Personal Safety

This is tangential to a topic over on greenwizards.org.  I didn't post this there because I didn't want to seem like I was picking on anybody.

I see a lot of extreme viewpoints about safety in the doomer/declinist community, from people who think it's not a concern at all if you aren't rich, to people who think collecting guns and ammo and moving to a hunting lodge is the only answer, and there isn't a lot of discussion that I consider realistic.  There is a whole lot of space between our current situation and roving zombie hoards, which a lot of people don't recognize.  It's in that space that most of the world actually lives, both today, and historically; but rather than learning from the people who live/lived this reality, Americans who think about these things tend to go in for paranoia, idealism, and other kinds of navel-gazing about human nature.  This is just one manifestation of our superiority complex; we tend to think we're so different from the rest of humanity that we have nothing to learn from their experiences.

Let me declare my prejudices up front: I have shot .22 rifles, handguns, and M-16's, but I don't like guns.  I'm not really anti-gun, but I don't have the time, money, or interest to collect guns, learn to shoot them well, clean, and maintain them.  I do feel safer when I have a gun within reach, but I also think there will always be someone better-armed than me no matter how well-armed I might be (and at some point, the police/military has to be counted).  I think this country is going to be more dangerous than some others in the mid-term future because there are so many firearms here and I wish that weren't the case.  Now, drugs: I am in favor of legalizing everything except PCP and other drugs that cause people to hurt other people, or are frequently used to hurt other people (like date-rape drugs).  The war on drugs was never winnable, and at this point we have given so much power to the drug cartels that they would not disappear even if drugs were legalized tomorrow, but at least they would suffer a setback.  The damage the drug war has done and continues to do in Latin America is unpardonable.  That said, I don't agree that violent crime would decrease at this point if illegal drugs were taken off the table, I think we're too far into economic collapse for violent crime to decrease more than a blip here or there.  I work in the criminal courts and I have observed, in the police reports I regularly read, that in the past year or so, robberies in my city are more likely to end in violence.  I expect this trend to continue; crime not only increases overall in times of stress, it gets meaner.  And we ain't seen nothin' yet.  I fear that the perceived value of human life in this country has a long way to fall before it hits bottom.

I have recently been called naive by someone in my own family for saying that if the lights went out for good right now, I would go outside and talk to my neighbors and try to work with them, rather than sitting on the front porch with a shotgun in my hand.  I honestly don't know which is more naive - this is an unprecedented scenario in the history of humanity.  But the more likely scenarios are not so unusual.

This is what I've learned from living in, visiting, and hearing stories from Latin America:

When the crime rate is high, you don't leave your house unattended overnight, or habitually during the day.  This is one reason it's practical to live in extended families.  If everyone in the household has to go somewhere, you ask a neighbor to come house-sit for you.  It's not that you have to defend the household in the way we might think - a child or an old woman can watch your house to deter petty theft, because the potential perpetrators are local opportunists and they don't want to be identified.  Violent home invaders are a different sort and they won't wait until you leave; fortunately they are less common.

You rely on family ties, you maintain civil relations with family regardless of differences, and family recognition extends out to anyone who can identify a common ancestor.  Neighbors are family too if you live in a small town - either because of tight community intermarriage, or you just decide to call your neighbors "uncle" and "aunt".  The downside of such an interdependent community is that when they are against you, you have no options: my father-in-law had some of his land stolen and his fence torn down to make a soccer field and he had to just put up with it.  A calm personality is important to avoid violence in these situations; it is the price to be paid for living in a stable community.

You don't wear visible jewelry or cell phones when you travel outside of your safety zone, however you define that.  But don't assume that just because you have nothing of value, you won't be targeted.  Try not to go into town looking, acting, and/or talking like a country bumpkin - people who are obviously from the country are targeted when they come to the city because they usually come for a reason that involves bringing the savings they had stashed under the mattress - be it for a doctor, travel expenses, or to make a special purchase.  In the old days, pirates and highwaymen preyed on travellers, and those days may come again; but nowadays you're more likely to get shaken down at police or military checkpoints.  Women must be more cautious about travelling alone and in small groups (including with a man).  Never assume a uniform makes someone safe; and never assume that if you cooperate with someone you won't be hurt.  One Honduran guy we know was kidnapped for ransom at the Mexican border, a common tale these days.  He pretended to be deathly ill, and they shoved him out of a car at a Wal-Mart, a risky move that probably saved his life, since no one in his family could have afforded the ransom.  Listen to your intuition, always!  The one time I was mugged I saw it coming and didn't listen to my intuition.  (If you haven't read any of Gavin De Becker's work, I recommend it.)