Survivalism: Not Just For the Right-Winged Anymore

Orig­i­nal fic­tion, essays,and poet­ry com­ing tomor­row or the next day; it's been a bit of a wreck around here last week and this. Had to make a quick trip back to my par­ents to vis­it my 95-year-old grand­ma, who is sad­ly liv­ing her last days in this world. Fif­teen hours in the car in 48 hours. Not fun, but had to be done. This woman made me sug­ar cook­ies spe­cial every Christ­mas for years and years, until her hands couldn't do it. Any­way. Don't get me start­ed. I'll blubber.

It was nice to see my fam­i­ly, if only for a day, real­ly. Break­fast with my sister's fam­i­ly, bon­fire at my niece's, light­ning bugs and coy­ote howls and s'mores, and best of all, a long trip down dirt roads late at night, deer in the head­lights and pos­sums in the road. It wasn't all bad.

Now for the top­ic at hand. I have been a sur­vival­ist of sorts in mind since about 1980. I nev­er leave home with­out a knife and a means of mak­ing fire even now. My first abort­ed nov­el was a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic kind of thing. If I could build a bunker here in Revere to save my fam­i­ly from the end of civ­i­liza­tion, I would. I'm as prepped as I can be. I have the skills to sur­vive it. If it comes. So I laugh a lit­tle bit at the sur­bur­ban folks pan­ick­ing now. Like, have you paid atten­tion for the last forty years?

Thank god the red­necks will all prob­a­bly survive. 🙂

SAN DIEGO — Six months ago, Jim Wise­man didn't even have a spare nutri­tion bar in his kitchen cabinet.

Now, the 54-year-old busi­ness­man and father of five has a back­up gen­er­a­tor, a water fil­ter, a grain mill and a 4‑foot-tall pile of emer­gency food tucked in his home in the expen­sive San Diego sub­urb of La Jolla.

Wise­man isn't alone. Emer­gency sup­ply retail­ers and mil­i­tary sur­plus stores nation­wide have seen busi­ness boom in the past few months as an increas­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans spooked by the econ­o­my rush to stock up on gear that was once the domain of hard­core survivalists.

These peo­ple snap­ping up every­thing from water purifi­ca­tion tablets to ther­mal blan­kets shat­ter the sur­vival­ist stereo­type: they are most­ly urban pro­fes­sion­als with mort­gages, SUVs, sol­id jobs and a twinge of embar­rass­ment about their new­found hobby.

More here.

Or you can see lots of hor­ri­fy­ing­ly unnec­es­sary sur­vival crap all over the inter­nets. Here's a sample:

Bat­ten your hatch­es and watch Red Dawn and the Post­man again, peo­ple. Or read one of my favorite books, Wolf & Iron, by Gor­don Dick­son. It may come to this, folks. The good thing is, if it does, I'm like­ly to stop obsess­ing over edit­ing this fuck­ing novel. 🙂