Prepping - Strength in Numbers / Community

[jennyjj01]

Depends on the situation.

Wolves live in packs for a good reason.

When the time comes, Don't be a sheep: Don't be lame or frail.

And sadly we might reach the stage where we need to be 'well hard'

[tco-lincs]

My biggest issues with communities in that sense are they can quickly expand beyond the people you know and trust.

So lets say you have a good friend but at the time of SHTF that good friend also has cousins or other distant friends who once hear about his prepping, now before you know it instead there being two families you suddenly are providing for multiple.

[jennyjj01]

My biggest issues with communities in that sense are they can quickly expand beyond the people you know and trust.

So lets say you have a good friend but at the time of SHTF that good friend also has cousins or other distant friends who once hear about his prepping, now before you know it instead there being two families you suddenly are providing for multiple.

Our new 'community' will inevitably need to have some 'undesirable' characters to deal with undesirable requirements, such as disposing of the bodies of the other gang

I think I'd stay low and independent long enough for the unprepared herd to meet their fate.

Gotta prep our attitude to be hard. Allegiances would flex. At first I might keep in with the religious based local foodbanks and do gooders. All along planning to join 'Looters R Us' on the night shift.

[grenfell]

I can't help thinking that the word community has different meanings to different people. I'm sure some of it is fueled by the Hollywood fantasy of a fortified town patrolled by crossbow wielding guards in a scenario where there has been a huge die off but millions of decomposing bodies are largely ignored. That I see as being the most unlikely possibility and also tends to rely on some sort of instant event. Much more likely and sensible is a slower crash and the building up of friendships and working partnerships , all of which can be done now. The posts about communities that have developed in other countries are very informative but people just upping sticks and depositing their problems in another area or country is probably more common ( that probably poses the question of why anyone would then welcome refugees but that's a different topic).
Size wise I seem to recall reading that the "natural" size for a human community is somewhere between 125 and 200 , a tribe size or the rough size of an army company. Going by our population density that figure would likely be higher and I could see communities forming along ethnic lines especially in areas with large immigrant populations , trust is also a very important aspect.
To approach this from a different angle , let's assume something has happened and you've formed a community and are building trust within that community. Do you share preps to cement that trust or risk the truth coming out that you have stocks and becoming ostracized . Or put it another way , perhaps you or family become ill and only afterwards find out another community member had stocks of antibiotics or medicines but chose to do nothing to help...

[GeraldTheBonzai]

Some interesting bits of political philosophy here. There is a political author whose ideas appear to me - Robert Nozick. In his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, he looks at how the State actually comes into existence. His argument is that the catalyst is exactly this - small groups forming for mutual aid and defence. Those groups then have to determine how to arbitrate between other groups, without conflict. The process of arbitration leads to the establishment of a "higher" body, which is the nascent "State".

On the size of groups, this is supported by many of the theories found in evolutionary psychology. For very good reasons, people tend to group into smaller to larger units, from immediate family, to wider family, to clan, village etc. There are some very good evolutionary reasons for doing this (kin inbreeding avoidance etc). If you look at how grouping has been implemented historically - the Roman Legion structure is a good example - then they always tend to follow the same sort of increments in unit sizings.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog ... ial-groups

[grenfell]

That goes along with the figures I've read. Using that 150 figure and taking the population as 67 million gives us 446,667 groups or thereabouts which seems like a huge number of possible friction points. And I suppose there must be a contra argument that these 67 million are at least working together as some of community seeing as we aren't permanently ingaged in some sort of tribal warfare.

[Bijela]

My view is it depends on the event. If the power was out for a while, handing out a few tea lights for neighbours is one thing. But, I have limited "useful" people near by for anything major. Always be of value.

I would expect anyone still around after 30+ days is either a prepper/resourceful or part of a group taking from others. Reason being that there is not enough food locally to support everyone. If we had customers at the rate of summer, we would be out of most things in under a day.