Whenever you read fiction stories about surviving TEOTWAWKI, reading articles here on SurvivalBlog or any other similar site. One of the things that keeps coming up is its best to form a group of “Like Minded People”. Here is what I have put into motion and my future plans on how I hope to accomplish it. Any feedback is always welcome.
My situation is my age being in my mid-50s and having a disability. It would be wonderful to find some like minded people in their early 20s or 30s who have the strength and ability to do what I am unable to accomplish or have the physical stamina to fend off any opposing evil at the gate. Unfortunately I’m not really going to find those kind of folks with there being such an age difference. People with disabilities can still do many things to help out, we just have to do them differently.
I found what works the best for me in finding like minded people is to stick around my own age group. People who grew up in the mid 50s to mid 70s are a prime target. People who understand what it was like to work hard for a living and realizing that things are not just given to you but you had to earn them. I think modern technology is great but it is also going to be our undoing in the long run. There is some merit to grow up using your imagination as a child for entertaining yourself than finding it in a video game. As kids growing up and playing Army out in the woods, we were learning how to build forts, set up defenses , working together as a team and forming strategies without even knowing it.
When finding like minded people in my age group it’s going to be very rare to find someone who is not in some form of needing medical assistance. But, this is not such a bad thing either, some of us old hornets still have a lot of sting left in us and we posses knowledge and skills that are not found in just any book. Something that comes to mind is two of the people that I’m working on served in Viet Nam so they are not strangers to a vicious enemy. I believe for the type of BOL I’m looking for in the wilderness I would prefer someone who is familiar with jungle fighting but would love to find anyone with experience in setting up military style defenses.
One of the things I have done is to join the County CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) program. Here I have found men and woman mostly near my age group who are in some way concerned about being prepared. Some of them take the course just for their own knowledge in what to do to better prepare for an emergency around their own home but you will find others who extend it to a further means. Many of the people I have been meeting have in some way been involved in the military or in some form of Emergency Management / Training and are retired.
About two years ago I had the opportunity in my county to take an amateur radio course. We had an individual in our CERT program who was very much into this hobby and was involved with putting on the course. I signed up and spent four Saturday mornings for four hours sitting in lectures that I had no idea what they were talking about. The good thing was for the course we needed to pick up the book: The ARRL General Class License Manual.
First let me explain, there are three classes of Ham Radio licenses: Technician, General and Amateur Extra. Each class offers more benefits to having the license, basically more frequencies you can use. Well in the back of the manual, there were test questions that you could study and these test questions were word for word as they were on the exam. There are also online sites you can get into and take practice tests, over and over again. Hind sight being 20/20, I would have just studied all the questions, memorized the answers and gone in and challenged the tests when the exams became available. I hate to say it, but I passed my General exam without even knowing how to turn on a radio. For the first two years I had done nothing with my license because anytime I would meet a ham radio enthusiast and ask a question, they would just open up with all the techno knowledge they had to impress me that I walked away more confused than before I asked.
This all changed one night about two weeks ago while at a CERT meeting, I met a man in his mid-60s who was into ham radios. After talking with him for a few minutes and explaining my situation, he laughed and told me it was people like that was his reason he was not involved in any clubs anymore. We exchanged phone numbers and he told me to give him a call and he would hook me up with a radio I could borrow and get me on the air. This past weekend I went over to his house and in the two hours I spent with him, I learned more than the 16 hours in the class. He also put me in touch with Associated Radio, a small family owned business in Kansas that he has found to be very good in dealing with for ham equipment. The owner’s name is is Dan. I now have being shipped a Yaesu FT 2900 R and a TRAM 48″ magnetic mount antenna. Once I get the system my friend will help me get it mounted in my SUV and programmed.
While my new found friend was helping me with the radio, I also learned he was a prepper but not so open about it. We talked about different things and found we had more in common than we realized. This is someone I plan on working with to see if he has an interest in combining forces for later down the road. It’s wonderful to find someone who is very knowledgeable but doesn’t come across as the type who has to prove it or make you feel stupid for their own ego.
One day last week I volunteered to do some admin work for the CERT program. I was working with a gentleman who also does a lot of volunteer work with CERT and in talking with him, I found out he was involved as an instructor in Emergency Management in New York City and was at the Twin Towers on 9/11. Like my ham radio friend, this gentleman also served in Viet Nam. We shared like interests and had a lot in common, some things we disagreed on but nothing that would hold me back from bringing this person into the club. Actually you want someone who does not always agree, brings out other options to look at as long as you can team up and work together. He was slowly building up his preps in buying much needed items such as fire arms and was working on obtaining other supplies. In talking with this gentleman I wanted to hurry him along some in his prepping efforts so I mentioned a couple of books to read, Patriots by James Rawles and One Second After by W. R. Forstchen. Also in our conversation he mentioned he has a son with one of the SEAL Teams. On hearing this, my mind went into mental overload and started racing with all sorts of thoughts. This is a person I definitely want to get to know much better and would love to meet his son. If for nothing more than to thank him for his service.
A third person who has been a long time friend of mine and use to be my boss in the Coast Guard many years ago is now a Pastor at a church in Florida. where he is planning on retiring in a couple of years. After he retired from the Coast Guard, he went into nursing school and he now works one day a week in the Emergency Room at a busy Florida hospital. He and I have been sharing a dream of one day buying a couple of Class A type motor homes and touring the country with our wives in tow (not literally in tow, they can ride inside). In one of our conversations I had mentioned that this type of unit would be good for getting out of Dodge if the SHTF. He mentioned that this was part of his plan in getting one but had to get his wife onboard that things are not looking good and they needed to start making more preparations.
A fourth person I know is a good friend of mine and I hire him any time I need work done on my home he’s a very talented carpenter and also loves to hunt. He and his wife have a 5th wheel camper and they go camping and hunting regularly with it. With the construction field being slow, he is doing mostly work by word of mouth and would not be able to put a lot of funds into prepping but he brings other talents to the table.
My wife and I have been working hard scrimping and saving to get this house paid off which will soon come to light. I highly recommend this as part of your prepping efforts. I have been actively looking for land where we can pick up some acreage that has a year round fresh water spring and boarders a National Forest. When I find the right piece I hope to be in a position where I can afford it. Once I find the right place I will take time and set it up with gardens, off grid power systems and security measures. I’m now thinking on ways how I can set up several motor homes and camouflage them into the landscape. My ham radio friend has just purchased a Class A motor home and he has found a good dealership that will work with you and has a good reputation. My friend in Florida also has a member of his church who owns a motor home dealership so finding a good deal should not be a problem.
In my making plans for where to find land to establish my BOL Community one of the sites I use is: LandAndFarm.com. You can go in, find any State and any County within the State and see what’s available. In my mind, I can see the property I’m looking for, now I just have to find out where on earth its located.
I have purchased a map of the United States and have mounted it to a piece of cardboard. I have been in the process of locating where nuclear power plants are and using a colored push pin to mark their location. You can use the distance scale on the side of the map to make yourself a small round disc to place under the push pin to represent the distance you want to be away from the plant such as 25 miles. I found this information here.
If you have settled in on one State in particular you can just get a larger more detailed map of that State and work with that. Being a member of AAA has many benefits but one being free maps and information books on areas. When finding a location I use a more detailed map to locate major roads and highways. I want to identify what I feel will be heavy traveled routes and stay away from them. Google Earth on the PC is also a wonderful program.
Also located on this map I make note of prevailing winds, earthqauke-prone regions, and so forth. Two of the sites I use for this are: NOAA Seasonal Drought Map and Natural Disasters Map.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I have a disability and so do some of the people I’m meeting. So something that is important is where hospitals and medical centers are located. For this information I use this site. These places may not be up and running in a full blown out disaster but they will be up until then and maybe for a short time after.
At times I have found some decent properties that seem to have some potential then once I find something that I may like I go into: www.bestplaces.net and I can enter the town or county and pull up records of the area. One of the things I look for is the crime rate. Some places that seem like good potential actually have a crime rate higher than the National average. I can understand one day when the toast is burnt people are going to get ugly and crime will go up but I don’t see the need to start off with it at an already high level.
My plan is slowly coming together and I’m finding the right people that are like minded in my way of thinking. Other than my two long time friends, the other two just came into focus within the past two weeks or so. I have to believe that the Good Lord is making things happen by bringing these people into my life for a reason. Real life past experiences have shown me this. I have in my mind the skill sets I’m looking for in a person and eventually the Good Lord brings them around. Like I mentioned, I waited two years just to find someone who can help me with the Ham Radio. When I find that piece of land I’m looking for, part of my plan is to get my friends to join me out there camping at times and see what we can come up with or bounce some ideas off them.
You can go into various web sites and look to meet online “Like Minded People” but I find that can be very dangerous so use extreme caution, you really do not have any idea who you may be opening up your life too. Having before used online dating sites and finding out the profiles are not always accurate in describing the person I would shy away from that. What has worked for me was joining the local CERT program and getting involved with that. Here you can actually meet the people, work with them under emergency situations and disasters and see how they hold up. You can also figure out who you can work with and who you can’t, the ones who pitch in and help and the ones who like to jump in and take charge. I would shy away from the people who jump in and take charge thinking their way is the only way. This may work out good at a disaster but not so good in a group of folks who are trying to survive. Working with your Emergency Management also puts you in the know of what is available in your local area for resources and the ability to do some networking. If you do enough volunteering, you may actually find yourself in a position where you can set up programs and policies that will be of a benefit to you. You can find out a lot about a person such as religious and political beliefs without giving out to much information about yourself just by working with them.
Approach friends or people you know and work with that you feel comfortable with and strike up general conversations. You can be conducting an interview without them even knowing it and getting a feel of their beliefs. I feel it’s best to keep a very low profile of my prepping activities and not spill the beans until I feel the time is right. I have many friends and neighbors whom I have known for years and would love to have them involved in prepping and setting up a community. I’ve tried talking with them and trying to get them working on it but they just say they need to or would like to but just don’t have the finances, don’t have the time, blah blah blah. In the end they say that if anything happens they will just come out and stay with me and my wife. Wrong! Right now they have jobs, the stores are well stocked and they have the same opportunity as I do. My wife and I are not scrimping and saving to have the funds to prepare for their benefit. When I do find the land, it will be a closely guarded secret.
2 Corinthians 6:14, Be ye not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers:
Deuteronomy 22:10, You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together.
As always, good luck in your preps and God Bless…