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I just ignored all the annoying Christian bits, that were like mossies buzzing in my brain, and read for information purposes only!
Rawles’ How to Survive the End of World as We Know It,528 is essential y the distil ation of the wisdom of his survivalblog.com between covers and one of the outstanding books on this field. If budget constraints for a reader were great that only, say, 10 books could be purchased, I would definitely put this book in the top 10 list, along with Stein’s When Technology Fails, which jointly cover most of the bases including firearms and self-protection. Rawles adopts the 528 James Wesley, Rawles, How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques and Technologies for Uncertain Times, (Plume Books, Penguin, New York, 2009).
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original approach to developing survival lists, giving a master “list of lists” from which people work on making up their own survival lists. Thus, the list of lists would cover the basic areas of water, food storage, food preparation, personal items, first-aid/minor surgery, chemical/nuclear/biological/pandemic defenses, gardening, hygiene/
sanitation, hunting/fishing/trapping, power, lighting, batteries, fuels, firefighting, tactical living, general security, security/firearms, communications and monitoring, tools, survival books, barter and charity. Rawles then goes into dot point details under each of these sub-categories.
Religion aside, Rawlesian survivalism embraces sound principles which I see as worthy of acceptance: lower populated areas are preferable to higher populated areas, exercise restraint, but be prepared to use lethal force if necessary. There is strength in numbers
– retreat groups should ideal y make use of a number of families for 24/7 security, the need for skil s over technology, wealth in tangible goods rather than fiat currencies, seek good soil, clean water and adequate rainfall for agriculture, store adequate and surplus supplies, food storage is needed as crops may fail, undertake proper training with all tools including guns, use of “appropriate technologies”529 such as a blacksmith’s forge in col apse situations; the better prepared one is, the more can one help others - some technologies offer advantages in the short term (e.g. night vision gear and communication equipment), and some in the longer term (e.g. barbed wire and razor wire). Seek out skilled, reliable friends with practical knowledge, fortify your retreat, which ideal y you should at live at all year round, and live simply and frugal y.
Before moving on to consider worthy self-reliance and self-sufficiency books, nuclear war survival skil s should be briefly mentioned. Dr Bruce Clayton’s Life after Doomsday 530 is a still-relevant classic, and his more recent Life after Terrorism 531 updates 529 E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (Harper and Row, New York, 1973).
530 Bruce D. Clayton, Life After Doomsday (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1992).
531 Bruce D. Clayton, Life after Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Survive in Today’s World (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2002).
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things with a consideration of more recent horrors including biological and chemical warfare and much more. Available online is the respected book by Cresson Kearney, Nuclear War Survival Skil s (1986).532 The US Armed Forces, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Survival Manual (2003)533 is also worth consulting, as mentioned earlier in this chapter. I have not gone into detail about nuclear, biological, chemical and equal y important, nanotechnology threats and survival strategy, as I plan to devote a future work to this if there is still time before doomsday.
Medicine and surgery, beyond basic first-aid, is an area requiring specialist knowledge, skill and training, and to preserve some of this knowledge, especial y in the areas of public health and preventive medicine, is essential. There is no need for the world to go back to “bad air” and “evil spirit” theories of disease and books on pathologies can be acquired from university bookshops or second-hand book sales that are usual y held by students at the beginning of the university year. Textbooks on anatomy, physiology, dentistry and surgical procedures, would be useful for general preservation of knowledge purposes and to better inform amateur medical and surgical practices in the desperate times ahead. Basic obstetrics and the delivery of babies should be learnt. I assisted my then-wife in the delivery of my first daughter, and if I can do it, you can too. Along with this, it is worthwhile having a basic surgical outfit of stainless-steel instruments – maybe someone qualified will wonder into your orbit, or you may be lucky and have someone come aboard before the col apse (but whose instruments are inconveniently back at the burnt-out hospital).
I have in mind here instruments such as a bone saw (amputations), Mayo and Metzenbaum scissors, lift-out forceps, dissecting forceps, an obstetrics kit, small curved clamps, large curved clamps, and an ample supply of disposable scalpels. Most survivalist books cite David Werner (with Carol Thuman and Jane Maxwell), Where 532 Cresson Kearney, Nuclear War Survival Skil s (1986), at http://www.oism.org/nwss/.
533 US Armed Forces, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Survival Manual (Basic Books, New York, 2003).
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There is No Doctor: A Vil age Health Care Handbook 534 along with Murray Dickson, Where There is No Dentist,535 as must-have books.
I agree that these are very good texts, but they are not true col apse or survival medicine books for col apse situations. Here Dr Joseph Alton and Amy Alton’s The Doom and Bloom Survival Medicine Handbook 536 offers instruction where the system has col apsed and there is no hospital to go to, true col apse medicine. Other books in the preventive and emergency paradigm, which consider grid down situations, are Ralph La Guardia, The Doomsday Book of Medicine 537
and Gerard S. Doyle, When There is No Doctor. 538 Useful books include William W. Forgey, Wilderness Medicine: Beyond First Aid,539
Paul S. Auerbach, Wilderness Medicine 540 and Hugh L. Coffee, Ditch Medicine: Advance Field Procedures for Emergencies. 541 Obviously enough, in a col apse situation prevention is much better than cure
– all the more reason to get a good diet and exercise in order to avoid the diseases of modern moron civilization such as heart disease and diabetes. There is room for herbal medicines and micronutrient therapy, perhaps even to tackle disease such as cancer.542
After the media image of survivalists as crazies tramping through the scrub with guns, comes the image of survivalists as stockpilers of supplies and food. So, let us not disappoint them. There are a 534 David Werner (with Carol Thuman and Jane Maxwell), Where There Is No Doctor: A Vil age Health Care Handbook (Hesperian Foundation, Berkeley, Ca, 1992 and June 2003).
535 Murray Dickson, Where There is No Dentist (Hesperian Foundation, Berkeley, CA, 2010).
536 Joseph Alton and Amy Alton, The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way, 2nd edition (Doom and Bloom, 2013).
537 Ralph La Guardia, The Doomsday Book of Medicine, (Mindstir Media, 2015).
538 Gerald S. Doyle, When There Is No Doctor: Preventive and Emergency Home Healthcare in Chal enging Times (Process Media, Port Townsend, 2010).
539 William W. Forgery, Wilderness Medicine: Beyond First Aid (The Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2000). See also www.wildernessmedicine.com.
540 Paul S. Auerbach, Wilderness Medicine, 5th edition (Mosby Elsevier, Philadelphia, 2007).
541 Hugh L. Coffee, Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures for Emergencies (Paladin Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2002)
542 See Raymond Francis, Never Fear Cancer Again (Health Communications, Deerfield Beach, 2011).
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number of excellent books available to help you get started on food stockpiling and preserving grown food. Kathy Harrison’s Just in Case 543 and Peggy Layton’s Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook 544 have already been mentioned, and both books provide a wealth of information on food storage and preparation. Harrison introduces the oar syste
m: organise, acquire and rotate, where you actively manage your food stockpile, keeping track of “use by dates”
and using food then replacing it. The food stored will be foods that one’s family actual y eats. One of my friends, for example, stockpiled numerous tins of cheap meat without first trying it. When he did feast on the contents of a tin he and his family found the meat too fatty and salty to eat. Even the dog wouldn’t eat it. Another take-home message is that while you can’t live on bread alone, bread and soup is a possibility: soups and casseroles are excellent foods. Tin soup, mixed with rice or soup mix, can make a quick meal.
Jack Spigarelli’s Crisis Preparedness Handbook 545 gives a comprehensive guide to emergency and survival preparations, including survival tools to store and stockpile: clothing, heat, cooking and light, sanitation, medical and dental, home preparation and management, communications, preparations for terrorist attack (biological, chemical and nuclear), but focuses largely on food and water stockpiling, food production and food preservation in chapters 5-19 of the book. Spigarelli, also says that one should store the types of foods that a family will normal y eat, because children faced with an absolutely boring diet may starve. Adults too may lose interest in food if it is “oh no, not fuckin’ baked beans again!” even if the mistake of my friend with the fatty, salty meat mentioned in the paragraph above is avoided.
There is merit in putting aside a large stockpile of the Mormon
“basic four” of wheat, sugar (honey), powdered milk and salt. It is 543 Harrison, as above, p. 804.
544 Layton, as above.
545 Jack A. Spigarelli, Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival, 2nd updated edition (Cross-Current Publishing, Alpine, Utah, 2002).
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possible, if you know what you are doing, to add variety to these staples by making from gluten, the protein part of flour, a meat substitute which can be made into various dishes. But, as said, you will need to know how to prepare this and be a good cook. Further, the narrower the base of foods you have, the greater the risk of starvation if you or family develop allergies to a particular item, such as wheat and wheat products (gluten) and cow’s milk (lactose). As wel , this diet is lacking in fats and vitamins, although vitamins could come from fresh fruit and vegetables to be added to it. But, even then, the diet is lacking in essential fats such as omega 3 fatty acids. At a minimum, the Mormon basic four should be expanded to include as well as the four – oils (especial y olive oil), a variety of grains and legumes, multi-vitamins and micronutrients such as selenium supplements, protein powder, herbs, seasonings and leavening agents. Olive oil trees can be grown both for oil and use can be made of olive leaf extracts, an excellent herbal treatment for a range of heart and respiratory conditions.
Stored food will deteriorate at various speeds, depending on storage conditions, losing nutrients, palatability and in the case of foods like yeast, thickeners and gelatines, their functional properties.546
There is, surprisingly enough, little scientifical y based knowledge on the shelf life of various foods and most of the figures cited in various books are estimates.547 There is general agreement that salt and maybe sugar under ideal (moisture-free) storage conditions lasts indefinably, but beyond that there is little agreement. Some figures for il ustration are: canned goods (two years, although under ideal conditions), canned fish (three to five years), dried dairy products (five years), dried fruits and vegetables (seven years), dried beans and legumes (seven years), grains (other than wheat, e.g. oats, 10 years), wheat (10-20 years), Meals Ready to Eat (mre, 3 + years), dehydrated food (10-15 years), and freeze dried (7-25 years). As an example, decades ago I used to crash in a friend’s office in Austin so I could get to college, readily while doing my science degree, then PhD in applied mathematics, part time. I general y ate “power muesli” for 546 Hol y Drennan Deyo, Dare to Prepare! (Deyo Enterprises, Pueblo West, 2006).
547 Spigarelli, as above, p. 52.
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lunch – oats, dried fruit, protein powder and powdered milk. One day I didn’t/couldn’t eat lunch and the guy renting the office said that he would store the contents in a jar and when we left the office, he would eat the power muesli. The food sat there for years, in an office under a tin roof (level four directly under that tin roof) and no air conditioning, exposed to light and often 40 C + temperatures in the summer. When we left the office years later I reminded him of his boast about eating the feast. He tipped out a handful and tossed it down. It was, “ok, I’ve eaten better.” Talk about tough guys. But, did the oats have any worthwhile nutritional content?
Spigarelli cites a study that found that 40-year-old canned cream corn, fruit cocktail and green peas were about nutritional y equivalent to some freshly canned foods.548 He says that canned goods retain, even after a number of years, 50-90 percent of their vitamin content, and all of their proteins, fats and carbohydrates.549 Spigarelli puts the shelf life of canned food at 2 ½ - 7 years. However, I have tried to store tin food under “ideal conditions” (cool, dry etc.) and have never kept a tin of canned food “alive” more than about four years, especial y with tomatoes in it (i.e. baked beans = acid) My bad luck!
Thus, Lundin’s advice is good advice: “take all prophetic advice about how long your vittles’ will be vital with a grain of salt. The sure way out of this dilemma is to rotate your food by storing what you eat and eating what you store. ”550
Dehydrated, air-dried, freeze-dried and canned foods, all have their advantages and disadvantages, especial y with respect to cost, with freeze-dried and air-dried foods general y costing substantial y more than canned food. On the principle of not putting all of one’s eggs in the one basket, it is ideal to build up one’s food reserves using a variety of these types of foods such as freeze-dried meats, dehydrated foods like powered milk, potatoes, cheese, eggs and soups and 548 As above.
549 Survival Diva, “The Mother of All Food Storage Myths,” September 13, 2012, at http://
survivethecomingcol apse.com/1970/the-mother-of-all-food-storage-myths .
550 Lundin, as above, p. 239; “What You Need to Know about Eating Expired Food,”
November 18, 2015, at http://www.backdoorsurvival.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-eating-expired-food/;
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canned foods like fruit, vegetables and ready-to-go soups. There is no “one size fits all perfect food storage plan”; rather each individual survival unit, typical y a family, will need to devise a plan to best suit their ends and tastes. In a col apse situation food will be one of the few remaining pleasures in life and for the purposes of morale, needs to be something to look forward to and keep one, keeping on.
It is important to properly store food in food grade storage containers that protect the food from insects and pests such as rats and mice. A friend prepared for the y2k non-event, by buying various grain products and storing them in the plastic and paper bags they came in, in a storage area under the roof of his house. This was not wise in the first place because of heat, let alone mice. When I told him that he needed to deal with mice he arrogantly dismissed my concerns and put down rat poison and left the food. Not so! The entire stockpile was destroyed as the result of being an arrogant know-it-al .
What self-respecting rat or mouse would go for rat poison over tasty grain? He would have got no food from me if a col apse had occurred because I would not want to pretend to be wiser than the forces of natural selection and aid in the survival of the dumbest.
In a nutshel , what food items should be put away by people on a tight budget, who just cannot think through all of these issues for themselves because they are so time-strapped from working long hours for minimal pay, just to keep body and soul together?
“Health ranger” Mike Adams has put together a shopping list of 50
items.551 Adams makes the point that
salt will be hard to come by in a col apse situation, so sea salt (which has iodine) should be put away in large quantities. It lasts indefinitely under ideal conditions, and it is possible to store enough, in suitable glass containers, to last generations. There is almost nothing written on the ultra-long-term storage chemistry of food grade plastics because these things haven’t existed long enough to judge their stability over a few hundred years.
Will chemicals leak into the salt after 50 or more years? What about 551 Mike Adams, “Fifty Food Items to Stockpile Now: Health Ranger Releases Preparedness Foods Shopping Lists,” August 22, 2012 at http://www.naturalnews.com/036907_
emergency_foods_shopping_list_discounts.html.
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100 years? Ideal y, for ultra-long-term storage, use glass containers.
In the distant future salt can be obtained from journeys to the oceans.
Self-Reliance and Self-Sufficiency Philosophy The self-reliance/self-sufficiency and ecology movement has produced a range of useful works for the survivalist. Zachary Nowak in Crash Course: Preparing for Peak Oil,552 gives a useful review of books and lists many useful websites, as does Ted Trainer’s “Simpler Way” website aimed for small scale self-sufficient local economies, the abandonment of consumerism and adoption of simple living.553 Some key books to consult are Carla Emery, The Encyclopaedia of Country Living,554 John and Martha Storey, Storey’s Basic Country Skil s 555
and A. R. Gehring (ed.), Back to Basics. 556 Today the living simply/
organic/permaculture/minimalism traditions are “mainstream” and newsagents often hold an array of magazines such as Mother Earth News and Permaculture (www.permaculutre.co.uk), Grass Roots, Earth Garden (www.earthgarden.com.au) and Warm Earth (www.
warmearth.com.au). Of course, many more US produced magazines will be available. There are also many excellent “off-grid” living books, worthy to consider, because long-term survival in the future will definitely be off-grid, or rather, no grid.557