Prepping: Going It Alone: Will the Lone Wolf Approach Work for You?
Some Preppers like to think or even fantasize about going it alone when the world collapses. They may envision a cabin hundreds of miles from civilization with enough provisions to sustain them for years. Humans may have very well created the disaster that forced them into seclusion, so then avoiding other humans is only logical right.
Most people realize that other humans can be a threat during any crisis. However, not everyone will be a threat. Even today, in the absence of a crisis humans cause most of the problems in the world.
While some people will be a threat, many more will be a burden because they failed to prepare. Then a smaller percentage will become saviors because of their knowledge, skills and their willingness to share what they know with others.
Those that want to set up a mountain top retreat, a private sanctuary if you will, can do so in hopes of avoiding others. What happens though, when your appendix’s explodes, or you break a leg dragging a deer back to the cabin, or what do you do when a minor infection leads to gangrene?
You can successfully live alone on a mountaintop in today’s world because of technology and the advancement of medicine. During a crisis however, the world will change, help is not a phone call away, and medevac helicopters will be grounded, no search and rescue teams will be deployed, and medicines will not be stocked on store shelves.
Specialized skills will be needed during a crisis, skills that can replace lost technology, skills you likely lack because you do not need them in today’s world, but your world will change.
You can build a bunker and sequester yourself inside, but what have you accomplished. You will find yourself getting more paranoid and you may end up spending all your time peering out the gun ports. Do you see yourself shooting everyone coming up to the door?
Is everyone a threat to be eliminated? How you decide who is a threat and who is not may become blurred to the point where everyone is out to get you. Whether you believe it or not, you will need others during a crisis, maybe even more so then you do now.
Early humans banded together because they could pool resources. Each group had hunters, gatherings and those that made clothing, cooked and tended to other camp chores and administered to the sick and elderly. Villages did not thrive by everyone wandering off and doing their own thing. Humans instinctively gather in communities. Collective minds solve problems.
No One Is Truly Self Reliant
The goal of course is to be as self-reliant as possible, but there will be things that you cannot provide for yourself, which someone else has, whether it is a skill, knowledge or material goods. You can of course get along quite nicely without someone else cutting your hair, mowing your lawn, or even hauling off your garbage. You can dig your own well, raise your own food and butcher your own livestock, but can you deliver a baby, pull an abscessed tooth or amputate a limb that has gangrene.
You do not have to run out now and start putting a Prepper group together. You can do all of your preparations in secret, being a lone wolf Prepper does not mean you are going to be a lone wolf survivor. Prepare with the understanding that when the SHTF that people will need to come together to help each other and to restore some semblance of order.
You can survive as an individual but you need to know who can provide you and your family with medical care, help dig wells or simply provide you with information about what is going on in the world. People will be on the move so information will be on the move as well.
You will of course need to provide security for yourself and family, and possibly for those that cannot provide it for themselves. This means you need an adequate stockpile of weapons and ammunition but having firearms is not the end all, security is just a part of your overall survival posture.
For those that worry about predators disguised as Preppers such as the ones that claim that all they need is a weapon to take what they need from others, keep in mind people banded together will deal with problems of this nature swiftly.
You should advocate that every person is responsible for him or herself as a rule. In some cases, you will find people wanting to redistribute supplies. It is recommended that you avoid this type of community endeavor. You want to be independent as much as possible but at the same time realize there are some things that you cannot do on your own.