Regarding people who stockpile food, water, medicine, guns, ammunition, fuel, generators, etcetera in preparation for a coming disaster or martial law, the comedian Eddie Murphy once said, “That’s real good, unless you’re not home when something happens.”.   That’s where I am at. I had all that stuff back in Idaho, but I’m not there. I’m here working in Dickinson and Watford City.

Some of my friends in Dickinson had a survivalist mind set. We would go camping in the summer, and discuss politics, the future outlook, economic survival, preparations, and other things related to survival. Early on in the survival movement, people focused on supplies, and having everything they thought they might need. As time went on, men who had been in wars, disasters, and prison, began to point out that having supplies might only be 30% of the problem. What you would mostly need in order to survive, would be to understand what would actually happen in your environment in a disaster.

As worried panicked people went to the local stores, due to long lines, shelves emptying, ATMs being out of money, people would just take what they could carry and leave. Within about a day, all stores would be empty of merchandise, with no intention of re-stocking. Probably about 15% of the population in Dickinson, and about 20% of the population in Watford City are men who are workers, who have not really set up a home with a full pantry, they probably only have about a one week supply of food. Though some older residents in town, and some families in town in Dickinson and Watford City have cupboards and closets of food, the people in town would constantly be having to fight off and fight it out with all the single male workers who ran out of food.

The long time residents of Dickinson and Watford City that live in rural areas, have one of the most ideal survival situations. The rural areas of North Dakota are sparsely populated, there are not a lot of people wandering around, especially on one’s own property. There is hardly any bushes or trees, so people can’t sneak onto your property, or up to your house. The rural people already have their own well, septic system, and out house. They probably have their own generator, and have already learned how to survive when the power has gone out for a couple of weeks in the winter during a blizzard. For the people in rural North Dakota, life would return to the way it had been about sixty years ago, except for having to shoot white trash workers from the South every day, for a while.

A few other things that make Western North Dakota an ideal survival location. There are no over crowded inner cities anywhere near here. There would be no mass exodus of savages and gangs from the cities towards the rural areas. Because the landscape is so desolate, and barren, and because it gets so cold here, Western North Dakota would have very few homeless people wandering around in comparison to the other states.

A few tips. In order to make the World a better place for everyone, a World where 1% of the population doesn’t use 20% of the oil, a World where an individual farmer doesn’t personally own 3,000 acres, it may be necessary for the government to make some changes. So when FEMA sets up an emergency operations center at WalMart, and everybody needs to come on down and register, just to make sure you’re O.K., there’s free hot coffee and doughnuts, …don’t go, unless you’d like to live in a work camp in Oregon.