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Note: Black text is by Jay Hanson. Comments in red text are by Norman [norman@noidea.me.uk ]
#1. Move out of the city! Sometime in the next couple of decades, civil authority in large US cities will simply disintegrate.
And when authority goes, we know exactly what's going to happen.
Remember the Rodney King rebellion? All that old class hatred and jealousy comes boiling to the surface. It's really going to be ugly — you don't want to be there!
Go somewhere where the climate is warm, with plenty of rain. I don't think "ethnic cleansing" will be a big problem except in the cities (at least, not to start with).
A lot depends on where you live (I'm in Australia, BTW). Not everyone lives in a city. Not everyone can afford to move out. The best thing to do, in my opinion, would be to stay where you are and with what you know. Educate your neighbors and work with them to survive together.
#2. Prepare yourself to survive without municipal power, water, or sewer services. You won't have to live without hookups initially, but you will be forced to do without them sometime in the next few decades.
(Yes you can live with the use of the power you have now while you get set up. Just one other point about moving out of the city, don’t leave it too late, you don’t want to move to a nice town, village or community to find you are the last who just got in. Leave enough time for them to get to know you and you to get to know them, to become accepted, become part of the community.)
Most of the country's groundwater is already contaminated, and once sewage systems and dumps are abandoned, it will ALL become contaminated. Without power to pump or chlorine to disinfect groundwater, you really have no option except to rely on rain catchment for drinking water.
Easy enough to do. Water tanks are common enough in this country (we already have 2,500 gallons and planning to get another—Government provides financial rebates for buying tanks). Composting toilets also easy to set up (we have one) and the composted material can be used to grow food. Solar cookers, solar stills, also easy to put together.
Fuel wood for heating and cooking could be a problem. Could be solved by neighbors getting together to plant fast-growing trees wherever possible, for later harvest. Municipal authorities could be a problem here—just tell them you're keen on tree-planting to improve the environment (Don't tell them what it's for).
( Water: NEVER! NEVER! EVER TAKE THE SLIGHTEST UNNECESSARY RISK WITH DOUBTFUL WATER. Always boil or use distillation, chemical treatment will not be around forever.)
#3. In order to survive, you are going to need a large garden. An oversized garden would allow you to exchange your extra produce to your neighbors for hard goods -- like ammunition.
(Guns will not last forever, it will take years, centuries, maybe never to get back to the level of technology and production that we have now. For one thing there will not be the people and second it will surprise you how quickly we regress with knowledge, even when it is in books.
We need leisure time to learn and leisure time is something we will have very little of, if any at all.)
Also not a problem, provided you've got the space. Work in with neighbors on this one. Some of those planted trees could be food crops. Learn what wild plants can be eaten. Similarly for medicinal plants.
#4. Remember that you will not be able to rely on complex technology, because once supply lines break down, you won't be able to get spares. So limit yourself to technology that you can fix with a hammer and forge. (If you don't know what a "forge" is, go see an old cowboy movie.)
Beyond these four points, just try to fit in with your community as best you can. Perhaps join a church, lodge, or club — find someone who is willing to help you in case you are attacked.
Obviously, I don't follow all of my own suggestions, but it's something to think about.
Good luck,
Jay
THE THREE FIRES
The three fires will take them.
Slowest of all is the fire of rust that burns at the steel. Yet give it some short centuries, and the high trestle that spans the canyon will be only a line of red soil on the slopes below.
Faster by far is the fire of decay that feeds on the wood.
But the fastest of all is the fire of the flames.
If we want fresh stuff to eat next year we shall have to grow it ourselves, and it may seem a long way off now, but there's going to come a time when we shall have to grow everything ourselves. There'll come a time, too, when, all the tractors are worn out or rusted, and there's no more fuel to run them, anyway - when we’ll come right down to nature and bless horses - if we've got them.
We'll have to plough, still later we'll have to learn how to make plough-shares, later than that we'll have to learn how to smelt iron to make the shares. What we are on now is a road that will take us back and back and back until we can - if we can - make good all that we wear out. Not until then shall we be able to stop ourselves on the trail that's leading down to savagery. But once we can do that, then maybe we'll begin to crawl slowly up again. '
The most valuable part of this is knowledge. That's the short cut to save us starting where our ancestors did. We've got it all there in the books if we take the trouble to find out about it;'
From my reading of history, the thing you have to have to use knowledge is leisure. Where everybody has to work hard just to get a living and there is no leisure to think. knowledge stagnates, and people with it; The thinking has to be done largely by people who are not directly productive - by people who appear to be living almost entirely on the work of others, but are, in fact, a long-term investment; — it was the labour of the countryside that supported them.
Our lifetime is not enough, We have to start now to provide the next generation with some sort of future.
There's nothing in this room. No artifact that is the exclusive creation of one man. Our reliance on technology has robbed us of the simplest, most basic skills. I think we have to look ahead to the time when the last axe head cracks. The last saw breaks. There's no doubt in my mind that we're going to regress very quickly. If we start being self-sufficient now then perhaps the regression won’t be so hard to bear. The sooner we stop depending on the past the greater our chances of making so sort of new life.
In an urban society, everything connects. Each person’s needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong also make it vulnerable.
Ultimately, no one is going to be able to provide for all of the possible permutations required to survive on the basis of physical supplies or shelters. Some equipment is absolutely required to survive, but ultimately you cannot buy everything you might conceivably need.
The New Passport To Survival: 12 Steps to Self-Sufficient Living
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.
— Eleanor Roosevelt