Survivalism

There is a concept called Survivalism, but I call it Preparedness because I don't like the other word's connotations. I am not into it as much as I should be, but I strive to get better. By better I mean, we should all take a cue from the Latter Day Saints and have plenty of food and supplies stocked up for emergencies. Unless we'd rather that in the event of a collapse, only the Saints would have the means to rebuild - and call the shots.

I won't bore you here with the list of things to get. At a minimum it starts with a back pack of camping gear at one end, and at a maximum could well go up to a solar-powered house with it's own well on five acres of a self-sufficient farm at the other end! There are geographic and population considerations, too. Claire Wolfe's book "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution" has plenty of good ideas on all of it, and there are plenty of other Preparedness books out there.

At base, make sure you have a full outfit of camping gear, sets of clothes appropriate to the worst environment you have (Cold or Wet Weather), at least one month of food (if only Top Ramen, Rice and canned vegetables), ten 1 gallon containers of water, and a weapon (preferably a shot gun, if you are getting only one). Grow from there.

Is there a need for preparedness?

Consider....

"Far called our navies melt away,
On dune and headland, ‘neath the fire,
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday,
Is one with Ninevah and Tyre."

From Rudyard Kipling’s "Recessional"

To predict or imagine the collapse of the greatest empire the world had ever known was pretty foolish and kooky. Except that since Kipling wrote that about the British Empire, we all see the sun set on it every 24 hours! For it is no more.

As collapses go, the British did it as nicely and properly as they could. More like a slow motion lobotomy, then the typical violent suicide of most nations. In any case, I doubt that we’d be so lucky. And when Britain fell, there was still us, when we fall…who knows?

That’s one scenario for a collapse, the "one extra regulation too many" one.

The other scenario, more popular during the Cold War, is the big boys getting to dazzled by their own propaganda and hype, and taking us all back to the Stone Age with some massive exchange of nuclear warheads. The Soviet Union is no more, but I find that having a dozen potential madmen instead of one, does not make me rest easier. And what is China up to?

What’s to be done about those kind of things? Nothing. There isn’t anything that will prevent a collapse or nuclear exchange, until the day comes when we have enough Anarchists to insist on some much needed changes in economic and foreign policy. Or put another way, we’re probably looking at least a century before we could make a real difference, unless these Anarchic ideas really take off.

There is a recurring theme in science fiction books that deal with the issue of civilizations falling.

In Isaac Asimov’s "Foundation" trilogy, he imagined that a group of scientists and their families immigrated to a planet on the edge of the Galaxy, and so when the collapse came, they were safe with the collected mass of human knowledge. The scientists called the group, "The Encyclopedia Foundation", and their goal was to shorten the coming Dark Age from 30,000 years, to 1,000 years.

In Larry Niven’s and Jerry Pournelle’s book, "The Mote in God’s Eye", we meet aliens for the first time, and they are smarter then us, but trapped in their own star system, and subject to periodic collapses due to wars over limited resources. These aliens have scattered over their planet a series of "museums" that can only be accessed with a knowledge of basic astronomy. Once in, it’s a guide as to how to rebuild civilization from steam engines to atomic power. These are so when a collapse comes, then as soon as a primitive tribe becomes aware of the celestial patterns, they can open the museum and advance faster.

In Walter M. Miller Jr.’s book, "A Canticle for Leibowitz", our governments laid waste to the Earth with a nuclear war. A scientist named Leibowitz made it his mission to collect and preserve knowledge and did so until killed by book burners. The Catholic church made him a Saint, and one of their Orders became the "The Order of St. Leibowitz". They made it their mission to collect every scrap of pre-war papers, books and scraps they could find.

Finally, the long dark age was over, thanks in part to the Order. Space flight becomes possible, and the Order prepares to send off copies of all their files to another planet. They do this just in time, for predictably enough, the new governments laid waste to the Earth with a nuclear war.

What’s the point of all that? The point is that all history shows that governments always push it too far, they can never leave bad enough alone. So some kind of disaster, never minding exactly what, is all but inevitable. Doesn’t have to be this year. Nor this decade or century. But on such things as governmental madness, I always like to bet sooner rather then later! What happens then?

Those intellectual and productive giants did so well in the Galt’s Gulch of Ayn Rand's book, "Atlas Shrugged". Farms and factories and mines and mills. But in truth, such things are much harder then Rand thought.

If you do get far into preparedness, then you will need to put a little bit of "preparedness" into the building. You need a well, some solar panels, some emergency medical supplies - all there for when disaster strikes. This will put you way ahead of things, and is easier then trying to get those things after a collapse.

If you are doing preparedness, you need to get all the books on how to re-build civilization should there be this general collapse many believe can happen. But just getting books on how to re-build to a nineteenth century level is quite daunting - I know, I’m still collecting such books!
And an important task.

For the Randian heroes couldn’t really have started farming as quickly and easily as they did. Dwight Sanders, a character in "Atlas Shrugged", who had built aircraft for a living, quit to move to Galt’s Gulch and said, "I’m doing quite well at producing ham and bacon without the men from whom I used to buy it." Perhaps. But perhaps it would be better to have a variety of books on that subject, for while one sounds fancier, there is as much to raising livestock well as building a plane well.

Books on farming, homesteading, canning, husbandry, mining, smelting, blacksmithing are just a few of the books that those in Galt’s Gulch would have needed. And no genius knows all the figures in the Machinist’s Handbook. Go get one and you’ll see what I mean.

It would be nice if your house/farm were a "Galt’s Gulch" in the sense that they were all self-sufficient in power, in water, plenty of food, plenty of books, tools and supplies. The more self-sufficient your house is, the less you would need fear natural disasters, or governmental ones.
And do we really want to leave it to others to do this? Better the Latter Day Saints or the Catholics or even the Hare Krishnas, then no one at all. But better still it be us, too, the Rationalists, the Voluntarists.

Have basic preparedness gear at home. Have all the proper tools, supplies and books.

See to it that whether a power outage, a tornado or the collapse of civilization occurs, that you and yours will be safe. Start small. Get what you can, do what you can, be aware of the situation. That's all. Nothing fanatical, just practical.

Dean West