Guerrillamerica – by Samuel Culper III
This blog’s readership consists mostly of Patriots and Preppers. This growing subsection of America is the entire reason this blog exists, and I’m here to advise and enable better security for your communities and homesteads. If there were just three steps you could take this week to improve your intelligence and security, this is what I’d recommend.
1. Conduct Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) gathering and build intelligence products on the security infrastructure that exists within your county, or a sixty mile radius. As the intelligence element, we are called to be experts on our operating environments. In a SHTF situation, first things first, I want to know who’s not on my side. That begins with authority like political leaders and law enforcement (LE). Will they support and enforce unconstitutional laws of the regime, or will they make a good faith effort at providing security? The irregular threat – adversaries like thugs, gangs, looters and other criminals – will be difficult enough to deal with post-SHTF. If I’m going to have to deal with trained, armed and organized criminals like pro-regime or privateering LE during an emergency, then that’s something I need to know now instead of finding out during SHTF after they’ve stolen my stuff (or worse). I trust my local LE; that’s a large reason why I live here. If you don’t have a relationship with your local law enforcement, then get to know them and the officers who live nearest your AO.
2. Plot and track criminals and criminal events in your area. If you have sex offenders or ex-convicts living near you, identify them now. Identity the criminal elements in your backyard. These are the people who are most likely to resort to criminal activity post-SHTF. If they’ll do these things in spite of the prospect of going to jail, then they’re certain to do them when arrest and punishment is an unlikely outcome. If SHTF happened tomorrow, how are you going to ensure these people don’t rape and pillage in your community? It’s not happening in my back yard, and you shouldn’t allow it to happen in yours. If you can provide security for your community, then your community will likely support your efforts.
3. Conduct the four steps of Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB). Identify the physical terrain and lines of drift — that is, how strangers will find their way into your community. Identify these ingress routes and plug them. Through the IPB process, identify the terrain that you can use to your advantage, i.e., setting up checkpoints or observation posts. Checkpoints allow you to screen individuals for intelligence value and threat level, and OPs provide early warning, which during SHTF could make the difference in defending your community against those proverbial Golden Hordes. Develop possible threat courses of action so that you understand their range of options and can plan for multiple scenarios. Then use IPB to improve your tactical defenses (hardening the homestead, for instance), and starting thinking about operational defense (area, county or intrastate).
Collecting threat intelligence information takes only time. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I hope that each of you who are concerned about the future takes the time to complete these three simple steps. A few hours’ worth of work could save your family’s life.
http://guerrillamerica.com/2014/06/three-steps-to-improving-prepper-intelligence/