While I used to find it a lot of fun to imagine all the ways I’d need to learn and know to survive a major devastation, at 65, I am now inclined toward “oh, just take me out now and let me go in peace”. I am not inclined to fight off “hordes” of humans. Zombies maybe, if they’re the slow and stupid ones and not the running, climbing, clever ones.
But if I’m going to need radioactivity counters and worry that I might become my community’s next meal, then I’m out.
If everyone else was pretty much gone, isolation does not bother me in the slightest. I actually COULD be the last person on earth comfortably and sanely.
So barring a Mad Max world, fast zombies, and Soylent Green, I feel well prepared for the normal things such as major job loss and also larger things such as another Great Depression or war. I’m not a doomer in the sense that I feel inclined to prepare to the ‘nth degree for it because mostly I’m just too old to care about surviving absolute devastation, but I think I am a doomer in that I believe it is inevitable - in my life or soon thereafter.
No empire lasts forever. The world has seen massive political and religious structural changes since the beginning of man. It’s not “if” but when. And when is ALWAYS. Being comfortable now is no indication that we have evolved beyond that cycle of destruction and restructuring. It’s a given, IMHO.
Also, humans used to simply relocate when natural and cyclical changes in weather patterns occurred (ice age, massive droughts, volcanic activity), sometimes migrating en masse. Some we see coming because they happen incrementally over decades, and some happen in hours. But land ownership has pretty much killed off our natural lives and we can’t migrate to better hunting grounds so now we complain instead about earth's weather changes.
And that’s kind of how I have learned to prepare: what did folks do before? What did early man do? How was this done in medieval times? How did colonists in the New World survive once they left a community and settled in the wilds of Kentucky? How do you fish without a modern fishing pole? How do you trap, skin, and eat squirrel? How do you just live?
That doesn’t mean I don’t have food put by. I dehydrate everything, and mostly by the wood stove so it’s doable most of the year and the sun and air can do a good deal in summer (if it’s not too humid). I do think you have to know how to live without modern convenience because we might have to again.
I don’t garden. Hate it, I'm a natural plant-killer, and after 6 years of failure because we’re too wooded and shady, I started planting seeds and starts from fields around me: native foods abound in the yard now without any help from me and we already had nut and fruit trees.
We’re in a small town, in a house on the edge that was built room-by-room so it’s a maze of doors and windows. We would not be able to defend it all alone. But if we had to hunker down in it, we’d be fine. We eat simply and not a flour-based diet because I’m not a bread-y person and tubers and roots have more nutrition. Flour and white rice have almost ZERO nutrition and I would not try to survive on them. I don’t store them. I do store a lot of dried potatoes and other roots and tubers, cornmeal, and oats. But even the grains aren’t the slightest essential in the human diet. But I know it will extend greatly our capacity to feed ourselves longer-term and I do like them. So my food storage is aimed at the most nutrient dense foods, not necessarily the cheapest, easiest to buy and put away: potatoes and other roots and tubers, greens and some veg, mushrooms, fruit and tomatoes, nuts and seeds, eggs and meat, fats and salt. And tea and chocolate. If I can get a dairy animal, I would like that also.
I don’t need electricity. Our mudroom can be converted into a small animal shelter/coop for the chickens and small animals, if necessary. As long as I can get outside and collect food, I can eat it and not touch our stores. Not a huge amount of variety by modern standards, but guess what? A human can live just fine on nettles, dandelion, roots and tubers, and meat/eggs for a long time and probably be healthier than most people today and you feel full after eating much less food because you are actually being nourished with much less food. What I have stored in larger quantities is salt and fats. Those will be harder to produce.
I have made all my own medicines from plants for 45+ years. I bought or grew the exotic ones to battle things like smallpox or Marburgs and such to have on hand. I don’t think people know much about the heavy-hitters when they talk about herbalism in the homesteading and prepping community. Growing lemon balm and yarrow are great, but what are you going to do when you need pleurisy root or pitcher plant?
I’m just thinking that self-sufficiency may not be about being prepared with all systems intact as much as knowing how to live on the planet regardless: how to find food and prepare it, how to live without running water, electricity, communication tools, what plants help fight off the worst bacteria and viruses that can be released. Basically, how to live historically, the way humans have until the mass movement to cities the last couple of hundred years.
I never had a cell phone. I am not an instant person. My phone hardly ever rings and I’m not often anywhere near it to hear it when someone has tried to call me. I know how to make a good stew out of just about any root, green, and meat. I don’t need variety; my food is not entertainment. I am perfectly happy to daydream if there is absolutely nothing to do and watching nature is already an endlessly fascinating way to pass the time. I’ve stockpiled as much literature as food probably. A field, a pantry, and a library and I'm good to go.
I’m thinking Great Depression or war maybe. And I grew up with people who lived through those and taught me how to live so I’m ready already because that’s how I live. Without plastic garbage bags and cling wrap and a dozen cleaning products and such. Never did those anyway.
Tech things and social media completely confuse me. When people can't just talk amongst themselves and make sense, the whole species has gone to heck in a handbasket. LOL
