Anarchy: Survival Tactics To Learn From A Veteran

What exactly is this situation known as Anarchy and how dangerous is it?

Parents often say it’s having more than 3 kids running around the house at any one time! It also has been said that one person’s anarchy is another’s patriot revolution.

Anarchy is defined in the dictionary as (1) A situation where there is chaos in a complete absence of organization or control, (2) A breakdown in society where there is an absence of any formal system of government or authority.

So what does that mean for people who want to prepare for such an event and come out of it unscathed?

The formal definition doesn’t mention the violent destruction aspect to any extent. Probably because this is taken for granted in such a social circumstance where there is supposedly no longer authoritative law and human behavior is uncontrollable.

But one thing is for sure. In an all-encompassing social breakdown, anarchy will become a part of everybody’s new ‘life style’, in one form or another.

Anarchy or Mob Riots?

First let’s examine more of a real time definition of the types of ‘anarchy’ that most people might be exposed to in the uncertain future. It will not resemble the ‘zombie’ movie versions that much and will likely be worse in some circumstances. Complete disregard for people’s lives and property will be demonstrated in all manner of so-called anarchy after the escalation of violence.

The rule of egalitarian law and order exists mainly to prevent the dark side of human nature from taking control of society. When lawful authoritative social control is virtually gone, the void is invariably filled by dangerous unrestricted malevolence. It’s part of human nature and amounts to nothing less than pervasive criminal activity.

The most dangerous form of anarchy is when large groups known as mobs are violently running wild in the streets devouring and destroying anything and everything in their path with no chance of subsiding…until there is nothing left.This is the bad one and you must know this fact.

Once these events reach critical mass as they did in places like Egypt lately there is no stopping them as they grew larger and more widespread except by absolute overwhelming counter force to simply annihilate the threat.

It becomes all out war at that point. If you are ‘caught’ or trapped in the middle of a ‘war’, you’ll almost certainly be a casualty. Stopping this type of anarchy can only be accomplished by powerful and lethal military force. What that means to anybody else is that you cannot survive serious anarchy under the standard prepper paradigm.

Recently we have witnessed incipient examples of this type of activity in places like Ferguson (Mo) in the context of how they sometimes start. But Ferguson did not rise to the worst case potential anarchistic scenario because there definitely was government ‘control’ in the form of police and Guard under the state authority.

In the police work involving this event these are not usually referred to as anarchy but are called Mob Riots, and the authoritative counter-measures are known as Riot Control. The difference between anarchistic groups and mob rioting is the assumption that the mob riots will eventually be stopped or controlled because there is definitely a government authority still in effect.

Understanding the dynamics of this social phenomenon is absolutely necessary to correctly prepare and survive it. The intensity of these situations is very relative to location. For instance in my ’neck of the woods’ there’s little or no chance of mobs or rampaging looters amassing into hordes of vandals coming over the horizon like a human tsunami, killing and burning everything in its path.

If a group even attempted to enter the area they’d never get any momentum going because of the simple strategic mob action disadvantage of rural areas. There’s too much distance between targets to loot and defile. They can’t use only their own feet in moving around with the optimal opportunities like they would in a compacted city.

They’d die of travel exhaustion after only one or two attempts to ransack a distant town or two. Even if they had vehicles, by the time word got across the county, the local armed citizenry would form up a rapid response militia and ‘head ‘em off at the pass’ with a concentrated ambush of their convoy from which there would be no escape.

A Story to Remember

Once a biker gang came to a nearby small town of around eight hundred in my area several years ago. Maybe a hundred or so altogether. But these weren’t your average recreational motorcycle groups which small towns usually welcome for the quick burst of revenue when they do a pit stop. This was a transient outlaw bunch all the way from the West Coast.

It didn’t take them long to start drinking heavily and causing trouble. They badly punched out a local in the bar and refused to turn over the guys who did it to the lone town police officer. Only one Sheriff’s deputy and a State Patrol officer were in the vicinity for back up arriving only to be confronted by dozens of very ugly and belligerent dudes. And more LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) help would not get there any time soon.

The quick thinking town Police Chief put a call out to one of his friends who happened to be highly experienced combat vet asking him to grab his ’go gun’ and get there as quick as he could. A couple other calls were made as the tension increased on the street.

A few minutes later the gang had the cops surrounded and were actually taunting them when a pick up truck screeched to a flanking stop behind the gang and out jumped six people including one of the wives all armed with AR-15’s AK’s and shotguns. The Chief’s military friend took his sons and wife along, and even stopped to pick up a neighbor.

A kind of surprised and subdued attitude suddenly came over the biker gang and the Chief took the ‘opportunity’ to issue a ‘police order’ to immediately leave the town or they would all be placed under arrest and their motorcycles towed.
That raised some bad-ass eyebrows and just as all this was mulling around in the biker’s alcohol deteriorated brains, two more trucks pulled up and another half dozen heavily armed citizens emerged. And other town citizens were now coming down the street as word got out carrying pistols and even baseball bats.

The State Patrol officer said… “Hope you people make the right move fast, I hear the tow truck driver here ‘accidentally’ seriously damages almost every vehicle they impound…” They left quickly and without incident.

The situational dynamics of a large city are completely different. This is absolutely the most dangerous location to occupy in the event of mob violence escalating into all out ‘anarchy‘.

Also the large big city populations have already bred enough of an indigenous level of potential below radar mob oriented criminals with a hard case predisposition toward all out anarchy. And it wouldn’t take much to get a large enough group of chaotic behavior to become a major problem of out of control city wide violence and destruction.

Chicago had it during the ‘68 race riots. They literally had to bring in recently returned Viet Nam combat vet platoons to sweep parts of the city and apartment complexes to help stop the carnage between citizens. Officially New Orleans still keeps the whole Katrina story tight lipped because it was so ugly. Many hundreds who tried to ‘Survive in Place’ in the aftermath thinking they were well stocked and prepared… were killed in house to house fighting.

Leave While You Still Can!

The solution to survive large metropolitan widespread anarchy, is relatively simple: don’t be there when it happens.

If you ‘get outa Dodge’, you’ll never get trapped in the OK Corral when the shootin’ starts.

The only way to guarantee that you will survive any type of anarchy is to bug out in advance. Period. Otherwise you are just playing Russian Roulette no matter how well you believe you have stocked up to ‘Survive in Place’.

Imagine that a serious anarchistic mob event took over a large populate by rampaging through a city and surpassed the local police ability to control it, and the only thing left for authorities is to form an outside perimeter to confine the general chaos and call in the military.

What makes you think you’ll be able to ’survive’ in place in the ‘eye of the storm’ when even a local swat team wouldn’t survive?

If a city of millions erupts with tens of thousands of angry violent marauders storm trooping from block to block especially after they armed themselves, looting and then torching everything in their path, you’d need a minimum of an entire Marine combat rifle squad equipped with two M-60 belt feds, grenades and lAWs rockets, to defend just one city block!

What do you think you are going to do cowering in your little 1st floor apartment bedroom with your semi-auto AK and a few magazines and all the MRE’s you dutifully stocked up on but will never know how they taste because if you’re really good you might take out a few before the marauders eventually smash through, and put a bullet through your head… And that’s if you’re lucky, which will be more merciful than raping and torturing you or burning you out.

There are those ’extremist’ preppers out there who are unfortunately possessed of what real experts refer to as the Alamo Bunker mentality. These were mostly ‘programmed’ early on in the survival business by their disingenuous survival books designed to teach you how to ‘Survive in Place’.

The biggest problem with these guides is that they were written by person’s of dubious ‘experience’ and knowledge who really didn’t know what they were talking about besides what they watched from TV survival movies. Some of them have since ‘modified’ their stance and include bugging out as the best option.

Even if you never were in combat or never read military tactic books like ‘The Art of War’, it’s almost common sense to realize why the military always tries to ‘fall back to regroup’ when faced with overwhelming odds. The military actually prefers to attack with vastly superior resources and firepower in battles otherwise they don’t like to engage in direct assault.

So why would anyone in their right mind actually plan to stay in place and endure through such an overwhelming event as mass rioting, looting, burning, and rampaging, like a lamb tied to the slaughter post, when they could have left for distances far more safer and secure?

But you may say I know it’s best to be out of a big city when the SHTF but I’m not prepared for bugging out? I don’t have a place to go, I don’t even have a decent car, let alone a good BOV? I don’t know if I can afford a ‘bug out’ emergency plan. It’s hard enough stocking food and water for a couple months. And how would I even know when it was the best TIME to bug out?!

There are numerous ‘Bug Out’ instructions and information out there and on this website. It’s no harder than ’Surviving in Place’ and in many ways easier. You could start there.

But the last question is the most important: when do you know that it’s time to bug out? It’s known as ‘AA‘ mode: Acute Awareness. Good Cops and soldiers develop it, but it is mandatory for preppers. If you’re one of those people on ‘Watter’s World’ who walk around floating a few inches off the ground because your head is so full of air and who think ‘Ben Ghazi’ is someone running for office, then you won’t know much of anything until it’s too late.

• You have to develop an information input habit to keep you aware at all times of what’s going on in the real world around you besides just your own little fantasy world. Regularly pay attention to daily news broadcasts backed up by web news which is usually a little sooner and more detailed.
• It’s a good time to leave when you hear that hospital Emergency Rooms are closing due to an abnormal influx of patients with Ebola, or even virulent Flu like symptoms that they can’t handle any more. Most people will be thinking, wow, I better not go out in public for a while. And that’s how you will survive and they might not. You take this as a signal to ‘hit the road, Jack’!
• It’s a good time to lock up and leave quietly, but immediately, to your BOL when you hear that Iran dropped a nuke on one of their Middle East enemies. It’ll escalate fast, but you’ll still have time before WW3 goes full blast to get somewhere safe if you’re all set with a plan and ready to move.
• If you hear that the Yellowstone Caldera just exploded then get your stuff, family, and anything else, and just hit it for the hills as fast as you can.

The main trick here is to beat out the mass ’panic’ evacuation that would likely come sooner or later in real bad scenarios. Usually when the city starts issuing major police orders or establishing a state of emergency or Martial Law.

You never want to be caught in one of those kinds of Mad Max road rage races when everybody gets the idea to leave all at once. They can become just as bad as the ‘anarchy’ you are trying to escape. But if you beat out everyone else, it will just be like a normal drive out to the country maybe pulling your camper to stay ‘overnight’.

Nobody has to even know you’re bugging if you do it right. You don’t want to be standing around outside drinking a beer and discussing what’s going on with your neighbors. You want to be long gone before everyone starts to panic because then you’ll never make it out due to all of the accidents jam-ups and fighting.

And even if it becomes a ‘false alarm’ it’s better to have wasted the gas and a couple days work and come back okay, then to have been trapped and dead if it got really bad.

… But What If You Can’t?

But let’s say you wanted to bug out but were trapped for some reason, and now you’re in the middle of Hell. I don’t think about that too much personally, because the chances of me winning the lottery are better than ever being in a large city during an end times scenario.

But if you had no choice because if it wasn’t for bad luck you’d have no luck at all, there are a very few things to try, again, mainly depending upon your location.

• If you are in a densely populated part of the city in an apartment building, you should at least try to make it to a suburb or forest preserve if the looting and burning is coming your way. Maybe all the interstate and regular highway escape routes are blocked to get out of the city, but you still might be able to drive in the inner city streets out of the immediate danger. And you might even find a back door route eventually out to the country or a secluded part of the city to at least ‘re-group’ away from immediate psycho violence.
• If you have friends or relatives in a less densely populated part of the city not far away with maybe a house you could hold up in then that would be a better location. And the added strength in numbers would be a slight situational improvement if you were by yourself.
• A last resort for an inner city dweller stuck in the middle when it all goes South is if you had a small false closet wall in your apartment you could sit and hide in quietly for a time, with some food and water, your gun, and important valuables. Throw a bunch of stuff around like you were already looted before you ran away. Go hide and you could simply leave your apartment door wide open. If they were down in the street ransacking and your building would likely be next, and they find all the mess inside they might just do a quick check through and move on. Then when the wave of human scum moved to their next target you could come out, lock yourself in again and hope for the best if they didn’t also torch your building.

Most large scale anarchy if it is localized will eventually burn itself out and authorities will get control back and you’ll be able to return to your home if it’s still there.

People always come together and selflessly help others in distress if they can. But an extreme level of ubiquitous catastrophic disaster will turn the milk of human kindness and charity dramatically ‘sour’.

If a major event actually does destroy all civilization as we know it and government collapses in a massive doomsday scenario and all out anarchy prevails, then people will change as well. It will be every man for themselves. You won’t be able to count on ‘help’ from anyone.

So it will automatically be ‘safer’ anywhere else outside of major cities, and the less visible and deeper you are out in a rural area the safer you will be. The more self reliant and prepared you are, the better you’ll survive.

“Failing to prepare…is preparing to fail” – Ben Franklin

After the dust settles from a cataclysmic event most scattered survivors will begin to gravitate towards and join small local groups who are relatively organized. These groups would be led by law enforcement people or military experienced citizens and their families and friends who have organized themselves to defend against the remnants of anarchists roving in packs of predators and violently taking what they can. But those survivors who regrouped into mutual support and future value production–mostly in rural areas– will survive in relative safety.

Small towns will once again become viable. Alternate commerce and commodity production will emerge again. And life will eventually go on again in the humble illusion of normalcy. This time, hopefully, with an improved philosophy for humanity.