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Those that are concerned with TEOTWAWKI scenarios, as we are, can find great benefit in looking to history for meaningful lessons on what to expect and how to plan and prepare. In many of these circles we often here of and reference the heroic exploits of bands of citizen warriors throughout history.

Rogers Rangers, the Minute Men of New England, The Green Mountain Boys of Vermont and other Revolutionary War militia, The guerilla fighting Comanche and Cheyenne warriors of North America,  and of course the various books, movies and television shows that constitute our survivalist-militia paradigm. I wish to add another relevant and realistic event and militia group to our lexicon and highlight a bit of recent history that took place just about 3,000 miles from North America. This true and well-documented period of time and events can be mined by our communities for numerous insights into preparedness.

The tiny African nation of Sierra Leone first won their independence from the British Empire in 1961. This was a joyous time for Sierra Leonians. Sierra Leone, a beautiful nation on the West African Coast, with beaches to make many vacationers jealous, became a vacation spot for Europeans and Africans on holiday.  The country was awash with valuable minerals, metals, and diamonds which brought the financial interests of global powers.  If you were a member of the elite ruling class and politically connected then times were good and money flowed; allowing you an increasingly comfortable lifestyle. But by the 1970s corruption was entrenched. Wikipedia summarized:

“…politics in the country was increasingly characterized by corruption, mismanagement, and electoral violence that led to a weak civil society, the collapse of the education system…”

In 1968, [Siaka Stevens,] a popular leader rose to power and would leave office 17 years later with the result of turning what was once a constitutional democracy into a one party state.
The Prime Minister’s 17 year term of office is described by Wikipedia as:

 “…the 17 year plague of locusts” saw the destruction and perversion of every state institution. Parliament was undermined, judges were bribed, and the treasury was bankrupted to finance pet projects that supported insiders.”

He stepped down in 1985 leaving a short list of ineffective leadership behind him. Wikipedia characterizes the social ruin that the country now found itself in only 30 years after its independence, with the following…

“With the state unable to pay its civil servants, those desperate enough ransacked and looted government offices and property. Even in Freetown (the capitol city), important commodities like gasoline were scarce. But the government hit rock bottom when it could no longer pay schoolteachers and the education system collapsed. Since only wealthy families could afford to pay private tutors, the bulk of Sierra Leone’s youth during the late 1980s roamed the streets aimlessly. As infrastructure and public ethics deteriorated in tandem, much of Sierra Leone’s professional class fled the country. By 1991, Sierra Leone was ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world, even though it benefited from ample natural resources including diamonds, gold, bauxite, rutile ([the] main ingredient in titanium), iron ore, fish, coffee, and cocoa.”

This became the foundation for the decade long civil war that would lay waste to the country and forever change its people.

A rebel army named the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) formed and funded by the criminal government of neighboring Liberia, under convicted war criminal Charles Taylor, grew and quickly took over many areas of the country. This rebel movement was a result of the intense interest in the diamond mines within Sierra Leone and Liberia, and also the large number of disaffected youth that were easily swayed by riches, power, and promise of adventure. The Government of Sierra Leone and its army were either unable or unwilling to effectively challenge the well-armed and funded rebel army. The RUF  tormented the cities and countryside forcing children to become soldiers, getting them hooked on hard drugs, and encouraging them to engage in unspeakable behavior aimed at terrorizing the civilians into subservience. The RUF would quickly become known for rape, murder, torture, burning, looting, and a terror previously unknown in the region.

Sierra Leone, like much of Africa consists of both dense cities and rural countryside.  People fled the cities for their ancestral  homes still occupied by family in their rural villages. Many of these families can trace their family histories in these villages back hundreds of years. This is their native land. These were agrarian villages where people were mostly farmers. It was West African slaves from these areas that would make the American colony and future state of Georgia’s largest export and cash crop rice, grown in the lowlands of the coast similar to their homeland. The average home was armed with only farming tools and instruments.

Making a living from the land for generations, extended families controlled large fields and swathes of land to graze their animals and grow food. They lived in tight ethnic communities where everyone knew everyone. These were not people that were concerned with national politics. They made little to no money from the diamonds, gold, minerals, and everything else that drove the international greed for the resources of their country. These were extended families living a peaceful existence in their ancestral land, practicing and maintaining their culture and history. These communities had strong men that were willing and qualified warriors but these men were the first targets of violence, and they were not prepared or trained for organized military threats on their communities.

Imagine the ease that a light rebel army would experience when pulling up to a sleepy farming village, rounding up the able-bodied men for torture or execution, the male children for conscription, and the women and girls for slaves or throw-away sex toys. Rural police stations were no match for the rebels and would flee, be killed, or join them. Many in these villages became entertainment for depraved rebels mad with drug use and traumatized by their own situations. Old men and women were chopped down with machetes or burned to death with kerosene or car tires. Babies’ heads were bashed in by gun butts or by soldiers’ boots. Sometimes the child’s own parents were forced to bludgeon them to death at the gunpoint of crazed men and boys in soldier uniforms. Pretty girls became a commodity traded by soldiers. People were shot indiscriminately in the street and in their homes.  Houses, farms and fields were burned.  The chopping off of limbs became an all too often exercise and horrific scene during such attacks. The movie Blood Diamond starring Leonardo Dicaprio used the backdrop of this war to tell its story and illustrated many of these documented atrocities. [JWR Adds: Blood Diamond provided some valuable insights into the depravity of man under the circumstances of civil war. The history of the 20th Century is replete with similar examples, worldwide. (West Africa was not unique!) It was a surprisingly good film, despite Dicaprio’s pitiful attempt at mimicking a Rhodesian accent.]

Resourceful and physically able people fled to “the bush”, their term for the thick untamed jungle wilderness. Their communities destroyed, families dead or dispersed. Many people had to rely on their wilderness survival skills or risk being caught in public areas looking for food and shelter. They had to learn to evade others in the bush that may alert others to their presence. One man on foot in the wilderness is no match for a mobile light army. He would easily be found, caught, and become a victim. A family would be even easier to hunt and track down.
Rebel armies had taken control of many areas and where they did not control, the government armies were often no better. They brutally purged villages looking for rebels and often accused the innocent and made them examples to others. They helped themselves to food, supplies, and women. They were feared by all and were rumored to be soldiers by day and rebels by night, earning them the name “sobels”. There was no one on the side of the regular people. These armies fought each other and used the communities as their battlegrounds. Civilians were collateral damage and/or simply resources to be taken, killed or abused by either side. Roadways were controlled by these forces so any resources such as food, medicine, or ammunition, traveling along them was subject to seizure by the armies. The best homes and structures were taken and used by rebels or government armies for cover, command centers, flophouses, storage, barracks, or other military needs.

This is the extreme of our human experience on Earth, my friends. I can’t imagine a more terrifying experience. It does not matter how bad-ass one man is, he could either evade these forces or become another casualty. Period.  Where was the humanity, you ask? How could they all behave this way, you say? Well how could the Germans behave as they did under the Nazi regime? Or Cambodians under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?  The ethnic cleansing by Serbs under Slobodan Milosovic? These things happen. When people are pushed by extreme socioeconomic forces they are capable of unspeakable cruelty. In the midst of this turmoil and unimaginable violence a resistance movement grew in the south. A group called the Kamajors.

Wikipedia summarizes: “The Kamajors are a group of traditional hunters from the Mende ethnic group in the south and east of Sierra Leone (mostly from the Bo district).”

These hunters came from a long line of traditional tribal-warriors. In Africa each ethnic group is typically associated with a secret society. These secret societies teach the younger generations survival skills, cultural history, and prepare them for being an adult in their society. For the boys this would often include warrior training, hunting and trapping skills, wilderness survival and so on. These Kamajors came from this tradition. They banded together early on and protected their immediate communities. They had weapons that they had used for hunting along with warrior training and preparation. They had an intimate knowledge of the land and its people. And they had the not just the will to fight their aggressors but the means and know how. This was a modern day tribal militia.

The Kamajors  successfully repelled both the RUF/rebel army and the government army over and over again when they would approach their protected regions. They reacted swiftly to enemy threats in their patrolled areas and gained a reputation for being fearsome fighters and protectors of their communities.  Rebels and the government army, like any marauding groups, will choose the path of least resistance and focus on soft targets. They were reluctant to engage the Kamajor fighters, because a dust up with the Kamajors was certain to end in casualties and depleted resources. They fought fiercely for maintainable ground and quickly retreated and regrouped when outnumbered or overwhelmed.  They were light quick and effective. Youth from all over the affected parts of the country sought out the Kamajors for protection, and many joined their ranks, multiplying their strength. They suffered casualties and we can be sure they suffered their own defeats, but they remained the only alternative and safe haven for thousands.

These were hunters and family men that joined together to protect their families and communities. They were unflinching in their mission and quickly earned names for themselves as the only ones with the strength and knowledge to protect themselves and others from the new realities of their world. The Kamajors answered to their traditional tribal leadership who were often seasoned veteran elders, which was a true government of and by the people. Rebels and soldiers alike intensely feared these Kamajors and African superstition strengthened those fears. Claims spread of the Kamajors participating in sacred rites that would make them bulletproof. It was said that sexual abstinence made them fierce in battle. Stories of their being invisible and being protected by magic persist to this day. The Kamajors were so successful that when international will was finally strong enough to bring peace to the country the Kamajors were enlisted by international peacekeeping forces  to successfully return peace to the country with the help of the UN, an army made from a number of West African countries (ECOMOG) and private mercenary groups.

The war lasted more than ten years and ended in 2002. It is only now, ten years after the wars end that the economy of the country is picking up, experiencing international investment, and people are finally able to start putting the war behind them. Regular electricity to the nations capital, Freetown, and other major cities, was restored in 2007 due to international assistance and the construction of new hydroelectric facilities. Markets are booming and people have returned to the cities twofold. The nations’ future is bright and the worst is behind them but for a long time their future was in doubt.

So after a roughly twenty year period of economic and social decline, we have what was basically a twenty year period where a country was in a total state of war, economic collapse, depression and dysfunction. A messy war with no boundaries or clear enemy, caused by outside forces, political corruption and mismanagement. Caught in the middle were a peaceful people, largely of rural background, forced to find a way to survive a situation that quickly became desperate and deadly. Their ancestral farms and homesteads were attacked and burned. Local currency became worthless. Food was scarce. Resources were taken and consumed by the armies leaving little to nothing for civilians. Civilians became the targets of the new power structure, controlled by the ruthless and lawless armies.

A grassroots fighting force of hunters and family men rose as the only effective resistance force. They were effective because through their hunter/warrior culture and vigilance they were more prepared than others to defend their communities and way of life. These irregulars were the Minutemen of their time. If they had not been trained and organized ahead of time they would have been decimated early on and would not have had the strength to raise a defense later on. The Kamajor fighters were prepared from the beginning and when the SHTF they did what they were prepared to do without hesitance.

Many lessons can be drawn from this history, but a few themes are easy to take away here.  It was their community and culture that created the success of the Kamajors. They had a hunter/warrior culture that could be easily compared to our survivalist/prepper culture today. They also maintained a community within this culture that not only rallied when threatened, but had enough training to be organized when the SHTF to not lose too much ground or strength.

Could they have foreseen the situation that they found themselves in? Perhaps. Could they have done much to prevent it? Probably not. This is a relatively basic SHTF threat. It does not require asteroids, or volcanoes, or even Al Qaeda. Defense against lawless but organized armed personnel; that is what all preppers and survivalists should strongly consider when preparing for SHTF/TEOTWAWKI.

One armed man can’t effectively respond to such a threat of course, yet it is one of the most predictable and relatively common of social upheaval threats and one of the most terrifying. It is basically a home invasion on a regional scale. Some people behave as if these types of events or scenarios are ancient history, or unrealistic. Hurricane Katrina highlights this possible threat, so does the constant narcotics traffic violence in the southwest, the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles, or even Pine Ridge in the 1970s. But for continued insight, moral support and inspiration we only have to look across the Atlantic to a little over 10 years ago when a resourceful group of hard-nosed warriors banded together to protect all that they knew. These were the Kamajors of Sierra Leone.

About the Author: CYA is the pen name of a first generation American on his father’s side, and a U.S. combat veteran. His father was born in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone in 1951, and his mothers’ family can be traced to colonial New England.

Based on some of the latest articles I have read, I wonder if there is a misunderstanding of prepping or the Preppers themselves. Everyone has their own reasons for prepping, what they consider prepping, prepping for or at what level they can prepare. Not everyone can afford prepping to the levels of others, not everyone has the skill sets as others or can go out and find that perfect piece of property to call their retreat or bug out location (BOL.)

For the grannies who buy a few supplies or have found a like-minded social group of preppers where they meet once a month or so and talk about things they have read or heard about, good for them. For all we  know, for that granny, this may be her (or his if a grampy) only form of social networking and for them survival is getting out and meeting these people and enjoying the time spent. If after that meeting on the way home granny stops in Wal-Mart and picks up a few supplies and she is happy, more power to her and God bless her.

For me, I would have to say I’m a closet prepper. I prep for the needs of myself and my family. I do not hang out in prepper forums or blog sites, I do not attend preparedness expos to meet others or go online to find like-minded folks in the local area for coffee. My neighbors do not even know that I’m a prepper. In a way I live in fear, if something was to happen I really do not want anyone to come knocking on my door for supplies. As for the people you may meet at these places I think you’re going to find some who are “way out there” to some who really do not have a clue. You have to size up each person individually and decide for yourself as to whether or not these are people you want to get to know.

I, like many, have not actually killed anyone. Could I? I hope the time never comes when I have to find out. I spent 26 years in the Coast Guard and have gone through all the drills and training I could get my hands on. I have dressed out and practiced for Nuclear, Biological & Chemical (NBC) warfare without actually being in any of those scenarios. Could I still do it, if I had the gear? Yes, but not everyone has the budget of the military to buy the correct gear. In the military we had to train and know how to do these things because we had to get our ship back up and into the action. As a civilian the best thing to do is get as much distance between you and the situation. Does this mean because I have not actually been in a survival situation that I cannot perform and do things from what I have read and studied? I don’t think so. Some say a little knowledge is dangerous but having the basics is a good start. One of the things we use to believe in the military is, no one person can know how to do everything but the important thing is to be able to know where to go to find the information on how to do it. If you have a member of the family who read an article and says they know about how to eat the inner bark of a pine tree for example, instead of telling them they do not know anything, take them outside and try it out. Encourage don’t discourage, and learn together.

Does anyone know what will happen or when? No, but I used to teach a course in terrorism, and as ugly as it sounds to us because of the way we have been brought up in this country, terrorism is actually a beautiful way of warfare. You have all the elements of surprise, when, where, how, what and who. One of the things about terrorism is that it does not have to kill many people. All it has to do is change our way of doing things after. How many people actually remember not so far in the distant past when you could go to an airport and actually meet your party at the gate. Those days are long gone. Now you cannot get near the gate unless you’re a passenger, show your tickets, ID and go through a strip search. Now the drinks you buy inside the terminal are subject to testing for explosives. I personally will miss going up to the Burger King or McD’s in the terminal ordering a burger, fries and a volatile Sprite. Just one act of terrorism can change our freedoms and our way of living for decades. So the terrorists win.
           
One of the things people prep for is the coming economic collapse. What is the coming economic collapse? We are living in a depression. Many people have lost their jobs, homes and benefits, we have a government that cannot even come together to pass a spending budget and the only thing that is a priority for them is getting re-elected.  How much more needs to happen before its decided that we are in an economic collapse? Are we talking the Government shuts down, all the banks close up, the stock market zeros out, money is worthless and no one in the country has a job? Another item is civil unrest. If what is happening with all the riots in the Middle East were to happen in a city here in the States would it be enough to send you to your BOL or are we talking civil unrest on a national scale? What kind of event would it take to cause it on such a scale where every city is in riot?

Everyone has to determine their comfort zone. I live in a hurricane prone area. Some people pack up and get out of Dodge while others stay. One day I hope to be able to buy a safer piece of land further from the coast in the mountains. But for now, like many, I have to deal and adjust for where I am. Many people who live in this region live with the dangers and beliefs that nothing is going to happen to them or the situation is not going to be as bad as predicted. What does truly bother me about that is that they are told to leave, they don’t. Then shortly after things get truly bad, they are shouting “Help, come rescue me” and put someone else’s life on the line.

For me, prepping is a hobby. I truly enjoy reading the information I find here on the Internet and in books. I like reading survivalist fiction because the books get me thinking of things that could happen and what I will need to do to prepare even further. To be honest I never thought of stocking up on a year’s worth of dog food until I read the novel One Second After by William R. Forstchen. I enjoy reading of what others have done and how they went about doing it. One idea I picked up on SurvivalBlog here was in an article back in August, 2012: “Technology Today, by KCL04” he suggested getting an Android phone that you can store apps and down load all your survival books on.  Well, I’m not into the phone thing, but I took that information, did some research and bought a Nook reader from Barnes & Noble. Slowly but surely as I can afford it, I’m building my library. All my books in one of my kits must weigh about 100 pounds but I can store all of that on the little Nook and whole lot more.

I enjoy organizing and making lists. I enjoy going to the store, picking up the type of storage containers that work for me and filling them full of supplies. As one container gets full, I may take out the toilet paper and start it in its own container. It’s not long before that one jar of Vaseline becomes a stackable container full of 12 tubs, the bottle of Listerine becomes a stackable container of 16 bottles and on and on it goes. I keep track of everything I have in inventory and as the kits and containers change. I get into the computer and adjust my inventory. I have made check-off sheets of items I use around the house every day and I keep a log of when I opened up the product and when it became empty. This way I have a working knowledge of how long an item will last and how much I need to buy to last me a year.

The other day my wife had some insect bites so I went to the medicine cabinet to get the calamine lotion then ended up searching all over the  house to find some cotton balls. Guess who now has a container full of cotton balls? Every time a disaster happens I find little chinks in my armor of what needs to be purchased and done so that next time I’m more prepared. I have my lists of things I need to save up for and buy and also list of projects I need to do. This past spring I finally built some raised garden beds and tried my hand at gardening. Cucumbers went totally crazy so I teamed up with a neighbor and we spent a day canning. With that experience, a couple of things got checked off my project list.

People who believe in God do so because we need to have faith and believe in something that will continue our survival once we leave this earth. We believe he has given us a set of rules and a guide we should live by, the Bible. So we spend our lives trying to do what is right and which serves our God and our belief. Well, prepping is not much different, we do not know of what kind of disaster will happen or even if one ever will. Some people prep more than others, just as some people serve God more than others. The important thing is that they are doing something. If prepping gives someone hope that in a time of a disaster what he or she has done will make them a little better off or more comfortable in a time of despair, well, more power to them. People sit around and love to hear stories about God and things that happened back when Jesus walked the earth. Well people also enjoy sitting around and talking up the prepping, learning new things and telling what they have experienced. The beauty of this country is we all have the right to do these things–buy, sell, prepare as we wish and love the God of our choosing and conducting our faith as we wish. If you are frustrated as to what you see other preppers doing or how they go about it, stop for a moment and be thankful. For now, we live in one of the few nations that allows this. God Bless America and each and every one living here.