The Future
Succinctly put, it's bleak. We've seen two million jobs evaporate this last year alone. Our manufacturing base is in serious trouble. Banks are clamming up with the credit and all our economy does is consume, consume, consume. We make nothing.
Politicians are more interested in scoring short term political victories than laying the foundation for long term sustainability and growth. The term "mortgaging our children's future" is such a cliche these days that the poignant image it is meant to convey is utterly lost. In short, politicians are long on gathering power und to themselves, and very short on actual, real leadership.
Our leaders, be they corporate or government, are no longer expected to produce results. They are bailed out or golden parachuted or pardoned when they fail or even commit criminal acts. There is no accountability. The meritocracy that once made this nation great is no longer. Our democratic ideals are dying out in favor of a nouveau nobility. Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes, and more.
Our executives in the governmental realm behave more like kings than officers of the public trust. Our corporate chiefs act like spoiled children of nobility who are given a small fiefdom to run... often into the ground. Corporate boards are comprised of executives from other, often competing, companies. One CEO may have a board whose members are CEOs at companies whose boards on which they themselves serve. Can anyone say mutual masturbation?
Our leaders are modern day robber barons; thieves, confidence men, and thugs. I mean that with no poetry and in all ways literally. We have yet to see the Obama Administration in action, of course. While I am allowing myself to hope a bit, I know history too well to get my hopes too high. Washington has a way of changing those who mean to come to town and root out the rotten core of our government.
The momentum of this financial crisis has not slowed one bit. No one talks about this, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much to blame for our financial problems as the mortgage crisis. The defecits we run (roughly $400 billion a year for the last few years) do not count the cost of the wars we are engaged in. They are funded with emergency supplemental spending bills - off books. The true defecits we have been running are north of half a trillion dollars a year.
Do you hear that sound? It sounds like a giant toilet flushing... and we're on our way out with the crap.
"Survivalist"
This word is oft maligned as meaning "gun nut", "militia freak", "racial supremacist", "radical", or "wingnut." This is not what the word means to most of the community.
While I am not a prominent member of the survivalist community, I do consider myself a survivalist. To me the word "survivalism" means, in its most basic form, "preparedness." So to be a survivalist means to be someone who is prepared or who strives to be prepared for the day when the trucks stop delivering me my food and when the lights go out.
To be honest, no one can foresee exactly what shape the coming gridcrash will take. Will the markets melt down and banks fail causing currencies around the globe to go into a hyper-deflationary spiral? Will there be an attack on Washington which will cause a lapse in centralized authority leading to riots born of panic? Or will budget shortfalls in the fed, state, and local levels coupled with high unemployment cause government to essentially be ineffective and overwhelmed leading to defacto anarchy? We saw how well the fed responded to a disaster like Katrina. Or, on the radical end of the spectrum, will a bug escape some Army lab and wipe out 90% of the world a la Stephen King's The Stand (minus the supernatural stuff)?
The point of the last paragraph is to say that there's no telling how, or even if, the shit will truly hit the fan. How does that influence the survivalist's mindset? I can't speak for others, but for me it means having a flexible, generalized plan that can handle as many eventualities as possible. It means learning a whole metric ass ton of information on the basics:
- Prioritization - What must you have? What can you do without if you had to? What do you do first?
- Water - Treatment and sourcing
- First Aid - Not bleeding to death
- Growing and Storing Food - Gardening, composting, and food preservation
- Hunting - When the supermarket runs out of meat, you'll need to hunt, kill, and prepare game of some sort. This will be especially important years when your garden's yield is less than expected
- Sanitation - Getting rid of waste and possibly using it as compost
- Energy Engineering - When the lights go out, can you get them back on? Can you setup a wind turbine? Could you construct one? How about biodiesel? A tractor would make that farm way more productive...
- Outdoorsmanship - If you had to spend a night outdoors in the winter, could you? How about a week? A month?
- Gunsmithing and Marksmanship - Fixing, cleaning, and shooting guns
- Construction - If a tree falls on your roof and knocks a hole in it, could you repair it?
- Brewing - Making your own beer, because what the hell is life without beer?
Just think of all the stuff you call on others to do. Do you have even the slightest clue how to do that yourself? Some things will just go away. For most, electricity will simply be gone or could be unreliable, at best. How will you preserve your food without the handy-dandy refrigerator?
Not too long ago we knew how to take care of ourselves. My grandparents canned food from their garden and so did my father and mother. They didn't do it because they were poor and had to, either. To the contrary, my grandparents and parents were on the more afluent side of the middle class. Our great-grandparents didn't have refrigerators and it was a way of life for them to grow food and preserve it themselves.
In hard times, can you trust the cop who hasn't been paid in two months? They may be in as tough or tougher a bind than you are (more likely the latter). They are just like you except they have authority and a gun. I have to admit, if my family were hurting and I had the gun and authority, I'd be sorely tempted to use it to my family's advantage.
A survivalist, in short, does not take for granted the notion that the cushy comforts of modern life will always be there. In many ways, a survivalist is a rationalist. Look at our economy. Unsustainable and obviously broken on a fundamental level. Look at our energy consumption habits. Unsustainable and terrible for our environment. Look at our modern society. Stupid, lazy, and isolated with no signs of improvement. Look at our leadership. Incompetent and corrupt.
Who wouldn't be concerned? Who wouldn't look at all of that and wonder when we'll reach the tipping point which brings it all crashing down? A survivalist is someone who sees the big picture and resolves to not be a victim. A survivalist may be your savior one day...
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