(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
Post-SHTF, a survival group will be dealing with issues that are certainly more important than occasional potholes. What happens if individuals within the group begin dragging their feet and refuse to help with group projects or refuse to spend time on security and common defense? From a pure expediency perspective, what can actually be done about people in a group who don’t help with projects or participate in security and defense efforts? Should a group sit idly by and allow a gang of marauders to loot the recalcitrant member’s home nestled in the center of the MAG? That simply won’t work.
It is likely that refugees will be coming from outside the community and that they will try to join. If so, what will the requirements be? Who will make the final determination of whether or not they will be allowed admission? If there are leaders who will be making these decisions, will these leaders be elected? Or will they simply be those individuals with “the most toys” and the greatest assets on which others depend?
If these leaders will be elected, who will determine the eligibility of members to vote? Will the electorate include the original resident property owners only? Will it include every adult living in the group? If so, will this include even the newest arrivals who brought only what their vehicles could carry, or perhaps only what they could carry on their backs? If factions begin to develop, what conflicts might arise between a flood of “newbies” and the original members?
After society has fallen apart, assume that wherever this survival group is located, among the group’s members their adult sons and daughters, or their brothers and sister who were living elsewhere, straggle in after a tortuous and dangerous journey from great distances. Are they automatically entitled to join the group? If the answer is, “Obviously, yes,” then what about their spouses and children? If the answer is, again, “Obviously, yes,” then what about their son-in-law or daughter-in-law’s parents, siblings, etc.? Where does it stop?
What would be happening with all of this would be a micro-level example of “chain migration,” an immigration issue that exists in our country today. For every immigrant admitted, seven more will try to immigrate because families “should be allowed to stay together.” The question becomes, “Who will feed them and with what assets? Their own? The group’s?
As a point of reference, see: Amazing Photographs of Prospectors Carrying Supplies Ascending the Chilkoot Pass.
As an example of the problem here with less than fully-prepared group members, and with new arrivals after the calamity has begun, take a look at those photographs. It shows a long line of miners during the Alaskan Gold Rush carrying huge packs while climbing a snow-covered mountain. These men were on the Chilkoot Trail that began in Skagway, Alaska. They were headed to the Klondike gold fields. Canadian Mounties waited…