Chicago Boyz Discuss Survivalism (Updated)

      Chicago Boyz is a political and legal blog, so it was interesting to me to see them take up the subject of survivalism recently. It kicked off with Jay Manifold's review of Bill Quick's Lightening Fall. Because of various comments, Manifold posted a follow up post. T. Greer then posted an article he had originally written in 2011 for The Scholar's Stage.

      Both Manifold and Greer address the issue of rural retreat versus town/urban locations (or bug-in versus bug-out). Manifold, because he is reviewing Quick's book which posits an EMP disaster, begins by noting that the effects of EMP will vary quite a bit from location to location--some places may have the electrical grid crippled, while other communities near by may be largely untouched. Moving beyond physical differences, he also comments on social differences:

... In the metro area I live in, there are entire square miles in the inner city with less aggregate wealth than single households in the tonier areas. I lack progressive credentials; I strongly believe these inequities to be an emergent property of the overall system, an artifact of culture and especially generational temperament rather than anything readily meliorated by the proper legislation. The Silent Generation (birth years 1925-42) was deeply concerned with equality. The first wave of the baby boomers (’43-’51) was somewhat less so, the last-wave boomers (’52-’60, which includes me) much less so, and the Gen Xers (’61-’81) scarcely at all. [All dates from Strauss and Howe, and note that these are cultural, not demographic, generations, thus the departure from the usual ’46-’64 definition for the boomers.]

So, to bring this home, and I encourage readers to plug analogous neighborhoods in their own cities into this paragraph, the east side of KC – which as I commented recently, has a homicide rate around 80 per 100,000 per year, so high as to be characteristic of failed states elsewhere in the world – might very well experience a population crash from starvation and disease, while southern Johnson County on the Kansas side lost 1% or less of its people. And that is likely to be true even if the physical infrastructure of both areas is equally affected. Relative wealth connotes many other kinds of preparedness and resiliency, including the psychological.

He turns to the real world example of Haiti:

Now to veer sharply in a nonobvious but, if I may say so, rather insightful direction: suppose there were an existing society in which the electrical grid chronically malfunctions, there is no regular supply of potable water, availability of motorized transport is scant, malnutrition is a constant backdrop, and a variety of illnesses (often vector-borne) are at pandemic levels.

According to the survivalist/prepper model, the inhabitants of that society should be dying in heaps, not least from slaughtering one another. Furthermore, the safest people in that society should be the most remote, studiously avoiding human contact and devoting their energies to becoming, and remaining, entirely self-reliant.

But that society does exist, and in it, other than a tiny elite, the largest number of people living in some (admittedly by North American standards rather slight) comfort are those with the greatest degree of interaction with others. The worst off, at imminent risk of death, are the rural isolates – and the wealthiest elites are not found in the deep countryside, but on the very outskirts of the largest city in the nation. Also, there’s no slaughtering going on.

Well, that’s Haïti, and my time there over the past three years has convinced me that the oft-extolled strategy of holing up somewhere as far away from other people as you can get, with everything you think you’re going to need, is nothing more than elaborate and painful suicide. In a decade or two, someone will find your bones in your hideout and wonder what the hell you could possibly have been thinking.

[The best course of action is] the exact opposite of isolation and self-reliance: trade and specialization. As Julian Simon masterfully documented, people are the ultimate resource. In anticipation of a significant disruptive event, therefore, we would do well to look toward (to borrow a term) community organizing. How well do you know your neighbors, and what can you offer them, whether material or informational, in trade?

       Greer's article more broadly addresses the traditional "jack-of-trades," isolated retreat versus the cooperative community models. Greer begins by addressing a fundamental tenet of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations--that specialization and division of labor leads to vastly increased efficiency. However, he observes that it also brings with it a certain fragility because the parts are dependent on the whole system working. A failure, for instance, in one part of a manufacturing plant can shut down the whole plant.  Greer writes:

For the survivalist this is a problem pervading not only the pin factories, but all of modern society. Over the last century two trends have decidedly shifted society’s balance away from robustness and towards efficiency. Modern dependence on technology and the specialized knowledge needed to maintain it is the first of these trends; the second is the fusion of local communities with the global economy and larger political units. The day is past where a man is expected to know how to repair all that is on his property, grow his own food, or make and use his own fuel. In some cases this is simply the fruits of geographic isolation and economic specialization - the knowledge needed to raise livestock and plant crops is quite useless to the city dweller. Other cases reflect the ‘division of knowledge’ that inevitably comes with man’s growing understanding of and ability to manipulate the universe in which he dwells (e.g. few Americans know how to build a hard drive, much less a nuclear power plant). The rise of multinational conglomerates and global supply networks ensure that most of what we need is made far away; the eclipse of local civic and political institutions by national agencies erodes our communities’ capacity to solve problems without outside help. What we are left with is a culture of dependency, so ingrained as to be seen in our aesthetics. ...

      Greer postulates three levels of disasters: Type 1 are major disasters, sudden, but short term and geographically limited (e.g., earthquakes and floods); Type 2 are long term, but not sudden and of greater geographic impact (e.g., a depression, hyperinflation, perhaps a political collapse); and Type 3 are disasters national on scale with an impact lasting for a long period of time (e.g., nuclear war, an epidemic on the scale of the black death, political collapse). However, he suggests that while probabilities favor preparing for Types 1 and 2, the cost of preparing for a Type 3 disaster outweighs the risk:

That is the difficulty with type-3 disasters: the probability of their occurrence does not square with the measures that must be taken to truly prepare for them. The cost of these preparatory measures (such as relocating one’s family far away from urban centers, as Mr. Rawl’s advises) is very high - too high to recommend their adoption. If moving to a backwoods Idaho cabin is the only sure-fire way to survive a nuclear war, I would rather live my life as I will and meet, if it comes, my fiery death with a grin. I assume that I am not the only person who holds this view. Moreover, if preparations are made for type-1 and type-2 disasters, those of the third type will be much easier to survive. The extreme measures advocated by many survivalists are simply not necessary. 

I say this not because I find fault with the preparation ethic of the survivalists, but because I find fault with what the survivalists prepare for. Survivalist literature is dominated by images of chaos and disorder, social disintegration à la Mad Max, full of riots, robbers, bandits, and desperate men willing to do anything – and kill anyone – to survive. This vision of bellum omnium contra omnes in the suburbs of America betrays a profound unfamiliarity with disaster psychology and sociology. The literature on this topic is extensive (this, this, and this are a few good introductory articles; this and this are popular books on the subject) and it lends no support to the notion that disasters produce panic stricken mobs or roving bandits prone to avarice and violence. It is the opposite that occurs: those who survive sudden disasters respond to their plight not with riots and terror, but with spontaneous acts of altruism and amazing feats of self-organization. Remember the 11th of September, when more than 500,000 denizens of Manhattan Island were evacuated by boat, bridge, and ferry without any centralized planning or direction. Consider the state of New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina raged, levies broke, and hundreds of thousands of people fled the region for safer climes. The Hurricane and its aftermath are widely seen as an unparalleled disaster. The centralized response to the Hurricane was just that; everything from the army-built levees to FEMA’s delayed relief efforts were marked by failure and mismanagement. The same cannot be of the said of the main populace’s uncoordinated response to the disaster. Though millions of people were evacuating the region and police forces temporarily lost control of New Orleans and its immediate environs, crime levels in New Orleans were no higher than normal. Reports of looting and violence were creations of an easily excited media machine, bearing no resemblance to reality. 

This suggests that, contrary to the expectations of most survivalists, the greatest danger will not come from the other disaster survivors, but from outside elites trying to reassert authority over a disaster ravaged area. These elites are susceptible to what has been called the “Myth of Panic“: being the largest beneficiaries of the traditional order, they cannot see anything but chaos, violence, and carnage in its absence. The government response to Hurricane Katrina is a testament to the perilous effects of such misperception. Fear of violence and crime led to the misallocation of relief resources, and in a few shocking cases, refusal to offer relief at all. Eager to restore “peace and order”, government officials stripped Louisianans of their rights, confiscating all weapons in the city of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina is small fare compared to most of the scenarios survivalists prepare for; in the event that such a disaster occurs, we cannot expect the authorities’ scramble for control to pose any less of a danger to the lives and liberties of disaster survivors.

 Accordingly, like Manifold, he suggests that the key to survival is to be part of an organized community rather than an isolated family or small group of retreaters:

It is unlikely that we will face any disaster so bad that we will be forced to eat from our larders for a year or more’s time. However, preparing for that year as if it were a certainty is quite sensible: those with supplies otherwise unavailable will undoubtedly be providing for the needs of more than just their immediate family. When friends and neighbors are sick or starving and asking you to help them survive, the wisdom in such extensive preparations will be more than evident.

This focus on supplies should not mislead us into thinking that survival is simply a matter of gear or supplies. Herein lies one of my main complaints with the survivalist movement: too many survivalists seem to think that survival comes down to equipment. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The key to survival does not lie with supplies, but people.

I mean this in two senses. On the one hand, an individual’s skill set is incalculably more valuable than anything they might own. (E.g. if you are not trained in basic first aid then all of the medical supplies in the world will do you no good). Yet even this is not enough. As with most things, what we know is less important than who we know. The notion of a lone survivalist tramping off into the wilderness to make it through doomsday is utter nonsense. These figures are great for Hollywood, but they stand little chance of surviving in the event of a real world disaster. The well supplied lone wolf is even less resilient than the masses of modern society he so abhors. One accident is all it takes to bring the best laid plans of the single survivalist to nought. Their survival will be dependent on a margin or error that simply does not exist. 

Mr. Rawls and a few other survivalists recognize this. They recommend ”forting” with a small group of several families or close friends. I submit that even this will prove unsatisfactory. The most successful survivors will be those who belong to a much larger community. We’ve already discussed how networks of mutual aid spontaneously arise in the wake of disaster; those formed around existing social groups with a strong sense of collective identity, social cohesion, and a regularly exercised ability to care for their own will be by far the most successful of these communities. Being independent of national infrastructure and existing political structures these groups will have little trouble organizing and mobilizing after a major disaster. Minority immigrant groups, Mormon congregations, military bases, rural towns, and their like will become the loci of the new commonwealths forged by disaster. The organizational capacity of these communities will far outstrip what any family commune is capable of providing. 

Becoming a part of one of these communities before disaster strikes is the best way to ensure your survival in its aftermath.

(Emphasis in original).

Updated (5/22/2014): In the comments, a reader points out the potential for civil war, citing to a couple articles by Matthew Bracken (here and here). (I mentioned these articles in a post from a couple years back). He (the reader) comments: "For every 'good' outcome the Chicago Boyz cite for why large cities and their suburbs will not descend into a dystopian hell, I can cite contrary first hand accounts."

My response is two-fold. First, as long-term readers of this blog know, I subscribe to what I've called a baby footsteps approach for prepping--that is, don't try to do everything at once, but begin by preparing for the more common or statistically likely threats (such as short-term power outages, snow storms, household accidents, burglaries) then increase your preps, both in quantity and sophistication, over time as you are able. Thus, you could begin by preparing to have a few days or a week's worth of food and water, first aid kit, fire extinguisher, defensive weapon(s) (a firearm suitable for home protection and something non- or less-lethal), emergency lights or candles, etc. Once you reach a basic level, then you can start adding more food and water and fuel for cooking to get you to a month's worth of backup, and adding other preps (a garden, generator, additional weapons and defensive preps, etc.), working ideally to having several months or even a year's worth of food stored away and otherwise prepared to weather an economic downturn (personal or national) or other major disruption. In this regard, I agree with what Greer says that if you prepare for the more likely disasters, you will be better prepared for the statistically unlikely, but major, disasters (his Type 3).

I recognize that we are headed for major social upheaval. The elements are in place or coalescing. But I don't know when, how, or what will spark it.

Second, the urban vs. rural debate is (or should be) more nuanced than it generally is. I can't claim to know exactly what the Chicago Boyz authors were thinking when they wrote their articles. I don't read what they wrote as suggesting that cities or towns would necessarily be safer, but that cities and towns would recover quicker from a disaster, and being part of a cohesive group of people is better than being a loner.

For what they are worth, here are my thoughts on the matter. There are a lot of survivalist literature that advise a rural retreat in an Intermountain or Western state such as Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, etc. I've read enough of the older literature that I know the original reasoning for this, which had to do with fall-out patterns in the event of a full-out nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. These locations were desirable because they were (a) not in large cities (i.e., targets) and (b) not downwind of major targets (i.e., not in fall-out zones). However, along the way, these locations also became associated with a place of retreat from the "inevitable" hordes that would abandon the cities in the event of a nuclear war or economic collapse. I think this was about the time that the government decided that "civil defense" would simply be warning people to evacuate large cities in the case of an attack.

Nuclear war is one thing, and other forms of disaster are another, and the two shouldn't be confused. As someone that has lived in Idaho for a long time, I can tell you that there are reasons that the early settlers simply passed through on the way to Oregon. First, with the exception of a few river valleys in the southern part of the state, and the Palouse in the north, there is not a lot of good arable land, and most of what there is must be irrigated because there simply is not enough rainfall (and because of the method of water appropriation, don't think that you can simply take water from the nearest stream or river--assuming there is one, which is also unlikely in many areas of the state--and use it). Although much of the state is forested, even the forest soils are pretty poor--hardly more than sand in many areas. Second, the summers are hot, and, in most places in the state, the winters are cold and harsh. Growing seasons can be short. I would also add that wages are relatively low and many of the more isolated rural communities are economically depressed. So, in reality, the remote cabin in the mountains of Idaho is actually one of the worst places you could go to survive a long term disaster such as an economic collapse.

What applies to Idaho, does not necessarily apply to other states. I would expect that arable land and the necessary water for a garden or crop is more common in the mid-west and Mississippi/Ohio river valley. Thus, a rural location may make more sense in other areas of the country than in the "American Redoubt."

That being said, living in the rough part of town in a large urban center is not a good strategy either. But, from what I've read from various sources on the events in Argentina, South Africa, the Balkans, and post-WWII Europe, living in a village or remote farm didn't prevent disfavored minority groups from being killed or driven out in WWII and post-WWII Europe; and Argentina, South Africa, and other examples show that in a slow-collapse, rural locations are no better off when it comes to crime or access to food, and may actually be worse off in some ways. Your best security is to be among people that are like you--socially, ethnically, and religiously.