POTD: Fire Destroyed Houses in St. Louis Neighborhood

 

Source: "On This St. Louis Block, the Houses Keep Burning"--Riverfront Times.

    The photograph above is from a neighborhood in St. Louis, MO, where arsonists are burning down abandoned properties. It reminds me that in a SHTF scenario, we will probably see a lot of burned out buildings, whether from riots and protests, fighting between groups, or, like above, a slow motion disaster that slowly swallows a city block-by-block. 

    But it raises another point which is that, burglary tourism aside, most crime will be committed by people living in or about the situs of the crime. And that brings me to the article, "Post-SHTF Local Circle Around Your Home," from Modern Survival Blog. The author suggests getting onto Google Earth, finding your home, and use the circle option on the ruler tool to draw a circle of 1 mile radius (i.e., within a 20 minute walk) from your home. This represents the resources, locations and people that you would likely be interacting with most regularly in a grid-down situation. He continues:

    Do you know any of them? Do you know what they do? Are any of them assets to the situation?

    While using Google Earth, it’s quite easy to zoom in on these locations. It will provide insight. For example it may reveal farming (big or small). Water sources. Congestion. Routes of travel. Those with more land than others. What’s in people’s yards. Buildings. All sorts of observations. It will also provide a pretty good representation of your local population density – which may surprise you…