Don Shift Sends: Guarding Vital Infrastructure

Survivors of a SHTF event or those living in a world without the rule of law (WROL) will need to guard critical local infrastructure to prevent its exploitation from malign actors. I wrote two books about my agency (a SoCal sheriff’s office) surviving an EMP. One of the major duties I gave to surviving police is simply guarding local water wells to prevent them from being captured by gang members. In a real grid-down situation, I do not expect any peace officer to actually take up this duty, so it is up to the community to prevent vital infrastructure from falling under the control of any one group.

What I was getting at in my writing is that the good guys have a vested interest in maintaining open public access of vital infrastructure. Practically, this means water, transportation routes, and logistical venues (stores and markets). Without water and commerce of daily necessities and food, people will die. Monopolization of critical infrastructure by bad guys subjects everyone to the whim of the bad guys. Do you want to be extorted just to shop at a local farmers market or women selling themselves to a dude with an AK just so she can draw water?

Practically, what I mean is that good guys will need to take turns guarding things like wells, substations, pumping plants, etc. The community will need to act to prevent armed forces from extorting businesses, farms, or markets (or customers). Transportation routes may need to be routinely patrolled to detect and eliminate ambushes on traffic. Barons in Europe used to stretch chain barriers across rivers and tax boats that came through, impeding free trade and increasing the costs to everyone.

In the Old West, horse thieves were hung not for the economic value of the animal, but because a man’s livelihood was being stolen. Without a horse, that farmer might not be able to plow to sow his crop and he would starve to death. Death by hanging for horse theft, proverbial or not, served as a powerful deterrent to that crime. Survivors and patriots in a world gone pear shaped must be prepared to make the penalty for certain offenses so harsh as to be unthinkable. I can certainly guarantee that the evil, desperate men who want to victimize others will resort to terrorism to further their ends.

An “Armed Voluntary Security Detail” consisting of homeowners in the Cobblestone neighborhood show how they typically patrol the neighborhood on foot on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016. The patrol on Wednesday was Brian (from left), Mike and Daniel who were chatting with homeowners Robert (left) and Moses. The patrol was formed after crimes in the neighborhood alarmed some homeowners. They carry rifles and handguns along their patrols. (Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News)

Basic concepts

1. Secure vital infrastructure. This includes wells, water and food distribution areas, and places of commerce. Guard these locations using a neutral force and ensure that the public knows any able bodied person is able to join the guard so it remains impartial.
2. Patrol important transportation routes to maintain open roadways and eliminate any person or group seeking to obstruct, rob, or tax.
3. Eliminate any persons or groups that attempt to extort open markets or their customers, and producers of foodstuffs or goods.
4. Make the punitive costs so high to anyone violating these norms that it is not worth the effort (or the lives) of bad guys to mess with your area. In other words, kill these people, their friends, and anyone else who might try to avenge them.
5. Publicize your efforts. Europeans gibbeted the dead bodies or heads of criminals as a warning to others. Roman crucifixion had a similar purpose.
6. Maintain a credible response force to not just eliminate these threats, but to head off reprisal attacks from a vengeful enemy (or purge the enemy entirely).
7. Forget any notions of fairness or that certain things are uncivilized. Your enemy won’t be.

Let’s say a small gang takes over a well and is asking for food, valuables, and sex for water. If I was a mafioso or a cartel member who could no longer sell drugs, I’d look to sell access to vital necessities. Your team doesn’t try to intimidate the guys or bargain with them; you kill them. You mount their heads on pikes with a sign “death to extortionists” and when/if you hear of their family members complaining and plotting revenge, you kill the males who might attack in revenge.

If positive (morally good) control is maintained over critical public infrastructure, it requires the enemy to be on the offensive, rather than good guys to defensively react and re-take that point. The public knowing that there is free and safe access to X resource is going to buy you and your friends a lot of brownie points and raise the community’s consciousness about keeping important things open and free.

Some readers might wonder if this bears mentioning at all, but I think it does. We’re naturally inclined not to stick our necks out so our plans consist of protecting our homes and neighborhood. They are reactive. Well, those plans need to be broader than what to do if a looter gang drives up to your barricade or a riot shows up. Offensive operations against an antagonistic force may be a bit too much for many, but a proactive defense of guarding infrastructure isn’t. Preventing a takeover is half the battle.

Your measures may start off with your defense group or even just a competent, proactive group of neighbors, but this effort has to be picked up on by the community at large. With community engagement in the tasks of peacekeeping and guarding critical infrastructure, the ability for one person or group to monopolize a resource is complicated. If a everyone takes turns protecting X, no one is burned out with constant guard duty, everyone feels like they have a stake in the defense, and regular guards don’t have the chance to “get ideas.”

Security must be a public undertaking, it cannot be monopolized by a single group because the control, even if it starts out as good in the beginning, can metastasize in the end. If virtually anyone can participate in the security operation, it means that no one person or group is the access broker. Constant variation of guards helps prevent clicks from forming and decreases the risk should a guard be compromised.

A constantly rotating guard or observer force may be hard to achieve, but even the idea of no one messing with the well or blocking the road can be something that is maintained by the public. Anyone can challenge anyone else who is attempting to monopolize or control a resource. Preferably no one tries it because all attempts have failed or it is too hard to beat the defenders, constant surveillance, etc.

As far as who does this, any able-bodied male can be a guard or respond to a take over attempt. This is original community policing; you don’t dial 911 you deal with it because wrong is wrong on its face. In my novels, police are the ones to do the work of securing the critical infrastructure. I was writing to encourage my brothers-in-blue to step up should a major grid-down SHTF occur, but in reality I fully expect a 100% desertion rate when things get far enough along.

What static infrastructure guard duties will be is to maintain a visible presence to deter any exploitation of X. In a contemporary context this might be a security guard in a park who runs off troublemaking kids that might graffiti walls. You can detail a rent-a-cop for this instead of putting the SWAT team out.

Save your SWAT team for the offense and rapid-reactions. Few of us will have pre-organized defensive groups and those who do will probably be dealing with more serious problems than guard duty. You don’t take a bunch of ex-special forces guys and have them stand around running off the former drug dealers who are trying to get people to trade a can of food in return for five gallons of water. This is something that ad hoc, post-event, volunteer groups can handle.

FILE PHOTO: Lithuanian army soldiers install razor wire on the border with Belarus in Druskininkai, Lithuania July 9, 2021. REUTERS/Janis Laizans/File Photo

Guard duties

• Maintain a visible deterrent presence.
• Crowd/traffic control.
• Ensure equal access and use of the facility (rules enforcement).
• Repel any attempt to monopolize or destroy the facility.
• Have the capability (skills, will, and weaponry) for at least self-defense.

Put another way:

• Stand around looking tough (and preferably with the training and mentality as well) to give confidence to the public using the facility that they are safe and deter threats. Make the bad guys want to go somewhere else.
• Keep the crowd orderly and in line.
• Permit equal, open, and free access to the facility but disallow anyone who seeks to violate the “rules” like taking more than their allotted ration. No one wants to be kid who counted out loud as others drank from the water fountain, but someone will have to.
• Have the ability and willingness to drive off or kill anyone who attempts to seize control of the facility or victimize consumers. If you can’t do that, be able to protect yourself to get away and call your rapid reaction force.

Commerce

Vital infrastructure includes things like markets, stores, and swap meets. A concentration of people, stuff, and potentially money is an easy target. Such markets could easily be controlled and “taxed” by a mafia-type organization, raided by bandits, or plagued by thieves.

In my novel Blood Dimmed Tide, in the aftermath of an EMP, one of the scenes is set at a rather pathetic community market. The few remaining sheriff’s deputies are there to keep order and provide security for what could be a lucrative target to bad actors. Any place selling or trading anything has always been a target for theft or robbery. Customers with large amounts of money or valuables to trade can be robbed going to/from the market. Sellers could be extorted by violent gangs. In order to effect safe post-SHTF commerce, the security of the market (i.e. economy) must be maintained.

A open, free market that all peaceable people are welcome to is a benefit for everyone when conventional stores no longer exist or can operate. Assembling buyers and sellers in one place and time is efficient for everyone especially when transportation is difficult. Sales go up with “window shoppers” acting on impulse. Both merchants and customers gain security through safety in numbers.

However this convenience is easily exploited. Today, farmer’s markets and swap meets often charge a nominal cost to defray operating expenses. Renting a public space (or private property), security, portable toilets, etc. is not likely to be a concern for survivors setting up a flea market in a park or empty lot.

Given that a market is a concentration of wealth and people in time, they are prime targets for crime. At the low end of the spectrum, it’s defrauding people (talcum powder instead of flour) and petty theft. Moving up, robberies of vendors and people leaving the venue. A bold and savvy gang may attempt to control the entire premises, extorting protection fees or helping themselves to the goods for sale.

Buyers and sellers need to be armed. Everyone should theoretically be at parity of arms with one another. Any sort of venue that is a “gun free zone” even with trusted security should be avoided and altogether shunned. Security screening is unlikely to be effective or complied with post-SHTF despite anyone’s best efforts. Even screening by a trusted force, like the police, could be co-opted by a gang who assumes security control to disarm everyone for the day when they decided to run things to their advantage unopposed.

Punishment for petty theft should be immediate and public. The victim and witnesses should state their case before the crowd and attempt to reach some consensus before punishment. Punishment should be proportionate to the crime; i.e. a good thrashing for stealing food vs. amputating the hand of a first offender for snatching an orange. Too harsh of a penalty may radicalize thieves to retaliate and it may cause the public to feel inappropriately merciful to the offender.

Protecting vital commercial establishments

• Ensure security at the venue from external threats.
• Maintain surveillance for thieves or acts of extortion.
• Remove fraudsters from the venue.
• Have a dispute resolution mechanism for buyers/sellers.
• Make sure that the market is hosted in a neutral venue.
• Have a way to punish thieves.

Some degree of vigilantism may be involved, but historical examples have shown that when the community isn’t acting out of bias (racism) and there is good evidence or testimony, the court of the mob often made correct judgements. If there is no legal mechanism, this may be necessary in order to provide a deterrent effect. Giving the judgment and punishment to the community present at the time of the crime may also have the best shot at fairness as well if there is no rule of law to take over the judicial and punitive element. A neutral, group based (civil) dispute resolution system can help keep grudges from festering or cheaters getting away with fraud.

Roadways

Roadways are vital pieces of infrastructure by virtue that we all need to use them. Actively protecting them and patrolling them in a SHTF situation may be tricky and the exact how-to is a little beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, roadways will need to be patrolled to remain open, free, and safe.

• Regular usage maintains the right-of-way from property owners who may wish to close the road.
• Regular traffic can discourage criminal attacks, however, busy roads have always attracted bandits.
• Patrolling the roadway is a visible indicator of security activity that:
• Gathers intelligence;
  • Encourages public morale to make people feel secure (“showing the flag”); and,
  • Patrols can discourage bandits and discover traps, ambushes, surveillance, etc.

I encourage you to think beyond protecting your home or your rural retreat. Mowing down the mob and shooting roving gangs is only part of life in SHTF. We need to think about how lazy people with no compunctions about exploiting others would want to gain during SHTF and defeat them. This part of post-apocalyptic survival may not be sexy as pumping 37mm rounds into a riot or patrolling in the woods, but it will be important.

About the author: Don Shift is a veteran of the Ventura County (CA) Sheriff’s Office and is a student of emergency response, disasters, and history. He is the author of several post-apocalyptic survival novels about nuclear war, EMP (Hard Favored Rage and Blood Dimmed Tide), and the non-fiction Suburban Defense guide.