WHAT ABOUT THE PRISON WHEN THE SHTF? WHAT ABOUT YOUR NEIGHBOR?I am a member of the internet reading group, Goodreads.com/ My documentary film director son told me about this group and I joined immediately. Have I got a good deal for you!
You sign up, free, on this reading website full of other readers. Authors come to this website and give away their new book, either not published yet, or just published. They do this in order to get your written opinion of their book. No joke, just sign up, write about yourself on your sign up page, go to the section of giveaway books, pick the books you would like to win, there is a deadline to sign up for each book, and the author goes through the ones wanting his/her book and chooses who gets the book.
An author may give away one or ten or any number of his/her book. If you are chosen, you get a notice you won and a book comes to your house, FREE. What kind of books are there? Every genre and plenty of each in each genre. Altogether, there are usually 80+ pages of books to go through. You can pick a genre and just look at those books, then pick another genre, etc., or you can go through all the genres mixed together.
When you join, write on your page everything about you that would interest an author. List every skill you have, your education, your interests, as the authors are going to read about you when deciding to whom to give a book.
Now, going through those books to choose which ones you want to read, is like eating your favorite ice cream. You will be saying in your mind, “I want that one and that one and that one and that one, etc.”. Just punch on one and follow a couple of directions and you are on the list wanting that book. Keep doing that until you get tired punching on books. Do it again the next day and the next day, etc., having a blast doing it whenever you want. Eventually, you will win a book and more books if you keep entering.
I went nuts getting on those lists. It was great fun just to do that. In about two weeks, I won two books. I think I won them due to what I wrote about myself on my page. I wrote about writing prepping articles and gave my psychological education/background and medical training. The two books I won are:
“Oh Sh!t…The Awakening”, and “When Life Hurts”. One day, both books were in my mail. Wonderful, hard back books, all mine for free. Both books are available on Amazon.
“The Awakening” is about the economic collapse of our country – how it came about is the first section of the book. The main character is a man with a family and his friend in the “money” world tells him what is happening to our currency and he realizes the country is in danger of collapsing. Then, he has to convince his wife of that fact. The story continues and toward the end (this is book one), the collapse has happened and we are in the executive offices of a prison. Food is hard to find at this point and the director of the prison and his staff have to make a decision what to do about the prisoners. They have two choices – leave them in the cells and they starve to death or let them all out. I forgot to say this story takes place in Atlanta, Georgia. The prison is in the greater Atlanta area. The director puts out over the airways that the first release of prisoners will be those guilty of something other than murder. Eventually, the murderers will have to be released into the area.
There is another rather quick occurrence after people can’t find food – the main character’s wife hears someone at the door and her next door woman neighbor is there demanding food. She has seen trucks pull up to this house and food and water being delivered just before the collapse. She saw this lady and her daughter outside making a solar oven a few weeks ago and made fun of them for doing it. We’ll talk about this scenario.
Let’s back up and talk about prisoners who are no longer prisoners – they are out. I assume you know where jails are in your area. Jails are different than prisons. Usually, a person is in jail until they have been convicted or found not guilty or they have to stay in a jail for a few days for a minor offense. If guilty of a serious crime, those are sent to a prison for a long term incarceration. You know there is a jail connected to your police department and a jail connected to your sheriff’s department. Now, do you know where those actually are in relation to where your house is? I know where they are in relation to my house. Find that out if you don’t know. If one is fairly close to your house in an emergency that goes on for a period of time and there is no water or food, you would definitely want defensive weapons close at hand as soon as such an emergency happened in case criminals were around.
Prisons are different. They hold many dangerous prisoners. Is there a prison anywhere within 30 miles of you? Another question is, if you have such a prison, do you have any idea where prisoners tend to go when they are let out of this prison? They are given some money and taken to a bus station. Do you have any idea where the majority of them might go if buses are still running? If buses aren’t running, where do you think they would go?
Now, I’ll tell you about my situation and perhaps that will give you an idea about a prison near you. (First, you have to find out if there is one if you don’t already know.)
The main prison in Texas and where prisoners are executed in this state, is 25 miles north of me straight north up an Interstate Hwy. that goes through that town. The main employer in that county is the prison. The University there is the second largest employer and has a large criminal justice program that furnishes employees for that prison. What about the people in the town – are they subject to be preyed upon by these prisoners when they are let loose? Not really. Why? Because most of the prisoners are repeat prisoners and they follow the same route they have taken before and newer prisoners will follow them, go where they are going.
Where do they go? Well, I know where many of them go. In my practice, some prisoners from there were sent to me for a psychological evaluation. Where were they? When they got out of prison in that town, they bought bus tickets to Galveston, straight south on that Interstate Highway that ends in Galveston. It was and is, the farthest place they could go before they were in the ocean. They want to get as far away from US land as they can so they go to the ocean. I would go to Galveston and test these “former” criminals. Most are career criminals, crime is all they know. There was a halfway house in Galveston and they stayed there until their time allowed to be there was up. Then, they lived on the beach. It was not safe to be on that beach after dark. Galveston had a high rate of burglaries and I imagine it still does. Once on the beach with no money, they had to steal to get something to eat – either steal money or steal food or break into houses and steal both. One day I was testing one of them and he said he hadn’t had anything to eat since early the day before. I had a sandwich with me and gave it to him thinking I may have just saved someone from getting robbed.
Now, remember this is SHTF time, so if there is no bus service since there might not be gas available, where do they go after being let out? The people in the town are still relatively safe because the prisoners don’t want to hang around that town – too many law enforcement types in that town. It will be hard for them not to attempt to get to Galveston down that highway. Galveston is 120 miles south. I think they will head down that highway and only veer off it to steal food/water and continue until they get to Galveston. Those who don’t do that, will head east and west of the prison town and they will be in the open countryside within three miles outside the prison as the prison town is a small town. So, people in the immediate countryside might have to deal with these criminals. There is a state park with a lake just outside the prison town a few miles and that lake means water and fish and that would draw them there. Anyone living around that lake would be a target.
Any lake will gather all kinds of people who need water and food. If you live near a lake, be warned people will go there. Think about it - where would you go if you had no water or food and a lake was within walking distance? That would mean life for you. The water would have to be boiled and the majority of people won’t do that – they will just drink it and become sick, but that is another problem.
I have a friend who lives on a smaller lake a short distance from that lake in the state park. The large house is about 30 yards from the lake – just walk down the concrete path to the dock behind the house. It’s quite a lovely scene at the lake side but all I could think about was how vulnerable the house was. Couldn’t stop anyone from coming there from the water. There would have to be a lookout watching that dock all the time. While we were standing there, a large fish jumped out of the water and splashed down - food everyone would want.
Think about the location of your house to jails and prisons. If you see a potential problem there, determine what you would do to secure your house and your family from a released prison population. They are going to get a distance away from that prison immediately.
Another happening from the book: The woman neighbor who comes to your house demanding water and food. Remember, she made fun of you when she saw you making a solar oven. That ticked you off. Now, here she is demanding water/food because she knows you have it – she saw one or more trucks delivering food and bottled water to your house. You made a mistake with the delivery of food. When I ordered long term food, I split the orders so not many boxes were delivered at a time. I would wait two weeks before I ordered more boxes. If you still need to order food, don’t have a large number of boxes come at one time.
Now, here is the woman at your door. She says she knows you have plenty of food and water and she wants some because they have no more water or food at their house. What do you do? You need to make that decision now and stick with it. If you give her water and food, she will be back wanting more. If you watched the National Geographic movie about the grid going out, a neighbor came to a prepared family wanting food, then demanding food and he was turned down so he came back with some men and things got out of hand.
In this book, the prepared woman told the neighbor she had no food/water to give her as they didn’t have enough to share. She told the woman where there was a FEMA camp and said she and her family could walk there and they should do it right now before too many people got to the FEMA camp. The not prepared woman still wanted the food/water these people had and became irate and the prepared woman had to push her out and shut and lock the door.
What will you do if your neighbor comes to your house wanting water/food? What are your choices to get out of this problem? If a disaster happens, I am locking my front door and will not answer it if anyone comes. As long as I don’t open that door, I don’t have a problem. I don’t care if it is a neighbor because I can’t help him/her. I won’t accept the danger of a starving neighbor. Once I open the door, I have lost some control over my safety and provisions as whoever is there wants something from me.
Nothing good will likely happen if the door is opened – but dangers can happen if it is opened. A locked door means security of life and provisions.
My door has been hardened so it can’t be kicked in unless the intruder spends a great deal of time to get it open. If a person was that determined to get past that door, the person would walk into a hollow point bullet. I think the person would give up on my door and go to another house and people are very likely to open the door. We are conditioned to respond to a bell or door knock and open the door. Get over that conditioned response. For mental preparation, think through the door bell or knock and you aren’t going to open the door. Think about it over and over and over so you don’t rush to the door.
We know there will be a “grid down” country drill on November 13, 14 – that is next week. I recently read the target drill area for the grid to go down is the east coast. I’m not positive that is true but I believe it is. Those involved in the drill will assume nothing works on the east coast after the power goes off. Since that drill will happen, why not use those two days to assume there is no power in your area, water and food are gone as none can be delivered to stores. Think about the first thing you would do if power went off and was going to stay off. Then, consider your surroundings as to jails and prisons and neighbors and make a plan.
Make a Plan:I have to be the best (or worst according to how you think about it) planner on earth; I think I was just born that way, and I have another flaw besides that. I assume I can fix any problem if I just look for the answer because I know it is there somewhere. I jokingly call that a “flaw” because I don’t give up searching for the answer. The internet was the greatest invention for me to find answers to problems.
If I could get across one technique for you to use to help yourself and your family, it would be to make a plan for every eventuality that could befall you in a serious emergency. Already having a plan, steps to take, makes one respond quickly when that event happens. I want you to be able to do that – react because you already know what to do. Yes, there will be some event(s) you haven’t planned for but you will be better able to deal with that since you have practice making plans.
Solving a Problem:Inherent in each plan you will find problems to solve so I say to you every problem can be solved one way or another. If you are the type person to give up, think you can’t solve that problem, you need to change for the better and start solving your own problems. There may come a time in the not distant future when you must take charge of your life and solve problems as no one else may be able to help you.
You are your greatest asset so hone your skills and become a prepper extraordinaire who can live well on your own – and make plans and solve problems, okay?
