🙂 C5
You are right!! Arguing never (or rarely) changes someone's mind. It's an Alpha thing.... The loudest and boisterous get's the attention. We argue to hear ourselves talk and impress the audience. Mark Twain said... Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

Thanks Siberios. I think I was getting around to my own Tempertanrem. LOL. The reality is that Proper Preventative Prepping that bipasses the need for looting or salvage is realy boring. This is the prepping I have been at today. I disassembled my motor cycle wheel to get a bearing replcement done. I changed out a hitch that got broken over the winter on my small trailor because some time this week I need to move some fenceposts I cut last month, followed by shoveling several loads of gravel onto our roadway so it stays passible without getting stuck in the mud.
Prepping is about Tackng together shelves to store food you got on sale. Going to your job each day so you can buy enough boots and socks to get through the next 30 years. Keeping the dog in line to not spook the 5 dear I see at the moment out in my feild. Building a big enough woodpile so that if I break my arm this summer, Im still able to keep from freezing over the winter and the year after. Its about dinner parties to forge strong connections. Being able to shoot 200 yards is less important than to be able to stare at your garden like a sniper, with the fear that your group might not make it through the next winter. Your deadly enemy being ...the cut worm and the potato bug...and seeing that potential 4 years ahead of time so you can get in the right cover crop to change the nature of the soil. Prepping is not becoming hardened to farms down the road because it will all be survival of the fittest. Its nurturing those relationships. Its takeing Personal Responsability for those around you to see to their health and welfare and thats not idealism, its also self interest to see that his survival is symbiotic with your own. If a wild dog or weisle comes along and kills all your egg layers, thats a near devistating loss of protien. Being able to go over to your not dead connection a few kms away to be able to trade for a few chickens to rebuild your flock is essential. Prepping is examining old gas cans to see if they need to be replaced and cycling it into your car every 6 month to keep it fresh. Prepping is getting a bycycle for when that gas is all gone. Rather dull stuff like that

I'd like to think there are two kids of animals.... Sheep-dogs and wolves

Since people are still reading this thread...let me tell you what I consider ethical looting.

Any thing in a dumpster ( think Sandy) whether its a food dumpster or a construction dumpster. If some one is SOOO uptight that you are violating their garbage....you have my permission in the name of jesus...to knock them the fu## out. This includes using a jack to pry up a corner ,a shim, or, in some cases, bolt cutters. If they come out with a hockey stick, you have my permission to lay the boots to them. Just remember the cops rarely support jesus. Best to go special ops when dumpster diving.

Anything left in a back ally next to garbage. Most decent people want their trash to be recycled.

City fruit and nut trees on bolivards or right of ways . It will never come ripe...but its calories.

Side of the road, apple trees. Until recently, people planted apple and crab apple trees on the roadside as an act of Christian charity for travelers. If in doubt...ask.

Illegal dumpsites. Clean up A$$holes garbage for usefull supplies.

Clearly abandoned houses. Once again, go special ops because cops don't think jesus and you have to use your judgement. A good source of screws.

Anything dumped off a bridge. This is an important one!...because its a source of bike parts. They are usually stolen bikes but they will never get home again. If you need a bike to get home again, you can assemble a bike from three broken ones....if you keep a pump, vice grips, hex keys, and a tube repair kit in your bug out kit.
Seriously, if in doubt, ask. People are happy to get rid of sh%t and want it to get recycled. If 10 people tell you No, 3 people tell you, right on, I'll help you load it.
Any trees for firewood under mager power lines. They have to cut them back any how. Special ops doesn't hurt in this case because...people are busy bodies.

Pallets. Don't take blue or orange ones because they have a deposit on them. Buisnesses have to dispose of the others...but they may have arangements. If in doubt...ask. People are not all duches. Most actually want to help someone out.
I hope you get the picture.

C5 - You are absolutely right! Stuff accumulates behind the small businesses because a lot of the time they don't have the means to dispose of it. Everything they throw out cost's them money and their bottom line is affected. Go and ask if you're interested. Chances are they will say yes.
I hate it when people dump stuff on the side of the road but as an example, there is some good sh*t here

I've seen people driving down our road with loads of crap and finding places to drop it off. For a while it was on the side of our laneway but my diligent neighbour stopped that. He would wait till they had unloaded it then go over with his tractor and block the lane until it was picked up. Often he'd insist they took more if someone else slipped thru unnoticed. They can't argue with him as they can't get by and sitting there with his cell phone out is great encouragement for them to pick up their crap.
I agree as well that to do it without being noticed is the best thing. The cops might agree with you, but they also have their jobs to do as well.

I don't know much but I know the world has always had it's unethical thieves pirates and bullies. When there is rule of law they are on the cover of Macleans and Forbes magazines. When there is anarchy they are the brass hordes. Then there is the rest of us. If I didn't have this innate need to prep I wouldn't even look at this site in hopes of a good idea for a prep I hadn't thought of, because the threads on .22's are 3 and 4 pages and the one's I consider useful have only a few replies. C5 know's this about me I'd shoot anyone that tried to hurt me or one of mine, but if I'm supposed to shoot a hungry person trying to steal or Loot my preps that is a world I wouldn't want to live in anyways.

I guess I'm more of a villager than a prepper. Proud to be one of the Prepper village people 😆

Guns don't kill people, Gun nuts do!

I don't know much but I know the world has always had it's unethical thieves pirates and bullies. When there is rule of law they are on the cover of Macleans and Forbes magazines. When there is anarchy they are the brass hordes. Then there is the rest of us. If I didn't have this innate need to prep I wouldn't even look at this site in hopes of a good idea for a prep I hadn't thought of, because the threads on .22's are 3 and 4 pages and the one's I consider useful have only a few replies. C5 know's this about me I'd shoot anyone that tried to hurt me or one of mine, but if I'm supposed to shoot a hungry person trying to steal or Loot my preps that is a world I wouldn't want to live in anyways.

I guess I'm more of a villager than a prepper. Proud to be one of the Prepper village people 😆

Guns don't kill people, Gun nuts do!

Im proud to have you in our village, too. Where is my cowboy hat when I need it.

Ive been wanting to write about looting for the last few years since "coming out" as a prepper and choosing to become a public figure. Not "that" kind of comming out, silly. I assure you I am quite comfortable in my sexuality, thank you, and in being so, I am quite comfortable with OTHER peoples sexuality. That said...I do have some questions about the whole....um.....hem....highly charged, Homo Erotic side of prepping. 😆 You Know... That whole Macho Man Love thang and absolute fascination with all things manly and what it means to be Man and the TOYS, TOYS, TOYS that prove you are desirable to be with other men. You know, The guns, The ever increasing Size of pickup trucks, The quads, weight lifting, UFC sweaty "wrestling", power tools, personal vibrating flashlights, Full on restraining, hang me from the ceiling, Tactical combat gear 😯 .....the cowboy hats 😳 A bunch of Dudes running off into the woods together...hey, Im just saying. 😕 I can just hear The Village People in my head. Lets not forget chest thumping hatred of all things "Girly". It just makes me want to drag out my old EYELINER pencil. I can not begin to tell you the number of women that little stick...and my own bravery, got me(Its a very large number), and besides...It realy is Women that decide what a "Real Man" is and not some Ford or Dodge truck commercial...that was designed to play off your fears and inadequacies to get you enslaved in dept....FOR EVER

So, this is a big Shout Out to the ladies of IPN. I love the large increase of female preppers...Especially those dragging their husbands, kicking and screaming, into the prepper movement. Here's to you. Its easier to drag your men in if you tell them they get to play with guns. 😀 We are sort of simple that way. I, personally, was reassured that there might be HOPE for the prepper movement, a couple of years back, when all of these manly men suddenly became obsessed with Canning.......bacon.

....but I digress. Goddess, that was one fun rant. Enough with the humour. There is a point. We are back to taking about the mentality of "The Brass Hoard" or immature prepping.

I had to cut one of these Brass Hoard preppers out of my life after several months invested in him...and I am SOOOOOOO glad I never told him where I live. Its a causionary tale when seeking to make prepper friends and why to take it slow and steady. No matter how much I chided him to build food stocks...he just refused to get more than a box of MREs...wile puming thousands into his gun collecting and shooting training. Eventually it came out. His "PLAN A" was to gather his non prepping family and non prepping shooting buddies from the range, Run down to the Marina, Steal a boat then head out to Take Over some empty Recreation property. That was my end point for me and him. His entire plan was based on theft. In reality it was based on Murder once you followed it through. AND it would be a short, unsustainable plan. Lets ignore the whole unethical looting thing and focus on the STUPID short sightedness. First off, Good luck getting a bunch of Non prepping or gun prepping friends and family members to abandon their homes to blindly declare you the leader ("Well, why wouldnt they. They would clearly see that based on my guns and fatigues that I could lead them to safety...from gun toting psychopaths) all on a future path to robbery. We'll ignore the gun toting scoot across town for the moment and take us to the marina.
YES, THE MARINA. Have any of you heard this before.I can hear your head bobbing up and down from here. Unfortunately its alot of peoples plan. A common fantacy...like running off into the woods to hunt...with the millions of other hunters and wannabe hunters and desperation hunters....and other soon to be cannibals. So, lets say you organised your band of Blackwater wannabes..and parents... in time that there are any boats left (in a naval town 😉 ) perhaps the other boat owners might not like the idea of some gun totting pirates trying to steal their neibours boat. Let the first shoot out and bleed out begin. You have just stolen some other owners chance of survival. You murdered them just as much as shooting them in thier sleep. We will skip right past whether you know how to hotwire the thing...or even know how to operate or sail a boat. You've made it to your destination...past millions of cannibal Sportsmen to break into someone else's recreation property retreat. What are you going to do when they show up, rather peived at their broken door and pirate squaters. Never mind. Perhaps, you didnt figure in that back woods folk have tendency to look out for each others property.You Know, the country...where every one has some type of gun. Now you have the local town needing to drive your little pirate band of thieves and murders out. Your future involves being under seige,slowly starving behind barricades ...or a rope. Should I even bother to ask the question, "What exactly did you intend to eat." Is it spring during this whole apocalypse. Did you even bring a shovel to dig a garden (Good luck with that). Are your tactical vest pockets stuffed with seeds or did you plan on living off dandelions.
This is an extreme example but how often have you heard someones "Plan" involve "First, we break into Gun shop" or Walmart or abandoned houses....always finalised by Grand Theft Auto.
Lets start with The Gun Shop. Do you know where they lock them all at night? Are you a safe cracker? Letts skip past all that to the well armed and trained owner and his suck up buddies that sort of expect this behaviour and might take lethal offence to this assault on his livelihood.
The Walmart. First off, I have absolutely no ethical qualms about looting the big box bastards. They gave up the right to my civic protection when they destroyed lives and towns and countries. Sorry, money is not free speech, its war, and corporations are not persons. That said...This is one more Damn Fool Stupid plan. First off...its alot of peoples plan. Whats the best way to get in...and out with your loot. Do you plan on shooting the watchmen and night restocking minimum wage kids. Even if its empty...in the midst of chaos...when the police are overwelmed with 911 calls, they are going to ignore the fires , heart attacks, fender benders and fights. When someone calls in that there are some people with rifles sneaking around in the dark breaking into places...Every cop is going to drop what they are doing and swarm on mass on YOU. You are their priority number one.

Now, wouldnt this have all been so much easier if you had just....I dont know....instead of dropping 15 hundred on a fully tricked out AR or 20 thou on truck (mostly on credit), just dropped an extra 20 bucks each time you went grocery shopping, for a few extra bags of rice, beans or spaghetti and a few cans of soup on sale to stick under your bed. Maybe a few seed packs to stick in a sealed jar in the freezer. It acumulates fast. LET ME REPEAT THAT. Like our public debt, It acumulates REAL FAST. Faster than you can build shelves for. Your freinds will be convinced you are Hoarder and need help. Moving day will be always be a problem with the GF shaking her head at you....but you'll have become a real prepper. Next we work on fire wood....
Every time you decide to go out and loot, no matter how justified, you put yourself at risk of highly dangerous confrontations...with people that are far better than you. You risk losing everything.

Thats it for me for the time being. Im typed out but have much more to say on the issue. I may continue this further in the comments once Ive recharged. Maybe I will talk about what I would be willing to loot or my past looting plans and why I chose to to fully abandon such action. No, It wasnt Jesus. 🙄 It was the numbers.

EDIT. Arg. In answer to my detractor below. All I did was correct a few spelling mistakes...and add MORE comments. Clearly you have your own issues to work out and have refused any attemps on my part to solve the problem.

i think ,flashlight need to be more powerful those type of works, a big flashlight gives much better light

Farcy, perhaps you should introduce yourself fist before making strange posts. Using an anonymous proxy doesn't help either.

Well you know if you feel compelled to argue over the importance of the size of your flashlight........I guess that counts as machismo....hmmmm.

On a side note I notice you cannot buy the large six cell ones or C cell ones anymore. Apparently I am told the cops got upset about them being used in crimes - so no more of them.

As to the idea of having a Marina resource for bugging out.....

A friend of mine ten years ago owned a boat at a Halifax Marina. When he caught wind of a relatives plan to steal it in the event of a pandemic and had to other waters, my friend made arrangements to cripple the sailboat so it would be useless to thieves as well as eventually moved it down the coast to another relatives mooring.

The concept of owning a well stocked boat for escape has appeal. However it is out of the reach of most of us price wise.

I think part of the ethical problem around disaster response in the general publics mind stems from media entertainment and movie portrayals, where characters routinely take the taboo step of flaunting the law or ethics in order to survive a imminent threat. In fact the plot of many movies provide the escapism to some of being unlawful. That "what do you do when in a disaster?" is intriguing I think to many people, despite the fear factor that also paralyzes people who think too long about the prospect of disaster reality.

There does seem to be a certain psychology in people these days that also allows them to suspend civil behavior when it comes to dealing with crisis situations. I blame the media for it, as these dramatic disaster movies are like a training script for the minds of the ill-informed. Since not everyone is raised in a small town where ethics are an important currency by themselves. That is why the idea of surviving a large-scale disaster in a urban location makes me nervous. I know some people call it paranoia to think so badly of ones neighbours, but I suspect any disaster lasting longer then a week is going to produce some very dangerous circumstances within Halifax and area. Just look how Juan impacted some parts of the city, and that really was only a few days for most ( a few weeks if you were unlucky to live in places like Musquidobit).

Having been in the situation where I had to put ethics ahead of survival I know the sacrifice. In that case I was lucky that I walked away from it. But when push comes to shove I think the vast majority of the unprepared do seem to be of the mindset that looting is perfectly fine, as long as the target of the looting is someone who has more then they do (aka. a store chain, a rich person, a government supply depot, etc.)

That is one reason why I have always been stealthy about what my neighbours know about my prepping. I would never let on about some preparations, because frankly having neighbours fear you over the prepper stigma does little to build fences or contacts that may come in handy when SHTF.

I like what a earlier poster mentioned about the difference between looting and salvage. It makes sense. If you feel the need to do so to save your life, then material is easy to replace down the road. You can always leave contact information if you are serious about repaying them for something you had to take. But the idea of doing that will be too personal for some. It is the general "all rules are off - its a disaster!" kind of people that scare me. They will care little for what damage and pain they cause. Just look at how these people behave in a bar fight or lifeboat situation and you have a good idea how its "everyone for themself" justification. Thats sad.

If I found myself facing down people like that then it would the ethics around what level of force is needed to deter them taking my stuff that would be more the concern. I know I am ethical, and would not take something without the intent of repaying the person who was the original owner. The vast majority of the ill-informed would not likely be as inclined.

Pretty sure you can't outlaw a flashlight.

http://www.amazon.ca/MAGLITE-S6D016-Heavy-Duty-Flashlight-Black/dp/B000056BME/ref=pd_cp_hi_1

Just check out maglite.ca..
C cell available in 2, 3, 4 cell
D dell available in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 cell
Honestly, AA & AAA cell lights are nice and compact, but the batteries are quite low in Mah compared to larger C & D...
A good light with the larger cell size is a good compliment to the smaller cell ones...even if they have LED bulbs.
Also, LED conversions are available to replace the Xenon bulbs that come with larger cell Maglites!

I've upgraded a few of mine to led. Better for power consumption and brightness. Checking out a Cree upgrade is next on my list.