I am guilty of falling into the “Wolverines!” mindset from time-to-time, that being the image of going toe-to-toe with the insidious foreign invasion force and setting up ambushes to destroy the evil occupiers or perhaps having to confront droves of hostiles, be they urban gang-bangers, local looters, or some other such group of less than savory individuals. The modern survivalist seems to be rather obsessed with the idea of a total collapse of all centralized authority to the point where society is little better than Somalia, although historical precedent doesn’t give much credibility to this theory. The idea of a “total collapse” has been covered to the point of ad nauseam but what of the idea of a “partial” or “limited” collapse? If you have prepared for a total collapse and your entire mindset, mentality, and preparations are focused on that, what if the collapse is less than total? What if instead of a nuclear war there is simply an increase in violent crime by 500 percent or even 1,000 percent due to a serious weakening of government power and authority, short of a total collapse of central authority. Are you prepared to live in an America that is incredibly more dangerous than it presently is but where you don’t have a green-light to don the tactical armor and take out your battle rifle to clean the streets?

There’s an essay, well-known in survivalist circles, titled Thoughts on Urban Survival. It was written by an Argentinean who detailed his experiences during the 1990s situation in Argentina and he makes it clear that there are many other sort of “collapses” that are possible, such as the partial collapse. This Argentinean had to survive in a major urban area with a massively depressed economy, issues of hyper-inflation, etc, in an area prone to danger and violence. He reported that simply avoiding being kidnapped, robbed, mugged, carjacked, or killed, on a daily basis, became something of a chore and was seen as an accomplishment. There were no armed gangs (with machine gun armed "technicals") cruising around the city openly looting stores and besieging foreign embassies. Instead there was a massive increase in street level crime against ordinary individuals, which much of the crime being perpetrated by seemingly ordinary individuals who had previously held respectable jobs.