by Selco, The Organic Prepper:

Through the media, we have gotten a picture of scavengers, so there are movies and book about guys who ride motorcycles while wearing helmets with horns. These guys are looting and scavenging after the SHTF. And then, in this fantasy, there are good guys who do not do that, except maybe to get some interesting book or similar.

The interesting thing is the fact that guys who “scavenge” somehow through all those movie and book cliches are understood as bad guys and psychos. Through the news, we see folks who loot as a mindless mob who drag out big screen plasma TVs while floods are coming.

It would be cool if we could try to form our opinion and adopt some knowledge and strategies without those images from above.

It is nearly impossible, but let’s try.

Let’s try to form our strategies about looting and scavenging through the following topics.

First, remember that curiosity killed the cat.

One of my favorite sayings is that “curiosity killed the cat” and I think I survived many times during my SHTF situation thanks to the fact that I kept it on my mind all the time.

We are living in the times where we simply we “want to see and understand”, or even better where we want to have that feeling of “amusement”, moments of excitements.

We read about how people get killed or injured just because they want to check how dangerous something is, or just because they wanted to have selfie photo in some dangerous place.

Horse playing has become our culture, and a lot of people do stupid things just because “it looks cool”.

A real SHTF event has much higher stakes, so you need to have the thought constantly in your mind that says: “Do I really need to do that?”

If  you do not need to do that then just simply do not do it.

Do not go out into riot just because it looks cool, do not lift objects from the debris just because it is shiny and weird, do not check abandoned house because you saw it happen in movies.

The examples are numerous, and it is a bit hard to transfer examples to your own settings, but once when SHTF please use the question, “do I really need to do that?” all the time and keep in mind that curiosity did kill the poor cat.

And yes, that goes along with looting and scavenging.

Yes, looting and scavenging is a part of prepping and survival.

Prepping at its core is about having enough items to overcome some hard disruption in the system around us.

There is nothing wrong with that if we are talking about shorter SHTF events like a temporary collapsing of law and order and system from events like storms, electricity failure, rioting, etc.

But if we are talking about a really prolonged absence of the system, then we should include more actions in our prepping. We should have more plans to solve some problems.

One of those actions is looting or scavenging.

Based on the event (or kind of SHTF) that you will experience you need to understand what kind of level of SHTF is happening around you. How hard did it go?

Based on that information., you have to switch your mentality to a new level. You will have to adopt a new set of rules.

It sounds metaphysical but it is very simple.

It means that if there is no more system, which means there is no more law and order and especially that there is no more distribution of goods, maybe now you need to adapt to the new reality that going into the mall to take food is no longer stealing. It is simply obtaining the goods.

It is a decision that each one of you has to make while again, keeping in mind that curiosity kills the cat.

Looting 101

I am talking here mainly about looting. This includes taking goods from stores, malls, and similar.

Do you have to loot?

The answer is that I do not have clue, and it is completely up to you and the event that is happening around you.

• How well you are prepped


• How big your storage is


• How long the event is gonna last


• How dangerous it is


• What your personal opinions about looting are

All that comes into the equation.

I know from my personal experience that I did not loot enough. In other words, I was not smart enough to loot enough while there was time for that, simply because I did not understand there were new rules and how big the event was.

What should you loot?

Now I can give you some suggestion on WHAT to loot if you decide to loot. And no, I am sorry but it is not gonna be in the form of “100 items that you need to loot”.

It is not gonna be because of two reasons:

1. You are a prepper probably so it is insulting if you do not know what items are important for survival when SHTF


2. The list of needed items is way too long

There is a big advantage here, thanks to our modern society. You should, as a prepper and survivalist, go and loot items that most people around you who are looting will not be interested in.

While other people look for money from cash registers, TVs or stereos, or whatever is popular to loot at that moment, you will look for batteries, tools, lamps, lighters, stove fuels, matches, tarps, canned food, and seeds.

I mentioned this often: when SHTF happens here, there is a small parking machine right next to my building, and it is operated on small coins. When I see people trashing it in order to take coins from it, I’ll run there to take the small solar panel that sits on top of it and the battery from it while they are looking for money.

Nobody will even notice that solar power, but there are lot of coins inside.

F**k the coins.

You see the analogy here?

Scavenging 101

Scavenging is very often the art of recognizing what to take from what looks like a pile of junk.

As the situation deteriorates around you and as your prep storage goes down, and as things in your house including your tools, clothes, and similar deteriorate, you will be forced to scavenge more and more, and you will learn to recognize what is useful and what is not.

One example is that we first went and chopped all the trees around our homes for wood-heating and cooking. Then we moved to parks and small forested areas. Then, when that disappeared, we took apart wood frames and furniture from abandoned or destroyed houses. Then we pulled up wood floors etc.

As a result, I learned what kind of floor burned fast or slow, how much I needed to boil water, whether it was wet, how long it was under the rain, and how that impacted the quality of fire, etc etc.

Wood is one example only.

Over time, pieces of wire from burned houses became important to use as a rope, for example. Pieces of gutters were useful for wood collection, etc.

I am talking here about the other side of scavenging and what you can repurpose.

You are a prepper so there is no need to tell you that you definitely need to scavenge every bit of fuel possible from the abandoned cars in your area or to look for means of alternate to transports goods like carts or bikes.

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