Civilization’s imminent collapse is upon us. What’s in your survival pack?
There are many ways that civilization could collapse, so let me put my assumptions on the table: I’m considering a world where the electrical grid, phone and internet communications, and running water and waste water treatment systems are no longer operative. For sure you can’t drive to the store for a loaf of bread because the stores will have been long since looted and the gas stations have no more gas.
I am not assuming sea levels rising dozens of feet all at once (since that will put me and mine well underwater), nor bands of ravening zombies.
There are some contingencies I’m just not ready to face.
Still, take away the infrastructure of modern civilization and I think we could do OK for a while. If I were the well-prepared type, here’s what I’d want to have on hand:
Water and food: Without reliable tap water, we’ll be walking to the creek with bottles and a pump with a “structured matrix micro-strainer” that filters out protozoa and treats bacteria and viruses (like this one). Eventually, of course, we’ll run out of cartridges for the pump, so we’ll have to hope our immune systems and GI tracts can adjust to whatever microscopic goodies are in the water. Assuming we still have stuff to burn, boiling the water might be a good idea, too.
Once we’ve stripped through our canned goods and granola bars, we’ll still need to eat. Foraging will only get us so far, so we’ll need to get growing. John Jeavons’ How to Grow More Fruits and Vegetables plus some leather gloves, a pitchfork, a shovel, and a shoebox of seeds will give us a good start. If we can scare up a couple of goats to help us clear some land, give us milk, and provide manure, even better.
How hard could it be to milk a goat?
The comforts of home: Even if we don’t need to find higher ground, there won’t be heat, and the toilets won’t flush. Clothing that gives good warmth for its weight – and when wet – will make surviving more comfortable. This means wool, polypropylene or silk underlayers, and the synthetic fleece made of recycled soda bottles. (The good stuff will get looted fast, so having some on hand before the collapse is prudent planning.) A winter hat will keep you from losing too much body heat. A summer hat will keep you from getting too badly burned while you’re out tending the crops and milking the goat. Sunblock is handy while it lasts, but I’d have an aloe vera plant around for the long term.
Without operative sanitary sewers, you don’t want to go in the woods and foul your water source. Go with a composting toilet. Don’t fall in love with the fancy models with heating units or air injectors – you’re not going to be able to buy batteries for them.
For the other stuff we may want or need to do, rather than pack a whole garage full of stuff, an Exhibition Catalogue from the Design for the Other 90% Exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is a good source of ideas and inspiration.
Feeding our humanity: Keeping our bodies going isn’t my idea of a survival worth working for. We’ll want to bring a few favorite books (at least one of poetry) and some pencils and blank books to write our own stories (not to mention keep track of what we learn about crops or goats). A guitar or harmonica and a deck of cards can be a source of recreation as we try to rebuild community with our fellow denizens of the post-civilization world.
And we’ll want some knock-knock jokes. If we can’t laugh, the collapse has won.
How strange you should write this now. It looks much like my packing list for a holiday to Ecuador next month! Water filters, chemical water treatment, sunblock, the right clothing…
I think I’ll need a stash of whisky for the end of civilisation, and the equipment to knock up a still in my spare (non goat milking time). The world without alcohol? Don’t like that idea much! Of course, the medicinal benefits would outweight the psychological ones.
Other things to take with you:
Friends. Banding together increases the amount of food and water required in the area but allows for division of labor, increases the number of skills available, allows for projects that require more then yourself and helps with that human need of companions around.
Weapons. A world with a breakdown that reduces the infrastructure to such a degree as described will catch a lot of people off guard. A certain percentage of these will survive by taking what they need from others. I’d suggest a crossbow in addition to firearms.
Trade goods. If you meet others they probably don’t want paper currency in exchange for their goods. Knives, crossbow bolts, arrows, matches, rope, dice, decks of cards, etc.
A book with chemical formula. For example chloroform to use when surgery absolutely has to be done. Or a simple disinfectant.
“How hard could it be to milk a goat?”
I laughed at this!
I have a goat and a couple of years ago she came into milk. I thought milking her would be simple, until I tried. I never knew up to then that it was possible to squirt milk from the udder up your sleeve to you armpit!
Assuming you’re planning to stay in your current home, and depending on how much time, effort, and money you want to put into preparation, there are a number of other things you can do.
Water: To save all those walks to the creek, you might consider installing an integrated gutter system and either a cistern or basement tank to collect all the rainwater off your roof. With a bit larger pump (harness the goats?) you might even install an attic or roof tank that could provide gravity feed water to the kitchen and bath.
Heat and cooking: Consider a Russian stove with a built in oven. Of course, you will also need reliable means of starting fires without matches or lighters.
Learn a useful trade: I doubt that there will be much immediate demand for philosophers of science. 😉 However, reverting to your chemistry background could be quite useful. You could trade practical knowledge and its applications for much useful labor and/or food and fuel. Making soap, tanning leather, making matches, making paper, not to mention making wine and beer will all be in demand. In fact, you might want to lay the groundwork for this in advance by providing yourself with a good copper still. (And to provide a good supply of bottles and corks, you might as well stock up a big wine cellar now. I’m sure you know how to empty the bottles. 😉
One final thought on books. Find a late-1800’s/early 1900’s edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. They were loaded with detailed descriptions and illustrations of every sort of practical technology.
I would think you’d want to take along your mushroom identifying, fly-rod wielding, cheese and beer making brother. In addition to being able to survive in the deep woods on a meager diet of homemade chorizo, trout ceviche and wild turkey I also have a stash of cornichon and sauerkraut from the garden and I’m eying some olive trees this weekend. And you may want to revisit the vegetarian thing if things go really far south.
Make sure those seeds are heirloom, or at least not hybrids, and definitely not seedless variety of fruits and vegetables. You’ll want them to breed true!
Also, for trade items: cigarettes because there are some people who will just have to have that ‘luxury’ item :D, and they are easy to carry (and conceal from prying eyes).
HUGE bottle(s) of aspirin! Bandages/medkit. Fishing gear /net. These are all light-weight small stuff that can make life easier.
Shotgun for killing geese! I STILL don’t like them!
You can treat water with a small amount of bleach or iodine and still drink it, but that too would only work until you ran out of supplies. Boiling water for three minutes is enough to kill most things, as long as you can start a fire and have a pot in which to boil. You can do crude filtration of brackish water using nylons or cheesecloth. You would definitely want comfortable hiking boots, a Nalgene bottle, and a utility knife. Those are just a few suggestions from my Peace Corps days.
Also, if you want to hold onto some aspects of civilization for as long as you can, you can purchase small, foldable solar cell arrays that can generate enough power to charge an iPod, laptop, or other small electronic device.
Also available are small radios that are powered by a handcrank. Now, I’m assuming there’ll be no Top 40 radio after the collapse of civilization, but you may want to listen out over the radio waves for packs of tech-savy survivors.
You can treat water with a small amount of bleach or iodine and still drink it, but that too would only work until you ran out of supplies. Boiling water for three minutes is enough to kill most things, as long as you can start a fire and have a pot in which to boil. You can do crude filtration of brackish water using nylons or cheesecloth. You would definitely want comfortable hiking boots, a Nalgene bottle, and a utility knife. Those are just a few suggestions from my Peace Corps days.
Also, if you want to hold onto some aspects of civilization for as long as you can, you can purchase small, foldable solar cell arrays that can generate enough power to charge an iPod, laptop, or other small electronic device.
Also available are small radios that are powered by a handcrank. Now, I’m assuming there’ll be no Top 40 radio after the collapse of civilization, but you may want to listen out over the radio waves for packs of tech-savy survivors.
Depending on where you live, consider acquring a refuge suitable for farming. That means arable land, access to water, and a benign climate. Also make sure it’s near a body of water with natural fish. Consider hunting equipment, because what will you eat if your crops fail and your goats die? Consider acquiring some kind of antibiotics, although I presume they are perishable and wouldn’t last long, especially without refrigeration. Gather other basic medical supplies, including a do-it-yourself book on surgery (does such a book actually exist?). Very high quality axes, saws, splitting mauls, shovels, picks, hoes (more than one of each, since they will break). Other basic tools for dismanteling equipment and building new equipment with the parts. Multiple paris of safety glasses (wouldn’t do to get a wood or metal splinter in the eye while you’re cutting and splitting firewood). As mentioned before, like-minded friends.
And, especially, a plan so that everyone involved knows what, where and when to do everything when the disaster hits.
Hate to tell you this, but the scenario you present is going to be a lot worse than you think. In short, you’re going to have to move. If nothing else, the fires are going burn a lot of people out. Add them to the mobs looking for food once the distribution system breaks down and the looters, and you’ll have mobs and roving gangs everywhere. Some of them will be bands of cannibals.
To protect you and yours from those people you’ll need to join forces with others and establish a walled community. Someplace with access to water and good farmland. Medicines will be a must. As will reliable books on herbs and medicinal plants. Don’t forget the marijuana and opium poppies.
And remember your target practice. The eater (Dies the Fire slang for cannibal) you plug today won’t be the one dining on the Younger Sprog tomorrow.
You and the family make it, it’ll be because of hard work, good neighbors, and the willingness to do things you didn’t think you could do.
A small block of land, close enough to water, but not too close to major tourist attractions. It’s worth aquiring it as early as possible and raising a small orchard. Lemon trees for food, cleaning and preserving. A few almond trees.
Seeds – I’ve been maintaining a line of beans now that (I kid you not) my Grandfather brought with him from Italy in the late 40s. They grow easily, are amazingly productive, and breed true.
Lots of seeds that grow like weeds – parsley, zucchini, herbs like rosemary and oregano. These low maintenance plants give you something for nothing once they’re established.
Spare tool heads – hammers, mattocks and rakes. The handle’s can be made by hand easily enough, but smelting is out of the question.
Keep my dogs – extra security, help keeping birds away from the crops, and scavengers like possums away from food supplies.
A rifle for taking the odd roo or wallaby. Bow or crossbow for when the bullets run out.
Oh, one more thing. Lots and lots of salt. Stuff doesn’t just preserve itself, at this latitude anyway.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
The Interrupting Cow.
The Interrup..MOO!!
Hehe, yeah. Classic.
Feeding our humanity:
I first misread this as “Feeding on humanity” and I was struck by how quickly you went Comac McCarthy on us: (…and of course the scenario in this post is total heresy from the perspective of a particular political party.)
If Civilization collapse,perhaps we have a better world without wars,fears and consumer paranoia.In the alternative I go yo a isolated island near Cape Horn en the south of Chile with a red wine bottle and The Stranger a A.Camus book.
Medical Reference books.
I have “Medicine for Mountaineering” and it practically teaches you how to do an appendectomy in the field.
One of the tricks in there is to have a 1 once bottle about half full of pure Iodine and the rest water for water treatment. You shake the little bottle, pour it into a quart of water (Careful not to pour out the crystals!) and let it sit for a few minutes. Pour some of the treated water back into the little bottle to replenish it and your done.
The nice thing is that Iodine is not very soluble in water, so a little bit of Iodine lasts a long time.
However, I guess it is difficult to get pure Iodine any more.
I thought a little more and came up with some other items. A lifetime supply of toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss. Maybe the looteres will have ignored things like that when they cleaned out the local Wal-Mart. Plans and material for a still, so you can make alcohol. Alcohol can be extremely useful for lots of things other than drinking, like disinfectant and fuel. Bicycles and lots and lots of spare tires and inner tubes. Store them in air-tight plastic bags and maybe you could extend their life long enough to be useful down the road. Some bicycle tire pumps.
What about a good collection of seeds? and a Swiss knife?
Preparing for the collapse of civilization is not feasible. Read Adam Smith on all the specialists it took to make a wool coat and then imagine a world in which the shepherd assumes you will try to take their wool by force. Like Somalia, but without an outside world where cell phones, bicycles, and antibiotics are manufactured. The coal near the surface is gone, and you can’t dig for natural gas with a sharp stick. Somehow, we have to keep it together.
Preparing for disasters, on the other hand, is a good idea. For example, if everyone had enough food and water stashed, we could stay home while a deadly flu epidemic burned out.
A bit of forward thinking is required
Toys like that water purifier are not needed, if you have a reasonable amount of sunshine, go here:
http://www.epsea.org/stills.html
or in cooler climates, a slow sand filter will work
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/ssf/en/index.html
For food, stay away from monoculture, see what happens when you let nature help
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk
Bill Mollinson and permaculture are good search terms for bittorrents and youtube
you know what I haven’t read on here…(i didn’t read that carefully.. honestly..)
Guns… lots and lots of guns and ammo. Civilization falls…you have to protect you and your family.
Porn (to help repopulate the planet). A deck or two of x-rated playing cards should do the trick (also useful for barter).
I’d be screwed.
Without a reliable supply of thyroid hormone replacement, I’d eventually devolve to a lethargic, dull-witted lump. And a near-sighted, presbyopic lump at that.
I’m rather fond of civilization, myself.