Survival Stupidity

I stumbled across a forum post that was supposed to be about preparing for climate change. Reading through the entire thread (currently at 8 pages long) it’s pretty clear to me that “preppers” still do not get it. They do not understand the reality of climate change and what this is going to mean for them and all of their plans.

One guy however, really stood out as an idiot extraordinaire:

Today, IF by some chance I had to leave my ranch here in Tx, I would grab my ALICE ruck that has been with me for nearly 50 years, my trusty knife I carried in Vietnam and still to this day, Ruger 10/22 my Vietnam mess kit (don’t ask me how I got back with that thing LOL), put on my Danner USMC ISSUE RAT boots, (FYI, worn combat boots all my life, never put on a better more comfortable pair) a dozen or so issue MRE’s I keep, change of clothes, poncho and liner, 300 feet of mil-spec para-cord and 5x 2.5 lb bags of Italian Roast, Turkish grind coffee and hit the outback. My total weight is about 35 lbs in the ruck, total carry weight is just under 50 lb or about 25% of body weight.

Oh boy. Dead man walking. Going to go “survive” in the “outback” of… Texas? With a .22 and a “dozen MRE’s”.

It is this kind of asinine thinking that permeates “survivalist”. Rambo warriors (aged 70) who think that their MRE’s and a gun are going to be sufficient preparations. All it is going to take is a turned ankle, or a head shot from 300 yards out or just a little bit of dehydration and exposure to stop this clown dead in his tracks.

This is how you prepare for climate change? Absolutely not.

There were also “seed stashes” that were going to somehow magically sprout their way to food production (in several months) and avoid pests, disease, crop loss to a hoped-for bountiful harvest of food, apparently just in time to avoid starvation.

Good grief. It is stunning for me to realize that there is still no awareness within these groups on what is really needed to survive (anything). Calorie burn (energy consumption) begins BEFORE disaster strikes – and continues indefinitely thereafter. Assuming your going to “survive off the land” (along with every other idiot out there with a rifle) or “grow you own” (after NOT learning the how-to which takes a decade or more) at the end of… what season? When will disaster strike? How long do you have to wait for the magical jumping beans to sprout and feed your family, assuming nothing else goes wrong?

MRE’s and survival seeds will not save your sorry ass. You might buy yourself a few days or at most a few weeks if you have a mountain of these constipation and sickness supplies. But if dehydration and exposure has not already killed you, you will be frantic for FOOD and calories (and clean water).

The entire “bug-out to the hills” survival mentality is so incredibly stupid that it boggles the mind. But so is the “I’ll grow my own“. I’m serious. Go DO IT if you think it can be done and PROVE IT. Many have tried – all have FAILED. The reasons are many, but it comes down to climate, weather variations, skills, experience, time and soil / water / temperature / extreme event(s), etc., etc. that work against you – all the while you are burning calories trying to stay alive.

If you’re going to stay in place – you need to prepare for the DURATION. Whatever the emergency actually is. If your city is hit by a hurricane, tornado or earthquake – how long do you think it will be before services are reestablished? How long before you will be able to resume what you’ve always done – go buy food at the supermarket?

You don’t magically become a great gardener or know how to grow food when emergency circumstances arrive. You learn these skills a decade or more in advance. And even with those skills, if you have them (almost nobody really does), you will still require an entire growing season (4 months at least) before you can expect to produce enough food to supplement your other food supplies. But nobody is “growing all their own food”. This is almost entirely MYTH. Home food growers supplement their store-bought supplies with what they can grow at home – when conditions are good.

But when they are bad – they don’t grow anything. They become even more reliant upon food that has been delivered to their region.

It is quite stunning that survivalist types still think they’ve got what it takes to survive. They don’t – and they won’t. It’s all made-up keyboard kommando bullshit. Their Danner boots (which are crap by the way) and “trusty knife” is not going to generate 2400 calories a day, every day. But it will get them in a shitload of trouble as they attempt to rob, wheedle and cajole their way to sufficient calories, wheresoever they may try to find them (along with that dinky little .22).

I grew up with a Ruger 10/22 welded to my hand. I’ve own tons of them. Great little guns – but useless beyond a 100 yards or so for food production. Guns don’t replace food. Guns don’t even provide food very often (nowhere near often enough, not even close). The whole hunting meme and living off the land is simply a fantasy that will be the death of thousands who try this – competing with all the other idiots who are convinced that plentiful food on the hoof exists just outside the city limits, waiting to die for you.

This is survival stupidity. And it always has been. When civilization fails, or when your region is devastated, people do not run to the hills. They run to the nearest store. And they do this because they were stupid themselves – they failed to prepare ahead of time. Nobody would need to do this if they started listening to sound advice, but everyone thinks “it won’t happen to me” and then it does. Rinse, wash, repeat. It will happen all over this country. That’s what climate change means.

We are not going to become a nation of “survivalists”. We are going to remain a nation of people dependent upon safe, stable food supplies generally grown elsewhere. That is a fact, but it does not fit the asinine and ridiculous romantic notions of living off the land. Or being Rambo.

There is a stunning amount of very bad advice, very bad ideas and very stupid ways to go about “being prepared”. I generally ignore these fools because I recognized long ago that they were misguided morons and would soon depart from us should their “plans” be enacted. But then I realized, I’m going to have to deal with these morons when they show up at my door, hungry, sick and injured. That is a reality that they neither get or accept either. But I do and have and you should too.

Self-made refugees are not the same thing as real refugees from disaster. But even a cursory look at this latter group will reveal that they are 100% dependent upon scrounging for food and water from stores. Nobody in a disaster is planting a garden and going to endure long enough to see a harvest without being fed from the store first. Only those that have set aside enough food or that can find enough food will be able to keep going for that long.

Disaster aid agencies will step in – if they can. They don’t always get there in time. And you will be deprived no matter what, eating what they offer if there is any, and living on what water they can make available. Prepping is about doing those very things for yourselves – for any kind of disaster. It’s not about running off to survive “in the outback”. Everyone else is going to be busy trying to rebuild. And you’re going to look like the fool you are when you come creeping back.

My main message today is going to be “surviving stupidity” and being very careful of the stupid advice that gets passed around. It’s not sexy, macho or Rambo to admit that you are dependent upon civilization to exist – but it is the truth.