There are several preconceptions that seem to be floating around regarding survival after a significant event and although we are all gearing up to be survivors and be the ones to repopulate the species there is much more than that involved. We are looking at rebuilding our society as well. I’ve touched on this before but still get puzzled looks when I talk about what we need to do to get back on our feet. In my view our survival preparations have several intentions, some unrecognised and some unspoken.
We want
- To live.
- Our children and their children to live.
- To rebuild our situation so we are not living hand to mouth.
- To rebuild a local community.
- Our society back, preferably with no socialists in it.
- Our species to survive and thrive.
Clean out and start again
Some of us think that a survival situation would be a good thing. A clean out and start again. They see themselves as being able to do what they want, back to the good old days when men were men, women were women and little purple aliens… well you get the idea. The problem is if we falter now in our quest to expand and move off this planet then our species could very well stagnate and die.
Now there are people who want that; Our AGW green friends and their dumb supporters as well as a bunch of Malthusian’s and PETA. All would like to turn back the clock but do not realise the implications, those that do realise simply don’t care beyond their selfish wants, while many of their supporters are too dumb to realise that their leaders mean the plebs, including them, make the sacrifices and only the plebs. True supporters like Al Gore can keep up their lifestyle, but even he doesn’t appear to realise it is based on our existing society and Mr brain surgeon won’t work for turnips and won’t get much experience working on a farm planting crops anyway.
I believe technology can be our saviour but only if we continue to develop and advance. It won’t progress unless we progress. Thus if we all went back to an agrarian society we would soon find that our world would be unable to support us and our numbers would start to decline. However, moving from that back to our current society won’t be easy because all the easily accessible resources have gone. We will not get another chance for centuries until numbers are low and match resources. So if we falter, either by our hand or by an external event, we need to get back on our feet quickly, before the machinery we have built is useless and will not work, while we still have the knowledge on how to drill for oil, build factories making microchips, perform complex mathematical constructs and medical procedures to extend and enhance life and there are enough of us to do that.
In addition, our masters, seem to think along the same way as their helpful puppets but they see society fracturing in two; the masters, them, and the slaves, us. They are already conditioning us with the ‘your papers please’ attitude for everything nowadays and dissent is smacked down publicly even when it is not even illegal to keep the plebs in place. They continually break the laws to keep us in our place with impunity and put themselves and their enforcers above the law of our society. We call it democracy but we all know that our wishes are ignored and they promise anything to get elected when they have no intention of delivering. They are the most likely cause for the stalling of our society and although they will be OK, their grandchildren will be far from it but thinking more than a day or two into the future is not a skill that politicians have.
Now, even if the event takes it away from politicians and their green friends and we are forced into a situation where we have to revert to survive people have some preconceptions about what this means.
The advantages they see
| We see ourselves being free and not subject to taxes and government intervention. |
| Well, Yes. We will have that but as well as giving that up we lose being able to do anything bar work to feed, clothe and house our families. People will die of injuries or illness that are curable today and life expectancy will plummet. Government and taxes are just two of the negatives of our society but we will lose all the benefits as well. |
| We can handle anything that comes our way; Zombies, hungry hordes and nature. |
| Very few people will be able to avoid all three. Few have remote retreats where they can hide out of everyone’s view and be left alone. Hungry hordes can tear down and invade anywhere if there are enough numbers even if they are unarmed and you are armed. Extreme weather can occur anywhere and being out in the wilds is not always they best place for that. Wild animals can devastate your livestock and you if you are not careful. Some of us may manage it but certainly not all. |
| We will keep our heads down and government will ignore us. |
| Maybe, maybe not, depends where you are and what they want. If it is not a major event they will be down there to bring you back into society. Resistance will be met, as with anything the government does, with bullets and explosives. Again, some will manage it for a time but not all and if government is there then eventually you will be forced to face them even if it is down the local market. |
| After a few years it will get back to normal. |
| For smaller events Yes, in a way but not the normal you have now it will be a different normal with different economic values. For major events then No. You may have that life, and your children may have it, for the rest of your lives depending on what it is. Our existing society requires a certain amount of people to press the buttons and load the wagons. We may be overloaded but a major event will reduce that beyond a sustainable level. Nobody will be processing oil, gas or coal and the stores we have above ground will soon run out never to be replenished. Most people don’t know how to do things we take for granted nowadays. Can you make a pane of glass? Make penicillin? Make a syringe and needle? How about a simple pencil? |
| I’ll set up my own little kingdom in the local village. |
| Good luck with that. The leaders will not be those that talk a good fight like it is now. It will be the one with the strongest arms, the one who is prepared to kill someone who screws with him. Survival of the fittest. The times where we made the most progress in society. Democracy may come back but it will be a cover for a tyrant, pretty much as it is now actually. The plus in this case is the tyrants will be deposed permanently by violent means. |
| I’ll live just like now in my little retreat with all my gear. |
| No matter how much fuel, food, ammunition you put away it will run out, a wire will break, a pipe fracture, barrels will wear, wind turbines will break down, batteries will stop holding charge, items will be lost, stolen or destroyed. Eventually, you will have nothing you cannot make from the items found in nature within a days walk or ride of your retreat. |
| We will educate our children ourselves. |
| If you are in a large enough group where you can call on experts from all walks of life and refer to books that you have put away you could give a secondary school education. If you are a family or a couple of families then your educational options are limited to what books you have and what knowledge you have between you, certainly primary school and certain subjects at secondary level. Eventually, all but what you need to survive and live will be lost. Only larger groups can invest the resources in education to retain knowledge and advance their understanding. Even then most healthy people of working age are expected to work. Who is going to teach them basic medical procedures that first year students know now? You or me? |
| Life will be idyllic. |
| Just like in the Garden of Eden. Let me know where that is because I’m off there now. We will have a lower lifespan, we will work harder than we do now and common ailments that we can now treat easily will now kill or incapacitate us. Nobody is going to pick grapes from trees, drink the nectar of the gods and laze around all day. |
Preparing is insurance
Like insurance we pay out for an eventuality we do not want to happen and one we must not initiate and, just like real insurance from an insurance company, there is no guarantee it will pay out when we need it.
We just have to put our hands up with some things. Some events, real ones, are just outside our control and we have no chance of survival. There are many scenarios that we could list where it would be the end of the human species. The earth though would most likely continue, new species would rise and adapt and a million years from now nothing on this planet would remain to show we even existed and only spacecraft we have sent elsewhere, such as Voyager 6, would be the only remnants of our entire civilisation. If anyone, or anything, was able to find them in the vastness of space.
We can only mitigate the risks for those that are survivable
Those that devastate us sufficiently so that there is no governments in place to provide aid or support and those that removed our infrastructure support and left us without food, water, electricity and the million and one other benefits of our society.
We would be on our own with a chance of survival depending on where we are and how much we have prepared. There would be massive loss of life from the event, starvation and disease from the removal of our infrastructure with many more succumbing over the next 5 years with diseases that have been kept under check by medication or lifestyle choices, both of which will not be viable without the infrastructure we have set up over hundreds of years.
We plan for these types of events where we need to cater for everything down to supplying our own electricity, filtering our own water, treating our own medical issues and with planning for these we also cover lesser events which are significantly more likely but have less of a long term impact. After these ‘smaller’ events it is likely that after a few weeks we will have aid parcels being dropped, after a few months infrastructure would be partially or fully restored and troops would be deployed to keep law and order. In the meantime however those who have not prepared will be without the basics of food, water and sanitation. Our preparations then will easily cover these eventualities. In fact some of us have made the conscious decision not to prepare for the really bad scenarios and have decided that anything that bad they do not want to live through. Fair enough it is their choice but I suspect that if it came to it they would fight just like everyone else and would regret their choice.
However the reality is such that the bulk of the food stores and equipment we put aside are really only there to make the transition to an agrarian lifestyle less of a culture shock. Allowing us to still live with the foods we are used to whilst we settle into our replacement lifestyle. Sure, these foods will help us over an event that stops or disrupts our infrastructure so we kill two birds with one stone but we are really preparing for the main event.
Paying the insurance
So we all start off small and build our stores, over weeks, months or years depending on our financial situation until we reach the targets we have set ourselves and then we can relax, relatively speaking, and cycle our perishables consuming what is approaching out of date and replenishing with fresh new stock. This investment/insurance policy will cost us money and take money away from us having bigger TV’s, shiny new cars, etc. Even if an event occurred whilst we were building up our stocks we could still handle most of the events with whatever stocks we have and partially because we have a survivor’s mindset, we have a better chance than most. Of course no amount of preparation can guarantee your survival. There may be a small explosion in the street in your town and kill only a few people, insignificant really in the scheme of things, but you could be one of them, no guarantees.
Get on with your life
So we prepare and we watch and wait carrying on with life as normal hoping that nothing happens and that the world keeps turning and we all live on and eventually we take our steps out into space with a moonbase followed by a mars colony until we develop FTL drives and can start a new expansion into our galaxy as our first step. It must happen or eventually the human race will simply die on this planet when the resources run out and our shortsightedness will go down as a log entry is some strange species books. ‘Visited this nice blue/green planet on the outer arm. No intelligent life and no sign of civilisation. Their species barely made it out of the caves. Send a colony there’
We don’t want a survival event and if one is forced on us by events we need to recover from it as quickly as possible to save our species. Preparing is the way for us to survive an event, get back on our feet and continue as if nothing happened. The government won’t do it for us. They actually believe that a biosphere filled with thousands of scientists, teachers, politicians and an army is going to continue our society under the politician’s leadership and we can just continue on our merry way.
Conclusion
Pray any event we are considering never happens and that all the issues we have in the world get resolved without a collapse of our society. Revolution, civil war or just a gradual change in what we will accept and the restoration of morals in society would be better for our entire species.
i have been preping for a long time in fact many years. i started with cheap stuff but found out that it just wasted money so now i only buy the best. i have found out by doing this that i really don’t need loads of things what is more important is know how?. That is what i teach my children to survive any where with the basic’s. again i used to prepare for as much as i could everthing i could think of what ever happens but again i realised the one big problem with preping? we need other humans to live with out that we become animals. ever person is needed be it doctors or farmers, teachers or joiners and the list goes on and on?
now for proper preping we need a network of people with know how and skill so we can keep a social group alive after all what’s going to hurt us the most is seeing are loved one’s hurt or dieing and no help? ever one in a commie has a job a master of something and a family to care about. now you can build on that but you have to keep it safe you dont want some group come along and take it all, so you need people who can look after it by what ever means it takes to do it.
this way is true preping the rest is delaying death. was medevil or victorian britian a good place to be, i think i would give it a miss thanks. in a commie sometimes helping each other is more profitable than running a business as it cuts down greed and nastieness a good network of people all over the country with a plan that is the place to start a future for kids
I agree that a community is where we should be going but I don’t see how a socialist community works. None of them ever last once the ones that work see the others living on their hard wor and go.
It is only when the workers are forced to work and cannot leave that it holds on a little longer but eventually they all fail.
a socialist community ???
sort of,
it’s good to bounce ideas off not just going mad!!!
imagine some one in your family is ill and you could not fix them thought a lack of real know how but a doctor could and he/she wanted more than you had and they died.
your feelings would be anger leading to an action of some sort excluding you killing them!.
then they were in danager needing you help be it anything for the sake of the story you wouldn’t help them would you.
so in a (community of the future) say every one helps each other to live a happy safe life in the knowing that there is more danager out side the community,
and no one is better than anyone else what ever thier belief, or race or age or sex. the bond should be the safety for thier family even if they die and when the time comes when people are safe all over the country and people are not killing each other then business could start again i am a capitist and in this world cash is king but cash can not save you all the time if you know what i mean.
this veiw is something i have been think of i don’t know what the right answer is?, but if you get a crises over and trying to make a life in a collapsed world, you will need more than just yourself.
i don’t know if people would share that idea or would greed stop it guess it’s human nature to be greedy.
some american sites talk about different prepers and the one they don’t seem to like is the raider. in a mad max world i think you need a social commie or you have to be a raider and all that goes with it.
i found a site (www.houseofrudzik.com)he has a good idea but i can see how he is going to make that happen have a look?
anyway the real point to preping i think if your a parent is your kids and partner you can’t let them down no matter what.
and something i found funny to read (the zombie survival guide)
Grumpy,
That is a socialist ideology and so far has never worked the way intended in the history of man. The nearest thing to it is the LDS and the Amish and they are basically religions not communes.
I’ve looked ta the Rudzik site and wish them good luck. These things almost always end up with a leader living like a king and his subjects with no cash working to keep it going. We will see what the criterion is for membership and the fact he is now looking worldwide rather than doing one place followed by another makes me doubt it is going to be good.
This discussion however would be best put into the forum. We can keep an eye on it from there.
Hi SD
I’m a newbee on this site and am playing catch up on articles that were written a while back.
I like thsi article, and especially your closing line about “restoration of morals in society”
I think Socialism is a good idea in theory, but in practice its human morality that is the barrier to its viability.
Human freeloading, greed, hunger for power will not simply get wiped out in a major event. Propbably the reverse, as these are probably ancient survival traits of our species. Our plans need to very much take account of all negative sides of human behaviour, as for sure these will have to be dealt with over and over again until a new society emerges.
I agree with everything he is saying. It is hard to know what will happen, so prepare for everything, I think though as a Christian we will in a collapse go back to religion and faith in god because we will need him more than ever(the naysayers and atheists will turn on each other and loose hope). People with shared family values and faith will help each other not just for survival but because of love and friendship. In the collapse to come which a blind man can now see, it will be all of the above scenarios over a long time period. The person who will win out will not be the strongest physically but those able to adapt, share and help others. those able to share and help their friends will be loved. The reason socialist ideals do not work because without a guiding god, man’s negative human nature such as selfishness, paranoia fear comes to the fore hatred fear jealousy etc.The Christians believe this world is a transition to eternity(socialism teaches government and man himself is god), But the true god watches and waits for us to go home. this in itself is the basis for a hope that will survive all the turmoil we know is coming disease famine death, tyranny. When the world can not kill your hope or shake your faith it makes a man invincible. the Invincible will survive and thrive, no mater what happens. Prepping is great but if your in the wrong place at the wrong time.just plain old bad luck can kill the most well prepared. God looks after those who look after themselves yes true and he also lends a helping unseen hand, .lets prepare for everything and get all the help you can get.
god bless
billygoatgruff
Can’t disagree. I can see that the harsher life is the more people want to believe ther is something more and the more religion gains a foothold.
Religion, at least most religions, given us a good set of moral guidelines to follow.
This is a very interesting book on tribalism
http://www.rufer.nl/2020/Beyond.Civilization.Humanitys.Next.Great.Adventure.Nov.2000%20Three.Rivers.Press..pdf
Jan,
Thanks for that.
When the `event` happens you will find that for some time it will be every man for himself. Then you will have groups who clan together to take what they need, but they will meet larger groups who will most likely wipe them out. We will return to the dark ages and no amount of technology will stop that. I and my friends do not stock up on guns and ammunition, our stock of weapons consist of longbows and crossbows with a shit load of arrows and bolts. These are recoverable and reuseable, bullets when used are gone and please dont start talking about how you will `reload` it wont last. My friends, as preppers we must prepare for the worst scenario possible, not hope for the best. We must be ready when TSHTF strikes, communes will not work, you will be over-run in no time at all, Dave from down the road will need to feed his children and he knows you have plenty so he will ask you for it, you have your own children so you say no. So Dave is coming after you with anything he can use as a weapon that he can find, his children need fed and he does not give two flicks of a rats tail about you or yours. When TSHTF get out fast and take care of your own, no one else will
Hi
I like the idea of prepping.
However..I find it interesting…almost bizzare!….that someone would choose a capilist approach to it though. This idea of one person somehow becoming a king in a socialist group? Surely that’s communism?? In my experience capitilism eventually always leads to GROUPS of people thinking they are better than everyone else….etc.
If you are gonna take prepping seriously…why not discard this nonsense from your heads? Just get on with life and perhaps its time to leave your past prejudices behind I think?
Androspandros,
Welcome.
It is socialism that screws everything up. Getting something for nothing destroys innovation and the working ethic. I don’t want to be leader of a larger group but I’m certainly going to be in control of my preps. Amyone wants to join my group has to conform to the rules though.
It’s our past prejudices that are causing our issues.The music is stopping and we are down to the last few chairs.
Human Survival
human survival as a species, first requires understanding of what humans really are.
for the species to survive for an indefinate period of time there must be diversity within
the bloodstock.
if the survival of humans as a species depended on just one small familly or close nit
group. its demise would be inevitable as disease and malformity slowly weekend any
offspring, resulting in either extinction, or sever mutation within a few generations.
Mutation through inbreeding, can also leed to evolution of a species as in the case of the
ciclids in lake tangyaniki and victoria in afrika.
these forms of de/evolution have happened before many times throughout human history, as early
ancestors formed groups and moved away from eachother, later for them to re-intermingle and
mix up the gene pool once again.
cross species mutation, is also highly likely to have happened previously in human history.
neandertal and early humans are highly likely to have occasionally interbred.
and both developed or evolved from the same earlier human form (Adam)
it is likely that we all carry some of this crossbread gene mix since it would have been
very early in the human evolution chain.
since we can find no living trace of either neandertal man or any of the early human
species it would be a good guess to state that we ourselves are the link between the two.
their interbreeding is what led to us ourselves as a species.
eg.
neandertal = short strong hairy
early humans = tall smart hairless fast.
outcome a species taller and smarter than neandertal that is also stronger and more capable
of surviving harsh weather than early man = us
Evidence in history.
Adam had 2 sons, cain and abel. one of his sons was hairy, the other was not. why?
1 was a meat eater , 1 was not ?
this suggests Adam (man) was the father of both species, neandertal and early human.
Leaving ourselves being the offspring from both.
that only covers the physical,
humans as a species are also a collective whole, the diversity in our beliefs and knowledge,
is probably one of the greatest things about being human,
it is our ability to quickly learn from eachother and share information in great detail that
is our greatest evolutionary achivement.
this must be kept if we continue to wish to exist as humans, and the only way to keep it is
by keeping human diversity, many minds forming the greater human collective.
the conclusion is that for humans to exist we cannot live alone or even as just one small
group.
there must be many groups seperated (never put all your eggs in one basket) but still working
together peacefully towards survival of the species as a whole , and occasionally
intermingling amongst eachother.(mixing the gene pool)
Pretty much how the world already is but without the wars and violence
Communication and understanding being the key to the survival of our species.
This way the species will continue as it is yet still continue to evolve.
any other way could result in human extinction through evolution, as it becomes something different.
or worse still extinction through species death.
Luci Ferson re “Evidence in history.
Adam had 2 sons, cain and abel. one of his sons was hairy, the other was not. why?
1 was a meat eater , 1 was not ?
this suggests Adam (man) was the father of both species, neandertal and early human.
Leaving ourselves being the offspring from both.”
These people are fictional therefore not evidence, evidence requires, well , evidence!!
The point about us needing genetic diversity to survive as a species is something I agree with whole heartedly even if I don’t accept the biblical references.
This entire article is well thought out and well presented, the proposed social organisation of like minded people could be said to be based on informed mutual self interest rather than socialism… To help each other and in turn recieve help when you need it isn’t socialism, community isn’t the same as commune.
I regularly help my doctor neighbour with work on his place and have received medical help from him in the past, this isn’t based on any kind of equitable exchange, just friendship and a willingness to help. When a person is unwilling to help, “what goes around comes around” as they say.