Peace Season

In Afghanistan they have the Fighting Season. That’s when the snow melts out of the mountain passes and people can easily travel to the neighboring valleys -so they can slit their neighbors’ throats. Any place that gets too cold and too snowy can bring fighting to a halt. It used to be that way in Scotland -before they decided to all get together and hate the English more than each other.

Winter campaigns are risky at best. Just ask the ghost of Napoleon about his attack on Russia. If Napoleon, a certified military genius, couldn’t do it, it’s not a good idea for mere mortals.

So if the warm months are the Fighting Season, the cold months must be the Peace Season. Thank goodness places like Scotland and Afghanistan have cold winters, or there probably wouldn’t be anybody left there. Winter is a time to hunker down, nurse your wounds, sharpen knives, and make a new generation of warriors.

What does this mean to the prepper? Winter cold and snow might be allies. Being snowed in at a well provisioned cabin is no big hardship. Travel is very limited, but that works two ways. Mutant Zombie Bikers won’t be making an appearance for months. Of course, isolation and cabin fever are no joke, but much easier to deal with than marauders.

If there was a big EMP type event in the winter, isolated snow country places would be even more isolated. When the snowplows stop, the roads soon disappear. Nobody is going to walk very far in deep snow. Snowshoes and cross country skis help, but only the very fit and experienced are going to travel any distance on them.

It doesn’t even need to be something as drastic as an EMP. Disrupt fuel supplies badly enough and the rural roads would soon be abandoned. Resources would be concentrated in the cities.

My dad used to own a small one room hunting cabin and the of 9 miles of dirt roads. Some years the main road would be plowed, so it was only a 1/4 mile hike to the cabin. Other years it was open for snowmobiles, so that worked too. A couple years the road was both unplowed and snowmobiles were banned. One of those winters I hiked into the cabin alone. There was no cell phone service and I didn’t even bring a radio. I didn’t see anyone until I hiked out a week later. Good thing I had a few books to read. It was the most isolated I’d ever been, and I liked it. It was . . . peaceful.

-Sixbears