I’ll be perfectly honest that with the exception of my husband and son and a very teeny tiny handful of hunting partners, I trust no one. I’ve seen how people can turn when there’s extreme poverty and little food. I dont believe that we can totally make it alone, but I have zero desire to share my preps and prepping ways with my neighbours. I am friendly with my neighbours and keep a good line of communication for emergencies, bartering, and things like that, but I’m still never going to trust them. I stick with the gardeners and hunters, the knitters and fishers. I form tight bonds with the people who say things like “I keep extra canned goods in the trailer in case we get stranded for a week or the roads get washed out”. Tight bonds can develop something very close to trust and that’s close enough for me.
I’ve literally shown my entire preps openly to 2 people outside my family and those people are like minded. It took years of developing those friendships before I let them know. Even still, that level of trust is still something where I know that one day those 2 people could become my family’s enemy and I have to be okay with that too. Hopefully, they’ll become assets though.
