The problem that all the "hurr durr I'll bug out innawoods" crowd is that they don't have an answer as to why people already living there would want them around disturbing _their_ SHTF survival plans.
"get off my lawn" Anyways, this happened for real for my mom when the communists took over Cambodia in the 70's. It was not pretty, and they took to the countryside. I know it's not apples to apples, but still a SHTF scenario
The only reason it would work for me is because I have family (most of my family) that has a lot of rural land and has lived in the country for decades. So obviously thats where I'm going.
the problem with hurr durr the woods are already occupied" people is they don't understand population density. the cities are already occupied as well, but guess what the higher population density means you're more likely to encounter bandits than in the woods. also, if you're going to assume everyone is going to be one a chute first ask question later script, the cities are still worse for that. just admit you can't survive without modern conveniences and infrastructure. no one's judging you.
“Small town” to me is like where I am in Wyoming; population 700 and declining and its differentiating point is that it has a tiny grocery store, unlike the other small towns in the area. When you live here, some of the preparedness is just inbuilt: you buy groceries two weeks to a month at a time because it’s too time consuming to go to the city to pick things up (grocery store in town is expensive and doesn’t have everything). Some winters it seems like I-80 is shut down more often than it’s open, so you plan accordingly.
I don't understand why small towns like this exist in America. I assume it's an American problem as I've never travelled. I suppose they were originally settlements based on some local resource extraction, but once the work is done I don't know why people stay.
@@Jkp1321 based on the characterization of small towns as an “American problem,” am I correct in inferring the usual brand of smug European condescension?
@@Jkp1321 massive landmass especially in the western states. don't know where you are located but i Assume Europe. other parts of the world have massive tracks of land between major settlements. also American style of individual owned farms and ranches is very different from the farming village style found in Europe.
I live in a small village on the big island of Hawaii. My mom is from Evanston WY and my grandma is from Rock Springs WY granddad from Fort Bridger WY… I need to go back and visit… I spent many summers on our family ranch. McGraw Ranch. It’s gone now.. all split and sold off, but I’d still like to go back and see things. Aloha 🤙🏽🤙🏽
If your looking for a case study on monopoly of violence, check out the privatization of security, and the corruption of local government officials in South Africa, I've run small security operations for some foreign nations and done about five year of anti-poaching in some of the worst place around South Africa since 2011 till 2022 as well as farm security for rural and semi urban(less than 10km from a small town) and the number one thing I've seen and learned is help is not coming till it's convenient for them(the police and first responders). Thanks for the videos
Yes please make some videos detailing your experience and methods of farm defense. I have a couple SA friends that came over on work visas and their stories are pretty wild.
There are stories of women driving alone in rural parts of South Africa being run off the road and SA'd by cops. Even if the police come, they might not be coming to help you.
Plenty of people still somehow seem to be under the impression that the mountain town that feeds 80% of its population from a single Dollar General by the highway is more resilient to disaster than an urban center with the population and resources to find solutions or otherwise alleviate large scale societal emergencies. Sure throughout history many cities were depopulated by disaster or societal collapse, but countless more villages, towns and smaller cities which were economically dependent on those urban centers simply vanished into thin air once disaster necessitated the larger urban centers to focus on themselves to stop the bleeding. Rurality is a detriment unless you put in the *significant* effort into building genuine self reliance for yourself and your community. Without that, safety in numbers among denser communities with the ability to have a much deeper diversity of skills, knowledge and manpower is almost assuredly a more reliable means of survival. This does require up front effort similar to survival in rural conditions but this is mostly social effort within your community to build group identity and bonds which will foster loyalty. This also means that the suburbs are almost assuredly the first places which will fall into chaos as they lack both the pre-existing means of creating self sufficient systems for food and water like the true rural zones and are thus entirely both materially dependent on the rural periphery and economically dependent on the urban core, but also have so thoroughly isolated and atomized their residents such that there is no possibility whatsoever that they will feel a community bond or any loyalty to their particular block of mcmansions.
Having followed topics like economic and healthcare trends in the US for over two decades now, I've lost count of how many stories I've read of rural and small towns being screwed over when the local, small hospital with an ER surgery room or even a Walmart shuts down. Supply chains for medicines and food are complex and given how most people in a widescale SHTF situation will die from malnutrition or shitting themselves to death from dysentery compared to violence, that's a pretty big deal
Pros and cons to everything. Best is living on the edges of a medium size town. Enough to have resources diverted your way if things go bad, but not big enough that the massed humanity is an issue in itself. I’d say population 20-50k in your town/ county ideally if you’re in the US. Under rated factor - it needs to be viable for human settlement even without electricity and technology. If people only live where you live because of water pumping, air conditioning, and levees… move Look at the LA fires. Look how much national attention there is, how much effort and money is being spent to fight them. You think they would do that for a hamlet in North Dakota? No Look at the Yugoslavia collapse. Where were partisans hitting hardest doing the most horrible things? Isolated villages. Where did people hole up and make strongholds? Cities. Where were aid packages delivered? Cities.
Good point. Being from a European nation that has received many refugees over the years incl from Yugoslavia but also African and Middle Eastern countries, I can guarantee you not one of them came with an AR. It's an almost certain death sentence in a real conflict region. What you'll need is cash and all your paperwork incl ownership titles to an intl. Bankaccount.
That's a good point about Yugo. The counter is that it was the rural inhospitable terrain and climate that made insurgencies successful in Afghanistan.
I live in a town of 3500 people surrounded by cornfields. My town is RURAL. 2/3rds is old people who will die if they lose air conditioning. Rural towns, not suburban, are still not gonna fair well. Even less so against gangs.
Oh yeah another good point someone made that i didn’t consider, avg age differences in different locations and how that can affect things. Cities contain stuff like colleges (typically at least) so the average age of people in a city are probably lower than a rural area. Just looking at the census real quick it looks like more rural areas are (very roughly) 18% of the population is 65+ vs 14% in urban areas. Average age in each is 51 for rural and 46 for urban. Good anecdote, made me think a bit so thank you for sharing!
Your shit is going to be looted by millions of suburban and urban people fleeing. Look up the deer population in the US during the Great Depression for just the tiniest hint of how bad shit gets if the whole system fails (and let's be real, the Great Depression wasn't anywhere near SHTF, it was regular ass, bog standard economic downturn).
If anything has proven that the rural areas are really not as well prepared as /k/ will lead you to believe, it’s Helene. I live in Appalachia, and MANY people were not only completely without power, but even ran out of food within literally a single day who didn’t get their houses destroyed or even damaged. It ain’t 1850, people aren’t taking their mule cart to the general store once a month to stock up on long-term provisions for life in the wild just because there are more trees between them and their neighbors than the average subdivision.
Man we saw Texas collapse over an inch of snow. The hubris of more rural states is laughable when the majority of people are reliant on the systems that shtf would destroy. Like they forget food deserts are a thing and the only thing close to foraging anyone there does is sit in a tree stand and use bait.
@@DKOutdoorAdventures Yep, I grew up in rural areas and people there generally aren't any more self sufficient than people in urban areas. They get 95% of their food from the grocery store and the farms grow sorghum and dent corn with complex machinery, proprietary seeds, fertilizers and pesticide made in factories who knows where. They're just as dependent on modern society as cities, although admittedly the lower population density would be an advantage in a full blow collapse.
This needs to be platformed more. The flexing rural inhabitants do is just culture war larp. In some cases makes sense even if just as fun banter but should quickly segue into “but seriously how many days could you even feasibly be self-sufficient… and how about the 100 people closest to you?” I can count on one hand the people I think would be ok, and it’s either because they’ve stocked up deeply on boring stuff, or because they have insane hunting and gathering and survival skills that if you don’t start learning as a kid and constantly reinforce as an adult, good f’kin luck. So most of us are relegating to “stock up and pray.” Which means you actually have to have deep water, food and energy contingencies that aren’t nearly as sexy as guns. And any lack of similar preps by close neighbors will manifest itself in uncomfortable ways.
I duno about you but I think leaving a stable structure with insulation that was made by professional builders for a hut you made out of sticks sounds like a bad idea.
@@Winters_Folly Whats your definition of "pretty quick"? A proper cabin is going to take months and months on your own. If you're really that concerned it would be more advantageous to buy land and get a small prebuilt shelter
I've never understood the idea that we're all supposed to "Bug Out" with a backpack/rifle and live indefinitely in the woods or whatever. Even if you have the requisite skills/equipment to do this which 99.9% of us don't, what does a pepper think will happen when the hungry disheveled unwashed hordes find his or her spot? Hunt game? Yea, you and everyone else. Those resources would be exhausted very fast. Moreover, if the water mains stopped pumping drinkable water in most populated areas for more than 2 weeks, half the population would be dead within 3. We would all be better off accepting the fact that we're dependent on these societal systems and working together to ensure our survival.
Yeah and no one is actually going to do it from the cities because they’re pussies and don’t actually know how to live in the woods. Valhallas RUclips channel did a good segment on this from the perspective of a retired green beret who’s actually seen/participated in societal collapse.
Sorry for the double reply but it’s also funny how city dwellers act like the country side is empty with no ppl. There are already MANY grown men who have been hunting those deer woods for generations. They’re not going to just leave or let refugees take all the game. City ppl would be getting ambushed constantly.
@@CiviTac If your plan in a rural area is "I'm gonna get into a gunfight with anyone I don't recognize because they're here to steal my deer" you're gonna be dead real fast
@@CiviTac If your plan living in a rural area is "get into a gunfight with anyone that you don't recognize because they might be here to steal your deer" you aren't going to last very long
More people should read FerFals account of Argentina chaos. Cities were dangerous BUT in a way easier to organize with neighbors and band together. The countryside was more prone to violence and people isolated became more at risk - we see that today unfortunately in the Farm Murders in South Africa in particular
Food for thought here. One thing to consider: you stay in the city, you may indeed participate in the resources made available to urban areas. But, it will be at the cost of your freedom. You will get in line, submit to search, give up your means of defense, and do what you're told. Count on it. I grew up in Brooklyn. Park Slope. In the event of a major breakdown of whatever sort, I would not want to be there. I live on 20 remote acres in Teton County. Ten miles from town, such as it is. We make a good living here based on the real estate economy of this resort area. Everything around me is paid for. We could close the gate and live comfortably for maybe a year. But, I'm under no illusions about what it means to live in such isolation in the event of a major wrol scenario. As you say, it's best to live where you please, and not worry about drastic scenarios.
If yall got that land then prepare to dig a well before you start planting your own crops. do yall have chickens? better start getting chickens. Yall need a goat for each house for your own milk. Yall need pigs at least 2 per house and a couple heffers.
Good thoughts but to be fair, NYC is one of the worst cities ever as a baseline, let alone during fun virus times, let alone during an apocalyptic scenario. Almost every other city would not be so oppressive on your rights even during crisis
I had a really high paying gig in San Francisco doing a certain type of trade work and I would not leave it because I feared an SHTF scenario. Sometimes we have no choice but to live in a major city and when I was living in San Francisco, and I was preparing for an SHTF scenario, I accepted the fact that if anything were to happen, I was not getting out of that city my two options were taking one of the major bridges, which is only two of them or fighting my way all the way south and the Bay and even then I would have to cross through a desert that is miserably hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter just to get home to Texas. So I accepted the fact that I would have to bug in and find like-minded people because if I tried leaving when everyone else was trying to leave, I would most assuredly die in the chaos or get wrapped up in the shenanigans. Best bet is to bug in and then make your way out after the initial chaos. Even then you can only leave with what you can carry on your back. If you try to leave in a car you’re at a disadvantage because you can get trapped and you put a target on your back a lot of times people rural areas are more out of shape and often times less equipped than trained people who live in densely populated areas. The only pro to rural living is you spawn in there and you know the land.
No... There are other reasons. Waste management is a major primary concern. Cities will have brown outs before the rural towns. Water will be more accessible if you live in an area with wells. You must pick your place of living on what you will likely encounter in daily life when your grid goes down.
If anything, cities are likely better than the countryside for low-level SHTF stuff because all the people who matter are there and resources will be prioritised to them. For prepping innacity you mostly need to survive 72 hours or a couple of weeks, while innawoods you basically have to be completely self-sufficient for a month at minimum. Cities are worse pre-SHTF, for sure, but that's not the focus of prepping.
In my city, we have weathered extreme storms, long term blackouts and even a terrorist attack. Never experienced anything crazy like the movies and prepper books have described. The worse thing that happened is lack of access to groceries and common goods. I have essentially forced my family to have preperations for these things and our family never suffered from grocery store shelfs being wiped clean and, further more, my family and close friends in my community have come together in said events to help each other in areas that each group was lacking. Thank you for this video:)
The wild thing with many prepper types is they move to a small town that doesn't even have arable land or the entirety of the local irrigation is reliant on modern electrical pumps
lack of milliions of starving people, dying of dehydration, closeness to water sources, ease of getting to where you can dig a tunnel and have scatter buried food caches, not having to deal with ambushes, road blocks, etc, getting to your BOL from the city The cities suck, big time.
That's why for most of human history, cities were located around rivers or other bodies of water. The fact that Cairo, Rome, London, Babylon, Baghdad, DC were all near sources of freshwater is no coincidence.
Most of them move to rural areas that surround large cities and pretend it’s safe backwoods living. They’re just the first to be looted by anyone that has too much trouble in their city.
@@Heywoodthepeckerwood Facts. yeah living in suburban Dallas or suburban Phoenix is not small town rural living they just live in a suburb that is almost guaranteed to be completely reliant on utilities most likely run out of the closest city proper. Out of all the prepper types i ever met only like a 25% actually lived in rural off the grid locations a couple from WV, Central PA , Montana etc etc. Most i met were from Manufactured HOA suburbs an hour or less from a major city.
MFers be dropping megabucks on "farmettes" within earshot of interstates and acting like they aren't just a loot pinata for the first band of urban raiders to get bored eating their own.
It’s not that rural won’t suck in a collapse, it’s that the change from current won’t be as noticeable. And by rural I mean can’t see your neighbor’s house
IMHO the sweet spot is a small to medium sized town in a heavily agricultural area that also has a decent industrial base. Gets population density closer to the carrying capacity of the land while preserving most of the benefits of civilization.
Preferably next to a biodiesel plant The supply chain for refined fuel is stupid fragile, hence why we're seeing interruptions more and more Texas power grid falls over in "normal" times, I wouldn't expect it or the normal refineries to be in operation at all
Hey there’s something I’d like to touch upon. I live in LA, and I was directly next to the second largest fire, just a hair outside of the evac area. When it came to preparedness, I was faced with a very strange situation. I had friend’s houses to go to all over socal. Food and water wasn’t going to be an issue across socal simply because of localized albeit large fires. My survival was no issue whatsoever. What WAS a problem, was my irreplaceable stuff. Collectibles, hobby things, just impractical *things*. A friend of mine asked why I wouldn’t take a go bag and I told him that’s a lot of space and weight I could use for valuables instead, given that my survival or shelter was no issue. To someone who hasn’t been in this situation, it might sound ridiculous, like someone climbing on a titanic lifeboat being concerned about their luggage instead of their survival, However, this situation is more comparable to the if the Titanic was sinking, except the Carpathia is parked directly next to it. In that situation, you are guaranteed to survive, so the question would be “what about my stuff”? How should anyone prepare for that? It’s easy to pack a bag with food and water, so if I had to live on the run I could, but in this situation I wouldn’t be living on the run to survive, I’d be evacuating to save my property. In most common situations, it seems to me that impractical physical possessions are more likely to have need of saving than my life, which is pretty thoroughly secure even in a disaster. How does one prepare to pack up useless shit? What do you prioritize? How do you decide on those priorities, depending on situation?
There is a recent adage that came about during the Marie Kondo craze: If you got poop on something you owned, would you clean it or throw it away? The stuff you would clean is what you take first, everything else is second
It all depends on evacuation time and whether you actually are going to lose everything or just have water damage. The sooner you can bail, the more likely you are to be be able to get out with a carload rather than getting trapped. It's a balancing act. You can also potentially move stuff to a more survivable location. For example, clothes are more likely to survive a wildfire if submerged in a pool than in a bedroom closet.
This is something I've been mulling over the last couple days. I ended up repacking my go-bag with clothes I'd actually prefer to wear vs. old stuff, and made more room for my photography gear lol. Everything feels crazy but I have to remember that I can drive to family a few hours away, and I'd rather have sentimental items over some cubic inches of food. Good take.
Good summary. Anything that will cause cities to collapse into warzones in some apocalypse scenario pretty much affects most "small towns " too. Lack of law, loss of power, limited or no access to food, etc. Small town and city people largely live the same way when it comes to acquiring their daily essentials. They all needs gasoline, food, and water and almost none of them have the means to produce it on their own, they all participate in commerce in a functioning nation state to acquire it. Remove the functioning nation-state and they are largely in the same situation.
The idea of bugging out to the mountains is only a good one if you have a shelter well stocked with supplies, means to replenish water/food, are far enough away from others with the same idea, and you can actually get there. Otherwise you aren’t just going to go to the mountains and hunt everyday to survive. I’m a very avid hunter, and in the area I live in the average hunter success is between 6-10% on deer depending on game management unit, weapon choice, etc. So if 100 dudes are out look for a 2 week season with advantages like pre season scouting, trail cams, baiting, quads, e bikes, high end optics, etc. Only 10 go home with meat if they are lucky. My state is already over populated and has too many hunters. Imagine things get desperate and 4 million people from around a 50 mile radius in my area decide they have the same idea. 10% might luck out and wipe out any game within a couple weeks. Anything still standing will go nocturnal and bed in the thickest nastiest terrain, and 3.6 million are going to be starving.
I live within 30 miles of a big city, in a rapidly growing bedroom community. There are farms and rural communities just as close by. Know your area and neighbors. I know who I can trust and not trust. I know some older folks who will need help. I know a young family with kids that like my dogs. A creek / river is close by. A farm with cattle is close by and our family buys a 1/4 cow every year. I know who is in a construction trade and who is in healthcare. Outside my subdivision I know of folks who live in an old double wide but they grow an amazing garden every year. I know corporate higher ups that would be useless if that had to do anything physical. Know the folks around you. I have also lived in small rural towns ( < 10,000) where the biggest industry is drugs and pills. Industry has been offshored and the town is dying. Where people are already clannish and suspicious of outsiders. Where the young people with any future leave. - it isn’t Some shtf Eden.
A good eyewitness account of Argentina's collapse, where gangs frequently targeted rural families: Surviving The Economic Collapse by Fernando Aguirre.
My main concern with being anywhere with population density is water and sanitation. Modern cities, or anywhere with enough population to have a postal code will turn into cesspits inside a week without running water, on top of all of the other problems that come with population density.
Look at the garbagemen strike in nyc back in 90's. 2 weeks of no collection in the middle of the summer and it was putrid. Rotting food and Toiletries + rats were absolutely everywhere (more than usual lol)
Look at small lumber and oil towns that have fallen apart with the ups and downs of those industries. They have effectively already experienced a collapse of their society so to speak. They're not flourishing. People tend to romanticize small towns when it's not hard to see rampant drug and alcohol abuse and homelessness there. Ex cons trying to stay under the radar in a place where housing is cheap. And the smaller the town the less anonymous your prepping will be there. You could end up becoming more of a target. And this isn't even mentioning that a lot of farms in the southwest are just as dependent on the "apparatus of society" to give them the means to farm. Water being pumped, implements to work the land with, fertilizers, seeds etc.
It’s typically not the big cities that we hear about during disasters. It’s usually rural towns that are devastated and then cut off from disaster relief because they’re remote and there’s maybe a single highway in and out of town. And, like it or not, we all depend on the same globalized supply chains anyway.
So your argument is big cities are better for weather related natural disasters, gotcha. Do you feel that during any other type of SHTF scenario big cites are more survivable than rural areas?
@@mikewebster8224entirely depends on the scenario we’re playing out. Everything up to govt/societal collapse probably. More violence but more resources to go around, ability to move resources quickly, and higher priority to get resources too due to the sheer number of people. If the scenario is localized and isn’t nation wide, people are coming from around the country to lend aid, and that aid will likely make its way to cities first. So kinda a pick your poison type of thing, but very situationally dependent and you can find scenarios where either location is preferable
@@Cryptogram44 More violence is an understatement. The cities will eat themselves alive within the first couple days. As someone that spent the first 25ish years of my life in Chicago, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near cities of more than 250k. Good luck getting out once everyone takes to the streets, roads start getting blocked off by both good and bad people, as well as bridges, highway ramps, etc. The sheer number of bad actors in confined spaces makes big cities one giant funnel of death.
@@mikewebster8224 again that’s very situationally dependent. If we’re in a total collapse scenario sure i concur, but most things short of that the odds flip is the point being argued. If there’s still military/police presence due to partial collapse (natural disaster as an example), then being able to move freely, at least during the day, may not be an issue at all. In that case it’s becomes purely a resource driven issue. The cities get aid and resource first, then the surrounding suburbs, and then the more rural areas around that. If the roads into your small town are destroyed, the city could be entirely unaffected while food & water is cut off from the small town. I’ve lived in big cities (NYC), suburbs, and more recently a smaller town. All have pros/cons and their own prep requirements, but in 90% of scenarios both are survivable with the question being how long will it take for things to go back to normal, for which the more urban areas will be shorter in duration but potentially higher in intensity depending on severity of the scenario in question.
The argument to avoid cities only holds water in the argument of a complete infrastructure collapse, and even then it is far from perfect. Beyond this, most people greatly overestimate their ability to survive in the woods. For example, even supposing you were successful enough and game was available for you to support yourself or your group, how many people do you know who can process and preserve a deer or elk in the absence of refrigeration? Or have the knowledge of vegetation and nutrition sources to fill in the gaps left by wild game? Or have a filtration system or treatment method for ground water supplies? Assuming anything less than full collapse cities are likely to be a better option, as infrastructure and population will draw more available resources than rural communities
I grew up in the heart of a major metro and thought I served in the Army I don’t know shit about the outdoors. Taking my family into the woods is probably the worst thing I could do.
My rule of thumb is that if everyone has the same preparedness plan as you then none of you have a plan that works. Those that say that if there is a hurricane they will just go to the store and buy supplies the day before. Or those that claim that they will just leave the city and move to the mountains if something happens.
As someone who lives in a small-ish ranching town in Wyoming - I agree that there are not really that many more prepared people than other places. People around here generally have extra food and stuff in case a snow storm locks things down for a week but that is about it.
"Ok" is a relative term when you're talking about a city like LA. Fire or no, LA is _historically_ a hotbed for violent AND property crimes, political and racial unrest, and wealth disparity. Like, yeah, the spiderweb of concrete is always gonna be there. But it's the "meat" in between I'm concerned about, and they are... NOT "ok".
I think this would appeal to most of his viewers because it probably safe to assume most of us who think this way aren’t in the boonies but also not downtown in a huge city either
@@CiviTacIt would be helpful to know, while in your suburban locale, when to travel into the city, or out to the country, to get supplies (e.g. water, food, medicine), or to just stay and pray?
@@timunderbakke8756 Tbh I feel cities themselves have more resources in a more dense space than rows of the same homes. So I feel there is a stark difference
3:35 I would have one pouch that had 1-2 MREs and the other one had cleaning gear/hygiene kit. That way I didn’t have to dig through my pack if we were going to be somewhere for a short amount of time.
I’d rather take my chances with five similarly minded and trained individuals in a major city then I would being alone in the rural parts of the country
First, I need to say this is why I like you're channel, when it comes to preparedness, you're pretty real and grounded. I mean being in Utah, and salt lake of all things, makes sense, as regardless of your religious affiliation, there's a lot of good and interesting preparedness tips in Mormon philosophy. And only learned they exist because I had some family history there, dude was a captain of the Mormon battalion and somehow accidentally founded a town during a supply run. But I digress, as my point is I see some preper guys and they are just out right insane and as unprepared as it gets, even my grandmother on my mothers side was one, I never met her but there are a few stories, so seeing someone who can be down to earth about it is pretty nice. This video I think personally is probably one of the best that shows it, the first that showed a bit how down to earth you are was probably the bug out bag video. I am someone who takes prep a bit similar to being well armed, and my philosophy comes from the SWAT 4 tutorial level of all things which was somewhere around the lines "Be well prepared, well armed, and ready to shoot, but prey to god you never have to actually use it." And you're the only channel that can give me a perspective that is actually useful. two... moving the love letter for your work aside, For some reason I now want to play a Twilight 2000 campaign now... I don't know, just watching it gave me ideas and it sounds fun now.
I was among the first few Americans to hit the ground in Haiti porta prince, post earthquake January 2009. We were there for about 6 weeks before a full size MUE replaced us and we moved in to Africa our original destination. A massive urban multi story building city. Most building collapsed, no power, no water, no medical, no real help at all for 99% of people. There was definitely un speakable ruthless violence on innocent people over things like food. But also people were carrying on and surviving. It wasn’t the thunder dome, wasn’t constant fighting, wasn’t a mass migration.
Nova is too sweet to be left alone with any cat poor doggo. Living in the country working in the city i agree. We just got a snow storm here last weekend and the amount of people on social media complaining that the side streets in our little town or worse yet their driveway got covered when the plow went through absolutely astonished me. Small towns kinda suck when weather hits but we have less chance of riots so im okay with it
A few thoughts: First, a "rural small town" is definitely under 1,000 residents, and more than likely, those residents are spread out over a larger area than the typical medium to large towns (I'd probably classify those as 1,000 to 10,000 residents and 10,000 to 20,000 residents respectively). Outside of the United States, a rural small town would most likely be referred to as a "hamlet" or "village." Second, we can primarily blame the Green Revolution (i.e., the industrialization of agriculture and farming) for both just-in-time food delivery as well as the increase in dependency on retail food centers (even for rural residents). Because this happened globally, we can see the results in recent cases such as Syria, where U.S. theft of Syrian grain resulted in severe food insecurity for those living under Syrian Government rule. Traditionally, siege warfare and starvation were only effective strategies against cities because the population density exceeded the area's ability to generate food, but now even rural residents (especially in developed countries) lack the knowledge, supplies, and tools to grow their own food. Third, while I agree that current rural communities are currently no better prepared for SHTF than larger cities, the shift from reliance on outside support to self sufficiency during SHTF is far easier for rural communities than it is for cities. Rural areas, while also susceptible to criminals and marauders, are also less likely to see anywhere near the same duration and intensity of violence that cities will endure. Yes, if there is outside help available, cities will receive a disproportionate amount of relief more quickly, but we're talking about SHTF here, so that's a capital "IF." And, of course, that's assuming that the rural community is directly impacted by said S hitting said Fan. Fourth, this is great timing on this video given the current disaster we see unfolding in one of America's largest and most populated cities, which is currently experiencing a severe shortage of resources, support, etc.
I watch your vids cause ya bring up some interesting points. I don't always agree with'em but that's normal enough. Looks like y'all have a great time out "playing" with this mess. I also dig on the low key Sling Blade-esque bg music and the Nova-mutt. 🤠
Since you mentioned some book, One Second After by William Forstchen shows a pretty realistic look at city vs rural SHTF, ofc, that the top tier on your pyramid. Agree though, with limited supply chain options, most rural locations wouldn't fair very well. With that "Civil War (2024)" level shtf where we still have to go to work, cities would have way more of that infrastructure.
I listen to you for the heeler content. Heeler dad here and I'm planning on protecting a heeler pup and heeler senior citizen during the breakdown. Oh and my wife.
small town in rural area, with lots of back roads leading out of it and ideally no big highways comeing close to it, much less thru it, but having a hospital, not too far away.
You sound like you live in a actual rural town as opposed to a huge majority of preppers i met who live in some manufactured HOA suburb less then a hour away from huge cities and directly connected to a major interstate.
@@aenima2288 no, i live ina 100k city, but I live 1/2 mile from the fence of a huge militar base, which is half covered with brush, trees lakes and creeks. I've got a bolt cutter, too
Go read selco's book on his experience in the Balkan wars trapped in a city. Did he survive? Yes, is it possible to live in a city during shft, yes. You will have more access to supplies, but also much more competition. I think if you don't have enough supplies the city can work. Being in the sticks take so much more work even on a good day, but being properly prepared with enough people (basically making a small town lol) you will have less competition for the limited resources. I can tell you this, in limited loss of rule of law (covid small scale shtf) I didn't notice any change to my day to day. I have limited law enforcement resources availability today, and will almost not be noticed once it's gone, one could make the argument that it's likely I will retain this small law enforcement much longer than a city will.
I have that book, well he wrote several but I have the main one. In it he specifically says not to live in a small town - I think he says village - because they are the most isolated and easiest to target. They get the least resources and the least help. Partisans were rolling through small villages “getting” every single person in it because they were isolated and easy to hit. Ferfal says the same about the Argentine collapse. Gangsters would drive out from the city to the farmland to hit the isolated farmers
I've read it, it's a interesting read. It's a very very specific scenario. He also does technically mention that a lot of the rural outskirts just died 4 seconds in. But yes that is the worst case scenario and in a scenario like that I would not want to be in a city.
@BrassFacts yeah, when you have large groups of loosely organized fighters rolling across an area to fight another group, those small areas with no arms or organization it goes poorly for normal people. It takes way more up front cost to prepare for something in the middle of nowhere, and even then the odds are about even for someone in a city in the same situation.
Accurate assessment. I’d say the only real difference is that very small towns will likely seek to work together sooner, than in cities. I’d also say that going benevolent warlord is more important, and easier, in very small towns. Easier because folks could be more inclined to trust you, since they know you. More important because you’re a small town and will be an easy target if not well organized.
nova's a heeler, she seems timid but at the end of the day I've watched heelers get flung 10 ft in the air, hit the ground hard, then charge right back at a 2000 lbs angry steer and bite it right in the face. my money is on nova.
the mentality of most people will not allow them to work together to stabilize a bad situation and figure out what to do next, that is the real issue. Together we could deal with almost anything, divided we collapse under the weight of an ice storm or a fire on a relatively small scale. When the idea of some small percentage of humanity surviving some event comes up, people tend to ignore what sort of people that would be, and what the world those people would live in and propagate would be, we are talking about the darkest of ages, not the best way to live out your life.
Eh, I mean what is civilization other than a counter example to your claim? Yeah it's fucked but.. I mean this entire thing is people deciding to have faith and work together, even in the face of distrust and greed. If anything I'd imagine a disaster would make that more likely, not less. That seems to be the norm.
@subjekt5577 the Japanese showed good social coherence during their disasters, so did the Russians, so did a number of others, healthy societies tend to handle things.
@@BigChiefWiggles Homogeneous societies tend to handle things. As you say, the Japanese are a good example. The United States, at this point, is a grouping of tribal societies flying in loose formation. Tens of millions of those within our borders are not even Americans. We're not going to get together to "handle" anything, because our aims are mutually exclusive.
I also like how in loads of SHTF books, they make it super clear that civilian shooters just can't hack it, and they need the strong skilled military guys to train them. But also the majority of these books feature military people that are not combat troops, so that supply officer that never left his home state is just so much more skilled with a rifle than the dirt poor hunts for food dude.
I currently don’t have a long rifle and I’ve looked at building my own and/or purchasing a complete rifle. The one I keep going back to is the DDM4V7 from Daniel Defense. I absolutely know I can go cheaper, but I like a lot about the company and how they make rifles. I’m not asking for permission, but I appreciate an educated opinion.
Wanted to add, your guys pets are cute. It's extra funny the dog is named Nova because so is the dog of my bestie/roommate, and her dog wants to get along with my cat but kitty won't have it either
Brown out events is the biggest probroblem to face. The only way to prepare for that is to leave when it happens. That and dug wells are the only two reasons why to move to more rural living.
Brown outs happen everywhere attached to the grid. Not just urban areas. It's the same grid. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, or you're implying rural homes have alt power?
There’s a book “ The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” by Fernando "Ferfal" Aguirre He lived through the Economic Collapse in Argentina & obviously not a total collapse but he says how everyone in the country side had to move into the city to find work something to to think about.
appreciate the heber city call out! it’s getting too big, but does have sustainability offerings such as dam power, a couple of dairies, and geographic isolation - cue Burt Gummer
yeah but at least you have the only place in utah with a deep diving location also I did my drivers ed there. And I won a 1 mi race in highschool there. So it's okay in my book
I decided awhile ago that buggin' out was not going to be a good option. I would need to throw so much time and money to get to a survival level ability it would be inefficient. Second, is I would be competing with everyone else fleeing. I am now focusing my efforts in creating a community who we can partner with for resources, protection, and skill sharing.
Damn I never realized Heber City was that big. Passed through a couple times and always thought it was one of those small one road towns. Also I avoid SLC not for emergency preparedness, but because that place just sucks.
heber use to be a lot smaller. But then around the 2008-2010 or so it ballooned in pop, likely as park city just became completely unviable for normal people to live in.
There are locations in pretty much every major city that I would already avoid for my own safety. I was in New Orleans before and after Katrina. The dangerous places expanded and got more dangerous. 10/10 would not want to be in a city during a regional power outage or cell service interruption unless you are already part of a gang that offers you protection(Bloods, MS13, Police, etc.)
299 Days book series is pretty good about a more than likely scenario. The scenario is more of an economic collapse and it’s pretty realistic about things that would occur during a shtf scenario. Would recommend but it’s taking forever to get to the action.
You posted 6 minutes too late for me to be able to watch on my lunch break. Now I have to watch on the clock. To heck with thee
Are you stealing time from your boss. 😂
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I Ass Fax on company time
Damn Skippy buddy @@user-vr8zs3ei7n
TPS reports due. Did you get the memo?
I think you need to take a long, 10 min and 57 second shit
The problem that all the "hurr durr I'll bug out innawoods" crowd is that they don't have an answer as to why people already living there would want them around disturbing _their_ SHTF survival plans.
If you dont know who the loot drop is, you are the loot drop
"get off my lawn"
Anyways, this happened for real for my mom when the communists took over Cambodia in the 70's. It was not pretty, and they took to the countryside. I know it's not apples to apples, but still a SHTF scenario
The only reason it would work for me is because I have family (most of my family) that has a lot of rural land and has lived in the country for decades. So obviously thats where I'm going.
@@firefly9838 Things will get tribal. And you have a tribe.
the problem with hurr durr the woods are already occupied" people is they don't understand population density. the cities are already occupied as well, but guess what the higher population density means you're more likely to encounter bandits than in the woods. also, if you're going to assume everyone is going to be one a chute first ask question later script, the cities are still worse for that. just admit you can't survive without modern conveniences and infrastructure. no one's judging you.
“Small town” to me is like where I am in Wyoming; population 700 and declining and its differentiating point is that it has a tiny grocery store, unlike the other small towns in the area. When you live here, some of the preparedness is just inbuilt: you buy groceries two weeks to a month at a time because it’s too time consuming to go to the city to pick things up (grocery store in town is expensive and doesn’t have everything). Some winters it seems like I-80 is shut down more often than it’s open, so you plan accordingly.
I'm trying to wrap my mind around the idea of living through a winter in Wamsutter during shtf.
I don't understand why small towns like this exist in America. I assume it's an American problem as I've never travelled. I suppose they were originally settlements based on some local resource extraction, but once the work is done I don't know why people stay.
@@Jkp1321 based on the characterization of small towns as an “American problem,” am I correct in inferring the usual brand of smug European condescension?
@@Jkp1321 massive landmass especially in the western states. don't know where you are located but i Assume Europe. other parts of the world have massive tracks of land between major settlements. also American style of individual owned farms and ranches is very different from the farming village style found in Europe.
I live in a small village on the big island of Hawaii. My mom is from Evanston WY and my grandma is from Rock Springs WY granddad from Fort Bridger WY… I need to go back and visit… I spent many summers on our family ranch. McGraw Ranch. It’s gone now.. all split and sold off, but I’d still like to go back and see things. Aloha 🤙🏽🤙🏽
If your looking for a case study on monopoly of violence, check out the privatization of security, and the corruption of local government officials in South Africa, I've run small security operations for some foreign nations and done about five year of anti-poaching in some of the worst place around South Africa since 2011 till 2022 as well as farm security for rural and semi urban(less than 10km from a small town) and the number one thing I've seen and learned is help is not coming till it's convenient for them(the police and first responders).
Thanks for the videos
dude you should make videos about it.
Yes please make some videos detailing your experience and methods of farm defense. I have a couple SA friends that came over on work visas and their stories are pretty wild.
There are stories of women driving alone in rural parts of South Africa being run off the road and SA'd by cops. Even if the police come, they might not be coming to help you.
@TrussingDoor to say the least, there are to may cases like that and many more that are far worse
Plenty of people still somehow seem to be under the impression that the mountain town that feeds 80% of its population from a single Dollar General by the highway is more resilient to disaster than an urban center with the population and resources to find solutions or otherwise alleviate large scale societal emergencies. Sure throughout history many cities were depopulated by disaster or societal collapse, but countless more villages, towns and smaller cities which were economically dependent on those urban centers simply vanished into thin air once disaster necessitated the larger urban centers to focus on themselves to stop the bleeding. Rurality is a detriment unless you put in the *significant* effort into building genuine self reliance for yourself and your community. Without that, safety in numbers among denser communities with the ability to have a much deeper diversity of skills, knowledge and manpower is almost assuredly a more reliable means of survival. This does require up front effort similar to survival in rural conditions but this is mostly social effort within your community to build group identity and bonds which will foster loyalty. This also means that the suburbs are almost assuredly the first places which will fall into chaos as they lack both the pre-existing means of creating self sufficient systems for food and water like the true rural zones and are thus entirely both materially dependent on the rural periphery and economically dependent on the urban core, but also have so thoroughly isolated and atomized their residents such that there is no possibility whatsoever that they will feel a community bond or any loyalty to their particular block of mcmansions.
Thank goodness my Lesbian Dance Studies will finally be appreciated and contribute to a diversity of skills.
Having followed topics like economic and healthcare trends in the US for over two decades now, I've lost count of how many stories I've read of rural and small towns being screwed over when the local, small hospital with an ER surgery room or even a Walmart shuts down. Supply chains for medicines and food are complex and given how most people in a widescale SHTF situation will die from malnutrition or shitting themselves to death from dysentery compared to violence, that's a pretty big deal
People in large cities can't even function without government aid.
TL;DR
@@woodsghost9088better thank a lesbian firefighter next time you see one
Pros and cons to everything. Best is living on the edges of a medium size town. Enough to have resources diverted your way if things go bad, but not big enough that the massed humanity is an issue in itself. I’d say population 20-50k in your town/ county ideally if you’re in the US.
Under rated factor - it needs to be viable for human settlement even without electricity and technology. If people only live where you live because of water pumping, air conditioning, and levees… move
Look at the LA fires. Look how much national attention there is, how much effort and money is being spent to fight them. You think they would do that for a hamlet in North Dakota? No
Look at the Yugoslavia collapse. Where were partisans hitting hardest doing the most horrible things? Isolated villages. Where did people hole up and make strongholds? Cities. Where were aid packages delivered? Cities.
That point about Yugoslavia is so fucking good.
Finally, some who also noticed what actually happened in Yugoslavia.
Same thing happened in the other wars I have looked at.
Good point. Being from a European nation that has received many refugees over the years incl from Yugoslavia but also African and Middle Eastern countries, I can guarantee you not one of them came with an AR. It's an almost certain death sentence in a real conflict region. What you'll need is cash and all your paperwork incl ownership titles to an intl. Bankaccount.
Even if you're around 100k the population density is also relevant. Around that 1000-1500 per square mile mark is good.
That's a good point about Yugo. The counter is that it was the rural inhospitable terrain and climate that made insurgencies successful in Afghanistan.
I live in a town of 3500 people surrounded by cornfields. My town is RURAL.
2/3rds is old people who will die if they lose air conditioning.
Rural towns, not suburban, are still not gonna fair well. Even less so against gangs.
Oh yeah another good point someone made that i didn’t consider, avg age differences in different locations and how that can affect things. Cities contain stuff like colleges (typically at least) so the average age of people in a city are probably lower than a rural area. Just looking at the census real quick it looks like more rural areas are (very roughly) 18% of the population is 65+ vs 14% in urban areas. Average age in each is 51 for rural and 46 for urban. Good anecdote, made me think a bit so thank you for sharing!
Especially not areas which depend solely on farming and goods from semis. No corn means no calories. No corn means no deer. No deer means no protein.
Your shit is going to be looted by millions of suburban and urban people fleeing. Look up the deer population in the US during the Great Depression for just the tiniest hint of how bad shit gets if the whole system fails (and let's be real, the Great Depression wasn't anywhere near SHTF, it was regular ass, bog standard economic downturn).
@jeb6361 if there's no aircon there's also no refrigeration. That meat is gonna spoil
@lordhellfire153 Smoking. Salting. Canning. Our ancestors had meat long before refrigeration.
If anything has proven that the rural areas are really not as well prepared as /k/ will lead you to believe, it’s Helene. I live in Appalachia, and MANY people were not only completely without power, but even ran out of food within literally a single day who didn’t get their houses destroyed or even damaged. It ain’t 1850, people aren’t taking their mule cart to the general store once a month to stock up on long-term provisions for life in the wild just because there are more trees between them and their neighbors than the average subdivision.
Man we saw Texas collapse over an inch of snow. The hubris of more rural states is laughable when the majority of people are reliant on the systems that shtf would destroy.
Like they forget food deserts are a thing and the only thing close to foraging anyone there does is sit in a tree stand and use bait.
Right. If that hurricane had hit Chicago or Los Angeles it would have been totally different. They are way more prepared.
Just because you live in rural areas doesn't mean you know how to survive or live off of the land.
@@DKOutdoorAdventures Yep, I grew up in rural areas and people there generally aren't any more self sufficient than people in urban areas. They get 95% of their food from the grocery store and the farms grow sorghum and dent corn with complex machinery, proprietary seeds, fertilizers and pesticide made in factories who knows where. They're just as dependent on modern society as cities, although admittedly the lower population density would be an advantage in a full blow collapse.
This needs to be platformed more. The flexing rural inhabitants do is just culture war larp. In some cases makes sense even if just as fun banter but should quickly segue into “but seriously how many days could you even feasibly be self-sufficient… and how about the 100 people closest to you?”
I can count on one hand the people I think would be ok, and it’s either because they’ve stocked up deeply on boring stuff, or because they have insane hunting and gathering and survival skills that if you don’t start learning as a kid and constantly reinforce as an adult, good f’kin luck.
So most of us are relegating to “stock up and pray.” Which means you actually have to have deep water, food and energy contingencies that aren’t nearly as sexy as guns. And any lack of similar preps by close neighbors will manifest itself in uncomfortable ways.
I duno about you but I think leaving a stable structure with insulation that was made by professional builders for a hut you made out of sticks sounds like a bad idea.
You can throw up a cabin pretty quick, if you know what you're doing. Most don't though.
@@Winters_Folly the hard part is getting the cabin into your stomach beforehand, lots of splinters
@@Winters_Folly you can build a “debris hut” pretty quick. A “cabin” that’s comfortable to live in takes lots of time. Months to complete.
Depends if you actually got a “professional” to build your house. Builders these days cut so many corners
@@Winters_Folly Whats your definition of "pretty quick"? A proper cabin is going to take months and months on your own. If you're really that concerned it would be more advantageous to buy land and get a small prebuilt shelter
I've never understood the idea that we're all supposed to "Bug Out" with a backpack/rifle and live indefinitely in the woods or whatever. Even if you have the requisite skills/equipment to do this which 99.9% of us don't, what does a pepper think will happen when the hungry disheveled unwashed hordes find his or her spot? Hunt game? Yea, you and everyone else. Those resources would be exhausted very fast. Moreover, if the water mains stopped pumping drinkable water in most populated areas for more than 2 weeks, half the population would be dead within 3. We would all be better off accepting the fact that we're dependent on these societal systems and working together to ensure our survival.
Yeah and no one is actually going to do it from the cities because they’re pussies and don’t actually know how to live in the woods. Valhallas RUclips channel did a good segment on this from the perspective of a retired green beret who’s actually seen/participated in societal collapse.
Sorry for the double reply but it’s also funny how city dwellers act like the country side is empty with no ppl. There are already MANY grown men who have been hunting those deer woods for generations. They’re not going to just leave or let refugees take all the game. City ppl would be getting ambushed constantly.
@@CiviTac If your plan in a rural area is "I'm gonna get into a gunfight with anyone I don't recognize because they're here to steal my deer" you're gonna be dead real fast
@@CiviTac If your plan living in a rural area is "get into a gunfight with anyone that you don't recognize because they might be here to steal your deer" you aren't going to last very long
@@CiviTacone jdam will get rid of any “bugout camp” lol
More people should read FerFals account of Argentina chaos. Cities were dangerous BUT in a way easier to organize with neighbors and band together. The countryside was more prone to violence and people isolated became more at risk - we see that today unfortunately in the Farm Murders in South Africa in particular
Feels good getting back to the SHTF content. I was going through withdrawals
A man's gotta have something to look forward to.
We tune in for the really bad background space western music, obviously.
rofl
@@BrassFactsI am once again asking for the name of the first song...
@@TheMsdos25 Impenetrable - Taylor Crane
I always thought it sounded like the sad SpongeBob music
@@BrassFacts Sweet, thanks! Now I can listen to it on loop when it inevitably gets stuck in my head.
Food for thought here.
One thing to consider: you stay in the city, you may indeed participate in the resources made available to urban areas.
But, it will be at the cost of your freedom. You will get in line, submit to search, give up your means of defense, and do what you're told. Count on it.
I grew up in Brooklyn. Park Slope. In the event of a major breakdown of whatever sort, I would not want to be there.
I live on 20 remote acres in Teton County. Ten miles from town, such as it is. We make a good living here based on the real estate economy of this resort area.
Everything around me is paid for. We could close the gate and live comfortably for maybe a year.
But, I'm under no illusions about what it means to live in such isolation in the event of a major wrol scenario.
As you say, it's best to live where you please, and not worry about drastic scenarios.
If yall got that land then prepare to dig a well before you start planting your own crops.
do yall have chickens? better start getting chickens.
Yall need a goat for each house for your own milk.
Yall need pigs at least 2 per house
and a couple heffers.
@@Bender_B._Rodriguez I've got a good well, a couple of ways to pump from it, and two ponds.
Good thoughts but to be fair, NYC is one of the worst cities ever as a baseline, let alone during fun virus times, let alone during an apocalyptic scenario. Almost every other city would not be so oppressive on your rights even during crisis
I had a really high paying gig in San Francisco doing a certain type of trade work and I would not leave it because I feared an SHTF scenario. Sometimes we have no choice but to live in a major city and when I was living in San Francisco, and I was preparing for an SHTF scenario, I accepted the fact that if anything were to happen, I was not getting out of that city my two options were taking one of the major bridges, which is only two of them or fighting my way all the way south and the Bay and even then I would have to cross through a desert that is miserably hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter just to get home to Texas. So I accepted the fact that I would have to bug in and find like-minded people because if I tried leaving when everyone else was trying to leave, I would most assuredly die in the chaos or get wrapped up in the shenanigans. Best bet is to bug in and then make your way out after the initial chaos. Even then you can only leave with what you can carry on your back. If you try to leave in a car you’re at a disadvantage because you can get trapped and you put a target on your back a lot of times people rural areas are more out of shape and often times less equipped than trained people who live in densely populated areas. The only pro to rural living is you spawn in there and you know the land.
No... There are other reasons. Waste management is a major primary concern. Cities will have brown outs before the rural towns. Water will be more accessible if you live in an area with wells.
You must pick your place of living on what you will likely encounter in daily life when your grid goes down.
I was not prepared for the amount of coherent, thoughtful comments. Bravo assfacts audience!
If anything, cities are likely better than the countryside for low-level SHTF stuff because all the people who matter are there and resources will be prioritised to them. For prepping innacity you mostly need to survive 72 hours or a couple of weeks, while innawoods you basically have to be completely self-sufficient for a month at minimum.
Cities are worse pre-SHTF, for sure, but that's not the focus of prepping.
In my city, we have weathered extreme storms, long term blackouts and even a terrorist attack. Never experienced anything crazy like the movies and prepper books have described. The worse thing that happened is lack of access to groceries and common goods. I have essentially forced my family to have preperations for these things and our family never suffered from grocery store shelfs being wiped clean and, further more, my family and close friends in my community have come together in said events to help each other in areas that each group was lacking. Thank you for this video:)
You should talk to S2 Underground and make a risk assesment chart for a givem area
That’d be a cool project, but you’d need several guys to contribute and compile objective and subjective data points for multiple scenarios.
He’s kinda already done a video on it not with s2 though
The wild thing with many prepper types is they move to a small town that doesn't even have arable land or the entirety of the local irrigation is reliant on modern electrical pumps
lack of milliions of starving people, dying of dehydration, closeness to water sources, ease of getting to where you can dig a tunnel and have scatter buried food caches, not having to deal with ambushes, road blocks, etc, getting to your BOL from the city The cities suck, big time.
That's why for most of human history, cities were located around rivers or other bodies of water. The fact that Cairo, Rome, London, Babylon, Baghdad, DC were all near sources of freshwater is no coincidence.
Most of them move to rural areas that surround large cities and pretend it’s safe backwoods living. They’re just the first to be looted by anyone that has too much trouble in their city.
@@Heywoodthepeckerwood Facts. yeah living in suburban Dallas or suburban Phoenix is not small town rural living they just live in a suburb that is almost guaranteed to be completely reliant on utilities most likely run out of the closest city proper. Out of all the prepper types i ever met only like a 25% actually lived in rural off the grid locations a couple from WV, Central PA , Montana etc etc. Most i met were from Manufactured HOA suburbs an hour or less from a major city.
MFers be dropping megabucks on "farmettes" within earshot of interstates and acting like they aren't just a loot pinata for the first band of urban raiders to get bored eating their own.
Brock I can't believe you didn't go as far back as the Rescript of Honorius. SMH not doing your Roman Empire thinking for the day.
It’s not that rural won’t suck in a collapse, it’s that the change from current won’t be as noticeable. And by rural I mean can’t see your neighbor’s house
IMHO the sweet spot is a small to medium sized town in a heavily agricultural area that also has a decent industrial base. Gets population density closer to the carrying capacity of the land while preserving most of the benefits of civilization.
Preferably next to a biodiesel plant
The supply chain for refined fuel is stupid fragile, hence why we're seeing interruptions more and more
Texas power grid falls over in "normal" times, I wouldn't expect it or the normal refineries to be in operation at all
@@subjekt5577 You need a tremendous amount of electricity and water for biofuels to work.
@@jeb6361 Know plenty of people with old trucks that run on grease/oil. They just filter it.
@@Winters_Folly They sure can. The ol deuce and a half trucks will run on just about anything.
Hey there’s something I’d like to touch upon. I live in LA, and I was directly next to the second largest fire, just a hair outside of the evac area.
When it came to preparedness, I was faced with a very strange situation. I had friend’s houses to go to all over socal. Food and water wasn’t going to be an issue across socal simply because of localized albeit large fires.
My survival was no issue whatsoever. What WAS a problem, was my irreplaceable stuff. Collectibles, hobby things, just impractical *things*.
A friend of mine asked why I wouldn’t take a go bag and I told him that’s a lot of space and weight I could use for valuables instead, given that my survival or shelter was no issue.
To someone who hasn’t been in this situation, it might sound ridiculous, like someone climbing on a titanic lifeboat being concerned about their luggage instead of their survival,
However, this situation is more comparable to the if the Titanic was sinking, except the Carpathia is parked directly next to it. In that situation, you are guaranteed to survive, so the question would be “what about my stuff”?
How should anyone prepare for that? It’s easy to pack a bag with food and water, so if I had to live on the run I could, but in this situation I wouldn’t be living on the run to survive, I’d be evacuating to save my property. In most common situations, it seems to me that impractical physical possessions are more likely to have need of saving than my life, which is pretty thoroughly secure even in a disaster.
How does one prepare to pack up useless shit? What do you prioritize? How do you decide on those priorities, depending on situation?
There is a recent adage that came about during the Marie Kondo craze: If you got poop on something you owned, would you clean it or throw it away? The stuff you would clean is what you take first, everything else is second
@ that’s pretty accurate.
It all depends on evacuation time and whether you actually are going to lose everything or just have water damage.
The sooner you can bail, the more likely you are to be be able to get out with a carload rather than getting trapped.
It's a balancing act.
You can also potentially move stuff to a more survivable location. For example, clothes are more likely to survive a wildfire if submerged in a pool than in a bedroom closet.
@ That’s smart
This is something I've been mulling over the last couple days. I ended up repacking my go-bag with clothes I'd actually prefer to wear vs. old stuff, and made more room for my photography gear lol. Everything feels crazy but I have to remember that I can drive to family a few hours away, and I'd rather have sentimental items over some cubic inches of food. Good take.
Thanks for making this video, this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time.
Exactly, how am I supposed to become a local warlord if I’m not in a population center???
I truly enjoy your channel, man. You've become one of my favorite guntubers. Always look forward to your videos.
“The people watching this video are not normal” and I took that personally
Good summary. Anything that will cause cities to collapse into warzones in some apocalypse scenario pretty much affects most "small towns " too. Lack of law, loss of power, limited or no access to food, etc. Small town and city people largely live the same way when it comes to acquiring their daily essentials. They all needs gasoline, food, and water and almost none of them have the means to produce it on their own, they all participate in commerce in a functioning nation state to acquire it. Remove the functioning nation-state and they are largely in the same situation.
I listen to you because your polisci vocabulary makes me feel comfy.
The idea of bugging out to the mountains is only a good one if you have a shelter well stocked with supplies, means to replenish water/food, are far enough away from others with the same idea, and you can actually get there. Otherwise you aren’t just going to go to the mountains and hunt everyday to survive. I’m a very avid hunter, and in the area I live in the average hunter success is between 6-10% on deer depending on game management unit, weapon choice, etc. So if 100 dudes are out look for a 2 week season with advantages like pre season scouting, trail cams, baiting, quads, e bikes, high end optics, etc. Only 10 go home with meat if they are lucky. My state is already over populated and has too many hunters. Imagine things get desperate and 4 million people from around a 50 mile radius in my area decide they have the same idea. 10% might luck out and wipe out any game within a couple weeks. Anything still standing will go nocturnal and bed in the thickest nastiest terrain, and 3.6 million are going to be starving.
Facts
Have you played Oregon Trail? The 4m will fight each other and die of cholera.
100%. I agree...
There's less than 16 million hunters in the US. So, the chances of 4 million of them being within 50 miles of one another is slim to none.
@@DKOutdoorAdventures consider there are more rifle and shotgun owners than hunters and if times get hard that number would spike as people get hungry
I live within 30 miles of a big city, in a rapidly growing bedroom community. There are farms and rural communities just as close by. Know your area and neighbors. I know who I can trust and not trust. I know some older folks who will need help. I know a young family with kids that like my dogs. A creek / river is close by. A farm with cattle is close by and our family buys a 1/4 cow every year. I know who is in a construction trade and who is in healthcare. Outside my subdivision I know of folks who live in an old double wide but they grow an amazing garden every year. I know corporate higher ups that would be useless if that had to do anything physical. Know the folks around you.
I have also lived in small rural towns ( < 10,000) where the biggest industry is drugs and pills. Industry has been offshored and the town is dying. Where people are already clannish and suspicious of outsiders. Where the young people with any future leave. - it isn’t
Some shtf Eden.
Community is key anywhere.
A good eyewitness account of Argentina's collapse, where gangs frequently targeted rural families: Surviving The Economic Collapse by Fernando Aguirre.
I live in one of those rural towns. The recent impending snowstorm caused all local grocery stores to all but EMPTY out within 2 days. Whoops.
I appreciate your pragmatism and objective approach. Super refreshing.
These are my favorite videos that you make!
4:51 you doxxed me bro
My main concern with being anywhere with population density is water and sanitation. Modern cities, or anywhere with enough population to have a postal code will turn into cesspits inside a week without running water, on top of all of the other problems that come with population density.
Look at the garbagemen strike in nyc back in 90's. 2 weeks of no collection in the middle of the summer and it was putrid. Rotting food and Toiletries + rats were absolutely everywhere (more than usual lol)
We listen to you because you take the time to think, write, say, edit and upload content
Look at small lumber and oil towns that have fallen apart with the ups and downs of those industries. They have effectively already experienced a collapse of their society so to speak. They're not flourishing.
People tend to romanticize small towns when it's not hard to see rampant drug and alcohol abuse and homelessness there. Ex cons trying to stay under the radar in a place where housing is cheap. And the smaller the town the less anonymous your prepping will be there. You could end up becoming more of a target.
And this isn't even mentioning that a lot of farms in the southwest are just as dependent on the "apparatus of society" to give them the means to farm. Water being pumped, implements to work the land with, fertilizers, seeds etc.
You and hop have turned into the modern Nutnfancy and I’m not mad at it
This is peak BF content. Keep it coming brother.
It’s typically not the big cities that we hear about during disasters. It’s usually rural towns that are devastated and then cut off from disaster relief because they’re remote and there’s maybe a single highway in and out of town.
And, like it or not, we all depend on the same globalized supply chains anyway.
So your argument is big cities are better for weather related natural disasters, gotcha. Do you feel that during any other type of SHTF scenario big cites are more survivable than rural areas?
LA Recently: hold my beer.
@@mikewebster8224entirely depends on the scenario we’re playing out. Everything up to govt/societal collapse probably. More violence but more resources to go around, ability to move resources quickly, and higher priority to get resources too due to the sheer number of people. If the scenario is localized and isn’t nation wide, people are coming from around the country to lend aid, and that aid will likely make its way to cities first. So kinda a pick your poison type of thing, but very situationally dependent and you can find scenarios where either location is preferable
@@Cryptogram44 More violence is an understatement. The cities will eat themselves alive within the first couple days. As someone that spent the first 25ish years of my life in Chicago, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near cities of more than 250k. Good luck getting out once everyone takes to the streets, roads start getting blocked off by both good and bad people, as well as bridges, highway ramps, etc. The sheer number of bad actors in confined spaces makes big cities one giant funnel of death.
@@mikewebster8224 again that’s very situationally dependent. If we’re in a total collapse scenario sure i concur, but most things short of that the odds flip is the point being argued. If there’s still military/police presence due to partial collapse (natural disaster as an example), then being able to move freely, at least during the day, may not be an issue at all. In that case it’s becomes purely a resource driven issue. The cities get aid and resource first, then the surrounding suburbs, and then the more rural areas around that. If the roads into your small town are destroyed, the city could be entirely unaffected while food & water is cut off from the small town. I’ve lived in big cities (NYC), suburbs, and more recently a smaller town. All have pros/cons and their own prep requirements, but in 90% of scenarios both are survivable with the question being how long will it take for things to go back to normal, for which the more urban areas will be shorter in duration but potentially higher in intensity depending on severity of the scenario in question.
The argument to avoid cities only holds water in the argument of a complete infrastructure collapse, and even then it is far from perfect. Beyond this, most people greatly overestimate their ability to survive in the woods. For example, even supposing you were successful enough and game was available for you to support yourself or your group, how many people do you know who can process and preserve a deer or elk in the absence of refrigeration? Or have the knowledge of vegetation and nutrition sources to fill in the gaps left by wild game? Or have a filtration system or treatment method for ground water supplies? Assuming anything less than full collapse cities are likely to be a better option, as infrastructure and population will draw more available resources than rural communities
ooo new brassfacts video right when im starting a new Oxygens Not Included run? wonderful.
I grew up in the heart of a major metro and thought I served in the Army I don’t know shit about the outdoors. Taking my family into the woods is probably the worst thing I could do.
Watching a new brass facts on a Friday at work just hits different
LA is so relived to hear this right now
*relieved?
@@ExtremelyAverageMan He said what he said...zombieland confirmed.
@@ExtremelyAverageManno re - lived
The video was that good
The rich people will be fine. The working class folks, on the other hand..
I know, right?
My rule of thumb is that if everyone has the same preparedness plan as you then none of you have a plan that works. Those that say that if there is a hurricane they will just go to the store and buy supplies the day before. Or those that claim that they will just leave the city and move to the mountains if something happens.
As someone who lives in a small-ish ranching town in Wyoming - I agree that there are not really that many more prepared people than other places. People around here generally have extra food and stuff in case a snow storm locks things down for a week but that is about it.
Great video. Well thought out. My favorite part was “Nova, here!” She spun her old ass around so fast 😂
post apoca-lipstick 0:25
Look at la rn it seems to be holding together ok and a good chunk of it is actively on fire
No one is starving or dying of dehydration yet at the same time the LAFD literally has no water to put out the fire. Weird dichotomy
Having lived in LA County for nearly 2 years, I can assure you it is not holding together ok even when everything isn't on fire lmao..
"Ok" is a relative term when you're talking about a city like LA. Fire or no, LA is _historically_ a hotbed for violent AND property crimes, political and racial unrest, and wealth disparity. Like, yeah, the spiderweb of concrete is always gonna be there. But it's the "meat" in between I'm concerned about, and they are... NOT "ok".
Now you need to do the suburbs.
I think this would appeal to most of his viewers because it probably safe to assume most of us who think this way aren’t in the boonies but also not downtown in a huge city either
I’m relatively confident that suburbs and cities function the same in terms of the preparedness scale and risk.
@@timunderbakke8756 I'm not.
@@CiviTacIt would be helpful to know, while in your suburban locale, when to travel into the city, or out to the country, to get supplies (e.g. water, food, medicine), or to just stay and pray?
@@timunderbakke8756
Tbh I feel cities themselves have more resources in a more dense space than rows of the same homes.
So I feel there is a stark difference
3:35 I would have one pouch that had 1-2 MREs and the other one had cleaning gear/hygiene kit. That way I didn’t have to dig through my pack if we were going to be somewhere for a short amount of time.
I've got all my bug-out gear ready, I'm in South Los Angeles. Ready to leave this place before I'm forced to defend myself against the mindless horde.
It's California. Likely it will be a mindful horde.
I’d rather take my chances with five similarly minded and trained individuals in a major city then I would being alone in the rural parts of the country
First, I need to say this is why I like you're channel, when it comes to preparedness, you're pretty real and grounded. I mean being in Utah, and salt lake of all things, makes sense, as regardless of your religious affiliation, there's a lot of good and interesting preparedness tips in Mormon philosophy. And only learned they exist because I had some family history there, dude was a captain of the Mormon battalion and somehow accidentally founded a town during a supply run. But I digress, as my point is I see some preper guys and they are just out right insane and as unprepared as it gets, even my grandmother on my mothers side was one, I never met her but there are a few stories, so seeing someone who can be down to earth about it is pretty nice.
This video I think personally is probably one of the best that shows it, the first that showed a bit how down to earth you are was probably the bug out bag video.
I am someone who takes prep a bit similar to being well armed, and my philosophy comes from the SWAT 4 tutorial level of all things which was somewhere around the lines "Be well prepared, well armed, and ready to shoot, but prey to god you never have to actually use it."
And you're the only channel that can give me a perspective that is actually useful.
two... moving the love letter for your work aside, For some reason I now want to play a Twilight 2000 campaign now...
I don't know, just watching it gave me ideas and it sounds fun now.
I was among the first few Americans to hit the ground in Haiti porta prince, post earthquake January 2009.
We were there for about 6 weeks before a full size MUE replaced us and we moved in to Africa our original destination.
A massive urban multi story building city. Most building collapsed, no power, no water, no medical, no real help at all for 99% of people.
There was definitely un speakable ruthless violence on innocent people over things like food. But also people were carrying on and surviving.
It wasn’t the thunder dome, wasn’t constant fighting, wasn’t a mass migration.
Had to re-sub to your channel after mysteriously being unsubscribed. Guess you've made it. Congrats dude! Love the content.
Nova is too sweet to be left alone with any cat poor doggo.
Living in the country working in the city i agree. We just got a snow storm here last weekend and the amount of people on social media complaining that the side streets in our little town or worse yet their driveway got covered when the plow went through absolutely astonished me. Small towns kinda suck when weather hits but we have less chance of riots so im okay with it
A few thoughts: First, a "rural small town" is definitely under 1,000 residents, and more than likely, those residents are spread out over a larger area than the typical medium to large towns (I'd probably classify those as 1,000 to 10,000 residents and 10,000 to 20,000 residents respectively). Outside of the United States, a rural small town would most likely be referred to as a "hamlet" or "village."
Second, we can primarily blame the Green Revolution (i.e., the industrialization of agriculture and farming) for both just-in-time food delivery as well as the increase in dependency on retail food centers (even for rural residents). Because this happened globally, we can see the results in recent cases such as Syria, where U.S. theft of Syrian grain resulted in severe food insecurity for those living under Syrian Government rule. Traditionally, siege warfare and starvation were only effective strategies against cities because the population density exceeded the area's ability to generate food, but now even rural residents (especially in developed countries) lack the knowledge, supplies, and tools to grow their own food.
Third, while I agree that current rural communities are currently no better prepared for SHTF than larger cities, the shift from reliance on outside support to self sufficiency during SHTF is far easier for rural communities than it is for cities. Rural areas, while also susceptible to criminals and marauders, are also less likely to see anywhere near the same duration and intensity of violence that cities will endure. Yes, if there is outside help available, cities will receive a disproportionate amount of relief more quickly, but we're talking about SHTF here, so that's a capital "IF." And, of course, that's assuming that the rural community is directly impacted by said S hitting said Fan.
Fourth, this is great timing on this video given the current disaster we see unfolding in one of America's largest and most populated cities, which is currently experiencing a severe shortage of resources, support, etc.
Fantastic. Thank you. Love the prospective.
I watch your vids cause ya bring up some interesting points. I don't always agree with'em but that's normal enough. Looks like y'all have a great time out "playing" with this mess.
I also dig on the low key Sling Blade-esque bg music and the Nova-mutt. 🤠
As a person who lives out in the country, i have to admit city living is definitly something.
Since you mentioned some book, One Second After by William Forstchen shows a pretty realistic look at city vs rural SHTF, ofc, that the top tier on your pyramid. Agree though, with limited supply chain options, most rural locations wouldn't fair very well. With that "Civil War (2024)" level shtf where we still have to go to work, cities would have way more of that infrastructure.
I can positively hear the dog-brain cogs whirring: "Friend? Toy? Food?? What are you small not-dog?"
Author was wrong, LA is perishing by fire, not water.
I listen to you for the heeler content. Heeler dad here and I'm planning on protecting a heeler pup and heeler senior citizen during the breakdown. Oh and my wife.
small town in rural area, with lots of back roads leading out of it and ideally no big highways comeing close to it, much less thru it, but having a hospital, not too far away.
You sound like you live in a actual rural town as opposed to a huge majority of preppers i met who live in some manufactured HOA suburb less then a hour away from huge cities and directly connected to a major interstate.
@@aenima2288 no, i live ina 100k city, but I live 1/2 mile from the fence of a huge militar base, which is half covered with brush, trees lakes and creeks. I've got a bolt cutter, too
Go read selco's book on his experience in the Balkan wars trapped in a city. Did he survive? Yes, is it possible to live in a city during shft, yes. You will have more access to supplies, but also much more competition. I think if you don't have enough supplies the city can work. Being in the sticks take so much more work even on a good day, but being properly prepared with enough people (basically making a small town lol) you will have less competition for the limited resources. I can tell you this, in limited loss of rule of law (covid small scale shtf) I didn't notice any change to my day to day. I have limited law enforcement resources availability today, and will almost not be noticed once it's gone, one could make the argument that it's likely I will retain this small law enforcement much longer than a city will.
I have that book, well he wrote several but I have the main one. In it he specifically says not to live in a small town - I think he says village - because they are the most isolated and easiest to target. They get the least resources and the least help. Partisans were rolling through small villages “getting” every single person in it because they were isolated and easy to hit.
Ferfal says the same about the Argentine collapse. Gangsters would drive out from the city to the farmland to hit the isolated farmers
I've read it, it's a interesting read.
It's a very very specific scenario.
He also does technically mention that a lot of the rural outskirts just died 4 seconds in.
But yes that is the worst case scenario and in a scenario like that I would not want to be in a city.
@BrassFacts yeah, when you have large groups of loosely organized fighters rolling across an area to fight another group, those small areas with no arms or organization it goes poorly for normal people. It takes way more up front cost to prepare for something in the middle of nowhere, and even then the odds are about even for someone in a city in the same situation.
In shtf scenarios the countrysides often descend into banditry and lawlessness. Something to remember.
MUH “TrY tHaT iN a SmAlL tOwN”
Accurate assessment. I’d say the only real difference is that very small towns will likely seek to work together sooner, than in cities. I’d also say that going benevolent warlord is more important, and easier, in very small towns. Easier because folks could be more inclined to trust you, since they know you. More important because you’re a small town and will be an easy target if not well organized.
nova's a heeler, she seems timid but at the end of the day I've watched heelers get flung 10 ft in the air, hit the ground hard, then charge right back at a 2000 lbs angry steer and bite it right in the face. my money is on nova.
10:10 YEEEEAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!! It’s a shame Socko immediately recognized Nova as a threat to his dominance of Hops heart
the mentality of most people will not allow them to work together to stabilize a bad situation and figure out what to do next, that is the real issue. Together we could deal with almost anything, divided we collapse under the weight of an ice storm or a fire on a relatively small scale. When the idea of some small percentage of humanity surviving some event comes up, people tend to ignore what sort of people that would be, and what the world those people would live in and propagate would be, we are talking about the darkest of ages, not the best way to live out your life.
Eh, I mean what is civilization other than a counter example to your claim?
Yeah it's fucked but.. I mean this entire thing is people deciding to have faith and work together, even in the face of distrust and greed.
If anything I'd imagine a disaster would make that more likely, not less. That seems to be the norm.
@subjekt5577 the Japanese showed good social coherence during their disasters, so did the Russians, so did a number of others, healthy societies tend to handle things.
@@BigChiefWiggles Homogeneous societies tend to handle things. As you say, the Japanese are a good example.
The United States, at this point, is a grouping of tribal societies flying in loose formation.
Tens of millions of those within our borders are not even Americans.
We're not going to get together to "handle" anything, because our aims are mutually exclusive.
@@robgrey6183 bingo!
I also like how in loads of SHTF books, they make it super clear that civilian shooters just can't hack it, and they need the strong skilled military guys to train them. But also the majority of these books feature military people that are not combat troops, so that supply officer that never left his home state is just so much more skilled with a rifle than the dirt poor hunts for food dude.
The Nova and Socko crossover episode was unexpected but something I needed
I currently don’t have a long rifle and I’ve looked at building my own and/or purchasing a complete rifle. The one I keep going back to is the DDM4V7 from Daniel Defense. I absolutely know I can go cheaper, but I like a lot about the company and how they make rifles. I’m not asking for permission, but I appreciate an educated opinion.
Nyet, city is fine
Wanted to add, your guys pets are cute. It's extra funny the dog is named Nova because so is the dog of my bestie/roommate, and her dog wants to get along with my cat but kitty won't have it either
Brown out events is the biggest probroblem to face. The only way to prepare for that is to leave when it happens.
That and dug wells are the only two reasons why to move to more rural living.
Brown outs happen everywhere attached to the grid.
Not just urban areas. It's the same grid.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, or you're implying rural homes have alt power?
I read black autumn a year or two ago and the review in the first 38 seconds was perfect.
Depends on the area. I live in Canada so some towns look like Colorado, some towns look like Chandigarh. Or like literal Canadian Somalia.
There’s a book “ The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” by Fernando "Ferfal" Aguirre
He lived through the Economic Collapse in Argentina & obviously not a total collapse but he says how everyone in the country side had to move into the city to find work something to to think about.
“Don’t listen to me.”
Been doing that.
They just made a movie / series of this book. The movie is pretty slow and only covers like the first quarter of the book. But it is called homestead
2:08 we're actually just here for the doggo Brass.
appreciate the heber city call out! it’s getting too big, but does have sustainability offerings such as dam power, a couple of dairies, and geographic isolation - cue Burt Gummer
yeah but at least you have the only place in utah with a deep diving location
also I did my drivers ed there.
And I won a 1 mi race in highschool there.
So it's okay in my book
I decided awhile ago that buggin' out was not going to be a good option. I would need to throw so much time and money to get to a survival level ability it would be inefficient. Second, is I would be competing with everyone else fleeing. I am now focusing my efforts in creating a community who we can partner with for resources, protection, and skill sharing.
I love this whole book series.
Damn I never realized Heber City was that big. Passed through a couple times and always thought it was one of those small one road towns.
Also I avoid SLC not for emergency preparedness, but because that place just sucks.
heber use to be a lot smaller. But then around the 2008-2010 or so it ballooned in pop, likely as park city just became completely unviable for normal people to live in.
@@BrassFacts I used to pass through Heber on my way to visit my in laws going back to the nineties. Way different now. But so is everywhere.
Just based on the audible description of the author during the first minute, I would have sworn you were basically talking about Jack Carr! lol
That's a nice jacket you got there. Wonder where you got it from.
Some douche named hop gave it to me.
Lol you said post appocalipstick in the beginning. Im gonna steal that from you and start a prepper themed make up brand.
There are locations in pretty much every major city that I would already avoid for my own safety. I was in New Orleans before and after Katrina. The dangerous places expanded and got more dangerous. 10/10 would not want to be in a city during a regional power outage or cell service interruption unless you are already part of a gang that offers you protection(Bloods, MS13, Police, etc.)
Yeah, I’ll be staying in my city. I know it like the back of my hand and have much more resources. I live on the outskirts of a good size city.
299 Days book series is pretty good about a more than likely scenario. The scenario is more of an economic collapse and it’s pretty realistic about things that would occur during a shtf scenario. Would recommend but it’s taking forever to get to the action.
Well well look at the city slicker pulling up in his fancy German car