Ebony's Pearls

Iraq
Originally uploaded by nodigio

There are several different sorts of survival groups – there’re the survival groups who plan for survival after an apocalypse and the ones who plan for lesser disasters. The first one needs a greater degree of authority vested in one person and is stricter. It has to be, survival will be delicate and difficult in the event of a nuclear holocaust or some other major level disaster. The second type needs to have a greater degree of flexibility and autonomy. I favor one that’s a hybrid of the two.

The very best thing that a survival minded person can do, after preparing their home, and developing their own survival skills, is to associate themselves with other skilled survivalists. No one person can know everything or do everything, and almost everyone can contribute something.

In preparing for a nuclear holocaust or other major wide-reaching disaster, few people could afford the equipment that an organization can have. One well-equipped laboratory for testing for alpha and beta particles in food costs $5,000. Along with other radiation detection equipment and many other types of emergency supplies, what individual can afford it? Yet no nuclear survival group should be without one. Nor should a nuclear survival group be without a compound designed for survival. In building a nuclear shelter, the major expense is the entrance and support mechanisms such as emergency lighting, water source, etc. The incremental cost for space for one additional individual is quite small. The overall cost can be spread over a larger number of people, reducing the average per-person cost.

Moreover, no individual has the personal resources that a group has. If the head of a single family survival group is injured, lost or killed, the chances of survival for that group are much reduced. However, if it is a large group, then there are numbers of people available to continue to give support and there will be redundancies in training and experience. Whether the group is preparing for a holocaust or a depression, one more prepared and equipped individual added to such a group is an asset. After a nuclear strike, one more unprepared and unequipped individual in a public nuclear shelter is just another liability. Public shelters (assuming your city has one, and assuming it’s been kept in repair and stocked) aren’t really designed to help people survive in the long term. They weren’t well-thought out. Joining a serious survival-minded group will provide you with the resources you need to survive and you will be able to contribute to the survival of the group. In fact, you’ll be compelled to contribute to the survival of the group or face expulsion.

A successful survival group will have to be either completely homogeneous or thoroughly committed to an appreciation of a wide range of individual preferences regarding society, economics, religion, and future expectations. Still, a shelter is not a democratic society anymore than is a ship or an airliner. The captain’s authority should be absolute, but it should be bound by pre-arranged rules or a constitution of some sort. Everyone must perform assigned duties. There are no wealthy passengers along for a free ride to be served by others. After a nuclear holocaust, money probably won’t be worth anything anyway, and it will be your skills and contributions that matter, not your bank account.

There will, of necessity, be limitations to personal freedoms during and after a nuclear attack for a limited amount of time. Inside a shelter, those freedoms will be seriously curtailed – once the worst of the radiation dangers have passed and people can live outside a shelter, in a compound, perhaps, many of those freedoms will be restored.

Inside the shelter, firearms and weapons would be locked up and checked out at the door – since there will usually only be a limited number of ways in and out to prevent radiation contamination there won’t be any need to have weapons inside the shelter and it may be too dangerous to have them inside the shelter if there are children and people untrained in the proper use of firearms. Contamination procedures would be very strictly adhered to. No private stocks of food inside the shelter would be permitted to avoid social disorder and angsty feelings (people are very concerned about food). No loud toys, devices or other objects that would violate other people’s environment. No smoking inside the shelter. No incense burning or wearing of heavily scented perfumes, aftershaves, or cosmetics. Pets and animals would have to be well-trained before the event and the owner needs to provide enough for the animals’ survival. Staying in a shelter could be anywhere from a couple of weeks to several years depending upon the severity of the nuclear attack.

Thing is, in the event of a nuclear attack, most people will not only survive it, they may not even know their country’s been attacked for the first day or two. It’s possible you might be living in an area that won’t experience a lot of fallout and you may never need to enter a nuclear bomb shelter. Having such a shelter is like insurance – in case you need it, it will be there. If you never need it as a bomb shelter, it can be used for other things – a root cellar, for example, so it won’t be wasted.

We’ve lived under the threat of a nuclear attack all our lives, it’s such an ubiquitous thing we hardly notice it anymore. We rarely talk about it except at survivalist groups. Public bomb shelters have fallen into disrepair and I bet you don’t even know where your nearest public bomb shelter is (or was, as the case may be). There are still storm shelters, and those are indeed good for storms, but none of them are adequate for a bomb shelter.

Your survivalist group may decide to create a bomb shelter and aftermath compound in a remote location, or they may decide the nuclear threat is low enough that they can dispense with the bomb shelter and concentrate on survival in other situations. These situations can range from civil disobedience to economic disasters. Civil disobedience may encompass groups who disagree with a single law or with a range of laws or even with the way a government is being operated. The government may look at the law or laws and allow work to change them (best case scenario) or it may consider the protestors to be criminals (worst case scenario). In America, we’re supposed to have channels we can use to protest unjust laws and to have our grievances heard and addressed – it’s even Constitutionally guaranteed. In reality, our government has ignored or passed laws which have negated huge portions of our Constitution and actively prevents us from regaining those lost rights and privileges.

It’s possible that along with a depression, we will be facing a civil war – those who want our rights restored against those who don’t want us to have any rights at all. Being part of a survival group can increase your odds of surviving both the depression and the civil war. I know I would be on the side that wants to thrive and have our freedoms restored.

A non-nuclear survival group is harder to find, most survivalist groups focus on wilderness survival and/or post-holocaust survival. They operate on the assumption that there will be no government afterwards, no banks, no civilization other than themselves, and precious little technology.

I’m torn. I don’t think it will be that way. I don’t see any patterns leading to that, but I suppose I wouldn’t because it would be a cataclysmic event that would change everything in a very, very short period of time. I do see economic patterns of distress coming up – a depression and government breakdown that would require people to band together for mutual support and survival – we’d still have some tech, there’d be no nuclear fallout to contend with, but there would be violence engendered by hopelessness and frustration. Life for most people won’t change abruptly. It will be a gradual decline until a tipping point is reached, and even then, for most people, a better future will be visible if they only endure.

Still, I have the little niggle that a nuclear attack (not from Russia, but from the Middle East somewhere or possibly the Far East) is not impossible and it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

I know I have skills that would be welcome in either a nuclear or an economic disaster. I’m just terribly uncomfortable with the presumption by most post-holocaust survivor groups that pets and other animals will be a burden and shouldn’t be included in survival plans. I keep thinking of Harlan Ellison’s post-apocalyptic story A Boy and His Dog, and I see just how important making sure animals survive, too, really is. We need them not just for food, but for work. They can be of great benefit to us – and I say this not just as a partner to a hearing assistance dog. We bred dogs as co-workers. I don’t think we should abandon them. We’ve learned to train other animals as helpers – cats, raccoons, birds. We need them as much as they need us.

I haven’t joined any survivalist groups and any group I do join would have to make provisions for ensuring the survival of animals as well as people (and plants, but plant survival is easier because we can save seeds, corms, and rootstocks). I would want to see solid fiscal planning and transparency in financial transactions. I would want to see a written set of rules and regulations with sunrise and sunset dates pre-factored in. I would prefer that all the authority not be vested in one person but rather that one person be selected to be in charge for specific lengths of time and that everyone – especially the person in charge – adhere to a constitution or set of guidelines. Even in the event of an emergency, Id like there to be an advisory committee. I’m just that paranoid about abuses of power, and being solely in charge of a survivalist group, particularly if it’s run in paramilitary fashion, is just rife for that type of abuse.

If you decide to join a survivalist group (or start one), consider what type of people already belong to it (or the type of people you want to attract), what the goals are, who’s handling the finances (and just how open the financial statements are), in whose name property will be, if you want to incorporate for current tax breaks and accountability, what equipment is essential, what type of training qualifies, and what the rules and restrictions will be, what rules and restrictions have sunset dates set into them, which ones are dormant and will have sunrise dates built in (in the event of this happening, these rules will go into immediate effect….), who will administer the rules – one person or a pre-selected committee?