It is a long-term disaster / emergency as defined by this forum. You have done a good job and you and your family are going to be fine with what you have. You friends, relatives, neighbors, and strangers start showing up to ask you to help them and to share your resources.

Has someone developed a "help-triage" system to aid you in deciding who gets what and how much, if anything?

Do these concerns deserve to be reflected in your plans? if so, how specifically?

This mine field has been waded thru here before. You might try searching for it.

There were definitely varied opinions.

I'd look at from the perspective of helping others unless it limits my ability to help myself/my family.

What search terms would turn it up?

In what long-term disaster scenario can we know the duration precisely enough to know if we have enough supplies?

I can't imagine a "system" that can prepare you for who might ask for help, what they might need, how much they might need, how much you'll need, how long an emergency may last and exactly what that emergency would entail in terms of hardship.

I don't know how to prepare for that scenario other than to stockpile in excess of what seems prudent for your own household. Now I suppose if you had a one year supply of food and water for your family and a storage tank full of gasoline and all kinds of other stuff, that if a tornado, hurricane or earthquake strikes surely you could spare quite a lot to help others.

The possibility -- probability -- that others will be less prepared or for other reasons need help, should certainly be considered. Don't we all expect that few of our friends/neighbors/family will be as prepared as we are?

Do we have a moral obligation to stockpile extra, knowing that others would be needy in an emergency?

People on this forum are so generous with information, I would expect that it would also be the inclination of nearly all of us to help others in an emergency by being generous with supplies.

That said, it's one thing to help, or not help, friends/family/neighbors. Strangers are easier to say no to. Several times a month, sometimes several times a week, I say no to strangers who ask for money. I've never said no to friends or family.

And now I'm tied up in knots. I've posed a similar question before in regard to evacuation. Can't really know what we'll do until something happens. I've thought about it and I can't imagine shutting the door on friends/family/neighbors.

This is one of those questions that you probably aren't going to find the answer you're looking for in a Survival Manual, at a training school, or on the internet.

It comes down to you doing what you think is right. You have to evaluate the situation on a case by case basis, weigh the strengths and weaknesses, and make a decision...hoping you've made the right one.

I will say this though, no matter how self-sufficient you think you are, eventually you will get to a point where you'll need to ask another human being for help with something. It's almost an inevitability. As humans, we must, at the very least, keep that in the back of our mind; or else it might come back to bite us.

This has been discussed in various forums including this one. Almost always there's a subtext to your question Dweste - that someone is comin for your 'excess supplies' simply because you have them and others need them. Confiscation, requisition, eminent domain, what have you - the spectre of local authority showing up and taking away your excess to help others. I have spent time studying a number of severe disasters, and there is no record that I can find of local authorities confiscating excess supplies from survivors, 'for the greater good.' More often there is on record instances of individuals donating what they have to help others, willingly, gladly. I think the concept of having a cache of supplies that others covet enough to come and take them posits a disaster far more severe than anyone actually has experienced.

You can't answer this question in isolation from actual disasters. So put yourself in one - take the American Samoa earthquake and tsunami. By itself its a very dire situation. They are very low on drinking water, there are a fair number of injured, things will get back to normal, but it will be slow. Plop me down in America Samoa, and my family would be well supplied for at least a few weeks. And given the rate of inflow of aid to the area, I could safely share some of what I have on hand with friends and neighbors. It has been hardest for the first 72 hours, with the next 72 hours seeing aid come in, and the next week intended to improve life and begin to get people back to 'normal.' For the first 3-5 days I would expect to expend much of my food and medical supplies for the greater good - that might include giving first aid, and feeding family, friends and neighbors, sharing what I have. 'Normal' for me means being generous with what I have to help others in my community, knowing that I'll have an opportunity to resupply in the near term. Soon after a disaster I would start to inventory and resupply.

Please leave out any government confiscation concerns. This thread is limited to private parties and how to manage your resources.

If your stuff will run out in a couple days or less when shared with others, versus lasting your family a couple weeks if you do not share, and you have no idea when help will arrive, what do you do?

My primary focus is not so much to clooect various theories on what to do, but to find if anyone is aware of a thought -through / formalized / developed way of handling the issues.

Maybe there are just two basic pathways: I choose to equip myself/my household to be relatively autonomous and self-supporting for a finite period of time, within the constraints of location and resources; or I choose to equip a larger group (neighborhood, scout troop, congregation)to do so. The latter is not simply the former writ large. Working with a group adds the human behavior in organizations element. The forum moderators seem todo this-Martin, Blast,-seem to be actively involved in this sort of thing-maybe interest in group survival is that which develops after one develops mastery of personal/family survival, and recognizes its limitations in long-term and widespread survival scenarios.

For me, this is most difficult part of planning. A few years my answer would have been different. I've spent several years trying to convince my neighbors, friends, relatives (and anyone else who will listen) to even think about this stuff. Those that have, have started preparing; if only modestly.

I have several close neighbors who are taking preparedness very seriously. Together, we've started making plans for different scenarios. In the event of on emergency, I'm counting on them. We've talked about making sure none of the neighborhood kids go hungry, but as for the adults... I still don't know.

I don't think I'll have a problem turning out some of those people who have said "I know where I'm going when the SHTF, your house!" but haven't done anything for themselves. Then again if a neighbor showed up at my door hurt or starving, I don't think I could just let them die.

For me, it comes down to community. I believe in the event of a large scale, long term emergency, the people that come together will be better off.