- Joined
- Dec 3, 2017
- Messages
- 23,682
Remember Katrina? People that could/would got out. Other people got herded to a colliseum and waited for the govt to help.
The Golden Horde
- Thread starter Helen Back
- Start date
Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:
The Golden Hoard will steal and kill each other the same way they will treat you. While they are rolling, they are going to be unstoppable. They are not going to push cattle ahead of them or act in any organized or rational way. They are the zombies of horror movies without trying to be. They will overwhelm everything until they run out of water if on foot, gasoline if in vehicles. They are a prepper's worst threat because they will appear in all SHTF settings, no matter what the underlying cause.
"The Golden Horde" is pure fiction, in a country like Britain we are not used to evacuating even in wartime, when a serious event happens people are told to go indoors, shut the windows and sit tight.
nobody will go anywhere or do anything until the store shelves are empty and the lights go off, until that happens they may gripe and moan but they wont do any more than that.
nobody will go anywhere or do anything until the store shelves are empty and the lights go off, until that happens they may gripe and moan but they wont do any more than that.
Potable water alone would reduce the horde to a plodding mass of humanity.
Likely they would gather around a water source and then some idiot would defecate in it and let the sanitation issues commence. That would be the cholera outbreak we saw in Afghanistan, as they had a drought more so than usual for that country.
I could see some with some degree of organizational skills or leadership try to keep some degree of order, and many will gladly follow such people.
Go to a Wal-Mart.
Those are the people who would make up the majority of the horde. Most of them get winded walking from their car to the sliding doors, let alone walking three days and be in any kind of fighting condition.
Use the terrain to your advantage.
all kinds of SHTFs - and some will start a reverse Golden Horde >>> countryside will head to the surviving & supplied cities - Where did the Covid vaccine go first and inoculations available only???? - won't be any different with some other related type limited resource .....
without food or water they wont get very far and would get progressively weaker the further they walked.
the ones that would attempt it will be fairly young and male, no elderly person, female of any age or young child would even think of doing it, young males will squabble and fight over every morsel of food or mouthful of water.
the ones that would attempt it will be fairly young and male, no elderly person, female of any age or young child would even think of doing it, young males will squabble and fight over every morsel of food or mouthful of water.
they won't be walking anywhere - they'll take off in their 35mpg cruiser and keep driving & driving & driving - getting off tracked to smaller & smaller roads until they are driving a goat path in someone's backfield ....
you're going to have people everywhere - I don't care if you have a church or townhall in the middle of freaking no-place >>> you'll have the local lite-hearted wanting to shelter handfuls of stragglers that showed up ....
where will they get the fuel? filling stations will be empty within 24 hours and over here everyone drives on empty so even siphoning fuel wont get them much.
If the JIT/BAU system has failed as it likely would in a SHTF situation, where do they get the gas from?
I could also see some locals (gangs) commandeering a gas station for their own personal use.
The vast majority of humanity isn't sitting on a full tank of gas (or probably anywhere close to it), and in SHTF, they aren't finding an easy fillup.
exactly, so they will be walking even if they start in a vehicle.
in this country they wont get far, most are unused to walking more than the distance from the car park to the store so the idea of them walking for even days never mind weeks is just laughable.
Water is heavy. Doubt anyone is carrying three days of water for themselves and their family, either. Then add in food, tools, etc. All a Horde will be is a repeat of the Highway of Death from Kuwait, back during the first Gulf War.
a pint of water weighs 1 pound, a round American type canteen (I have one)carries 3 pints so 3 lbs and 3 pints wont last long.
3 pints is about 2 litres which is the daily minimum suggested requirement for an adult human.
3 pints is about 2 litres which is the daily minimum suggested requirement for an adult human.
Last edited:
I can tell you from experience, a 5gal bucket full of water, weights 45lbs.
Some will say there are water sources all around, just have to look for them.
To a degree that is true. There is water along the route if I had to hump it from work to home. But the distance varies from the road going over a small creek, to a lake a few miles away.
I used to be a big fan of Lifestraws.
Then we had a drought.
A lot of those water sources dried up, and the lake levels dropped.
Since then, I use a gravity filter into a 3L bladder. That and the "dirty" bag is 6L of water. 1L of water an hour for a 5 hour hump home, assuming it has not gone all Mad Max yet.
Quick thought, you have this horde walking towards your town....a few shots in their direction would displace them quickly.
if you see they’re all armed, hopefully you’re shooting something high caliber that’ll take out the first few rows of people.
the majority of the horde is not going to be trained soldiers so they’re going to turn around quickly and run
if you see they’re all armed, hopefully you’re shooting something high caliber that’ll take out the first few rows of people.
the majority of the horde is not going to be trained soldiers so they’re going to turn around quickly and run
Reading Ted Koppel's book, Lights Out, he interviewed a NJ emergency worker who said to the effect of they would give people bottles of water and tell them to keep going to the next state as they did not have the resources to sustain city refugees for a prolonged period of time.
And never rule out the power of RUMIT (Rumor Intelligence). Some one will start the rumor that there are fully stocked FEMA camps at Sams Club, Costco, Wally-World with all the food and water to be had.
Even internet!
We really don't know what will happen when middle class people run out of food and water. What we have seen in poor countries is the masses quietly die or follow fake news reports to a refugee camp somewhere over the horizon. I believe that better off people will be in a kind of shock. They will listen to their battery powered or wind up radios hoping that someone will tell them what to do. What will the government tell them to do? By then its a little late to start prepping. I think most western countries will tell them to stay inside and wait for help that is on the way, right now. It will be a lie most of the time. Many civilized countries are able to move supplies around to local disasters. None are prepared for a nationwide or global crises. Their aim will be to shift resources to try to preserve the continuity of the government. That will leave most people with nothing.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Survivalist Myth? The Golden Horde
By Timothy Gamble (February 17, 2016)
"James Wesley, Rawles, in his book How to Survive the End of the World as we Know It (an excellent book, by the way), describes this mass exodus as "The Golden Horde." Its a term he got from his father, who was comparing the potential mass exodus from the big cities to the Mongol horde of the 13th century. Here is how Rawles describes it on page six of his book:
At one point in our nations history, the Golden Horde probably would have happened in a long-term grid-down event. But those days are long past, as the concept of self-reliance has been intentionally erased from the American people. Let me explain with some recent real-life examples.
Remember New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? Remember all those people standing around in knee-deep water waiting for the government or someone else to help them? They had several days warning that a major hurricane was on the way, yet they did nothing. Even after Katrina hit flooding large sections of the city and collapsing its infrastructure, they did nothing to get themselves out of the situation. Instead they stood around in knee-deep water until authorities were able to round them up and ship them to the horrible and dangerous conditions of the Superdome.
That is called "learned helplessness," a behavioral term for when an organism (animal or human) has been taught through external stimuli to NOT help themselves, but to depend on outside factors. In the case of those people in New Orleans, generations of public education and government dependence left much of the population unable to help themselves. For most, it didn't even occur to them to try to get out of that situation on their own. And, if it did, they simply didn't know how to even start to help themselves.
Interestingly, the term "learned helplessness" appears in declassified CIA documents. The CIA defines learned helplessness as a type of instilled "apathy" which it is very difficult or even impossible to overcome."
Dystopian Survival : Survivalist Myth? The Golden Horde
I disagree with him. He is citing Katrina as a model for SHTF for an entire country. These people had realistic expectations that help was coming because it was, even if poorly run, heckuva job, Brownie. MOST people DID leave. If the entire grid goes down, nobody will believe help is coming. Comments?
Survivalist Myth? The Golden Horde
By Timothy Gamble (February 17, 2016)
"James Wesley, Rawles, in his book How to Survive the End of the World as we Know It (an excellent book, by the way), describes this mass exodus as "The Golden Horde." Its a term he got from his father, who was comparing the potential mass exodus from the big cities to the Mongol horde of the 13th century. Here is how Rawles describes it on page six of his book:
Is The Golden Horde scenario realistic, or a myth?
At one point in our nations history, the Golden Horde probably would have happened in a long-term grid-down event. But those days are long past, as the concept of self-reliance has been intentionally erased from the American people. Let me explain with some recent real-life examples.
Remember New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? Remember all those people standing around in knee-deep water waiting for the government or someone else to help them? They had several days warning that a major hurricane was on the way, yet they did nothing. Even after Katrina hit flooding large sections of the city and collapsing its infrastructure, they did nothing to get themselves out of the situation. Instead they stood around in knee-deep water until authorities were able to round them up and ship them to the horrible and dangerous conditions of the Superdome.
That is called "learned helplessness," a behavioral term for when an organism (animal or human) has been taught through external stimuli to NOT help themselves, but to depend on outside factors. In the case of those people in New Orleans, generations of public education and government dependence left much of the population unable to help themselves. For most, it didn't even occur to them to try to get out of that situation on their own. And, if it did, they simply didn't know how to even start to help themselves.
Interestingly, the term "learned helplessness" appears in declassified CIA documents. The CIA defines learned helplessness as a type of instilled "apathy" which it is very difficult or even impossible to overcome."
Dystopian Survival : Survivalist Myth? The Golden Horde
I disagree with him. He is citing Katrina as a model for SHTF for an entire country. These people had realistic expectations that help was coming because it was, even if poorly run, heckuva job, Brownie. MOST people DID leave. If the entire grid goes down, nobody will believe help is coming. Comments?
The Harsh Truth About Bugging Out of Cities, by Patrice Lewis
JAMES WESLEY RAWLES OCTOBER 11, 2015
"Suppose that there was no warning? An EMP attack. A coordinated power grid attack. A catastrophic natural disaster. What would happen if there was no one to tell folks what to do? No one to hold open the roads? No means of communicating instructions?
What if you were on your own?
To put it bluntly, if you have to evacuate from a large metro-complex in a catastrophic TEOTWAWKI scenario, your chances of survival are frighteningly low. Let’s be realistic. In a major and immediate catastrophe, individual and familial survival will reign supreme. The already-thinning veneer of community in most cities will shatter. If looting and rioting is already commonplace after a successful win by a local sports team, imagine the degree of societal breakdown likely to occur after the explosion of a dirty bomb or the loss of all electricity and electronics following an EMP attack.
Studies have shown that most urban residents, without any authoritative guidance, will remain in place for up to a week before self-evacuating. But what will they do when they finally realize no one is coming to their rescue?In the ten largest cities in America, over one-third of the urban population does not own a car. In New York alone, 56% of the residents don’t own an automobile."
On the West Coast almost everyone has a car, or two. I think this guy is wrong too. We all have friends and family; people that know where we live, outside the major cities. As soon as there is a major SHTF crisis, they are heading to your place uninvited or not, because in their minds, that's what friends and family do. So YOUR friends and family are MY Golden Horde, and vice versa. I doubt most people will turn away these people, and if they do, they aren't going back to the city. Then there will be a second wave of straglers after the week of waiting proves fruitless. Say my little town 20 miles outside the city has 10,000 people. How much friends and family is that? Now, if only 10% of the city becomes straglers bugging out, how many more are headed your way? In my case 300,000 is 10%, if a quarter heads in every direction, I have another 75,000 people headed my way.
That's alot of people, even if 85% stay in the city and die. Doubtful.
JAMES WESLEY RAWLES OCTOBER 11, 2015
"Suppose that there was no warning? An EMP attack. A coordinated power grid attack. A catastrophic natural disaster. What would happen if there was no one to tell folks what to do? No one to hold open the roads? No means of communicating instructions?
What if you were on your own?
To put it bluntly, if you have to evacuate from a large metro-complex in a catastrophic TEOTWAWKI scenario, your chances of survival are frighteningly low. Let’s be realistic. In a major and immediate catastrophe, individual and familial survival will reign supreme. The already-thinning veneer of community in most cities will shatter. If looting and rioting is already commonplace after a successful win by a local sports team, imagine the degree of societal breakdown likely to occur after the explosion of a dirty bomb or the loss of all electricity and electronics following an EMP attack.
Studies have shown that most urban residents, without any authoritative guidance, will remain in place for up to a week before self-evacuating. But what will they do when they finally realize no one is coming to their rescue?In the ten largest cities in America, over one-third of the urban population does not own a car. In New York alone, 56% of the residents don’t own an automobile."
On the West Coast almost everyone has a car, or two. I think this guy is wrong too. We all have friends and family; people that know where we live, outside the major cities. As soon as there is a major SHTF crisis, they are heading to your place uninvited or not, because in their minds, that's what friends and family do. So YOUR friends and family are MY Golden Horde, and vice versa. I doubt most people will turn away these people, and if they do, they aren't going back to the city. Then there will be a second wave of straglers after the week of waiting proves fruitless. Say my little town 20 miles outside the city has 10,000 people. How much friends and family is that? Now, if only 10% of the city becomes straglers bugging out, how many more are headed your way? In my case 300,000 is 10%, if a quarter heads in every direction, I have another 75,000 people headed my way.
That's alot of people, even if 85% stay in the city and die. Doubtful.
maybe in America it will be different, but British people dont evacuate even in a war.
when there was flooding in Somerset people just retreated upstairs and waited it out, when the floodwater receded they moved into a caravan on the drive and started drying out the house, some were still there 12 months later.
where would they go anyway? modern British people arent pioneers, back woodsmen or hunters and they would be dead very quickly if they tried, if their food dosent come in little plastic pockets or foil containers they wont eat it and as for eating fruit off a tree that is alien to them, food dosent grow on trees it comes from the supermarket.
when there was flooding in Somerset people just retreated upstairs and waited it out, when the floodwater receded they moved into a caravan on the drive and started drying out the house, some were still there 12 months later.
where would they go anyway? modern British people arent pioneers, back woodsmen or hunters and they would be dead very quickly if they tried, if their food dosent come in little plastic pockets or foil containers they wont eat it and as for eating fruit off a tree that is alien to them, food dosent grow on trees it comes from the supermarket.
Once infrastructure collapses everywhere, there won't be any help arriving.. Just the opposite until infrastructure is restored.
I was in new Orleans when Katrina hit. I was there by choice.. I wasn't waiting for government help nor did I need any.
I was in new Orleans when Katrina hit. I was there by choice.. I wasn't waiting for government help nor did I need any.
I am not agreeing with Rawles, but humans do tend to stay where they feel safe or familiar in emergencies.
For how long, is the question.
How many are going to sit and wait for everything to return to normal?
While many cite Katrina, as others mentioned, those who could leave, did leave.
But that still left many who could not.
And, if you have ever lived in New Orleans, you know about the flooding. The highest point in the city is at the zoo. They have a marker with a "here be the highest point in New Orleans" plaque on it: 12 feet Above Sea Level.
Are there lessons to be learned from Katrina? Yes. Reports of LEOs bugging out and more than a few never went back. Reports of people using their authority to do bad things.
There were some good stories here and there.
I think looking at the Texas Arctic blast is a better look into the human psyche.
There were a few reports that the TX grid was like minutes away from total system failure.
Then what would of things looked like?
For how long, is the question.
How many are going to sit and wait for everything to return to normal?
While many cite Katrina, as others mentioned, those who could leave, did leave.
But that still left many who could not.
And, if you have ever lived in New Orleans, you know about the flooding. The highest point in the city is at the zoo. They have a marker with a "here be the highest point in New Orleans" plaque on it: 12 feet Above Sea Level.
Are there lessons to be learned from Katrina? Yes. Reports of LEOs bugging out and more than a few never went back. Reports of people using their authority to do bad things.
There were some good stories here and there.
I think looking at the Texas Arctic blast is a better look into the human psyche.
There were a few reports that the TX grid was like minutes away from total system failure.
Then what would of things looked like?
