A fascinating article about someone who, admittedly a ‘hard luck case’, moves to ‘survivalist country’ and winds up in the sort of situation that has no good resolution.
The takeaway here, as I see it, is that while we like the idea of a place out in the middle of nowhere, that middle of nowhere also appeals to another subset of people that we may not particularly want to share oxygen with. In short, the ‘wide open spaces’ and ‘lack of oversight’ that make a place appealing to you and I also appeal to some less savory types who might be your neighbors. And, sometimes, it can turn ugly in a big way.
Whatever terms he initially plugged into Google or Facebook or YouTube, he was soon frequenting websites promoting far-right conspiracy theories, watching videos predicting imminent social collapse, and reading how-to guides on survival preparedness. Over a few months in late 2012, the content of Taylor’s Facebook posts shifted from topics like trucks and music to videos from the hacktivist group Anonymous and posts about pandemic disease, the threat of GMO foods, the rise of Islam, and the Obama administration’s purported plans to confiscate everyone’s guns. Taylor devoured TV shows like Doomsday Preppers, Survivor Man, Live Free or Die, and Man, Woman, Wild. The notion of living off the land allowed him to imagine ways he might escape the wage economy and finally make something of himself.
RTWT.
There’s a lot be said for doing proper due diligence and not getting yourself into bad situations.
Strikes me as deeply broken, lonely people interacting exclusively with other deeply broken, lonely people. I find it all a bit suspect, frankly. The menacing antagonist is an old drunk with double-knee replacement, hard of hearing, and carries a 2” single action .22 to threaten people? He couldn’t hit Jack or sh!t with that thing. I’d imagine anything with 2 functional legs could get away from him no problem.
Aside from “appropriating” someone else’s stuff because you *thought* they might be dead, Taylor’s fundamental mistake was moving out there alone. Besides not having anyone to back him up, it’s far to easy to ‘get weird’ inside your own head, living alone with no one else to talk to. None of this nonsense needed to happen.
Taylor wasn’t poor because he was ‘hard up’. He was poor because he thinks like a poor person & has no plan beyond the next 12 hours of his life. All the screwed up relationships, abandoned children, instability & stupid jobs. I can pity Taylor, but he alone is responsible for the stupid, short-sighted decisions he made. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I think it’s true.
Hit the nail on the head.
Ignorance is no excuse, plan for the worst, hope for the best. Rather “wordy” article.
So a guy hauls his POS trailer with his POS truck up to a POS piece of property in the middle of no where. No money, no job, no water, no food, no power. That’s the plan?
Then he steals his neighbors stuff because, well, he’s not home. Then when neighbor does get home and gets mad guy calls for help from a comically inadequate sheriffs dept? Throw in some ‘prescription meds’ on top for good measure. What could go wrong?
Sounds like someone couldn’t add up two plus two and deserves what he gets.
Ah, but the issue isn’t whether or not either of these knuckledraggers was responsible for their fates…the point is that the qualities of the region that make it attractive as a place to live for you and I also make it attractive to people like this who may wind up being your neighbors.
Which circles us back to the shelter in place vs. bug out location (BOL) decision.
BOL = threat from wandering bands + neighboring cretins and how to secure it from both while on property and away doing various chores. Dogs can be shot, doors/walls/windows can be breached given enough time and if it’s far enough from civilization it’s probably far enough from LMI’s that could watch our stuff.
No perfect answer so I guess it’s just do the best with what we have and each solution has it’s own plus and minus column. Bigger groups is better security but it requires a bigger need for resources.
Maybe one solution is just be nomads, like a lot of aboriginals, and move from location to location depending on weather, food/water availability, security, sororities, beer, etc.
In terms of location this has zero appeal to me. No level ground, no good soil, super short growing season, no water, the whole place is a fire hazard. Plus, the neighbors are a who’s who of society’s rejects and, yeah, no cops when you need them.
As someone who’s living in Wisconsin, I found it interesting that he left. Small town living in Wisconsin has it’s draw backs and the growing season at about 140 frost free days (south of I-94) is barely long enough, but the soil’s great, there’s plenty of summer rain, and crime’s low and societal structures are intact.
If someone wanted to, mostly, live off the land in the southern half of the state they could buy a little place outside of most of the small towns for pretty cheap and grow a large garden without too much of a struggle, deer, rabbit’s, and turkeys are so plentiful that they’re pests and there’s no shortage of fish in the lakes and rivers.
I thought the moral was that Everyone needs a backhoe.
And to not blabber to the whole world how you plan on employing that backhoe.
Everyone needs their hoe back. FIFY.
As they say in the suburbs, “Fences make great neighbors.”
I would hate to live in a society like that. Seems like all involved had mental issues. One was a fuck up, the other a bully. The guy who stole the solar lights seemed to think they were abandoned. Maybe a stupid mistake, but an honest one. The guy who had his lights taken should have proposed a solution. That he didn’t and just tried to terrorize cost him his life. It seems a tragedy for everyone involved.
It could be argued to the author that the social contract works both ways: if you repeatedly seek help from the proper authorities and yet that help never arrives, and consequently you resort to fending for yourself because “the system” isn’t there for you, it’s arguably unfair to then be held liable and placed on trial for violating the rules of the system.
All of the punishments with none of the protections is not how good societies function.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
The whole article could have been summarized by the Rule of 3 S’s….. Shoot. Shovel. Shut up.
Underscores my high level of skepticism IRT “Bugging Out” which is constantly being pushed by innumerable parties in the prep world. This is a perfect example of what can happen when unprepared novices with a tenuous grip on reality and their heads filled with all of this highly questionable nonsense they ingest from the net based “experts” run straight into a heavy dose of what’s really out there in bug out land. The vast majority of folks who subscribe to a “be prepared to BO ” lifestyle can’t even handle having their IPhone run out of charge let alone possess the internal fortitude, ruthless outlook, and commensurate skills needed to fend for themselves in a lawless environment facing hardened people who will not hesitate to kill them, take their things, and claim their property given even the smallest of opportunities do so in a WRL environment. Do yourselves a favor. Stay home…
JMHO
Regards
But in a WRL situation wouldnt it be just as lawless, with just as hardened people, in your own neighborhood?
Probably. But at least on home turf you know the cast of characters, and have a good chance from the jump off of knowing who the troublemakerare likely to be.
Absolutely right zero…. And the problem is ALWAYS people. That’s why planning to stay in a reasonably high population zone you will be a sitting duck IMHO. People out in the sticks during the Great Depression barely felt a change when things collapsed but now we have a crazy amount of very dependent people so having a rural propositioned supply house ready to go will be of great benefit when people become the problem….. And people are the problem during a collapse Just look at every societal breakdown or collapse and you will see the common thread of people going crazy and dog eat dog type of behavior.
People will be desperate everywhere and will have to be closely watched. Keeping your guard up will need to be a constant factor in day to day life if things progress to a WRL situation. The advantage of staying put is the familiarity you have of your area, the folks that live there (or don’t belong), and the level of preparedness you can achieve by years of planning in a static location. The exception I would make would be for those living in a large urban area – HOWEVER I would STILL stay put for as long as my supplies would hold out (I would plan for a 90 day period) until the initial wave of craziness died (literally) out. fortifying your habitat and staying off the streets would greatly improve your chances. A drone charged from a dedicated power source to monitor the situation outside would be a good idea especially in this kind of environment.
There are always that top 5% of folk who will be adequately prepared (and financed) to leave their primary residence, get to a hold out, then hunker down but let’s face it. The VAST majority of folks planning to do this will NOT make it. They will simply die like lemming from – insert causality here – The further out you go, the worse it will get… What happens if you arrive safely but find that another group of permanent dwellers there has taken over your property and is prepared to fight you over it? Something also often overlooked (but critical to even getting to the point where you have a BOL) is just the sheer cost of this strategy. Remember, 50% of Americans can’t generate $400 without borrowing it…
Once again, JMHO
Regards
“What happens if you arrive safely but find that another group of permanent dwellers there has taken over your property and is prepared to fight you over it?”
That’s when you activate and trigger the pre-positioned demo charges that were emplaced when construction was begun. Whether you advise them of the existence of said charges to encourage them to leave is up to you and your perception of the squatters.
No no no! You activate and trigger the smoke bombs you put in. Shoot them as they’re coming out. If you can’t get paws on smoke, bugbombs are acceptable. I’m not going to destroy my own place if I can smoke the opposition out instead.
I think the difference is that where that guy was living it, pretty much, already is a WRL situation.
Commander:
Every school of thought has a lunatic fringe –
Why would prepping be any different?
The problem comes when opponents try to pretend that the fools are the norm.
We know better…
I don’t think I would live well in locations where being snow bound for a good part of the year is part of the regimen. I was born and grew up in the South where snow is a very rare event. Heat, illegal alien traffic and the occasional hurricane are our hazards.
Rural living – I could do it, but I’d be much happier if it were in a group I think. I see ranches where there are several homes within a 100 yards of each other. Probably family units, where all contributed efforts and property expenses to keeping it secure and safe. Many tasks communal and if your vehicle was incapacitated, you had another ride instantly. That is more like it – privacy and quiet with benefits.
Sounds great. The time to establish those mutually supporting relationships is “now”, obviously. Once it’s WROL, the gates will be shut.
I feel that it’s less the geography and more the local society that is the issue there.
Too many malcontents have gathered there. If they only prey on each other, that’s one thing. But when an idealist who doesn’t truely understand HOW things work there arrives, they become a victim.
I suspect many regular readers here could handle the geographic & supply issues, it’s the local society that would make it not viable unless a group all acquired lots in the same area.
Steelheart
The root problem, aside from all the psychological issues, was tsking the solar panels.
It makes me wonder when does scavenging become morally acceptable? If we are assuming a descent into EOTWAWKI, where on the slide can you start policing up all the bbq bombs in the neighborhood?
My takeaway — from this and a couple of the other essays on that site — is that the narrative is less about losers acting stupidly, and more about the urban-liberal prejudices of struggling-for-employment members of the Old Media.
Their hostility to white working/lower-class Americans is counterbalanced by their fantasies about the wonderfulness of foreign primitives of sufficiently dusky hue. Stab a whale? Fine if you’re of exotic enough ancestry. Shoot a bear that’s killing your livestock or attacking your neighbors? Time for a case of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy vapors.
As presented, Taylor appears to have been a dimwitted loser from the beginning. A long history of stupid and self-defeating bad choices. But the author makes not the slightest effort to hide her prejudices and biases — in true liberal-elitist fashion — Taylor’s not even given credit for his own stupidity. His problems are all due to not enough supervision by the enlightened — those with advanced degrees (in non-science fields, of course) from the “right” sort of schools, such as the author.
The “moral” she claims to have found fails even the simplest test: in no way does the “social contract” require that anyone participate in society according to HER standards.
For all of her pearl-clutching, eastern Oregon is a far safer and more civilized place than the neighborhood around her alma mater Johns Hopkins, with all of its laws, regulations, police saturation, etc. I very much suspect if one were to substitute “Baltimore” for “Klamath Falls” and dial-up the melanin of the parties involved — while keeping the title “Outlaw Country” — that she would be loudly condemning that title as “racist”…