Gunner Quinn
Introduction
It’s every prepper’s fantasy: living in (mostly) a self-sufficient secure compound surrounded by liked-minded individuals living off the land just out of reach of the ravaging hordes. For novelists and daydreamers, living on the frontier in a simpler way is an appealing escape from the often-disheartening humdrum of ordinary life. Rather than worry about politics and taxes, you worry about raiders and if this summer’s crop will come in. But in the pages of fiction or the corners of our imagination, the good guy always prevails. Reality is much more stark.
Those who lived on Israeli kibbutzim—collective compound-style communities— probably felt quite secure until October 7, 2023. The Hamas attacks upon Israel should be enough to disabuse the prepared citizen from the romance of the SHTF compound fantasy. Those who are concerned about the United States degenerating into a situation where something similar is possible need to confront the awful reality of enemy raids on compounds as seen by the Israelis.
There are some differences, of course, to the collapse that preppers imagine. Israel is, and was, a functional country with operating police and military; however, they failed to prevent the incursion and were not able to come to the immediate aid of the kibbutz residents. Yet in other respects the Hamas militants shared many characteristics of post-apocalyptic raiders: they were well armed, coordinated, semi-disciplined, and after striking in force, took control of the compounds and murdered, kidnapped, or abused the residents. The only distinction between Israel and the fantastic is Hamas didn’t intend to capture and hold the compounds for themselves, as an SHTF villain might.
The standard kibbutz structure is centered around a grouping of houses, communal facilities like dining and schools, and organizational offices. Often agricultural in nature, outlying areas feature farmland, orchards, or industrial areas. As they are located primarily in rural areas, some, like those attacked on Oct. 7, sit very near to Israel’s border, on the proverbial frontier.
A kibbutz has many attributes with a fortified facility, and many are hardened in some fashion, but they are not military outposts. They are not optimized for defense and their perimeters can be open or easily breached. The original concept was partially influenced by a need for mutual defense against Arab hostility, but much of that waned over time.
Kibbutzim, of course, have individual levels of security with some better than others, but even the best are not impregnable compounds. As you may recall, even army outposts were “busted” by Hamas using novel techniques. Those communities proximate to the Gaza border are usually enclosed by fencing, including barbed wire, and surveilled by cameras, but these are intended to stop casual intrusions and crime, not a true assault. Some of the places attacked were toughened at about the same level of an American gated community.
To an attacker, a kibbutz makes an inviting target. With no real defensive fighting positions, buildings without ballistic hardening, and single-story homes, they made for an attacker’s dream. Isolated from other communities down long, narrow, and winding roads, help would not immediately arrive even in the best of circumstances (and October 7 was a day of worst-case scenarios). Without a sizeable guard or reaction force able to defend the compounds, they easily fell to the often amateurish, but brutal, Hamas terrorists.
The typical attack by Hamas began with a border breach a few kilometers from the compound. Kibbutz raiders proceeded to their target while others attacked any military outposts and pinned the soldiers down so they could not respond to calls for help. Hamas deliberately planned to completely disrupt the emergency response. With the soldiers dead or fighting for their lives, the police were outgunned, outnumbered, and overwhelmed. Hamas effectively had free rein.
Opening the attack with a rocket attack drove many victims into their shelters. While these shelters might offer protection from shrapnel from a nearby rocket strike, few were built as true panic rooms. Instead, they acted as traps, allowing the terrorists to easily shoot, kidnap, or burn alive the shelterees. Sheltering-in-place also reduced the situational awareness of the hiding residents who were unable to give reports on intruder movements and activities.
When they got to the homes, Hamas knew that in virtually every case the victims would be unarmed. Unlike in the United States, where an armed homeowner, especially one who knows what he’s doing with a gun, makes a home invasion a dicey proposition, the gun laws of the much-vaunted militarized nation was in the terrorists’ favor. There was little resistance when the terrorists broke in. Once inside, most victims were either murdered outright or taken as hostages back to Gaza. If the militants couldn’t get in, they would often engage in ruses to try and lure the residents out or they would burn the house down around them.
Local security teams did manage to engage the terrorists successfully in some cases. However, it was universally “too little, too late.” Small teams, usually around a half-dozen men, were only able to be effective after much of the damage had been done. By then, they were bottling up any fighters who didn’t escape back to Gaza or encouraging others to leave. On a compound of hundreds of acres, there was only so much that a squad or fire team-sized group could do. While the defenders who were able to fight did so heroically as one might expect of an Israeli, there just weren’t enough of them.
Lessons for American Preppers
So what are the lessons that an American can take away from the October 7 tragedy? While many gun owners, preppers, and patriots have fantasies about being Wolverine guerillas in their own personal Red Dawn, the sheer brutality and audacity of Hamas’ raid should douse those daydreams. For the victims and survivors, it wasn’t a book or movie; it was the worst thing that ever happened to them.
Probably the first myth that needs to be dispelled is that the good guys will always win. Sure, Israel prevailed in the end, but only because they eventually did get their military/police apparatus into gear for a response and because Hamas chose to withdraw. The compounds were only retaken hours and days later after much blood had been drawn and captives spirited away. The intruders weren’t noble warriors or just thieves: they were hate-filled monsters who indiscriminately committed atrocities I don’t need to detail.
Since 2020, the tactical prepper community has likely shifted too much focus toward riots and leftist violence, drifting away from the older expectation of banditry—like that once seen on the American frontier or from rampaging barbarians throughout history. What happened in Israel was urban warfare with ethnic massacres, house-to-house killings, and mass kidnappings included. Sectarian violence looks more like this than purple-haired weirdos burning down a Tesla dealership.
An analogous American attack might begin with a riot but will end up with the bad guys forming gangs to plunder neighborhoods. Mobile bandits may hit rural farms and compounds in force. Urban folks are likely to be threatened by those motivated by ethnic or class divisions, organized crime, or ideological militias. Rural folks will probably see raiders coming to occupy land they can survive on or steal resources like food and livestock.
Fortunately, America is not like Israel, with a lot of people living close to a perilous border (Mexico even with its cartel violence isn’t Gaza right now). However, without rule of law (WROL), SHTF could be a matter of hungry, desperate city-dwellers turning out en masse on the countryside. The frontier becomes an internal one at that point, not just a line on a map. Your idyllic ranch or farmhouse might appear to whoever the bad guys turn out to be as the perfect target. Suburbs far from the violent inner city might fall under the glare of envious eyes. The U.S. remains far from that reality, but under the right conditions—nuclear war, political breakdown, or economic collapse—it could become a real possibility.
Your suburban isolation can become an illusion just as the victims in Israel found out a border wall and couple of kilometers separation were no deterrent. Earlier I mentioned that overall kibbutz security wasn’t much better than a gated community in the US. Walls may be topped with barbed wire, entries gated, and cameras covering the approaches, but obstacles are only good if they are enforced by someone with a rifle. Otherwise, they are just speed bumps that might slow down the tempo of an attack, not stop it. We cannot be reliant on unmanned security infrastructure, even if it’s high tech.
Cameras may be a deterrent to someone who fears getting caught, but if there are no police to catch them, or the bad guy does not fear death, let alone, apprehension, it is just a warning tool. Cameras are tools for intelligence and alerts. They are force multipliers in that one person can cover more “ground” by watching multiple feeds. Cameras can cover areas that are difficult to physically surveil. During an attack, someone should be watching the feeds and giving updates to the defenders pursuing the intruders. At Kibbutz Nirim, one camera operator did just this, which made a massive difference in the defense.
As a similar attack here will probably be as much a surprise as it was in Israel, we cannot assume that there will be any “alert phase” to do things like board up windows. Defenses must be constantly in place and require no preparation to use. Passive defensive obstacles are those that require no intervention from a defender, like a fence. The average kibbutz already had the compound layout and was isolated from surrounding settlements, just like a dream prepper compound. It’s a shame they weren’t hardened more.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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