“James, what really wears thin with me are these people who think preparedness is only about having guns and that they are going to—in the case of a societal collapse—go take from others. To me this is wrong-headed, lazy and also stupid. Aside from the fact that this is morally wrong, what do you think about this?

-Banjo

Banjo, I do think that preying on neighbors is morally wrong. The Government agrees and has reserved the exclusive right to prey upon us for itself. I’ll come back to this.

Look, criminals will be preying on any persons or households thought to have goods and one of the main goods they will be seeking will be your guns and ammo, then your daughter, then your food.

Keep in mind that large male bulls of vegetarian species, who do not prey on others: bison, elephant, cape buffalo, etc., outlive the predators that hunt them. This, despite the fact that these predators are usually smarter and always more ruthless. This is due to the fact that offense is more risky than defense. A canine or cat, which has to attack with its face and expose it’s eating device and literally stretch out its neck beneath the hooves of an animal, is a clear illustration of the peril awaiting the aggressive close-range hunter. This is why our modern hunter almost always hunts from ambush and from afar. If deer had guns or lazers, or if hunters had to kill boar with spears, the ranks of recreational hunters would evaporate and leave a few hard cases in the field. This is true in boxing, with the worst KO examples being of men getting hit while attacking. The best example would be Pack Man getting KO’d by Marquis and Foreman being KO’d by Ali, Frazier by Foreman, etc.

In warfare, it is generally considered impossible to take out a prepared defender unless one has 3-to-1 odds and that casualties are high in this likelihood. Typically, casualties are not judged acceptable by American Military thinkers until 7-to-1 force superiority in the sector being attacked is achieved. In other words, if you have to lose a man taking out an enemy man, you want to lose 1-in-7 not 1-in-3.

The great disparity in losses inflicted on Union troops during the Civil War by their enemy was due to the fact that the Union did almost all of the attacking. When the Confederacy attacked in desperation at Gettysburg and Nashville, they suffered horrendous casualties.

A conservative military planer seeks 7-to-1 odds in order to suffer no losses by using his superior numbers to effect superior mobility. For instance, by using 4 of his 7 shooters laying down fire on the guy in the house, to permit his three most aggressive operators to circle around and kill the defender.

This is where law enforcement comes into the equation. Law enforcement has long operated on the 5-to-1 armed-on-unarmed [which is like a 50-to-1 military force equation] on the street for arrests of resisting targets. For taking out prepared defenders, Law enforcement does not even move until they have 10-to-1 and only after psychological attrition of the defender through sleep deprivation and negotiation.

These equations tell us that two effective types of forces will be hunting preppers out of their lairs when collapse finally comes:

-Police, working from scouting intelligence, with large numerical advantage and usually overwhelming technological advantages

-Mobs and organized bandits with huge numerical advantages and inferior to superior equipment, and a wide range of scouting profiles, from highly informed former employees and girlfriends and drug use associates to blind sweeping raids. The greatest danger of these types, in the current situation, is to generate policing targeting of successful defenders.

Banjo, that quite literally makes raiding for survival a real COP-out.