind on the battlefield or one day you wake up alive
but empty.

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 Part 3:
The Truth About Death &
Violence
What you need to know about violence after the SHTF......... 102
Common causes of death when the SHTF .............................. 109
The truth about knife attacks ................................................. 113
What combat is really like ...................................................... 117
How terror is used strategically ............................................. 124
3 things you need to know about killing another person ....... 127
The consequences of killing in a post-collapse world............. 131

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 What you need to know about
violence after the SHTF
April 10, 2016
Today I travel back in my mind. I write a lot about my preparations and
assessments since the time I got trapped in my city and views on the future,
but I will just now, write some about ‘How It Was’ back in that time.
Remember we were all thrown into that situation with no preparation, and
found often that our allies were our enemies from one day to the next…
Violence is something that people like to talk about, and give their theories
and opinions, but at the same time few of us experience the real ‘deep’
face of violence, being trapped in a prolonged a deteriorating situation.
You may have experienced bar fights, or home invasions maybe, shooting
somewhere and similar, and those events can be life-changing situations
for sure (or life-taking).
But I am talking here about violence so large-scale and long-lasting that it
brings something like a ‘new way of living.’
Overwhelming violence that demands a complete change of mindset.
I often hear, and I often agree, that violence cannot solve anything, and
that violence only brings more violence. But when you are faced with a man
who wants to kill you, you are going to have to probably kill him in order to
survive.
I hope that, at this moment, you will not care for philosophy, humanity or
ethics, and that you just go do what you have to do and you survive. Later
you will cope with other things. This is how it works.
As I get older, I realize more and more that violence is the wrong thing. But
at the same time, I also realize that I have to be more and more ready and
capable to do violence when the time comes.

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It is paradox maybe, but again it is how things work. I do not like that, but it
is what it is.

Violence and You

It is a way too big of a topic even to try to explain it in one article, but some
things I must try to show you here.
There is a man, let’s say we are talking about you here. An average citizen,
a law-abiding person, and suddenly you are going to be thrown into a
prolonged situation where you are going be forced to watch and use
exceptional levels of violence.
Do you think that you are going to be able to operate in those conditions
with the mindset you had from the time when you were average law-
abiding citizen?
No of course not. You will have to jump into another mindset in order to
survive.
Let’s call it survival mode.
In survival mode, you’ll have to not forget what it was like for you in
‘normal’ times. But you will have to push those memories aside in order to
operate in a different mode – survival mode.
In a real-life situation that means for example that you'll maybe have to
ignore panic, fear, smell, and noises in the middle of an attack and take the
right steps in order to survive.
Maybe you’ll have to ignore the screaming dying kid next to you, maybe
you’ll have to ignore your pride and run, or maybe you’ll simply have to
ignore your “normal“ mindset. Maybe you are going to have to kill the
attacker from behind.
There is a list of priorities in normal life, and there is a list of priorities in
survival mode.

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Let’s just say that you using your different faces and “small“ mindset during
your normal life and everyday business with the people around you.
Just like that, when faced with violence you’ll have to use a different
mindset, different face. Or another you.

Violence and Experience

There is a strange way of thinking here for me, but since I have lived
through the time when a huge number of people did not die from old age,
but from violence, I have experience in this subject. So here are few
thoughts.
Experiencing violence over a prolonged period of time does not make you
superman. Actually in some way, it makes you crippled man, a man with
many problems, both psychological and physical.
I do not put myself in way of thinking that I am in a better position now
than people who died next to me, or in front of me. You may call me a
winner or survivor but many days that ‘title’ sounds very hollow.
Am I lucky man? Yes.
Am I happy man? No.
But we are not talking in terms of quality of life. We are talking in terms of
surviving or not.
Ethics, psychology, and everything else here is a matter for a couple of
books to be written, and even then you are not going say anything new. It is
like that from the beginning of mankind.
What is more important about having experience in violence is that you
simply KNOW how things are working there.
In a lot of things you simply know what you can expect.
You know what chaos is, the best way of dealing with it, and you know
what it takes to do things.

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Preparing for Violence
Again, there is nothing like real life experience. When you experience
something like real violence, you keep that in yourself for the rest of your
life.
What is best next to that? Other people’s real-life experience.
So it makes sense to read about other folks real life experience. Read a lot
about that.
Physically training yourself is a great thing. You’ll train to get yourself into
the state that you are ready for hard tasks. So, of course, it makes sense to
do that.
But training yourself mentally can be harder.
You actually can only guess how it is going to be, how it is going to affect
you.
I can tell you that it is hard, chaotic. I can describe a situation to you, but
can I bring you the feeling of terror in your gut when you feel that you are
going to sh*t yourself? Can I give you the smell of fear, the smell of a
decaying body? Can I give you the feeling when you realize that “they“ are
coming for you?
No, of course, I cannot. You can read stories and real-life experiences and
based on that you are going to “build“ your possible mindset for violence
situation.
You are going to build your “survival mindset“.
But there is a catch there. If you build it too firm, too strong, and then there
is SHTF and everything that you imagined doesn’t fit the given situation or
scenario and you are still pursuing and acting in the way that you imagine
dealing with it you are going to have serious problems.
The situation will not adapt to your mindset. The situation will kill you if you
are sticking too firm to your plan when it is not working.
You simply have to adapt.

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It goes for any situation. If your plan and mindset are that you will defend
your home until you die, you are going to die probably.
Whenever I heard people saying “I’ll do that when SHTF “ or “I’ll do this
when SHTF“ I feel sorry for them.
When SHTF you will adapt and change your given plan according to the
situation. Or you will not survive.

It is same with violence.

Violence is a tool that you are going to use according to the situation. It is a
tool, not a toy.
Now to finish with a final thought. It can sound, from what I have written,
that an SHTF situation is like a Mad Max movie. Everyone running around
killing, hurting, doing things with no consequences. In fact, this fantasy of a
world ‘Without Rule of Law’ (WROL) is a big discussion in some circles.
For sure regular ‘law’ has gone. There are no ‘authorities’ or courts as we
know them to deter or punish, BUT, during an SHTF situation you will find:
• It is (especially in the beginning) like everything is possible. The law
is gone, you could go outside and see people looting stores, groups
organizing (by street, or other facts like the same job in company for
example) trying to either defend part of the town, or bring more
chaos just for fun, sometimes you could not say what, both could
bring violence and death to you. Over time the violence’ becomes
more organized and ‘structured’ to start to achieve certain specific
goals (although there is always ‘chaos’ as well).
• After some time you look at the violence you encounter in two
ways. Violence happening outside your group, or inside your group
(It is quite certain you will need to be in some sort of ‘group’ to stand
any chance of surviving).
• Outside your group, you just wish to be very ‘small’, invisible. After
some time, you do not pay attention to anyone doing violence to
others, because, quite simply you are still alive, and want to stay that
way. In terms of “I am still alive, I do not care what they do to that

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 person, and how bad it is (your will and judging of good and bad is
broken, you just care for your own life) it is like you care only for
yourself while you are watching how others get killed, no matter
what you feel that it is going to come to you in the end (violence) you
just care for yourself.
• Leaders of the “bad” group (gang) have best chances to stay leader
if members fear him. So in fact, he is most dangerous, vicious, sick
bastard, nothing like a “reasonable” man. (Competition is huge in
SHTF) Instilling discipline (through fear) and enforcing ‘your’ rules are
paramount to holding your position as leader.
Various groups were interacting with the outside world and each other
through fighting, exchanginga information, trading goods etc, but every
group was more or less a closed world, with trust only for those inside the
group.
The forming of a group was quick, mostly because nobody expected this
situation was going to happen, and so we're not prepared. But very quickly
we were literally ‘fighting for survival’. Any problems were solved “on the
way” (bad members, not skilled, not obeying etc.) Sometimes through
discussion and agreement, but always with the threat of violence as an
option.
To finish, and to educate, as opposed to shock you: Many folks cannot think
too clearly about the level of violence I am describing being involved in.
Maybe you think SHTF is just like ‘Black Friday Shopping’ but every day. So
let me just give examples of the how far the world I lived in descended
from ‘normal’. Remember this was a regular city, in a nice country in
Europe, less than 25 years ago…
-People who never used violence before, did some ‘hard’ violence:
normal people, dads, and mums, killing folks in order to save their
families.
-Certain groups of people who look like they were just waiting for the
SHTF so they can go out (“crawl out from beneath some rock”) so
they can fulfill their own fantasies about being kings of the town,

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 imprisoning people, raping women, torturing folks in the weirdest
ways…
-Strange groups organizing in whatever the cause they choose to
name it, again only to gain power in order to have more resources
(sometimes simply “gangs” of 50 people, sometimes whole militias of
thousands of people) through terror over other people or group of
people.
-Irrational hate towards the “other” - whoever the “other” could (or
might) be (other religion, group, street, town, nation) because it is
very easy to manipulate groups of people through hate and fear
(from and towards “others”), if someone manipulate you that your
kid is hungry because “others”, he can do a lot with you.
Real life examples I saw:
-People being burned alive inside their homes (And people ‘enjoying’
watching this)
-Private prisons were made where you could go and torture other
folks for fun, or rape women as a “reward”
-Kids over 13 or 14 years of age were simply “counted” as grown-up
people, and killed as an enemy
-The humiliation of people on all different ways in order to break
their will, for example, forcing prisoners to have sex between same
family (like father and daughter and similar)
-Violence was an everyday thing, you could go outside and get shot
not because you were ‘enemy’, but only because sniper on other side
want to test his rifle.
It is a needed, but depressing realization, that people, even regular folks
can become so cruel, so fast, BUT it is a very important thing to be aware of
for anyone truly involved in ‘preparedness’.

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 Common causes of death when the
SHTF
October 20, 2011
I guess when you look all together, the most common cause of death was
from the firing of weapons. It was a war after all, but on the other side if we
talk about civilians in town then I believe in the beginning people died
mostly from shelling and firing, then from all kind of diseases and
malnutrition.

Snipers
During the daytime people got killed from snipers on a regular basis. If you
really have to go out because of something, there were places called
sniper’s alleys, so if you knew where to walk – or run actually - I guess you
had some chance to survive the snipers.
There was of course open parts on streets or between houses where you
had to run and take chances, sometimes just hoped that the guy on the
other side with a sniper rifle had lunch break or something like that.
People got killed from snipers in many ways. Women sneaking to the river
to get some things washed or to collect water, or just ga uy who goes out in
the open to check what is going on.
A guy who I knew got killed in one of the usual ways at that time. First the
sniper wounded the man in his legs and left him laying there where he
cannot move. The guy is calling for help, crying, then someone came to
help. The sniper wounded the first guy who came to help him, then
wounded second guy who came to help them, then nobody else came to
help them. Then the sniper killed them all.
Usually “good” snipers did not kill people with their first shots, because
nobody is gonna come to help a dead man. I since watched those kind of
situations in movies. I’ve heard later that is a “normal” sniper strategy, but

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to see that in reality is something different. Especially with civilians, it is
haunting.
It is true horror to hear a grown-up man screaming in pain, crying, asking
for mercy, some people could not stand that. On the other side, one of my
neighbors, chronic alcholic once walked 500 meters openly on street during
the daytime. He was completely drunk, and sniper did not shoot him. I’m
not sure why, but we have saying here that “God saves fools ” so I guess
that is the reason. He survived everything, died few years ago, from alcohol
intoxication.

Shelling
Shelling was other story, it was a constant thing. There was some time of
peace, some time without shelling, but periods like that did not last more
than a few hours. All kinds of thing fell on the city all the time. I read much
later somewhere that in the worst period of that SHTF, the city was
devastated with around 500 shells daily. People were torn apart,
dismembered with shrapnel, sometimes people literally disappeared in
some kind of mist or red fog and small pieces if they were directly hit.
Sometimes I remember that period like a constant rumbling sound and the
smell of burnt things and flesh. I think nobody was safe anywhere.
A 125 mm shell from tank hit my house in the second month, and just took
away big part of second floor. I realized then that some nylon heavy duty
tarps can have great use in SHTF situation. That kind of destruction
completely changed a man’s opinion of ordinary things. The same was the
first time when people fired on me, when I heard the hissing sound of
bullets close to my head. It completely changed my priorities in life.
I’ve read a book long time ago, not sure about title or writer, I think it was
about soldier in WW2. He was listening about reasons for war, plans, and
strategies, he thought about good things to fight for… But when he gets in
his first firefight with enemy, he realizes the whole truth and he shouted,
“Oh my God, they are trying to kill me!”
I felt like that guy. When you realize that, a lot of things change.

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Other causes of death
In the worst period you could see a lot of dead people on the streets,
people that were not killed from snipers or shelling, people killed from
beatings or knife wounds.
The summertime was bad. We have summer temperatures sometimes 45 C
here, so the stench was horrible. People buried their dead close to houses,
usually in nearest park, or any clear ground without too much ceremony,
sometimes even in mass graves.
Usually all those graves were exhumated after the war ended and then
properly buried. People died in all kind of different ways. My relative went
out one night alone (yes, a mistake) to find some things and never come
back. He just disappeared, nobody knows anything, but we have river in the
city, 3-4 meters (10-14 feet) deep, and very fast so… he was killed and
robbed by somebody probably.
There was a large number of missing people, just missing, nobody knows
how or where. They are still missing.

Air bombardments
Air bombardments were rare, but that was one of the scariest things in my
life.
I remember maybe 10-15 air attacks, all of them during the night. A few
attacks were helicopters with rockets, I think it was MI6 or MI8 helicopters,
scary.
But real horror and in the same time somehow funny situation was airplane
attacks with bombs. You see I think they used some old planes (maybe
propelled engines, not jets) and I think they just dropped bombs out of
them.
So imagine, it was a pitch dark. I was going somewhere to get something to
eat, and then I heard the sound of airplanes, a very distant and far sound,
but still that sound gets your gut to vibrate. It is a different sound from big
“MREs“ planes). I looked at the dark sky trying to realize what the hell it

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was. Next thing that I heard was a sharp and high whiz or zing of something
falling from the sky, then the horror started. As far as I remember, the time
from the start of that sound to the explosion was 5-6 seconds, I’m not sure
exactly. In that time I am manically and desperately trying to hide
somewhere, and there is actually nowhere to hide. All around me was
pretty much ruins.
A few seconds can feel like a few hours. When that thing exploded your
whole stomach is just going up from the power. The feeling was horrific,
because you never know where the bomb is going to fall. The explosion
from that bomb usually destroys the whole house completely. Who ever
got killed in big explosions, from bombs or shelling, usually stayed buried
there, in the ruins.

Some things just stick with you.

I did not see too many violent deaths prior to SHTF so some things just
struck me, some things can just move you from normal reality into some
other way of thinking. When I see man shot in the head from a close
distance, from a rifle, man, that was hard, I was paralyzed.
The first thing that came into my mind was that man is such as fragile thing,
so easy to kill. Funny maybe but all thinking in that situations come to lower
scale, like to simple level thinking, very fast you just forget all reasons and
higher causes, you just switch to some other mode, a kind of primal mode.
It is hard to explain.

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 The truth about knife attacks
September 29, 2016
This is written based on my experience, seeing and dealing with knife
attacks and wounds, both during the SHTF and during my work in the
medical field.
It is not written scientifically, or based on hard data. It is based on what I
saw, or did… what I actually experienced.
Often we find, some same topics are viewed differently by different people,
and it is perfectly OK to be like that, but when it is come to knife wounds
and killing, in the end, a wound is wound and blood is blood.

Knife (blade)
There is something primal (can we say even mythical?) about a blade and I
guess it comes from the fact that it has been used as a killing tool for many
centuries. To be honest, for me it is the scariest type of possible fight – to
be forced to knife fight.
Having a knife in your hand and pushing it into someone’s body is a scary
thought. It is very personal, on many levels.
As always, thanks to the movie industry, people imagine a knife fight is like
two guys doing a whole bunch of fancy moves. In reality, it is mostly about
who pulled their knife first and stuck it into the other guy. (Before other
guy had a chance to pull his knife hopefully.)

Knife Fighting, Knives and Common Sense

I know there are knife fighting experts out there, and I have never gone
through some sort of experts training so I cannot say the full impact of this.
But I know that if you are forced to into a knife fight with someone when
the SHTF - if by the chance you have a pistol with you, pull the gun and
shoot the man twice… Forget about ‘honor’ and ‘movies’.

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Knife fighting (equal terms) means that you are almost surely going to get
hurt. You will most likely get at least a couple of cuts from your opponent.
Remember that even a small cut when the SHTF can kill you.
Accepting the possibility that people on the internet will call me an idiot, I
must say that choosing your knife for SHTF as a weapon ONLY is a HUGE
resource waste.
A good knife means a working tool and a weapon.
Also accept there are more usable weapons and tools out there, like an ax
for example, in terms of multi-use. A knife plays its part in the bigger
picture.
What I am trying to say is, do not get yourself too romanticized into a
certain type of knife. When it comes to stabbing and cutting in fights, most
knives will do the job, with the possible exception of a really cheap one.
When it comes to tools, then you should aim to choose the higher quality
ones (and multi-purpose if possible)
In one period of SHTF, most of the knife fights I saw took place with simple
kitchen knives, and I assure you those knives did the job bloody good.
The point here is to have the intention, and yes, to have guts for that. The
type and style of knife are very much secondary to that…
Always you want to have common sense, and adaptability. For example, if
you found yourself in a situation where a knife is your only weapon maybe
it makes sense to make a spear out of it, to have some distance and
strength. You can’t just assume there is only ‘one way’.

The ugly truth about a knife fight

There are numbers and data from years of the research about bleeding and
death from knife wounds and blood loss, and it worth your time to read this
information, to know what is about and what you can expect.
On the other hand, there are real-life experiences and exceptions for
everything, and you need to acknowledge that too.

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You could see maybe in movies that if you silently move up on a guy from
the rear, put your hand over his mouth, and stab him with the knife in his
back region or kidneys, he is gonna go down silently in two seconds.
Good luck with that, stabbing someone is actually a very noisy job, and
there are variables like:
• Did you hit the correct place?
• Did you stab or slice?
• How long and sharp is your knife?
• Did you go deep enough?
On top of all this, you must understand you will need to add a lot of force
to whatever method you use. It is definitely not like in the movies. People
will fight for their life – literally.
Depending on the situation, you could hit the correct place (carotid artery
for example) but the wounded guy could still have enough time to strangle
you. I’ve seen it happen. Yes, he will die very fast from massive bleeding
from a carotid artery – but the point is that he could still kill you before that
happens.
So you have an option of moving to the guy silently in order to kill him,
great, but think, are you going to use your fancy knife in order to cut his
carotid artery?
Maybe it can make more sense (and present better odds) to use a big rock
and instantly crush his skull, with one strong blow, rather than take the
chance of missing an artery and be faced with an alerted enemy with a
knife?
If you do not have any good training about how to correctly use a knife, it is
simply not very easy to achieve fast, effective kills.

More unpleasant facts about a knife fight

More unpleasant facts about a knife fight are if you want to kill someone
with a knife, it is going to be some serious requirement in terms of
“working“ with your knife.

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For example, a simple stab or even multiple stabs to the abdomen region
will eventually kill the man, but not fast enough- it is a completely different
story if you stab the man and then move your knife around- or dig, gouge
and cut if you like. Messy job, but it works like that.
If you need to kill someone with a knife, and you get the chance to stab
him, you need to be prepared that it will likely take multiple stab wounds.
One stab rarely works unless you really know what you are doing.
The final sad truth is, that during the knife fight, when you get chance to
stab your opponent, he has the same chances to stab you, so there is a very
good chance you will be hurt too.
Make sure you are not ‘oversimplifying’ you options and training. Many
preppers I hear carry things with them to kill folks or defend themselves.
You need to understand your full range of defense options, train with your
tools, and train with an understanding of the realities of these things in
mind.

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 What combat is really like
March 26, 2013
When SHTF, nobody told me how hard is gonna be and what things I would
have to do to survive. There was no training or simulations.
Most of the stuff I was going through for the first time in my life. I was
hoping it was only a temporary situation, that it not going to last for a
whole year.
A few events opened my eyes, and somehow made me a survivor right at
the beginning. I had the luck to understand in the very early stages how
hard it was and what it takes.
During one of the first bigger events of killing in the streets, I was out
together with my friend who also was a medical professional.
Fire from machine guns was on people who were standing in front of the
main city bread factory, and people started to scream and run over each
other.
My first impulse was to run to the nearest cover but my friend got down to
help some lady, so I stayed one meter next to him.
I was confused about my decision and not sure to stay with him or run.
Bullets from machine gun hit him over his legs, and I saw how his kneecap
exploded, it looked like some bad movie special effect.
He just looked at his legs, then at me, in silence. Even though it was just
seconds, moments like this feel very long.
I took him by the hands and dragged him some 20 or 30 meters to safety.
Only there I saw that he was missing his leg under the knee. It stayed with
the dead lady on the street.
And only then he started to scream.

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I used a belt to stop the bleeding. The ambulance still worked in that
period. He went to the hospital and then evacuated from the city. He
survived but never came back.

Lessons learned?
In moments of chaos always listen to your instincts and do not hesitate.
Especially if you are involved in a situation when someone is shooting at
you with high caliber machine gun. Just accept that people will die and you
have to survive. To help others is a great thing, to survive is even better.
Also, I realized that human being is so fragile and easy to destroy.
You must practice with gear.
Later I learned some things about weapons and how to use them, so I
realize that more firepower does not necessarily mean more dangerous
and better chance to kill.
Owning a weapon is just absolutely necessary in preparing for a survival
scenario, even more in urban survival. You need to go and get as close as
you can to the real stuff while you are doing the preparing and training for
the SHTF, so it makes sense to go out and check your preps, to check your
gear, and yourself.
For example that pair of boots that you bought and store for bad days will
not be used for walking only, it will be used for running, squatting, jumping,
in mud, junk, blood, guts maybe or just running through a shallow river.
Everything that you have prepared and stored for SHTF will be pushed to
the limits.
It is one thing to go out into woods nearby and do a recording of your
weapon testing on some beer bottles with your friends, and after that
concluding that particular gun or rifle is best for SHTF and that you are a
dangerous dude because of your accuracy rates. Some people gonna put
that clip on YouTube and go home convinced that they are ready and
prepared.

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In reality, you do not know if you are prepared until it happens.
A lot of survival stores that sell things sell the idea of buy this and you are
safe.
No, you are not. You can learn more about real urban survival scenario in
my survival course and this helps you to mentally be better prepared but
the real deal when SHTF always comes as surprise.
When the time comes again it gonna hit everyone like a hammer. The good
news is that when you know you will get hit like that you can recover faster
and use your skills, knowledge, and preps to make the best out of the
situation.
Using a weapon in real life, in real survival situations, is something
absolutely different from shooting beer bottles.
And if you could do some real training that is realistic that would be maybe
going camping for 10 days using a trash bag like a tent, with 10 small cans
of food, and 10 liters of water, and then walking every day for 10 km.
On the 11th day, run a few kilometers and then shoot and see how
accurate you are when your body is wasting away.
And still, the most important thing is missing. While you are shooting at the
beer bottles they do not shoot back at you in order to kill you.
During some of the first battles in the city I was moving through the
building behind a guy, we both had rifles. He was sweeping the rooms and
shooting, it was the closest to urban combat as it can be. At the moment
when he runs out of ammo, he used his rifle as something between spear
and bat.
Now someone could say why he did not just switch to the pistol? He did not
have one, also he did not have time to look for ammo. But there I learned
how it is useful to have folded stock of rifle when shooting and moving in
very confined spaces.

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Also, I learned that rifle with pretty sharp parts at the barrel can be very
handy. He stabbed a guy to the cheek, ripping his face down and finishing
him on the ground.
One of the biggest misconceptions that the people who do not have
fighting experience is what they just need to practice.
It is all about pressure. You need to learn:

1. What your weapon can take and how to fix it

In terms of kicking, throwing, how often and when will it malfunction, what
the most common malfunctions are, and how to fix it – and how to fix it in
the middle of a fight. If you find yourself in the middle of fighting, and your
weapon “jams“ do not be, as we call it “zblesavljen,” or in English do not
stand there looking like an idiot.
I have seen that: a guy is shooting and in the middle of fighting his weapon
jammed. He stopped, surprised, and looked at the weapon in a “what the
f*ck?“ state. And of course, in two seconds he ends up dead.
You absolutely need to know how to manage small weapon jams without
looking at the weapon. You need to look at the target while you are
“repairing“ weapon (clearing the bullet, switching to another magazine
etc.)
Other option would be to MOVE immediately when your weapon jams,
move to cover in the same second or to drop to the ground, or on your
back, and switch to your other weapon. But you need to learn to do all of
the above without thinking. You need to train so that this becomes
automatic.
Small things like how quickly you can put your rifle on your back and a
switch to pistol can be the difference between life and death. If you
somehow “trip“ yourself while you are trying to put the rifle on your back in
order to take pistol, you can end up dead.

2. What you can take

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Remember this: while you are shooting at the bad guys, those bad guys will
be SHOOTING AT YOU TOO.
So shooting at the beer bottles in the woods with your buddies will not
really do all the training you need. I do it often, but it just does not cover
everything.
Fighting and surviving combat means constant moving and outsmarting the
guys on the other side. You are gonna need to run, squat, throw yourself in
the ditch, lay down in all kinds of sh*t, and shoot at the same time, and
probably fix your rifle from jams, or switch to another weapon.
Do some basic weapons training and learn about line of sight and how to
get out off it.
In SHTF, a very great percentage of shooting is done without aiming. It is
just spraying bullets.
It makes sense to do some airsoft or paintball in the woods to check how
constant moving changes the whole game, and what kind of moving will
help you to survive a gunfight.
For example, how often you shoot from your weapon with both hands,
dominant and not dominant? In urban fighting, you will need to switch
weapon around very often (moving through the apartments, rooms, around
the corners etc.). When you are shooting behind the corner, and you are
having a rifle in your right hand and corner is on your left side it makes
sense to transfer the weapon to left hand. otherwise, it is dangerous to
stick your left part of the body out in order to shoot from your right hand.
For all you of who have some military experience, this is basic stuff, but I
have seen many guys who were killed in stupid ways.
A real gunfight is a dynamic thing. Adrenaline is a weird thing too, so people
can do tremendous things while adrenaline is pumping, but also with lack
of training and common sense guy can do tremendously stupid things. I
have seen a man who was pointing to something and he stood up from the
cover and got shot.

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 3. How to train yourself
Training is the key. You can not do anything else today except to train very
hard.
You can not experience real stuff today ,of course, but you can take it as
close to real stuff as possible. Go out with your friends and think about all
possible scenarios.
Think about worst case scenarios. SHTF is not gonna wait for nice and sunny
weather. You are gonna be maybe hungry, dirty. Maybe have to give up
your shelter and food storage on the second day of SHTF.
Or you gonna be forced to use another weapon that you are not used to.
Maybe you gonna be forced to hide for hours hidden under a pile of rubble
and then you are gonna be forced to jump out and “kill“ ten beer bottles.
Sounds like fun? This is why resilience and mental strength is so important.
Maybe you are gonna be cold and thirsty and in the middle of the battle.
One thing is sure – very rarely it goes the way that you planned. So just be
ready for many options and do not panic when things go another way.
Want to get some funny-sounding advice?
Get good at suffering while still being able to work towards a goal.
4. What weapon, caliber, stopping power, etc?
It is a very hard question (that I get asked a lot). But think about fact that
everything today is mainstream and commercial. And somehow it is more
about what other people say is good and not necessarily about what you
need and what is good for YOU.
You and your hand kill, the weapon is only a tool. I have seen the fight
when a man with a knife killed the guy with a rifle. He had mastered
fighting with a knife and had the will to kill. The other guy had a rifle but he
ended up dead. I also saw more than once people shot with rifle bullets still
fighting and running for a good amount of time. Some of them were not
even aware that they were wounded before someone else pointed that out
to them.

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What I am trying to say is, do not expect miracles if you own a weapon that
is at the moment the most popular, having great stopping power and cool
reviews. It is about practicing, weapon mastery, and correct placement of
bullets
I said bullets for a reason. I have seen many things, but I did not see
someone survive multiple shots in the correct place on the body. Have a
weapon that is best for your case, and achieve perfection in using it. Do not
expect that people will fall back if you shoot them with one bullet from
some widely popular weapon and caliber (not talking about shotguns).
So I am not gonna tell you what is the best weapon because what works for
me maybe does not work for you or others.
Having a weapon that is too rare, too good, or too bad does not make much
sense for me. Do not find yourself in a situation when you lose your
weapon and pick someone else and then find out that you do not have clue
about it, because your own weapon was special and rare.
Just have what everyone else around you has, because of gun parts, ammo
and looking like everyone else.
Your weapon is only a tool to survive. Be ready to lose it if you need to lose
it, and pick some other weapon from the ground in the middle of a fight.
I knew a guy who did some scary stuff with rusty shortened M-48. He was
old and poor-looking dude. He played that part well until he would take out
this old gun from under his coat and rob and kill people. Simple strategy but
it worked for him. So look around and think what works for you.

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 How terror is used strategically
February 9, 2015
It looks like there is no sense and order in what ISIS folks are doing while
they are terrorizing people and burning them alive, stoning them to death,
killing captured soldiers, or murdering women and kids. But spreading
terror and pure fear makes a lot of sense in terms of strategy, especially in
already “chaotic“ times and territories where they are trying to advance.
Terror is a psychological game.

The “they-are-coming for me” feeling

I have experienced for myself, more than once the feeling that “they are
coming for me“. It is that moment when you are armed and ready, together
with more folks, who are armed too and we are all waiting for an attack.
And guys who are attacking are famous for the fact that they do not take
prisoners, or that they have few sick guys who are collecting ears from the
captured people, while they are still alive.
No matter how well you are armed and prepared and ready to fight, if you
hear about their atrocities for weeks and then one evening you are forced
to fight with them, it will have an impact on you.
You will face the stress of battle and also have to deal with your own fear.
Of course, different people react in different ways, so some guys will break
down or give up even before the fight, without single bullet flying through
the air. They will even surrender without a fight and beg for mercy, even
they listened to stories about “no prisoners“ for weeks. Often they are the
people who can not imagine how truly evil people act. They think because
they would not kill and torture other people they do not know that nobody
would. It makes no sense, but it is what terror does and why it works. It
makes people act without sense, makes them do stupid things, and makes
them confused and not logical.

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Terror is an advanced level of trash talk in sports where one opponent tries
to make the other one so angry that he loses focus. When it comes to
terror, it is just fear that is used as a weapon.
I have seen that sometimes only rumor about some infamous unit coming
to attack is enough that groups who are very well organized simply fall
apart.
If you hear that there is a unit coming and they will torture and kill
everyone in their way including your kids and your woman, you have two
choices: To fight to the last or run.
In the movies, folks will fight to the last, but in reality, most of the folks will
run. The difference is like walking on edge of the sidewalk or walking on
edge of a high building. In both cases, you walk on the edge but only in one
case, a wrong step has much worse consequences.
A few times I asked myself why ISIS has so much success over there in Iraq
and Syria. One of the answers is a terror. Nothing spreads so fast as terror.
I also think the idea you can have ultimate power over life and death of
people makes many people want to join them. People get high on power
and that they can decide who lives or dies. If this happens in a group you
usually find people trying to be more brutal than other people in their
group to be the most respected and feared one.
You finally can rule over people, to judge, it does not have anything to do
with religion, it is in human nature of some folks.
A few months ago I read some US weapon forum and one of the members
showed his rifle and said how he bought it cheaply and how it was probably
used in the Balkan war.
On the rifle butt, there was still a small engraved sign of the unit visible.
And strangely I knew that unit.
The unit was famous in war because they (like many others) did lots of bad
things, like raping killing prisoners in private prisons etc.

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But at the end, most of them ended up dead, killed like the people they
killed.
Once people realize that bullets can kill you no matter how famous or
infamous you are, it all gets easier.
People dealt with them, and today they are just some weird war memory
with a symbol on someone's rifle butt. This is a lesson you need to keep in
mind in situations when you face enemies that cause fear and terror in you.
• First, you need to accept your fear and terror. Some people do not
accept it and try to pretend it's not there until it breaks out and
makes them unable to function. Often in situations when it matters
most.
• Be aware of your fear and terror but also confident in your abilities
to face this enemy. This is an attitude that you need to show openly
also to all members of your group. In groups emotions always get
amplified.
Just like walking on edge of the high building you focus on the task at hand,
the walking or fighting and forget about consequences for that moment.
Terror needs to be met with brute force before it spreads way too much to
be contained. It is like a disease.
You can get sick from terror, just like from pneumonia, for example.
Symptoms are fear, panic, doing illogical things, or having the urge to run
away before even you realize who is your enemy and how you can defeat it.
This is why we prepare, practice and learn to focus on what matters to
achieve our goals. Terror only works if you give it power.

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 3 things you need to know about
killing another person
June 30, 2015
There are few things to understand if you are forced to kill someone or in if
someone is trying to kill you.
Most of the people are unaware of them but it is important to understand
them.
As I said many times before, most people simply did not face real violence
before the war. I mean killing or fighting for life. That’s good because we
live in a society where those things are not needed.
On the other side, from the point of survival, if you did not go through
serious violence before, then you lack that experience. You do not really
know what to expect when SHTF.
So here is what you need to know.

Are people easy to kill or are people hard to kill?

Guess what? Both are actually true.
How?
It is simple, first forget about movie scenes where people are flying 10
meters back when you shoot at them with your handgun.
Not too much flying there, but when you shoot a man from close distance
couple of things can happen.
In some cases, he just flops down, collapses, and that’s it. He is gone. And
the most interesting thing from that experience is the sound of his collapse.
It is sound like some big bag of something full of wet stuff and some solid
elements going down. Pretty much what our body is.
It is a unique sound, and you will remember it for the rest of your life.

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Let’s say here that right placement of the shot, right distance, numbers of
shots, and your training and calmness makes this happen.
In another case, you may find yourself in a situation where the attacker is
coming at you, rapidly closing, you keep firing at him, distance is pretty
close, and nothing happens… he is still closing in. You shoot and shoot, you
are screaming or maybe you just think you are screaming. Something loud
keeps exploding in your ears, and you are not aware whether that your
gunshots or what. You are not even sure are guns being fired at all, maybe
something is wrong with your gun. “That other guy’s eyes are getting closer
and he has a knife, he is huge, sh*t what is going on? Am I going to die?
God? Mom?“
And then he is down.
Was that a guy who was hard to kill?
Yes, later you figured out that you shot him like 6 or 7 times, but not in the
correct places. He was huge, adrenaline made him forget the pain so…
Both examples are real experiences. There are so many factors that play
into this.
So with the questions about whether people are easy or hard to kill, I
suggest a simple formula. If you are forced to kill someone, remmeber that
it takes lots of factors to be in place to achieve that, but if you are in
situation when someone is trying to kill you, remember it is very easy to get
killed.
A long, long time ago, when I was a beginner at some things, and when I did
not know anything about violence, and it was very clear that I would face
violence, one old dude gave me advice about similar things. He had a pistol
with one extra mag.
He said, “OK, when he is coming to you, you empty themagazine into him.“
I asked, “What then?”
He said, “Then you reload and empty another magazine into him.“

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I asked “ Both magazines?“
He said, “The first two bullets should do the job, but you just go ahead and
empty both magazines at him.“
Killing is a nasty job.

Reasons for violence

This is a huge topic. But let's just say that it will happen, without going too
deep into philosophy. Lots of the violence will be “understandable“ in a
way when SHTF. Fighting for food, water, land etc. And as a survivalist, you
need to be prepared for it. It makes sense to expect it.
But lots of people will have problems accepting violence that will happen
without real reasons.
In fact, as I mentioned before, there is a huge number of people who are
waiting for SHTF to happen and to get violent without real reasons.
Murdering, torturing, raping, imprisoning…
You may call them sick people, which they are, of course. But more
important is to understand that today they are folks who drink beer in the
local park or guys with whom you watch football games sometimes. They
are your peaceful-looking neighbor. When SHTF, all kind of scum crawls out
of their holes. So accepting violence, in general, is hard.
It is easier when some people at least have reasons, but you can not expect
this to be the case always. Prepare your mind for this.

Accepting the Violence

You may have the luck to live peacefully after seeing, experiencing or
committing violence. Maybe you are built for that. Maybe you are what
people call a “strong man” inside and outside or only on one side.
I think I remember each man who died in front of me or next to me. I
remember the sounds, the smells, the pictures.

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I forgot names and years, dates and places. But I remember the moment
when life goes from the eyes of a dying man. Or the deep last breaths from
several people. Or the smell of defecation when a man is gone.
A few times I thought I felt something like a weird sensation, a couple of
seconds after men’s last breath, something like I could feel his soul leaving
him. Or I simply felt my adrenaline eruptions, or maybe I was losing my
mind for a moment, who knows?
With time you learn to cope with those things, to watch people die, either
people you loved or people who die from your hand.
There was an urban myth that one officer from the army was asked,
“Captain, these young guys that we just killed in huge numbers, there are
still kids left, they do not know anything, what do we do with them?“
Officer said “ We do what we do, it is our way of life“
It is death. And you simply need to cope with it.
That’s why working on your mindset for survival is so important

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The consequences of killing in a post-
collapse world
December 8, 2013
About three years ago, the wife and kid of my friend were driving in their
car, and at some intersection, they hit another car. It was a very small
accident, both were driving very slowly and they only scratched cars.
In another vehicle, there were 4 pretty drunk guys and they immediately
jumped out of the car and started to curse at the woman and kid. She
locked the doors and called her husband.
The guys were young and drunk, and most probably they did not mean
anything too bad other to look very cool and dangerous, but one of them
pulled a knife in order to scare lady. It was in the evening and without too
many folks on the street, and even a few people who came by did not want
to interfere.
One of them did call the police. Her husband came very fast, maybe in 10
minutes and found them yelling at the car and his wife. The guy with the
knife was piercing tires.
My friend jumped out of his car and broke the jaw of the guy with a knife
with his boot, then beat other three dudes in few minutes. They suffered
broken ribs, head fracture, jaw fracture, and a ruptured spleen.
Bystanders said that he started to strangle one of the guys when two
policemen came. They separated him from the guy, but then he turned
around and started to strange the policeman.
Finally, the other policeman knocked him out with a baton. When he
regained consciousness he was in jail.
He got out of the whole problem thanks to the testimony of the bystanders,
and he got a mild penalty because of attacking police officers thanks to his
psychiatrist.

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He is 170cm (5’6”) and some 70kg (154 pounds) guy. You could ask
everyone before the event about him and they would say, “He is a very nice
and peaceful guy, someone who always avoids trouble, actually someone
who is scared of violence, guy who trusts in the system and love between
folks.”
I was with him during the war. Our SHTF was 20 years ago and I know
different. He was (and still is) one of the most dangerous guys I ever knew.
The point of the story is not to say that violence happens, you all know that.
The point is that you never judge folks by the way they look.
To be more precise, really dangerous guys do not look for the trouble, they
look at how to avoid it because they know what trouble may bring. It is the
same with “psychos.” If you come across someone wearing funny clothes
and acting crazy, he is probably just playing. Real psychos try to look
normal.
Back to violence. When you have experience in using violence, you may say
that you join a kind of club of people, and that changes some things for
you.
People do not like to be around folks who have killed other folks, no matter
why they did it. It is an experience that changes you. Actually, once you did
it you see that you are capable of doing it, and you know you are capable to
do it again, and again. A big taboo is broken once you have killed. This is
scary for people around you.
Some of those things are bad, but also other is giving you some advantage
over the other folks.
Yes, you may be sure that after taking some lives you are not gonna be the
same man. You are gonna be outside of that group of common people.
During SHTF, it makes sense to be known as a guy who is not taking sh*t
easily, but only to a certain point. After that point, your “fame“ of being
tough guy may attract other, maybe tougher guys who want to take you
down only because that gives them more “fame“.

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If the level of violence rises around you, you want to still “blend in”. Do not
stick out as weak and not as extra tough. Maybe a bit more tough than
average but that is enough.
Using violence in order to survive and using violence because you like it are
two different things, and I have seen people who “discovered“ themselves
in doing violence because they like the feeling of power that comes with it.
I know a man who enjoys using violence. He was the family man who
started everything just like most of us when SHTF. He did what he had to do
in order to survive.
Over the time, he started to enjoy everything. After some time even his
family members start to feel not comfortable in his presence because there
is this guy who now has new option to act. He can kill and take life, just like
that. This is scary for most people.
Keep in mind people talk about what happened. Just to process it or make
sense. So people will talk when you kill. Stories come back to your group.
Some people get the wrong impression of you because they do not
understand the situation, they do not understand the high after you took
that life.
The guy I was talking about was no drug dealer or criminal mastermind. He
was a normal family guy. He just found something weird and dark inside
him when SHTF.
He died when he became too careless because he believed he was a way
too strong and too smart. A 20-year-old woman stabbed him during a
trade. He was too confident. It came as surprise for a man who was proud
and famous for being a killer.
What you have to understand is that this feeling of being in power to take
other peoples lives can put some strange ideas in your head, and we all
suffered from different amounts of that. But some guys forget that this is
not what survival is about.
Today in our world most of the “tough“ guys are tough because other folks
are saying so, they are living on that fame and other folks’ fear. Reputation

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is everything, so most of the people believe in it and do not want to
question it.
When the SHTF, having a man in your group or family who is something like
a weird version of action hero is not advisable. I mean it is no contest that
the body count and blind wish to do violence all the time, usually will bring
you trouble.
In today's “normal“ world, sometimes I walk in the evening. Sometimes I
see some trouble in front of me - let's say I see some guys drinking and
looking at me. When I see possible trouble, you know what will I do? I will
avoid it, I will go to the other side of the street.
Now you can call me coward - I do not care - but thing is that I know if I get
involved in a fight I'll do some things without hesitation.
I am known for what I am capable of, and I am remembering (too well)
what I did years ago when I was faced with violence. I would not have
safety switches (or something that would tell me “OK, now it is enough“) so
I like to avoid it.
If you carry gun and brain at the same time, you avoid trouble, too.
One of the other things that my experience brought me is some weird
ability to “recognize“ dangerous guys, and I know some folks can see it in
me too.
I am not talking here about some weird powers. I am talking about the look
in the eyes that says something like, “Oh, I know how to hurt you very
badly, I did that before. And I will do that again if I am forced too, and I'll do
it very efficiently.“ Someone who has all possibilities including putting you
in extreme pain or ending a life looks at you differently, and interacts
differently.
War vets with close quarter fighting experience from anywhere know
perfectly well what I am talking about here. Convicts and others who lived
in a violent environment know too.

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At the end of the day, using violence is a very bad thing. It destroys you. It
can also destroy the relationships with people close to you because it
changes you and changes how people see you.
You can work on yourself on many levels for years, but still, that does not
change fact that you are a simply different man from the majority of folks
around you.
Years after the collapse that I lived through I may only think that I am like
everyone around me. Actually, I am not, and in a split second, I am ready to
turn back into what I was in that time. People who have not been there are
thinking this is a good option to have… Selco is prepared… yes, but I carry
this also around when I go to the park to relax and see families playing
together. This dark side never leaves you.

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About the Author
Selco survived the Balkan war of the 90s in a city under siege, without
electricity, running water, or food distribution.
In his online works, he gives an inside view of the reality of survival under
the harshest conditions. He reviews what works and what doesn’t, tells you
the hard lessons he learned, and shares how he prepares today.
He never stopped learning about survival and preparedness since the war.
Regardless what happens, chances are you will never experience extreme
situations like Selco did. But you have the chance to learn from him and
how he faced death for months.
Real survival is not romantic or idealistic. It is brutal, hard and unfair. Let
Selco take you into that world. Read more of Selco's articles here:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/category/preppers/selco/
And take advantage of a deep and profound insight into his knowledge and
advice by signing up for the outstanding and unrivaled online course. More
details here:
https://shtfschool.com/survival-boot-camp/

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