Dealing with Family and Friends after SHTF

If there were ever a SHTF event that caused your family and friends to come to you, wherever that may be (Home, BOL, cave), are you ready to deal with them? If your family and friends are anything like mine, they are woefully unprepared, even if they do have more than 3-days of food in the pantry, or a safe full of guns, and agree with you about the state of the world and what might happen. They simply have never put any priority towards actually being prepared.

They will come knocking. Are you prepared to take them in and put them to work; to arm and supply them; to train them; to feed them; to cloth them; to shelter them? Before you get all callous, I question those who say they would turn their own family away. Either you are lying to yourself or you are one cold-hearted SOB. My brothers and sisters have children. It is not the children's fault that their parents did not prepare. My children would not understand us turning away their cousins, and I would not want to live with the heartache of my children's memories of me doing something like that.

It is a rare circumstance that a person is absolutely worthless. I know there are some out there, but most people can add value to a crummy circumstance. As I previously listed in the logistics post, there are a lot of jobs that are required for survival. Maybe Uncle Joe was a jack ass drunk before SHTF, but you can certainly put him to work hand weeding the garden, dealing with waste, digging fox holes, and even standing watch. Eventually he might become more useful (now that he is off the sauce) and he can become a viable part of your survival community. But you must feed and shelter him and his family (whom are also put to work.)

Survival, real survival, is work. It is lots of hard work. Each person that you take in becomes your (individually and the group's) responsibility. That means that you must watch over them, and take care of them until they are full members of the group. This takes you realizing that your family and friends will show up, and you will take them in, and you will need the supplies for all of them. Now multiply this by however many group members you have, because their families and friends will show up too. So your little four couple group with kids is maybe a total of 17 people. After SHTF, it will probably be 75 or more! Think about it.

This may sound daunting, but it is not (unless you plan on spending the duration of the event in a one bedroom apartment.) Boats and RV's manufacturer's always pitch how many people their boat or RV can sleep. They leverage every space as "convertible" to a bed. So how many can a typical three bedroom house sleep? Many more than you think. These people are not going to be spending all day inside the house. It's not a party. They will be outside working from sun up to sun down then passing out on the floor somewhere. Once you realize that your house will only be full during sleeping hours, then you can look at the problem from a different perspective.

When so many people are living in one space, or multiple small spaces, they will work hard to improve on their lives. Two toilets will not serve 75 people, especially on a septic/aerobic system, or if the water is out. People will quickly build outhouses or slit trenches outside, and the indoor bathrooms will be reserved for medical purposes only. These same people will realize that your small garden will not feed them all. Some will work to expand the garden, while others might go hunting, and still other will begin foraging. Their success will depend on their motivation. Eventually, some of the more industrious of your newly expanded group will begin to build rough furniture from scraps they scrounge because they are tired of sitting on the ground all the time. Plenty of people will be willing to help because their ass hurts too.

When we retire an item, it usually still has life in it. Things like old pillows, sheets, towels, clothes, utensils, etc, get put in storage. These are reserve items for use after SHTF, or to resupply if our home burns down tomorrow. At least 12 of our unprepared family members will have pillows, towels, and sheets when they show up, even if they are sleeping on the floor and cleaning up outside in a crudely built tropical shower.


But, if these people are smart, they will work to improve their conditions. They will become survivalists by force and their natural born independent nature should begin to flourish. But, it is still a survival situation. You will need to arm and train them (if they were not already.) More guns, more ammo, more magazines, and more web gear. I have lots of it - stuff I tried and didn't like. I kept it, and that is what they get to use. Grandpa David will show up with his arsenal of guns, some boxes of ammo, and a severe case of gout. The guns get handed out and training commences, while Grandpa David goes to see the medic and is put on a strict diet and limited duty.

You also need to feed them. This means putting back more. It does not need to be high quality. It just needs to get everyone through the first phase of adjustment. Beans, rice, wheat, spices, and vitamin supplements. These are cheap and easy to store. For $1000, the price of one quality rifle, you can feed a lot of people for a long time, though it will be bland and monotonous. If someone gets some game, it gets added in to the meal, as does some fresh vegetables or fruits when available. Maybe you have chickens (you should.) The eggs are a great supplement, and more chickens producing is better. Your unprepared family, with your competent directions, will constantly seek to improve their lives. They will become experts at foraging and "procurement." Cousin Sandy will show up one day with some extra old blankets and some fresh berries she found near the creek. Niece Betty will have replanted the perennial wild onions that she found off to the side of a trail. Uncle Connor carted back a pile of school books and supplies he found.

One of the biggest benefits of the extra manpower will be shorter watch standing rotations and more patrols of the area, which leads to more opportunities to find needed supplies while protecting your area. You cannot just sit static in one place and hope for the best. And if your group is small, then you will not have enough people to have adequate and proper security. So family and friends showing up might be a blessing in disguise provided you have planned on them showing up.

And that is what this is all about:

PLANNING.

This is something we have considered. Family and also neighbors.
We store away almost everything that we have replaced or just didn't care for. Clothes, pillows, blankets, sheets, shoes and boots. Anything that still has some use to it. So much so we are running out of storage space and have already started planning new storage facilities.

Something else I have been considering is watching for the sales and clearances on most anything that will store that can be used after SHTF.
Garden implements, hand tools, axes, hand saws, etc. Those folks you take in are gonna need tools and equipment to work with.

Yes. We have started acquiring more food etc. just incase we need to consider other family etc.

plan to give both my daughters a "bin" of beans, rice, oats, salt, and sugar for their birthdays this year. boy howdy, how excited will they be knowing they do not believe in what I see.

I would love to see the look on their face when they open that up.