by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper:

In one of the previous articles, I mentioned how to deal with people who might show up on your doorstep once when SHTF, looking for help from you. And I mentioned that a lot of people worry about the fact that their friends and family will be among those people.

The topic that cannot be separated from that is trust, and it is something to think about (and write) here.

Friends and family in the world today

I was talking a few days ago with a friend about the issue of friends and family when SHTF. I realized that some 15 years ago if something serious happened, some event that needed a strong group of bonded people in order to overcome that event (riots, serious weather event, disruption of law and order, war…) I could count probably on 15 people I really trusted, organizing together with me in a very short period of time.

Today if something serious happened, I can count maybe on 5 or 6 people.

I am talking about the number of people that I can trust with my life in a strong core group.

That count includes all of my friends and family. Only 5 or 6 would be trusted enough.

And you need to know that I live in a region of the world where family connections are traditionally very important.

So yes, things are very bad, even here.

We are living in the world where, intentionally or not, we are being pushed or dragged into a reality where materialistic goods are the only thing that is important.

Or to use philosophic words, it has become more important “to have, not to be.

It is visible in any aspect of life across the world, so without being too grumpy, I have to say that respect is gone.  Who knows how all this going to look in 10 years? Family as the most important unit of humanity is being twisted into something weird, and at the end, it has lost its basic purpose.

All this goes to the topic of friends and friendship. For many of us, it is almost like,“Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?” 

This is why the “lone wolf” has emerged.

Over the years of my survival /prepping work I have always mentioned and capitalized the importance and necessity of having group or network of friends and family with you when the SHTF. Together with that topic I always emphasized how hard is to survive a real SHTF if you are alone, without that network, or if you are actually that “lone wolf”.

That problem got summarised in the comments on one of my articles. (Thanks for the comment, Gab.)

“I’m sourrouned by liars, cheaters, and backstabbers, but most of all they want to live off of the substance of other like a parasite. So this why the lone wolf is my only option.”

Indeed, we are all sourrounded by them. The way of life that we are living today kinda pushes a lot of people to be liars, cheaters, and backstabbers. It is, to them, the easier way, and a lot of people choose it because of that.

It almost looks like a conspiracy to completely corrupt every bond in order to make it easier to manipulate folks.

It has kinda already hit the fan.

After all these years, I do still believe you have to find a network of people in order to overcome serious SHTF, but I also believe that it has gotten harder and harder.

So what are the solutions?

It is easy to say “connect with like-minded people” or “have trusted people when the SHTF”, but it gets harder and harder to achieve that.

Let’s keep it simple and use three words here: time, trust and skills.

Usually, it will be a combination of these three words.

The best case would be if you have enough time to get know people with whom you want to connect so you can trust them, and if those people have skills that can be used in hard times.

Time and trust

You need time to find good people, simply because there is a shortage of good people, as we already mentioned.

You will not find it by hunkering down in your home waiting for the end of the world, so basically, good advice here is to try to socialize, to meet other folks.

It is common sense.

The preppers movement has in its core a distrust of people around us, and while it is common sense not to trust to everybody around you it somehow very often turns into a parody of common sense. Nobody said you need to trust everybody, but it is a good thing to socialize and to meet other people. Otherwise, what is the point?

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