
Lone wolf survivalists won’t last long. You must have community to survive. Community for defense. Community for rebuilding. Community for food production. Community for mental health.
Just consider what it takes to mount a 24/7 guard: 4 hour shifts, that’s 6 per 24 hrs. You need 8 hrs recovery time between shifts. How fast do you think burnout will occur with the guard crew? What if someone gets sick or hurt? And this only covers one Observation Post (OP), and you have a 360 degree perimeter. Also, this does not provide for scouts, rovers, perimeter patrol, runners, etc. Now, who is doing the cooking, cleaning, and food production? Ya think your 10 person fire team will last more than a week or two before they are so exhausted they can no longer function? You NEED community!
A few survival communities exist, but much more common are various forms of religious communities. The ‘home church’ movement in the US has gained a lot of ground in the last 20 or 30 years. Home churches usually consist of 2-4 families gathering for worship and study. Just what will fit in the living room or rec room of the average home. It’s probably the best place for a prepper to start networking. Some churches have ‘breakout’ community groups that operate something like mini-churches, meeting in homes for mid-week prayer and study in place of a Wednesday night hymn and prayer service at the church. I attend such a church and breakout group. Socially, it allows the building of a close-knit community where people get to know each other and have an opportunity to share faith and teaching, pray for one another, and quite often learn about and meet members’ needs, whether with prayer, counseling, emotional support, food, cars, appliances, physical labor, etc. It’s hard to hide in such a group; you’re going to out yourself quickly if you have a agenda that is subversive or anathema to the group.
From an OPSEC point of view, a ‘gospel community group’ is a great place to ‘vet’ others to maintain integrity and security of a ‘survival’ group. Back in the 90’s the terms ‘survivalist’ and ‘patriot’ were demonized by the Clinton administration and the lapdog media with it’s Marxist agenda of destroying America. Having identified with survivalists and patriots for many years, I was overjoyed to see those ideals and groups re-branded as ‘preppers’ and ‘Christian preppers.’
Of course, not all preppers are christians (nor are all christians preppers), nor are the terms survivalist and prepper interchangeable. And another thing to remember is that not all ‘christians’ are disciples of Yeshua ha Mescheach. In other words, they claim the name, but don’t try to discipline their lives to follow the teachings. In fact today, many ‘christians’ are socialist crusaders that wouldn’t know the Gospel if it jumped up and bit them on the butt. These folks should be very careful, as the 10 Commandments say not to take the Lord’s name in vain. They are taking upon themselves the title of christians and followers of Jesus (Yeshua), but they claim the name in vanity, refusing to acknowledge the deity of Jesus or allow His Spirit to have any say in their daily lives. Sure, you can say that the commandment means you mustn’t curse using His name, but you can’t deny the logic of my argument that it can mean claiming to be a believer without really meaning to follow through.
So, coming back from that rabbit trail, let’s get back to the establishment of communities of refuge, which is the focus of the following article:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/cities-of-refuge-why-are-hundreds-of-places-of-refuge-being-created-for-when-society-totally-collapses
BTW, if you wonder why I didn’t capitalize ‘christian’ it is because it means nothing today. So many have claimed the name in vain, or misused it, that it really is useless as an identifier. Disciple connotes discipline or an attempt to conform to certain standards, and believer works for me because it begs the question of “What do you believe in?” This, of course, opens the discussion which will quickly determine if you have any common ground or if you are diametrically opposed to each others basic beliefs (world view).