groups

GROUPS
It can't be easy trying to get a survival group together. Everyone will have a different idea of what is necessary or desirable. Everyone will try to be the leader. Financing the initial land purchase would have been tough a year ago and virtually impossible today. How do you pick a spot everyone likes? Where everyone can be employed? Etcetera. There has got to be 101 different complications. Which I guess is why either they are all really clandestine or more likely just don't exist.
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You had a few attempts ( to judge from personal ads ) to get another couple to join a homestead, or something similar on a small scale. I'm sure those might have worked, or at least been feasible. But getting a viable group together? One that followed the old recommendations of getting the ideal mix of doctors, carpenters, ex-soldiers, and what not, should have been nearly impossible. Even before Y2K, even now. Too many different ideas of what is needed, when to panic. I think the best you can hope for is to have a plan to all meet at one place in the event of a disaster. Even then the plan most likely wouldn't work out since the folks would be widely scattered and encounter difficulties all getting to the meeting spot in one piece. But it's the only way everyone's different ideas could work together.
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So, the only other option would seem to be to have an "accidental" survival group. You group together under other reasoning, then hope for the best. For instance, a religious group. More feasible every day, a group getting together to share expenses. A tent city would seem to offer little hope of holding anything other than the dregs of society, but look for something similar such as RV'ers looking for a place to park. At least they have financial means, needing gas and insurance. A couple or two sharing a larger house. Yes, ripe with potential conflicts. We love our own space, owning our own castle. Which was feasible under an era of growing wealth ( first an untapped wilderness, then a treasure of petroleum ), and getting harder to do now. Groups will be tricky and need tender loving care. You need as many advantages as possible. Say, a couple of close buddies or lifelong friends or even some kind of blood ties. Something that makes it harder for anothers behavior to lead to an irrevocable split.
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The point I'm trying to make here is that if you use another excuse besides being survivalists, you will have a much easier time forming some kind of group. Granted, you won't be surrounded with people armed to the teeth and having a decades worth of freeze dried foods, but neither will you be all alone in a wilderness cabin waiting for zombie bikers.
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