Group Prepping? Go It Alone Or As A Group?

It makes clear sense that if you are under physical attack, your chances of survival are better if you’re one of a group rather than fending for yourself alone. A piece on the Sky History channel, for instance, gives the example of an attack by wolves being more effectively defended if you are one of a group.

Survival psychology

Serious, academic study has shown that – whether individually or as part of a group – different people react in different ways under conditions of extreme stress. A paper submitted to the British Psychological Society (BPS) considered the contrasting outcomes for members of the same groups who have found themselves surviving the initial trauma of aeroplane crashes, being stranded in arctic wastes or the depths of the jungle, or even experiencing deprivations as prisoners of war.

Amidst the stirring tales of individual survival against seemingly overwhelming odds, there are also those occasions when other members of the group have died for no apparent reason. For this latter group, the author of the study suggests replacing the concept of a “will to live” with a “won’t to live” – a tendency to just give up rather than continue to battle against the challenges.

The prepper’s escape

For the great majority of preppers, however, conditions are unlikely to be so extreme as that air crash or being stranded in a completely remote wilderness.

You will have planned your escape – you will have made at least some provision for “bugging out”. We’ve suggested some of the kit to pack in your grab bag in our blog on the 9^th of April, for instance.

So, should you aim to make your escape as a loner or as a member of a group? There are advantages and disadvantages either way:

The prepper group

• in practically every instance, more can be done by a group of individuals than a single person – provided there is at least a modicum of harmony between the group members of course;

• in a crisis or survival situation, you might expect a greater recognition of the need to pull together – but also the need for some clear leadership;

• thanks to a formal or informal division of labour – where each member of the group has his or her own jobs to do – sharing the responsibilities like this will give you the chance to sleep knowing that someone else is keeping watch for the night;

• if one member of the group is injured or falls sick, the others can cover for the loss by taking up the slack;

• the very factors that make a group more effective – more hands to the pumps – also sow some of the seeds for potential problems during times of particular stress or hardship;

• that is when tempers are likely to get most frayed, leadership decisions challenged, and group dynamic resulting in a breakdown of cohesion;

• you will also need to take into account the simple fact that any group needs considerably more resources – food, water, shelter and the like – than any individual, warns a posting by Survival Sullivan;

Going it alone

• if you decide to go it alone, some things might seem immediately easier and more straightforward;

• planning on your own, for instance, is a sight easier and less fraught than planning by committee;

• if you answer only to yourself, you alone decide where you’re going, when, how fast, and what you’re taking with you;

• you’ll be making your own decisions – and carrying entire responsibility for them – without any of the potentially critically time-consuming negotiation backwards and forward between members of a group;

• you will be free of any of those potentially catastrophic group dynamics that might lead to betrayals, meltdown, and mutiny;

• to others you might meet along the way, you will probably appear less threatening than a whole bunch of people – and may find help and assistance this way, if you ask for it, just when you need it;

• when you are going it alone, though, there is – by definition – no one around to help you;

• that means no one to help with the essentials such as fire starting, shelter building, foraging, lighting and cooking;

• you will be relying on your own knowledge and experience – alone, without the benefits of any that might otherwise have been shared within a group;

• if you get sick or injured, your difficulties will be compounded many times over if there is no one to help collect fuel, keep watch, or perform the myriad chores that continue to need doing;

• in an especially tight and threatening situation, when you are on the edge of panic and despair, there will be no one to help pull you back from the brink.

Your bug out group

Have you been swayed either way by these arguments for and against prepping as a group or going it alone? It might all boil down to the type of person you are – and your resilience as a loner or team player as part of a group.

There is certainly likely to be strength in numbers – provided you are all pulling together, starting from more or less the same point, and have broadly the same objectives in mind. That suggests that if decide to aim for a group, you pick members you already know fairly well and with whom you share the same principles and values – close friends and family members, for instance.