Mutual Assistance Groups

The importance of having a strong Mutual Assistance Group (MAG) or neighborhood association is difficult to overstate.  The MAG is not a new concept although in addition to neighbors, it is entirely possible for a MAG to be spread over a large area and simply share intelligence and ideas.  Neighbors have traditionally looked after one another.  Not too long ago, your neighbors could be relied upon to notice your household goods being loaded into a truck when they know you are out of town.  Today, we go to great pains to keep our neighbors from knowing we are gone because we don’t know them very well.  At some point in the 20th century, we began to withdraw and cut ties with neighbors.  Our circle of friends today is typically spread over a much broader area with links forming through work, church or club memberships.

The attitude toward crime, especially violent crime, should be “Not in my home! Not on my property! Not on my block and not in my town.” When you install burglar bars on your home, you might be sending a message.  You could be ceding ground to the enemy.  Subconsciously, you are retreating to within your home “the line you have drawn in the sand”.  By choosing to draw the line at the perimeter of your house, by default you are saying it is fine to commit just about any crime in your front yard.  Do you really want drug deals, rapes and murders taking place in your front yard? Throughout America’s Bible belt you can see examples of this mentality as many small towns have outlawed alcohol sales within city limits only to find liquor stores springing up just outside the city limits.  The line the city has drawn in the sand.  Be careful where you choose to draw the line.  I favor drawing multiple lines in the sand.  Each one with a higher price to be paid for crossing it.

Having at least three tiers of defense is a good strategy and the walls of your house make a good third and final line of defense or redoubt.  If you intend to make your first line of defense the walls of your house, why not save yourself the maintenance and mortgage issues and just go to prison? Within your home, you have a right to deal with threats with the strongest responses.  It is imperative that you be made aware any time there is an intruder in your home whether you were already present or are just arriving after an absence.  It would be preferable, at least while present, to know that someone is making an attempt to enter.  This should be kept in mind when designing a comprehensive security strategy for your homestead whether in the city or an urban area.  I think of the home security system as the core protected area.

As difficult as it is to defend your property line against bad elements, you need to at least be able to address threats out to the edges of your property.  Your property line makes a natural second tier of defense.  One of the things that finally crashed the British Empire and the Romans before them, was allowing their “property lines” to be spread beyond their ability to control them.  There are other articles here and elsewhere that address methods and strategies for dealing with threats on your extended property.  I would call this your second tier of defense.  You have a legal obligation to use more restraint in dealing with intruders on your property and in a post-apocalyptic world, a moral obligation.  It may be enough to reliably be made aware of intruders on your property and be able to track their movements visually or electronically to maintain a picture of the threat potential.  Your property including outbuildings can be thought of as your personal perimeter.  While your personal perimeter is critical to your family’s security, it should not be the first line.   It does no good to have a well-defended home if you allow hostile forces to build up just outside your gates to observe and probe your defenses at their leisure.

Whether you live on a small city lot or have a proper homestead on rural acreage, it is not reasonable to expect you are going to be able to effectively defend beyond your property borders without the cooperation of your neighbors.  This is why community is critical to the first tier of your comprehensive security system.  Within a city you might want to foster the development of a strong neighborhood association starting with informal get-togethers where the subject of local crimes might lead to some discussion of what your neighborhood can do to address the problem proactively.  Cooperating and supporting each other is an essential element for a MAG.  Earlier I wrote an article describing a wide area intercom system that could be effective for such an association.  In many communities, police response can take twenty minutes or more.  In a close-knit neighborhood, help might be just next door.

In a rural setting, neighbors are spread over a wider area, but the same theory applies here.  You want to keep crime as far from you as possible and organizing your neighbors into some sort of MAG could make the difference. In normal times, your MAG will probably focus on sharing ideas and strategies for individual preparations.  During a crisis, the role of the MAG will undoubtedly grow.  As much as Americans tend to resist authority, during a crisis it will be essential for a MAG to have a command structure or chain of command.  Nothing will bring doom to your defensive posture faster than trying to make tactical decisions by consensus.  Some will argue, some will quit, and others will quietly ignore the decisions made by a group. In addition, these decisions must be made quickly without a whole lot of discussion.  In addition to the chain of command during a crisis, proper vigilance needs to be practiced at all times.  Even small communities have a person running emergency services dispatch and a lookout (police officer) at all times.  Since normal work routines will break down for most of us during an emergency situation, your MAG should be prepared to operate a communications center and at least some lookouts round the clock.

Above, I said your home is your final line of defense and it is.  Sort of.  You also need a plan for what to do if you have to abandon your home at least temporarily.  We all like to think that nothing could ever force us from our homes, but if an army of heavily armed looters (including FEMA) is headed your way, the choice to stay might condemn those you love.  Have a plan to bug out at least temporarily.  For me, this would involve a small cache at or near the perimeter of the property and out of sight of the house where I can maintain a three-day bug out kit.  By the end of three days, the looters (whoever they may be) will have gotten bored or run out of resources and moved on to plunder someone else’s stores.

In the information security business, we had a popular saying; “Defense in Depth!” Practice it and do not rely completely on the community boundary.  Neither should you rely totally on your front gate stopping someone determined to do your family harm.  Hopefully you will never have to rely completely on the lock on your front door, but you still want it to be locked.  One very important thing to do is walk around your home, your property and your community.  Try to see it from the viewpoint of an attacker.  How will an attacker capitalize on that thick hedge? How can they approach your home without being seen until they are turning the door knob?