Survival Group Leadership and Control Issues

Jerod, not his real name but he will recognize his question, wrote to UrbanSurvivalSkills asking about leadership and control of a survival group. Apparently he is in a group with too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. He said there are six full time "preppers in his neighborhood which Jerod considers the "group", plus a couple guys he calls gun freaks, plus a couple of friends and relatives, with most of them having sat around and discussed what a collapse may look like and how to be prepared.

While this group individually purchases equipment and material, Jerod says there are some issues with what types of food, equipment, material that some of the more vocal members "highly suggest" buying. Jerod said there are some disagreements with an outline on what they first steps should be following a collapse, mostly around providing security around their neighborhood. He said about 1/3 of the group wants to determine a military type chain of command.  One of the guys wants everyone to make a list of what and how much they have and Jerod keeps blowing that off, concerned about exposing everything to everyone.

UrbanMan replies: Jerod, I appreciate you giving me permission to use your e- mail, however I took your rather long e-mail and condensed it down. We agree that living and surviving by yourself or with just your family is worst case because of the lack of support, but this is a two edged sword as a larger group will create leadership and control issues.....as you have found out. 

I understand your survival group (in my words) to be several individuals and in some cases families, living on different properties who are loosely prepping together and are prepared to provide support to each other, but who are not planning on moving or bugging out to a central location when the collapse hits.

If you are planning on joint support for all and from all, particularly in response to time sensitive events, I hope you are all located close enough and have a tested communications system or a general plan in order to access support from each other.

Leadership in a group, especially of Type A individuals, can be very difficult as many of these people may be thinking with their ego's and their feelings as opposed to applying critical thinking skills for the benefit of the group. This can be further made difficult due to these individuals being concerned about the safety of their love ones, therefore reluctant to accept a differing point of view or decision. And legitimately there can be a difference of opinion, among honest men, on how to proceed.

It's pretty simple if you own a house or a Bug Out retreat and a bunch of people show up to survive with you,....it's your way or the highway. Much different if you are one of many households occupying a neighborhood street and know you must organize to survive but disagree on how to do so.

American para-military forces or militia, certainly during the French and Indian Wars, and the Revolutionary War used to elect their leaders. Now, while that sounds a valid like a way to go, it can also split the team based on personal loyalties. Think about this: If the leader made a decision that, you thought, placed your family at risk, would you not do something about it?

At some point a survival group will need to have a decision making process, especially facing dire circumstances like security, disease control, water and food procurement, refugee control or visitor vetting.  Be it a linear chain of command, a committee or whatever. This has to be a timely process as well.

I am of the mind that a small committee is generally the best method of decision making within a grouping of independents elements. Maybe your core individuals get together and everyone has a say to what they admire or desire in a leader. This will help each person mentally evaluate the others as potential leaders or decision makers. Then the group votes on establishing, say a three person committee to make necessary decisions. If this is succesful, then the group votes by ballot on those three people.

Another thing you may be able to do is to have each group member write one or two key issues (in a tactful way) as topics for discussion. Group members who are not respect nor reasonable in this process will expose themselves as the same. If the group cannot be reasonable as a group then it may be time for you to disassociate yourself from the group. This may bring hard feelings and it would best be resolved with you moving before a collapse every started.

I hope I gave you some things to think about. Good luck in any case.

Book Review: Holding Their Own

Bottom Line Up Front - "Holding Their Own" good book,..I am waiting the publishing of the second book continuing the story. If you haven't read the book then don't read the remainder of the post,.....I don't want to ruin the story for you, .....as I am going to re-call some of the story line and using it as a lessons learned review.

The setup story of how the United States pluges into collapse and chaos is entirely plausible,....many of the factors in the book either exist in whole or are real and potential threats to this country.  In fact, the author said as much.

The main subjects in the book, Bishop and wife Teri, hunker down in their 'off the main path' suburb, organizing with their neighbors.  It is not only possible but necessary for a small community to organize to meet the threats. As the federal government starts to regain control and require people to rally at locations that will basically become camps to control the population, Bishop's community starts to unravel as people have different views on what is best for their family.  The situation of dimishing food stocks not to mention security concerns also impact on decisions to leave. This is probably what will happen when a community, organizing for survival, does so after the need becomes real and in their face, as you can't pick your neighbors.

Bishop and Teri, who had prepped to a small degree (mainly for Hurricanes) load their truck and start out for West Texas where Bishop owns some land and had a trailer pre-positioned in a remote area co-located next to a year round natural spring. So basically you had the situation where Bishop had a planned Bug Out location, with the scenario where Bishop waits, Bugging In, at his suburban home to wait and see if the situation will straighten out.  This is a probable scenario for most of us.  The trick is to Bug Out in an organized fashion and not under pressure or an environment that will make it too dangerous to get to our  pre-planned and or prepared Bug Out location.

It is human nature to stay where your home, belongings and friends are. Indeed the lesson here is to develop some factors or guidelines before hand that would trigger the Bug Out. As in Bishop's case they waited too long, expending precious food, water and fuel while Bugging In.

Fuel and water play a large issue in this story. To be fair, the story had Bishop stocking and rotating fuel pre-collapse, but he got lazy and the collapse found him with several empty five gallon fuel cans.

The water issue is huge as we simply can't live without out. The idea of having a once a week water service delivering a 5 gallon jug of water, and the one time order to ten additional jugs would give a urban/sub-urban household 50 gallons of drinking water at any time a collapse would hit. Smart people would combine this is additional storage including the main collapse event when municipal water sources are still probably flowing for a short time to come. Bathtub water bobs, spare jugs, 55 gallon barrels and even kitchen
pots now become storage.

I am going to end this review with storyline of Bishop and Teri transiting secondary roads across Texas, mainly at night using night vision goggles - all smart things to do, but a survival group or team, even a small one would have made the trip safer. The lone survivor concept just kind of freaks me out....there will be way too many of these individual or duos anyway.

Again, bottom line - good book. I look forward to the story continuing.

Urban Survival - The Chinese Invasion

I received an e-mail from Bill regarding Chinese companies establishing factories here in the United States , Bill writes: ”Have you seen this? As I understand the concept, this will be an independent Chinese community. And, the models built in China have exploded in population. But, the independence is what bothers me...along with the provision of special immigration status and the proximity to an airport. Perhaps I'm reading more into this than I should but I can envision this and any other similar zones established in the US to become outposts for Chinese military and intelligence operations that would pose a significant security risk or, in the event of a catastrophic event of some sort, the means for "invasion". Is my thinking off the wall?...Thanks...Bill”

What Bill is talking about comes from an article from December in the Idaho Statesman

Apparently a Chinese national company is interested in developing a 10,000- to 30,000-acre technology zone for industry, retail centers and homes south of the Boise Airport. Officials of the China National Machinery Industry Corp. have broached the idea — based on a concept popular in China today — to city and state leaders. They are also interested in helping build and finance a fertilizer plant near American Falls, an idea company officials returned to Idaho this month to pursue.

This ambitious, long-term proposal would start with a manufacturing and warehouse zone tied to the airport, and could signify a shift in the economic relationship between the two superpowers — a relationship once defined by U.S. companies like the J.R. Simplot Co., Hewlett-Packard and Morrison-Knudsen that would head to China to build and develop.

Public comment over the concept of a Chinese company getting the red carpet treatment have promoted a lot of anti-chinese comments and some of that obviously is frustration with the direction the U.S. economy is going. In fact, following Wall Streets six week slide and the U.S. Government’s inability to fix the budget and national debt issues, the head of a top Chinese rating agency, Guan Jianzhong, president of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd., claims it's too late……that the U.S. has as already defaulted by letting the U.S. dollar weaken. "In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting," Guan was quoted as saying.

I guess it just isn't bad enough that China has to fund most of our foreign debt, the fact that States are kowtowing to Chinese and foreign firms because our economic leverage in the world is decaying rapidly is the most dangerous thing in my mind.

Although I am a giant believer in States Rights, the State of Idaho has no statutory authority to grant ANY immigration status let alone a special one. Bill has a point that this and other Chinese businesses, which are owned by the Chinese Government, whose end state is the destruction of the U.S. as a world class economic and military power, would have a foot hold in which to conduct economic sabotage, possible have control over elements of industry and certainly use the business to bring in intelligence operatives for espionage against the U.S. Government and U.S. industry.

Having control over an airport doesn’t do you any overt good since you would still have to fly airplanes into the U.S. airspace and through the National Air Defense network. What good it would do for the Chinese is for direct flights to land where Chinese could easily develop protocols to circumvent U.S. Customs bringing in basically anything they wanted to include chemical and biological agents, nuclear devices and personnel.

So Bill, I don’t think your thinking is too far off the wall at all.