This article was originally published by J.G. Martinez D. at The Organic Prepper
Note from Daisy: If you aren’t aware, a short time before the collapse became evident, the Venezuelan government confiscated all the guns from people. This left the population disarmed and vulnerable. In this article, Jose discusses some of the very real dangers of being at a rural homestead and ways to defend yourself if you do not have a gun.
by J.G. Martinez D.
My cousins there in the open country of Venezuela tell me that nights are dark. The government cut the power, and hungry people use this to go to the farms and see what they can steal.
Don’t rely on your elaborate systems too much.
I must tell you that those who rely on power and water off-the-grid, are wrong. Use it while you have it, but plan for when you stop having it. You will not be able to get supplies for your systems.
Oversize your systems; use industrial and heavy duty equipment. If you can afford buying some additional meters of extra pipe and have storage space, do it. It won´t rot and can be very useful. Design with time. Learn to get pleasure from customizing your designs, and discuss it with your family and like-minded friends over a couple of beers. I used to do this with my dad and we both enjoyed it a lot. I miss him.
The quality of the tap water is……similar to what you could get in a third-world nation. Not surprising. Therefore, I would not recommend you tie yourself to replaceable filters. Use the kind of filter that could be cleaned properly with a hard brush if needed. I would invest in UV lamps for the sterilizer and direct the money to a good quality battery pack.
A crossbow is a fine investment
I mention this because, on my wish list back in the homeland, there was a good, simple, and robust crossbow with a sight and a night vision scope. Maybe even three or four would be better, just in case. Use a tall tree for a camouflaged surveillance post, and leave the crossbow there with enough arrows to make a real mess in a roving band.
Don’t get rid of that smartphone just yet, even if you have no service. Just invest in a good waterproof case and an IR heat tracing device that you may fix to it, perhaps a new battery, and you will have a wonderful device for night-watching that should last for a few years if cared for properly.
If you are skilled enough, I would suggest you try to make your own crossbow and arrows. I am not especially gifted for handcrafting, but if I have to repair my crossbow and my life and my beloved ones’ lives depend on that… you get it.
A simple sheet of 3-4mm or thinner steel will give you plenty of tips. You can store them also, and they are cheap, too. Oil them and they won’t rust. So making your own even if you are a couch potato (like me, sometimes, at least LOL) will provide you with an additional edge. No thief that is trespassing on your property at night is aware that an arrow will cross the night silently to get stuck in a tree one or 2 meters away from their chest. It should work as a deterrent, and a very good one. Worst case scenario, this will make them much more aggressive the next time they decide to trespass, and you should be prepared to respond accordingly.
Eventually, people will come for what you have.
This is no joke.
There could be a lot of people, even people you know. They will have watched what you have, or what they think you have, and sure as heck they have had time to plan, and decide. Among them, it is very likely that you could have met them in a nearby town, and even had some light chat. I know that some farms have been attacked after some intel has been collected.
This is not uncommon. It happens in places like Colombia all the time, where rich coffee farmers suffer kidnappings and stuff. It’s only a matter of time until Crime Inc. (Castro’s maybe?) decided to “export” their modus operandi to Venezuela.
Chances are that after the first successful trespassing, next time they decide to get a little more. The only possible defense against this… is numbers and silent, dangerous long distance weapons that don’t use powder and are untraceable.
I have been informed of people in numbers of 12, 15, or even 20 persons storming a place.
The invaders don´t need other weapons for this if their gang is big enough: stones and sticks are enough. Young, hungry, but still strong, they will come at night, take what they can. Oh, and remember, this is the Caribbean tropics, so they have very sharp machetes. And being country laborers and workers, they know how to swing them pretty well. Something to consider.
If you have numbers enough, and a silent alarm system is in place, drills have been done… a small compound can make a mess of a decent amount of night attackers. The most dangerous approach someone can do, is going at someone’s door in the middle of the night. Even in regular times, it is something very stupid to do, because good people don’t come at night.
The real problem comes afterwards.
It’s not like the movies. You repel the attack, the guys run leaving behind trails of blood and stuff. You still have to live THERE. Perhaps with women, elders, children, perhaps someone ill, injured or disabled – and now there are a good number of “neighbors” (the bad kind) all p***ed off and humiliated.
Because that is how the criminal thinks: if someone stops them, they FEEL humiliation. This makes them angry. This makes them even more dangerous. They have plenty of time to plan another attack, though.
What you can do to avoid it, is something that everyone has to resolve on their own. I would leave some stuff in their path, something enough for them to consider a success. Next time, they would find something less…with a note. Perhaps some crossed long bones that mimic human ones or something creative.
Let’s say 20 persons, 5 of them with edged weapons, and your defense line is just 7 persons, including perhaps some teenagers that can’t re-cock the crossbow. Using 3 crossbows for each person, the attack can be avoided. It is going to be a mess, but you will survive to tell the story. If just 3 of the 7 men (or women, or grandpa/grandma) of the defense team can re-cock a couple of crossbows for the younger, it is a very good tactical advantage. Go with a very simple cocking mechanism, and make sure the cords used are abundant, and perhaps even able to be hand made with ancient techniques.
Why do I write about this now?
Because these are the types of things some of my extended family still there are facing. Their protein intake has become much lower because the roving bands are desperately looking for meat and poultry. If things go so bad that one is able to get into the property of someone they know face to face, in the middle of the night, and with a sharpened machete… it should not be so difficult to shoot an arrow, if your kids are in the panic room shaking in fear, don’t you think? Use some light armor, provided some of your members are young, and agile (not like me), and get closer than what you need.
This is why I identified those IR devices as being very useful for this kind of night operation. They could even record some footage if needed for further investigation if some kind of law enforcement team is operating.
I designed all of this after contacting them and asking them how things are around their place: a farmer’s town where everyone used to know each other.
Less than 2000 population. Peaceful and quiet. Until now.
People will do anything to survive.
We have to be ready for that, not just in our equipment selection. In our minds.
A bad choice is something that we will have to face for the rest of our lives. I know.
Thanks for your support fellows, and your encouraging comments.
Be safe, and may the good Lord bless you all.
***
About Jose
Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. Thanks to your help Jose has gotten his family out of Venezuela. They are currently setting up a new life in another country. paypal.me/JoseM151
Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.
Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.
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“I would invest in UV lamps for the sterilizer”
NO!
I have lived on water from my roof for the last 19 years.
It is called Catchment and is legal here in Hawaii.
I have 34,000 gallons of storage.
I filter and use a UV sterilizer for my water.
UV bulbs only have about a one year shelf life.
It makes no sense to have a stash of them.
The liberal’s wet dream of being able to disarm us all is truly a delusional dream. I can purify 10s of thousands of gallons of water and have my own pond complete with edible fish. A well with a manual emergency pump is a big stress reliever also. Every inch of this property can be covered by our arms and we are not gonna run out of ammo or wood to burn. And it’s prepared in other ways. A siege is what has been prepared for here, nothing less. People that cannot say at least this are not prepared for what is coming.
Menzo, The BOL sits on 30 acres and one side borders on a year-round creek with good water and edible fish. Nice deep well with a flojak for backup. Rain catchment system on the cabin and boocoo water storage. Everything else you can think of is already well-covered, same with the relatives’ properties. We can hold our own and then some.
I’m glad friend. It’s closer now.
Military equipment will be up for grabs in a SHTF situation. One hijacked tank and all your preps are theirs!
I believe you can buy LED ultraviolet lights now… wouldn’t those have a much longer lifespan?
It’s even easier than that…
A simple, stupid Pentek “Big Blue” 20-BB filter housing is like $40. Stick a really big funnel on the input pipe, and a clean bucket under the output pipe.
The 20″x4.5″ filter elements can range from $20 to $80 each… the $80 filter elements contain carbon, are usually 0.5 micron, and will work for upwards of a year or more apiece for an entire household (including bathing, toilets, etc) if you pre-filter any dirty water water first (rain catchment is perfect, but even if you strain dirty creek water through a tightly-folded t-shirt, you can still count on at least 6 months’ usage.)
All said though, you would be strongly advised to have a few skills long-term:
* How to make activated charcoal
* How to make a sand/gravel/charcoal/cloth filter
* How to make straight ethyl alcohol (the drinking kind) to add to drinking water in small quantities (5% to 10% dilution, tops) to kill any germs lingering in your drinking water… if you have a clear-enough water source, you can just use the booze to disinfect.
(…so why not chlorine? Because you either have to store it or make it, and making chlorine typically requires electrolysis and salt water.)
Food thefts and large-scale food heists are on the rise. Just another sign of the times.
Jose is an upper middle class professional….Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities….
and now he is begging for money on PayPal.
Jose is full of shit.
A crossbow is a fine investment — bullshit on this one.
You can’t use it for hunting in Venezuela simply because there is nothing left to hunt. If you have to kill someone, use a gun.
By the way, who uses crossbows? Felons. Because they can’t own guns, they get crossbows.
Maybe good for VZ but
i’ll keep my guns and 50
k of ammo. All I need to know is the proper temp to cook intruders for stew.
No way Jose.
That’s ridiculous. A cross bow gives you the advantage of almost silent hunting and/or home defense. If you want to attract attention use a gun. If you want to remain anonymous use a cross bow. I have both and I will use the one that is best suited for the task at hand.
katana and years of kendo training.
The crossbow takes to long to reload when outnumbered.
Even the standard recurve bow is a better choice, until contact distances with a numerically superior force.
crossbow is fine for discrete hunting or exterminations.
but in a melee you need a melee weapon.
Research
The
NagiNata.
Japanese women successfully defended home and villages with them against Samurai for centuries.
so says my Japanese wife.
after years of Kendo myself. I would have to agree.
outdoors and outnumbered, its a fine tool.
indoors melee. ko-katana or wakizashi.
Or
The US or Russian Entrenching tool and head for ruthless violence…
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/01/11/in-hand-to-hand-combat-no-greater-friend-than-the-entrenching-tool/
since the trenches of WWI US soldiers have been decapitating folks with their short small shovels. Sounds like Russians have a whole school of training with them as well.
(Of course ALL this assumes for some reason you lost your Mossberg 590 or Benelli M-4)
stay frosty.
Good information . I invite you to this page if you dont already have it
I’ve Crossbows (plural), Traditional Bows, Firearms, and even an Atlatl, I can use all of them well. I will use the best one for the chore at the moment. I do like the Crossbow because it’s quieter than a silenced rifle, and has no muzzle flash, but it is slower and less range. It’s all in the trade-off.
Hey Mac, how much of a cut are you getting on José’s scam anyway?
“Eventually people will come for what you have”
Here in USA your own government has been stealing from you for decades and only recently have people begun to realize it. Yes you pay to get fucked as they steal from you 24/7/365. So the headline is a bit of a complete misnomer and understatement, Hey ?
Both this guy and Selco are nonsense fantasy largely.
I rather have a Chesapeake Bay retriever to alert me when someone comes onto the property. I’ve raised this breed for many years. They are fearless, they retrieve waterfowl or any other animal you tell them to, protect your property and your vehicles if you have them in the vehicle with you or you leave the vehicle I guarantee they’ll display to those getting close their beautiful SMILE. This breed is not for everyone as they can be hardheaded and stubborn and you best demonstrate to them that you are the Alpha of him. One of our favorite quotes of a Chesapeake is this,” If he can get away with 2% of any thing he shouldn’t do, he’s had a GOOD Day.
reper, your dog (or mine) will be the first casualty.
I’ve been looking for a decent driveway monitor, battery powered, obviously, but the reviews on them leave a lot to be desired. Will it stand up to southern US rain, heat, humidity?
If you’ve found a reliable one, let me know.
I don’t want to go the disposable dog route. Our are family.
As for the article, we all know if you’ve got forest around you or someplace to bug out away from your home, that may be your only option. And hope it’s temporary.
We’re surrounded by thick forest where we could disappear for quite some time and be invisible and unheard to all except elite mil. units with heat detection.
That’s the best we can do, and it’ll have to do.
1st thing is NEVER LET ANYBODY TAKE YOUR GUNS!!!!
When everyone else is saying it is time to bury them you have to know IT IS TIME TO DIG THEM UP AND USE THEM!!!
Any politician using the police to confiscate weapons needs to die!! along with the “authority”, that the cowardly politican uses, coming to take them.
They both took an oath to defend our constitution and they committed treason when they tried to go against that law.
4GWF
???
Nail,
It is funny that only you and I mention
4GW. Perhaps it is because we truly live in a state
that is single party, and by the barest of margins
still own guns.
Rojer that,
The funny thing is, guns, are not even necessary to wage 4GWF, get er done by whatever means will be the call when that ship sails, its a small world over here, unfortunate accidents happen all the time,
I have 5 dogs.
A mule, a donkey,
among other animals.
My property, 5+ Acres,
perimeter is fully
Hog fenced and gated.
My neighbors have dogs,
and all sorts of animals.
Nobody moves around here
without something making
noise.
My biggest concern is
natural disasters.
I’m so rural and easy to defend,
that I’m not so worried about civil
rioting and gangs.
Honestly, for us folks, for you its Hilo/Kona, but theres tons of old school folks still and a whole lot of resources
For us it lahaina, kihei, kahului that will be the problem, but same thing, our island still has a ton of old school folks who can hunt/fish/grow/gather/ work/trade/make do!
Oahu, ??? Tey are scREWed! Glad i dont live there,
Hell i could feed our neighborhood indefinitely from the weeds i got growing in my borders! And im just one booger on this hill,
Check out dakota alert driveway systems. Get the one using MURS frequency. Only issue is its electromagnetic so lightening sets it off. But way better than motion (leaves, animals, etc.
Ditto on the dakota. I have both the ground probe and the motion sensor. I like the probe it only detects vehicles. The motion sensor goes off with birds, bugs, cows, etc. I have a 30X zoom camera pointed at the gate where the probe is so I can see who is there. The probe is 1/2 mile away and the transmission is good. You can mount a wireless cam up high away from your property to see everything around you also. You will want at least a 2 watt video transmitter for good range and clarity. I make mine stand alone solar powered. They also make an infrared sensor (like a garage door sensor) type system.
Ketch, I’ve got a driveway alert and its made by “Bunker Hill Security”. It’s pretty decent. Sometimes it will mis-alert due to tree limbs that line the driveway on a windy day or when the deer pile in the front yard at night. Both inside and outside units are battery operated. The outside unit seems to require more battery changes than the inside. I’d say I’m satisfied currently with their performance. They’re on their fifth year and still operating.
It sounds crazy.
invite the group in and feed them poisoned food, they wont be coming back
I stopped reading when José talked about firing a warning shot at a night intruder.
I’m not a tough guy, just an old man, but if I feel the situation has deteriorated to where I need to shoot, throw, heave, drop or cast anything in your direction you can believe it will be aimed AT YOU with the purpose of inflicting enough damage on you to incapacitate you if possible.
If you survive and run away, then it is my fault.
<bb
I’m with you…. there are NO warning shots.
He forgot to mention the deterant of having heads mounted on stakes around your place.
bb, This fake Jose is full of shit.
Something is coming – I don’t know what or when but believe it to be big and bad.
I have my guns and thousands of rounds of ammo.
If I have to resort to cross bows – I am dead.
Tactical planning with multiple alternatives for various different defenses – what ifs
Various defensive perimeter plans and fall back locations etc
people with some sort of triage medical experience and supplies – ie quick clot etc.
I’ve been learning double weapons for a few years now and my favorite are the modern scimitars. It’s hard to put them down!
As far as off-grid water supplies, gravity flow with enough head to give decent pressure at the faucet is the most reliable…assuming you have clean local water.
Even if you don’t have a source of water uphill from you to use gravity, you can still take advantage of water flow to pump water sideways or even uphill by using a hydraulic ram pump. These have been used for over 100 years and some are still clanking away in the mountains from old lumber camps. The old ones were cast iron. You can still buy those but they are dear. The way to do it is to get plans online to build one with pvc and parts from the local hardware.
These pumps don’t pump a huge volume at a time and the flow is intermittent like a pulse…but that’s how they work. You will need to put storage uphill from your residence and then pump with the ram pump to fill it. Then you can use gravity flow into your house from there. The higher above your faucet (head) that your storage is, the more pressure you will get. You can also go from bigger diameter pipe to smaller to increase pressure. These pumps use no energy other than the force of water flow and they will run 24/7 unless you shut them down.
“invest in a good waterproof case and an IR heat tracing device that you may fix to it, perhaps a new battery, and you will have a wonderful device for night-watching that should last for a few years if cared for properly”
Any ideas what this is????
Yeah, he defenetly does not mean an “IR blaster” wich is a common attachment for a phone to use it as a TV remote.
Please specify
The far infrared cameras that plug into the USB jack on the phone. You can get one for about $150 on ebay. Look under “infrared camera” and “infrared imager.” They do a fair job but are short range for human temperature targets. (about 100 feet max) especially on hot summer nights. They cannot be mounted to a gun. Be sure your phone is compatible. (android)
Night vision. Some of the older generation ones required IR light to pick up the heat signature of a warm blooded object. My advice would be to look at the FLIR.
You can’t shoot hordes of bad guys who come every night. The best solution is complete elimination. This is easily accomplished by poisoning supplies. The bad guys who ingest cyanide won’t be back. Be careful to mark the poisoned supplies in a way you recognize but no one else does. Keep the good and poisoned supplies together, so it will be Russian roulette for whoever steals something.
Traditionally the tsuki or thrust is the fastest most lethal most difficult to parry technique. The target is generally the descending aorta under the rib cage due to ease of penetration. That has been the case since the ancient Roman legionaires.
Here are some Japanese techniques.
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9iy0WzXExgY
The Koreans in history used a short bow made of horn that shot up to 160 yards at very high speed due to ease of draw yet was remarkably accurate. The English longbow draw is very very different where you push the bow rather than draw or pluck the bowstring. But you get major yardage with the goal of lots of volleys that was decisive against French cavalry at Agincourt.
The Mongols and Turks used short bows as well, though the Turks (in the video) used a composite bow with laminate backing. Note how the Turkish archer draws versus a Western draw.
A crossbow can be decisve but takes to long to load the next bolt.
With a gravity-fed magazine on top for extra bolts (“arrows”), a crossbow can be shot as fast as it can be cocked–no re-loading required for each shot. At 45-degree elevation (sighted just under the elbow of the bow arm), that “160-yard” direct bowshot could drop on a target indirectly shot at 640 yards! That’s the kind of shooting that won the day in those medieval battles, before moderns fell in love with the position-betraying tell-tale “boom” and flash of powder-dependent (even more vulnerably dependent on extremely esoterically produced smokeless powder for semi-and fully automatic) guns. Good archers were known to let fly at least three arrows before the first one hit its target at full range (usually within about 5-seconds). Arbalests (large, more powerful but mobile if not portable crossbows) can suffice as kinetic or incendiary artillery, especially if shooting large stones or firepots hundreds of yards. As with slings, part of the beauty of archery is in the simplicity and therefore the ease of manufacture and the limitless and natural supply of not only the materials for the weapons themselves but, also for a variety of forms of destructive ammunition that can be used with them. Guns are quite limited and finite in their usability–not to mention being woefully dependent (on likely the enemy) for supply of ammunition, much less the industrially-dependent manufacture of guns themselves, and any gunsmithing required to keep them shooting. Gunners, especially after the demise of big industry when shtf, will inevitably run out of ammunition wasted on missed evasive targets (especially if thrown past those targets altogether by the constant mis-aiming after the first shot from the continuous recoil while on full auto!) and then be overwhelmed by those who have the endless supply of lethal stone and other deadly primitive ammunition that can be used with their primitive weaponry. Some primitive armors (especially scale) can also give good protection from even gunshots, especially at bowshot range. Anyone who survives the hideous whistling and lethal pounding of an otherwise silent and therefore unpredictable barrage of fast incoming large heavy stones can attest to the power thereof. (Advisedly well-armored!) live drill with them is key to understanding and becoming proficient with primitive weaponry.
Who gives a s—- about Venezuela
That can all go straight to hell
The best things that you can have in a SHTF situation are hand-grenades, C4 explosive and a rifle that fires 7.62x39mm rounds and/or a.50 calibur sniper rifle.
This is encouraging. My Mutual Assistance Group can easily handle 20-30 marauders. Hanging treble hooks on piano wire guard the perimeters, high and low. Its my version of razor wire, except without a wire cutter, you ain’t getting out.
When your hungry, just bait the hook.
If it goes SHTF, then it’s punji stick time.
For historical discussion only.
jo7XBaG_-SE
what a lot of testosterone……!!!!….Remember Ruby Ridge?…Remember Waco?….When the “authorities” bring up their big guns ie: tanks and such….the only choice you will have is “do I surrender or do I suicide”…..that is all..You will either have to learn to make friends with EVERYONE around u to defeat ” intruders”…or u will fall or suicide…Remember that a UNITED Afghanistan defeated the USSR over a period of years….but these people were UNITED against a common enemy and had the advantage of a remote terrain….Unless you have the same terrain and united support….all the/your “tough talks”….are just that….talk..!!!
Afghanistan was not united against the USSR. Actually the USSR made Afghanistan a test case for educating and empowering female communists and that was very popular in the urban regions. But the rural and mountain people were very tribal and fierce as they always have been going back to the medieval period. It is actually a rural fanatical Muslim versus an urban far less religious and devout urbanite.
The USA empowered the mountain mujahedin with mules and stingers and rifles and training to overthrow these urban communists and it worked.
Then radical Islam attacked USA policies throughout the Middle East and especially Iran due to the Shah’s secret police and brutality (SAAVAK). That set into a chain of events with the fall of Terahn and a powerful banished cleric returning to create an extreme fundamentalist society. That infected all of Islam to some degree.
Honestly it demonstrated that devout spiritual rural people can foster successful partisan and guerilla movements which cannot be deefeated unless willing to use the same brutal tactics of terror.
Look up Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Jordan in the early seventies versus today. They were all becoming more open and westernized even Afghanistan.
The USSR badly miscalculated their influence outside the urban areas.
Then the USA began being harmed by the very rebels we had supported.
The USA was demonized throughout the Middle East as westernization equated to immorality due to the sexual revolution, drug use, feminism, etc.
Afghanistan in the Seventies.
LPzCqCpC20M
Iran in the Seventies.
jpxWzXopukE
Unless you are well hid in a hole and not only prepared to stay for what could last for 5 or more years Its important to move around .But more than likely you will meet your enemy some day. You Can Run But You Cant Hide . Howl Like Wolves And Fight Like Demons