The Survivalists Vs. Everybody Else

Good evening,

It is not inconceivable that the modern world could collapse catastrophically. Let us go beyond the scheming in Brussels, the sorcery of Wall Street, or the possibility of another 1848 or 1929 in the boom-and-bust cycle inherent to capitalism. I want to address the Specter of Ultimate Bust that hovers over all the world, waiting to see if Fate will greenlight its descent. Let us count the ways.

The planet, or the galaxy, turns against us

Imagine that one day the Earth has the worst case of gas ever. It farts in the form of volcanos. Imagine the Ring of Fire going off all at once. "Went down, down, down / as the flames went higher / and it burns, burns, burns..." If that's how the dinosaurs all died, we can be thankful, for they would have dined on our ancestors before they even had a chance to go up into the trees, let alone come down from them. If it wasn't volcanoes, then it was a massive asteroid strike that covered the Earth in a life-choking shroud of death dust, pretty much killing off 90% of everything. Sure, it could happen again.

Peak oil

Peak oil is where the extraction of petroleum is no longer cost-effective as far as the global economy is concerned. Now, the Earth itself is never going to be depleted of the black goo of industry. Rather, it's just going to become harder and harder to get, until it's just too difficult for it to be worth it anymore. Remember hunting for Easter eggs as a child? All the obvious ones - the pastel blots of purple, yellow, and blue, in contrast to the deep Miracle-Gro green of grandpa's lawn - were scooped up by the shrieking toddlers within minutes.

The more challenging hiding spots weren't too much trouble for you if you were among the older children. However, the ones that your bastard teenaged cousins hid, deviously so, were another matter. Basically, we may soon be down to the Easter eggs that your black sheep uncle hid inside the cactus planter suspended from the patio overhang, and none of us would be tall enough to get them. It was often the case that nobody would ever find these particular eggs. Well, grandma would. A few weeks later. What did Toucan Sam always say to do?

Peak water

Yes, we might someday run short of the clear stuff. Nebraska's aquifer is about to go kaput, and Lake Mead here in Vegas will run dry in 10 years at this rate. African tribes are already skirmishing over water rights, just like in the Old West, except even the relatively powerful can't get their clutches on enough of the stuff. This may be Mother Nature's way of saying that she has diarrhea, and that we're the bacterium who has been irritating her lower bowels.

Overpopulation

It's the classic Malthusian dilemma. But it's not just mouths to feed; it's lifestyles. One reason that commodity prices are through the roof these days is that the Chinese and Indians want to live like us. We would need six planet Earths for two billion more individuals to live as Americans do. It doesn't take a Nobel Laureate to figure that something's gotta give.

Nuclear war

The Cold War is over, but nuclear proliferation certainly isn't. Imagine the nightmare scenario of Islamic crazies coming to power in chaotic Pakistan. Not that they could lob one at us, but an exchange with India would kick up a whole lot of glowing green particles, and they might set one aside for Israel, an unofficial nuclear power. In addition, North Korea will be capable of hitting Los Angeles in a few years if they keep working on their dong rockets. The little guy might just be crazy enough to do it.

On top of all that, compare China's rapid industrial ascent in the beginning of the 21st century to Germany's at the beginning of the 20th. If we in America should begin to hear echoes of the anti-Teutonic belligerence that erupted from Britain on the eve of the Great War, start digging a hole in your backyard. Tell the neighbors you're building an underground clubhouse for the kids. After all, your fallout shelter will only keep four people alive until it's safe to see daylight again.

SURVIVALISTS, WARLORDS, AND YOU

There is an elusive subculture, scattered from the damp forests of the northern Pacific to the stewing swamps of Florida, who do not consider these possibilities remote. They are the survivalists, and thanks to the magic of the interent, you don't have to stumble across their hidden compounds to find out what's on their minds. You will find that in regards to the above threats, they eschew proactive realism towards the big question of humanity's capacity to address these threats. Reactionaries that they are, they veer towards bitter, misanthropic pessimism, and chances are that you fall into one of their broad, hateful categories. Hence the guns.

If you already need Xanax to get through your day

What would it take for you to be reduced to the status of a desperate, starving refugee? Or rather, what would it take for a few hundred million of you to be reduced to the status of desperate, starving refugees? If it comes to that, you're probably going to die. If you don't die, then you will have found a way to live, and chances are that the way you will have found will not be pretty.

If you are a young woman, you might resort to selling your pussy. If you are a young man, you might demonstrate your willingness to rob and kill for the warlord that you would swear fealty to. (Well, it's more likely you'll just end up in old-fashioned slavery. If you're lucky. And you were so snarky when the Marine Corps recruiter approached you on campus!) Yes, you read that right: warlord. Read Somalia as being a microcosm for the postapocalyptic future.

Now, you might be able to demonstrate useful knowledge (such as electrical engineering) that would be of interest to the warlord, which may excuse you from trigger-pulling duties. For the most part. Either way, you're in the employ of a warlord, whether it involves spreading your legs, bayonetting small children, or converting a Diesel engine to run on the reconstituted fat of dead people. Don't like that scenario? Take the easy way out and jump off a building.

The eager sociopaths among the survivalists - the hated among the haters - plan on becoming those warlords. Let's hope that most of them die in the initial chaos. However, per the rules of Darwinism as they seem to be understood among Internet fascists (I am not one of them, so fuck you!), the ones who kill them will themselves become warlords. Worse ones. As for those of you who are kinder and gentler - more 'genteel', even - who understand that cooperation is the optimal path to reconstructing a more rational, sustainable, and humanist civilization: you had better have plenty of guns and ammunition ready for those who would beg to disagree.

Let's say that when the balloon goes up, you are unable to find the well-armed and fortified progressive commune in the forests outside Portland, Oregon, whose mission is to heal the Earth. Or, let's say that the progressive commune was overrun by a howling mob of northeast Portland tweekers, and that those left alive quickly went on to envy the dead. I mean, if you are being cannibalized, it would imply that you are dead. But hell, if you're not dead.... So that option's out the window.

You may try living on your own in the forest, foraging for nature's bounty in the form of berries, roots, and mushrooms. If you don't die right away, you'll quickly find that the Man Vs. Wild reruns you watched back when the TV still turned on are about as useful for wilderness survival as Star Wars is for the field of astrophysics. Suicide? You can take the easy way out any time. Meanwhile, you offer yourself up to the nearest warlord and hope he'll at least turn you into a slave and not into dog food. Literally, into dog food. Pig food, too. The hogs will eat every last bit of you, although your teeth won't sit well with their digestive tracts.

So you think survivalism's for kooks?

Meanwhile, the survivalists who are living up to their internet bluster - more likely, they are the ones who kept their net presence relatively subdued (they don't want to attract the attention of Federal agents, after all) - are sitting pretty on ten years worth of food stores, several dozen acres of arable land, livestock pens full of goats and chickens, and dozens of thousands of rounds of military-grade ammunition. They are entrenched enough and have enough firepower to pile up the corpses of your warlord's thugs by the dozens and hundreds all the live-long day. Chances are the clan patriarch had plenty of experience doing so in Vietnam, with his son's generation having seen their share of it in the Islamic world. Even if the thugs do prevail, good luck figuring out what to do with all that farm equipment once the food stores are picked clean and the animals are all slaughtered.

If you should come across them while still a lone, harmless refugee, hat in hand and begging to be taken in, you'll be lucky if you're just turned away. They already have enough mouths to feed, and since you were just a cubicle dweller prior to being displaced by the apocalypse, you're worse than useless to them. In addition, they might just shoot you so that you won't go on to run your mouth after later being taken captive by thugs. "Shoot, shovel, and shut up" as they often say in the most rural corners of our land. Don't count on pity overwhelming paranoia. Believe me, as of today they have already been thinking long and hard about the possibility of having to dispatch innocent little you should you ever darken their doorstep in that darkest hour.

Ultimately, what is but a paranoid right-wing fantasy today may tomorrow become prophecy realized. Who's crazy now, motherfucker?

CONCLUSION

In the above nightmare scenario, however unlikely it may be, it would seem that survivalism is the thing to do while you still have the luxury of calling it an eccentric hobby. Yes, you would want to call it that, while insisting vehemently that you're not one of those "right wing nuts in Idaho." After all, scrutiny is one of the survivalist's worst enemies, whether it comes in the form of a curious neighbor or a Federal SWAT team.

For you, the reader, it comes down to a matter of Rational Choice, if you are familiar with the socio-behavioral theory that goes by that name. How likely is that scenario? Is it worth sacrificing your Juicy Couture, your bling-encrusted iPod, your $12 neon martinis, and your stucco townhome to make the dire preperations for something that may or may not happen? (By the way, you're a fucking douchebag.) Would it even save your ass if things got that bad? Life is a gamble, and altogether few of you will elect to live like Jed Clampett before up from the ground came a bubblin' crude. That is, unless you have very compelling reasons to do so.

I'm guessing that if you're anything like the next sane, well-adjusted, complacent American, that you are far from being compelled. Hell, who can blame you? In fact, I'm not all that compelled myself. Aside from bump-in-the-road contingencies like Hurricane Katrina, which in all seriousness you would do very well to prepare for, I'm going to gamble on all that extreme apocalyptic shit not happening in my lifetime. Why else would I remain right smack in the middle of this unsustainable sandblasted neon shit-hole they call Sin City? (Not that I plan on staying here for much longer; few sensible Las Vegans do.) In the end, life is too short to survive.