Survive- The Economic Collapse

by Piero San Giorgio

  It was from this concept, which the authors graciously permitted me to borrow, that I developed a program constructed upon seven fundamental principles. These will allow you to put in place an SAB, your SAB.

  The seven fundamental principles are:

  Water

  Food

  Hygiene and Health

  Energy

  Knowledge

  Defense

  The Social Bond

  In the coming chapters, we are going to cover each of these principles. We will also see how to choose a location for your SAB as well as the different ways it can function from day to day.

  *

  Miguel worked his whole life as a concierge.

  He bought himself a house in his native Portugal. Over the years, according to his means, he and his brothers, along with a sister and cousins, transformed this old country house into an SAB. He has put an abandoned well into working order, redone the roof, installed several cisterns for collecting winter rainwater and is thus able to face the increasingly dry, hot summers. His cousin is a tile setter, and was able to redo the bathrooms with the help of friends from the next village, as well as install a septic pit. They have also worked to construct a small henhouse with 1,000 chickens, which one of his brothers manages, while his wife takes care of the garden. Miguel thinks that by the time he is 60, this place will allow him to spend his retirement comfortably and, in case things get rough, let him shelter his family.

  Point 1: Water

  <
  benjamin franklin

  inventor, businessman, & politician

  //1706-1790//

  <
  abraham lincoln

  politician

  Message to Congress

  /1862/

  Water is indispensable to life; you could say water is life. To establish an SAB, a whole hierarchy of needs must be satisfied, the first of which is water. But let’s first remember that the hierarchy of human needs is constituted of five levels, according to the celebrated scheme of Abraham Maslow. His research showed that human beings try to satisfy each lower-level need before thinking about the needs on the immediately higher level. This is why one can speak of a hierarchy or pyramid. For example, it is preferable to satisfy physiological needs before the need for security; this is why, in a situation where our survival is at stake, we are ready to take certain risks.

  These five levels of needs are:

  physiological (breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping);

  security (of body, of employment, of health, of property);

  love and belonging (friendship, family, intimacy);

  esteem (confidence, the respect of others, self-esteem, achievement);

  self-realization (morality, creativity, problem-solving, etc.).

  The day public utilities no longer work, you will only be able to count on your own preparation to supply your needs for water. You can improvise a lot of things, but not water. Water is hard to create; it must be found. Water is the key resource to master in an SAB, because it allows life, it allows food to be raised and prepared, and because without water, you have nothing. This is where we must begin.

  Water for human consumption and for irrigation is increasingly difficult to obtain in this world. Over 80 countries, representing more than 40 percent of world population, are already facing water shortages. Infrastructure costs connected with water have increased sharply: it must be pumped from deeper levels or sought at greater distances. Water quality has deteriorated because of pollution, contamination with waste water from growing cities, from industry and from agriculture. Ecosystems are dying one after the other. One billion persons in the world lack drinking water, and three billion have neither water on tap nor a way of getting rid of waste water. Eighty percent of infectious diseases are water-transmitted. It is not for nothing that water has been called “blue gold.” Most people in the West, along with those who live comfortably elsewhere in the world, are used to unlimited quantities of excellent drinking water: for their baths, showers, toilets, washing machines, dish washers, pools, lawns, and gardens. In the great majority of cases, such water is drinkable. If the distribution or filtering of this water were to stop, not only would the reservoirs empty out quickly, but the population and industry would soon have to seek water from open sources such as rivers, swamps, lakes, etc. Obviously, rainwater could be saved. But such water must be stocked and transported, especially if you install your SAB in regions where rains are seasonal or the climate dry, which may increasingly become the case in the world thanks to climate change.

  You will need drinking water, but also clean water for your animals and to water your garden and your crops. And you will need water for hygienic reasons. Water is called “potable” (i.e., drinkable) when it satisfies certain criteria that render it suitable for human consumption. The standards in this area differ according to place and time and are, of course, informed by particular contexts and cultures. They determine the question of access to water, because good water is essential to economic and human development. Water is also the vector for a number of parasites, bacteria, and viruses. One must take precautions before drinking water in the wild. An apparently limpid and pure water can hide micro-organisms or pollutants. Prudence is called for: across the world, more than 22,000 persons die each day from drinking unhealthy water.

  Here are some of the possible contaminants and their consequences:

  bacterial contamination, which can cause such illnesses as cholera, typhus or dysentery;

  contamination by viruses (infectious hepatitis, etc.);

  contamination by parasites that are the origin of fevers and diarrhea, which cause complications if not treated quickly;

  contamination by parasitic worms (larvae swimming at the surface of the water; they can also get through the skin during bathing), which cause schistosomiasis, whose symptoms are abdominal pains, skin eruptions, anemia, and chronic fatigue;

  contamination by chemical pollutants (heavy metals, insecticides, hydrocarbons, etc.) with harmful effects (toxicity, neurotoxicity, cancer), especially in the case of prolonged consumption;

  contamination by algae or other toxic organisms in suspension.

  Water, even when fit for consumption, is never simply H2O. It can contain many dissolved salts, such as calcium and magnesium salts. It is then said to be “hard.” Spring water, for instance, contains various quantities of these salts; it can have, therefore, various levels of “hardness.” In France, the water of the Massif Central, the Vosges, the Armorican Massif as well as the Ardennes is soft, with less than 200 milligrams of salts per liter. In the Parisian basin, the Alps, the Pyrenees or the Jura, this concentration can reach 900 milligrams per liter. Check out what is the level in your area. For a person in good health, drinking hard water is not dangerous. Anything called spring water is naturally fit for human consumption. The only treatment useful for such water is aeration, decantation, and filtration.

  You need a lot of water for drinking, cooking, washing, irrigating crops, and watering animals. If, on a world average, a human being needs between 20 and 50 liters of water each day, just two or three are sufficient for drinking each day; that’s less than a gallon, but it’s still a lot—and it’s heavy if you need to carry it. This is the absolute minimum. Five or 10 additional liters are needed for cleaning and cooking. Your SAB should have enough water for these needs, but also to water the garden and the animals, etc. In an ideal situation, you should try, in fact, to find 50 to 70 liters of water per day for each person.

  Sources of Water

  Spring water. This is the best possible source of water for an SAB. A freshwater spring is often potable and of much better quality than the fluoridated or chlorinated water you get in the city, but it may be useful to get a laboratory analysis of the chemical and bacterial composition of the water. If
you chose a rural SAB, access to a spring, preferably on your own property, is very important and will certainly be one of the main criteria for choosing your location. It was for me. It is important to verify that the spring flows all year round (sometimes a source will run dry during the hot, dry months, and it may freeze in the winter, although this is rare). Your location will be even better if the spring water can be canalized through the force of gravity to supply your house and garden directly.

  Wells. These are an excellent source of water, but they require a pump, manual or electrical. A good solution is a photovoltaic or wind-driven pump feeding into a water tower or cistern, from which the water will then be lead by force of gravity into the house or onto the crops. You might use a water-level regulator to avoid having the cistern overflow: when the water level reaches a certain point, the pump shuts off. This is not expensive and works well.

  Precipitation. Rainwater is easy to collect in containers (water tanks, cisterns, drums, etc.) and can easily be used for irrigation, bathing, clothes washing, and sanitation. If it is filtered, it can also be used for drinking and cooking. One must be careful to use only clean containers for collecting rainwater.

  Rivers. Water can be pumped from rivers, streams, ponds, swamps, lakes, etc. It is essential to filter such water in order to make it potable.

  Sea and Ocean Water. If your SAB is by the ocean or on a boat, seawater is obviously an inexhaustible source, but it must be desalinized. For this one must invest in some rather costly materials relying on reverse osmosis.

  In any case, verify whether any waste (especially toxic waste or anything polluted with heavy metals, intensive agriculture using pesticides, etc.) is being discharged from factories upstream from your spring, aquifer, or river. It is important to do this research before buying any property. Afterwards, one must remain vigilant about any suspicious and potentially polluting activity.

  Water Treatment

  One of the ways of making water potable is to treat it. There are three stages involved. First, pre-filtering, which allows for the removal of organic and solid particles. The water must be passed through a filter or tissue (several cotton t-shirts, bath towels, blankets, etc.). Then, it must be treated with chlorine with the help of purification tablets (Micropur© or similar), which kill bacteria. (These tablets are easily found; you should carefully verify the dosage.) Finally, the water must be filtered again through a ceramic or carbon filter (Berkfeld©, Berky©, Steripen©, Katadyn©, MSR©, Aquamira©, Culligan©, PUR©, Water Sentinel©, etc.). Some of the above are great for fixed usage (my preference is Berkey©), some are ideal for carrying like the Katadyn©—choose the best combination for your usage. It is important to keep enough tablets and filter replacement parts in stock. A substitute for chlorine is ultraviolet radiation treatment. Pasteurization can also be a good system: the water must be heated to between 149 to 194 °F (65 and 90 °C) for a short period, which will kill the microbes. It is not necessary to boil water a long time. There are pasteurizers on the market that can be used for water, milk, and other liquids. You should buy the necessary materials in advance and test them, as well as locate the primary, secondary, and even tertiary water sources near your SAB. Make sure to have enough containers to carry water—bottles, canteens and the very useful jerrycans—should the need arise.

  If you live in an area without easy water sources available the whole year through, you must arrange for a lot of rainwater storage capacity, with large-volume plastic or concrete cisterns or tanks. To collect rainwater, you can use angled roofs, tarpaulins, etc., with different sized funnels that channel it into your storage places. In an emergency, one of your first thoughts should be how to store water. In the worst case, there is always toilet water and water-heater tanks: but these will only last a very short time. In the most extreme cases, it is also possible to boil rainwater, or recover swimming pool water by adding a little bleach (a drop of 7-10 percent bleach for each liter of water to be sterilized). In the worst of worst cases, you can drink your urine or seawater. Obviously, this is neither a sustainable nor an enjoyable system! But in the collapse, millions will be reduced to such methods. You, on the other hand, are preparing to be autonomous and sustainable during the coming “interesting times.”

  *

  Wilhelm has installed his SAB in an old farm on the edge of a forest in the Ardennes.

  He has fixed it up over a period of years with his buddies and is quite proud of the result: a stone wall around his little property (6000 m²), a vegetable garden, access to the forest for firewood, a little wind turbine for electricity, a few rifles for hunting and protection. Above all, he has dug a well that is always full, and there is a river not far away. The first time he tried drinking well-water, he got sick (he did it under normal, non-emergency conditions so he could be treated if the contamination was serious; it wasn’t, apart from one night spent on the toilet). The water is fine for the garden, but not for human consumption. Since then, he has installed a large ceramic filter. It cost a lot, but will be worth it the day the public water supply gets cut off (their area is no longer considered sufficiently profitable by the new Brazilian owners of the local water company). For greater security, Wilhelm’s SAB has several ceramic replacement filters in reserve.

  *

  Maurizio wanted to install his SAB in his urban apartment.

  In fact, he hasn’t gotten far with his preparations. On his balcony and the roof of his building, he has installed basins and old bathtubs to catch rainwater. He then filters the water through bath towels and uses Micropur purification tablets to render it potable. On the whole, this is not the greatest solution, but he has a better plan than that of most of his neighbors. Fortunately, there are several persons in his apartment who belong to a neighborhood association called “social solidarity” (before the crisis, it was considered to be far-out and far-right). The street was quickly secured thanks to a small militia they helped to raise; a service has also been put in place dedicated to finding food and recovering anything that might be useful. There is even a retired doctor in the building across the street from his (the one that hasn’t been burned, that is). Since the river is in the part of town under gang control, they get along by collecting as much rainwater as they can. A market is being organized thanks to “runners” who bring food from the park (now a giant vegetable garden) in exchange for metals and various objects of value. The neighborhood has become a haven of peace thanks to the security service organized by some ex-skinheads. In short, they are getting a working society back on its feet. After a serious clash with a neighboring gang for territorial control, there was a difficult period, but the war between gangs close to the river ended up leaving that area empty and destroyed; it was easily brought under control. With access to river water and the installation of manual pumps, the neighborhood is coming back to life. Now it is a zone of peace and industrious organization, helping to extend survival further and further.

  Point 2: Food

  <
  coluche

  humorist

  _revue de presse

  /1980/

  <
  jane goodall

  naturalist

  /2008/

  During a vacation in Iceland a few years ago, my girlfriend and I were looking forward to enjoying some fresh fish, since fishing is the largest industry of that beautiful country. We were disappointed. We were barely able to eat any fish, even in fishing villages. They explained to us that fish caught in the Atlantic Ocean were prepared, frozen, and wrapped on board the trawler; as soon as it docked, the fish were loaded directly onto a plane and sent to be sorted in London, Paris, Milan, and Frankfurt. We ended up fasting, in order to avoid eating frozen hamburgers for the whole vacation.

  This was a reminder that in the modern world, the essential part of our food is routed from its source of production to our plates by an extremely complex
—and fragile—system of supply. We have seen what can happen to this system in the case of a serious crisis and panic.

  For this and other reasons, food is the second fundamental principle of an SAB.

  How do you feed yourself in a time of crisis? The ideal is to be able to produce your own food, which means having a garden, raising animals, and being able to conserve a surplus for unproductive seasons. But since you can’t do all this in a day, you must begin by stocking food right away to guarantee reserves in case of an immediate crisis. Even when, later on, your SAB is perfectly autonomous and capable of permanently supplying the needs of its inhabitants, you must have stocks in case of bad harvests or a lack of nutrients.

  So, what should you stock up on and what should you grow? There are three rules to follow concerning food:

  Stock up or grow what gives you good, balanced nutrition. You must eat healthily in order to have the energy necessary for long workdays. Nutritional balance also assures effective metabolism and a better immune system. Sick persons and children must have the best possible nutrition to guarantee, respectively, their best chance of recovery and proper growth.

  Why abandon your gourmet habits, especially in difficult times when you’ll appreciate life’s little pleasures the most? Why sacrifice what you like and deprive yourself? Varied agriculture and a good complementary stock will give you high-quality, natural products with a taste and variety that will allow you to remain the gourmet or gourmand that (I hope) you are.