A few weeks ago I read a post on Survival Blog called OPSEC and the Dangers of People You Thought were Like-Minded by a prepper who was just shocked to find that a couple of people he knew were planning on becoming vicious criminals after any long term TEOTWAWKI scenario. Since he knew these so-called friends for more than a decade he was surprised to say the least.

Obviously we feel for him but if you read between the lines you can see that the real problem isn’t his friend’s attitudes but his inability to recognize that they had them in the first place. He didn’t really know his friends and like many people raised in our increasingly narcissistic society he projected his thoughts and beliefs onto them. For many young people other people are seen as reflections of themselves and they have been robbed of the ability to “size people up” for lack of a better word.

I grew up in a bad neighborhood and lived for a while in NYC so I learned how to size people up the hard way. Unfortunately it is a skill like any other that you learn from practice and experience; there’s no book you can read or course you can take to learn to quickly and correctly take the measure of a man. Once you’ve developed this skill it’s often a subconscious process in that you’ll just “know” someone is no good without having to think about it, thus it’s very hard to describe exactly what kinds of things you’re looking for. However here are some general tips I can give you to help you start sizing people up before you end up in a situation like our poor prepping brother mentioned above:

1) Start thinking about people as more than extensions of yourself: We tend to see people through the filter of our experience with them. But a person isn’t just your friend from work or a fellow prepper – they have lives away from you. This seems like common sense but our culture has encouraged people to see others the way toddlers see others, disappearing from existence when they’re outside of our sight. When we see people as little more than characters in the theater of our lives we tend to project our characteristics onto those people to fill in the gaps of what we don’t know about them. Wonder about what people you know do when you’re not around, and you’ll find yourself driven to find out before you and your family sitting around a survival retreat with them.

2) Look at how people conduct themselves with others: Friends and family often overlook the peculiarities of a person’s behavior because “that’s just so and so being so and so” as they say. But look at a person objectively, like you don’t have a history with them. Do they come off petty and bigoted? Are they rude? Do they use drugs? Are they barflies? We tend to forgive people we know and like for what the outside observer would recognize serious character flaws. But petty people don’t become less petty during emergencies and even the mildest illegal drug user, the gentle pot smoking hippy for example, has contact with more hardened criminals which can lead to disaster when law and order breaks down. How people conduct themselves now is an indicator of how they will conduct themselves in emergencies. More importantly their opinions of others and how they interact with other people besides those they “need”, like friends and family will reveal their moral fiber or lack thereof.

3) Learn the difference between being likeable and being a decent person: The poster at Survival Blog made this mistake and we all do. There are lots of reasons we may like a person. We might find them attractive or they make us laugh or for preppers it might be because we share an interest. None of those things matter. Take a good hard look at your friend and objectively evaluate whether or not they live up to a reasonable moral standard.  If you’re having trouble being objective use the grandma’ test – would you tell your grandma that you were living the life they were? Simplistic but if the answer is no chances are your friend is not a decent person no matter how much you like them. Alternatively you could use the old would you let them date your sister/daughter test. If the answer is no they can’t be trusted after SHTF.

4) Learn to be suspicious: We’re taught to take people at their word not because it’s good practice but because it’s impolite to call people a liar. I’m not advocating that you call people liars; just that you understand everyone lies. How many lies have you told this year? A lot no doubt when you include “little white lies” and your so-called friend is no different. You are not a human lie detector and despite what books and television would have you believe there is no “tell” for lying that is 100% accurate. Do your homework on people who you are letting in your life. Court records are online so at least eliminate the possibility that your new friend you are thinking about into your M.A.G. is a tier three sex offender who was caught making child porn. And learn to analyze the information people provide you. That person who was divorced three times can claim it was always the other person at fault but does that make sense to you?

Once you get the hang of catching onto lies what’s important is not the lie but what people lie about. Everyone lies to save face or spare someone’s feelings, but decent people don’t lie to gain your trust or make themselves out to be someone they’re not. For example catching a person claiming they left their job when they got fired may or may not be a big deal, but people pretending they are combat veterans when they aren’t should set off red flags.

5) Learn to listen. Con artists and other manipulators will get you talking and let you unload with only the occasional interruption to sympathize and agree with you. This is how they gain your trust. You’re left feeling like you’ve had an actual conversation because people nowadays are raised to be narcissists who see their part of the conversation as the important part. You can use the same technique and spend time simply listening to the ideas and opinions of others. We tend to interrupt others when they pause because we’re uncomfortable with silence so we try to fill in the blank spaces of conversation. Instead when a person pauses nod in agreement and say something like “I never thought of that, go on.” Everyone wants an audience and the best way to get a good sense of a person is to let them tell their story. The worst way to get to know a person is to tell them your story or worse, clue them in on how they can best craft that story to impress you. Think of every conversation with a perspective prepping buddy as a college lecture. You’re there to learn through listening and asking the occasional question.

There are other techniques that you’ll find through experience but the most important thing to remember is that we see people how we want to see them. We project the things we find most appealing about ourselves onto our friends and we imbue people we dislike with what we think are the worst qualities. When we put our trust in the wrong person it is because we didn’t bother to look at them as people but as mirrors reflecting ourselves. Every prepper needs to take a good hard look at the people they surround themselves with before SHTF, because finding out you were wrong about a person afterward will be a disaster.

Rob Taylor blogs at Hunter-Trader-Trapper