Survivalism
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A survivalist is a person who anticipates a potential disruption in the continuity of local, regional or worldwide society, and takes steps to survive in the resulting unpredictable situation. Some survivalists take an interest in survival in the wilderness or at sea, while others look for opportunities to gain practice and training by assisting in government volunteer organizations. Still others look at historical incidents, either localized or affecting large regions, and put extra effort and funds into preparing themselves with all the tools and information needed to handle repeats of those same events.
Survivalists have current access to modern society, but prepare for a future loss. This differentiates them from other people who endure extreme situations by living in locations isolated through winter, incursion commandos and guerrillas, and from subsistence farmers.
The specific preparations made will depend on the nature of the anticipated disruption. The natures of the disruptions most commonly planned for among survivalists include:
- Natural disasters, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, and severe thunderstorms
- Disasters brought about by the activities of humankind: chemical spills, release of radioactive materials, war.
- Collapse of the socioeconomic structure resulting in the unavailability of electricity, fuel, food, water, and other goods and services. Concern over the Y2K computer bug led to a brief widespread interest in survivalism in 1999 for this reason.
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History
The taking of prudent precautions as a hedge against bad times is as old as history. The modern survivalist movement in the United States and Great Britain can be traced chiefly to two sources:
- The directive of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its members to store a year's worth of food for themselves and their families
- The publication of Famine and Survival in America by Howard J. Ruff in 1974.
Ruff's book was published during a period of rampant inflation in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Most of the elements of survivalism can be found there, including advice on storage of food. The book also championed the notion that precious metals, such as gold (as in South African Krugerrands) and silver, have an intrinsic worth that makes them more usable in the event of a socioeconomic collapse than other currency.
Howard Ruff later repudiated much of the book. He has kept it out of print and claims to have purchased the undistributed copies and destroyed them. However, Ruff later published a successful financial advisory newsletter and wrote a series of books with only slightly milder variations on the same themes. The most popular of those books was How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, a best-seller in 1979.
Newsletters and a number of books on the topic of survival followed the publication of Ruff's first book. In 1975, Kurt Saxon began publishing a newsletter called The Survivor, which combined Saxon's editorials with reprints of old 19th century and early 20th century writings on various pioneer skills and old technologies. Kurt Saxon used the term 'survivalist' to describe the movement, and he claims to have invented the term. Around the same time, survival bookseller and author Don Stephens in Washington state popularized the term 'retreater' to describe the movement, referring to preparations to leave the cities to a rural retreat when society breaks down. For a time in the 1970s, the terms 'survivalist' and 'retreater' were used interchangably. The term 'retreater' eventually fell out of favor, perhaps because 'survivalist' has a more macho connotation. Another important newsletter in the 1970s was the Personal Survival Letter published by Mel Tappan, who also authored the books Survival Guns and Tappan on Survival. These newsletters functioned as important networking tools for the movement during the pre-information age.
Interest in the survivalist movement perhaps peaked around 1980, on the momentum of Ruff's How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years and the publication in 1980 of the book Life After Doomsday by Bruce D. Clayton. Clayton's book, coinciding with a renewed arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, marked a shift in emphasis in preparations made by survivalists away from economic collapse, famine, and energy shortages which were concerns in the 1970s, to nuclear war.
Interest in the movement peaked again in 1999, triggered by fears of the Y2K computer bug. Although extensive efforts were made to rewrite computer programming code in response, some people nonetheless anticipated widespread power outages, food and gasoline shortages, and other emergencies to occur.
After the horrors of the Islamic extremist attacks on the World trade centre in New York in 2001 and similar outrages in Bali and Spain a resurgance of interest in survivalism started again, With the fear of a war or jihad against the west by a minority of muslim extremists, combined with an increase in awareness of environmental disasters and global climate change, also coupled by the vulnerability of humanity after the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean has once again made Survivalism an issue of concern for many people.
Preparedness is once again in the forefront of peoples concerns and those same people are now seeking to stockpile or cache supplies, gain useful skills, develop contacts with others of similar outlooks and to gain as much advice and information as possible.
All the old books have found new readership and other publications such as RETREAT SURVIVAL which is a free booklet available on the internet are enjoying more attention from concerned individuals and families than ever before. At the start of the 21St Century electronic bulltin boards have replaced many if not all paper based news bullitins. On sites such as Yahoo Groups one can find up to the minute discussions and debates on such subjects as Survival Vehicles, Survival Retreats, Militias, as well as general purpose survivalist groups[[1] (http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=survivalist&submit=Search).
Common Preparations
Common preparations sometimes include preparing a clandestine or defensible 'safe place' and stockpiling food, water, clothing, seed, and agricultural equipment. While some survivalists do not emphasize also stockpiling weapons, many do.
The common goal is to allow a group to remain completely self-sufficient for the duration of the breakdown, or perhaps indefinitely if the breakdown is predicted to be permanent. Specifically, survivalists assume they cannot prevent the collapse, and prepare to survive as individuals, as families, or in small communal groups.
The term 'bugging out' is commonly used to describe a survivalist who chooses to seek shelter in remote locations concealed from the rest of civilization. These 'lone wolves' are similar to hermits. Their strategy for survival is to live undetected, lying low to avoid unwanted attention.
Survivalists make different preparations depending on which events they are most concerned about happening. These concerns have changed over the years. During the 1970s, economic collpase, hyperinflation, and famine were the most common. These were prepared for with food storage programs, constructing a "retreat" in the country which could be farmed, and sometimes, hoarding precious metals and barterable goods on the assumption that paper currency would become worthless. During the early 1980s, these concerns were eclipsed by nuclear war, with some survivalists going so far as to construct their own fallout shelters. In 1999, many people purchased electric generators, water purifiers, and several months or years worth of food in anticipation of widespread and possibly months-long power outages because of the Y2K computer bug.
Other survivalists have more specialized concerns, often related to an adherenece to apocalyptic religious beliefs. Some New Agers anticipate a forthcoming arrival of catastrophic earth changes and prepare to survive them. A small percentage of evangelical Christians hold to an interpretation of Bible prophecy known as a post-tribulation rapture, in which Christians will have to go through a 7-year period of war and dictatorship known as the 'Great Tribulation'. As previously noted, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has an official policy of food storage for its members. Some smaller religious sects have also been known for belief in a coming apocalypse and the adoption of some survivalist practices; among the best known of these groups was the Branch Davidians.
Many people, who are not 'survivalists' in that they are not preparing for any total collapse of society or apocalyptic event, nonetheless make prudent preparations for emergencies. This can include, depending on the location, preparing for earthquakes, floods, power outages, blizzards, avalanches, wildfires, nuclear power plant accidents, hazardous material spills, tornadoes, and hurricanes. These preparations can be as simple as keeping a first aid kit, shovel, and extra clothes in the car, or maintaining a small kit of emergency supplies in the home and car, containing emergency food, water, a space blanket and other essentials, commonly known as a 'bug-out bag' or a '72-hour kit'.
Some businesses have arisen around providing survivalist supplies, including businesses that sell complete sets of food supplies for specified periods of time.
Fringe Groups
Some survivalists take a militaristic approach and have an uncommonly strong concern about government involvement in their affairs. This is most common in extremely rural parts of the Western United States, where a world view occasionally develops that growing interference from the federal government, and the United Nations (perceived to be, or to be aiming for, a world government), is best countered through acquisition of suitable small arms and the setting of strategic booby traps. However, not all who take military matters into their own hands are survivalists; see militia movement, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City bombing.
Kurt Saxon, who besides publishing a survival newsletter is also the author of the book on improvised weapons, The Poor Man's James Bond, is perhaps the best known proponent of this approach to survivalism. Saxon's writings on survival tend toward social Darwinism, with survivalism defined by Saxon as "looking out for #1" and a need to be sufficiently armed to defend your refuge and your belongings from hungry people who might demand that you share them if society breaks down.
Such a militaristic approach is not shared by many survivalists, and is indeed condemned by many. The vocal advocacy of such an extreme position, however, gives survivalism a bad name. As a result, some writers frequently, but incorrectly, use the term 'survivalist' interchangably with right-wing radicalism.
One such group which contributed to giving survivalism a bad name was The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas, which adhered to the Christian Identity religion and had extensive ties to the white supremacist movement. Its leaders eventually faced a government raid and extensive criminal charges in 1985.
Other Voices
The back to the land movement, which has been sporadically popular in the United States, especially in the 1930s inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing, and more recently in the 1970s inspired by The Mother Earth News magazine, shares many of the same interests in self-sufficiency and preparedness with survivalists. They differ from most survivalists in that back-to-the-landers have a greater interest in ecology, and sometimes the counterculture, than most survivalists do. The Mother Earth News was, as a result, widely read by survivalists as well as back-to-the-landers during that magazine's early years, and there was some overlap between the two movements.
Ernest Callenbach's 1975 novel Ecotopia, about the secession of the Pacific Northwest from the United States to form a new country based on environmentalism, named the political party governing the new country the Survivalist Party. However in his 1981 sequel to the book, Ecotopia Emerging, he qualified that choice of names by having the party leader state that the name Survivalist referred to the survival of the planet's ecosystems, not to people who hoard food and guns.
People outside the survivalist movement who have encountered similar situations to those survivalists are preparing for, either in third world countries or as a lifestyle choice, usually assert that the survivalist's emphasis is misplaced for a number of reasons: The low likelihood of a scenario involving socioeconomic collapse serious enough to require exhaustive preparations but mild enough that such preparations would not be overcome by disease, looting, fire, war, or other external forces.
Advocates of nuclear disarmament are critical of survivalists in general and preparations to survive nuclear war in particular, on the grounds that attempting to survive a nuclear war would be neither possible nor desirable.
In Fiction
The Postman is a novel and movie that depicts a post-apocalyptical future in America. A survivalist militia is organized and preys on weaker communities.
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is an older classic dealing with life in Florida after a nuclear war with the USSR.
The antagonist of The Ghostway by Tony Hillerman is a survivalist who finances his preparations for nuclear war by working as a hit man.
Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, is about a cataclysmic comet hitting the Earth, and various groups of people struggling to survive the aftermath in southern California.
Edward Abbey's 1980 novel Good News is not often thought of as survivalist fiction, but it is about small bands of people in the Phoenix, Arizona area trying to live free and fend off the rise of a military dictatorship, after the collapse of the economy and government.
Two made-for-TV movies made during the 1980s, The Day After in the United States, and Threads in the United Kingdom, portray a nuclear war and its aftermath. Both movies were, at the time, among the most controversial movies ever made for television.
The 1984 movie Red Dawn portrays Colorado high school students taking to the hills after a fictional invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union.
The Survivalist is also the title of a series of paperback novels by Jerry Ahern.
External Links
- Survival Center (http://www.Survival-Center.com) maintains free access to survivalism-related topics.
- Frugal Squirrel free Digital Library (http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/survival-lib.html), published by Preparedness Educational Services Inc. Their survivalist forums are located at [2] (http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php)
- Survival Forums (http://www.SurvivalForums.com) maintains free access to survivalism-related topics, as well as promoting free discussion of survivalism-related interests.
- SurvivalRing (http://www.survivalring.org) started as a webring in 1997, has grown to offer over 800 megabytes of survival and preparedness related information, most of which are digital versions of government documents on shelter, disaster preparedness, WMD training, FEMA, and Red Cross files, all of which are free.
Classic Survival Books
The text of three classic survival books from the 1970s can be found online:
- Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearney (1979, updated 1987 version): [3] (http://www.oism.org/nwss/index.htm)
- Possum Living by Dolly Freed (1978): [4] (http://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm)
- Tappan on Survival by Mel Tappan (1981): [5] (http://www.geocities.com/mark_l_anderson/faqs/tapp.txt)