None of us are truly living off the grid
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If you look for hints about their motivations, it often strikes me as a way for people to feel like they have some sense of control over their future in a world they are disillusioned with. They sleep a little better at night thinking that they are going to get the last laugh while the boss that embarrassed them three years ago starves somewhere. The whole thing then morphs from “I’d better be prepared on the off chance something happens” to “I hope I get to show all of them before I die.”
I was/am a massive covid skeptic. None of the data made sense to me, from February into the summer of 2020. Im also unvaccinated for covid now.
But when lockdowns were starting... My family bought tons of supplies. Amounts you'd call insane or who knows what.
Do you know why I bought a lot of toilet paper and food and salt and flour??
In case I was wrong about covid.
If covid turned out to be as bad as the media was talking about (videos of Chinese people shaking in the streets, newspapers in Italy full of obituaries, morgues full and digging mass dirt graves on islands), I wasnt about to go back out into ebolla-ville and buy paper to wipe my ass.
Everyone presented it like hoarders were stupid to think supply lines in America would break down. That wasn't the point.
If covid was actually deadly and easy to transmit, I wouldn't want to go into the streets to restock items even if they were technically in the stores.
And the unwritten point being, if it turned out to be not so bad, your worst case is that you have a bunch of toilet paper that doesn't have an expiration date (or food you were going to eat anyway, or salt and flour that keeps for a long time, et al.). COVID skeptic or not, it seemed to be the smart hedge.
Call it anti-social if you want, but don't call people preparing for health preservation stupid.
But the thing is that I am truly worried to my core about global warming and I have been for more than a decade at this point. This year has brought anomalies that are terrifying and I think the majority of people at least now feel that something is going wrong. I don't want to see collapse - I like my showers and air conditioning as much as anyone. But the way things are just looks more and more precarious to me.
The fun realization for me has been that we're in a no-win scenario now. Even if climate change (which has been re-defined) is overly-stated, the policies that are being and will continue to be enacted as a response to it, guarantee immense suffering for billions and a general decline in quality of life.
The good news is that you can mitigate for much of the consequences by simply not being in the West, ideally in a commodity rich country.
That's interesting, my impression has been entirely the opposite, that Global South is going to suffer the worst of the consequences; as most parts of the West can afford to mitigate the effects with large investments in infrastructure and for western countries these consequences are outweighed by secondary-order effects i.e. migration and conflicts due to the more affected places.
And I promise you many people including most serious chefs would say there is a giant quality of life improvement from using gas stoves.
The problem is living 'off grid' is not new. Monasteries have been doing it for a while. Boomers have been doing it for a while. The article drives home a sense of hopelessness about the whole affair.
If a war ever broke out, I'd much prefer to be living in the countryside like a ww2 british mom in a roald dahl novel, than sitting next to the local recruitment office and thirsty government official making "no, sir" a very difficult proposition indeed.
I know ww2 references are basically irrelevant in this day and age, but given the articles bleak outlook, it seems that the Hope of living offgrid in world war 2 and the infinite religious commitment of a Monastery, though difficult, is somehow more realistic and a tonal 'step up' from an American blogger in 2023.
I don't know how that happened, but here we are.
To the contrary, monasteries were very often at the nexus of trade, serving as the middle-men between peasants who produced goods and markets in larger cities [1][2]. Monasteries were on every grid available in their day - road, communication, etc. They were even connected to social grids to recruit new monks.
1. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1301/trade-in-medieval-...
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yQ0VGuQDo&list=PL5opbjxUR5...
No? Suburbs are "off grid" now? What? lol
Ironically though, every cabin in the woods / prepper camp that I've seen as a real estate agent, wouldn't even last someone through a winter. Still way too many reliances on the modern world. Oh you've got a giant water tank and a well, but the pump (or your generator) runs on gas? Yeah good luck with that. Ok you've got a year's supply of freeze-dried meals, but no greenhouse, no setup for animals, no access to hunting, so... how are you going to produce more food? So you've got woodpile, but no more trees on your property and your only source of heat is a wood stove, so...
It's good to be prepared - earthquakes, tornadoes, and certainly fires are going to continue to be a thing. But I feel a kind of sadness for a lot of these folks who have survivalist fantasies that are a manifestation of their fears.
To be honest, I have fantasies -- but they are fantasies of a simpler life without all the craziness of the world. Or rather, if I had to spend all my time getting food and staying alive for the next few days, I wouldn't have a lot of mental energy to worry about all the ways that things could go really badly that I don't have any control over.
1) Disaster preparedness, like you are describing, as a sane and prudent thing for many people and places. Know your local conditions and put in place some resources you could use if there were a fire / tornado / earthquake (whatever your local threat) for some period of time.
2) Simple living. That is, if there are things you can do that make you more self-sufficient and create pleasure, then go for it. Many people plant a garden, raise some chickens, etc not because they are prepping for the end of the world but because they enjoy it.
3) Actual off-grid preppers - people who for one reason or another plan for some time in which they will need to be entirely self-sufficient and may even wish to explicitly separate themselves from other people (war, zombie apocalypse, etc).
I think it's really just this third category that raises eyebrows and questions.
And that was without trying to push it. Realistically, we could have extended that by months - limited only by food - by camping near a water source.
Our lifestyle at the time wasn't at all "prepper" driven, but I think it's another category worth recognizing here.
Many full-time RVers have similarly, surprisingly-long off-grid capaciy at all times.
We did meet a few 'real' preppers along the way, though. The kind who have a reinforced "bug out room" deep in their basement, with positive pressure air ventilation, shelves lined with MREs, many crates of water, and an substantial arsenal. Interesting dude, but the prepper thing wasn't my speed.
The irony for a lot of the prepper community is that the most efficient "off grid" social structure is concept that they strongly oppose, the commune. A small community working together for a common good in a shared space.
I have a feeling that the opposition of preppers to the commune is a rather US-American thing. In other countries I rather sense that some kind of small commune is at least accepted as a necessary evil among preppers to increase the chance of success/survival.
This makes no sense. Why would people that want to survive these end-of-the-world scenarios be opposed to the one thing that makes survival more likely?
I'm not doubting you, but it makes no sense to me.
For example: let's say you bought into Matt Simmons' peak oil hypothesis in 2008. The data is there. Hubbert's peak is a real phenomenon and mathematically, it will eventually happen. So you moved off-grid, spun up a sustainable, regenerative ranching effort, and started rolling over long-dated NYMEX crude contracts, losing your savings slowly for a decade and a half, while tight oil technology expired your options worthless, every single month.
Some people might say ok, I was wrong. Shit. Time to get back to the real world.
But many more of them will convince themselves no, it's just the timing, I was just a little early. See the Bakken and Eagle Ford production is already peaking, and the Permian Basin will peak in just a couple more years. THEN I'll be right. I have to be right. July 2025 will be my swan song. I'm going to go watch The Big Short again.
Humans are gonna human. And I suspect you're going to see a LOT more of the left-leaning, tech-bro type of this prepper emerging due to climate change concerns than you will of the traditional Bible-beating Soviet-EMP style of prepper in the coming decade.
while i’m sure we’ll see an uptick, i don’t think we’ll see anything like we did with the previous batch of paranoid types.
the modern left is much more about “we need to rely on and help each other” rather than the “im gonna become a survivalist and die alone in the woods.”
and honestly, anyone who thinks going off alone is somehow the intelligent move is fooling themselves and obviously hasn’t thought it through. we know this. we have thousands of years of evidence of this. when we come together we thrive. when we go off in the woods to show how “strong-boot-straps” we are, we die of an infected toe nail or something equally as stupid. that’s why every survivalist disaster “expert” recommends to prepare for disaster with your neighbors in your town to help each other and distribute the load. it’s not rocket surgery.
again, i’m sure we’ll see a slight uptick in every type, but nothing like we did in the past, i think we learned too much from watching their mistakes. we’ve seen too many shows and videos of people with even strong survival skills be absolutely miserable off on in isolation.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I want to have a zero carbon footprint now, not in 50 years. This is just not possible if I have to buy food at the grocery store, take fossil fuel powered transport or just generally participate in the economy of a system which still strives for infinite growth.
Meanwhile, when living in a self sufficient community, it becomes absolutely possible to reach that goal, or even be carbon negative.
Of course collapse is a very real possibility. But collapse is often asynchronous, occurring at different times in different places. In first world countries, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't even happen within my lifetime, or at all In that case, will I feel bad that I decided to disengage early from a destructive society and live by my own beliefs? I don't believe so.
There are countless examples of people living off the grid, even for their entire lives.
I’ve lived off the grid. It’s hard, you’re always exhausted you’re constantly having to work to get food and fire. And if you’re in the wilderness, you have to do all that while trying not to injure yourself because help won’t come. This means “going around” obstacles instead of trying to negotiate them. Often, “going around” means additional miles, which means additional calories, which means additional work.
Perhaps they should have made a stronger point about the futility of millions of people doing it:
- First, millions of people wouldn’t want to do it. They want comfort. They want media and social media and consumerism.
- Resources are more scarce, because people must produce them.
- People are soft, used to the comforts that civilization provides them.
- People are untrained and often terrified of nature, that very thing they are an apart of.
Edit: it seems prudent to point out that normal people get their kicks by just going camping. If you are considering going to live in the woods, try starting with short, two-day camping trips and gradually increase the days so that you can take notes and improve your skills and equipment.
But if we are talking about post iron age tech, you eventually gonna need to join a production chain of some sort, you can't just find bog iron, smelt it and hammer into an axe by yourself, while also dealing with other topics. You eventually need a community, hence a grid
I think a lot of people shit on self-sufficiency due to their own inadequacies.
It will not be fun. It will not be easy. But it’s doable. No, you will not be using metal tools or having solar power.
Funny thing about your “you can’t just find…” comment though: when I went to live in the woods, I went deep, miles from any highway and much farther to any town. And I always found signs of civilization in the middle of nowhere especially tons of metal scrap and ancient iron and usable plastic bottles.
There is enough debris from civilization all over the planet for scavenging. It makes things a lot easier but you can get by without them.
I even found an intact toilet once, in an area far away from even logging roads. My best guess is somebody with an aircraft may have wanted to play a daft joke?
The other strange thing were these random staircases in the woods in the middle of nowhere…
PS: If anyone reading this is thinking of leaving civilization, I suggest you start with short trips beginning with a couple days and then gradually working them up to longer periods. This will:
1. Allow you to see if it’s really for you or if just doing more camping will suffice.
2. Will show you your skill and equipment discrepancies and allow you to correct them before the next trip in a less life-threatening manner.
My first trip was an entire month and it was rough.
But you are onto something, scrapping things from the outskirts of society might be something you would be able to do, albeit unless we are talking about total societal collapse this would still put you on the production chain, on the far end of it, as a scrapper
You can certainly live primitively in nature without the scraps of civilization. Again, it isn’t fun and it will be much harder.
Remember, total societal collapse is going to result in most, and perhaps the mass majority of humans, dying off. If not from the collapse, then from the realities of shifting into primitive living unprepared (including but not limited to: finding enough calories, disease, famine, etc).
If you have kids, like me, you and your family will probably be dead. I figure I will be. But my threat models are more concerned with pandemics, natural disasters, and loss of power/water/gas/law, so I focus on those. And yeah, all of those threats have occurred at this point (I am in a rural area) :-/
Counter-citation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dhW4XFGQB4o we could argue about how useful the output is but this is a clear demonstration that one can, in fact, do it alone.
Also note that he is only producing cast iron at the moment, which is not particularly useful for impact tools (like axes, pickaxes or weapons). Getting the iron sufficiently hot for smithing is very hard to do, and require a lot of infrastructure non existent on nature.
But indeed I did find a toilet and several balls (tennis, baseball, etc) miles from any road. Presumably tossed from aircraft for $reasons.
1. https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3kd90k/im_a_search...
Personally I would equate this to one of the most comforting aspects to believing in God, that it's not just some meaningless random luck of the draw but instead there was agency somewhere. War stories are often similar, the new recruits think that they are special and their skill and strength will keep them alive. They then learn it is dumb luck who lives and dies, just luck whether that bullet, shrapnel, or artillery shell misses you or not
One day you have a medical emergency and poof, you're gone, possibly going through a lot of pain, because of a condition that would have been recoverable.
Never went through any emergency myself and largely going through life without any drug but looking around me, I consider myself crazy lucky.
That's what I would be afraid the most about living off grid and the first reason I think it can't last long for many (most?). What are your thoughts on this?
Yeah sure, if an area turns into a disaster zone, many conveniences of modern life (water supply, power grid, supermarkets, gas stations, internet) may become unavailable for X amount of time.
But all the materials & gear that modern society produced, doesn't just disappear. Houses would still be standing, the hand tools in your toolbox would still be there & do the same they did 20y ago, the groceries in your pantry are still there & your clothes would still be hanging in the closet. Your smartphone keeps working as long as you have any way to charge it.
That 'installed base' of modern stuff can go a long way in dealing with challenges as they come. Especially if (for example through hiking / camping trips) you have learned to get by with limited gear. Eg. a swiss pocket knive serves many purposes & lasts for decades.
It's just that many people are NOT prepared for modern conveniences falling away for extended time. One example - ask 'random' people: "If tap water goes out, how long until you run out of drinking water? And what you do if tap water wouldn't come back at all?". And be amazed at the answers.
I mean, that's #1 survival material after breathable air. And neither difficult or expensive to get a grip on.
What's that saying again? "When supplies break down, a modern city is just 3 days away from large scale riots & looting".
If anything, it's people being unprepared or panicing that'll get them killed. Not so much whatever disaster that struck them.
They are used to living within environments with all the modern conveniences. They can’t imagine anything different, when in fact your average farmer and his family have stuff like outhouses, manual wells, self-made tools and MacGyver fixes and hacks. While they’re not “truly” off grid, they’re effectively partially off grid and would totally do fine.
As a white collar knowledge worker I try to soak in their blue collar skills and wisdom whenever I can. And in turn try to evolve my white collar skills into something that would be useful to them (eg being competent with a variety of radios and other stuff) if the SHTF.
Conversely, I live 20 minutes outside of town. I work in town, but just on the edge of town, so I'll go months without having to go into town.
It’s weird and neat when I go into “downtown” and I’m overwhelmed with the noise and activity and new modernities (the latest being these new electric scooters people rent and ride around and then just leave wherever. Before that was Uber. I knew these existed but it was weird to see them in person. Though I’ve still never used Uber myself.)
In my experience, they are just as all over the place as any other group.
No one is truly living off the grid.
This has been my thought as well, but I gotta say... I do know of a place where the owner put in absolutely millions into an eco lodge and while a "prepper cabin" wasn't his goal, it really is a great example of how one could live in a degree of comfort off grid. Probably their biggest weakness is they rely a lot on their diesel generator. But, they do have some solar, they have a good greenhouse, access to hunting, a private airfield, access to a river for both fishing and water, in an area with mild(ish) winters... so guess I'm saying that if you've got absolutely wheelbarrows full of cash, it can be done... but that's not the case with the vast majority of prepper types I've seen.
Sounds great, I'll go round up the boys and it'll be ours by sundown. I think a lot of the "it can be done" commenters didn't read to the end: it can be done when you're the only one doing it. Not so much when 8 billion people are doing it. See also: roving gangs from any Fallout game.
This is the thing. If you are using "equipment" then you are only off the grid temporarily. Sooner or later all that stuff you bought at REI is going to fail. Then what?
There are countless example of individuals doing it, because the rest of society is in the business of not caring what they are up to.
This paradigm completely fails when if those countless millions are forced without the grid. Once this happens those that will survive are not the ones that survive off the grid, but those that marshal human resources and create a new grid.
Obviously people can live in this way if pressed, but what kind of life is it? Humans are social creatures, and we strive for more than mere survival.
If our current society somehow "collapses," we will immediately form new societies that will work to pick up the pieces, and there will be strength in numbers.
It is fundamental to our nature.
And not the "camping" that involves pulling an air-conditioned trailer to a paved campsite with power and water, a fire ring, and a shower and toilet 50 yards away, and a convenience store with ice and beer at the camp entrance.
Real camping is not that fun, unless you're a kid in the boy scouts. At least for me. It's hot and sweaty and dirty and uncomfortable.
As mentioned in the article, American homesteaders were settling into so-called wilderness for $0 but which had been cleared of the people already living there. Few homesteaders lived more than a day's ride away from a military fort.
Even "mountain men" who rejected colonizer society went into the wilds fully equipped with its technology, and would frequently cycle out for supplies.
Furthermore, a lot of the land they had occupied was already partially cultivated and developed by indigenous tribes. And those indigenous tribes were trading with the colonists - and they had to, because their traditional ways of life were no longer possible, or they had been pushed off the lands where they used to live.
Uncontacted indigenous tribes are probably the last ones to truly live "off the grid". But, maybe not. They also live in a network of shared resources. They rely heavily on a small society of a hundred or so people.
The number of single families and individuals who have truly "lived off the grid"? Without significant support from larger groups, including common defense, trading, scavenging, and theft? For their whole lives? And prospered? I would guess there has never been anybody who accomplished that, from the beginning of time.
"people gonna attack us? IM PREPARED!" you are not. You know what's better than prepping? Fighting tooth and nail to make sure the grid is rock solid and free of corruption. And every day is a battle, because there's always a schemer who will try to get in and hoard for himself. If preppers got depressed from thinking how things are in collapse, and how they need to improve things, as a society, in order to improve things for themselves, they'd actually maybe act.
I see preppers as poor "throw money at it" rich folks. Rich folks don't care if the education system isn't working, they can find a private school which costs $100k a month to give their child the best education possible. They can get a bunker professionally built so if anything happens their thick doors and automated guns will take care of any people trying to get in. They can hire a chef and have the best food possible in an ideal diet to keep them happy, sated, and healthy all their lives while most of us have to suffer from over-sugared foods and affordable food being incredibly poor in nutrients
Preppers are similar, they don't want to solve societal problems, they want to feel like _THEY_ are insulated from societal problems because they are "off the grid". But they are not. No living up in the mountain is gonna protect you from a bad harvest, or from a crop disease, or from a fucking splinter. I love something someone said recently "if you're in a zombie apocalypse, you won't get to have the cool hair, the cool bat, and go smash zombie brains. You'll likely die from diarrhea pretty early on."
Everyone loves to think about how they'll handle attackers, but never spend much time thinking about the lack of sleep and how that'll severely impact them. Never how much isolation will destroy so much of their mental state.
Popular media influence of lone wolves surviving and other such content can really prevent people from being aware of the realities of such collapse I suppose!
See: Heavily armed Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands post WWII.
It's a funny old thread in any case - I'm a >60 year old Australian who grew up in the Kimberley region in a minority amoungst people who truly lived off the grid and had done so for tens of thousands of years.
The people that raised me were born in the 1920s and 1930s and many had survived the collapse of European society in South East Asia and Japanese internment, some having formed long range insurrgency groups to spy on | terrorise Japanese soldiers and coordinate long range bombing of oil extraction points and depots through SE Asia (all a bit before I was born, obviously).
I'm related to people that charged on horse back belt fed machine guns across four miles armed with bayonets.
They 'won'[1]
Where I am now my neighbour shoots ULR at 24 inch targets 5,000 yards distant [2]
US preppers are pretty funny.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917)
It seems more likely to me that they have a realistic awareness of their level of influence over society, which is to say effectively none.
Our lives are going to get worse. Many people will die. If we form sustainable local communities, and build political coalitions to lessen the damage going forward, fewer of us will die, and our lives will get "less worse".
It's not over until it's over.
Build community not bunkers
Only one has the ability to last and be sustainable
The article mentions it, and it calls "community" a grid. I mean, what do we think a "grid" is? A collective effort to more efficiently bring $GOOD_STUFF to...you knew it was coming...a community of people.
I live near the Amish, they are going to make it. Yes life will be harder for them, but they are prepared for a breakdown in civilization.
As others have pointed out, it may be more difficult for a single individual to make it, but a large family or small community has a decent shot of survival.
Amish are testing their resilience daily.
Their predisposition for non-violence may change when they encounter roving gangs of wasteland bandits (from New Jersey) venturing about but that's not guaranteed.
They aim for it, certainly. They're quite likely to have good relations with their neighbors who are less restrained or forgiving, and who value the company of the Amish and other neighbors.
Like, there are a whole lot of reasons the article listed for why this won’t work in the future. You can’t just negate them because it works now.
It’s not just a breakdown in civilization - it’s a dramatically changed and broken planet in this scenario. The Amish will starve just as fast as anyone else when crops fail or it doesn’t rain for years on end.
I think preppers should pour their energy in to helping society prepare, and not just turn their back on the very reason they exist.
p.s. I don't consider taking sensible precautions like having a well-stocked medicine cabinet, fuel in the car, and some food in the freezer "prepping".
Did the Covid pandemic not exist to you?
As long as the important things are taken care of...
On the other, we* are not headed for any widespread climate disaster. Yeah, fires, waves of migration, etc, sure. None of that will be worse than things we have deliberately caused ourselves (like the collapse of Libya and its aftermath). It won't even come close to pointless slaughters of first and second world war after which our civilization flourished to new heights.
* I mean the first world we.
Humans moved away from there and now depend on other land. It was 'easy' back then because the other land was empty. But uh, we've ran out of that empty land. As we burn up more land with climate disasters, over farming, and land destruction via building and run off we aren't getting new land back. These are not short term problems like wars. These are problems that last at geologic time scales.
The fall of ancient civilizations is always a great story but I think we have fundamentally changed when we attained systematic knowledge. There will be no great collapse with massive loss of capacity because we put our understanding of the world and our tech into models and then wrote it all down millions of times.
Basically, we know how to build a nuclear reactor, an internal combustion engine, and a computer, we will never forget it, and therefore can always run an industrial civilization.
Primarily, this idea that we've written it all down so we'll never forget it, is not true. Advanced technology requires industrial infrastructure and gobs of tacit knowledge that absolutely can be unlearned at a societal level. It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again--and that process looks like redevelopment, not just filling in some gaps.
And as that development process will require the coordination of millions of people to set up and maintain the supply chain of materials and logistics, it won't be possible in an unstable society that doesn't have the natural endowment of cheap energy that we've had for the past 100 years.
For one paper that explores this, see "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons" (1995): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699
This is simply not true. There is no secret in this sauce any more. Sure, you would need to relearn how to actually do some things, but the recipes are all there, well documented. Not quite youtube tutorials but we have videos.
This is not a hypothetical. We tested this[1] and it matches my expectations (I studied physics).
Esoteric materials, very precise optics, or spare parts to f22, things that are made in one or two places, we may lose that capacity. But fundamental inventions like flight, electricity, radio, fertilization are gonna stay with us as long as there's some version of us around.
But it sounds like we've both made up our minds, and you believe in the immortality of information, and I can see as evident that knowledge has been lost time and time again. We only have to wait awhile to see how it actually turns out.
This is fairly obvious to anyone who hasn't been completely indoctrinated into the myth of individual success based on hard work - a myth largely promoted to justify the consolidation of wealth and resources into the hands of a small ruling oligarch class in the modern world, see for example Margaret Thatcher's line 'there is no such thing as society' and so on.
That said, it's possible that modern technological developments might be able to create the kind of technology that could allow people to survive quite happily with minimal external inputs of raw materials, via extensive recycling of finished goods back into raw materials, use of incident energy (sunlight and wind), but the problem would be creation of the technological tools and maintenance of those tools, which would almost certainly require high-tech factories operating at scale. If those factories could somehow be miniaturized and also be highly adaptable (still in the realm of science fiction, no backyard chip foundries at present) then concepts like a self-sustaining Martian habitat could become more plausible.
1. Predicting the long-term future is a bizarre and fruitless game. One might even say idiotic. If you're a prepper, and I'm not, prepare to live for a month or three. I do. Whatever the heck happens, within 90 days there will be some new normal. You're not trying to live forever. You're just trying to outlive temporary chaos. At that point, you're going to have to reinvent some kind of life. Who knows what that will be? Not me. Not this guy either.
2. He mentions wi-fi a lot. Gotta have that internet, gotta have that wi-fi, gotta have that bluetooth. I kinda doubt it. Can you go a day without internet? How about power? Just turn all of your stuff off. Most folks should be able to learn how to live like normal humans have for eons. There are various hobbies and occupations where you spend a lot of time without power or plumbing: scouts, infantry, etc. These people know what it's like. There are enough of them that the species itself will do just fine no matter what sort of apocalypse you can dream up.
It seems the problem with this essay, like so many pieces of media I consume daily, is the desire for _certainty_. Here's problem A. Here's exactly what it means, what causes it, and so on. And you have to do B to fix it. (Or, in this case, there is no B)
Disasters are chaotic and uncertain. Assuming climate disasters, moreso. But that both means that things are going to be tougher _and_ you can't have-wave your way around predicting how it all will turn out. Are many people who think themselves preppers disillusioned about their actual skills and their ability to adapt? Absolutely! But that's a one sentence essay. What's the fun in writing and commenting about that?
Apologies to the author. I believe there is a good one sentence thesis in there somewhere. But this sucked. I wish you better in the future.
Humans are not meant to live alone. Even a small group could divide the labor and survive orders of magnitudes longer than a single individual. The most important survival gear is family and community.
One of my observations, not sure if an artifact of editing or accurate, is how everyone progressively talks about missing their families more and more right before they decide to tap out.
The winner from last season(?) mostly seemed to win by keeping relentlessly positive, whatever happened on a given day, thinking of his family fondly, and keeping his mind engaged with hobby crafts (i.e. making a fancier X for his shelter).
I will say I enjoyed the early episode of one of the seasons on Vancouver Island where a cop tapped out within a day or two because there were bears. He even said (I'm paraphrasing) that he's not used to not being able to shoot them or call for help on a radio.
> He was helpless.
Sounds a bit just so? In my arguably not prepared home just in my sight line I see 4 different ways to improvise implements to open a can if I need to. Not counting the two manual can openers I have for just that task.
Can openers were invented way after cans were invented. People just used chisels.
If the lack of electricity makes you helpless you were helpless even with electricity.
Back in the days of the pre-Y2K "crisis" hype, I lived in Colorado and was young and more impressionable, I started developing a prepper mentality. While I was pretty sure that we'd get through that, it seemed wise to plan for the future.
So, I fell into a group of like-minded people, and joined in conversations about what would be needed to survive in a post-collapse environment. We honed our hunting skills, pre-stocked camping backpacks, and formulated plans to flee into the mountains in case things went south. We also started looking into what it would take to buy a piece of property and build out a bunker, stock it, and prepare for whatever was to come.
My enthusiasm for this individual prepper mentality diminished quite rapidly due to a single conversation. I was in a "seminar" where we were all discussing the advantages/disadvantages of prebuilt bunkers and how to disguise them on the property. During a break, when I asked one of the "consultants" what his plan was. He took me aside, looked around so that nobody would hear him and said something along the lines of: "Kid, don't waste your time with this hiding in a bunker nonsense. Me and my kids and grandkids live up in the mountains and know where a lot of these preppers have their stashes. If things go south, we're just going use our bulldozers and diggers to dig them out and take what they've stored away for us. They won't be able to outlast a group of us."
I looked at him like he was Judas, but he then said. "Don't think I'm the only one in this business who's planning to do this, we'll gladly take their money and build whatever bunker they want, but at the end of the day, if things go to hell, we'll use whatever means we have to survive, and so if that means cracking open these stashes - so be it".
Then he said "the key to survival is being part of a community you can rely on. Ideally, this is your family as they're much less likely to betray you, but a good like-minded church group could also work".
I was a bit stunned by this, but it crystalized in my mind then, that the individual "prepper" was eventually doomed to fail at some point and it was pretty useless to prepare for it.
So, yes, I now agree that the best approach to "prepare" is to work to strengthen your community.
Any prepper that is an individual and thinks they have it made is just an egotistical disaster in the making.
A few people working together can take any prepper out simply by being patient. If the person is in a bunker then you just poison the bunker. Otherwise you just wait till they come out and pick them off one by one.
The reality is probably that in the event of a serious global catastrope, the seriously-prepared people will be fine, the sort-of-prepared people will be one step ahead of 99% of the population, and everyone else will be totally helpless.
If they have an island they happen to be at.
The problem is now you're dealing with the law of large numbers. As an individual your plans are mostly meaningless when the catastrophe happens and you're caught on the 405 unable to escape.
Having a bunker as an individual means nothing if 20 people happen to get together and rise up against you.
This is why off the grid doesn't work. When the grid collapses everyone that you're not really good friends with is now your enemy. To survive you need to have/make new social grids of shared defense.
Yeah, you can't do that all by yourself; that's for politicians and movie stars and business tycoons.
There are preppers and "self sufficiency" fans who are not seeking to "defect from the social contract"; apparently that's a difficult distinction to make for people taking a quick survey of the field.
They're the ones whose advice includes lots of "know your neighbors" and "coordinate with your neighborhood".
(I have made peace with the likely possibility of not making it to 50 or having a "normal" death. I was suicidal for so many years that it just feels like an old companion.)
Do you have enough chickens to eat the bugs faster than they eat your crops?
Do you have enough other food not to have to eat all the chickens?
Do you have enough materials to build pens to keep the predators from eating all your chickens?
But yeah, to the GP point, chickens are actually pretty good hunters.
I guess he's never opened a can with a bayonet. If you can not improvise your way into a tin can with hand tools, you should not be allowed to operate a motor vehicle.
These kinds of errors are common to any first attempt.
Here's a challenge for preppers: Pull your circuit breakers Saturday morning and turn off the water. See how things go. If you make it 3 hours I will be impressed. Then learn, prepare, and try it again a month later. When you can make it 24 hours, talk to me. Most of my friends were at that level before Y2K.
You can not be prepared for everything, but you can: Learn to live without electricity or water for a week or two. * Grow a garden. * Move away from masses of unprepared people. * Learn to hunt (legally,) and fill your freezer with wild game. * Learn to shoot and learn to carry a gun legally where you live. If guns are "illegal," get a license. If you refuse to do that, learn to carry a knife. If all else fails, learn to carry a stick. Read "Stick Combatives" by Massad Ayoob, and practice. Then take a fencing class; that will help you with stick fighting. * Learn to repair things around your home yourself. * Keep extra food in the pantry, keep cases of bottled water. * Prepare go-bags, and test them on a camping trip, after you learn to camp. * Earn a Ham Radio license and learn to talk to your friends without Internet or phones. * Store data in such a way that you only need USB power to get access to it. * Rely on your vehicle when the power is out. Even the silliest little combustion powered econocar can recharge a ton of electronic devices if you have a low battery cutoff and devices with the right chargers. Most car chargers never get used, so most car chargers you buy will not last more than half a charge. * Test your gear. If you have something you have not tested, test it or throw it away.
* Learn to live without electricity or water for a week or two.
* Grow a garden.
* Move away from masses of unprepared people.
* Learn to hunt (legally,) and fill your freezer with wild game.
* Learn to shoot and learn to carry a gun legally where you live. If guns are "illegal," get a license. If you refuse to do that, learn to carry a knife. If all else fails, learn to carry a stick. Read "Stick Combatives" by Massad Ayoob, and practice. Then take a fencing class; that will help you with stick fighting.
* Learn to repair things around your home yourself.
* Keep extra food in the pantry, keep cases of bottled water.
* Prepare go-bags, and test them on a camping trip, after you learn to camp.
* Earn a Ham Radio license and learn to talk to your friends without Internet or phones.
* Store data in such a way that you only need USB power to get access to it.
* Rely on your vehicle when the power is out. Even the silliest little combustion powered econocar can recharge a ton of electronic devices if you have a low battery cutoff and devices with the right chargers. Most car chargers never get used, so most car chargers you buy will not last more than half a charge.
* Test your gear. If you have something you have not tested, test it or throw it away.
I guess the author defines off the grid as totally isolated from any kind of community?
Sure, humans survive poorly in very small groups. We are very social animals and normally tend to live in groups. We thrive in groups.
People need communities. But those communities don’t have to be cities. And while it is very difficult to be truly independent as a community, it is possible and humans have done it well for hundreds of thousands of years.
I think the author just doesn’t know what the heck he’s doing. Ignorance will get you killed, and if it doesn’t, it’ll at least keep you chained to misery.
That said… lone wolfing it for 5 years after the fall of civilisation? You’ll die, for two reasons. First, people need communities to thrive. Secondly, if you have the idea of lone wolfing the fall of civilisation, you don’t know what you need to know to survive, much less to thrive.
A community however can survive for hundreds or thousands of years. It doesn’t have to be a modern city.
Sudden dramatic sentence.
approach to writing articles. It's not as impactful as he thinks, and really annoying when it's done every 3 sentences.
tl;dr: any contact with other people and any trading with them constitutes "the grid".
It's nice to see an article bring up the shit-management problem.
Too many folks forget about how much they take toilet paper and plumbing for granted.
From there prepping is really about creating a “grid buffer” and getting as many people around you to do that same so if the shit does hit the fan, everybody isn’t immediately out trying to loot each other.
FEMA suggests having 3 days of supplies at a minimum for disasters. I personally stock 30 days of provisions, but not a bunch of MREs. Instead it’s stuff we actually eat, but I buy it in bulk. If the grocery stores shut down for 30 days, I’d start drawing down this buffer and hope to hell that the supply chain opens up again in some capacity.
Same for water, waste, etc. Pick a buffer that makes sense for your environment and build as much redundancy as you can into it without going overboard.
I’ve never seen a sane prepping guide suggest that people should “go it alone” without access to external resources. In fact they suggest the opposite: build redundant networks of people and resources around you in case the primary is disrupted.
"He's Lived 50 Years Off the Grid in Appalachia" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LEoW81mUXU
(No, he doesn't truly live "off the grid" either, he's clearly buying products from a nearby town. Me personally, I define "off grid" as just the usual rural "no physical connection", as in solar+well+septic, and don't pretend that that's the same as not interacting with society.)
Wait... what kind of "prepper" is that ?
it describes a world where the national governments have lost control and people are fighting for resources.
it's a rather dystopian view, but it points out that in addition to living off the grid, which is difficult enough you will have to face others who want what you have.
only law and order and a strong community can protect you from that.
For example, with my lifestyle without a car, a fridge, A/C, hot water, heating, TV, €10/mo electricity, without most things people have, my footprint is 5% of the average person. If more people would go in this direction, it would solve all problems
First of all, statistically speaking you're less likely to die off the grid after global warming because death from cold is just much much more common than all the other effects that global warming will have.
But I honestly don't buy the global warming narrative. And other physicists are starting to speak up against it, for example recent Nobel prize winner John F Clauser, known as the 'C' in CHSH inequality in quantum mechanics.
https://clintel.org/nobel-prize-winner-dr-john-f-clauser-sig...
Freeman Dyson, was also against the climate narrative. And these are two actual scientists which had profound unintuitive predictions about how the world works.
It is so important when people like this OP are speaking contagious fearful narratives that seek to propagate based on emotions, that more skeptics speak up and diffuse this infectious irrational fear that is dangerous to our society.
It reminds me of Covid and the stockpiling of toiletpaper and telling my family how the sewage plants depend on people and power to run , wiping your butt is going to be the least of our problems if this is the end.
So long and thanks for all the fish :).