My Survivalist Philosophy

 

Survival Mindset

     “I can survive.” That is the most important thing to keep in mind. You will survive the assaults, the chaos, the riots, the road gangs and roving marauders. Your liberty and your life and those of your loved ones are worth fighting for.

     “I am prepared to use lethal force.” Be prepared to use lethal force. There is no more Mister Nice Guy when the SHTF. If someone is coming at you with a weapon the law of the jungle is kill or be killed. For smaller people a gun is an equalizer. Train with your weapons. Learn the 4 rules. Always respect the lethality of weapons but you need to become comfortable around them.

     I thank God that nothing evil has ever happened to me. I think surviving a catastrophe will be the easy part. It’s the living after that will be hard. I believe it is my responsibility for my family to be prepared to live through troubled times and beyond.

 

Preparing to Live

     The first thing I think of when I read the title of this section is that I am not living now. Preparations take up very little of my time because I space out what I do. My life is focused on my sons. 

     I have always been a doomie. First it was nuclear war. I believed I could survive it but never took any steps to prepare. Now it is peak oil that has me worried the world is going to hell in a hand basket. I have taken many steps to survive.

     To start with I read fiction and nonfiction all the time. I read books on the skills I will need to survive. My list includes farming, Army tactics, animal husbandry, I also read survival and post apocalyptic fiction to try to understand the mindset of people in those situations. I read web sites and blogs like SurvivalBlog.com almost daily.

     All the stuff I bought I purchased over time. It spreads out the cost so a financial catastrophe is not part of the problem.

     Some areas to focus on are your house or retreat, guns, food, animals, community and training.

 

Retreat

     The house I’m thinking layers of brick, gravel, concrete block, steel reinforced concrete, and stone. Mass will stop bullets. I’m actually thinking of several houses and barns close together with thick walls connecting them. Basically like a castle. Water should come from a permanent source like a well or spring and large rain collecting cisterns. Pumps for the water can start as solar but should eventually move to windmill type.

     When I started buying guns I put bars on the windows of the house I live in now. I think metal shutters with loopholes would be better.

     After and maybe during the chaos of the coming times you will need to be able to farm and grow food on your land. There should be room for fields, a kitchen garden, an orchard, animal pastures and a wood lot for fuel.

     The seeds for your crops, orchards and gardens need to be heritage not hybrids. They need to be non-GMO (Genetically Mutated Organism).

     Good soil is the basis for the food of life. Modern farming with chemical fertilizers has left most farms with dead soils. Organic methods replenish soil with natural fertilizers and make farms sustainable.

     If you live and work at your retreat year round you know what to expect of the land during the seasons. There are no surprises like a spring flood washing away your garden. Living there also eliminates the stress of an evacuation situation.

 

Buy Guns, Store Food

     Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum. If you want peace prepare for war. It does no good to buy a lot of stuff just to have some one come and take it away. At first I focused on weapons and weapons training. I have weapons and lots of ammunition. I took pistol classes at the local range. I took a class on trapping animals. I joined the local varmint hunting club and hunt with them. I took Krav Maga the Israeli self-defense.

     Buy Guns. Buy at least one rifle, one shotgun and one pistol. Some people abhor guns. They are scared of them and refuse to own them. When the SHTF and the family next door is getting hungry the teenaged boys will not let their divorced mom starve. If you do not have a weapon to equalize the fight they will come and rob you of your food. They won’t just because you have been nice to them through the years. While they are robbing you that will be one day less they will be coming through my window.

     The rifle could be a hunting rifle but hunting rifles are not built for sustained fire like a military style rifle is. The AK-47 (7.62×39) is the most available rifle on the market, but if you were in the U.S. military the AR-15 (.223) may be what you are used to. The familiar would be my choice. If you are on a budget the SKS (7.62×39) has the lowest price of all military style rifles. You also need a larger rifle to reach out and touch someone; a FN/FAL (.308) will do that. I own one of each just to learn how to handle them.

     12 gauge is the standard of the shotgun world in Remington or Mossberg. If you are a smaller person you may find a 20 gauge easier to handle. I own 12 gauges.

     45 APC, 40 Smith and Wesson, and 9mm are the most available. 9mm’s are the best bets for the smaller people. I have small wrists so I bought 9mm’s.

     When you buy your weapons if you buy more than one of each kind try to buy in the same caliber. When I bought my hunting rifle I bought in .223 so it would be the same caliber as my AR-15, same ammunition for both.

     When I thought I had enough weapons (can you ever have enough?) I began to focus on water and food. I bought four 55-gallon barrels and filled them with water. I still need to buy a good water filter.

     Store food. Get started. Buying food is an easy place to get started. I bought large bags of rice and beans and stored them in five gallon barrels. Buy extra canned food or beans and rice when you go to the grocery. Store them in a cool dry place. Buy canned food, dried milk, noodles, peanut butter and crackers. I buy extra can goods. I bought a five-gallon bucket full of non-hybrid garden seeds (I still need to grow a garden). I bought some mason jars (I still need to learn to can fruits and vegetables).

     Do all of this before buying gold or silver.

 

Community

     The word survivalist brings to mind an individual in a cabin in the mountains. A Survivalist will be finished when the hungry horde trudges up the road. You need trustworthy people around you. You need someone watching your back while you plow the fields. Our family will save us.

     You can’t learn every skill yourself. Choose your friends wisely. Look for people with a wide range of useful skills or someone willing to learn new skills. Try to find people that don’t need to brag and won’t talk about their preparations and skills.

     The surrounding community needs to be small and distant from a large population center. When the SHTF the cities will empty as the food runs out. As the hungry spread out into the countryside. Other farmers protecting their lands will shoot at them. They might not get them all but they will whittle them down. The further you are away the fewer will reach you.

     Your community will need to be organized with support agreements between neighbors. Mutual security agreements should be agreed upon to come running on alarm or sound of gunshots. Trade for work and food will be the money of the day.

    

“Prepare like infantry, think like a pioneer”

     Infantry lays down suppressive fire so that other units can flank or encircle the enemy to destroy them. It takes a lot of bullets and gear to do this. Prepare like infantry, but when the SHTF start thinking like a pioneer. The pioneers that set out across the American west knew all they had was in their wagon. They lived off the land, traded where possible and built what they needed when they settled. If it comes to a firefight you just can’t start blazing away. You can’t waste your ammunition.

 

Training

     Training and skills are more important than gadgets. You can have all the toys, but they are useless if you can’t use them properly. Learn practical skills. Learn to handle your weapon. Learn to can produce. Learn to bake your own bread. Learn to organically build your soil. Learn to grow a garden. Get advanced medical training. Go camping. Learn how to hunt and dress the animals you kill. Raise chickens, goats or sheep. Learn to slaughter and butcher the animals you raise. Take Krav Maga or some other martial art. Learn to saw and chop wood.

      You can buy all the tools to practice the skills mentioned, but the tools will be useless if you don’t have the training. If you wait until the SHTF until you try to do the waste created during the learning curve may mean the difference between life and death. Learn to do the things that will keep you alive before the SHTF. Learn now when there is no pressure.

 

Peak Oil How to Prepare

     Why Prepare? Prepare to live. Preparation is the key to survival. Live life with less hardships

     Things you can start doing now. Get out of debt and pay off credit cards. You can pay down on house if you get a big chuck of money. Get training mentioned above.

     Read books and web sites about: animal husbandry, meat butchering, gardening, home repair, pioneer and frontier life, weapons use and renewable power.

     How to Prepare? How we prepare depends on what we expect to happen. What scenarios do we prepare for? In the beginning short term expect rolling blackouts. Buy a generator and gas containers (put gas and Stabil in them) to get you through to when the power returns.

     In the long term expect the lights to go out forever. With no electricity at all it will be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. How are you going to deal with that? Lots of people died during the ‘Little Ice Age’ because they were starving and could not keep their core temperatures up. Everyone should have a cold weather sleeping bag. Wool clothing will keep you warm when totally wet.

     With no electricity the water will be turned off. Have a water well with windmill as a backup pump. Better yet install renewable energy power sources such as wind turbine generators, solar photovoltaic panels, micro-hydroelectric and possibly methane driven generators.

     Food Shortages in the short term creates soup and bread lines. Every town in America had food riots at some time during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. Short-term buy prepackaged food (Freeze dried canned food, Army MRE’s), water containers and a water filtering system (Big Berky). Long Term buy and grow non-hybrid seeds for a kitchen garden and crops. Buy, raise and breed farm animals. To grow a garden and crops and raise livestock you need a house with room far a garden, pasture for animals, and a woodlot for trees for fuel and building.

     During World War I there were anti-hoarding laws. No one was allowed to have more than a thirty day supply on hand. A Navy doctor had a lot of food and went to turn it in to be redistributed to the poor and was charged under the law. No good deed goes unpunished. Hide your food stores and don’t talk about them.

     There will be a time of anarchy. Hungry people will gather in the streets demanding the government feed them. Riots will roll through the town square like a wave. Organized gangs will loot stores and break into houses. The mob mentality will be hard to resist. Random violence, stealing, raping and killing will rule the day. Don’t get involved. Have the weapons mentioned above ready to go. Also have body armor, helmet and bulletproof vest with the weapons. The police, National Guard, Border Patrol, ATF, or U.S. Army are organized and trained to shoot. They will follow orders.

     The firearms discussed above will eventually run out of ammunition in a long term SHTF situation. Everyone will eventually resort to bows and arrows, crossbows, spears, swords, nunchucks and staffs.

 

All Great Empires Collapse

     Our fragile society is based on the availability of cheap oil. Most of the food on your table comes from over 1500 miles away. Refrigerated trucks bring it to your local grocery. Rarely is food produced locally. Our clothes are sewn in factories in other countries like China, Mexico and Guatemala. Cargo ships bring it to our shores and trains and trucks bring it to distribution centers where other trucks carry it to the stores.  Our homes are built from wood milled in lumber producing regions and put on flatbed rail cars and trucks and brought to the work site. When you turn on the light switch a diesel train carried the coal that runs the electrical plant.

     Oil is finite and when the half way mark is hit it will become more expensive. When cheap oil goes away our society of cheap food, clothes and homes will go with it. Food will have to be grown and processed locally. We will have to rebuild our textile capabilities. If we want a home built we’ll have to use local stone and grow our own trees. There is no energy equivalent to replace oil.

     All great empires have come to an end. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Mongols, Incans, Mayans, Aztecs, Spanish, British, Ottomans, French, Germans, Japanese, and Soviet Union have risen and fallen.

     When the chaos comes embrace it. One of the U.S. Army’s slogans is “Own the edge.” Roll with the breaking wave of disorder. Ride the turmoil. If the pandemonium is too big get out of the way.