It’s been 6 months since Collapse and you and your group have managed to survive the chaos and other issues that followed. Now you could a) sit tight and screw everyone else or b) begin to venture out and meet with other survivors and try to start organizing some form of government in order to begin to rebuild.

During this time, Intelligence is vital. You’re going to know who is around, you’re going to want to know routes people take to get from one place to another, you’re going to want to know who is a threat and who isn’t. Prior to Collapse or SHTF event, use google earth, and paper topo maps, to get a good look at terrain in your area. You might even start to make contact with those around your BOL area before you even bug out. Get to know the terrain REAL WELL. This will help to establish some sort of potential friendship. Don’t tell them you plan to bug out to their area, make it more like a neighborly thing. The next thing you should do is make a list of ALL of the things you want to know. Then begin recon patrols once SHTF.

Once you begin your recon patrols, you will want to look for choke points, make note of what routes are traveled most, which times of the day, how exposed would you be traveling these routes, ambush points, make note of where people are living, how are they living, how are they traveling be it by foot, bike, motorcycle, car…. Are there places with defensive measures put up? Are there many dead laying about? How is people’s behavior? Animal behavior. Take note of all of these things, and more as your wants of knowledge take shape. If it turns out you have a large area to cover, break things down in to zones and patrol each zone and make notes for that zone. Make sure you record/write down everything you hear as well if you hear any talk. All of this could be important for you getting a picture of your new environment.

Once you have gathered information for your area and are satisfied in all you feel you need to know, you might consider approaching someone. You could do this many ways:

One way is to leave a note where they will easily find it, stating whatever you wish to say, but basically that you wish to meet on friendly terms. If they are more relaxed, you could just go up and knock. One thing you may wish to do when meeting them, however, is to not wear a bunch of tactical gear. Stash it and wear jeans and t shirt or whatever is appropriate, and carry concealed a handgun. For one, this will help the other party to relax, you won’t scare the living crap out of them. For another, this hides the notion that you have tactical capabilities. Remember your grey man?

As you meet with people, casually ask questions, make mental note of these. And ALWAYS keep part of your team on over watch. If there is 4 of you, 2 should go to meet, the other two watch the gear and watch over you. If you get in to trouble, you should have a rally point, and the over watch team should cover you, giving you time to get out.

Once you make positive contact, keep that repor. Find out their needs, maybe there is something you can help with. This helps to build trust. It will also help you to begin reestablishing a sense of community, as people will start to come together to work together. Find out if there re any bully types around or gangs. If there are, find out when they come and maybe from where. If known, find out where they stay at, too. You can consider this a possible threat.

As you gather people in to your network, encourage them to keep watch out for threat activity, this way you now start to build up human intelligence. If you have trail cameras, now is the time to begin using them. Set them up so they go down a trail, each side of it. Number or name each camera so you know when you look at a picture, you know which camera and angle it is from. If your trail cameras have time and date on them, you can get a sense of how fast they are traveling down the trail or road.



Trail Camera



Planting route sketch

Plant in a zig zag manner, be sure to start down tertiary trails so you can try to determine which way they went. In this manner, you can begin to get to know how heavily used the trail is. You can get a sense as to how many per trip is using the trail. This information goes into your intel data base. The reasoning for a zig zag is so that when one camera leaves, the next picks the movement up. Make sure you pay attention to what angles you are setting these up at.

Maybe you find some trails more heavily used than others, or pictures indicate a militia moving through the area. Now you can go and take out with a surveillance team a hand held camera, binoculars, and a spotting scope. Record everything you see and hear. Make note of uniforms or lack of, make note of discipline, and weaponry carried. Make note also of anything that identifies them. ALWAYS do all you can do to not alert them to your presence. Cover your back trail by making sure you don’t leave branches parted unnaturally, wipe out foot prints, make sure you have a good hide, don’t step on the trail, maintain strict noise, light, and scent discipline. Move very little, especially if people are present. All of the info you gather will go into the data base.

Doing all of this will help to give you a clearer picture of your area. You will have the data needed to analyze the potential threats.

On your paper topo map, mark, on an acetate overlay, the names of those you know and where they live, mark trails, your location, and any other important information you wish to know. As you gather information, you can make another overlay, or mark an existing map, with all of the info you find as far as where you’ve seen what. This way you have a situation map. A big picture. You can see patterns in this, or simply see where most people are hanging out at, routes they are traveling, whatever tickles your fancy here. People you’ve already met with their location should be marked down pre collapse/SHTF. It will be tougher to do afterwards, but still doable. The more you know, maybe the less sneaking you’ll have to do. Just remember, once you decide to come out into the rest of the world, it may be very dangerous. You will ALWAYS want to do this if you are going in to a new area after SHTF.

Either way, many of these measures can help you to develop a better, more complete picture of your area so that you can make much more sound decisions once SHTF. If you have threats, you will end up knowing about them, and how they operate, and how they are likely to react to you pushing them, if that happens to be your deal. It may be that it is better to avoid this threat, rather than attack it. But you won’t know until you have a full picture of what is going on.

Eyes Out Front!

In preparation of this posibility and other things, our group is doing a mapping project. We all have the same map (Delorme). We are spread out all over several states and so eventually it will cover quite an area. Each person marks routes and short cuts, potential road blocks and problem areas, but als potential safe spots and places of interest.
We feel this will make each of us totally aware of our area including short cuts and ways to travel on foot as well.

Exactly HP! Doing map recon like this is vital as well. Know your area well. It looks as if this is exactly what you are doing. I hope neighbors are likewise at least somewhat on the same brain wave here. They may be quite a ways away, I don't know your area, but having that mutual support and information sharing is going to do quite a bit in keeping your area safe and also keeping up with news. If grid is down, most news will probably come through radio (HAM, CB) and word of mouth.

Reviewing SALUTE or SPOT reports with your group (see FM 7-8, or appropriate field manual) or just develop a simple format for delivering a report on what they've seen. What you saw, Who you saw doing it, Where you saw it, Why they were doing whatever they were doing (if known), and When you saw this. If your group is good at identifying firearms, accessories, uniforms, gear types, patches, etc, that should be included. Uniforms and weapons are often an indicator of how well organized a group is, their gear is an indication of this as well. Also noticing if they're carrying packs or just water and a small day pack can show you how much range that patrol has, and what kind of radius they have. That will help you ascertain where they came from.

A Pen-pal relationship through dead drops might be mentioned as a good way to break the ice with another group, PM mentioned leaving a letter for someone in a location that you know they'll find it to make initial contact. If the group you want to contact isn't a well known factor, then you can set up a dead drop "mailbox" that you can correspond and keep an eye on. The others, if they're smart will do the same, but it's a good safe way to observe each other in a known and obviously well planned and covered method. Also could be a good way to share info if you and another friendly group have overlapping patrol routes, but no real face to face contact due to schedules.

Exactly Yakima, it is the safest way to do it. I could also go so far as to do this with someone you intend to do trade with, if you don't know them.

The point in what I am mentioning is, be ready to protect yourself, but your bottom end of it is to get the best possible picture of what the environment is. One can't be too careful, especially when it comes to potential enemies.

One thing I learned off of a TV show, which I found might be useful, is to create an assumed name as the "Leader of your group". This fictional person (which turns out to be you) could be "The one that directs everything". This way if someone has some ideas of capturing your spot, or raiding it, or trying to "cut the head off the snake", they'll never be able to find that person. This is using counterintelligence to your advantage by misdirecting. Hell, you could even point out this individual stays at another location and has back up for you if needed. This inflates your true numbers. Potential enemies may not pick up on this, and figure you to be far stronger than you look. There is an advantage to that in that they may decide you are too much for them to handle. It also helps much with keeping OPSEC. "Oh I don't know exactly what he has planned, we're just making contact with local people to determine how we might be able to help get things going again".

Information is power folks. One other element that is good to get to know is the local criminal element. Of course, don't trust them, or their word. But these can be a great source of information, not to mention that they tend to have the ability to get most of anything you may need. Once you have established a positive relationship with the locals, you can then try to help them organize into a government of sorts, offer your skills in trade for that which you need. Have a doctor in your group? Offer to set up a clinic. Win them over and you may find yourself with an entire army if the need ever arises.