friend of the built environment

Not the Nine Inch Nails song, but close.

Survivalists are a type of fetishist. And I say that as someone who spends a lot of time perusing survivalist, peak oil and financial gl00m message boards and weblogs.

Real survival will look a lot different than most survivalists want it to look. I personally prefer the War Nerd’s take on it:

…being tough, being armed to the teeth and ready to kick ass, that wouldn’t save you either if it all came down. It’d come down to dull stuff that nobody wants to think about, like organization. That’s what really hits me about these survival fantasies: it’s always about holing up in your house with guns and ammo and years of video-game wet dreams bouncing around in your head.

Of course, reading The Road (and seeing it) changed my mind a lot on the entire concept of ’survivability’. A few lines from the book that struck me a lot:

“Even if you knew what to do you wouldn’t know what to do. You wouldn’t know if you wanted to do it or not. Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?”
“Do you wish you would die?”
“No. But I might wish I had died. When you’re alive you’ve always got that ahead of you.”
“Or you might wish you’d never been born.”
“Well. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“How do you live?”
“I just keep going. I knew this was coming.”
“You knew it was coming?”
“Yeah. This or something like it. I always belived it.”
“Did you try to get ready for it?”
“No. What would you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.”

Most ’survivalists’ will not admit that they get off psychologically or emotionally on this stuff, but that’s ultimately the reason they’re into it. I even call it d00m pr0n.

Incidentally, I don’t really want to know many of these people in real life; they all seem like assholes: they’ll be totally devastated if we don’t go paleo-agrarian, and soon. If I’ve learned anything from reading about this stuff, it’s that you need to be prepared for anything, which includes being prepared for things to plug away just like they are now, for the rest of your life.

There are gems here and there - certain skills I want to learn, recipes, ideas on where to move to if I ever get the chance… But most of all I amuse myself by thinking, “OMG I am so gonna die when the shit hits the fan!”