Survival Resources 1: The Need

I wrote this summer about the notion that there was a collapse coming and, in fact, we might well be in the middle of it. (See my post, Collapse, 7/5/10.) A friend of mine is organizing a band of people who want to learn survival skills in preparation for a time when things may get worse.

I think this is a really good idea, for several reasons:

First, it's better to prepare for the worst and not have it happen, then not be prepared if something really bad does happen.

Second, these same skills may also be useful even if the bad events that happen are personal or local rather than societal. (For example, a fire or flood or earthquake.) There has been a lot of this happening within the last decade--the destruction of the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina being some US examples. Of course, you can argue that much of this is related to societal collapse--the increase in the number and severity of hurricanes being a function of climate change and the attack on the World Trade Center coming in response to the US interventions in the Middle East (which I would argue are related to peak oil).

Finally, many of these skills are also skills related to living simply and sustainably, and I think they will be useful even if the social collapse is slow and gentle--or if it doesn't happen and we need to take this abusive system we live in apart and create something new.

So I am going to spend the next series of posts exploring skills and resources that may be useful as we look at ways to survive no matter what happens.

A final question: What's the difference between what I am talking about and those militant survivalists holing up with years worth of supplies, waiting for the world to end? My answer: Most of those survivalists want to make sure that they survive--or maybe that their families survive. I want to see to it that as many people survive as possible--that we look at the idea of community survival rather than just individual survival. Therefore the wider these ideas are spread the better. I want to see 'a World that Works for Everyone' and I think these tools may help us get there.


Quote of the Day: "...for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive..." - Audre Lorde