Happy New Year!
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and have gotten a lot more prepared than I was in the past.
As a law enforcement officer (LEO) for the past nine years, much of the information on human behavior mentioned in SurvivalBlog hasn’t been a surprise to me. I particularly enjoy reading the articles you post from other LEOs due to the fact that they tend to have 20+ years experience and thus impart a lot of knowledge.
I wanted to share my experience with you in reference New Years Eve celebrations this year.
I live in a midsize county of approx 300,000 people, with one large city. For the most part the county is like many other with the city being very populous and the outlying areas being very rural. This year I worked in communications during the New Years Eve/New Year night shift which means that you see pretty much everything that is going on throughout the county. In the past this has been a crazy holiday but I never totally grasped the scope of how many people have “meltdowns” at one time.
We had free fire zones throughout the city, multiple disturbances, gunshots, robberies, and generally extreme human behavior all over. As I was driving home, listening to the gun shots, it dawned on my just how rapidly people degrade in their behavior. It is shocking that within the space of four hours I saw local law enforcement literally have to choose not to address very serious issues.
Indeed, I now read some of the posts on your site with much more open eyes and I agree that it cannot be stressed enough that when the time comes, you will most likely only have one chance to get your family out alive. I hope more of your readers get to have an experience like mine.
The worst part of the entire night dawned on me the next day. Low class people were acting like that during a celebration. Imagine how they will behave when their welfare checks are cut off or even threatened to be reduced. I believe that they will make the French Revolution and the current protests in Europe look like a High School pep-rallies.
Thank you for your site. – L., a Florida LEO