As a person actively preparing since the late 80s, the term resilience has many meanings for me.
Am I resilient as a person, physically and mentally? Is my family resilient as well? Is our living arrangement resilient? Do we have resiliency in our plans and preparations? All of these are critical questions, ones I focus on every day, because there is always room for improvement and new ideas to incorporate. In this article I will address the types of preparedness in terms of numbers and the two primary options for one’s retreat or refuge location.
Types of Prepared People
Just as there are numerous forms of resiliency, there are many types of Prepared People. Some writers break us down into as many as 18 categories in a single list: Wilderness, Hoarding, False, Rich, etc. Virtually every preparedness website tackles this subject. Here’s a couple of examples:
My approach is somewhat simpler, as I look at the size of the effort more than the behavior of the people involved.
In terms of resiliency, it takes numbers to be resilient. A group is always stronger than an individual, and that is critically important to anyone wanting to become more resilient. This is a primary reason for the development of villages, walled cities, castles, and eventually nations as they developed over the centuries.
Certainly, there are multiple approaches to becoming prepared, but in my opinion the numbers are the critical aspect. These include: Lone Wolf, Nuclear Family, Small Group, Large Group, and Prepared Community. Happily, I am not the only one with such a mindset.
Lone Wolf – 1 person
The Lone Wolf is one who plans to survive any crisis situation on their own, with no help from anyone. These tend to be highly confidant and very skilled individuals, or people with some degree of delusion regarding their skills or abilities.
Some in this category seem to have personalities similar to the Mountain Men of the American West; others might be described as Marauders who plan on taking what they need from others during a crisis situation.
When I started preparing, I never considered the concept of the Lone Wolf. Granted, I was married with three young daughters at the time, but the idea of trying to ride out TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) by myself struck me as a terribly foolish approach. Any injury, illness, or misfortune would mean almost certain death and I prefer better odds. And, as there is no way any single person can be awake constantly for security, the idea never had any traction with me. I consider security a critical concern.
Pros – decision making is easy, keeping things secret is simple, easy to hide.
Cons – Lone Wolf must be the jack-of-all trades, and will likely be the master of none. Security is all but impossible since the person must sleep sometime and will be completely vulnerable often.
Nuclear Family: 2 Adults and their children
So, I began where most people wanting to become more prepared start, at the Nuclear Family level, which is most commonly a married couple and their children. It took just a couple of months to realize that approach wasn’t significantly more survivable than the Lone Wolf.
While having double the number of adults in the mix is great, adding children means a huge amount of work and resources are required. Even with two adults, it is still impossible to mount a credible defense or to maintain 24X7 security. If the kids are older teenagers, things get better as they can take on some of the tasks involved in surviving whatever the crisis is, and assuming the parents can stomach the concept, some of the defensive effort as well. But the situation is still far from optimal. And, teenagers being teenagers, I can think of many potential issues that may arise with teens in crisis situations.
Let’s look at the most basic aspect of defending your home or retreat. There will likely be four sides of the structure that can be attacked, but with only two adults you can only defend two of them. Thus, leaving the other two sides wide open for infiltration and allowing an attack from behind your defenders. Say you add two teenage kids to the mix, the upside is you can now defend all four sides; the negative is that you really want at least two per side so that one can fire while the other is moving or reloading.
Pros – Same as the Lone Wolf, with the addition of another adult’s skills and capabilities.
Cons – Also, much the same as the Lone wolf, with the additional issue of minding children.
Small Group: 4-6 Primary, 12-18 Secondary members
The Small Group was the next step on my road to resiliency. Realizing more hands would be needed for all the work involved in surviving a crisis, as well as more people able and willing to defend the retreat, I began forming a small group of like-minded members. I was not surprised to find that very few women were interested in being prepared back then, and the group I formed was composed of men who were trying to do what they could to protect their wives and children.
I used the term Primary Member for the men who were actively involved and Secondary Members for their dependents. Doing so was important as I developed lists of all those who would be involved in our efforts, what skills they had, and what jobs they might perform at our retreat. These lists, and what are basically bylaws, provide the structure for the group to function and established the chain-of-command.
Many people forming such groups will prefer to avoid that level of structure, which is a major reason that creating groups can be very difficult. But the old adage of “Strength in Numbers” holds true, especially during a crisis situation. Someone has to be in charge as making decisions by committee takes time you won’t have when under duress, and can easily turn into a source of frustration and friction in the group so avoid that at all costs!
Bear in mind that forming a group for mutual assistance is very difficult, especially compared to the Lone Wolf or Nuclear Family approaches. You are literally placing your life, and the lives of your family, in the hands of others and asking them to do the same with you.
You are trying to identify and recruit others without giving away too much information while trying to screen out people who don’t fit with the group. You are looking for specific skills and abilities, but you absolutely must find people with the right chemistry to mesh with the group. On top of all of that, you must also find people who share the majority of your mindset in terms of your specific approach and focus on how to best survive TEOTWAWKI. Finally, they will have to accept your chain of command as it stands without complaint or issues. It is a daunting task to say the least as I can attest to with decades of experience in this area.
James Jones, a longtime survival expert and teacher, describes the process, the obstacles, and the goals when forming a group in his article “Organizing a Survival Self-Reliance or Mutual Assistance Team.”
Even if you are successful in recruiting members to the group (never assume you will be successful in your efforts) you almost certainly lose members over time. Recruiting never really ends, though the level of criticality will vary, so it’s a good idea to constantly recruit even when you don’t have a pressing need. For example, if you lose one of your Primary Members and the associated Secondary Members, it’s important to find a replacement. While if you lose two Primary Members etc. you may not have enough people to fully staff your retreat, which then makes recruiting a top priority.
Pros – More hands and skills mean more things can be accomplished, more defenders in case of attack, losses (accident, health issues, fighting) are less devastating, vastly improves the ability to cross-train people in skills.
Cons – Virtually impossible to keep things confidential (especially if anyone leaves the group), more personalities mean more likelihood of disagreements, requires some type of leadership or chain-of-command structure, recruiting can be painful.
Large Groups – 10+ Primary Members and 30+ Secondary Members
Large Groups, as the name suggests, takes the size of the group to the next level. I never tried to morph my Small Group into a Large Group. The recruiting headaches alone were enough to turn me away from that idea, to say nothing of the potential personality and “political” issues.
Sure, a larger group would mean even more hands and skills, but without a very strong chain-of-command it can easily become hopeless in a hurry. The other issue I faced was the size of our retreat location and the maximum number of people who could live onsite with any level of comfort or privacy.
Pros – Same as the Small Group, but with a multiplier.
Cons – Same as the Small Group, but with a multiplier.
Prepared Community – Potentially hundreds of members
Considered by many to be the ultimate resilience goal, the concept of a community filled with like-minded individuals/families is very appealing. There are many forms of this, from the neighborhood that forms a MAG (Mutual Assistance Group) to a town that prepares for crisis situations in a united fashion. Again, there are many versions of these and many ways to set them up. But, much like in the groups described above, it takes an incredible amount of work, effort, coordination, and patience to make one reality.
The biggest issue in forming one of these would be the people who live in the proposed community already, and those who come later, who don’t possess the preparedness mindset or participate in the efforts to be prepared. This is the equivalent of having a flat tire on a car. Sure, the vehicle can roll or move a bit with a flat, but it will not function at anything like peak performance. Such persons will likely be a drain on the group’s preps as they are unlikely to adequately prepare themselves. Such persons mean a significantly higher likelihood of failing the group in some way, as they have no allegiance to the group else they would have prepared like everyone else.
So, they might not perform in group related tasks or assignments, with potentially disastrous consequences for the group. Imagine a person such as this placed on guard duty who doesn’t guard and possibly enables an attack on the retreat. Imagine a person assigned to kitchen duty who doesn’t wash cookware properly, and many of the members end up with food poisoning. The previous examples are of a passive nature, neglecting to do what is needed, imagine a person who actively works against the group.
Unless every person in the community buys into the concept you are almost certainly going to have problems, so expect them, as I doubt any community will ever be 100% in participation or loyalty unless some Preppers only situation can be implemented.
Some examples of Prepared Communities follow, starting with one I co-founded called Fortitude Ranch.
Fortitude Ranch
This as an example of a prepared community designed to avoid many of the issues I described previously. The only way to become a member is to intentionally go through the process.
One must apply, pay the initial fees; agree in writing to follow the Ranch rules and direction of the Ranch staff, etc. All of which add up to a defined chain of command in advance, people who are trained in a multitude of areas work as staff, no one in the community who didn’t choose to be there, and no one in the mix without “skin in the game”. Granted some issues with loyalty, chain of command, and such are expected, but they should be minimal compared to what unintentional locales will likely face.
The Fortitude Ranch website lists locations open for memberships in West Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, with Texas coming soon and more states/locations to follow. Pricing starts at a level that most Middle-Class Americans should be able to afford, rather than the huge costs shown in the next example.
Is every location guaranteed to thrive or survive a crisis situation? Of course not, it would be foolish for any prepared community to think that. With any concept for surviving TEOTWAWKI the best anyone can hope for is improving the odds that you, your family, and perhaps some others can get through the crisis intact. The risks and threats are such that surviving is the only meaningful goal, anything more is a blessing.
The next example is one of the very pricy locations I referred to above.
Survival Condo
Their website describes two locations, each able to serve roughly 75 people in luxurious conditions. Evidently both are in Kansas, which makes them difficult to reach during a crisis for much of the USA. Costs begin in the millions of dollars, making these out of reach for all but the wealthy.
As if the cost wasn’t enough of a deterrent for this prepared community, they don’t seem to have any kind of leadership concept and their security arrangements seem rather insignificant for such an expensive facility. Both of these are major faults in terms of resilience.
Once a unit has been purchased it is the property of the buyer and can be visited/lived in at any time. As these are located in Kansas, and were former nuclear missile sites, I wonder about the availability of recreation options available in the area. Such resources can, in a crisis, be critical for many reasons, especially for hunting and fishing. They probably have good farmland in the area, but are folks spending millions for their condos willing or able to become farmers?
This is an example of how important mindset and skills can be to the long-term resilience of a group.
Vivos Xpoint
This facility is located in the Southwest corner of South Dakota, a long way away from most of the U.S. population. This distance is good from the perspective of isolation from potential problems with people coming out of the cities. But it’s going to be very hard to get there during a crisis before travel is somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible. Unless the members are alerted to the impending crisis before the general population most won’t be able to get there I suspect. Like many aspects of resilience or surviving a crisis, a positive is also a negative.
This place is huge; on their website they equate their land to the island of Manhattan in New York City. For those not familiar with that island, it is 13.4 miles long as well as 2.3 miles wide and home to Central Park, Broadway, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, etc. The Vivos site is a former Army facility built to house ammunition which closed long ago, hence the hundreds of bunkers now being offered as survival housing. Pricing is fairly reasonable for the bunkers themselves, and the owner can decide how basic or luxurious they want their unit to be with the costs reflecting their choices. Each bunker can support up to 24 people if I read the website correctly, so the total population of this place could easily be in the thousands.
I had hoped to find some useful information on a prepared community built into a small town or perhaps a suburban neighborhood but I have not been able to do so. I have found general comments about such locations, and similar, but definitive enough to share here. Such a situation is, to my way of thinking, very attractive to many people seeking resiliency. However, getting one of these up and running could be extremely difficult, for a variety of reasons. Some examples; not everyone living there will participate, nor will they accept the leadership in a crisis environment and turnover could easily be an issue.
Pros – A Prepared Community is the most likely grouping of people to survive TEOTWAWKI due to the potential number of defenders, availability of people to do the requisite work, as well as the broadest assortment of skills and abilities.
Cons – Hardest of the groups to avoid leadership and political issues, very hard to maintain a low profile to avoid refugee or marauder groups, and difficult to keep out folks who won’t contribute to the survival of the group.
Bug-Out Vs. Bug-In
The other major aspect of resilience is the opposing concepts of bug-out versus bug-in, referring to where the family or group would seek to survive the crisis.
For any refuge or retreat location one of the critical aspects is being able to maintain a low profile both before and during the crisis. The fewer people who know you are prepared the better; else they may decide that what is yours should be theirs and take action to make that so.
The Bug-In concept is staying where one lives full time and where you plan to survive TEOTWAWKI. This may be the option of choice for many reasons, some examples: no alternate location available, a lack of transportation options to get there, difficult travel conditions (especially natural obstacles such as mountains or rivers), concerns or lack of trust in others, or just a strong preference to stay where you are.
Bug-In
Whether the Bug-In concept is viable will be dependent on multiple variables including: is the location defensible, is there adequate storage for enough supplies to provide for the number of people who will attempt to ride-out TEOTWAWKI there, is there a sufficient water supply, is there enough room for the number of people expected, etc.
I have friends who are “Bug-In Preppers”, and that option is definitely the best option for them. Granted, most of them live in areas I would classify as places for urban or suburban residents to consider as Bug-Out considerations, so they have a huge advantage that way.
Personally, I never really considered the Bug-In option as viable for me or my group. Looking at the variables above, I evaluated my home location against all of them and knew there was no way to stay during a true crisis. I would happily ride out a local or regional disaster such as a tornado here, but not a major event. Here are my personal considerations:
- Is the location defensible? NO! I live in Chicago Metro Area, home to roughly 8,000,000 people, which means it wouldn’t be hard for folks wanting to take our stuff to get close enough to threaten us. There really isn’t any option here to form a prepared community as a neighborhood as the turnover on homes is fairly frequent. With this in mind, it would not be unreasonable to expect some group of motivated individuals to surround and attack my home, and there is no way I could ever stockpile enough ammunition to defend against even a small percentage of the potential threat.
- Is there enough storage? Currently, my wife and I are the only ones living here full time, and for the two of us we have ample storage space and considerable stores. If my children, their spouses, and grandkids join us, things get much more crowded. Doable, but very tight. If my group members show up, there is no way to fit everyone and everything in the house.
- Is there enough water? Not that I would depend on during a crisis. Any significant power interruption or cyber-attack means no water within a day or two. We don’t have a well and there is no potable water source nearby.
- Is there enough room? Depends on who shows up. My immediate family lives within 15 or 20 minutes of my home by car. In most crisis scenarios they should be able to get here and as noted we could handle that many. My group members are further away, call it an hour by car, and we really don’t have room for them anyway. Nor do they have room for us as an alternate approach.
Bug-Out
The Bug-Out concept is where one has determined that they cannot stay in their primary residence during a major crisis. Bugging Out typically means travel from their usual home to a retreat or refuge location. There are some with no fixed destination in mind when they Bug-Out.
A significant portion of the Lone Wolf types operate with this mindset, but most prefer not to wander off into the unknown. For the Nuclear Family, their location will often be a cabin or similar in a remote locale. For groups, their location of choice is frequently a property designed to shelter that group, complete with everything needed to keep them as healthy and safe as possible.
For a Bug-Out location to be a viable choice you must consider the same questions as the Bug-In location: is the property defensible, is there enough storage, is there enough water, and is there enough space for everyone that is expected? In addition, the Bug-Out type must also consider: whether there are relatively safe routes to get from home to the retreat, can everything (people, supplies, gear, fuel, etc.) be transported in the vehicles available, what obstacles (choke points, rivers, mountains, and cities) must be avoided, etc.
There are other key considerations when shopping for or designing a retreat or refuge:
- If at all possible, you want the location further from any major metro area than can be reached by an average vehicle on one tank of fuel. James Wesley Rawles advises being two to three hours from any major metro areas, but that is a fuzzy number at best. Are we considering that distance at highway or back road speeds? How does terrain impact the distance? This is critical because you don’t want to be easily reached by potential threats from major metro areas and being further out reduces that threat. Why make it easy for others to get to your area?
- Having to cross one or more rivers while heading to your retreat is a pain, but that obstacle can be important as anyone else heading in your direction will have to deal with it as well. And if the locals manage to set up roadblocks after you’ve passed through then so much the better.
- Mountain ranges can be worse, especially when passes close over the winter months, but again, if you can get through before they close you likely will have several months before refugees or marauders can get through.
- What medical facilities exist in the area? Hopefully you won’t need any, but if you need medical care, you will really need it.
- Are there any prisons, inpatient mental health facilities, or similar in the area you have to travel through or the area being considered for your Bug-Out location? Any of these could be problematic during a crisis as the staff might not stay on the job and might choose the “humane” approach of releasing the inmates/patients.
It is important to recognize that when it comes to resiliency or being prepared there is no One-Size-Fits-All or even One-Size-Fits-Most. Every region, every climate, every type of terrain, and every base population will have an effect on the choices and decisions made by someone as they strive to be more resilient or prepared. Each person will have to do what’s best for themselves, their families, and their groups and I pray that our preparations are never needed.
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