by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Why is it that almost everyone that one meets or otherwise encounters, who expects a societal collapse, appears to be obsessed with and by and focused on weapons?
Do you have seeds? Do you know how to grow a garden for food and how to farm? Do you know how to filter water to make it potable?
Where are your crafters? Who can blacksmith, work leather, sew and work wood and do carpentry? Who knows medicine and herbal lore and can identify edible (wild) plats?
We won't survive a collapse by killing each other. In fact we will need each other in order to survive. There is no such thing as self-sufficiency proper. Self-reliance maybe and yes but self-sufficiency no.
We will only survive with benevolent skilled communities working together. Not by fighting and killing each other. There is no way that any of us can survive on their own, not in the long run, because in the event of a societal collapse we will need to be able to make things that we need and none of us can do all that on our own.
Surviving just on eating small game that cane be gotten by snare and even larger animals that are shot with rifles is not going to work, especially not when it comes to low-fat animals such as rabbits and squirrels. Even the Neanderthals did not just live on meat. They probably ate more in the way of edible plants than they actually ate meat.
But there are so many other things that none of us will be able to procure or produce on our own. You cannot know how to do everything and even if you know you may not be able to physically do it. We will need other people with who we can trade and barter for the things that we cannot produce and make for those that they cannot.
What happens when the lone “survivor” gets sick or injured? No man is an island. We will only survive with benevolent skilled communities, as said already, working together, sharing skills, resources and also trade with each other and other such communities. Not by fighting and killing each other and, as far as firearms are concerned with collapse of society there will not be, for long, any ammunition available. Well, OK, we then simply kill each other with wooden clubs (sarcasm out).
Once the ammo runs out hunting will also become somewhat difficult for the survivalist, unless they have muzzle loading muskets, flints and are able to make their own powder because with such muskets it is possible, as they are smooth bore, to also shoot pebbles instead of lead balls.
Growing food, livestock keeping, and other cannot be done on the move and will require a settled communities.
© 2021
