Under Construction..
Prepping and Wilderness Survival are related but different: They are not comparable
It would be unfair to say that prepping is a dumbed-down version of survival skills. They are 2 different but related activities, and this is not the opinion of this blog or its author. I don’t like false equivalence arguments; they are not clever comparisons.
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No matter how hard we try, adaptation is like getting lost in the wilderness with no gear, skills, or knowledge, because the climate and environment are constantly changing, and 1.5C represents a phase change in the climate. “We Don’t Understand That This Is The Post-Anthropocene: We Have Lost The Goldilocks Climate Niche For Agriculture. The world’s climate & ecosphere are undergoing phase changes, moving away from a climate perfectly suited for agriculture.
According to Dr Jem Bendell, Solidarity Prepping: “In my experience, whether focused on individual or collective prepping, a rather grim defensiveness can pervade discussion.”(Rainbow Prepping) We have never had a conversation; I have never been interviewed by him. I don’t think he has ever read this blog.
The binary approach of Rainbow Prepping, which pits skills against calories, is flawed: the claim that “someone who trains ten people may contribute more than someone who stores ten months of food” (Rainbow Prepping) rests on a false equivalence and ignores the context-dependent utility of each action. While training people builds long-term capability, storing food addresses immediate survival needs. One is not universally “more” valuable than the other; their worth depends entirely on the situation. We cannot know the conditions of collapse from a world where everything is working, and the frame of reference for income is in investments and crypto.
I will return to this after a brief exploration of preparedness, anti-fascism, and activism, and why Solidarity Prepping and Kollapse Camp have more in common with each other than Rainbow Prepping has with preparedness.
How do we build social movements in an age of collapse? An interview with activist Tadzio Müller.
Tadzio Müller, Resilience, September 29, 2026, is a climate justice and queer rights activist in Berlin and a political scientist. For 30 years, he has been involved in struggles against neoliberal globalisation, nuclear waste, and coal, and more recently in what he sees as an anti-fascist struggle.
“Imagine small nuclei of folks organised and capable of intervening in floods or heat waves. And, by the way, my notion of catastrophe is both political and ecological. A Nazi attack on a Pride March is as much a catastrophe to me as a fascist party getting 44% in part of Germany. These are all catastrophes. So we pre-organise nuclei of people, and catastrophes will come. If the right nucleus meets the right catastrophe, you can get an expansive dynamic: people saying, wow, that looks really cool, let’s do that. I think it’s a better bet than organising the kinds of demonstrations nobody cares about anymore.”
Like Tadzio Müller and Kollapse Camp, Solidarity Prepping is staunchly anti fascist. In the UK, Prepping is dominated by the Far Right, talking about stopping boats, emigration, hating blue-haired lefty woke climate activists, and preparing for societal collapse, while denying the reality of climate change and ecological collapse.
The more we organise ourselves to care for ourselves collectively at the neighbourhood level, the better we will be in a crisis; we won’t be a burden on emergency services.
While the Far right might not be promoting community preparedness, they have been preparing for nuclear war, etc. Dr Jem Bendell is choosing to alienate and “other” experienced preparedness and survival practitioners who might otherwise help him. Does he not realise Britain is in the grip of collapse fascism?
The Rise of End Times Fascism, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, The Guardian
“End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy“
“My first job in 1995 was to source all wood from sustainable forests,” Bendell said. “[That organisation] still hasn’t done that today.” Adapt or die: Jem Bendell’s radical vision to survive the climate crisis. The founder of the Deep Adaptation movement – which predicts that climate change will lead to nothing less than social collapse – has divided climate scientists and supercharged protest movements. Critics call him a doomsayer. Others say he’s the only one acknowledging the truth, GQ, 25 April 2023.
Climate Change is leading to the collapse of this civilization; the difference between civilization collapse and societal collapse is important. Societal collapse could recover, but a civilization collapsing is the end; it’s terminal.
“As we cannot know whether the form and pace of collapse is fully set, or its full implications for humanity and life on Earth, we can attempt to increase the chances of a lesser catastrophe.” Rainbow Preparedness
I think we have a pretty good idea at the moment. Europe’s extreme 2026 heat has affected grain and potato crops across the region; in fact, grain crops worldwide are being affected.
Wheat, barley, and potatoes are climate-sensitive crops
- Germination: 12°C to 25°C is best, though seeds can sprout in cooler soil down to 4°C.
- Tillering (Shooting side shoots):10°C to 15°C helps the plant grow thick and strong.
- Stem Elongation: 15 °C to 25°C supports rapid vertical growth.
- Flowering (Anthesis):18°C to 24°C is ideal. Temperatures above 30°C can damage pollen and lower grain counts.
- Grain Filling:15°C to 22°C yields the heaviest and highest-quality kernels
Heat stress occurs when daytime temperatures rise above 29°C (85°F) and reach 32°C (90°F), which can severely reduce total crop yield.
The ideal air temperature range for growing potatoes is 15°C to 20°C (59°F to 68°F) during the day, while soil temperatures should ideally be between 15°C and 21°C (60°F to 70°F) for optimal growth and tuber development.
Potatoes’ weekly requirement: 25 to 50 mm of water per week, which equals 25 to 50 liters per sqm weekly (roughly 1 to 2 inches), increasing during hot or dry spells.
Climate change can decrease global maize productivity and grain quality. Maize crops require an optimal temperature for optimal yield. A suboptimal temperature during any critical stage for a prolonged period can negatively affect growth and yield formation.
Thermal stresses during critical growth stages of maize reduce grain yield, nutritional value, and farmers’ net income. Genetic variation exists among cultivars in cold and heat tolerance, indicating the need for more systematic plant breeding programs to develop site-specific plant resources that improve maize crop performance under limiting growing conditions. Exogenous use of synthetic and natural plant growth regulators at low concentrations also reduces productivity loss under such circumstances. New breeding techniques such as marker-assisted breeding and genome editing, particularly the transgene-free CRISPR-Cas9 system, offer great potential for developing climate-resilient cultivars in a comparatively shorter time. Additionally, a robust infrastructure for evaluating maize germplasm using high-throughput phenotyping and genotyping is required in developing countries. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7913793/
Currently, we appear to be on the eve of agricultural collapse. This has even turned Jeremy Clarkson from a denier into someone realising he was wrong. Changing seasons, heatwaves, and changed precipitation patterns have changed the soil. The soil in parts of Britain is bone dry and crumbling.
It’s the 29th of September, 22:30, and the outside temperature is 20°C with 80% Humidity. This is whaat climate and eccologica
I need to repeat that: “We Don’t Understand That This Is the Post-Anthropocene: We Have Lost the Goldilocks Climate Niche for Agriculture. Yes, I understand that agriculture hasn’t collapsed yet, but it will, and very soon. Civilisations collapse when their agriculture collapses. So when we talk about preparedness for climate collapse, we are talking about preparedness for now. Which puts statements like this in the context of how little time people have to learn the required skills and the calories required to learn them. The impact is obvious: someone who trains ten people may contribute more than someone who stores ten months of food. (Rainbow Prepping) Preparedness and survivalism practitioners recognise that storing surplus is a normal practice in nature (Bears do it), and indigenous people store food (smoking, salting, drying, Pemmican, and biltong). “Someone who stores ten months of food” is a prejudice and an attitude I have encountered before in the climate movement, among some members of the Green Party; it’s dangerous, rests on a false equivalence, and ignores the context-dependent utility of each action.
While training people builds long-term capability, storing food addresses immediate survival needs. One is not universally “more” valuable than the other; their worth depends entirely on the situation. Stored food can be useful in a variety of ways beyond selfish hoarding. The person who stored the food might also be the person who, in rapidly changing situations where we don’t have a standard answer or routine to follow, we will benefit from people around us being able to decide what is the best thing to do in a particular situation, and then do it with capacity and determination.” (Rainbow Prepping) This is also a lazy attitude to survivalism.
“It took me almost as long to work out how to order these action areas into the ‘rainbow prepping’ mnemonic as it did to identify them. Hopefully, that will help me remember them better! The categorisation is a bit arbitrary. Perhaps you already noticed not only some overlap, but that actions in the different areas could reinforce one another.” (Rainbow Prepping)
Experience, organisation and self-examination are central to the wilderness survival learning process, ideally with an experienced mentor/instructor whose training was similar. “The categorisation is a bit arbitrary.” The inexperience comes through as the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Solidarity Prepping approach is practical, and the rules are basic and simple:
We don’t use arbitrary categorisations. We follow processes for each given situation, and that is why you get individuals “able to decide what is the best thing to do in a particular situation, and then do it with capacity and determination.” Clearly, they didn’t start with Rainbow Prepping.
Coping with the psychological impact of watching the natural world struggle to stay alive in brutal heatwaves
What Is Solidarity Prepping and Why Does Their Approach To Collapse & Survival Use Polychronic Thinking?
An artist’s impression of polychronic thinking, linking the relationships with the landscape, land, fauna and flora. Polychronic thinking is part of the process of mapping our environment and the resources it offers us
Connection to the land and an understanding of it mean we can understand the environments we can utilise if needed, while remaining completely hidden in nature. I’m not talking about bugging out in a collapse. I am talking about periods of time spent in nature, planting trees.
Features of Polychronic thinking in wilderness survival skills are a distinct advantage over linear thinking processes.
- Task Overlapping: For example, jobs are not done sequentially: you can gather tinder while scouting for a good camp, note positions of good firewood and dry kindling, collect more firewood once the fire is going, forage constantly on the move.
- Dynamic Prioritisation: You respond to the conditions around you and the weakest member of your group. Wolves care for the clan’s older members. The Alpha is often at the rear, the scouts are out ahead.
- Mental Flexibility: This prevents the dangerous psychological trap of “tunnel vision”, helping the practitioner remain observant of the natural and urban world around them.
- Polychronic Thinking: Is indigenous thinking. It’s how the hunter/hunted percieves nature and stays alert but relaxed. This requires learned control of the Amygdala and some fear responses.
Decolonising Cognition
When you learn ancestral or wilderness survival skills, you are actively decolonising your cognitive habits. You shift your brain out of the stressful, hyperfocussed “tunnel vision” of modern scheduling, mobile phones and GPS, and open it up to the wide-angled, multi-layered situational awareness that kept humanity alive for millennia. We do this in the dark in nature.
The Brain Is An Antenna, Tuned To The Frequency Of Nature
The concept of the brain as an antenna is a metaphor that bridges neuroscience, quantum physics, and philosophy. It describes how our minds act as receivers of signals from nature that stimulate the release of hormones, continuously tuning in to the natural world and the broader universe. In the realms of philosophy, metaphysics, and even modern quantum neuroscience, some researchers explore whether consciousness originates from a non-local source, with the brain acting as an interface or receiver. This perspective suggests that human awareness is tethered to a larger, interconnected web of existence. The metaphor extends to how we direct our focus. The brain can be tuned to different psychological and emotional frequencies. Studies suggest that consistently tuning into Nature helps the brain process information more optimally, protecting against depression and supporting overall well-being.
In Nature, the Human Brain produces Serotonin; research shows they intersect in how our brains process environments, focus, and time: The Serotonin Connection. Read the Blog Post On Solidarity Prepping
Initiation into fear and our responses to it is the great personal work we need to do.
Episode 1 of Channel 4 Apocalypse, which I reviewed, offers a great example of how people bully others when their insecurities are threatened. “It brings out the first real character combination: a frightened bully who has already admitted to being afraid of the dark and calls themselves an alpha woman (I stand 6 feet tall without heels). Basically a frightened bully.” Solidarity Prepping.
I would suggest the same is true of some fiction writers and podcasters who need to convince their followers, fans, and members of their “cult” that their method of connecting to nature is the only way. So it’s the fear of a different way of connecting to nature (the web of life), one that involves survival skills and building relationships with non-food plants, that triggers an outburst worthy of Channel 4’s Apocalypse contestants. “Survival skills matter because they foster resilience and individual resourcefulness. During natural disasters like Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, residents equipped with practical survival, self-sufficiency, and traditional skills—such as off-grid communication, chainsaw operation, foraging, and timber processing—fared much better during extended utility and supply disruptions.” https://solidarityprepping.co.uk/2026/08/25/solidarity-prepping-why-i-will-keep-explaining-what-solidarity-prepping-is/
If we honoured fear of the darkness, we wouldn’t get anything done. We learn to use the amygdala to our advantage without letting it override common sense. This is a low-level initiation. There’s even a story about the Buddha before his enlightenment, when he lived in the forest among ascetics. He wanted to overcome his fear of the Tiger in the forest. The fear of death and the fear of being eaten alive: big cats kill their prey 1st, Bears eat you alive, though. He gave up: Fear of predation and the pain of it occurring is a primal fear we cannot overcome, but we can use the fear to survive, rather than to rule us and our responses.
Initiation cultures need people who can observe from the fire into the darkness without seeing danger that isn’t there, without a torch. That means a process of learning to harness the eyes and look at the dark world using certain parts of our vision. This has to be done deep in nature, and it’s part of connecting to nature. As a former outdoor therapist, I agree that exposure therapy is for people who are defensively aggressive about their fears. “The gold standard treatment for phobias is exposure therapy”, Norberg tells IFLScience. “It has been shown to work better than waitlist control conditions, placebo control treatments, and active treatment control conditions.”
If Climate Stabilisation Below 5°C Is Possible and Humans Can Somehow Restore the Biosphere, then a New Spirituality is Likely to Emerge.
Survival and land husbandry skills, taught in a prosocial manner grounded in the philosophy of land stewardship, habitat creation, and conservation, are foundational to Solidarity Prepping.
Solidarity Prepping isn’t just what is available on this blog. But at its core is an anti-money, anti-capital agenda. No grift, no membership, no special privileges, and no psychobabble.
I have written a lot about how we connect with nature and how we plan for collapse; in fact, this post looks very much like Rainbow Prepping, except it’s more organised.
This Post is about whether we need to be spiritual to prepare and adapt, or whether a new spirituality will emerge. I know, I am here to expose the idiot and messiah types
“To help discussions and initiatives around prepping to be more generative, I’ve developed a list of action areas for real preparedness for societal disruption and collapse.” (Rainbow Prepping) No, you haven’t; you are muddying the waters by trying to suggest that the lefty alternative to fascist prepping isn’t generative, and you base it on zero research. In your chaotic Dunning-Kruger way, you are telling us how you will benefit from highly skilled people, but they will have to serve while helping you, because you refuse to have some stores put by.