In my previous Pennsif's Progress post about food security @bobydimitrov made a very good comment about security and being able to defend one's food stockpile against the marauding masses if a society breakdown occurs.

Your food stockpile is just a club swing away from being someone else's. Your greenhouse is a magnet for hungry bands of pillagers. Even if you keep an arsenal in your house, you cannot possibly keep a band of marauders from taking your stuff and your life.

That is of course a big concern. In that sort of situation we can only have food security if we have security.

Our remote location is both a blessing and a danger for us. Our nearest neighbours are one mile way in one direction and half a mile in the often.

The neighbours are too far away to even know if we were having problems... or are they?

---

OpSec

Before I joined steem I wrote my daily Pennsif's Progress posts for many months on a UK Preppers forum. Discussions were always informative, often educational, commonly enjoyable and sometimes quite frank.

Security was a common topic for discussion - but 'OpSec' was the always the watchword.

Operational Securty was of the outmost importance - never give too much information away, least you would be 'uncovered' and hoards of undesirables would be beating a path to you door.

So my big takeaway from that preppers forum was to keep a low profile and never say too much.

That is sound advice. So in answer to @bobydimitrov I will keep it general.

One family in a remote farmhouse - even with a truckload of guns - couldn't mount any effective defense against hungry people with bad intentions.

But this is the UK, with very restrictive gun laws, so our truck won't be full guns... maybe just airguns, catapaults, sticks and stones and bows and arrows.

But this is rural Wales where every knows everyone, most people have the same surname and sometimes you really have to keep up with the Jones.

The Local Community

So that is where security will start ... with the community.

We moved here nearly 20 years ago and in that time we have been involved in a lot of what goes on in the local community.

Our children have attended the local schools, my wife has learnt Welsh at local classes, I have been been involved in organising festivals and other community events. In any ways and all ways we have got to know people in the local area and they have got to know us. My mother being born here has given us a free pass in some areas as well.

And our near neighbours have always been helpful - pulling our car out of the floods, lifting delivery vans that have slid off our lane, coming by in their 4x4s when we have been blocked in by snow.

The local community, and our neighbours, are the foundation of our security strategy.

Distance can be an issue, but that is nothing that some CB radios or a network of walkie-talkies won't be able to deal with.

So that is our Prepping Security Strategy, Part I.

Tomorrow, OpSec permitting, I will reveal Part II, and maybe even a glimpse of Part III...

---

---

• The Alternative Lifestyle Show - Friday 29 June 2018 [recording]

• My Life In 8 Songs - Thursday 28 June 2018 - @edprivat, @pechichemena & @meno [recording]

• I Buy Steem - back in the market to support my delegation projects

• My Life In 8 Songs - @piecesof8 - new account to support & autovote musicians on the show

• AltLife - the foundation - rewarding supporters of The Alternative Lifestyle Show on MSP Waves

• SteemRadio - schedule of all the steem radio shows - week beginning 25 June 2018

• A Dollar A Day charitable giving project update : Transfer completed & Girls Foundation

• Pennsif's Progress #634 - changing the face of Wales 10,000 trees at a time

• Pennsif's Sustainability Curation Digest for MSP - week ending 24 June 2018

---

[ images from pixabay - Creative Commons CC0 ]