I personally would try my best to avoid a massive government help facility, unless I must have medical help. This site is helping me for planning to be self-sufficient in a disaster so that I can avoid such facilities.

I know a massive disaster facility (e.g., Superdome Katrina) is set up to help people. However, their success depends on their available resources versus the number of people who need help. Plus, you may live in an area where nobody is accustomed to being self-sufficient. Thus, if it's a really bad disaster, you could enter a help facility only to experience hell on earth.

In regards to guns, I never like to voluntarily enter an area where I'm forced to hand over my gun(s), especially during a disaster or where law enforcement is nonexistent. I view a gun as a necessary item during a SHTF situation like Katrina or worse.

By the way, somebody above brought up the oil spill. While that is a SHTF situation, for people on land (not on oil rig), that example is obviously off base from the topic at hand, and this topic is worthy of serious consideration.

Also, I don't think this is the right topic or set of people for a lecture about being paranoid. The topic is SHTF. By definition, everything is abnormal. It seems like most people here have a healthy degree of paranoia, and there is nothing wrong with that. I won't be capable of listening to a lecture on paranoia if a tsunami takes out my house and family. I'm not sure if such a lecture has much use now. Guns are more valuable during a massive SHTF situation. As an actual example, a gun would have been valuable to Reginald Denny in the Rodney King riots. There are many other examples where regular people have had true needs for guns when the SHTF.