Once you find yourself in an SHTF situation, you need to be concerned about the prospect of your neighbors considering stealing your supplies to feed their families.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to determine which of your neighbors has the potential to use a disaster as an excuse to loot your hard-earned supplies.
That being said, there are a few signs that may indicate that your neighbor could turn into a looter after SHTF.
Your neighbors may exhibit some of these traits and also be of no threat to you and your family. What follows is meant to be a list of possible things that may indicate your neighbor could become a looter.
Ultimately you’ll need to use your own intuition and discretion when judging the possible future intentions of those in your community.
A Total Lack Of Preparedness
Once the societal safety nets are removed, panic will set in, especially when the unprepared amongst us realize that there is no help coming and that they are on their own.
Related: Are You Prepared for the Biggest Social Unrest of Our Modern Times?
When these people look to the prepared families around them, they will inevitably consider stealing from them to ensure their survival.
Desperation is a powerful driving force, and if your neighbors are looking at empty cupboards and starving children, they will also start looking at you as a solution to their problems.
This will be especially true if you adopt a policy of not sharing your supplies with the unprepared.
One red flag to watch out for is the people who say they will come to your place after an SHTF situation. Anyone who assumes that you will open your home to them also has a high probability of being a looter post-SHTF.
A Deep Interest In Your Preps Without Prepping Themselves
If word gets out that you are a prepper, you’ll inevitably encounter someone who takes a keen interest in your preps while doing nothing to prepare themselves.
Of course, not everyone who is interested in the scope of your preparations plans to loot you after SHTF. Still, they may have nefarious motives if they are not actively pursuing prepping themselves.
They could be trying to determine what supplies you have in your home and planning on taking those by force after SHTF. Moreover, they could be trying to determine where you keep your supplies.
⇒ Why You Should Never Hide Your Stockpile In Your Basement
Even those who are interested in your preps and have started the journey into preparedness may look at their insufficient supplies and consider taking from you to get their stockpiles up.
Previous Or Current Criminal Activity
There is a saying, ‘Once a thief, always a thief.’
This saying exists for a good reason.
If your neighbor is currently or has been a thief in the past, you should keep a watchful eye on them after a disaster or SHTF situation.
Of course, being a thief in the past does not automatically mean that they will immediately steal your supplies and gear, but it does mean that they can revert back to such behavior more easily.
If someone has stolen from innocent people in the past, they will already have traversed the moral hurdles involved in looting, which means they will find theft easier to do than the average person.
People With Loose Morals
For someone to resort to looting does not require that they have a criminal past or be currently a prolific thief. There are many individuals in our society whose morals are questionable at best.
These people are the ones who would not rob a bank but don’t hesitate to ‘forget’ to scan some big ticket items at the self-checkout. Looters are not often criminal masterminds; they are ordinary people who commit crimes they see as victimless.
We all know people like this. They like to cheat on their taxes, sneak into movies, steal cable or streaming services, and violate a myriad of other laws that would not usually land a person in jail but are still ones that the majority of us abide by.
Like other items on this list, loose morals are not a guarantee of future looting but are worth watching out for in those around you.
The “I’ll Just Steal What I Need” People
I think we have all encountered people who, when we talk to them about prepping, say something along the lines of ‘I’ll just steal what I need’ or ‘I have a gun; I’ll take what I want.’
They may not be serious, but you must look at these people suspiciously. Individuals with a lot of firearms and tactical gear but no food, water, or medical supplies and an attitude of taking what they need should be considered dangerous after SHTF.
If your neighbor seems armed to the teeth and is very interested in your tactical prowess and what weapons you have, it is a good idea to keep any and all information close to your chest.
None of these traits guarantee that your neighbors will resort to looting in a post-SHTF situation, but they are worth watching out for in those around you.
Part of being prepared is staying ready for looters coming to steal your stuff, and part of that is getting a good idea of who in your neighborhood may potentially resort to looting.
The best time to figure out which of your neighbors meet the traits listed above is now, so make a point to get to know your neighbors and use what I’ve listed here to figure out who you may need to keep an eye on.
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