Helping the neighbours - in what situations....?

[jansman]

Yorkshire Andy, I have been approached already by my insurance, they are genuinely concerned about my stiff neck and say I MUST go to the doctor.

[Brambles]

Got to be careful here. Bearing in mind that we are in the heart of rural England and we have a certain type of population.Said 4 wheel drive lady smokes ' Ganja' and the kind of vehicles and people that visit are ...you work it out.

The idea that SHTF the country is safer than the city is a total fallacy.

I think its just some peoples fantasy to run off to the country and live in the woods, we just don't have the woods never mind the unwooded countryside to support us all. We'd be short of bunnies and pigeons pretty quickly and only what we could carry to support us. Bloody right the country wouldn't be safer if the SHTF.

I used to live in what could only be described as a preppers paradise. The village was a loose collection of houses off the beaten track. It also had the highest crime rate in the area. Just about everyone had been a victim of crime, from motors stolen off the drive, to shed break-ins, home invasion and physical violence including a neighbour being driven to a cashpoint at gunpoint!
When I moved out and into town, my contents insurance went down by £8 month. Where I live now, in another urban area my insurance has gone down again, so I can concur that country living isn't all it's cracked up to be and this from a born and raised country girl.


Yep, anyone who thinks they will be safe living like Bear Grylls or Ray Mears hasn't spent enough time thinking about it. Every time I've been backpacking, I've always bumped into someone.
The people in this area seem OK, I have to admit I haven't made a lot of effort to get to know them, so I'm not sure what I would do. At the moment I have no plans one way or another.

[diamond lil]

I think the main thing is to be on your own home ground, know the terrain, the weather, the people. Up here it's great for preppers in that people are thin on the ground - but then so is food and shelter. But I know a few people who live in wee cottages hidden well off the road who have a great life. Poached salmon, deer, hare, all sorts of game birds and ducks, big gardens planted with veg, big log pile, lots of skill to barter- like fencing, ditches & drains, dry stone dyking. These folk live below the radar, never sign on the dole and work only for cash. They will survive anything, because they've been living like this going back generations.

[jansman]

I think the main thing is to be on your own home ground, know the terrain, the weather, the people. Up here it's great for preppers in that people are thin on the ground - but then so is food and shelter. But I know a few people who live in wee cottages hidden well off the road who have a great life. Poached salmon, deer, hare, all sorts of game birds and ducks, big gardens planted with veg, big log pile, lots of skill to barter- like fencing, ditches & drains, dry stone dyking. These folk like below the radar, never sign on the dole and work only for cash. They will survive anything, because they've been living like this going back generations.

Right now I could fancy that!

[Deeps]

I think the main thing is to be on your own home ground, know the terrain, the weather, the people. Up here it's great for preppers in that people are thin on the ground - but then so is food and shelter. But I know a few people who live in wee cottages hidden well off the road who have a great life. Poached salmon, deer, hare, all sorts of game birds and ducks, big gardens planted with veg, big log pile, lots of skill to barter- like fencing, ditches & drains, dry stone dyking. These folk like below the radar, never sign on the dole and work only for cash. They will survive anything, because they've been living like this going back generations.

Right now I could fancy that!

The lack of broadband would be a deal breaker for me now.

[Jamesey1981]

I can think of a few situations where the countryside would be safer, but that would go well beyond just a slow societal breakdown, if there was a particularly virulent and fatal disease for example the people in cities would most likely have been hit hard, and those that are left will be in real trouble, the likelihood of them becoming infected is huge, and in that situation there's going to be dead people piling up, with all the more ordinary problems that would cause.
People that live in sparsely populated areas are much more likely to escape both the mega infection and most of the aftermath.

If you look at the Second World War, yes everyone was rationed and fuel was hard to come by etc, but the people that lived in the country had more chance of supplementing their rations than those that lived in central London, I'm not saying everyone in the countryside was feasting while the city people starved, but even with the rabbit population being hit hard you've got a lot more chance of getting one in a rural area than you have in hackney!

Slow societal breakdown would hit everyone equally I would think, you'd be more insulated from it in the countryside, you'd still be struggling but you'd have more chance of keeping it together, but once everyone in the cities realised that they need to pack a BOB then it'll get just as ugly in the countryside!

With regard to scumbag neighbours, I'm sure we all have at least one dwelling near us that's inhabited by thieves/junkies or just generally scummy people wherever we live, but one thing to remember, people like that tend to have plenty of enemies, and if you could be pretty sure that the police are either non existent or not going to be interested then I don't know how long they'd last before someone pays them a visit to readjust their attitude, and just as it used to be in the frontier towns in the USA, mob justice is likely to be swift, inescapable and permanent.

[Tricky]

For me this would very much depend on the scenario and the cause of SHTF scenario. If it is pandemic, I/we are locked in, completely and long-term. Any attempted breach of that would be dealt with, with extreme prejudice.
But it seems likely to me that any SHTF scenario worth more complex planning might be due to a number of factors that could result in a loss of resources, across a range of suppliers. Loss of electricity or gas supplies alone is hardly likely to create a complete breakdown. Lack of petrol fuel and lack of foodstuffs hitting the shops would be more concerning and compounded problems like a loss of water, supplies and fuel across all commodities would have me in a state of mind that it was about to become a very serious scenario.
If the scenario was a singular loss then yes, I'd porbably help my neighbours. We know many of them and whilst nice folks, I'm not sure just how far I would trust any of them should things get serious.
In a situation where the problems were compounded where fuel issues prevented resupply of stores, where water stopped flowing through the taps, the situation would become dire fast. With most households holding only 2/3 weeks food the immediate problem would be water and the purification. Most won't be equipped to deal with that and people will start getting ill. In three weeks most food stores will have run out completely. Those that have worked out the water or are surviving well enough on dirty sources will likely have a change of heart when they start to starve. Unless a stable collective can be established throughout that period with a mindset to survive longer the lone wolf approach may be better.
One week in some will be sick, three weeks in some will start to starve, six weeks in there may be a lot of bodies to move. Unless something happens to interrupt that schedule the neighbourhood is likely to get very quiet. I'd say eight weeks cold rations is a very good place to start.
If supplies were a little short I'd share and hope to bring the situation to something manageable. If they were moderately short, I'd be cautious and definitely holding back but still working towards a common wider outcome. If things looked like they were going dire quickly, I'd be on a total lock-in and waiting it out.
I wouldn't plan to leave unless there were no other choice.

[jansman]

If anything went wrong it may be tough on folks.As I said earlier: Right now,I don't help my neighbours to pay their mortgage or rent.Nor their Tesco bill.Why then ,should I help them at any other time? None of them stepped forward when I was made redundant.

[MBJ]

While we're on the subject of bunnies, just remember that only eating the little blighters will eventually kill you. They're rich in protein but poor in oils and nutrients, so really adding credence to the saying "that too much of anything is bad for you,"

[Tricky]

Man can not live by bunny alone.
That's why they are good in a stew!