The New Frontier?

According to a piece in today's i Newspaper, prepping for societal breakdown - aka the apocalypse - is going mainstream, almost middle-class, even. Interesting. What can we make of this shift from the traditionally outsider domain of the prepper to the cosy suburbs of Middle England? I'm not sure: it either speaks to an increasing unease with the way this acceleratingly-weird world is going, or to the rather more banal ethos of hipster 'cool'; a bit like food-faddism or ill-informed eco-tourism or whatever is the current mot du jour. The central point is that if the ordure hits the fan for real, how long would any of us actually last? Given that you might have stocked up sufficient canned and preserved foodstuffs - fresh ain't gonna cut it when the supply chains are closed - and fuel for cooking and heating, for a few weeks: months at best; what happens then?

By the stage that your supplies are running out and your fuel is running dry, so will everyone else's: then what? Absolute, bloody anarchy is one scenario: animal survival of the fittest at best. The other, of course is probably what would happen: cooperative, stoic, grinding survival, using the best of the skills and knowledge available to each of the [probably isolated at first] groups of survivors of this putative apocalypse. The thing that would mark out the 'leaders' of this emerging class of people would be the most basic of skills needed to rebuild that was already lost: practical skills. The making and use of tools: the repair of surviving tools; the re-purposing of tools and materials in creative ways to assist and support the group. Teaching these skills to those of the group who are unskilled would also be paramount, in order that the continuity of purpose for survival be maintained.

The question these days is simply: how many truly, basically skilled people do you personally know who could form the core of an effectively new, group-based society? We have not been passing on the fundamentals to our children for some decades now, and that worries me: if the only access to 'real' practical knowledge is via Google or YouTube, then those people that depend on them are doomed should the worst happen: no phones, no internet, no cloud, no knowledge, no survival. A few tins of preserved goods and a couple of cans of petrol stowed in the shed won't sustain you for very long at all. Your store of frozen goods will defrost and your supply of fresh milk and water will rapidly run out. If you're even remotely considering prepping as a concept, you'd better start learning to kill, prepare and cook wild animals, how to reliably make fire, and how to fight off the inevitable competition for scarce resources.

If you want to improve your sorry lot under these circumstances, learning to cooperate with your fellow humans beings might be your most invaluable asset. Do I think we'll get to that sorry point? No, I don't, but that's not the point. But, instead of dealing with the issues at hand that threaten our very existence, it's all too easy an option to imagine ourselves as frontiersmen and pioneers fighting the environment and hostile tribes, just like in the movies. Or on YouTube. The real deal is the passing on of that very knowledge that has enabled the human race to survive this far and this well to our children and grandchildren; we forget, at our peril, that the small things enable and make the large: without the basics, there is no survival...