It is crucial to understand when SHTF starts. I think it is one of the most important things, to recognize that, in some cases it is more important to recognize that event and correct moment than to be prepared for that, no matter how strange this sounds.

I believe this is the truth because knowing when things turn bad can give you chance of escape.

But even if it is too late for escape, if you know this is a survival situation you think different. Make different decisions, think twice when dealing with strangers in need or accepting help from stranger who “want your best” or at least say so.

How do I prepare to know when survival mode has to kick in? Here are 5 symptoms that show that you might have a terrible disease in your area that can kill and that disease is called SHTF, society collapse or fight to survive. It comes with many names but if you know the first symptoms you can fight it better, earlier and smarter or avoid it.

Symptom 1: More violence in your area

Best information is a key for survival.

Personally I do not care much about press and media anymore. If you heard how situation went from bad to worse in my interviews in course area you know why.

Then there are global news of big events. They are good to keep an eye on and I read them but what really matters for me are local news. I get very few of important news from local newspapers but more from Police officers I chat with.

I also work in medical field so when things in my city get worse I know about it. More murder, riots, fights or other events where people get hurt.
You might not work in field like that but know someone, then talk to them. I did quick research and for the US for example there are law enforcement forums you could try to connect with some officers in your area.

If you find someone in your area, chat with them. Tell them you want to know their opinion. People who work in these fields have much better idea of how local situation is than what any media can tell you.

Media has to play nice with politicians, politicians need good news. Barack Obama ordered operation to kill Osama Bin Laden. Heard about it? It is election year, you will hear a lot more often about it.

But people who help victims or fight crime and give you their opinion will be able to tell you what’s really going on. Is violence up in your area? Is the media just hyping one incident or are there many more “normal” violent events like fights or stabbings nobody writes about.

Forget disaster media who write about new breakdown every day. Unless it is really something local it will take time before it affects you. Maybe you have local survival blogger or officer in your area who keeps people informed then you are lucky. Read those websites if you have them.

So besides real local street news what can help you to spot signs of SHTF?

Symptom 2: Group behavior changes, survival brings people closer and makes others less human

First you need to try to understand that SHTF event brings whole new set of things, and laws, together with complete absence of old laws.
Most important thing is, it is scary and when something is scary or people just sense things are going bad they band together.

They try to stick with people most similar to them. That’s in prisons and that’s everywhere once signs show something bad might happen.
Part of violence or why violence is easy is because the predator the one being violent considers his victim as someone very different. Almost like a thing. He is some else, almost not human. In these cases it is much easier to do bad things.

This happened during war, happens now in prisons and has happened through all of history. So once people band together and groups form and there is maybe your group or neighbours group and then there is this very different “other group”, then chance of things getting more ugly is bigger.

Symptom 3: Dead streets

Along with groups forming people try to stay with people they trust. Less people go out and if then also in group. People show up less often to meetings and social activitys.

Casual activitys like going to park change to visiting neighbors. When fear has spread so far that streets become less populated at certain times of day then it is time to get ready for disaster.

It means some people already live in survival mode but they do not know it. They probably will not have realized they have too little food storage and other things. Fear just makes them less social.

Symptom 4: New leaders emerge

Some people will use widespread fear to their advantage. Fear is powerful to control masses. Some election campaigns of politicians use fear to influence voters and get them on their side. This works with many people who do not know about it.

On local level this means that loud person in your favorite bar gathers more people around him. Some people organize groups for different also harmless things to make situation better. In times of fear people look for leader to hold on to. When things get tough those leaders will turn to be gang leaders.

Even some who did good things and became leader of good group to for example improve local situation turned into hard gang leaders who did everything to survive. I’m sure some of them never expected that but when things get tough everything changes.

Symptom 5: Nobody to trust anymore

I explain this with story of what happend to a friend.

Like great majority of people my friend watched in first days the situation deteriorating. I talked with him few days ago and I asked him can he remember right moment, or right event that he can call like something like point of no going back, or point when he clearly saw that everything is going to sh.. and something completely new is coming.

He lived in apartment building on seventh floor with his family, and he said that he like great majority of people watched in first week or two how things going down, stories of sporadic killing in city fueled by rage and hate, fear slowly started to creep into people’s mind, fear from unknown, still people believed things somehow gonna revert back to normal, nobody wanted to think too much about worst things, it was somehow unimaginable.

On one late afternoon or evening he heard shots, brakes and sounds of car crash. He goes to window and seen that truck went off the road to the dirt beside road, driver fell out from the truck, and screamed that sniper shot him. Vehicles were going on the road close to the guy but nobody wanted to stop and help him.

After 10 minutes, 10 or 12 policeman came with rifles, and take position close to the truck and wounded guy, I guess trying to figure where sniper was. Firefighters also came, but they stay 100 or 150 meters from truck. Also taking cover from possible sniper.

It was in first days when very few people knew who is fighting with who and why and who is enemy, nobody mentioned the word war too much, people still thought that things were some local unrests that gonna cease soon.

On the intersection, right across that burning truck and screaming driver, there was small store, „newspapers store“ they sell cigarettes, newspapers, lighters, candy and stuff like that.

When that truck crashed salesman ran away in fear from everything I guess.

Anyway police guys were hiding and lying down everywhere while that guy screamed, after some time one of them came to the store, used his baton and smashed glass and took couple boxes of cigarettes, after him few other also did that, he said one even took big box of bubble gums.

Police guys did not know what do with that sniper, after some time my friend says darkness came and someone started to shoot at them too, so they ran away carrying one Police man who was wounded. Firefighters ran away earlier, everybody forgot the screaming guy.

My friend said he did not even realize when the truck driver who has been shot stopped with screams. He said the image of police officers in full gear with weapon stealing things from that store was so new for him and so crushing that he clearly took that event and that moment as point of real beginning, moment when SHTF and his world broke down.

From that moment on he knew it was about survival now and rules had changed.

When you believe for years that guys in uniforms are there only to serve and protect you, awakening to something like that can be rude.
So symptom 5 is when behavior of authorities change. Clear signs now things are bad. Those might be smaller changes first and not so extreme like in my friends case, but at the end of day policeman are also fathers and sons and have family to take care of.

That night he and his family left that apartment, and moved to some safer parts of town, at that time they figured that S. had hit the fan. Not so much because of screaming guy, who died soon, but much more because image of police officers stealing things.

Also, few hours after police officers were gone, he sneaked out to the store and took some stuff, not too many things were left, but few boxes of cigarettes worth fortune in coming months.

Those are 5 important early warning signs or symptoms of SHTF. There are many more fine details to pay attention to of course. I speak in detail about all events that happened before we realized we were in a SHTF scenario in my course.

What are your early warning signs you watch out for?

I did not have a pet when SHTF, I did not have it later, most of the people who had it when SHTF let them go or in some cases probably ate them.

Just to clean up with some things I believe are myths. Dogs for protection did work but not that a dog guards you and fights for you. When human life matters little nobody has problems shooting a dog. Dogs were sometimes shot for fun.

So leaving family at home with dogs as protection is bad idea.

In civilized times somebody who breaks in house and never killed a human might wait long enough before shooting dog and get attacked, but in our case, nobody waited.

People who waited and did not shoot, did not live more than first few weeks after SHTF, or if they were and if they could not get themselves to shoot at living beings, they were just hiding somewhere.

Some families just locked dog out and never let in again. Food was only for humans after some point in time for most.

About eating dogs, not much to say about this. Dogs are animals and hunger can make people go eat everything. There were some people who nobody knew what they ate and how they got food. Most “exotic” meat I had was rat, some sort of big water rat, not sure if I would have touched dog.

I say not sure because of course I’m against eating dog now but once it is matter of your life or that of a dog, opinion can change.

One of the guys from my street had and kept his dog trough all of that, dog lived few years after all was over with them. I did not think too much about that dog, his importance for that family or burden or whatever.

But after many questions about pets when SHTF via email and in my course I decided to ask that guy about his dog and their SHTF time.

They get dog few years before war, ordinary mixed puppy, I mean no famous breed. Small dog, we call it “house” dog or “kids ” dog here. They called it Rino. Kids paid attention to Rino, but after few years when kids were grown up into teenagers they stopped to pay too much attention to him.

Oldest guy in family took him as something as a best friend, so it was normal to see grandpa walking trough the street with that dog.

When everything started family pretty much forgot about the dog, I mean a lot of much more important stuff were on their schedule. Some other folks moved in the house and it was crowded, with many problems, food, hygiene and all what our survival situation brought.

Dog still stayed with grandpa mostly, he shared some of his food with him, even some of the family members had opinion that giving food to the dog in that time was not so smart idea.

Anyway old guy went sick, he was pretty much old and had problems with high blood pressure and heart, and the stress and overall bad situation just speed up things. He lose his strength and fell into the bed.

For two months he was laying in the bed with Rino beneath his legs, that dog did not want to move from him. Grandpa and that dog became something like best friends. That guy from the street told me that it was like they both felt that they are not so useful in the whole situation, so they just move very close to each other.

Nobody told anything bad to the old guy, or show or act like he is a burden because he is sick, but being old does not mean stupid, the old guy felt useless.

Neighbor said it was at the same time so sad to see them together always. Like a picture of things breaking down.

Grandpa died in the middle of the hardest period, when hostilities and hunger was worst, and nobody knows what tomorrow gonna be. My neighbor also said, and he sweared to me it is truth, that night before grandpa died that dog was howling all night, and he said that dogs can smell death when is approaching the house. I do not know but when he told me that I got chills.

Dogs saved themselves from recent Tsunamis before they came so they seem to have some sort of sense for things.

In the morning they found grandpa dead, they burried him in the park, and they keep dog. In next few days they noticed that dog is blind, nobody knows when or how that happened, neighbor said nobody paid too much attention in those days what dog is eating or how clean it is, so everything is possible.

But he also noticed something else: when bad guys came in to the street, some 150 meters maybe that dog always would run and tried to hide, when somebody friendly came in the street dog is gonna stand next to the window frame with front two legs up there.

So they learned that and they use it as a some kind of early warning sign. He said that dog actually probably saved their lives couple of times.

When everything ended dog had something like special place in that house, something like special decorated war hero, best food, best care, best everything.

My neighbor told me at the end of the story that they found dog dead one morning, on exact place where grandpa was lying for months and where he died at the end.

I do not know too much about dogs, and I do not know if things from the story are possible, but that my neighbor sweared to me couple of times, he even cried at the end of his story.

He told me that story while we had few beers in a cafe, across the cafe was park where his grandpa is buried. They did not exhume people from the park, too many graves, too many problems and authorities after the war just turn that park officially in the graveyard with everything that goes with any other „normal“ graveyard.

So in short, no dogs will not be great fighters on your side when weapons are commonly used but dogs can help you with their senses. If you are dog owner please share your opinion about this in comments.

JL is a female member of my survival course and she asked a lot of woman specific questions about my SHTF experience. I decided to interview women because of that. I can talk about my experience but women live often in different world of feelings and emotions.

I spoke with first woman named Una, now 52 (so in her 30s back then) who took care of her family during that time. I asked JL to send me some questions she had on her mind and she did. If you have more women specific questions write in comments. I recorded interview and translated to English (sorry my English not proper English).

Una started to describe her situation

My first and worst concern was what is gonna happen with my kids, I had two toddlers, and I did not have any clue what is gonna happen, or even what is gonna look like when hell broke lose. We did not want to believe it could happen. We heard the sound of big guns miles away and stories of violence, rape and murder but everything looked so peaceful.

At the beginning, actually right before everything started during my meetings with my friends and colleagues at work we discussed the deteriorating situation, and pretty soon I found myself faced with important decision: is it worth to send my kids to some more “secure” region or to some relatives to neighboring country, or keep them with me, and wait what happens.

I never had question am I going to leave this place, I found it normal to stay in my city, with husband, in my house. Looking back now I know it was big mistake.

If I want to describe my worst feeling trough all of that, it was not hunger, danger, fire, cold or anything like that. It was definitely the feeling of uncertain future, complete absence of feeling that I control coming events, I was helpless and just like a leaf in a storm. Anything could happen.

Anyway I choose to keep my kids with me, still do not know if it was right decision. Survival was tough even at places I planned to send them before everything started. I found out after everything was over.

Anyway they survived, but with some mental trauma like everybody else who survived.

Some of my friends who send their kids through some organization to other countries, had kids getting lost and disappear, and in some cases they found place somewhere else but the kids lost connection with parents. If parents survived they became strangers with each other.

How did things start to change in your city?

Some very new emotions came up during that time, I was watching how city was dying slowly, together with normal behavior of people.

In the beginning people tried to stay together, I mean in the terms of neighbors helping each other. They had “normal” way of communication in the beginning. But as more bloody details, murder, rape and other crime became common trust faded and was replaced by fear.

Slowly people started to move away from each other and there was just us or them. Groups were not open anymore. No more welcoming.

I thought of my self as strong woman before, but that was before being without food and losing normal control of my life. I was teacher before everything, and of course I lost my job just like almost everyone. Nothing worked like it was supposed to work. I did not even have idea to continue to teach my kids at home, or try something similar, to survive took all my energy.

Did you have any ideas of how you would survive if you were alone or not?

I was with my husband and family and I think I would not have survived alone. Not because I’m weak spirited woman lacking will to survive but simply because what I saw and experienced was so different and “out of this world” that I would have not been able to handle it alone.

Being in family or group makes you part of something, if other depend on you and you have other who go through same unreal situation it makes you fight harder. I understand those people who gave up and locked themselves in to die.

Did you feel being a woman gave you any advantages or disadvantages?

For me I think it was better because I was a woman, I mean I was in a way protected from some of the hardest things, like finding food, resources or fighting. Hardest jobs were done by men, it was matter of luck for me. Woman are just more useful for certain kind of job like taking care of kids or wounded or sick people. Woman also have more feelings so some things like using violence does not come easy.

Did you realize how bad it would get?

No, definitely not, many times I thought this can not be worst and then it got worse.

Fighting for survival can reduce people to animal that we all are. Sometimes it was hard to still see that they or we are human. So much that we think makes us human is removed and then there is something very basic and brutal left. It comes as surprise that people can act without emotions like compassion that make us human. Since that time I never thought about humans like before.

How did the close people around you treat you?

I was protected, guarded in a way because I was a woman. It was not matter of some kind of gentlemen thing, I believe it was mostly about fact that I do my part of duties, like taking care for kids, food, trying to keep things clean etc. When I had to shoot, nobody would tell me: you are a woman you cant do that. Everyone in group had to function and people treat you good if you do.

What was your situation meaning how many people did you have as support, if any?

I spent that period in a group with 6 men, 3 woman and 4 kids.

What are you doing today that prepares you for any similar event or how did that change the way you live?

I have food in my house for several months, weapons and I am ready to leave everything at the first sign that something similar gonna happen. Everything.

Did anything happen that you handled differently than you assumed you would?

I was thinking a lot about that, and whatever I am gonna say it could be wrong. You get into situations that you can not imagine so there was no way to predict what to do. I saw hard man break and weak man be strong. Many people who showed off strength to the outside world before things got really hard were those who broke first. I think they build up a mask to hide their inner weakness.

I broke too but people still relied on me so I had to do my part. I kept myself together but the whole situation left big scars inside of me.

There were quiet and normal people like you [Selco] who managed to come out of all this stronger and who got used to situation faster and without much suffering. Maybe you were born for that I still do not understand people like you.

Were you concerned about hygiene and feminine body issues or would you say the lack of food water etc caused this not to be a concern?

How could lack of water etc not to be a concern? It was the opposite.

But over the time we learned that hygiene is not most important thing on the world, as dirty as that sounds. Other things occupied my mind, like with what to feed my kids, or how to make any kind of meal from very few things.

What did you notice that women did differently to handle the situation, if anything?

I know for myself that special way of thinking helped me. I just close my self in my own world, I mean with my thinking and worryng, and it helped me. When my husband was worrying about when everything would come to end, and what are the chances for that, or trying to find some useful information about that, my biggest concern was how to make dinner, or to warm kids.

It was not about “men in the house” thing, that he thinks about the big issues and I do not.

I am educated person, but worrying about small, everyday things I think helped me trough all of that, without going crazy maybe. My concern was for example when kid asked me “can you make pancake?” how to answer him and make something that only looked like pancake, and tell him something like “those are special pancakes”. Those were the little missions that kept me from completely losing myself like others did.

Did anything at all go the way you would have expected?

Nothing went as expected, actually I did not know what to expect. You can not expect too much when you find yourself in a completely new situation, deadly situation.

I lived day by day without too much hope or expectation, at some point you stop caring. I survived, my family survived, and that’s it. I do not know what happens next time everything goes to hell again but I’m ready now to accept whatever comes. I easily could not be here anymore like many people I know. This stays with me for life so I appreciate every day.

Did you have a source of spiritual strength?

I changed all phases, from completely not believing to completely believing and hoping that God will do something. I lost and gained faith many many times in that period. But yes, I think my kids and care for my kids gave me some will and strength to survive and live somehow normally. I think point of taking care for someone is really important in all this.

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I currently work on translating second, much longer interview I did with a woman who survived in a group of only women. Things were harder for them. I will post interview in members section in the coming days.

If you have more woman specific questions or thoughts share what you think in the comments. What do you worry most about as woman thinking about SHTF?

*Disclaimer: This is a guest post by Jay, the guy who created this website with Selco.*

Right now the Feds are looking into warrantless cell phone surveillance after a surpeme court ruling made them turn off 3000 GPS tracking devices.

That might have been the latest big news of a government slowly removing the rights of their citizen. That governments worldwide actively surveillance online communication is already old news.

“According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called ‘transactional’ data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns”. Source

It is free to your imagination what “suspicious patterns” are. They might not target preppers today, but we don’t know what’s going in five years from now so it is needles to say, it is important to be prepared in this area as well. Better to take care of this now before they have an even more detailed profile of you.

If you want to stop worrying about who might read what or how your data is used then this is for you.

Let’s get started.

How the Internet works

If you want your computer to be able to use the Internet, it has to be able to send and receive data. It does so through a particular language called TCP/IP (or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

The computers that host websites are commonly known as servers and just like your Internet access point (your home network, for example) they all have unique IP addresses, a series of numbers unique to your computer. (Visit this website or google for “my ip” to see yours.)

IP addresses make the Internet work because to exchange packets of data computers need to know where to get that data and where to send it.

Your Internet service provider (ISP) assigns you an IP addresses. There are two kinds of IP addresses: those that remain the same (called a static IP address), and those that change every time you connect to the Internet (called a dynamic IP address).

Your Internet service provider logs and stores your IP address for some months (or even years) depending on the country you live in and the the company’s own policies.

Your IP address is stored in case any authorities want to track the identity of a certain Internet user. In this case the ISP hands over the IP logs to the authorities which shows whose account was used.

Your IP address is also recorded whenever you access websites, send emails or do other activities online. If you prefer to maintain your privacy, there are a few steps you can take to truly remain anonymous online.

Let’s have a look what happens when you visit a website using a regular Internet connection. You enter an Internet address in your browser, let’s say the website of the Brazilian government. Your ISP routes this request to their domain name servers (DNS) which searches for the IP that corresponds with the Internet address you entered. The DNS returns the IP of the server where the Brazilian government website is hosted and establishes a route to it.

This route can go through many networks and it always sends your network IP along so at the end of this route the server in Brazil sees a request from your IP address and sends back the data you requested. That can be a certain web page, document or movie file for example.

Your IP address can be logged at every step of the process. Most likely the Brazilian government will monitor who visits their website, your ISP logs your IP anyway, and in between some other networks you come across might also log your IP address.

Why does this matter?

Open to attacks

First of all, people can try to access your network if they know your IP address and have some knowledge of network security and how to find loopholes in that security. So if you visit a website that is run by a group of hackers who want to spy on you or steal your data, once they have your IP address they can start breaching your network security.

Of course today it’s usually not a single person sitting somewhere and trying to take down individual computers. Instead, the whole process is automated and IPs are collected and networks are scanned for possible loopholes or backdoors.

(Having a router at home instead of being connected with your computer directly to your Cable / DSL / Internet modem can prevent some of the more common network attacks by the way.)

Once a backdoor is found, usually a small program is installed that can be used to install larger malicious programs on your computer, monitor your keyboard input, take screenshots, or hijack your browser.

These infected computers are often then used to attack other computers, or as a base of operation for more serious crimes. Needless to say, you don’t want this to happen to you.

Big brother knows what you are doing

The second reason you might not want your IP address logged is that it makes it easy for the government or any other authority to monitor your activity online. I personally have nothing to hide, but still do not feel I want to be profiled by some data mining software and judged for what kind of person I am depending on the websites I visit.

If the government really wants to it would be very easy to find preppers. They just have to look at the Internet activity profiles and filter out people who frequent certain websites.

So what can you do?

You will want to set up a virtual private network (VPN). You create a direct encrypted connection to another computer and from there you access the Internet. Because of the encryption your ISP has no idea what kind of data you send or receive.

It also hides your IP address, because your home IP address is not visible on the Internet and instead just the IP of the VPN server. You share the VPN server IP address with other people so there is no way to identify what websites you are browsing (because it could have been someone else too).

Here is how using the Internet without and with VPN works

New Online Privacy Course

In our new Online Privacy Course (FREE for all current Selco – One Year in Hell members) I will walk you step by step through all details of how to set up a secure home network, use the Internet without being tracked or profiled, establish safe emailing practices, make your local data storage safe, use encrypted voice over ip connections and more.

You learn what really works and not some security theater b#llshit that is spread by many who just spend a few days searching on public websites for security information. Yes, that pisses me off because feeling secure while not is even worse than not being secure and knowing about it.

There is a lot of false information out there. If someone is serious about security and recommends services like hidemyass or hushmail they have no idea what they are talking about or even worse, want to give you a false feeling of security. Both these services have cooperated with authorities which led to arrests of people in the past, so they can not be considered safe.

In our course you will really get to know what’s going on. This goes so far that I will show you how cyber criminals in the US and Europe are set up and operate. What works for them to not get caught, does work for normal people like us who simply want to keep our freedom as well (and is 100% legal if you just skip one step of the cyber criminal setup).

If you Google for VPN providers you will come across a lot crap providers. Many are actually logging your local IP address (to protect themselves) and therefore can hand it over to authorities if they are pressured to or receive a court order. This is security that is none.

In the Online Privacy Course you will learn what to look out for when choosing a VPN provider. You will also get a list with VPN providers who have a true no logging policy – even when their servers were seized by authorities, no users were identified (because without logs, nobody can be identified…).

Besides that you will also learn about several of other possibilities to make your communication and data bulletproof.

If you think this is not possible, you did not check out the course. I show you how can stack layer upon layer of security in a way that makes it simply impossible to get to you (VPN’s are just part of the puzzle).

Right now the course is free for everyone who is member of Selco’s Online Course. So if you sign up today you will get access to both courses.

You will get video tutorials and step by step instructions with screenshots for everything but if you have any questions or anything is unclear I also answer questions in our forum. If you did not know, we also have a 30 day money back guarantee because we are confident you will like what you learn.

Current members

You will see the link to the course in the members area menu on the left.

You might have to logout and login again that your permissions are updated and you can access the new area.