The post-collapse environment is a fancy way of saying that the lights are out and there’s no way to contact the police, if there’s even police. What are the biggest threats going to be in this situation? Now immediately, Hollywood has convinced us that it’s going to be the gangbangers, the thugs, roving bands of marauders, and the token bad guys that you see in the movies. But what’s likely going to happen is that a lot of people are going to be a victim of their own stereotypes. In zombie movies, the biggest threat is never the zombies.

As those series or those movies go on, a peer adversary, whoever that might be, whatever form that might take, always becomes the central antagonist in the story. In The Walking Dead, for instance, it’s always some other human that is the biggest threat. And in the same way, because we’re going to be victims of our own stereotypes, most people are just going to be looking for the junkies, the crackheads, the lower-tiered criminals, possibly politically motivated, all of the Hollywood cliches. Now in terms of the people you really have to look out for, the gangbangers and the low-level street thugs, these are not the criminal tacticians that most people think they are.

In fact, most people who lead a life of crime, while they do tend to be brazen in a lot of their activities, they seldom have the foresight and the resourcefulness to really pose a significant threat against somebody as vigilant to be called a prepper. So you’re not worried about people who’ve never had any firearms training. You’re not worried about people who are just going to haphazardly try to loot a building without any sort of foresight of the consequences. You’re not worried about the extemporaneous criminal who’s just going to be flying by the seat of their pants not thinking more than one move ahead.

Those guys are going to be easy to deal with. Their lifestyle suggests a certain level of laziness and lack of discipline and commitment, which is going to be relatively easy to work around compared to the real threats in a grid-down environment. So what are these real threats going to be? Surprisingly, I would say that the real threats are going to be the people who aren’t even a threat right now. The people who likely are disciplined enough to pull down a job, have a family, the people who have the mental capacity and the patience, to be cunning enough to be able to deceive you in a way that you’re not anticipating.

The only thing that the lower-level street criminals have against a lot of people is that they have good street smarts. If they use that, if they’re smart and they use that, they’re going to be able to seduce people to get what they want. And most preppers who are isolationists, protectionists, they’re not going to have the best street smarts, okay, because they don’t have the best social skills. That is the only real disadvantage when it comes to that lower-tier type of criminal. Drug addicts say what you will, they’re not stupid people.

In fact, they’re very convincing and because in order to survive, in the sense that they’re surviving, they have to live in a very deceitful way. And so they’re used to trying to con people out of stuff. The most dangerous people are going to be people who you wouldn’t suspect as being criminals. There’s going to be a lot of people who haven’t prepared and they have children, they have loved ones. These aren’t necessarily the most dangerous people, but the most dangerous people are probably going to be the people where you have your guard down, is what I’m trying to say.

Because people are going to be a victim of their stereotypes, they’re going to presume that an upstanding member of society, while the lights are on, is going to remain that type of person when the lights are off. And if there’s somebody who hasn’t taken the steps to prepare, then obviously they’re going to be in need. They’re going to be accustomed to having a higher standard of living. And they’re not going to deal with the pressures of being deprived of all of the amenities of civilization. They’re not going to deal with that as well as somebody who may have lived under the poverty line their whole life.

So it’s actually your peers, your neighbors who are going to be some of the greatest threats. Now this is not to say that these people are not going to be assets and you shouldn’t try to help them to a certain degree. But you should also not be naive to assume that you’re going to be able to trust everybody. Because at the end of the day, especially if they have kids, these are going to be people you have to worry about. Lone wolves are probably going to not be willing to make as many sacrifices to get what they need.

But a parent who has a child who is hungry, they’re going to go to great lengths to ensure their child’s survival. So parents are going to be a much bigger threat than lone wolves. Especially because being a parent requires a bit more competency. It requires a lot more planning and maturity and it requires more measured decision-making which you don’t often get in the more infantile mindset of somebody who is just looking out for themselves. Now in terms of these specific types of people, anybody with combat training, anybody with combat experience is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Anybody who’s been in a war in that sort of environment is going to have the skills to operate covertly, to surveil you from a distance. They’re not going to immediately rush in to battle. They’re going to consider all the angles because of course they’ve had to do that in order to survive in the dangerous environments that they’ve had to operate in. Especially if you live out in the country in a rural environment, expect to be heavily surveilled before you’re ever infiltrated by these people who have this type of experience and training.

They are going to be the biggest force to be reckoned with. Not even cops necessarily, although many cops do have good investigative capabilities. They know how to approach a situation with due caution. They know what to look for in terms of operational security, but I would say I’d be more concerned about people with military experience and then maybe people with SWAT type experience, run and gun, comprehensive firearm skills, worried about them next, and then your average sort of B cop would follow after that. Possibly a higher level officer like an investigator or a detective might have better skills in terms of ISR, intelligence gathering, and so when you’re operating in a post-collapse world, operational security extends far beyond what happens in your own domain and you really do have to be aware of what’s going on in your community outside your perimeter because that’s where you’re being surveilled from.

People are watching you to try to get the jump on you. Christmas just passed and every year we have a tradition of watching Home Alone and I think it’s Harry and Marv. They’re idiots, but they’re not as dumb as they’re portrayed in that film because they do with due diligence take their time in casing out the place and this is going to be what’s going to happen. So it’s not just going to be a one-dimensional scenario where the bad guys have a big arrow over their head and it’s obvious from miles away.

People are going to be incredibly sneaky and you’re likely going to be being watched and you’re not even going to know it for days on end. So this is why subterfuge is very important and in that movie Home Alone the kid in that movie was very smart in that he utilized one of the most effective principles of subterfuge which is to make yourself appear more powerful than you actually are. So in that sort of circumstance if you’re doing something outside and you think that there’s a good chance that you’re being watched you’re never going to know.

You always have to exhibit or attempt to exhibit a stronger presence than you might actually be able to bring to bear. I you’re stronger than you are. You know having more people the more people the better making it appear as though you have more weaponry than you actually do but exhibiting vigilance because people want the path of least resistance and most people don’t want confrontation especially the aforementioned groups that I talked about. People who are not criminals when the lights are on. People were just trying to get by. They’re going to be more inclined towards thievery and that’s going to catch a lot of people off guard because many people who’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood think that everybody is just going to be coming at them with firearms and everything they got.

The very smart people are going to just try to steal stuff from you when you’re not looking. So that’s what you’re going to be contending with especially if you live in an urban environment. When people are hungry and they have nothing better to do but watch you all day and they know that you have stuff people are going to be incredibly patient under those conditions and it’s going to be to your disadvantage. So just be prepared to be being watched at all times if you are a prepper and this is why you can’t just turtle in and play defense.

You have to be actively out there in the space pushing the boundaries so to keep eyes off of your castle keep. Now there’s other groups like hunters. Hunters have the patience. They have the stealth. They have the sign control. They are going to be willing to wait for hours for the right opportunity and they’re also probably going to be pretty good shots. So these are all things to think about if you live in a rural environment to try to make your property as inaccessible as possible and I mean I’m talking about real hunters now.

I’m not talking about you know weekend warriors who just jump out of the truck and they’re out of shape. I’m talking about professional hunters even subsistence hunters probably more so. The sign of blood is also not going to phase them. They understand killing something butchering it and eating it. That’s something that most yuppies have never done. Those abilities are going to be beneficial in that type of world. There’s going to probably be certain occupations which are more likely to yield people with sadistic and criminal tendencies who are perhaps not criminals now but might have been criminals in a past life of anarchy.

People with good sales abilities are going to be people to watch out for. They’re going to know how to con people and in those types of situations trust is everything. If somebody’s been training their whole life to win people’s trust to sell them, they’re gonna be very problematic. So it’s very important that whoever you encounter you try to figure out what they did in their past life. That’s gonna give you some insight as to the type of person that they are. Other preppers are likely going to be problematic not in the initial stages but in the later stages just due to the simple fact that these are very independently minded people.

They don’t want to be governed. They don’t want to be told what to do and that can be very politically destabilizing in any community long term. And of course many of them are going to be proficient with firearms and they’re just going to have that vigilant insecure mindset which is essential for survival. Just as is the case with most crime. I can’t remember the exact statistic but chances are if your house is broken into it’s by somebody who lives in your neighborhood. It’s kind of going to be similar in this type of situation where mobility is going to be largely limited.

I mean if there’s no gas people aren’t coming from hundreds of miles away to steal your stuff. You’re going to be dealing with the people in your immediate community and this is why I encourage people to do area studies. We’ve had Mike Shelby on before we’ve talked about that. I’ve done plenty of videos on urban survival strategies. I would say that the people who are bad when times are good are going to be the ones that get clipped the fastest. They’re going to do something stupid earliest and then you know the people who are upstanding good citizens those are going to be the people that become problematic in the long term.

But yeah you got to do an area study of your community. Understand what the personalities and predilections of people are and base your security strategy around that as opposed to some Mad Max world where roving gangs of nomads are going from place to place hundreds of miles from their place of origin have hazardly trying to pirate people’s provisions. There’s a three to one ratio in terms of offense and defense meaning that if you’re in a castle and somebody tries to invade that castle they need an army that is three times bigger than yours because you’re defending you’re going to be able to inflict a lot more damage on the invaders.

So you have home field advantage and so people coming from hundreds of miles away are not the people you have to worry about. They don’t know your surroundings. They don’t know who you are. You don’t understand the politics of the region so they’re at a great disadvantage when it comes to their mission to pillage your supplies. And then lastly one of the biggest threats of all is going to be the government and the question is going to be are the people who claim to represent that government are they actually going to be representative of that government? Are you going to be able to trust that there’s actually a functional centralized government that these people be they the mayor be they some city counselor some police chief are you going to be able to know with confidence that they are who they say they are and that they actually have had that power bestowed upon them by the federal government or by the provincial government.

I mean these are all things you’re gonna have to contend with but yeah the government municipal police whatever vestiges of that remains is going to be very problematic and I guess it’s going to be on an individual basis and most people are going to comply with that because they’re going to assume that there’s an army behind these people I’m not saying do anything that’s against the law but I will say that if the sheriff comes knocking and that sheriff doesn’t have anybody behind him to back him up really this is just one guy knocking on your door hoping that you’re going to be scared enough to comply.

Let me know in the comment section below what you think the biggest threats are going to be so you know yeah the best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at Canadianpreparedness.com where you’ll find high-quality survival gear at the best prices no junk and no gimmicks use discount code prepping gear for 10% off don’t forget the strong survive but the prepared thrive stay safe
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