Will You Feel Guilty?

Are you going to feel guilty?

Are you going to let someone tell you that all of your hard work was selfish?

Are you going to let someone bully you out of your months and years of effort, learning, applying, and adding to your stores because they weren't smart enough to get prepared themselves?

There are plenty of people who are going to think, and moan, and complain about how unfair it is that you have something to live off of while they scrounge or starve. It won’t matter how much time and effort you've put into being prepared.  It won’t matter whether or not you have the law on your side, they WILL try and take what you have, either by direct force, or demanding that others get involved in their plight.  They will have no problem taking every last ounce of your effort and then demanding more.

Then when that’s gone, will they show back up on your doorstep hoping that you do have more?

It doesn't take long looking through news stories to see this trend.  If you want new examples look no further than the latest reality TV shows.  Survivor recently had a great example of this.

On the episode titled, “Million Dollar Decision”, one of the contestants stashed some granola/ trail mix.  If you've followed this show, you know that going hungry for several days is commonplace depending on your team or where you are in the game. 

It’s unclear how it starts, but several of the other contestants start talking about strip searching everyone to find food.  There’s some grumbling, and then eventually a few of them start searching bags.  Of course they find the granola. 

With comments of elitist, and entitled, the rest of the group take the advantage and devour the contents of the bag.  Now, however, the girl Julie is made to feel guilty, and outcast.  She was smart enough to stash, but not smart enough to keep it out of reach, and then let the feelings of guilt outweigh common sense. 

This isn't a debate about the right and wrong of stashing something away from everyone else for the sake of the game. It does however, point to human nature.

At what point will your neighbor, that you've known forever, be on your doorstep because they didn't save enough, or didn't do anything at all?

Will they or could they become aggressive?  How aggressive will they get and will you be prepared to use force?  Will you be able to use force against a friend or family member?

Will it be your community leaders or self-appointed community leaders that will decide for you?  Will they show up on your doorstep to redistribute your effort to the whole community in turn putting your chances of survival at an even larger disadvantage?

Let’s be clear. If this happens it won’t just be that you had food that could be stolen.  It will be that YOU took advantage of other’s by having a stash.  That YOU think you’re better than everyone else, or that you've always been that “selfish” neighbor.  It won’t matter that you have been encouraging others for years to get prepared for, “just in case”.  Because when people are hungry, and real life has hit them in the face, they don’t care about what they didn't do, they only care about how to fix it NOW. 

That is a very negative and pessimistic view of the possibilities.

Hopefully this isn't a question that you’ll ever have to address.  Hopefully your community is a planning community and will be standing together.  Hopefully you ARE that neighbor that IS encouraging others to do something to get prepared.

But while we want to be prepared for whatever can happen, we also need to include possible emotional and psychological reactions.

Now... on the other side of that, the reaction to steal someone else’s effort is not a consideration for many of us.  We understand that our outcome is a direct result of our effort, and when that effort falls short on this end, we will have to pick up the slack on the other side.

We understand that little thing called personal responsibility. 

We are the ones that lend our efforts to help those who are in the middle of a disaster without waiting to be told to do so.  We are the ones that spend countless volunteer hours to prepare stock piles of goods for disasters around the world.  We are also the ones that give countless amounts of money to charities of all kinds because we want to be able to help.

People like us are typically not the ones that are going to be making the trouble.  It can happen, it’s just not typical. I believe it’s because we not only understand the better side of people, but move to promote it.

While preparing for your emergency, have you considered how to handle this kind of scenario?  Have you considered what you can do to prepare for a scenario like this before and emergency? 

There are a lot of different things that you can do now that don’t include burying your stash on a far off piece of property.  Are you up to the challenge?

For other great information, and ideas check out NewSurvivalSkills.  You can also find them on Youtube and FaceBook.