Solidarity Prepping Is A Survival Philosophy Based On Skills & Knowledge, and A Philosophy of Access For All (No Membership Portal Or Members Only Content)
Deep Adaptation is prophetic, “The perspective that natural or spiritual reconnection might save us from catastrophe is, however, a psychological response one could analyse as a form of denial..”
“Collapse as offering a potential upside in bringing humanity to a post-consumerist way of life that would be more conscious of relationships between people and nature (Eisenstein, 2013). Some even argue that this reconnection with nature will generate hitherto unimaginable solutions to our predicament. Sometimes that view comes with a belief in the power of spiritual practices to influence the material world according to human intent. The perspective that natural or spiritual reconnection might save us from catastrophe is, however, a psychological response one could analyse as a form of denial..” Deep Adaptation, Jem Bendel, July 2018
Nothing could be more prophetic; Jem identifies how the perspective that natural or spiritual reconnection might save us from catastrophe is, however, a psychological response one could analyse as a form of denial. Soft Denial is where people accept that climate change is our reality but will at the same time say “the podcast that believes another world is still possible if..” and “leaving behind a worold we could be proud to leave the next generation.” the if is a multifaceted approach promoting the work of others while having discussions abot pet subjects of the presenter which seem intended to draw people towards the paid membership portal. Celtic Shamanism, a blend of new-age wellness and Plum Village Zen visualisation meditations, with a nod to nature connection through forest bathing, coupled with Rupert Read’s Thrutopia, makes us more over-optimistic about the future. The doomers have had the Ziegeist about right; they were talking about agricultural collapse 4 years ago.
We Were Warriors Once..
We were once warriors, defenders of the land, spiritually connected to the feral self. The spirituality of activism was feral. I was on the Newbury bypass protest in the 1990s, I lived in a tree; I lived in the forest, walked barefoot on this earth; we could see in the dark; we knew each other by our gait, smell and voice. I was already practising outdoor skills; I just lacked the confidence to be more open about them.
The fact is, many of us went from being Monkey-wrenching Anarchists to working on the land. I ended up working in woodland management, laying hedges and restoring ancient, derelict coppice woodlands.
Living Through FAFO, (Collapse)
Its 28C as I sit and write this at 0200am while doing another night shift; it was 34C during the day when I slept between shifts. In 1996, we could never have envisaged that we would live through climate collapse, that I would remember July 2026 as the month after 20,000 people die in Europe in a week from heat exposure while these people talk about flourishing and hurl abuse at old environmental activists because they disagree with them.
So Why Dystopian Survivalism?
Because survivalism, which indigenous people do, is romanticised, and the survivalism which I might be doing is dystopian, because I might be suggesting that we might need to hunt and gather post-collapse, according to the person screaming Dystopian Survivalism, wasting their breath and time and sounding a little deranged. People who have set themselves up as authorities on collapse haven’t learned anything useful towards that end and are quite happy for all their supporters and followers to die as ignorant as they are. Some of the posts on this blog clearly show their hubris.
Dystopian Survivalism is how a shamanic practitioner who has been careful to sanitise shamanism -so that its easy describes real survival skills which could save your life
It’s Dystopian Survivalism, because they can’t see it as a method for conscious evolution; it’s seen as going backwards. But I can tell you they will be helping themselves to ideas like Polychronic Thinking: They will be stripping the survivalism out of Polychronic Thinking and calling it “shamanic thinking”. Even though survivalism and polychronic thinking are in symbiosis. It’s like stripping the Nature from shamanism (they have already done that), to make it easy and safe.
#TalkCollapse
Bradbrook is now breaking into talking about collapse to community groups about the Life-house model:
“She asked the audience how many of them have followed EU guidelines to stockpile three days’ worth of food, water and other essentials. A smattering of hands went up.”
“Harrowing statistics and scenarios were presented, including the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Such a collapse would lead to the terrifying prospect of off-the-chart sub-zero temperatures and far hotter summers “eliminating the possibility of growing food in the UK”.
“The enormity of the challenges was a lot to absorb, but the audience questions tended towards the practical, such as how do we map our local area for food-growing, overcome fragmentation and get groups working together to ensure inclusivity – all demonstrating a commitment to making such a project work.”https://www.salamandernews.org/gail-bradbrook-true-community-and-building-the-lifehouse
Sadly, Dr Bradbrook, however well-meaning, doesn’t have any answers. The answers requires an in-depth understanding of survival skills in the UK climate. The Zeitgeist is that people want to know how to learn the skills that these spiritual types can’t teach, and they are being betrayed by people who hate and reject survivalism.
Bradbrook’s approach to the food crisis is to talk about food banks; she asks, “What are we going to do when the supermarkets are empty?”, and she ignores agricultural collapse. She then starts talking about food banks, without even realising that food banks are part of the supermarket system. Food Banks are waste/surplus food distribution hubs. Bradbrook doesn’t ask what we are going to do when Agriculture collapses, because, like Scott, she doesn’t know. Meanwhile Scott has declared “We are going to grow food for everyone!” and announced she is going on a 2-year regenerative agriculture course.
“Harrowing statistics and scenarios were presented, including the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Such a collapse would lead to the terrifying prospect of off-the-chart sub-zero temperatures and far hotter summers “eliminating the possibility of growing food in the UK”. https://www.salamandernews.org/gail-bradbrook-true-community-and-building-the-lifehouse
The Irony that agriculture is collapsing due to global warming is lost on these hopium peddlers:
Hopium is internet slang that combines “hope” and “opium” to describe an irrational, addictive form of optimism. People run on hopium when they cling to unrealistic expectations or false hope despite mounting evidence pointing to the contrary.
How Did We End Up Here?
According to Dr Andy Letcher, of Shroom fame and a long-standing friend for over 30 years, he played bagpipes of some sort at my wedding; we have entertained the fire brigade deep in the woods on the edge of Oxford, and done deep research into his work to write Shroom. According to Dr Letcher Tim ‘Mac’ Macartney of Embercombe:
“I was impressed. Here was someone I could believe. Macartney is honest about his failings and walks his talk, literally. Recently he set off on a pilgrimage to Anglesey in the depths of winter with no compass, map or food, trusting in his bushcraft skills and the kindness of strangers to get him there. He’s in his sixties. No, his message hit home.” https://andy-letcher.blogspot.com/2012/07/tribes-of-britain.html?spref=fb&m=1
Andy is not the only person whom I have met impressed by this pilgrimage. Andy is also an old romantic. The idea that someone can do this, to Andy is impressive, but he forgets that Britain is crisscrossed by ancient trackways, any survivalist could do this and they do regularly. I think of my old Donga friends’ words: “Walking along the Ancient footways of Wessex with my friends” in his song. While there isn’t a continuous path from Great Malvern to Anglesea, it’s not hard to remember that you are going due west, then north on a small island. If bushcraft is so central to Embercombe, why is it so heavily ritualised? Embercombe isnt teaching people how to survive collapse, what we have go from Embercomb is expensive self development course which use bushcrafts for ceremonial purposes. The Story Festival imitated the ritualisation of bushcraft, but it was never talked about as a vehicle for decolonising the mind
Nothing has come out of Embercombe to indicate how we survive the AMOC Collapse.
Dark Mountain were possibly the bravest post 1990s NVDA philiosophical group to talk about the collapse of this civilisation and again like me their critics put words into their mouths. None of us want to be spectators at the collapse of our civilisation, but do we have a choice? George “Monbiot contends that “To sit back and wait for the collapse of industrial civilisation is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens value.” Monbiot is saying that Greens whatever they might profess value capitalism:
If you are self employed and the land you have bought is from that employment, then the system is working well for you. Know Thyself and thine own cognitive dissonence.
“Mainstream environmentalism has been assimilated by capitalism”
“Today’s environmentalists are more likely to be found at corporate conferences hymning the virtues of ‘sustainability’ and ‘ethical consumption’ than doing anything as naive as questioning the intrinsic values of civilisation. Capitalism has absorbed the greens, as it absorbs so many challenges to its ascendancy.” or Calling themselve Celtic Shaman and running a paid for training program they claim is training the future environmental activist critical mass.
Unsurprisingly, the project has its critics. John Grey, reviewer for the New Statesman, accuses its founders of believing that “global collapse could lead to a better world” and that in doing so, they have “swallowed the progressive fairy tale that animates the civilisation they reject.” While in the Guardian, George Monbiot contends that “To sit back and wait for the collapse of industrial civilisation is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens value.” Responding to such criticism, the founders insist that “the project has never been a quest for apocalyptic narratives, but rather an attempt to get beyond them.”
Extinction Rebellion were not the monkewrenching wild anarchists of the 1990s road protests, they wanmted to capture that wildness, but also wanted to bottle and sell it as spiritual activism and what you get is a cheap imitation.
What if the AMOC collapse leaves us only with survivalism to procure our food? What If the sub zero conditions mean we need to be coppicing at scale to keep warm in winter and build Russian style Pechkas to live in.
Modern New Age Shamanic Practitioners have ZERO demonstrable practical skills to teach us for AMC Collapse
“Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization”
“Highlights
- Human societies after agriculture were characterised by overshoot and collapse. Climate change frequently drove these collapses.
- Business-as-usual estimates indicate that the climate will warm by 3°C-4 °C by 2100 and by as much as 8°–10 °C after that.
- Future climate change will return planet Earth to the unstable climatic conditions of the Pleistocene, and agriculture will be impossible.
- Human society will once again be characterised by hunting and gathering.”
“For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter-gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilisation began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328719303507
The idea that we would become “plucky” nomadic hunter-gatherers (H&G) roaming the post-collapse landscape is a bit far-fetched, and perhaps the overfertile imagination of an author of fantasy historical fiction would come up with this nightmare, making it easier to debunk. But I have never written or suggested that this is a possibility, so it’s just her imagination losing the plot.
The Famine Garden
Famine Gardening: This is a process which combines permaculture (the growing aspect, not the over-technicalised “pattern language”) and H&G skills. Historically, during times of famine, people turned to nature for sustenance, because peasants still had a connection to the land around them and they still understood marginal food plants, many of which have been sprayed out of existence in field margins.
Plants for the Famine Garden:
- As many perennials as possible, look at their maximum and minimum temperature ranges
- Staples: Carbohydrates serve as your body’s primary fuel source and form the foundation of global diets. Foraging courses rarely cover staples because they are either regarded as culinarily uninteresting or they require special processing to remove toxins. Primary forager staples which are are easily processed:
- Typha Rhizomes
- Lesser Celandine root
- Silver weed roots
- Skirrets, while not strictly a wild food is an Elizabethan root vegetable whose flavour is second to none.
- Chinese Yam, a perennial root which also produces “air potatoes”
- Himalayan Black Cumin (known locally as Kala Jeera or Shahi Jeera), or potentially the tuberous roots of Bunium persicum the roots are known as a famine foods
- Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) & Burdock (Arctium) Roots.
- Sweet Chestnut
- Acorns & Beech Mast: Both need the tannins washed out of them.
Anyone who tells you you can’t grow Typha in a suburban garden has clearly never grown Typha in a bucket.
Rainwater Harvesting
I collect and store rainwater from my roof and have the capacity to store 2,200litres in a footprint of 3sqm. Using a recycled 12v pump and old cordless drill batteries, I can move water from collection barrels to storage barrels. With the same pump, I can water the garden with this pump. I can use the pump to extract water from the river 200m from my home.
I have already done an extensive post on water collection, storage and purification using DIY and non-commercial filters. The aim of this blog is not to sell you stuff; it’s to educate you. I talk about Xylem water filters and how MIT engineers have tested them. You can see the water post at this link.
“The perspective that natural or spiritual reconnection might save us from catastrophe is, however, a psychological response one could analyse as a form of denial..” A trained survivalist is: a forager, plant medicine practitioner, navigator, water purifirer, guerilla rewilder, plant wisperer, fire-master, backwoods engineer, green builder, off grid electrician, SAR-advanced 1st aider with specialities in wound management and physiological thermal regulation and hydration. These are collapse-ready-skills, I compare thse with what the smanaic practitioner offers for collapse and I know who I would rather be atround, and the Survivalist would train you for free.
