Re: The new survivalism: hoarding food

On Apr 22, 9:18 am, "deemsb...@xxxxxxx" <deemsb...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 22, 7:01 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

As the stories grow of Southern Hemisphere countries blocking food
exports and the price of tortillas growing four fold in Mexico, the
hip in thing to do in the U.S. of A is to play the "Swiss Family
Robinson" gambit. It makes the Mormons look like prophets, as it were.
New book by a former global strategist for Morgan Stanley says we
should anticipate a "breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.” That
should make the suburbans ring with gunfire.

“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,”
said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.

Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting
housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater
Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to
prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver
coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone
and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West
Texas desert.

“If all these planets line up and things do get really bad,” Mr.
Marcom said, “those who have not prepared will be trapped in the city
with thousands of other people needing food and propane and everything
else.”

April 6, 2008
Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism
By ALEX WILLIAMS

THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in
camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by
cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist
at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and
Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown
of the civilized infrastructure.”

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some
kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed,
fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss
Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of
riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks
down.”

Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.

Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a
housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in
oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are
starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social
fringes.

They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy
precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their
houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The
point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the
future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not
“Mad Max.”

“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,”
said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.

Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting
housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater
Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to
prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver
coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone
and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West
Texas desert.

“If all these planets line up and things do get really bad,” Mr.
Marcom said, “those who have not prepared will be trapped in the city
with thousands of other people needing food and propane and everything
else.”

Interest in survivalism — in either its traditional hard-core version
or a middle-class “lite” variation — functions as a leading economic
indicator of social anxiety, preparedness experts said: It spikes at
times of peril real (the post-Sept. 11 period) or imagined (the chaos
that was supposed to follow the so-called Y2K computer bug in 2000).

At times, a degree of paranoia is officially sanctioned. In the 1950s,
civil defense authorities encouraged people to build personal bomb
shelters because of the nuclear threat. In 2003, the Department of
Homeland Security encouraged Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting
and duct tape to seal windows in case of biological or chemical
attacks.

Now, however, the government, while still conducting business under a
yellow terrorism alert, is no longer taking a lead role in encouraging
preparedness. For some, this leaves a vacuum of reassurance, and
plenty to worry about.

Esteemed economists debate whether the credit crisis could result in a
complete meltdown of the financial system. A former vice president of
the United States informs us that global warming could result in mass
flooding, disease and starvation, perhaps even a new Ice Age.

“You just can’t help wonder if there’s a train wreck coming,” said
David Anderson, 50, a database administrator in Colorado Springs who
said he was moved by economic uncertainties and high energy prices,
among other factors, to stockpile months’ worth of canned goods in his
basement for his wife, his two young children and himself.

Popular culture also provides reinforcement, in books like “The Road,”
Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a father and son journeying through a
post-apocalyptic wasteland, and films like “I Am Legend,” which stars
Will Smith as a survivor of a man-made virus wandering the barren
streets of New York.

Middle-class survivalists can also browse among a growing number of
how-to books with titles like “Dare to Prepare!” a self-published work
by Holly Drennan Deyo, or “When All Hell Breaks Loose” by Cody Lundin
(Gibbs Smith, 2007), which instructs readers how to dispose of bodies
and dine on rats and dogs in the event of disaster.

Preparedness activity is difficult to track statistically, since
people who take measures are usually highly circumspect by nature,
said Jim Rawles, the editor ofwww.survivalblog.com, a preparedness
Web site. Nevertheless, interest in the survivalist movement “is
experiencing its largest growth since the late 1970s,” Mr. Rawles said
in an e-mail, adding that traffic at his blog has more than doubled in
the past 11 months, with more than 67,000 unique visitors per week.
And its base is growing.

“Our core readership is still solidly conservative,” he said. “But in
recent months I’ve noticed an increasing number of stridently green
and left-of-center readers.”

One left-of-center environmentalist who is taking action is Alex
Steffen, the executive editor ofwww.worldchanging.com, a Web site
devoted to sustainability. With only slight irony, Mr. Steffen, 40,
said he and his girlfriend could serve as “poster children for the
well-adjusted, urban liberal survivalist,” given that they keep a six-
week cache of food and supplies in his basement in Seattle (although
they polished off their bottle of doomsday whiskey at a party).

He said the chaos following Hurricane Katrina served as a wake-up call
for him and others that the government might not be able to protect
them in an emergency or environmental crisis.

“The ‘where do we land when climate change gets crazy?’ question seems
to be an increasingly common one,” said Mr. Steffen in an e-mail
message, adding that such questions have “really gone mainstream.”

Many of the new, nontraditional preparedness converts are “Peakniks,”
Mr. Rawles said, referring to adherents of the “Peak Oil” theory. This
concept holds that the world will soon, or has already, reached a peak
in oil production, and that coming supply shortages might threaten
society. While the theory is still disputed by many industry analysts
and executives, it has inched toward the mainstream in the last two
years, as oil prices have nearly doubled, surpassing $100 a barrel.
The topic, which was the subject of a United States Department of
Energy report in 2005, has attracted attention in publications like
The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, and was a
primary focus of “Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse,” a recent History
Channel special.

Another book, “The Long Emergency” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), by
James Howard Kunstler, an author and journalist who writes about
economic and environmental issues, argues that American suburbs and
cities may soon lay desolate as people, starved of oil, are forced
back to the land to adopt a hardscrabble, 19th-century-style agrarian
life.

Such fears caused Joyce Jimerson of Bellingham, Wash., a coordinator
for a recycling-composting program affiliated with Washington State
University, to make her yard an “edible garden,” with fruit trees and
vegetables, in case supplies are threatened by oil shortages, climate
change or economic collapse. “It’s all the same ball of wax, as far as
I’m concerned,” she said.

Scott Troyer, an energy consultant in Sunnyvale, Calif., said he was
spurred by discussions of peak oil — “it’s not a theory,” he said —
and other energy concerns to remake his suburban house in anticipation
of a petroleum-starved future. Mr. Troyer, 57, installed a
photovoltaic electricity system, a pellet stove and a “cool roof” to
reflect the sun’s rays, among other measures.

Mr. Troyer remains cautiously optimistic that Americans can wean
themselves from oil through smart engineering and careful planning.
But, he said, “the doomsday scenarios will happen if people don’t
prepare.”

Some middle-class preparedness converts, like Val Vontourne, a
musician and paralegal in Olympia, Wash., recoil at the term
“survivalist,” even as they stock their homes with food, gasoline and
water.

“I think of survivalists as being an extreme case of preparedness,”
said Ms. Vontourne, 44, “people who stockpile guns and weapons,
anticipating extreme aggression. Whereas what I’m doing, I think of as
something responsible people do.

“I now think of storing extra food, water, medicine and gasoline in
the same way I think of buying health insurance and putting money in
my 401k,” she said. “It just makes sense.”

How much can you really stock and store? Will this breakdown last
weeks, months, years? How will you protect your stash? It would kind
of suck to stockpile tons of food and then lose it to the first gang
that comes along. If our social order/infrastructure has a serious
breakdown, the survivors will be those who can band together and
defend themselves while being strong enough to trade/take what else
they need. It won't be pretty.

Try reading No Blade of Grass by John Christopher the 1956 take on
this idea. Hint, buy potatoes. Our gun people will be in seventh
heaven until someone else guns them down for their weapons.
.

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