Podcast episode 121521

Published on December 15th, 2021

In this episode I want to revisit the mental necessities for us to adopt to ensure successful outcomes. Over the last two years we’ve talked about the mental focus necessary, whether conquering a pandemic, or social unrest, our “head needs to be in the game” to ensure success. Now, we’ve talked about the different mental challenges that will face us during a crisis, and we have certainly covered the creation of, and the implementation of our written plans, but I’d like to revisit the idea that, not everyone is going to be part of our success. We need to ensure our plans take into consideration a possibility that those who should be assisting, become hindrances. After all we’re all only human. Whether these be family members who “show their real colors” during an emergency event, or if the are first responders who decide to capitalize of the situation, we need to be ready for everything to get sideways.

Let’s get this party started, by looking at the old mail bag.

Robert from Wyoming is going to get this started with his question “how will I know who I can trust when the shit hits the fan?”

Nicole from New Mexico puts up her question “ in the case of a natural disaster, who is really on our side?”

Jesse from Texas hits it hard with his question “what are some of the things we should plan for when the disaster gets really ugly?”

Brodie from Ohio pops it with “is it going to come down to every man for himself?”

Tucker from Nebraska finishes out the deck with his question “Should I be prepared to bribe people for access to what I need?”

Great questions to all those who sent them in. If I didn’t get to your question, sorry about that, but don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll touch on this topic again as its really relevant to a requirement for survival.

Before we get after it today, I’d like to make sure that, for those of you who seek peace and harmony, or hep in making sense of life, be sure to check out the Alaskan Ulfhednar podcast at http://AkÚlfhédnar.com. After 30 years of spiritual searching and discovery, I have arrived home. Home to the ideology of of my ancestors. Home of a proud Germanic-Dane heritage. Some good stuff for you there. Also, another second just to give a shout-out for our sponsors and affiliates:

Antennas Direct, Bad Ass Extension Cords, BrandsMart USA, Chewy, Chrome Burner,, MediTac Kits, Power Systems, SunPower, Australian Native T-Shirts, Sharesale, Survival Frog, and of course Google.

Shout out to all of them for supporting the mission here at Chaotic Navigation, we greatly appreciate taking a risk by supporting an “Outlaw” show. Please visit their links on our webpage and show them some love, they, like each of us, needs to pay their peeps.

Welcome to this week’s show, I am the Alaska Outlaw and I am back baby! That’s right I’m back, and I’ll be your host and guide in our discussion. It is absolutely awesome to be back with you guys here for another adventure. Today I want to cover the basic psychology displayed during natural or man-mad disasters. We’ll start with the whole idea behind the panic psychology that happens when disasters strike, how different people handled that level of stress very differently. Then, we’ll cover about the potential of conflicting priorities among teammates/neighbors/community members. We’ll cover what are some things that we may need to consider when interacting with direct neighbors or community members at-large. Finally I’ll finish up by discussing the scum of America, and that are the opportunistic criminals who take advantage of a community when its distracted by a disaster.

[STORY]

We’ll start our discussion by detailing our chemical process that happens during an emergency type event.  Let’s start by identifying the process according to an article at Harvard Medical School (https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response), which describes the actual process of the brain getting into the “flight or fight” syndrome.

“The stress response begins in the brain (see illustration). When someone confronts an oncoming car or other danger, the eyes or ears (or both) send the information to the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing. The amygdala interprets the images and sounds. When it perceives danger, it instantly sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. …”

So, we’ve talked about the influence when the adrenaline enters into the thought process. The primary hormone responsible for this stress response is epinephrine, and I know we’ve talked about this before, but we’re going to extrapolate to cover the necessary interactions that we’re going to have during, and immediately following any type of natural or man-made disaster.

So, with a basic understanding as to how our brain is going to process the emergency scenario, lets extrapolate how this same process is going to create a community pandemonium or Panic Psychology. So, we know that we are going to be fearful for our safety, our family’s safety. We’re going to be focused on getting us and our family members through this event, and back to normalcy. When we seriously consider all of those priorities, we can easily extrapolate that our entire community would descend into chaos. The descent into chaos is driven by one of our survival instincts, which is to have numbers around us, or as some might say “meat shields”. Ultimately this is really the idea as to how “mobs” get created, while it may start independently, as the level of stress goes up, we know that the level of independence goes down.

The Psychology of Mob Mentality as defined on psychologytoday.com, says  “Mob mentality,” as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a large and disorderly crowd of people, especially one bent on riotous or destructive action.” The article continues with the causes:

• Deindividuation—when people are part of a group, they experience a loss of self-awareness.
• Identity—when people are part of a group, they can lose their sense of individual identity.
• Emotions—being part of a group can lead to heightened emotional states, be that excitement, anger, hostility, etc.
• Acceptability—behaviors that are usually seen as unacceptable become acceptable when others in a group are seen carrying them out.
• Anonymity—people feel anonymous within a large group, which reduces their sense of responsibility and accountability.
• Diffusion of responsibility—being part of a group creates the perception that violent or unacceptable behavior is not a personal responsibility but a group one.
• The larger the group or crowd, the more likely there will be deindividuation and diffusion of responsibility.

So, we’ve got some ideas about how the mob forms, but more importantly, we can gather some pretty good information as to how we can prepare for the fallout from this “mob” going south. By evaluating the “reasoning” behind the formation of this mod, such as with social unrest, we can more easily establish how we’re going to have to deal with this mob. We ultimately have three choices: 1) Stand and negotiate with the crowd leadership (moderate chance of success), 2) Stand and invoke a level of violence (keeping in mind the concept of physical injustice (Y’all remember that one?)), and finally 3) Flee. While there are a number of variations of these three primary responses, the objective needs to be quickly determine which one your team will use. Now, I’m not saying the physical violence is the answer, however, for your own safety, sometimes it might be just enough to change the focus of an angry mob. Obviously law enforcement has found limited success using forceful tactics to break up protests and mob mentality. While in modern communities there has been a huge shift in tactics, allowing for angry mobs to run themselves out. This tactic was used extensively during many of the “Summer 2020 BLM” riots. Right, wrong, or indifferent, the shift in tactics used by communities and law enforcement almost fostered a boldness in this type of behavior.

So, we’ve got an idea about the psychology involved in all the other people around us, and while those that we count on (first responders) are supposed to remain calm, they are human too and may buckle under the load too. Within our own team or family we need to be sure we talk about conflicting priorities before the event occurs, so that our own teammates don’t get swept up in the mob mentality. It can be very difficult to stand up and be different as the mob attempts to sweep us into its fold, however, our first priority needs to be ourselves, followed very closely behind by our family and loved ones.

Let’s talk for a minute about providing cover, you’re probably wondering what that means. Providing cover can mean a bunch of different things, however, here for our context we are going to use it to mean follow up and possibly prepare a plan for extending our parameter to encompass others. There are several different levels and circumstances that may be encompassed when extending our parameter, so lets consider the locality. When considering our covering of our team members, whether they be Local or Remote (and you need to make your own determination as to what those definitions are). What I mean by that is how far are you willing to travel during this disaster event, how far can you travel? Obviously a major deciding factor is how far reaching is the event itself, if we drive 20 minutes can we avoid it all together? Is that too far? You and your team need to evaluate the distances, necessary travel, possible obstacles, all of those factors before we determine whether we include plans for joining forces, or relocating either team. Now, when we talk about covering our direct neighbors, obviously we need to understand the ramification of allowing them to be crushed by the disaster, because it affects your perimeter. If, as an example, our neighbor’s home becomes compromised during a siege of social unrest, our perimeter becomes compromised as the establishment of a forward base of operations to then attempt to engage your home. So really, by assisting in the defense of our neighbors, we are essentially establishing a larger perimeter around our home. Its simple security protocols.

When the subject of “covering our community” comes up there are multiple points we need to identify. Firstly, we need to accept our societal responsibility for helping law enforcement “policing” our kids and friends. As a society we have surrendered that responsibility, placing the blame on law enforcement agents. The next key ingredient to this portion is voicing our opinion, and we do that by casting our vote! This single act provides you with the partial ownership of your community, and ensure that, if nothing else, you establish principles within your community. So, with those obvious distractions out of the way, we need to consider the extension of our perimeter to include the entirety of our community. However, we need to be aware of the commonality within the vote, as it will tell us what the majority of our community members feel is important. This is a critical understanding of the challenges that we will face when the “push comes to shove”.

When discussing the psychology of panicked people, we also have to include a definition of “opportunistic criminals” who understand the value of pandemonium to assist in the forwarding of their agenda. These are individuals who use the distraction created by a social disorder to acquire their desires with no ramifications, due to the higher primary focus of law enforcement agents attempting to restore order.

In the realm of providing security during this type of event, we need to consider the company we keep, so as to speak.When considering the protection of our family and friends, we need to remain constantly cognizant of the environment in which we find ourselves in. As an example, if we consider the idea “if” we were to take a condition (any disaster type of situation) that were to happen to two different environments, we would clearly see where they communities handled those situation very differently. This speak volumes about how much influence our communities have on the way we handle disasters.

As always my friends, I am honored and humbled that you have chosen to spend this time listening to me. I deeply appreciate each and every one of you. Being prepared provides each of us with the confidence for successful survival. We mentioned before, and will certainly say again, that survival is a 90% mental task, but that 10% of physical resources is critically important.. By having a confidence and discipline, we can and will survive. Remember to be strong, be safe, and keep your head on a swivel… Peace