Neatorama » Blog Archive » E-Mail » Survivalism is Making a Come Back

E-Mail Post To A Friend

Email a copy of 'Survivalism is Making a Come Back' to a friend

Loading ...

25 comments to "Survivalism is Making a Come Back"

Tom
April 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I’m a bit worried about his kind of thing as well. I’ve converted most of my savings to precious metals and I have serval months worth of dry goods (rice, canned goods) on hand in the house–just in case.
mikelietz
April 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Not to be a contrarian, but what good will those precious metals be? Are people really going to be willing to trade useful goods (food, water, fuel, SUVs) for “precious” but otherwise useless metals? At least with diamonds you can cut glass with ‘em.
OddNumber
April 16th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Converting savings to precious metals would help you in the future if the dollar collapsed, but there were still goods to be obtained. However, in a crisis situation where survival is dependent on food supplies, no one is going to trade you part of their food supply for a couple silver coins.

Buying precious metals in the past has been a great investment, and it still is, but the trend of huge gains in precious metals is only worthwhile while the dollar is declining.

Hoarding food makes even less sense. When is the last time anyone in the US was completely unable to obtain assistance more than a day into a major disaster?
Anony
April 16th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
“When is the last time anyone in the US was completely unable to obtain assistance more than a day into a major disaster?”

Catrina?
Lasse
April 16th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
You people nedd to relax, I bet people weren’t this hysterical even when the plague killed a third of Europes population.

Keep calm and carry on, remember?
L
April 16th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
OddNumber must have been joking. Or he/she is completely unaware of a little storm called Katrina.

Personally, I think it would be cool to live off the grid, as far as electricity goes. No more worries about power outages. I mean, if society did collapse, you wouldn’t need your TV, but it would still be nice to have light and heat.
bean
April 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I get a kick out of the people that hoard gasoline on their property. Gas expires just like anything else. That’s like hoarding milk.
L
April 16th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
After reading the whole article, I just have to say that I get a kick out of people who would store wine and whiskey. Surely, with limited space, you’d want to store more — oh, I don’t know — food.

I guess some people are anticipating an end-of-the-world bender.
jessleigh
April 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I’m all about having a private place in the middle of nowhere to escape to. Thoreau and Emerson were right. For me, its not about the end of the world, it is more about escaping my teaching career/smothering family/crazy friends.
Colt Seaver
April 16th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Even food stores will spoil eventually. Silver coins (or any other currency) will ensure we’ll get the most out of what remains (courtesy John Locke):

“…unused property is waste and an offense against nature. However, with the introduction of ‘durable’ goods, men could exchange their excessive perishable goods for goods that would last longer and thus not offend the natural law. The introduction of money marks the culmination of this process. Money makes possible the unlimited accumulation of property without causing waste through spoilage. He also includes gold or silver as money because they may be ‘hoarded up without injury to anyone,’ since they do not spoil or decay in the hands of the possessor.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_locke#Theory_of_value_and_property
Paul
April 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Time to call Bear Grillz and start training.
CheeseDuck
April 16th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I’m just gonna turn to cannibilism
Lance
April 16th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
There are a LOT of people that make me want to escape to the wilderness. No, not Thoreau and his ilk- I am talking about Hillary, Obama and any other nut trying to stifle my freedoms and rights under the guise of “helping people.”

In the 57 years I have been alive, this country has made larger steps toward becoming a police state in teh last 5 years than in the 53 years preceeding.

No, I don’t trust the government. Why should I? Thry don’t trust me either.
Ali S.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I’ve always been interested in this kind of thing. Not because I believe that should things go bad everyone will go bananas and eat one another or kill each other Max Max style. However, I try to learn survival skills such as building a fire, setting up a tent, finding water, and food because I believe in keeping these ancient skills intact.

So many native people and their skills are disappearing and I believe in what Ray Mears (a survival expert) once said about this: That by keeping these skills alive we are honouring those who came before us, their culture became our culture, and in cases where we need to survive we all can look back and reuse those hard-learned skills to live.

Plus, I love this type of stuff from my days as a boy scout! Self-reliance in dire situations is practically a mantra I was drilled into learning. So if ever I’m stuck on an island I’m not going to go insane because I’ll know how to deal with it.
munky
April 16th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
@ Ali S — congratulations on being one of the Last Boy Scouts.

These days, parents are so risk-averse and scared that their precious jewel might come to harm by actually learning something useful that fire making and tent pitching are no longer core elements to the scouting experience.
These days, the lazy turds (ie, those that can be cajoled or bribed with Playstation promises into joining in the first place) earn merit badges in computer technology - very useful if you plan on raising corporate drones, not so useful if you’re trying to access http://www.howtocatchafish.com when stuck in the Alaskan outback.

Baden Powell must be rotating in his sephulcre at a very high velocity indeed…
Steohawk
April 16th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
It’s good to see that there’s a decline in the belief that government is omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
jim
April 16th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
The best thing to stockpile would be bullets.

You can use them for hunting, protection, and they also will have great value as currency.
sandy
April 16th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Does anyone else get a kick out of those radio adds for food supplies, water purifiers and precious metals? The adds are almost as good as listening to alex jones. NWO OMG!!! sure makes me want to stockpile supplies in my bomb shelter.
Christophe
April 16th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Ali S is the new Lord Baden-Powell

As for the metal stockpiling? I should have buy some pounds of copper or zinc 5 yeas ago instead of financial stocks I bet those stockpiling people can make a huge markup.
OK, bye, need to go buy a couple of crude oil barrels…
anathema
April 17th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Going with the Katrina example, I have to say that the people who can afford to stockpile like this don’t seem like the people who would be affected the most by a disaster like that.
Thebes
April 17th, 2008 at 12:20 am
To those questioning the value of precious metals… they have traditionally been what currencies are based upon going back far longer than our current worthless bits of paper scheme. YMMV.

As far as stockpiling, it boggles my mind that so many people have less than a weeks worth of food, and virtually no water, in their house. Katrina? Heck we’ve had snow storms around here that have stranded people for two weeks, and any responsible person living near me is prepared to spend at least a month in their home without assistance. Common sense really, bad things sometimes happen.
Ali S.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:05 am
@ Munky and Christophe

Thanks for the kind words. It took me a moment to remember who Lord Baden-Powell was until I recalled a picture my Scout Master used to have in our Den of Lord BP standing next to the British flag.

I think kids should get Scout or Camp life activity skills down because in the short term it’s a fun experience to enjoy camping and in the long run kids will begin to appreciate the environment and live in a more sustainable fashion.

However, if folks are really serious into learning skills like this ask your Grandpa or someone who used to camp, be in the Armed Services, or even your own kid who maybe a Scout! Or if you want a book to read a good one I’m always pointing folks towards is the “SAS Survival Guide” by John Wiseman.
MoonCake
April 17th, 2008 at 5:15 am
part of my near future revolves around becoming as self-sustaining as possible. i don’t have the financial stability that would allow me to do so at the moment because i’m in school, but as soon as i get a full-time job and start making a steady pay-check, you better believe that i’m gonna start taking myself off the grid. 50% of this decision has to do with our current state of affairs.. the other 50% has to do with my distrust of corporate america and my lust to be independent. i don’t want my life to rely on anyone else but me. i want to build my own house out of recycled materials, install solar panels or build a windmill or maybe even a water-mill, have a greenhouse and grow my own food, hunt for my own meat, have a compost heap, make my own clothing and convert my car engine to run on water (which i’ll collect from the rain). and the funny thing is, i probably want to stay in the suburbs! i hate people, but i can’t live without the social interaction and i’m probably going to work in the city anyway. but enough about me…
Scooter
April 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I don’t think stockpiling food will work, so i’m stock piling useful tools, like hand saws, chisels, bows and arrows, mussel loading rifles, fishing hooks and line, cooking gear, flint and steel strikers, sewing needles. Also useful skills like wood working (building shelter), hunting, fishing, fire starting, leather craft, sewing, and similar skills. Oh, and Books. Eventually if the whole world goes to pot people will run out of bullets and that point guns are just clubs. It’s not that hard to make gunpowder, charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur…
the lord
April 17th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
why would i go and live in the wild and work my ass off while the elite or the people responsible live it up FU#K that
ill raise an army and kill them all!!

NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!

and if they go hide in thiere underground bunckers ill make the surface of the earth inhabitable and they would have dug their own graves

but thats just me

you can go ahead and live of pigeons for all i care

its better to die on my feet than live on my knees

Want your own avatar? Get one for free at Gravatar!