How Gangs Operate Post-Collapse

Collapse is coming. To an extent, it’s already happened. Globalists have already decided this. A deeper collapse will arrive sooner or later. And when that happens, gangs are going to run your area. This is what happened in Venezuela. And this is how those gangs operate here.

Fortunately (and it’s painful to acknowledge this because they’re human beings that chose the wrong path), death squads have been doing their thing. The gangs aren’t as powerful as they had been as a result. Venezuela is mirroring many things that have happened in Russia in this regard.

Many average male Venezuelans have had a bad experience with crime.

The lonely petty thief looking for trouble is a Darwinian specimen that won’t last for too long. Once he (or even she) is detected stealing from someone (they will use the gun to punch if the victim paralyzes or refuses to cooperate), chances are that some witnesses would run over them with a car and get out of dodge.

The victims will collect their valuables and hit the road. Everything ends there. This isn’t common, but it happens. Some examples of this have been caught on film. I have watched a few, and the social media crowd cheered up the anonymous heroes. Go figure.

Anyways, things in the larger cities (as usual) have been like this for some time.

I have to be honest; before the Hugo era, crime was the worst here I’ve ever seen it. I had to run a couple of times to avoid robbery at knifepoint in my youth. So while things aren’t as bad as they were a few decades ago, they have gotten worse lately, though.

Many criminals carry illegal guns now. “Renting” them from someone else is the norm in gangs. Ammunition is found via corrupted uniforms as there are no gun shops anymore. People panicked when gangs of kids under 15 roamed the streets back in the 90s. They were heavily armed, and being minors, even killing someone wouldn’t get them out of the streets.

Laws down here don’t give severe punishment for a serious crime being committed by a minor. There is no such thing as “exceptions” to be “judged as adults” or some of the fancy stuff developed nations have. These kids are usually society rejects, with a crappy, disturbing childhood that forced them to degenerate into young criminals that have lived more than dozens of adult lives before they are 15 years old.

How do you fix someone like that?

In one of my previous articles, a rum distilling company owner started a social program with outstanding results. Sadly, in other parts of the country, this experience is not applied. The current mafias need young recruits. Word is this man has “connections” with the red crowd…but to preserve the privilege of keeping a large company working  under a Cuban-style ruling, that is understandable.

Let’s elaborate a little about how these gangs operate nowadays. They have been under official fire, but there are still plenty of them operating. There are rumors of a pact, or sometimes even their neighborhoods protect them. Like Pablo Escobar and some others did in the past, they provide for their neighborhoods what the official institutions don’t.

The following paragraphs could be a little crude, but most of us have not been in a situation where our life has been under threat by someone with criminal intentions. I know how it feels (and I hated it), and I know my reactions. The body disconnects and gets in self-defense mode. A person in this zone is very likely to eliminate threats without blinking. Some people need training. Some don’t.

Car hijacking

They usually choose a fancy car if you are in a city. A Japanese-made SUV, recent year. 4x4s are the most targeted. One car gets in front of the target, another one behind, guns ready. The victim, in the middle, doesn’t have a chance. The best option is to hand the keys, phone, money, and everything of value to the gangsters. Otherwise, they will shoot without any hesitation.

Something like 80% of these crimes are not subject to any investigation. The only exceptions have been cases where the involved are famous people, like Monica Spears, Venezuela’s Beauty Queen, in 2004. The brainless thief died in jail months later. The unnecessary killing of that gorgeous woman did not exactly make him a welcomed member of the prison crowd.

Returning to our carjacking scene, the thugs in the car parked behind will open fire if the owner defends himself. The best chance of getting through this (depending on if your vehicle is beefed up enough with heavy-duty-thick-gage custom bumpers) is to brake hard, destroying the front of the car behind, and floor it to push the front car out of the way. No mercy. Getting down and surrendering is the last option.

My experience with carjacking

My own experience (a tree across the middle of a desert road) was positive. I was very close to running over a thug that surely crapped his underwear seeing a 1600 kg SUV getting out of the road, take the curb, high beams on, and floor it to 90 mph POINTED STRAIGHT to where he was waiting for us to stop to avoid running over the tree.

I remember it was one of those white cargo trucks, like a Ford 350 – very common. We just ran over the upper branches, no harm done to the car, and they never followed us. Even the most dangerous predators crap themselves when their prey faces them with the intention to fight. These people are criminals for a living, and you’re fighting for your life. Showing any mercy  can mean a horrendous death.

Being cruel and ruthless to the aggressors is likely to give us a chance to survive because of the psychological impact. Use your head on this: always fight back with an edge – and a good edge like being inside a 1600kg SUV.

The open road variant thugs operating on the interstate roads are a dangerous crowd. Gangs like the Tren de Aragua terrified the roads at night, and nobody dared to travel after 6 pm anywhere in Venezuela. The gangs need to own the roads for trafficking narcotics between cities, I guess. Things have changed, but still, not even uniformed people travel by night unless they’re armed to the teeth.

(Need more information on emergency evacuations? Check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)

Express kidnapping

This is an old method. They choose their victims randomly based on their looks. Fancy clothes, cars, general appearance, expressions – they all make you fair game. Thugs are quite street-smart.

It’s not as if we are exposed everywhere. This is a much more common practice in larger cities. The selection of the victim is usually outside discos (yes, they still exist), restaurants, and bars, all of them targeting customers with money.

They will take the victim at gunpoint to their own house (the victim’s one), and then they will take whatever valuables they can find. If the car has a GPS, they will deactivate it. If some neighbor notices what is going on (this has happened), they will keep hostages and send one man barefoot to the neighbor’s house before they can call the police. Then, the barefoot man will ask to open the door because they have an emergency. When the neighbor does so, he is held at gunpoint.

Charming fellows, aren’t they? These kidnappings usually last for a few hours. In some instances, they even take people to a safe house and ask for a ransom if they believe their victim is wealthy enough: children, elders, disabled victims, etc.

Sometimes they even offer a “combo”: freeing the victim AND the car simultaneously as long as there are no policemen involved, and the exchange in cash is swift. Usually, the person in charge of such an exchange is a woman. Women soothe and calm the victim’s relatives, reassuring them there is no harm done to them and that they’re being well cared for.

They are usually very well organized; the best bet is to avoid being a target as much as possible. Calling the police is not always for the best.

Petty thieves – motorcycles, shops, houses

These opportunity gangs use the same modus operandi of using surveillance to steal motorcycles at gunpoint (very desirable because this way they can sneak around traffic after a felony), shops, and houses in the wealthier subdivisions. That’s why you NEVER use the same road to go home or even come back at the same hour. Following a daily routine makes you easy prey.

Stop to get some salt or some other not-so-needed staple. Stare out of the windows from inside the store to see if there is anyone suspicious following you. This eventually becomes second nature. If you are one of those boring people heading home at the same time, following the same path…that pattern makes you more vulnerable than you think.

People that say, “Suddenly, the guy was pointing a gun at me. I don’t know where he/they came from,” do so because they were distracted, so immersed in their own fantasy world that they never detected the danger.

However, these are extremely dangerous criminals. Unlike those kidnappers using the express mode, they are much more prone to shoot their victims and leave them to die on the street. If this is the case and they’re caught alive by people, usually a mob takes care of them to teach other criminals to never come back. It works. It’s not common, but it happens from time to time.

Operations in haciendas

These are one of the most common crimes – usually involving gangs with 14 or 15 members. Their goal can be immediate profit, or they need the land their victims own for strategic reasons. Terrorizing the owner to force them to sell at a bargain price is one of the techniques most used by the guerrilla in Colombia, Mexico, and other countries with huge narcotics problems.

Haciendas usually hold big loads of cash for the laborers. However, this has been changing a little bit for this very same reason. Nevertheless, the luxury SUVs the owners and their families usually ride, the isolation, and ease of access to the main house without being noticed are points of interest. Add the usual lack of guns for self-defense, and all that makes them confident that a specific hacienda is an easy target.

Unfortunately, any hacienda owner knows that laborers could talk about the security aspects of their home. It is a weak link in the chain, and the capabilities of the gangs to collect intel should not be minimized. This applies to all countries! They will ask about dogs, weapons, how many people there are, how many cars there are, and everything a criminal needs to know to take control of the hacienda and do as they please. Killing the owners and laborers to avoid later identification is not uncommon.

What can rural dwellers do?

A way to deal with this would be establishing a security ring around the main house forbidding access to anyone not family-related. First, fencing the mandatory fruits and vegetable garden is necessary. Inside this fencing, two more parallel fences surround the house, with a gravel space between them, like 6 or 7 meters wide.

Some dogs of the same race, same size, and color kept sleeping and happy inside a cool doghouse during the day. Maybe just one, or even 4, but no one from the farming staff should see them during the day or know their names or even how many dogs are, much less male or female. These are to guard ONLY family and obey JUST them.

The fence gate should be opened remotely from inside the panic room (a hacienda without a panic room nearby the main room is vulnerable) to allow the dog(s) to get out and face the threats. Anyone working inside the main house (whether maiden, cook, handyman, anyone) should be a very trusted person. Some basic safety precautions like these could make bad guys lose interest, thinking that the job is not worth it at the end of the day due to the difficulties.

(Want uninterrupted access to The Organic Prepper? Check out our paid-subscription newsletter.)

This is a very general guide to how gangs operate post-collapse.

Some elements are common with crime from everywhere else, and some others are very particular from this part of the world.

The common trait of gangsters and criminals down here is a developed street-smart ability. This allows them to hide the incredible violence they are capable of. They know how to camouflage themselves, especially in friendly and relatively open societies like ours. Their members look harmless, even nice, and unable to do wrong…until the dark side surfaces.

I hope this experience will save someone’s life someday, even though I am afraid some things were left out of the because of space reasons. However, the topic will continue under analysis in further articles!

Thanks for your reading!

Stay safe!

What do you think?

Do you think we’ll see this type of organized crime in America? How soon do you think similar patterns could begin to emerge? Share your thoughts in the comments.

About Jose

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has an old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. Jose and his younger kid are currently back in Venezuela, after the intention of setting up a new life in another country didn’t  go well. The SARSCOV2 re-shaped the labor market and South American economy so he decided to give it a try to homestead in the mountains, and make a living as best as possible. But this time in his own land, and surrounded by family, friends and acquaintances, with all the gear and equipment collected, as the initial plan was.

 Follow Jose on YouTube and gain access to his exclusive content on Patreon. Donations: paypal.me/JoseM151

The post How Gangs Operate Post-Collapse appeared first on The Organic Prepper.