What Is Civil Unrest?
Simply put, civil unrest can be defined as a widespread disruption of normal daily activities in a given geographical area. Disruptions include, but are not limited to, lack of protection and assistance by public safety forces (police, fire, and EMS); destabilized food and water supplies; interruption of electrical power and phone service (both land line and/or cellular service—remember that, during the 9/11 attacks, national cell phone service was down due to system overload, and only land lines worked); limited or no gasoline availability; compromised hospital care; and a host of other issues that may not be foreseeable. What separates civil unrest from the individual conditions that combine to define it is the feeling by a large number of people that the previous societal, personal, or moral restrictions that had been keeping themselves and the society around them orderly no longer apply. Thus, roving mobs or gangs of these “liberated” people are now roaming the streets intent on taking whatever they want from whomever they can get it from by any means necessary. There is no negotiation or pleading with such groups. If you do not have the ability to resist their predations, whatever you possessed previously, including your life and the lives of your family, will be gone in the aftermath of your encounter with them.
As I write this, it is the aftermath of the Colorado movie theatre massacre, and also the Sikh temple shooting, both committed by psychotics who were mentally functional enough to be extremely dangerous. With 12 dead at this time and 70 wounded, the Colorado movie theatre shooting stands as one of the largest number of casualties inflicted by an active shooter to date, and the way this nut job booby trapped his apartment, it was possible some first responders could have been killed or injured in the mitigation effort (fortunately, none were). This is just another in a long string of events that began during the Clinton administration, events that used to be almost nonexistent. Now these events seem to be getting more and more severe, while the incidents that cause fewer casualties are too numerous to even keep track of.
Because of the Colorado theater incident and all the other active shootings, I have realized something. We already are in a period of civil disorder, although it is pre-collapse. We are in civil disorder because our moral underpinnings are gone. If you are a cop reading this and you don’t carry an off-duty gun with you every day, and I mean every day and everywhere, then you need to hang up your badge and gun. (I personally wore down a lot of shoe leather walking the miles of legislative hallways in Washington, D.C., back in the 1990s, pushing for the right of all cops to carry firearms when off-duty and when later retired, anywhere in the U.S., through H.R. 218, The Peace Officer Safety Act). If only there had been one armed off-duty cop or legally armed citizen in that Colorado theater to take that psycho out, the casualties would have been far fewer.
We are in the midst of disorder now, and the only thing that hasn’t happened to make this uncontrollable civil disorder is that there hasn’t been a total governmental collapse. We are not yet living in terms of day-to-day survival. But it isn’t far down the road if we continue on our current path.
When true civil disorder reigns supreme, you will have four major immediate needs that you must provide for:
1. Food and water. Without these two things, anything else on this list becomes an exercise in futility.
2. Shelter. The incident may come during the winter or during other harsh weather conditions. In fact, it may have come about because of harsh weather, such as a tornado, hurricane, fire, or blizzard.
3. Medical needs. This is particularly important if you require prescription support medications for daily well-being. Back up until the time I turned 40 or so, the only support medications I needed were a multi-vitamin, maybe some over-the-counter allergy pills, and an occasional Excedrin. At age 55, that is no longer true. Up until a few years ago, I loaded up the medications I needed in a pill minder, with only the amount needed for the days I would be gone. Now, with the thought of not getting back home as quickly as I might want, I travel with full pill bottles of my medications.
4. Physical safety. I mean this to include protection of yourself, your family and friends, and your supplies. The latter is the part groups like FEMA never mention in their preparation materials. The government as it is currently constituted, and this includes at the national, state, and local levels, will never recommend (with few exceptions) that you obtain a firearm for protection in disaster situations. That is what this book is all about, to complete the missing component from other disaster preparedness manuals and show how firearms blend in with the other items needed for short- and long-term survival.
The Police and Military Will Be There, Right?
I’ve been a cop for 32 years. If I was called to duty in my nearby village of Baltimore, Ohio, and the unrest or disaster condition was widespread and affected my home area, well, I’m sorry Chief, but I’m staying home with my wife, particularly since she is totally blind. (In fact, I did stay home from my teaching job and with my wife during the release of the exotic wild animals from their cages by their mentally disturbed owner in nearby Zanesville. I loaded up my M1 Garand and kept an eye out.)
The first example I ever saw of a large number of cops abandoning their posts during disaster was during Hurricane Katrina. Upwards of 300 New Orleans PD officers left their posts, I assume, to assist their families. This widespread abandonment of post didn’t happen anywhere else that I know of in the path of the Katrina—then again, the civil unrest and looting didn’t occur anywhere else, either. It took cops coming in from all over the U.S. to stabilize New Orleans.
