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In the survivalist/prepper world, one can argue that we are all leaders, yes?  Well, ask yourself, what happens when you thought you were going to be the leader of your compound/ neighborhood/ community but got to the party late and someone else is in charge?  What happens when you can’t or simply aren’t THE leader?

You lead from the middle. This article proposes two ways in which you can lead without being the designated leader. 

As survivalist/preppers we know a neighborhood or city block is better than one home, while a community is best. Let’s assume the SHTF and you are executing your plan.  You were able to get your family out to your community’s compound. Having fought off several looters on the way, you managed to collect several critical items from your cache. You are definitely prepared for this event and have various skills crucial to surviving the next riotous year.  Relief overwhelms you as you realize that you are exceptionally skilled, and there is  no one better equipped to handle the upcoming chaos as you are able handle it.  Let the games begin.

Once you arrive at your community’s compound, Grey Beard is in charge and he designates you “firewood collector guy”.  He directs you to stow your food and supplies in the pole barn and report to the fire-master.

I exaggerate because I am not sure there is a “firewood collector guy” or “fire master”; if you were assigned to collect firewood with your leadership experience and mammoth suite of survival skills, you might feel slighted, indignant perhaps.   You might feel as though you deserve to be elevated to a recognized leader status.  Who wouldn’t, right? 

So what’s to be done, expert survivalist/ prepper turned firewood collector? 

Be the best fire wood collector you can be.  You will ensure that there will never be a minute, an hour, or a day without ample firewood. You may improve the firewood collection process, perhaps automating your wheelbarrow.  Focus on your task and do it with dedication and focus.  And go one step further, have fun while you are doing it.

All compounds are organized differently, and I am not being frivolous by suggesting someone be designated the task of collecting firewood.  What I’m trying to convey is that if you have a PhD in Chemistry, you would feel silly if you were hired by a University to mop the floor…in the chemistry wing. 
You would feel undervalued and underused – a non-contributor.  You would be operating below your capability. 

At this point, you might be thinking, “Nah, I won’t feel that way.  I’ll do what is asked of me.  I’ll be a great team player.  I don’t need to lead.”

I sure hope so!  However, I think, that anyone who is so earnestly invested in the welfare of others would not be so quick to surrender leadership, especially us A-types who spent the last several years preparing for a SHTF moment.  We must be prepared to lead from the middle because it may be our primary mode of leading. 

For me, leading from the middle arose from necessity.  Six weeks of indiscriminate Scud missiles during the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom kept me sleep deprived, anxious, and frustrated.  As a 1st Lieutenant surrounded by field grade officers, my objections were overruled with suggestions routinely ignored. Ultimately, I was relegated to doing a job that a Lance Corporeal could perform.  Simply put: I was not leading and it was frustrating.  Add to that combat stress, no sleep, and irregular meal times and I was ready to implode.

Working took my mind off the frustration.  Conscientiously monitoring communications kept me active. Concentrating on doing my job well relieved stress and I started to have fun—I smiled often and laughed a lot.  When I began to really study my communications plans, I saw deficiencies.  I corrected those deficiencies.  I discovered new commo devices different units had and that weren’t be used, so we trained on those devices.  We talked communications over chow and sometimes in our sleep.  I was no longer worried about the sea of officers that surrounded me—I was doing my job better than I had ever done it in the past.   

In time, lower enlisted sought my counsel, not the senior enlisted or other officers.  I was consulted on our intelligence briefings and our daily operations updates.  Our foreign partners sought my advice and suggestions concerning scouting missions and decontamination sites.  People began putting faith in me.

Reflecting on that time I realize that all I did was successfully do my job and tried to have fun doing it.  Do your work well, efficiently, and expertly.  In a SHTF environment I am willing to bet it’ll look and feel a bit like combat; days of downtime interrupted by minutes of panic.  Complacency creeps in and people get restless.  When they look at you getting firewood every day –cheerful and working hard – those around you become less anxious.  They will look inward after watching your example and realize their own work needs to be done and they will go and do it. 

You have just led them.  From the middle. 

My second piece of advice is to follow well.  Great leaders are great because they possess the capability to follow as good as they lead.  When SHTF dialogue is over, it’s time to do.  Protests must stop and you must act.  As long as you are conscious and morally not violated, follow that order. Others, who have witnessed your worked ethic, will see your enthusiasm.   They won’t be scared because you are not—you are too focused to be worried about other things.  They will ask you questions, for help or for advice.  Your skill set, even-keeled demeanor, and enthusiasm will inspire others.  You will be able to demonstrate all your skills as well as your leadership acumen when others’ speak with you and work by your side.  You, again, will be leading from the middle.

One aspect of following well is to offer solutions, not problems.  Sure, Grey Beard’s idea is not great. You can pick it apart blindfolded.  However, it’s not all that bad.  Don’t play “stump the chump”: offer suggestions that look like you love his plan and are working to make HIS plan even better.  Hide a weakness in his plan with a well worded suggestion.  People will see you are on board and are working toward making it better—not usurping it.  Think about the “sheeple” in your everyday life who say, “Oh, that’ll never work, you can’t do it like that!” and offer nothing but negativity.  Think about how you feel toward that person.  Sheeple bring problems, not solutions—being a good follower means you bring solutions.  Leading from the middle means you are not a sheep, but a clear thinking, highly skilled, insightful level-headed leader.

Some may argue against the necessity of being able to follow well.  They may say that the one with the best skill set and best leadership ability should lead and, in the case of survival, should fight to do so.  Let me offer you this—amongst an entire block or community or compound of skilled survivalist/ preppers, do you think any leader would do anything so egregious that you would be required to take over?  If so, you might need to reconsider belonging to that group.

Following well will show others that order is good; that you have courage and are not scared; that your faith in others and your abilities in your job will see whatever situation through. No one will panic because you are calm.   People are watching you—not the leader; they have their orders so there is no need for the leader right now.  Their behavior cues are coming from you because they want to see how you are going to follow the order.  You are the leader at this given moment – leading from the middle.

You have already set the conditions middle leadership.  People around you are recognizing your natural abilities as a spearhead, plus your excellent skill set has started to become apparent—you were able to weld a small motor to your wheelbarrow and you were able to suture a bad cut for your friend. 

In a small group setting like a block or compound, everyone doing their job is critical to survival.  You have to set the example – and the impact is immeasurable.  Being a good follower by being a problem solver makes you a contributor to the plan and also sets the tone for the subsequent behavior of your peers.  People may not move until you move, they won’t decide until you decide, and they won’t feel safe unless you let them know they are safe and have told them what they need to do.

Eventually, you will be the leader without being the appointed leader…because you led well from the middle.

I offer these two lessons learned because they have helped me throughout my life, not just during my time in the Middle East.  It was exceptionally hard for me to deal with being a junior officer and having no one to lead.  Imagine saving money for the entire year for prom and the woman (or man) of your dreams agreed and has said yes. You have the limo, the tux (or gown), flowers, and reservations at the best restaurant in town.  This will be the most magical night ever!

Yet you never get to go…

I was not prepared for being underutilized.  I had no idea, with the stress, fatigue, and hunger that I would feel so desperate to use my skills.  I was paralyzed by how frustrating it would be to watch a sea of senior officers completely disregard anything I had to say while refusing to acknowledge my contributions. It was one of the toughest emotional tests I had faced as a young man.

Leading from the middle and being a good follower saved my sanity, quite possibly my life, and the sanity of others.  I learned that a leader has many definitions and that being in charge of everyone is just one small definition of a leader.  Perhaps the greatest lesson was that no one cared about my idea of leadership – they cared how I demonstrated it.  So, I did my job well and followed even better.

After a few years as a defense contractor and now as a science teacher I’ve used these two lessons continuously with great success.   

I learned the value of humility by doing my tasks and following; I learned how to be a selfless team player and that alone is at the core of any great leader.

I hope this article at least wrinkled your eyebrow a bit.  God Bless!

There is a crisis of manhood in America today.  The numbers are astounding:  One in three children live in fatherless homes.  Since 2011, women receive more college degrees than men.  And recent decrees by the Obama administration will now see our wars being fought by women and homosexuals – it’s enough to make a guy like me be glad I won’t be around to see what this country looks like fifty years from now, and get a knot in my gut knowing that my children most likely will.  It makes me realize that my sons will need the skills to survive even more than I.

If you think like I do – that wisdom is more important than knowledge, and see very little of either coming out of America’s universities;

If you shake your head at today’s youth shuffling around the mall, looking like tattooed and pierced zombies-in-training; 

If it disgusts you that the average 34-year-old American male spends more time playing video games than the average 12-year-old boy;

and If you remember a time when a male of eighteen was considered a man, and expected to work like one, and you lament that so many of today’s high-school grads…aren’t and don’t;

This article is meant to bring you hope.

With three sons of my own, I take the issue of raising Godly sons as seriously as my spiritual walk, my marriage or my business.  If you have sons, you probably feel the same way.  If you are blessed with daughters, I hope you are fervently praying for them to find true men who will be able to give them what they truly need – provision, protection, affection and direction.  

We do everything we can as a family to be prepared for an uncertain future, from stocking the larder to making firearms training a regular family event.  To that end, we homeschool our children, because as Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, 

“I would not surrender them to the educational systems devised to stunt a child’s brain, to chaos with which he’s unable to deal, and thus reduce him to a state of chronic terror.”

If you aren’t sure what I mean, just google “pop tart pistol.”  

Sometimes I feel like the world’s worst prepper.  I am a videographer by profession, something that will be as useless as paper money in a post-collapse world.  I never hunted as a kid, and can only wish someone would have made me join the Boy Scouts.  But we all have to start where we are and work with what we’ve got.   

I had no say in my upbringing, but I can control that of my children.  And with a farm to manage and perhaps protect someday, I’ve decided to invest my time and energy into ensuring my children have what they need in terms of survival knowhow, even if that means they have skills that I don’t. 

As our kids get closer to completing their high school curriculum, we’ve had many family discussions about their best options for continuing their training and education.  My boys, especially, are looking for more “real world” skills.  For my part, I’m more convinced every time I turn on the news that emergency skills training will incredibly valuable in the years ahead.   

Most of all, I hope my kids’ll find a way to continue their spiritual growth long after they’ve left home to take on the world.

Several years ago we found an amazing course of instruction tailored to making young men into well-trained first responders capable of handling almost any emergency.  It’s called the Air Land Emergency Resource Team, or ALERT for short.  In the interest of full disclosure – I receive nothing for recommending them to you, except the hope the ALERT program will still be around by the time my youngest is graduating.

It’s a one-year program that takes young men just out of high school and gets them trained up on a whole host of skills.  For example:

Firefighting
Emergency Medicine – Paramedic
Aviation – Flight Training
Auto Mechanics
Rescue SCUBA and Aquatics
Technical and High-Angle Rescue
Building Trades – construction, electrical, HVAC, plumbing
Sawyer and landscaping
Aquatics
Wilderness Survival
Land Navigation
Law Enforcement
Evangelism

The International ALERT Academy is headquartered in Big Sandy, Texas, where they have turned a defunct 2,600-acre college campus into something like a combination between a Boy Scout camp, a Monastic order and the United States Marines.  The entire one-year course takes place here, with the exception of various “deployments” undertaken as they travel around the world on missions that include disaster response, humanitarian aid, search and rescue and missionary security.

These seventeen to twenty-five year olds are treated like men, and not surprisingly they act like it.  They are given man-sized responsibility from day one, and are expected to embrace their calling to take dominion over themselves – and then the world.  

It isn’t a course for adjudicated youth or problem children; but rather appeals to an, ambitious “cream of the crop” of high-school grads who is serious about squeezing every morsel of training out of a fast-paced year.  One example: each class or “unit” since 1994 has made a commitment to forego the distractions of music, movies and entanglements with females altogether for the duration of their time at ALERT.  

Awhile back I was asked to be a guest speaker at a local public high school.  If it’s been several years since you’ve walked the halls of one of those, you might be surprised, as I was, to see how much it has changed since I graduated in nineteen *mumble mumble*.  I won’t bother with a litany of shocking things I saw that I’d file under “advertisements for home schooling,” but suffice it to say I was appalled.  So few of the seniors I spoke to were capable of expressing themselves in complete sentences, looking me in the eye, or shaking my hand rather than grabbing their own crotch and grunting, “Sup.”

My first visit to the ALERT training center couldn’t have been more different.  Every one of the square-jawed, uniformed young men I spoke with shook my hand with confidence, looked me in the eye and spoke with conviction about the things they were learning in the program.  I was especially impressed at the level of spiritual maturity on display, as the men articulated their daily “wisdom searches” and other devotionals.  Questions like “What makes you passionate about the future” produced instant, well-considered answers that left me tempted to send my daughters to hang around here once they are ready to find a mate. 

I’m not normally the kind of dad who has designs on my children’s career or life choices once they get out on their own.  I simply hope to make men out of them and then let God call them into service to the Kingdom.  To that end, I am doing whatever I can to raise Godly men(a term I consider to be redundant), and will encourage all of my sons (and both of my daughters) to spend some time at the academy.

The ALERT academy was founded upon the realization that 100 years ago, boys aspired to manhood, not extended adolescence.  Our grandfathers, at age 18, could build things, fix things, hunt, fish, skin, trap, and take care of themselves like men.  By contrast, it seems today’s high school grads are more likely to be experts at playing HALO or Minecraft, but little else.  Americans today spend 25 billion dollars per year on video games – coincidentally the same number of hours spent on facebook annually.   ALERT set out to change that by giving men the skills to make them confident, competent and spiritually mature leaders in the real world.  Their first responder training makes them especially helpful in any kind of crisis, and well inured to challenging circumstances.  

In addition to the one-year course for men, ALERT hosts an annual one-month summer course called “Quest” for boys aged 14-16 who want a taste of what the full ALERT responder course has to offer.  Last year my oldest son attended this course, and even in one month’s time, I was impressed at the air of quiet competence he developed while there.  

For girls, there is a one-month summer course called STEP, which stands for “Skills Training for Emergency Preparedness.” It teaches a range of similar subjects in a female-only environment.  Our sixteen-year-old daughter attended somewhat reluctantly, but afterwards had this to say about the experience:

“At STEP I got more than just survival training and life skills, I learned the importance of teamwork and getting along with a big group of people. Through daily devotionals and sessions, I learned so much about God and how big He really is. I made great friends at STEP and I’m excited to go back for STEP Advanced.”

The cost of the full year course ranges between seven and seventeen thousand dollars for the year, including tuition, room and board.  The price depends on the advanced skills the responder chooses to pursue.  The course is broken up into three phases, and some attend just for the initial “basic” portion of the year.  The men wear uniforms, carry rank, live in barracks and do PT daily while at the training academy, but with the exception of the Law Enforcement track do no training with weapons or hand-to-hand combat.  That’s something I’d like to see added if they could find a good instructor.  Every stage of the training is based around a solid Biblical curriculum that, by the end of the course, gives each man a grounding in the principles of Godly manhood.

I’ve now visited the ALERT campus several times, and always come away astounded by  the men and the program.  We have decided as a family to support ALERT with our donations as well as by sending our children there, because we want to see this program succeed, and believe it is worth every penny, and then some.  

About a third of those who graduate from ALERT go on to join the military.  Another third enter the mission field, and the rest move on to other endeavors.  No matter what they choose, however, they will have garnered a tremendous skill set in a positive-pressure environment, and will be ready to face whatever the future holds.

In the Army I learned the maxim, “The more you carry in your head, the less you must carry on your back.”  Training my sons in emergency preparedness gives them a great head start on developing a full set of survival skills.  And unfortunately, I fear they’ll need it sooner rather than later.

About the Author: Chuck Holton is a former U.S. Army Ranger and now works as a freelance war correspondent. He is the author of several books, including Making Men: Five Steps to Growing Up.