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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.