Survivalism A-Z - Part 1

he end of the world is coming. It doesn’t matter exactly what causes it. You know some of the scenarios: bird flu, bioterrorism, accidental Russian nuclear launch, India-Pakistan war, total societal breakdown caused by a global financial collapse or “Peak Oil” shortage. Survivalists call it WTSHTF (When The Shit Hits The Fan) for short. If you want to survive it, start studying, making preparations, and stockpiling supplies. Survivalism should be your only hobby. We can’t even begin to tell you everything you need to know. But here’s a sampling of things good survivalists think about.

DVICE.

The best basic survival advice we’ve heard came from Bruce Beach, whom I visited a while back at his massive Ark Two fallout shelter in Ontario. His “top three rules” for preparing to survive a nuclear war hold true for most other WTSHTF scenarios, too:

Rule 1: Get out of the cities.

Rule 2: Get out of the cities.

Rule 3: Get out of the cities.

He doesn’t mean after the missiles are in the air or the first smallpox patients are showing up in emergency rooms. Do it now.

OB.

Bug-Out Bag. A portable survival kit containing the basic necessities to help you get to wherever you’re going to ride out the apocalypse. You should have it with you at all times. Survivalists spend endless hours tinkering with their BOBs and trading tips and suggestions on what to pack.

A New Age Christian sect that predicted nuclear war would occur on March 15, 1990. Church members cashed out of their lives and flocked to the CUT’s ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana, on the edge of Yellowstone Park. The ranch was equipped with a huge, state-of-theart fallout shelter stocked with 7 years’ worth of supplies, and church members also built their own smaller shelters throughout the valley. When nothing happened on March 15, the CUT claimed that their prayers had prevented the war, and eventually sold some of the ranch. But there are still about 30 top quality shelters all over Paradise Valley in private hands. It would not be a bad place to be WTSHTF.

EEP LARDER.

A stock of at least 2 years worth of food, the minimum most survivalists want to have on hand to ride out a WTSHTF scenario. Often contains foods like wheat, beans, rice, and honey, which keep for at least 10 years. Don’t forget a grinder for the wheat, and lots of vitamin pills. Be sure to periodically rotate out and replace any perishable supplies.

. Some New Age survivalists believe that the earth’s poles are shifting on their axis. This is causing global warming, and will soon cause earthquakes, solar flares and the flooding of much of the world’s inhabited land. The upside is that it will also bring about a new Aquarian Age of peace, understanding and contact with friendly aliens.

ARADAY CAGE

. Nuclear explosions produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that will fry most electrical equipment. To shield your gear from the EMP, you can store it in a Faraday Cage, which is essentially a metal box that blocks out the electromagnetic radiation. A microwave oven is a Faraday Cage designed to keep radiation in, but it will keep it out, too.

UNS

. At a minimum, you’ll want a good hunting rifle and a sidearm. Make sure your weapons all use common caliber ammunition so that you have a chance of finding more later (7.62 mm has good stopping power). Assault weapons are nice, but WTSHTF one shot, one kill will be the only way to go -- you don’t want to be spraying hundreds of irreplaceable rounds just to drop a deer or some half-dead plague victims. As Kurt Saxon, the former American Nazi Party member who basically invented survivalism in the 1970s, once wrote: A pistol for the bedroom, A shotgun over the door, A 30-06 for reaching out; You don’t need any more.

EIRLOOM SEEDS.

You’ll need to start growing your own food ASAP — the Deep Larder is just to buy you time to get selfsufficient. Use old-school heirloom seeds, not the more commonly available genetically engineered hybrids. Hybrids don’t “breed true,” so if you want to be able to use the seed from the crops you grow to plant the next year’s crops, you’ll need heirlooms.

ODINE

. For nuke survival, lay in a stock of potassium iodide pills. After a nuclear explosion or a Chernobyl-style meltdown, huge amounts of radioactive iodine are released into the atmosphere. When inhaled, this iodine concentrates in your thyroid gland and gives you cancer. If you take potassium iodide pills as soon as the bombs hit, they will saturate your thyroid with harmless, non-radioactive iodine so that it can’t absorb any of the bad, radioactive kind.

UST-IN-TIME INVENTORY

. Thanks to computerized inventory systems, goods are now manufactured and distributed just before they are needed. This is incredibly efficient and profitable for businesses, but also means that WTSHTF it will be impossible to get basics like food and gas almost immediately, since stores and warehouses don’t have the kind of stockpiles they used to. JITI has made survivalists even more obsessed with having everything they need in advance.

. AKA Rover Packs. Kurt Saxon’s term for groups of refugees who will band together after the breakdown of society and roam around looting the countryside. He describes a KC as “a social organism made up of improvident establishment hacks, urban workers and welfare loafers . . . Regardless of how much or how little you had stored away, the Killer Caravan would strip you of everything.”

ONG EMERGENCY.

As mentioned in the book reviews elsewhere in this guide, this is James Howard Kunstler’s term for the Peak Oil crisis. The basic idea of Peak Oil is that global oil production has reached its peak and that it will very gradually get more difficult to extract over the coming decades. This will lead to huge oil wars and the collapse of American society. The only viable option for the survivors will be small, self-sufficient primitive communities. I can’t shake the feeling that Peak Oilers are total fucking loons, but I’m not smart enough to find the flaws in their predictions.

ULTIPLE REDUNDANCIES

. Redundancy is a cornerstone of survival preparation. All of your preps should be triply backed up, because you’re not likely to be able to replace or repair them for a long time. If your first option fails, you go to the backups. For example, you’d want lighters, strike anywhere matches, and flints for starting fires, and an electrical pump, a gravity pump and a bucket for getting water out of your well.

TO BE CONTINUED:

SURVIVALISM A - Z

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