survival extreme

[smurff]

http://www.shtfplan.com/emergency-preparedness/a-true-survival-story-taking-their-possessions-and-some-seeds-they-had-retreated-ever-deeper-into-the-forest_02022013
an amazing story of survival,

I am always amazed at how cookie-cutter so many what-I'm-gonna-do plans look like under SHTF scenarios.  They seem to involve moving self and family to some isolated location, usually as far from civilization as possible, sometimes living underground (literally) in abandoned missile silos or hollowed out caves in the middle of nowhere, then becoming subsistence farmers, surrounded by a hidden stash of gold coins and some AR 15 rifles.

All by highly social people accustomed to interacting with lots of people all day and night, who have no farming skills (which are not the same as gardening skills) or talents, who don't know a bovine from an ovine, and with no assurance the family members (who are also social) will willingly go along with this plan.

Where did this idea develop?  Look at Lord of the Flies (the original, not the remake).  Even the kids formed a community.  And the early Mel Gibson movies showed post-apocalypse life being played out in communities.

When I see SHTF scenarios in the real world, what usually happens is that people who find themselves fleeing home try to head for a city, not the countryside, because it would seem that isolated people stand out and become easy to victimize in all sorts of ways.  They might get stopped enroute (by soldiers or exhaustion) and wind up temporarily huddled into refugee camps, but their original goal was to get themselves and their families out of harm's way by associating with other people in an area where trouble is less destructive.

Just curious.

[MachineGhost]

When I see SHTF scenarios in the real world, what usually happens is that people who find themselves fleeing home try to head for a city, not the countryside, because it would seem that isolated people stand out and become easy to victimize in all sorts of ways.  They might get stopped enroute (by soldiers or exhaustion) and wind up temporarily huddled into refugee camps, but that does not mean their original goal was to get themselves and their families out of harm's way by associating with other people in an area where trouble is less destructive.

+100.  Anyone simply needs to watch The Road to get an idea of how naive the ideal of isolated, right-wing survivalism is.  Even Burt Gummer of Tremmors fame didn't live isolated.  When the SHTF, practicality will override ideology except for the most stubborn or deluded.

[Coffee]

I resent that you're calling it a "right wing" idea of survivalism.  It would be more accurate if you called it a naive, haven't-thought-things-through idea of survivalism.

That whole notion came from the Jeremiah Johnson movie, played by none other than that John Bircher member himself, Robert Redford. 

[MediumTex]

People who are placed in conditions of isolation in very stressful situations often begin to lose their grip on reality pretty quickly.  The idea of creating conditions of isolation in a crisis with the idea that it will make things better is IMHO not a very realistic idea of how things actually unfold.

I remember reading Robinson Crusoe as a kid and I was hooked on the paramilitary fantasy from then on that much of survivalism involves.  In many ways this view of the world is a modern re-telling of the gunfighter movie storylines where a shady man roams the countryside in a completely self-sufficient manner (including psychological self-sufficiency), and then when it comes time to administer violence he is up to it and able to outmaneuver his opponents even though he is outnumbered.

It's all very appealing and exciting, but as I have grown older I have come to see it as simply a narrative that I would like to project onto events that frighten me, as opposed to a realistic plan for dealing with those events (most of which are never likely to occur in the first place).  I'm not saying that a survivalist mindset won't serve you well in many ways, I'm just saying that it's sort of like karate--most of the benefits don't involve actually fighting with other people.

I can't tell you how gripping the survivalist narrative can be, though.  It's very powerful to feel like you are going to survive because of your planning while most others will die because they haven't planned.  It has a sort of religious flavor to it as well in that it promises a kind of salvation to those who prepare properly, while damnation awaits everyone else.  If you read the work of someone like Jim Rawles, for example, the idea almost leaps off of the page that "You are special.  Most people are dumbasses, but not you."  And then he sells you whatever he wants you to buy.  Once you become sensitized to this play, it's hard to see the whole survivalist movement as anything but a clever marketing effort by the freeze dried food and Rambo knife industries. 

I loved The Road.  I felt like I was reading Robinson Crusoe all over again, except it had been updated just for me.   It's great fiction.

To me, the problem isn't being prepared.  Being prepared is almost always a good thing.  The problem is being prepared based upon fear that has been carefully cultivated in you by someone who wishes to benefit from you being frightened.  That kind of fear-driven preparation seems to consistently lead people to prepare themselves for the wrong things.

Looking into what's really happening with these different visions of the future is really fascinating.  I have learned a lot about myself in the process of separating fact from fantasy.

[Coffee]

Tex,

I think you're blurring the "Doomsday Preppers" show and survival fiction with what Rawles is actually preaching.

Yes, Rawles sells advertising on his blog.  And he sells his books from his web site too, just like you and I do.  He's not pitching survival time shares or selling bunkers or anything else that might be shady.

In truth, he's got a couple of courses, the main one being how to go shopping at Costco and know what to buy and how long it will store.

He also advocates moving to a truck farming community.  (I have no idea what a truck farming community is, do you?)  But it doesn't seem to have anything to do with crawling into a bunker and or encouraging social isolation.  The man lives on a ranch out in the boonies.  It fits with his brand of survivalism.

I've been following his blog for close to ten years and I don't remember seeing much that relates to his vision of a collapse and "The Road."  There are several different approaches to survivalism within the prepper community and most have nothing to do with the cuckoos you see on, "Doomsday Preppers."

The one thing Rawles can be accused of is that he's a pretty poor novelist.  But then I'm probably not one to talk. 

[MediumTex]

The one thing Rawles can be accused of is that he's a pretty poor novelist.  But then I'm probably not one to talk. 

I haven't read his books, but as I understand it he apparently got some great help from a ghost writer on the first one, and then went Milli Vanilli on the second one.

[smurff]

I went back and reread the story about the people who fled to Siberia to escape Stalin's purge/pogrom.  They were isolated, located so far from other humans they did not know Stalin had died, some quarter-century after they ran away.  They were cut off from relatives and friends, and any word of mouth news about what was happening on the world. The daughters born in isolation could not speak language, and the immune systems of the isolated people could not deal with exposure to outsiders and they died. 

One wonders what the outcome would have been had they fled to an area that was populated but where the hostilities were less vicious.  The 1930s adults might have gone on to make tremendous contributions to humanity. There's the possibility that at least the grandkids and their offspring might all be alive today, in 2013.  It's hard to be critical of someone who had to flee under a SHTF situation, but it looks like their decision to flee into isolation, rather than yielding survival (as the article writers seem to imply) instead yielded a massive fail.

that was kinda my take on the story as well, they prove the outer limits of humans ability to survive, and at the same time proved their strategy (influenced heavily by religious beliefs) was ultimately a failing one..

[rocketdog]

Anyone simply needs to watch The Road to get an idea of how naive the ideal of isolated, right-wing survivalism is.

How was that movie, btw?  I read the book and didn't really get the point of it.  Or maybe there wasn't supposed to be a point to it? 

[rocketdog]

People who are placed in conditions of isolation in very stressful situations often begin to lose their grip on reality pretty quickly.  The idea of creating conditions of isolation in a crisis with the idea that it will make things better is IMHO not a very realistic idea of how things actually unfold.

I wonder then how Eric Rudolph managed to survive for 5 years in self-imposed isolation while being tracked by the Feds? 

[smurff]

He also advocates moving to a truck farming community.  (I have no idea what a truck farming community is, do you?).

I like the emphasis on the word "community."

Truck farming focuses on growing primarily vegetables and fruits that can be shipped locally or regionally by the farmer, using a truck.  The truck can range from a pickup to a semi.

That's in contrast to industrial scale farming of grains/grasses and livestock, which (with some exceptions) require major corporate infrastructures involving silos, slaughterhouses, lagoons, USDA/EPA inspection regimes, rendering plants, chemical processing plants (especially with corn), rail cars, and cargo ships to get product from A to B.  The end destination may be another continent.  If you're doing this kind of industrial farming and a SHTF situation erupts, there may be no market locally for your goods.  Often farmers in relatively minor (compared to SHTF) economic downturns wind up destroying their crops and prematurely slaughtering their livestock because of low prices or lack of distant market for their products.  (Lately it means the price they can get for the product is less than they might get from insurance companies and government aid.)

It also means the kind of small-scale farming where the products can actually be sold by the farmer from the back of a truck, whether at farmers markets, roadsides stands, and along streets and roadways (still very common in the South).

[MediumTex]

People who are placed in conditions of isolation in very stressful situations often begin to lose their grip on reality pretty quickly.  The idea of creating conditions of isolation in a crisis with the idea that it will make things better is IMHO not a very realistic idea of how things actually unfold.

I wonder then how Eric Rudolph managed to survive for 5 years in self-imposed isolation while being tracked by the Feds?

I'll bet it sucked, but it was probably a good preparation for the psychological stress of being in a federal Supermax prison.

As best I can tell, the federal Supermax incarceration conditions are designed to drive someone insane in the most efficient manner possible.

[smurff]

I wonder then how Eric Rudolph managed to survive for 5 years in self-imposed isolation while being tracked by the Feds? 

Eric Rudolph (bombed an abortion clinic, bombed the Atlanta Olympics in the 1990s), was a madman.  He was an isolationist before he became a terrorist, and continued as such while on the run. The issue is not pure, physical survival, it's survival as a functioning and stable human being whose behavior will not harm others.  He's the kind of person who proves MedTex' s point.  My only question was which came first--his isolation or his madness.

Isolation is so damaging to people that most civilized countries ban solitary confinement.  The ones that hold on to it reserve it (including the USA) for people who committed deadly crimes as isolated people and can't be put into regular populations, or in brief situations where there is some type of death-related danger that can't be managed in the regular prison population.

[MediumTex]

I wonder then how Eric Rudolph managed to survive for 5 years in self-imposed isolation while being tracked by the Feds? 

Eric Rudolph (bombed an abortion clinic, bombed the Atlanta Olympics in the 1990s), was a madman.  He was an isolationist before he became a terrorist, and continued as such while on the run. The issue is not pure, physical survival, it's survival as a functioning and stable human being whose behavior will not harm others.  He's the kind of person who proves MedTex' s point.  My only question was which came first--his isolation or his madness.

Isolation is so damaging to people that most civilized countries ban solitary confinement.  The ones that hold on to it reserve it (including the USA) for people who committed deadly crimes as isolated people and can't be put into regular populations, or in brief situations where there is some type of death-related danger that can't be managed in the regular prison population.

On the subject of the government destroying the minds of people it doesn't care for, I love that "madness helmet" they made Jose Padilla wear when transporting him from jail to court.  It blocked out his ability to see and white noise blocked out his ability to hear.



It's sort of like what Tommy's followers wore in Tommy.

[Pointedstick]

Good god. I hadn't seen that before.

I think MediumTex just rested his case for the USA's greatest output being violence. Violence against the body, violence against the mind, you name it, we'll produce it.

Come to think of it, have we produced violence against the soul yet?

[Kriegsspiel]

Some people with thinner skin might say the Westboro Baptists? 

I wouldn't, because I'm the 'captain of my unconquerable soul.'

[MediumTex]

Come to think of it, have we produced violence against the soul yet?

Although this isn't just a U.S. thing, if you tell people that the decisions they make in the mortal realm about which church to attend and which beliefs to adopt will determine the fate of their soul for eternity, and you tell them that the correct decision will be rewarded with eternal bliss and the incorrect decision will be punished by eternal suffering, and you tell them that they will never really know if they have decided correctly until they die (since everyone believes they are right, but since many belief systems are incompatible with one another, many must be wrong), that feels to me a bit like violence against the soul.

Having grown up in Texas, I have seen many churches that do seem to exist for the sole purpose of making their congregants feel bad about themselves because of the uncertainty regarding their eternal fate and how constantly disappointed God is in them (even though God made them the way they are).  That's definitely a type of "soul-jacking", if you ask me.  Also, when you consider that one of the implicit pitches that most churches make to their congregants is that: "While God can be a bit fickle, he has unqualified favor for those who financially support the church", you might add soul extortion to the charges of soul violence.

[MachineGhost]

How was that movie, btw?  I read the book and didn't really get the point of it.  Or maybe there wasn't supposed to be a point to it?

Depressingly intense.  Survival was the point.

Two movies worth watching about the effects of isolation:

The Edge
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119051/

Murder in the First
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113870/

[rocketdog]

Two movies worth watching about the effects of isolation:

The Edge
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119051/

Murder in the First
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113870/

I saw "Murder in the First" at an advance screening with the director and Kevin Bacon in attendance.  Kevin had just finished filming "Apollo 13", and we talked with him afterward about his experience on the "Vomit Comet" (where they filmed some of the weightless scenes.)  He was super nice, very down to earth. 

He also said that filming "Murder in the First" was very difficult both physically and mentally, because he wanted to experience some of what the actual person he was playing had experienced.  The scene where he's hosed down was shot using frigid water, to "enhance the reality" of the scene.  I guess they had to have a psychologist on the set to ensure that he wasn't being adversely affected psychologically.