Porque no los dos?
Community engagement is vital, and we should all be involved with outreach, education, and mutual aid.
I think we all understand that we’re on our own now, and if we want our communities to survive and thrive we need to take ownership and contribute.
But it’s naive as fuck to pretend we won’t be on our own protecting those communities as well. Arm up, train up.
Exactly, thank you!
These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, do both. I train with my neighbors fairly regularly, at the range (including tactical training), hunting, fishing, navigation (land and ocean), first aid certifications, etc… We also work together to keep an eye on our neighborhood and on behalf of our other neighbors (early COVID times were absolutely wild here). I maintain a several HAM radios and a base station, and worked with some of my neighbors to help obtain their licenses. We all garden, cook, and do home repair and IT.
Unfortunately since we live near a major metro area when SHTF the best mid term plan is to bug out entirely, so we have updated plans for rendezvous and exfil to specific less populated areas. And as far as I know most households have bags ready to go.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying we’re preppers, we certainly don’t imagine ourselves that way. We just acknowledge that disasters happen and our society isn’t equipped to take care of an entire metropolis. We’re not under any illusions of being master survivors.
I feel like this is just common sense, not paranoia. In school we all had it drilled into our heads to keep extra water, preserved food, and bags ready in case of a major earthquake (common enough in our area). I don’t see why our planning isn’t just a natural extension of that kind of preparedness.
These people figure everyone else will do the hard stuff, and one day they’ll all come to their senses after rebuilding and realize they need a beans and guns guy. It’s a kind of narcissistic laziness.
Nah…the people who fill their bunker with beans and guns are the same people who will use their guns to take from those who build gardens and communities.
In other words, they want all of the benefits of a community without putting in anything in return.
Or to put it even more simply: conservatives.
I’ve played an enormous amount of post apocalyptic simulations and video games, so I’ve got some insight on how this typically goes:
The bunkers with beans and guns are rare, but usually whoever is inside died of something really common, like an infection, broken leg or a stroke, and was unable to get medical aid in time.
There’s also loot boxes/caches in the woods where you see someone tried to be completely solo and typically “having weapons” is way less valuable than knowing how to use them
The OG meme is right, you need other people in “the apocalypse”, going it alone is a death sentence, even basic things can become enormously difficult (many hands make for light work)
Make sure at least one of the people you know is a doctor, surgeon, or nurse of some kind
And if the “guns-people” ever band together (band-its) and try to take stuff away, they typically don’t have coordinated field tactics or military discipline, it’s a slog but battling the cannibals with a regular army does eventually result in their extinction
Risky game when the community garden people know which parts of the plants are toxic or not. Come try this “sloe berry” jam I made…
Get a single back hoe and pour rocks in front of the door.
Those fuckers probably have turrets outside their bunkers and will shoot on site.
Turrets run out of ammo eventually they also need a vent for air. Would be real bad if they got blocked.
Plus without supporting infantry you can just roll up behind a very thick steel plate, doesn’t matter that it’s slow as you can take as long as you like
Without supporting infantry all you need to do is somehow splash some paint on the lenses of their cameras.
Drone with some paint balloons should do.
If only we had an out of shape weirdo who never read a book in his life.
Well yes, we need the vents for his bunker, where else do we empty the latraines?
Guns and bunkers would help at first though
Is that a fish smoking a cigarette? With its eye?
Yes? So what? Don’t your fish do that?
Well now I can’t see anything but that!
Now see, right there, that’s the kinda shite you need to learn if you wanna survive the apocalypse.
It is a fish with a hook in it’s mouth
IT IS MOUTH
it is
Yes, that stuff is very important Mom, now me and the boys gotta push back some traveling renegades that want to pillage our stores and goods. With our gun. And because we have so many really good guns, we will win. Store arms is essential dooms day prepping
After a few years the guns will be useless and without resources. Long term survival does not revolve around stock piling unsustainable weapons or once-off use food supplies.
After a few years the guns will be useless and without resources
Lol I own guns that are older than your grandpa. I also reload my own ammo. None of this stuff has a shelf life.
Oh, that’s really cool. So how do you get the minerals for the explosives and the raw metal for the bullets?
You say that like people didn’t used to make gun powder from decomposting straw and lead can be mined.
By robbing other people’s bunkers obviously /s.
The point isn’t to sustainably be able to make ammunition for the next 10 generations. It’s to be able to hunt and protect my farm from predators and bandits. If shit ever really hits the fan having a bunker full of beans isn’t going to save you. But knowing how to live off the land and having the means to do so may very well be the difference between life and starving to death. If all of the sudden tomorrow the supermarket did not have food what would you do? Try to go to TikTok and find survival lifehacks? Me personally I would go out to my chicken coop and gather some eggs. Then make my way to the garden to pick some vegetables (if it’s winter, I should have canned vegetables). After that I would probably go milk my goats (I don’t have goats yet, hopefully next year though lol.) finally I would probably make a loop around the area to check on my neighbors and see if they need anything, maybe trade them some eggs, while also looking for game to hunt.
Not everyone who does this type of shit is some whiny bunker baby who’s waiting to live out their mad max fantasy. I’m not a doomsday prepper, I’m a homesteader.
So you’re very much not the stockpiling only guns and beans type of person, so why are you feeling so called out?
Go read a book about it.
Now that knowledge is so accessible… blah blah blah
Damn an experienced blacksmith, miner, surveyor, metallurgist, chemist, fabricator, and more all in one?
God bless you, brother
People hated you because you spoke the truth. You need all the things to survive. Everything OP listed AND a way for the community to see to it’s own defense. Which in the 21rst century means either guns, bows, or directed energy weapons.
With our gun. And because we have so many really good guns
Literally all our violence problems in the USA stem from this kind of massive insecurity and self-reaffirmation. The guns are a product of this kind of feeling of isolationism and fear, not a cause.
How do you know if someone is a conservative white american? They will start babbling about firearms almost instantly when you talk about the possibility of destabilization.
How do you know if someone is one of the many millions of liberal or leftist firearm owners? You won’t. They don’t feel need to whip it out and stroke it in front of strangers. The Finnish are laughing at you.
The post here is both right and wrong. You do need guns to survive in a post-collapse situation, but vast, vast majority of gun-toting americans would either not survive or become the worst kinds of raiders and bandits themselves because they don’t create community or sustainable systems in that community to keep people alive, and tend to ignore the importance of countless other facets of actual survival.
This presumes you live around real people.
My neighbors are a mysterious Brazilian who changes the topic when asked his profession but drives many luxury cars (drugs were hinted at by others), an 85 year old MAGA anti-vacc used car salesman, an absentee company owner that uses a $1.25M house to park his logoed trucks, boats and jet skis, and a lawyer who adopts maladjusted dogs and leaves his door open for them to run around the neighborhood biting people (me last).
Brazilian throws large parties for people who drive Porsches, used car dealer complains about Democrats and leaves packages on his porch for over a year, absentee is able to hook up a boat and leave in two minutes, and lawyer neglects feral dogs and spends time with his horses. I have only ever seen the used car salesman do work. He loves running things with motors at night.
None garden but 3/4 installed insecticide systems to kill all pollinators on their property at the push of a button and hire people to put in nice ornamentals.
The same 3/4 produce more garbage in a week than my family of four does in two months and may throw out and replace clothing rather than washing, so I doubt mending is on the table. They certainly don’t cook based on the food deliveries. Absentee business owner has never spent a night in that house in two years and I don’t know what he wears or looks like.
Damn…that’s just about perfect
BEANS
Mm beans tho
- The moment I start learning the names of my neighbors I get: “What are you a cop? Scram!” or just get shot at the front porch. The moment I ask them their trade I get arrested by cops they called for “being too nosy.”
- “That’s my stuff! Don’t touch it! Stop trespassing my property!”
- “Do you have a license for this garden?”
- Polyester Paradise
- Self defense requires Gun praxis, and bean storage food aid.
Once those mentalities above are fixed, there‘s is no doomsday preparation that will take place.
Making knocking on doors and interrogating people would be weird but you can go to people where they are and be friendly. Wanna be some old timers go to the Eagles, or Elks. Younger people? No one at the Pub thinks it’s weird if you go “so what to do you do for a living?”
so what to do you do for a living?
And I get “None of your business, glowie.”
That particular advice here is wrong because comrades can learn skills and adapt to new syndicates. More importantly is to earn the trust of the community and solidify than to know their names and specialties. But learning to mutual aid takes a zeitgeist awakening (advice #2). If anything, learning what comrades in your community prefer doing and not is more important than learning names.
And I get “None of your business, glowie.”
Unless you live someplace truly bizarre, I’m sensing Hyperbole.
You really don’t go out to pubs, don’t yah?
Folks go to pubs to relax, merry, reminiscent. The last thing they want to talk about is the 997 they just punched out from. Do you like talking about your job everywhere?
And why do I have to know you’re Bob from accounting? Are your counting skills going to seize the means of the exploitators?
I can’t imagine a more common perfunctory part of meeting someone new than asking about their occupation to the point that articles get written encouraging people not to for a variety of reasons. “Lets stop defining people by their occupation” etc etc.
Here’s are better greetings:
Hiya comrade! Were making pizza today at the canteen! Bring plates!
The permaculture cooperative is meeting today at noon. Just bring your hat, I’m bringing refreshments.
Rifle maintenance class at 0900 ’morrow
No idea why you are being down votes here and I wish people could explain why.
Formee in doomsday I don’t really want to trust anyone.
No idea either. I am an anarchist, I can only help the willing. I know where the willing meet. Canvassing never works. Mentalities have to change for actual change to give.
You are welcome to @ them.
Join your local CERT, learn and get free stuff and meet people
What does CERT mean in this context? I’m only getting tech-related results. (Computer emergency response team.)
In this context, Community Emergency Response Team.
Geeks helping geeks?
Sorry about that, being in a usa school shell shocked me a little too much on active shooting events.
Here I was hoping for a MF Doom reference. That said, in a doomsday scenario wouldn’t your biggest threats be the neighbors you have? If you needed tools that don’t break easily that’s no big deal, but if you have something sensitive that’s pretty risky to share (a pick axe is less critical than a generator for example). A community garden would be good, but if one of your neighbors is a self absorbed sociopath they would probably raid the community garden. Why do you need to learn to sew and patch when every department store probably has a life time worth of extra clothes? For self defense it’s hard to argue against having a bunch of guns. For first aid, outside of administering it to yourself and your close network offense is the best defense. In an actual doomsday scenario it’s much easier to shoot first and ask questions later than it is to mend wounds on yourself and others.
I’m all for a post apocalyptic socialist commune, but all it takes is one nut job for the peaceful socialist commune to turn into a fascist dictatorship. Unless everyone you know is of the same sociopolitical opinion as you, or if there are no guns around, then I’d still be stacking up guns if I could.
Not just their professional trades. Cultivate skills. Cooking, repair, gardening, etc.
Establishing a community garden is a lot of fun actually. We have one in our house but it is not very big so you basically get a single vegetable every now and then but the whole working with the ground, keeping the irrigation system intact is soothing.
Where I live we have a CSA farm (Community-owned agriculture). You can join the coop to get a weekly share of veg and either do a day’s work on the farm each week, or pay an amount each month. It’s honestly amazing, it feels like I’ve hacked the system. I get cheap, organic veg grown less than a mile away and harvested the day before I collect it and it’s upskilling and connecting the local community.
yeah, that’s very cool. there is nothing more satisfying than planting a bunch of seeds, watching them grow - you start to notice how much stuff they go through. It took me about two and a half months to get my first batch of plum tomatoes and just holding one of them in my hand felt like i just did something right.
Oh yeah, that’s an amazing feeling! No tomato ever tastes as good as the one first one you grow and pick.
yeah, it ruined supermarket tomatoes forever for me - after a while you can almost taste the chemistry in them.
Learned how to chop wood today
Doing a light version of the cabin in the woods thing (“F*** this city! I’m gonna go live in a cabin in the woods!”)
Interestingly enough I am doing this cause I’m a musician and need a place where I won’t bother anyone with my noise. Two birds one feeder, as the saying goes
Haven’t heard the phrase, “two birds, one feeder,” but I am partial to “feeding two birds with one scone.”
Oooh, that’s much better! I’ll be using that!
