No matter how prepared everyone is, at least two things are constant in any survival situation that involves more than one person: Civil authorities are unprepared to varying degrees and the citizenry is in large part thoroughly unprepared.

For a tutorial on that, read up on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; here are a few of the things the unprepared faced in that catastrophe.

You look outside your window and only see darkness.

Our government has admitted that our electrical grid is being held together by little more than duct tape and bubble gum.

We’ve had events as “harmless” as a tree branch falling 5 states away cause entire regions of the U.S. to go black.

Without power, without street lights, urban environments become a pitch-black nightmare when the sun goes down.

Your family is complaining of being hungry and thirsty all the time

With grocery stores picked clean and chaos still ruling the world outside your home, you’ll be left to survive with only what you’ve collected so far.

In some scenarios, without electricity to run the city’s pumps (or your well), there won’t be any water coming out of your faucet.

Even if there is, if the utility infrastructure collapses and water treatment fails, the water coming out of your pipes could be dangerously contaminated and come out brown and smelling like chemicals or sewage.

People can only live 3 days without water – even less in hot, stressful conditions.

Even for survivalists who hoarded food and water early, you won’t want to run through your stockpile too soon so rationing will be a big part of your response plan… and you’ll need to make hard decisions.

For non-preppers, it will be much worse!

Your toilet is smelling up the house.

With no water, there’s no indoor plumbing. But non-preppers will still try to use their toilets which will soon be useless and begin to stink up their house.
YOU will be forced to find another means of getting rid of what’s coming out of your body.

Fires are burning uncontrolled.

With more people turning to alternative means of cooking and heating in their homes, the probability of fires skyrockets.

But as firefighters are called on to assist with crisis response throughout the area, flames will overtake homes and spread.

Mobs are moving from house to house – looting, smashing, and burning.

Police departments are manned based on peacetime needs and not prepared for an all out collapse.

With the anger and frustration over not being “taken care of”, local residents can turn mean and decide to take things into their own hands.

In a collapse, there’s no more law.

You look for an escape but there’s no way out.

Without a proper bug-out bag, most people will be scrambling around trying to collect all their belongings to evacuate the area.

This takes up critical time you need to get ahead of the masses.

Amidst the chaos, roadways will be jammed with fleeing citizens and stalled cars that have broken down or run out of gas.

Highways will look more like giant parking lots.

You’re stuck where you are.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a case study in that list; even if you were prepared and opted to bug-in during and after the onslaught, the really bad stuff began as the storm was moving through and built to chaos very quickly.

Civil authorities, even federal authorities were overwhelmed with the number of unprepared who had stayed behind and the result for the unprepared became truly a “survival of the most ruthless.”

This is why even if you think a total, take us back to the 1800's survival incident is unlikely, you have to have the basics covered in terms of food, water, first aid, transportation, etc.

To learn more about what the unprepared will face in a Katrina-like event's aftermath, check out Modern Combat Survival.