textfiles/survival/how-not

HOW NOT TO SURVIVE by Kurt Saxon               copyright 1981
     Six years ago when I began THE SURVIVOR there were only vague 
glimmerings of the worldwide disasters confronting mankind. As a 
historian, I could match the causes and effects which led to the 
downfall of past civilizations with the same degenerative 
influences dooming our own civilizations.
     In the meantime, more and more people have at least awakened 
to the fact that the world is in terrible trouble.  For the most 
part, however, they entertain themselves with the belief that 
wisdom will prevail; a leader is somewhere out there; the enemy 
will be exposed and destroyed, etc..  All such is merely wishful 
thinking.  It is arrogance verging on paranoia to believe that our 
generation is somehow favored over, or superior to, peoples 
destroyed by the same causes throughout history.
     Too many people, even survivalists, are unable to accept the 
end of world civilization.  They mistake it for the end of the 
world, period.
     The fall of Atlantis was the end of the last world 
civilization.  It was such a shattering experience, and so complete 
that even most scholars consider Atlantis a myth.  Yet it didn't 
mark the end of the world.  Its totality lay in the fact that it 
was linked to, and interdependent with, all the other cultures on 
Earth, as in our present world civilization.
     There were survivors of the fall of Ur of the Chaldees, 
Babylon, Greece and Egypt. But to the majority of their inhabitants 
it was indeed the end of the world.                    
     Almost like Atlantis, the Roman Empire had spread a web of 
interdependence throughout Europe.  Its fall was followed by 
hundreds of years of ignorance, misery, despotism, inquisition and 
degradation known as the Dark Ages.  But it wasn't the end of the 
world.
     From 1348 to 1361 the Black Death engulfed Europe.  One half 
of the British died while the rest of Europe suffered a loss of one 
fourth of its population.  The plague ravaged the cities, for the 
most part, taking away the lower classes and leaving the 
aristocracy and the peasantry relatively safe.
     Boccaccio's DECAMERON is a collection of stories supposedly 
told to each other by a group of affluent and intelligent 
Florentines.  During the plague they left the stricken Florence for 
the countryside and partied and told witty stories until the worst 
was over.
     It wasn't the end of their world.  When the plague died out 
they went back.  Since the working class was decimated the 
survivors had to set about replacing hands with machines.  
Technology and science bloomed and the period was called "The 
Renaissance" or rebirth.
     So accept the end of world civilization with hope that you 
won't necessarily go with it.  Having done this, you can see the 
absurdity of the following stopgap measures to survive a temporary 
calamity.
     Investing in intangibles: Gold, silver, diamonds, antiques, 
paintings, etc. are dependent for their value on desire, not need.  
When need is the uppermost consideration, desire is simply a 
frivolous emotion.  In order to exchange your intangibles for your 
needs you will have to wait until surplusses are built up.  In the 
meantime, say you approach a farmer and offer him a $600 Krugerrand 
for its value in chickens.  If you're lucky he may offer you a $600 
chicken.
     Bugout vehicles: I'm amused by the fantasies of urban types 
who stock a camper with everything one could possibly need to 
survive.  When it hits the fan they will leave just before the 
rioting gets too fierce or the mushroom cloud hovers directly 
overhead.
     Roads blocked by fuelless and/or wrecked vehicles will doom 
most bugouters.  Bandits will account for many who make it past the 
congestion.
     People in the rural areas, threatened by mobs of refugees, 
will shoot at anyone who doesn't keep moving.  You can't carry 
enough gas to keep moving.
     It will take weeks, maybe months, for rurals to run out of 
supplies in their villages and towns.  Turning away strangers as a 
matter of course, there is little chance that you'd be allowed to 
settle among them before your own supplies ran out, regardless of 
what you had to barter.
     Best to pack a U-Haul and move to the Ozarks now.
     Fallout shelters: These are for urban areas.  Business 
executives locked into the establishment figure they can submerge 
before the fallout chokes them.  After a couple of weeks they seem 
to expect to come out to some kind of brave new world, go back to 
their desks and carry on as usual.
     When the cities go, those trapped in shelters will share the 
fate of those without shelters.  A chance for a couple of weeks of 
life is not worth the expense.
     In the fifties shelters would have been practical in the event 
of a nuclear war.  But in the eighties the devastation will be so 
much greater that rebuilding on nuclear ruins will be unthinkable 
for years.
     Outside the major cities a shelter might be nice and a real 
protection against the worst of the fallout.  Even so, it would be 
with us for months, if not years.
     Hiroshima and Nagasaki have proven the fallacy of mutations 
and obliteration by radiation sickness, sterilization and cancer 
years later.  But the majority will survive without shelters, 
unless all life is destroyed.
     Arsenals: I love guns, but I have only enough for myself.  I 
won't have to arm my neighbors because I've never met anyone here 
who isn't well armed.
     I have a complete reloading setup, accommodating every rifle, 
shotgun size and pistol of the common variety.  Forget the exotic 
stuff.  I'm prepared to reload for the community.  That's all 
that's needed.
     Yet I read of gun nuts buying everything that will shoot as if 
guns were all that mattered.  They must think the shooting will go 
on and on for years.
     Maybe they're right if they get trapped between the big cities 
and the well defended rural areas.  In that case the gun nuts would 
become precisely what they fancy they are arming against.
     So unless you're a gunsmith or an honest collector, you have 
no reason to collect guns just for the sake of having them.  Best 
to spend your money on more useful items.
     Of course, you should have a good shotgun, rifle and pistol.  
You ought to get a copy of Mel Tappan's book, SURVIVAL GUNS and 
choose the best guns you can afford and in the variety which will 
suit your actual needs.  But to consider an arsenal more important 
than long-term survival tools is juvenile.
     Fighting Communism: With actual Marxist Communism on the wane, 
the money and effort expended in fighting that silly ideology is a 
waste.  Of course the term "Communism" is becoming increasingly 
replaced by "Bildebergers", "Trilateralism", etc. which is 
supposedly the same thing.  It seems that everything is part of a 
huge plot.  Belief in such a plot is commonly known as "The 
Conspiracy Theory".
     Communists, Bildebergers, Trilateralists and perhaps a dozen 
other vague groups are being given credit for just about everything 
wrong on our planet.  If a culprit could be found, identified, 
fought and thereby stopped, the whole "fight" would be reasonable.  
But this nonsense has been going on for years with nothing to show 
for all the exposures by all the "patriots" we have left.
     When Rome was surrounded by barbarians and wracked with 
rioting by proletarians and freed slaves the righteous citizens 
wasted valuable time following up their own conspiracy theories.  
Rome fell without any of the "conspirators" being bothered.
     The point is that degeneration doesn't need any particular 
label and labeling it only gives false hope that a label is somehow 
like a target one can shoot at.  This is a false comfort since the 
target itself is false.
     Political and international manipulation of the world's 
inferiors should be ignored at this time.  The better prepared you 
are to handle your own problems, the better able you will be to 
deal with the vermin when the collapse comes.  In the meantime, 
don't jeopardize your efforts toward survival by getting upset over 
what a pack of doomed parasitical predators are up to.
     REVOLT AGAINST CIVILIZATION, by Lothrop Stoddard, is being 
serialized in this volume.  It shows how communists are simply 
intelligent but warped losers stirring up feeble minded losers 
against their betters.
     As far as I'm concerned, the losers have taken the world's 
cities and destroyed its economies.  Let them have the cities.  
Most of them will die there.
     The only way to fight losers is by abortion and 
sterilization.  Waiting for them to arm themselves and then trying 
to combat them is a bit late.  Since it's too late anyway, give 
them this round.  Move from the cities and let them rot.  After the
worst is over we survivalists can destroy what's left of them at 
our leisure.