We have had two summers now that have been extremely hot and dry, not looking as bad as California but other parts of Australia are looking that bad and worse with many cattle dying or being shot. Last summer was without rain for months then had the biggest floods since 1968, but now we are back to bone dry paddocks and everyone getting desperate for water. The water carriers have been very busy carting water into rural areas to fill peoples tanks.
The State Office of Water has been getting HEAPS of reports of misuse of water, most of these reports are coming from people short of water looking over their fences at neighbours who may still have water, tempers are flaring and arguments are breaking out....all this without the SHTF 🙄
I guess they need someone to blame rather than looking at the sky and reasoning that well dang it's not raining and that's likely why we have no water 😉
We are upstream of one neighbour and had dams cleaned out and reconstructed last summer and whilst only one of her six dams feeds off ours that was enough for her to contact the authorities over us stopping her from collecting water 😡
So it was an interesting visit from the Office of Water and a good walk around looking at and taking photo's of our dams etc, they told me that when the dams are collecting more than the properties allowance they get people to put a pipe through to drain the dams down to a lower level, but shrugged and didn't think that it was going to be necessary....here's crossing my fingers that all goes well and that we don't receive a nasty letter from them in a few weeks time 😕
They said that 90% of reports are unfounded and they had done three inspections around here that day....somehow glad we are not alone in have a horrible neighbour!
This is I guess all good practice at defending ones rights and possessions and when the SHTF I will likely be glad about the practice runs we are getting now, but all the same it can be very stressful to deal with these issues 😥
What do you do when someone wants what you have whether it be for them or their animals, we still have some feed in our paddocks because we don't over stock but the neighbour is terribly overstocked and then gets angry about wanting our feed and water. I did give permission for her to put up electric tape in a corridor so her horses could get water from the nearest dam but then got abused because she didn't have time to do this and wanted me to put up the fence which at the time I was terribly unwell and unable to even leave the house let alone work out in the paddock opening up fences etc. So yep then she squeals to the authorities...great 😮
She put a few of her horses on a small paddock down the road but it had no access to water so she asked the fellow in the neighbouring paddock to put a line in to get water to her horses, she got laughed at because that was going to cost him about $1000 to plumb water to a paddock he didn't even own to get water to horses that weren't his....hmmmm I wonder if he was squealed on to, 'I will have to ask him 😉

I wonder if things will get a bit lawless during a SHTF situation, whilst that means more aggression from others at least it means better reason to defend ones self and belongings. Laws are tight in Australia in respect of firearms so you can't just go pointing a gun at people to scare them off.
How do you guys deal with irate neighbours now and how do you plan on dealing with them in a SHTF situation. (BTW I only prep for financial collapse so in this situation buying water during a drought would be out of the question)