443 See: Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2003); Roger Ma, The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead (Berkley Books, New York, 2010).
444 Chris Lisle, “Prepare for Peak Oil on a Budget,” at http://ebookbrowse.com/how-to-plan-for-peak-oil-on-a-limited-budget-pdf-d230019877.
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good sleeping bag can keep you cosy warm in any climate under any conditions, be it rain, sleet or snow.
Wel , maybe, but a tarp, ground sheet and tent/swag would be an improvement – and why not treat yourself, for this is teotwawki!
Put a good synthetic sleeping bag on the shopping list, and if you haven’t got one, get one soon. Or, buy two.
James Ballou’s Long-Term Survival in the Coming Dark Age 445 is an excellent introduction to new Dark Age col apseology. The foreword is by Ragnar Benson, a leading survivalist author. Neither Ballou nor Benson speculate about the most likely cause of The Great Col apse and the book plunges straight into strategies and tactics for long-term survival. Long-term survival differs from shorter-term disaster preparedness insofar as there is going to be nobody coming to rescue you because there is no rescue. All has been lost. Cites will become
“violent slum areas for the most part plagued with disease,”446 as with no government and no government support services, human waste, and human violence will not be contained. Hence, there is a need to retreat/bug out from cites to rural areas, and ultimately live much simpler lives, with tribal living for protection. There will be stalking, killing and butchering game (what is left) for meat, along with gathering wild foods, with horticulture and agriculture the main food sources. Until, or while, such practices are being put in place, short-term survival will be by drawing on food stockpiles, accumulated before the Great Col apse.
Ballou’s book discusses bugging out (also discussed below447), but the most important sections of the book deal with life in the post-col apse world. Pre-col apse there is an urgent need for people to acquire extensive self-defence skil s (with firearms and other weapons) as well as practical skil s e.g. medicine over arts, blacksmithing over the humanities, mathematics and philosophy, 445 James Ballou, Long-Term Survival in the Coming Dark Age: Preparing to Live After Society Crumbles (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2007).
446 As above, p. 3.
447 See James Ballou, The Poorman’s Wilderness Survival Kit: Assembling Your Emergency Gear for Little or No Money (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2013).
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woodworking skil s over law. The world of paper and computer work, the world of talking, chattering and whinging, will be replaced by a practical, hands-on, can-do world – or death. A survival workshop, using hand tools as was done in the 19th century, needs to be established at one’s retreat, and I will discuss the issue of tools later in this chapter.448 Survivors will recycle and salvage everything, because as Chris Lisle noted, the great die off of the bulk of humanity will leave a mountains of resources (e.g. scrap metal, timber and other materials) that can be used by salvaging parties, once the formerly-populated areas are no longer a disease and security threat.
Nevertheless, the consumer society itself supplies many useful items that people throw away each day, such as containers to use for storage during the Dark Age. Rubbish dumps are a source for scrap timber and building materials which can be scavenged from the trash.449 Indeed – on “hard rubbish days,” consumers throw out great treasures for scroungers, such as old tools and scrap material that could be used for clothing. And, taking clothing as an example, in the
“short-term,” for about 50 years, I estimate, stockpiled clothing and clothes made from stored cloth and scavenged materials will sustain the survivors, but in the longer-term clothes and footwear will need to be made first hand from fibers, animal hides and leather.
Ballou’s Long-Term Survival in the Coming Dark Age, and related books, are a useful starting point for one’s survival framework of knowledge. I suggest that it can be supplemented by further books and information organized under the following topics: 1. Bug out and survival retreats.
2. Wilderness and backwoods survival philosophy.
3. Disaster preparedness philosophy.
4. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency philosophy.
5. Tools and the craftsman.
6. Zombie apocalypse preparation and survival philosophy.
448 See further James Ballou, Makeshift Workshop Skil s for Survival and Self-Reliance (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2009) and More Makeshift Workshop Skills (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2011).
449 As above, p. 68.
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Bug Out and Survival Retreats
Although some survivalists believe that urban survival is possible in situations of much less severity than a col apse, in general, survivalists such as Ragnar Benson, Bruce D. Clayton, Jeff Cooper, Cresson Kearny, James Wesley Rawles, Kurt Saxon, Joel Skousen and Mel Tappan, have favoured bug-out locations (bols) or survival retreats.450
Piero San Giorgio in Survive the Economic Col apse,451 writes of the need to find a “Sustainable Autonomous Base” (sab), a “secure space” with “rootedness, autonomy, permanence,” “where one cannot merely survive, but hopeful y thrive, living perhaps more simply, but wel .”452 sab is based on seven fundamental principles discussed in their own chapters in his book and are (1) water; (2) food; (3) hygiene and health; (4) energy: (5) knowledge; (6) defense and (7) the social band, creating a tribe (a genuine “community” rather than a socialist hippy commune) for genetic and socio-cultural reproduction. Some of the basic aspects of the sab will be discussed in this chapter and in this book.
Mel Tappan in Tappan on Survival 453 argued that population density is a major factor in choosing a retreat because retreats less than a tank of gas away from population centers face the real risk of being overrun by systems-dependent people. Apart from the problems of hungry mobs and roaming bands of looters, there is the problem of disease. Tappan listed other factors affecting retreat locations such as whether nuclear power plants are in the vicinity (in case they are abandoned and not shut down and go into meltdown).
Locating near military bases or National Guard armories may prove problematic, in case the troops ultimately decide to be the new warlords in a col apse, or maybe worse, they desert to be with their 450 “Retreat (Survivalism),” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_(survivalism);” Ragnar Benson, The Modern Survival Retreat: A New and Vital Approach to Retreat Theory and Practice (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1998).
451 Piero San Giorgio, Survive the Economic Col apse: A Practical Guide (Radix/Washington Summit Publishers, Whitefish, 2013).
452 As above, p. 250.
453 Mel Tappan, Tappan on Survival (Janus Press, Rogue River, 1981).
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families leaving the ghouls and associated scum to feast on highly destructive weapons that will ultimately be unleashed against you.
Nuclear war targets are also another matter of concern. Radiation fallout patterns need to be considered. The site also needs to be farmable with good soil and water, and ideal y hunting, trapping and or fishing should be available. It is a matter though of trade-offs and balancing factors in decision making, and single-family retreats were not regarded by Tappan as desirable given that if the retreats are found by looters, the superior force will win. Thus, he believed that long-term survival in a post-col apse world, especial y in the light of the problem of facing organized gangs of vicious looter, murders, rapists and cannibals—mzbs—would come from living in a small rural community up to about a population of 5,000 people, engaged primarily in agriculture, not industry.
Tappan felt, and I agree with him, that many people think that they can live, say, in a city and work, and when real y stinky, lumpy excreta hits th
e fan, bug out to their retreat, just in the nick of time.
The series Doomsday Preppers was full of these feet-in-both-camps bug out types. He said that there may be no clear warning at all and unless one is already living at one’s retreat, the odds are that one will never reach it. Living in such a “community” (that word again) has clear advantages over bug out options such as boat or mobile land retreats or isolated wilderness retreats, insofar as it is no longer necessary to guess correctly when the col apse will occur (the timing-problem) and it avoids the problems and dangers of bugging out travel e.g. safely getting to your retreat though the “zombies.” It also means that there is adequate time to prepare for the post-col apse world, stockpiling food, clothing, tools, seeds, firearms, ammunition, bladed and bludgeon melee weapons and other supplies. There is time to settle into the “community” and perhaps when confidences and trust are reached, begin preparing defenses ready for when tshtf.
It takes considerable time to convert an existing farm into a self-reliant post-apocalypse retreat, so having as much lead time as possible before the end is important. For example, it may take a number of years to get fruit trees and crops established. The last thing 166
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that a survivalist wants is to be in a post-apocalyptic situation and find crop failure (because of pests, diseases or personal incompetence), or find that soils are lacking in fertility. That is not the time to fail. Rick and co, in one edition of the graphic novel The Walking Dead, after fighting zombies for about two years, find that their tin food supply is starting to run out and he thinks it is time to find seeds and grow crops. The folk at Alexandria in amc’s The Walking Dead, season 6, episode 2, are also beginning a vegetable garden, at a time also of around two years into Post Apocalyptica, and only have it flourishing in season 9. Good luck fictional folks, you’ll need it. In reality all of them would have starved to death long ago.
Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre in his excellent book The Modern Survival Manual,454 has presented a survival treatise based on his first-hand experience of living through the 2001 economic col apse in Argentina. He differs from survivalists such as Tappan and Saxon in being critical of the approach of retreating to the country side.455 Aguirre argues against this based on surviving Argentina’s economic col apse. He sees governments surviving and coming to the countryside to confiscate food. As wel , most people can’t bug out and live off the land given large population numbers, so they will stay in cities. A similar position has been taken by “Survival Mom.”456 And isn’t “Mom” always right? Wel , no.
To this much can be said in reply, due respect to motherhood and all that. It is true that governments may survive a partial economic col apse as Argentina periodical y has done, but a complete col apse where the army and police do not get paid and hence desert their posts, is one where the government does not survive. Further, there is no reason why, if a government survives, it won’t confiscate food from people in the city: it has and wil . Season 1 of Fear the Walking 454 Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre, The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Col apse (The Author, 2009).
455 “4 Things Doom-And-Gloomers Got Total y Wrong,” June 2, 2014, at http://ferfal.
blogspot.com.au/2014/06/4-things-doom-and-gloomers-got-total y.html.
456 Survival Mom, “13 Reasons a Rural Retreat May Not be the Safe Refuge You Might Think,” September 26, 2015, at http://thesurvivalmom.com/rural-survival-retreats-not-safe-refuge/.
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Dead gives a dramatic il ustration of this with the US Army becoming essential y a barbarian gang. Further, as described in The Modern Survival Manual, cities become highly dangerous places during an economic col apse, with gangs conducting block-by-block home invasions, and although violent crime in the US had gone down in the past few years, 2019 has seen a surge of homicides in several US cities, with some cities’ homicide rates, such as Baltimore’s, “exploding.”457
Thus, almost everywhere becomes dangerous in a col apse, but the larger number of people in the city makes the probability of attack greater than in the country. Those considerations are based solely on an economic col apse scenario, and consideration of pandemic disease spread makes a general case against city-based survivalism, although, of course, circumstances could dictate otherwise if terrorists decided to attack rural areas first. The terrorist group Boko Haram, for example, has attacked rural targets in Nigeria, (killing 86 people in late January, 2016, with children being burnt alive), but most of its attention has been on city targets, such as with its bombing of the United Nations office in Abuja. Ferfal in his book does not consider the possibility of a more general col apse involving ecological variables, as discussed here and in Piero San Giorgio’s equal y as admirable treatise Survive the Economic Col apse.
While Ferfal is critical of “off grid,” presumably isolationist survivalism, he does say:
I recommend basical y what I later learned Mel Tappan recommended as well: live in a small town or community.
This community or subdivision should be close enough to a moderately-sized city with enough job opportunities, education and entertainment.458
However, there can be a case made even for isolationist survivalism in the classic lone family/tribe or even individual sense. A global 457 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/19/homicides-toll-big-u-scities-2017/302763002/, J. LaFond and J. J. Bowie, Letters from the Fall; Civilization Decomposes (Independently Published, April 18, 2019).
458 Aguirre, as above, p. 37.
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pandemic, a “zombie apocalypse” disease of a flu with a high mortality, will spread quickly in a large city where people live like hens in a chicken coop. A small town could more easily practice quarantine and an isolated doomster essential y exists in perpetual quarantine.
Consequently, context decides everything; in some desperate survival situations, there is merit even in an isolationist approach. Certainly, in a classic The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse, where even in a small town an infection could occur, isolation, like silence would be golden.459And it can be done—Soichi Yokio, a Japanese WW II solider who refused to surrender after the end of the war, lived in a cave in the jungles of Guam from 1945-1972—alone, and with much less resources than we have.460
There is a large quantity of literature available about bug out locations for the United States, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia, but relatively less for Asia, and South America.461 Joel M. Skousen has published respected books in this field, including Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places,462 which in its third edition gives a comprehensive guide to the threats that North Americans and Canadians face, from economic col apse to nuclear war, with associated strategic analyses. For example, there are considerations of the most dangerous areas for earthquakes, the top ten most economical US states to live in, and states with no sales tax and so on. Skousen also offers paid consultation for those seeking special contingency retreat plans.463 Joel Skousen has also published The Secure Home, 464 which tel s you how to construct high security, fortified retreats, both in terms of construction of such retreats as 459 For a general discussion and criticism of alleged problems with the American redoubt concept see, “The Problem with the American Redoubt Concept,” December 24, 2014, at http://ferfal.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/the-problem-with-american-redoubt.html.
460 C. Nyergen, “Thirty Years in the Jungle! Could You do It?” At www.primitiveways.com/
jungle_30_years.html.
461 “Survivalist Retreat,” at http://www.conservapedia.com/Survivalist_retreat.
462 Joel Skousen, Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places, 3rd edition, (Joel Skousen Designs, 2011).
463 See
http://www.joelskousen.com; [email protected].
464 Joel Skousen, The Secure Home, 3rd edition, (Swift, 1999).
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well as remodelling existing retreats. He has also produced Special Reports, such as How to Implement High Security Shelter in the Home (1996)465 and How to Fortify a Closet, for those on a budget who cannot afford to build a vault room.
James Wesley, Rawles has published the excellent Rawles on Retreats and Relocation 466 and there is some discussion of retreatism in his survivalist novel, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Col apse,467 although a more detailed discussion is given on the fortification of retreats, reinforcing houses, constructing anti-vehicular ditches, obstacles, and so on. Of course the ballistical y-protected house can also integrate a fallout shelter as wel . Rawles’
Survival Blog.com has a superb discussion of recommended retreat areas in North America, favouring Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, as the top five US retreat states, and Kalifornication as the worst. Interestingly enough, Alaska is not an ideal retreat location because although it is the US state with the lowest population density, it has the second highest crime rate of the US states per capita and most goods, even food, are transported in.
Those most likely to survive are seasoned backwoodsmen and native tribal folk having outdoors skil s and able to live self-sufficiently, from hunting and fishing. Much of the land is covered with ice and snow at least half of the year. By contrast, California has a mild climate and long growing seasons, but an appalling post-white socio-political climate and draconian gun control laws, massive illegal and
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