- Rawles, James Wesley.
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It.
New York: Plume, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-452-29583-4.
-
As I write these comments in July of 2011, the legacy media and much
of the “new” media are focussed on the sovereign debt
crises in Europe and the United States, with partisans on
every side of the issue and both sides of the Atlantic predicting
apocalyptic consequences if their policy prescriptions are not
promptly enacted. While much of the rhetoric is overblown and
many of the “deadlines” artificial constructs created
for political purposes, the situation cannot help but remind one of
just how vulnerable the infrastructure of civilisation in developed
nations has become to disruptions which, even a few decades ago,
would have been something a resilient populace could ride out (consider
civilian populations during World War II as an example).
Today, however, delivery of food, clean water, energy, life-sustaining
pharmaceuticals, and a multitude of other necessities of life to
populations increasingly concentrated in cities and suburbs is a
“just in time” process, optimised to reduce inventory
all along the chain from primary producer to consumer and itself
dependent upon the infrastructure for its own operation. For
example, a failure of the electrical power grid in a region not
only affects home and business use of electricity, but will quickly
take down delivery of fresh water; removal and processing of
sewage; heating for buildings which rely on electrically powered
air or water circulation systems and furnace burners; and
telephone, Internet, radio, and television communication once
the emergency generators which back up these facilities exhaust their
fuel supplies (usually in a matter of days). Further, with
communications down, inventory control systems all along
the food supply chain will be inoperable, and individuals in the region will
be unable to either pay with credit or debit cards or obtain cash
from automatic teller machines. This only scratches the surface of
the consequences of a “grid down” scenario, and it
takes but a little reflection to imagine how a failure in any one part
of the infrastructure can bring the rest down.
One needn't envision a continental- or global-scale financial
collapse to imagine how you might find yourself on your own for
a period of days to weeks: simply review the aftermath of
earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornado swarms, and large-scale
flooding in recent years to appreciate how events which, while
inevitable in the long term but unanticipated until too short
a time before they happened to effectively prepare for, can
strike. The great advantage of preparing for the apocalypse is
that when something on a smaller scale happens, you can ride it
out and help your neighbours get through the difficult times
without being a burden on stretched-thin emergency services
trying to cope with the needs of those with less foresight.
This book, whose author is the founder of the
essential
SurvivalBlog
site, is a gentle introduction to (quoting the
subtitle) “tactics, techniques, and technologies
for uncertain times”. By “gentle”, I mean
that there is little or no strident doom-saying here; instead,
the reader is encouraged to ask, “What if?”,
then “What then?”, and so on until an appreciation
of what it really means when the power is off, the furnace is
dead, the tap is dry, the toilet doesn't flush, the refrigerator
and freezer are coming to room temperature, and you don't have
any food in the pantry.
The bulk of the book describes steps you can take, regardless of
how modest your financial means, free time, and physical
capacity, to prepare for such exigencies. In many cases,
the cost of such common-sense preparations is negative:
if you buy storable food in bulk and rotate your storage by
regularly eating what you've stored, you'll save money when
buying through quantity discounts (and/or buying when prices
are low or there's a special deal at the store), and in an
inflationary era, by buying before prices rise.
The same applies to fuel, ammunition, low-tech workshop and
gardening tools, and many other necessities when civilisation
goes south for a while. Those seeking to expand their preparations
beyond the basics will find a wealth of references here, and
will find a vast trove of information on the author's
SurvivalBlog.
The author repeatedly emphasises that the most
important survival equipment is stored between your
ears, and readers are directed to sources of information and
training in a variety of fields. The long chapter on medical
and dental care in exigent circumstances is alone almost worth
the price of the book. For a fictional treatment of survival
in an extreme grid-down societal collapse, see the author's
novel
Patriots (December 2008).
July 2011 