Those wacky survivalist-types!

I grew up in the Ozark “mountains” of northern Arkansas, in the 1980s. Think “Shepherd of the Hills.” It was a lot like I imagine growing up in Northern Idaho during the same timeframe was. It was a cultural “mish-mash” of people on the fringes of politics, both hard-right and hard-left. Both sides however, seemed to share a pretty common theme of anti-government, live-and-let-live self-reliant living as an underlying philosophy.

As a result of that (as well as having a paternal grandfather who was/is a “doomsday prophet” type), I have always been a bit of a “closet survivalist.” I do believe that things have gotten progressively worse in a socio-economic and political sense. I don’t think it’s gonna get better any time soon either.

Too many people have gotten too comfortable with a life of ease, waiting for the government to give them shit for “free.” Even our sense of right and wrong has been warped. As an atheist, I certainly don’t believe that the Ten Commandments are the “Word of God,” but I think they are a pretty decent set of social survival rules, and were shared by most of mankind. Now, we make excuses for people who do horrible, evil shit. Fuck that.

It’s gonna get hell-for-worse before it gets better though. At the rate that our economy is plummeting, with only moderate hiccups of recovery, and the media making excuses for acts of terrorism within our own borders, in an attempt to keep people from righteous anger, I don’t see how it can’t. People just don’t give a shit. Half of them only care if they have their internet and satellite television services uninterrupted, while the other half are too busy struggling to feed their kids to give a shit.

About every three or four months, as a result of all this, I go into my “closet survivalist” mode, and start trying to make sure I’ve got my shit together, just in case it all goes to hell in a hurry. It’s sort of a WTSHTF or TEOTWAWKI cramming session. I always come up short on the materials list, though I’m typically pretty confident in my skills sets.

I’ll recognize that I don’t have enough food stored (sometime no food stored! EEK!), or I don’t have enough medical equipment and supplies, or enough ammunition stockpiled to last through one serious Katrina-type situation. My vehicle isn’t adequate, etc. There is always something…

Then, I look at the skills sets side of the coin and realize that I’m really better off than 99.9% of the population, including most “survivalists,” (or “preppers” which is, apparently the term du jour of the “movement.”

I believe there are some key areas that you need to be pretty well-rounded in, in order to have a chance at survival. Food procurement and production (including animal husbandry and gardening), water procurement, shelter construction (clothing falls into the shelter zone in so many ways), fire (construction and –fighting), security and protection (including medical skills, which are as important, if not more so, than pure fighting ability and force protection issues), navigation and travel (including map and compass work, methods of travel, etc), and a few more. I’ve got a solid background in most of these; at least as much as one guy can hope to have. I’ve taken Heinlein serious, at least in that regard.

I grew up on several small places that any “survivalist” would recognize as “retreat homesteads.” We built our own structures, raised most of our own food, and cleared a lot of the land as well. My mother’s ex-husband was a stone mason (remarkably enough, considering his status as a waste of oxygen in all other regards, he was a damned fine stonemason as well), and we learned a great deal of that trade. I learned to run a backhoe at around age 12.

I attended the Level C SERE Course at Ft. Bragg/Camp Mackall, North Carolina. I won’t go into details about it, like a good little soldier, but it is more of a “survival” school than BOSS or some of the “Rabbitstick” type courses ever dreamed of being, even though it doesn’t go much for “let’s play bushman” type primitive-living stuff like they do.

I later taught primitive living skills and wilderness survival (Yep, the “let’s play bushman” type!) in the mountains and deserts of Southern Utah. I taught young people how to track and trap game, how to read a map and compass, how to build fires and prepare food over them, how to build expedient shelters (and how to repair them in 50mph winds, during a blizzard in one instance, while everyone else stayed huddled in their sleeping bags.), and more.

I worked as a ranch cowboy and a horse trainer for several years. I’ve started more than 500 colts under saddle and to harness. I’ve roped thousands of cattle on pasture and in the pens. I’ve been bucked off a pile of horses too. I can shoe a horse better than most school-trained farriers, and can doctor a horse or a cow better than the vet. I’m a decent shade-tree mechanic, whether the work needs to be done on a tractor, backhoe, or a pickup truck (in a pinch, I can work on the engines of irrigation pivots. I can build and repair fence, whether it’s wood, iron pipe, or barbed wire. I can even weld!

I spent a significant amount of time as a framing carpenter, and have actually framed and finished a half-dozen small houses by myself, with just one apprentice/helper. I can run a chainsaw and an axe like an old-time lumberjack (plus, I can use a team of workhorses to drag it out of the woods!)

I can sew and cook. I can paddle a canoe, row a boat, or travel on snowshoes. I can speak Spanish (important even for a “survivalist” in today’s world!).

All in all, I feel pretty confident in my abilities with regards to TEOTWAWKI. I’d like to have more in the way of material preparations, but I’ve spent too much time learning new skills to really procure and store as much as a lot of folks have.

In regards to this post, some of the future Primitive Power posts will probably be about “preparedness” and “survivalism.” I’ve got a few notes already put together, that I’m going to go ahead and post shortly.