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General Discussion / Re: Self Sufficiency - 2024 vs. 1776
« Last post by Sir John Honeybucket on May 19, 2024, 12:44:38 PM »THIS is a good discussion!
The MAG topic is one that many people, myself included, really don't analyze deeply. To me (ymmv) 99% of what we call "survival" was taught in old Home Economics classes:
1. Shelter
2. Water
3. Fire/kitchen
The last 1% is SECURITY; the ABILITY to hang-on to your shelter, water and fire in the face of criminal attack; this ofcourse is where your guns and fireteam tactics would become necessary.
Any team MUST enhance the points above, or else you must consider whether they are worth keeping on the team.' Let's have a look:
1. Shelter. This BEGINS with your individual choice of clothing, boots and etc. Your first layer of 'shelter' are the clothes on your back. What does your clothing choice do for your survival and maybe even comfort? What works in South Florida will kill you by lunchtime in Northern Idaho, much of the year. Carefully analyze how does your MAG recruit dresses for shooting and other activities. The next and to me, MOST important layer of 'shelter' is your home and it's neighborhood. Urban, suburbia, small town or deep country? Learn to optimize you home. For us, we live in a very rural area, surrounded by forests, watermen and farmers and have a bit less than one acre of our own, so we are fortunate to have land for our little gardens, wood lot and etc.
2. Water: By this I mean SAFE drinkable/cooking water is absolutely necessary for your survival and having a life worth living. The ability to wash yourself, your clothes and eating utensils is hugely important. Again, we live in a highly rural environment, so our deep well is where we routinely get our water. However, in other environments, the rules change. Cities: learn where low spigots are on tall buildings, to get short term water. As a rule, the further out of the city you are, the more access you have to water, IF you know where to look and how to purify it. Does your MAG help or hinder your access to clean water?
3. Fire/Kitchen. I like sushi as much as the next guy, but in a survival situation, the danger of food pathogens in raw foods are ever present, so you must assume that cooking of food ( a survival skill...) is going to be the rule. Does your MAG assist you in collecting, then cooking good, nutritious and FILLING foods? If not, why not? If the MAG gives you more mouths to feed with no significant return on investment, leave before things go bad. You cannot afford to be running a Welfare Office.
Defence of the home, water and kitchen is the last 1%, not because it's unimportant, it's crucial, but your rifles , optics and fire teams are for one reason, to hang-on to your 1, 2, &3. As the saying goes "You rarely NEED a gun, but when you do, nothing else will do.". Does your MAG own and TRAIN with firearms? Do you train in watch standing, patrolling, layered, fire team tactics, or is it at best a mob, blazing away and a lot of nothing? I can tell you from experience that the difference between a mob versus an Army is hugely important. If your MAG will not enhance your ability to detect a threat and project force if needed, you need to either fix this failure, or leave, why waste you time and resources if there is no gain?
Another reason to join an MAG would be access to critical skills and specialists. I'd stack them in roughly this order:
A. Medical, doctors, dentists, mil medics, nurses .
B. Skilled members: farmers, watermen, radio operators/monitors ( I live on the Chesapeake Bay), --- who else ?
C. I'd like a MAG member who owns an off-grid brewery !!!
Nice to have: Special operators, Law Enforcement people (both pref retired), boat captains and crew, aircraft pilots, successful hunters with their rifles.
So, does the MAG add to, or detract from YOUR goals of a good life in rotten times? Remember TEAM CONCEPT: you must recruit, or train what you need, but numbers of warm bodies is not the goal; SKILLS and attitudes are the goal. I can train a person to stand watch, but if they're lazy, dishonest and unreliable, I won't even try to train that out of them. Because it's difficult to push those types of people out the door post-event, the logical option is to never let them in the door and best that they don't even know about your MAG.
"Yeah I don't know WHY JohnyMac threw me out of his Pa Mountain Club" but man they have a lot of food and pretty sheep 
and I know right where they iz and how to get'em..."
This will not end well.
EXAMPLE of Mutual Aid: I am old, my body is a derelict vessel adrift in this sea of life and would be considered to be a hazard to navigation if I were in the water. However, over the decades, my skills and LOCATION were optimized for living well in tough times. So, if I had some 20 to 40 year old, combat vets with the right attitude and some skills, but they live up in D.C. ( or some other Hellscape ) I'd likely see a MUTUAL benefit if we combined as a team. I get trained. disciplined and experienced watch standers, extra ( and strong ) hands for tasks and etc. and THEY gain a sustained bug-out location, a secure place for their forward deployed equipment and food for when they MUST bug-out, when their cities are about to go lethal on them. Being a former soldier & sailboat cruiser' I can show them the best E&E water routes & access points to my property, help to set-up their emergency comms between us and advise on what kind of very portable boat;/kayak they would need to get here without needing highways. (Waterways ARE the original 'highways'. That would be an example of a MUTUAL AID scenario.
The MAG topic is one that many people, myself included, really don't analyze deeply. To me (ymmv) 99% of what we call "survival" was taught in old Home Economics classes:
1. Shelter
2. Water
3. Fire/kitchen
The last 1% is SECURITY; the ABILITY to hang-on to your shelter, water and fire in the face of criminal attack; this ofcourse is where your guns and fireteam tactics would become necessary.
Any team MUST enhance the points above, or else you must consider whether they are worth keeping on the team.' Let's have a look:
1. Shelter. This BEGINS with your individual choice of clothing, boots and etc. Your first layer of 'shelter' are the clothes on your back. What does your clothing choice do for your survival and maybe even comfort? What works in South Florida will kill you by lunchtime in Northern Idaho, much of the year. Carefully analyze how does your MAG recruit dresses for shooting and other activities. The next and to me, MOST important layer of 'shelter' is your home and it's neighborhood. Urban, suburbia, small town or deep country? Learn to optimize you home. For us, we live in a very rural area, surrounded by forests, watermen and farmers and have a bit less than one acre of our own, so we are fortunate to have land for our little gardens, wood lot and etc.
2. Water: By this I mean SAFE drinkable/cooking water is absolutely necessary for your survival and having a life worth living. The ability to wash yourself, your clothes and eating utensils is hugely important. Again, we live in a highly rural environment, so our deep well is where we routinely get our water. However, in other environments, the rules change. Cities: learn where low spigots are on tall buildings, to get short term water. As a rule, the further out of the city you are, the more access you have to water, IF you know where to look and how to purify it. Does your MAG help or hinder your access to clean water?
3. Fire/Kitchen. I like sushi as much as the next guy, but in a survival situation, the danger of food pathogens in raw foods are ever present, so you must assume that cooking of food ( a survival skill...) is going to be the rule. Does your MAG assist you in collecting, then cooking good, nutritious and FILLING foods? If not, why not? If the MAG gives you more mouths to feed with no significant return on investment, leave before things go bad. You cannot afford to be running a Welfare Office.
Defence of the home, water and kitchen is the last 1%, not because it's unimportant, it's crucial, but your rifles , optics and fire teams are for one reason, to hang-on to your 1, 2, &3. As the saying goes "You rarely NEED a gun, but when you do, nothing else will do.". Does your MAG own and TRAIN with firearms? Do you train in watch standing, patrolling, layered, fire team tactics, or is it at best a mob, blazing away and a lot of nothing? I can tell you from experience that the difference between a mob versus an Army is hugely important. If your MAG will not enhance your ability to detect a threat and project force if needed, you need to either fix this failure, or leave, why waste you time and resources if there is no gain?
Another reason to join an MAG would be access to critical skills and specialists. I'd stack them in roughly this order:
A. Medical, doctors, dentists, mil medics, nurses .
B. Skilled members: farmers, watermen, radio operators/monitors ( I live on the Chesapeake Bay), --- who else ?
C. I'd like a MAG member who owns an off-grid brewery !!!
Nice to have: Special operators, Law Enforcement people (both pref retired), boat captains and crew, aircraft pilots, successful hunters with their rifles.
So, does the MAG add to, or detract from YOUR goals of a good life in rotten times? Remember TEAM CONCEPT: you must recruit, or train what you need, but numbers of warm bodies is not the goal; SKILLS and attitudes are the goal. I can train a person to stand watch, but if they're lazy, dishonest and unreliable, I won't even try to train that out of them. Because it's difficult to push those types of people out the door post-event, the logical option is to never let them in the door and best that they don't even know about your MAG.
"Yeah I don't know WHY JohnyMac threw me out of his Pa Mountain Club" but man they have a lot of food and pretty sheep and I know right where they iz and how to get'em..." This will not end well.
EXAMPLE of Mutual Aid: I am old, my body is a derelict vessel adrift in this sea of life and would be considered to be a hazard to navigation if I were in the water. However, over the decades, my skills and LOCATION were optimized for living well in tough times. So, if I had some 20 to 40 year old, combat vets with the right attitude and some skills, but they live up in D.C. ( or some other Hellscape ) I'd likely see a MUTUAL benefit if we combined as a team. I get trained. disciplined and experienced watch standers, extra ( and strong ) hands for tasks and etc. and THEY gain a sustained bug-out location, a secure place for their forward deployed equipment and food for when they MUST bug-out, when their cities are about to go lethal on them. Being a former soldier & sailboat cruiser' I can show them the best E&E water routes & access points to my property, help to set-up their emergency comms between us and advise on what kind of very portable boat;/kayak they would need to get here without needing highways. (Waterways ARE the original 'highways'. That would be an example of a MUTUAL AID scenario.
