
A COMMON-SENSE STRATEGY FOR SURVIVALISTSby Karl Hessand the EditorsofSurvival Tomorrow
ACommon SenseStrategyfor Survivalistsby Karl Hessand the Editorsofwith Additional Contributions byTom Bender,Joe Campbell,Sylvia Ehrhardt,and Russ Kerkman\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_Price List1 copy .......... $6.952-4 copies ...... $4.95 each5-99 copies ..... $3.95 each100+ copies ..... $2.95 each\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_A Publication ofKephart Communications, Inc.901 N. Washington StreetAlexandria, VA 22314© Copyright 1981Survival TomorrowKarl Hess, who is now editor of (published byKephart Communications, 901 N. Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314,$60 per year), has been, one way or another, acquiring survival skillsall of his life. Dropping out of public school at the age of 15, hecontinued his education at libraries while working for a Washington, D.C.,radio station. By the time he was 20, and self-taught, he was assistantcity editor of a major metropolitan daily newspaper. By the time he wasin his 30's, he had learned to fly, was a tournament-grade marksman,was voted into membership in a wilderness survival club, and had been ascience writer, a military affairs correspondent, an associate editor ofSurvival Tomorrow, and editor of an outdoors magazine. Later, heran guns to anti-Batista forces in Cuba. was successful as a free-lancewriter, and became one of the best known of political speechwriters,notably serving in that capacity during Barry Goldwater's run for thePresidency in 1964. Since then he has become an active experimenter withalternative technologies and, in particular, with the sorts of small scaletechnologies and production systems appropriate to individual families,homesteads, and intentional communities. He is also a commercial welder,and has, with his wife and two sons, built a nationally-acclaimed,earth-sheltered, passive solar house in the hills of West Virginia.The two major interviews in this booklet appeared in 1976. The thirdinterview appeared in late 1980. These three interviews portray a mandeeply committed to the original American dream, a man determined tosurvive the concerted, gradual destruction of that dream, and a mancapable of living the solution rather than just preaching the problem.Table of ContentsPART I:Survival TomorrowThe OtherSides of Doomsday ................... 3Survival in the Suburbs ...................... 7Survival is a Garden ......................... 9How Selfish is Survival? ..................... 13Retreats: Can You Really Hide? ................ 17Time Bombs .................................... 21Complex Matter of Simplicity .................. 25Inside the Alpha Strategy ..................... 29Survivalism's New Day ......................... 33Survival of the Fittest ....................... 35PART II:Resources for Troubled TimesSurvival Checklistsby Karl Hess ............................... 41Joe Campbell ............................... 42Tom Bender ................................. 43Sylvia Ehrhardt ............................ 44Russ Kerkman ............................... 44A Personal Survival LibraryBooks ...................................... 47Periodicals ................................... 52Survival SnapshotsEnergy ..................................... 55Foods ...................................... 56Health ..................................... 58Products ................................... 60Projects ................................... 62Retreating ................................. 62Security ................................... 64Shelter .................................... 65Skills ..................................... 66Technology ................................. 68Transportation ............................. 68Appendix: About the Authors ................ 70Newsweek Magazine
 Introduction: About Survival Tomorrow SURVIVAL TOMORROW is not just another survival newsletter. There are many letters concerned with particular sorts of survival. Some are concerned with financial survival in uncertain times. Others are concerned with survival as a form of combat. Still others are concerned with rural retreats and storing food as survival insurance. All have their place, and all have their following.ST does not pretend to replace any of them. It is concerned with retreats and food reserves, but also with survival in other senses: survival as a creative and self-reliant human being. Survival based on skills, inner strengths and attitudes.ST doesn't believe that it or anyone can predict the future with absolute accuracy. Each day changes every tomorrow. Survivors are people who are prepared -- in the way they think and in what they are prepared to do -- for any sort of future.ST takes the view that survival involves the whole person -- how you think and feel as well as what you have and where you are.Moreover, ST takes the view that people will survive with other people! Not in absolute isolation -- but with family and loved ones and (in most cases) in a community. Community is probably the most overlooked of all elements in today's survival literature. Yet, through all times, community has been the key to survival. It will be a crucial consideration in the pages of ST. Your community, whether it is a homestead, a retreat, a rural region, a small town or a big-city neighborhood, will play a substantial role in your survival.ST understands, however, that most people are short-sighted, and too naive or preoccupied to be interested in survival. That's one reason that this newsletter is written for a special audience of alert, intelligent, far-sighted people -- who are truly concerned about their futures.ST also knows that even those who are most interested in survival skills cannot be expected to casually make radical changes in their lives. Most changes toward self-reliance and survival will be a series of small steps -- prudent, cautious, sensible steps. Such changes, also, are very personal and highly individual, very much the product of your own particular personality and circumstances. ST knows this and thus does not offer any "canned" or guaranteed panaceas. It offers, instead, information for your individualized use; it shares with you the thoughts and skills of its special group of editors and advisors.ST also knows that you are busy surviving today. There's not time to study everything that might help you survive tomorrow. If you manage to get through one of the fine "back to the earth" magazines, there may not be time to check through the technical journals -- or vice versa. The key to some important part of your own survival planning may be in either place or in a hundred other places. ST and its editors will be looking everywhere for the things that you may need.It is up to you, in the long run, to be responsible for your own life\_, for the survival of yourself, your family, your community.ST hopes that it will be an important tool for you to use in doing just that.ST intends to serve as a clearinghouse for a network of like-minded people around the world. We hope to help people share concerns, information, even energy and resources.Resources for troubled times! That is both our title-page motto and a pledge of what we will provide. Understanding that you are the essential element in survival, we will regularly keep you in touch with information, experiences and resources that can serve your survival in a decent and human setting. To us, survival doesn't mean any old sort of survival, it means survival on a human and decent scale.PART I: Survival TomorrowThe Other Sides of DoomsdayThe reason this booklet exists is that some of us took a long look at the growing literature of survival and concluded that there are considerable areas of practical concern that have been obscured in the gloom of doomsday scenarios. For example, consider one major survivalist theme -- that nuclear war or social collapse will force howling mobs to ravage the cities, then pour out across the countryside. The suggested solution, in that sort of literature, is to find an isolated spot, arm yourself heavily, store food and make your house defensible. While such considerations are important, there is so much more to take into account.No such fixed-position defense ever has succeeded. Not even the Maginot Line of World War II -- or the Alamo or Corregidor! And don't forget, in any conceivable howling mob these days, you'd have to suppose the presence of highly trained experts such as vets of Special Forces, paratroop units, and Marine Recon units -- formidable forces to hurl against middle-class retreatists.Strong CommunitiesBeyond the notion of sitting-duck, isolated individuals, we believe there is a more practical consideration for even the worst possible situations of disaster. That consideration is community, places where groups of individuals and families, with substantial capabilities for being self-reliant, not only can feel secure in bad times, but can be productive and happy in better times. Even doomsday, after all, has two sides: the times that precede it, in which strong communities -- as an alternative to collapsing central authoritarian institutions -- provide a possible alternative to total disaster; and the times that follow it, in which the job of rebuilding the world can best be done by cooperating individuals.In the so-called Dark Ages, the best of the human spirit was kept alive in communities that included workshops, gardens, and a varied, productive population. They were called monasteries then. They might be called small towns, farm communities or city neighborhoods today.This is not to say that the option to get out of the world as completely as possible, to retreat as far as possible from its troubles, is an impossible dream. There probably are places on the face of the earth or, more likely, the face of the oceans, where it could be done.But no amount of "insider" information is likely to get you to such a place. Common sense must tell you that you will not find a totally obscure, hidden-away place that someone else tells you about! If they tell you, it isn't obscure anymore. Such hideouts are profoundly personal in discovery and in maintenance. If they are anything else, they are simply not likely to be effective.At any rate, there is advice aplenty these days on doomsday. Our emphasis is on something else. We are concerned more with the way people can live their lives decently than with simply how to avoid dying.In considering survival tomorrow, we think that the elements of community, friendships and family are as important as any other elements. We consider the way an individual thinks, the way an individual has and hones skills and is able to be productive under any and all circumstances, to be as important as the hardware of survival -- the gadgets, energy sources, storage systems, or what-have-you.Considerations such as these have several powers. First, they are exactly the factors involved in staving off the doomsday scenarios; in producing, here and there around the land, the sorts of exemplary communities, or even individual examples, that provide real alternatives to an explosive breakdown of the social system that many consider to be under such stress today. Even in a doomsday time they are the kinds of material and spiritual considerations that can assure survival of the best of the human spirit as well as individual human beings.But, beyond doomsday, such considerations are crucial in situations that appear even more likely on our historical horizon, situations such as the less dramatic but inexorable escalation of the struggle between the politics and economy of mass-market, mass-media, mass-management regimentation and the society and economy of locality, community and the individual. To take just one example, imagine the difference in young people brought up with a sense of self-worth, self-reliance, cooperation, community, and creativity as compared to young people brought up in reflexive routines that are wholly cooperative, order-following and national in nature.If even the concepts of individual responsibility and individual ability to make social agreements volitionally are to survive, then our competence in such survival skills as creativity and community must be constantly of concern, along with our tools.When it comes to tools, however, we have our own emphasis also. There is coverage galore these days of ways to turn back full circle to subsistence living, voluntary simplicity and virtually technology-flee ways of working. That is an option, of course. Our own experience strongly suggests that people cannot be held to such limits. Human creativity always leaps over limits.Technology's RoleOur view is that science is simply the way we view the natural world and our place in it, while technology is simply a matter of tools and techniques developed to provide a material base for the way people want to live. At the moment, most technology is devoted to the purposes of fairly large organizations, such as the nation-state and major corporations, either capitalist or socialist, national or multinational in scope.There are alternatives: technologies that are useful in supporting the kinds of communities we regard as most appropriate for responsible humans. These technologies are neither high nor low, ranging from the very sophisticated, but natural biological and botanical knowledge of high-density gardening, to the solid-state physics of converting solar to electrical energy, and with myriad spaces in between and beyond. Our purpose is not to view tools and technology through some sort of ideological filter but rather to view it all in terms of applicability to individuals and their communities.Now, how about the economic doomsday scenarios? We would never discourage anyone from squirreling away things for a rainy, or even a torrential, day. But there already exists a ton or so of advice for those who want to buy and hoard precious metals, paintings and old coins.Our emphasis on survival in times of economic dislocation is reflective of our general emphasis on the individual, on productivity and creativity and on elements of community and of cooperation.Our BiasIf we have a bias, then, it will be toward growing food rather than just buying it and storing it; toward hunting and fishing; toward being able to build rather than buy housing; toward general competence that abides in the individual rather than the familiar patterns of consumerism.And one more thing: Our contributing editors, because they have been through it all personally, agree that most people make changes in their lives slowly and even reluctantly. This means that we hope to be informative and helpful, rather than indulging in fantasies about pat solutions and instant salvations.All individuals and all communities are different. Each has some unique definition of a decent tomorrow. We can, and should, share information and ideas without specifically sharing those definitions.Survival in the SuburbsBy Tom BenderThe move is on to abandon the suburbs. Newspapers are full of stories about it. The writing is on the wall -- and on the gas pumps. People are moving back to the city to escape already unaffordable commuting costs, leaving their petro-hog cars and suburbs to the poor. Today's shining suburbs are being predicted as the slums of the near future.Don't let the stories panic you if you now live in a suburb. The predicted crisis does not have to destroy your suburb. The multi-billion-dollar investment in suburban housing, roads, utility systems and public services doesn't need to be a total loss.A close look at what actually exists in your own suburb should show that a little ingenuity can convert it to much more diversified and affordable use -- to a more survivable shape.Take gas stations. For years they were thought to be special-use structures with no other uses possible except the original one. Absurd! Look at the thousands of produce stands, drycleaners, wood stove stores and other small businesses that already have sprouted in the abandoned stations of Petroland.Outdated Zoning CodesAlready a number of suburbs are changing ordinances and codes to encourage suburban renewal. You can push for it where you live, if survival in the suburbs is part of your Iong-range planning.Here are some of the possibilities taken from things that already are happening in suburban communities:Large suburban lots so far have meant more driving and less walking. They take a lot of time, money and gasoline to maintain. Yet, intensive gardening and edible landscaping can convert big yards from a liability to an asset -- making it possible for a suburban family to grow a substantial amount of its own food. Some imaginative communities are even giving agricultural tax breaks and other inducements to encourage suburban (and urban) gardening. Laws that restrict such gardens should be high on the survival hit list. The Integral Urban House ($12.95, Sierra Club Books, Box 3886, Rincon Annex, San Francisco, CA 94119 -- also offered as a premium to new subscribers to this newsletter) details what can be done with a minimum of space and labor.Suburban AgricultureWhen converting lawns to gardens, be sure to have your soil tested for residual dioxin from 2-4D or 2-4-5T weed killers, mercury from fungicides, and other harmful residues from lawn care products. Since many suburbs have been built on prime agricultural lands, converting lawns to gardens can have unexpected benefits. Lovingly cared-for gardens in English suburbs actually have yielded more vegetables per acre than in previous agricultural use. A number of California cities are taking food production one step further -- planting fruit and nut trees on city land to make edible landscaping a community reality.No CommutingHome businesses already are beginning to change the face of suburbia. Cities such as Davis, California have removed zoning bans on home occupations. Garages are being used for saw sharpening, furniture repair and neighborhood groceries or stores of other sorts. Spare bedrooms are being turned into home offices, sewing businesses, toy-making shops or accounting and record-keeping centers using mini-computers. Plumbing businesses, small manufacturing operations, and even book publishing are operating from suburban homes. The renting of guest rooms has provided a low-cost alternative to freeway motels for vacationers, as well as income for homeowners.People are discovering that home businesses that eliminate commuting can be started with minimum capital to provide rewarding and secure work. Long-term survivability is a built-in bonus; the suburban homeowner becomes less and less dependent on a damage-prone and complex system, in which the suburbs are simply huge commuter bedrooms for those who work in the metropolitan centers.Even some suburban shopping strips are showing changes reflective of a long-term survivability shift. Such areas are sprouting such local small businesses as solar collector manufacturing, natural food stores, and even small health food manufacturing shops processing such things as tofu or bean sprouts. Furniture making and other craft operations already have replaced merely fashionable or luxury shops in some suburban shopping areas, providing local jobs and demonstrating the survivability of small communities.Survival in the surburbs depends on changing habits, patterns and restrictive regulations -- the physical environment can be survival-adapted quite readily.\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Suburban Survival ChecklistHow many of my neighbors share my view that this suburb is worth tryingto survive in over the long run?Are there enough of us to make a viable community, to support localenterprise if things deteriorate in the metropolitan centers?Can I get people together now to talk about it?Are there regulations inhibiting home business or other matterspertinent to converting this suburb to self-reliance?Is there a reasonable hope of local political power being exercisedby survival-minded folks as opposed to speculators and bureaucrats?Can our yards be converted to garden spaces?Are there public or other buildings that could be a future base forlocal light industry?Do I have skills that can be put to use locally?Could my family become a home-based production group?What local groups (churches, civic clubs, etc.) could be mobilizedtoward an interest in survival of this suburb?
 \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Survival is a GardenIn every sort of survival planning, for whatever reason begun and for whatever goal intended, there is a single, indispensable base: food.In the short term, the provision of food may be handily accomplished by simply storing it. Techniques ranging from traditional canning and air drying to dehydration and the most modern method, freeze drying, make the storage of food a relatively simple part of any survival plan. In fact, it is a prudent aspect of self-reliant living even for people who never expect anything rougher than recessions to beset them.There is a next step, however, that is crucial in long-term planning. It is the growing of food. For any survival planning on the individual or community level this means gardening, local small-scale agriculture. Soviet-style collective agriculture is far too inefficient, and Western extensive agriculture is far too vulnerable and energy-demanding to be appropriate to long-term survival.Two powerful items of evidence are the facts that yields per acre in Western agriculture are leveling off while the demands for chemical fertilizers and complex, costly pesticides and herbicides are steadily rising. In short, more is going in without more coming out. Pests are becoming more resistant to the chemicals used to kill them, while food crops are becoming more vulnerable to widespread diseases. (In older farming techniques, crops were adjusted over time to local conditions, developing hardy characteristics for particular places. New methods diminish the genetic variety of crops, sow similar seeds over wide ranges and open the door for extensive viral and other attacks.)Local Food ProductionSurvival planning cannot depend on such delicate systems, but requires more local food production, geared to local needs and conditions. Survival, in its most personal sense, means gardens.Because gardening may be considered the root of survival, you should begin acquiring skills by any means possible, wherever you are and whatever your present circumstances.At the very least, this means reading about it and then doing something, even in a small way. Trying your hand at growing a vegetable or two in small containers, such as bushel baskets or trash cans, would be a minimum start. Many books in your public library will contain information on container growing. Gardening books listed in our own bibliography supplement also cover the subject. The government publishes a booklet on minigardens which covers gardening in containers. It is Home and Gardening Bulletin No. 163, available from the Department of Agriculture (Science and Education Administration, Information Staff, Room 6007, South Bldg., Washington, DC 20250).In the suburbs, devoting part of your lawn to a garden is a vital first step in this essential survival skill. In the city, porches, rooftops or even window boxes should be planted. In the country, of course, you have room to stretch farther.There are several basic approaches that you can consider. Pick the one that seems to have long-term benefits for your particular situation. Try to avoid making choices on the basis of popular prejudices. The foremost of those prejudices is the one that says that you can buy things in a supermarket cheaper than you can grow them. Sometimes this is true on a cash basis. But it's never true on a survival basis. Supermarkets are simply not survival-oriented institutions.The most compact growing system of all is hydroponics. That means growing without soil. Plants are grown suspended in troughs of liquid nutrients or in troughs of sand or other material that will permit liquid nutrient solutions to be passed through the root systems while, at the same time, providing some mechanical support. Yields from this system are very high and, since it makes more sense to do it indoors or in a greenhouse, growing can be year-round. Artificial light is sometimes used for such systems and works well. A major criticism is that the person doing the growing has to go to great lengths to make sure that the nutrient solutions contain everything necessary for the plants -- minerals, trace elements and so forth. One very good source to check out for your own planning is:
by James Sholto Douglas(Sterling Publishing Co., Two Park Ave., New York, NY 10016,156 pp., $4.95).Beginner's Guide to Hydroponics
 Regular, chemically assisted gardening is in favor with many, It means using commercial fertilizers to enhance the growing of vegetables, particularly to maintain a good nitrogen balance in the soil. In arias of seriously impoverished soil it may be a method of choice. Conventional vegetable growing methods are covered in such books as: 
by James and Louise Bush-Brown(Charles Scribner's Sons, 597 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10017, $19.95).America's Garden Book edited by Joan L. Faust(Ballantine Books Inc., 201 E. 50th St., New York, NY 10022,$4.95, paperback).New York Times Garden Book by John Jeavons(Ten Speed Press, 900 Modoc Ave., Berkeley, CA 94707, $5.95).How to Grow More Vegetables
 An alternative, of course, would be to build up the soil naturally until it is able to support a rich harvest without chemicals, which, besides being costly, could be in short supply at any time. For an understanding of the basic part of most gardening -- the soil -- you might want to look at such books as: 
, ed. 8, by Nyle Brady(The Macmillan Co., 866 Third Ave., New York, NY 10022,653 pp., $19.95).The Nature and Properties of Soil by Gene Logsdon(Rodale Press Inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049,$4.95, paperback).The Gardener's Guide to to Better Soil
 Also, a great deal of advice concerning conventional gardening and soil quality and testing in your particular area can be obtained from the local county extension agent. There's one in every county, even big cities. Look in your local telephone book under the name of your county and then Cooperative Extension Service. Organic GardeningThe other end of the line from conventional chemical growing is so-called organic gardening. It avoids highly processed chemical fertilizers and pesticides and relies on the materials present in the soil or on prepared fertilizers and pesticides made from materials normally found in forests and fields. There's actually a thin line here. Many organic gardeners do use chemicals, such as lime. The main factor is emphasis: using materials that occur commonly in nature rather than totally factory-processed materials.Yields from organic gardening, overall are comparable to yields from conventional chemical farming. In Europe, large-scale organic farms compete evenly with U.S.-style chemical farms. In both methods there are soil-depletion problems. Organic farming takes significant amounts of such elements as potassium and phosphorus out of the soil. These elements must be replaced. Chemical farming compacts the soil dangerously and generally deteriorates soil quality while requiring replacement of virtually all important elements on a regular basis.One form of organic gardening, which depends more than any other on very thorough preparation of the growing beds before planting, is the intensive, or biodynamic, method. Its yields, in densely planted, deep, very loose beds of soil, are up to 10 times greater than in chemical gardening or in any other organic methods.A couple of good books to get you started on organic gardening are:
by R. I. Rodale (Rodale Press Inc.,33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $15.95).How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method,(Rodale Press inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $21.95).The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening
 Another fine source is Garden Way. For a copy of their catalog write Garden Way Publishing, Charlotte, VT 05445. You should at least be familiar with your gardening options. Choose any one, but do choose. Survival always has and always will depend on our ability to feed ourselves.How Selfish is Survival?Your interest in survival is soon going to come under attack from an unexpected direction. The unexpected source will be the new administration in Washington and its philosophical representatives. They will be joined by liberals who yearn for a return to the days of Roosevelt and the New Deal.National politics could have a profound effect on your survival planning. How you react to these attacks on survival and survivalists will largely determine the impact on your personal plans for the future.In essence, individuals, families and communities who are deeply concerned with their own survival will be regarded as selfish. They will be seen as "dropouts" from the new and optimistic mood of national revival and purpose. They will be treated as "special interest" people who fail to see -- or to trust -- the "big picture," the "big plans" and the big new leadership that will make it all come to pass.Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the new political policies being shaped, an understanding of this political attitude toward survival is crucial. Difficult as the politicians might try to make it, it is possible to support a national renewal and still maintain your commitment to personal survival.Tug-Of-WarAt the root is the enduring tug-of-war between individual liberty and collectivism, the notion that individuals are important only as part of some larger purpose and plan (defined by leaders either elected or self-appointed).This struggle is inherent in a recent statement by George F. Will, who is regarded as President Reagan's closest friend among Washington columnists: "Real conservatism requires strong government . . .real conservatism is about balancing many competing values. Striking the proper balance often requires limits on liberty and always requires resistance to libertarianism (the doctrine of maximizing freedom for private appetites) because libertarianism is a recipe for the dissolution of public authority." (Will's use of the term "libertarianism" is broad enough to cover the spirit that animates most who are interested in survival planning.)On the liberal side, just a couple of weeks ago, Henry Fairlie, columnist for The Washington Post newspaper and a leading defender of powerful government, warned the new administration that in reducing government spending it might also reduce government power. "It is impossible," he wrote, "to assert a new nationalism in foreign policy without asserting the same nationalism in domestic policy. If the national government is weakened here, it will be that much weakened overseas." He concluded with what could be a summation of the position against individual concern with survival. If people are too concerned with their own well-being, "Who then will the President lead to battle?" Only by maintaining government as "a proper object of our allegiance and even our affections" can we remain great, in his view.Liberty DefinedSurvivalists obviously do not want to see the continent of America destroyed. Many of those most passionately interested in personal survival are also deeply concerned about the survival of this nation.Proponents of individual liberty see the individual as the only purpose for any social arrangement. "How does it affect me?" becomes a legitimate and nonselfish question because such a person believes that all other individuals should be asking the same question. Solutions need to arise from discussion, confronting differences, reaching agreement or compromise, and not from the imposed decision of leaders.The collectivist view, whether framed as the new conservative nationalism, the old liberalism, or foreign socialism, emphasizes institutions that manage society. Liberty, in this view, is freedom for these institutions to manage society. Civil liberties, in the most enlightened versions of collectivism, are liberties granted to individuals by the managing institutions. Survival is the survival of the managing institutions; individuals, then, must be prepared to die in order that the institutions survive.People interested in their own survival may agree on many points with the views and actions of the managing institutions. Nevertherless there is tension because of the inherent conflict between priority for individuals and priority to institutions.This is where pressure is going to be felt. More and more, any move toward individual, family or community self-reliance is going to be called selfish. A recent attack in The New York Times on The Next Whole Earth Catalog illustrates this point.Because the book promotes self-reliance, it was said that it was "fine for upper-middle-class neo-pioneers," but "implying that the urban masses -- particularly the disadvantaged -- can provide for their own life-support systems verges on telling the people that they can "eat cake," an allusion to Marie Antoinette's fabled dictum that if the people do not have bread, "Let them eat cake."Again, there is a difference in emphasis. A keen interest in personal survival could lead you to ask how practical any situation is when people cannot provide for their own life-support systems. And how can we know if self-reliance for the urban masses can be realized if we don't even try?There will be increasingly more of such talk as politicians move more energetically toward some new mood of national "sacrifice" as opposed to individual survival.You can join this new parade wholeheartedly, of course. Many will. You can support some of it, while drawing back from parts of it. You can attend to your own business. But, come what may, you are going to have to firm up your decisions about personal and community survival or simply get lost in the stampede.If you are still interested in your own survival, and that of your family and your community, despite what some of the people newly in power may have to say, you are not betraying your country or your heritage. You are, in fact, being true to it.Retreats: Can You Really Hide? By Joe CampbellThe idea that you can hide by retreating into the country is one of the great errors made by people who think about moving back to the land. Unless you are prepared to be an absolute recluse, a hermit, avoiding all contact with other people, a country retreat is no place to hide.If you really want to hide, and still be among people, go to a metropolis -- the bigger the better. You can drop dead on the street in New York City without many or any even caring. But in a rural community, if you look a little pale, don't be surprised when someone drops by later in the day to say, "I heard you weren't feeling well. Anything I can do?" Country people will know more about you in a couple of weeks than your mother does!You can look at that two ways: One way, it's just plain nosy; the other way, it's genuine caring. Actually there is a bit of both involved.You can also look at hiding in two ways. The country is certainly a good place to get away from things that might trouble you in a city or suburb. I would not trade living in the country for anything. So, you can hide there from urban troubles, but you can't hide there from your neighbors -- and anyone thinking about retreating to the country had better give that some serious thought.No Free LunchAnother great error in thinking about the move back to the land is the vast difference between intellectual exercises and actually getting out there and doing it.Gardening magazines and seed catalogs paint a lovely picture of everything in the country. By and large it is lovely, but when that wonderful solar energy is pounding everything into powder during July, and the weeds must be pulled, and the bugs are biting, and you are soaked in sweat (which is different from winter when you are still soaked in sweat, but it freezes), when all that is going on, you may get to thinking that the seed catalogs lied. More likely, you lied to yourself, pretending, in effect, that you could get a free lunch out of living in the country.Take the question of distances. Wide open spaces are one of the reasons for moving to the country. But it will cost you. Need something from the store? lt's sixteen miles each way. Sure, the little general store has Vienna sausages and potted ham, shoe laces and fan belts, or even expensive milk and cheese. For serious shopping, however, it's close to a 40-mile trip.So just be self-sufficient! Well, I know all about that, but anybody who thinks that growing a garden and having a few goats is total self-sufficiency just hasn't done it. I'll never willingly give up my garden, my birds or my beehives, but I know this: to be self-sufficient in the country you need more. You need an income to fill in the economic gaps. Think about it.Another Look at EdenThink also about that other great dream of the back-to-the-landers: the owner-built house. The coffee-table magazines are full of stories of people who did it for $600 or something like that. Or there are the brave souls who do it with an axe, hewing logs for their cabin. Did you ever spend a winter in a rough-hewn cabin?Of course you can build your own home. And for a lot less than a contractor could build it for you. But it isn't easy. It's hard work. You have to give it much thought, and you have to learn skills.You also have to get over a lot of prejudices and preconceptions, like the idea of living in the country being some sort of return to a Garden of Eden, with all of us becoming happy savages.Take a little item like soap. lt's an alternative to beating your laundry on a rock down at the creek. I know you can make your own soap. I can do it. It's nice to know how to save your fat and ashes and so forth in case you ever have to. But who really wants to? What we settled for is a good automatic washing machine and a good biodegradeable detergent. We are close enough to other houses so that it didn't cost us thousands of dollars to get power; so far, it's a bargain.We have learned that you can't be a purist and just hate electricity, unless you are prepared in all seriousness to do without it altogether or to find a good substitute for the utility company. A home generator is such a substitute, for sure. You just have to understand that if everybody in the country used one it would soon get to be like living on a freeway. Trade-offs -- that's what it's all about.Still interested in a rural retreat? I hope so. But you need to be both interested and smart! Go slowly; plan; try it out. Visit friends in the country and travel around. Don't just jump because you're frustrated with city life. I know plenty of people who have done that and then have had to return to the city, deeper in despair as well as being cynical on top of it all.If you're thinking about moving with friends or partners, move most cautiously of all. I knew eight couples who were planning to join together to move to the country about the time we did, 20 years ago. All of those arrangements failed because they hadn't any realistic understanding of how much work there was to do and who would do it. Somebody always seemed to think it was the other guy's responsibility to collect manure for the methane generator!Read as much as you can on all the alternative approaches. Understand that no matter what the experts say you are probably going to have to adapt any plan to fit your special needs and personality.Being PracticalThere's only one area where I'd say there probably is a way to go that you should consider no matter what: If you're going to build your own house, design an earth-sheltered, south-facing house to take advantage of the earth's warmth and insulation as well as the natural warming of the sun. It really doesn't cost any extra to build that way, and the bonus in energy is tremendous.Also, please understand that high technology can still have a place in your life no matter how far into the country you might move. My own feeling is that it can be a salvation and not a curse at all.Photovoltaic cells, about which you will be reading a lot in this newsletter, are coming right along to provide a low-cost, independent source of electricity that should open up your options as to where you want to build and live.And when it comes to transportation, I'm now convinced there is a sensible, high-technology addition to my old, gas-guzzling pickup truck for living out here in the mountains of Virginia. I never thought I'd say this when I moved out here, but I am now dickering to get hold of a small helicopter, specifically a Rotorway Scorpion Two. I am amazed as I go over the figures for this little gem to discover that it may cost a heck of a lot less to operate than my truck, particularly here in the hills; it could provide a long-term answer, even when the rest of the area is snowed or iced in, when roads are flooded or what have you.These are the sorts of things I refer to when I say that, if you are thinking about moving to the country, you need to think in the most practical terms and with as few stars in your eyes as possible. You can have the stars aplenty, at night, after you settle down in the clear air.Retreating to the country can be a bed of roses. But remember, roses have thorns. I've pointed to a few because there is no sense in your being as scratched up as I am.\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_Rural Survival ChecklistThis list of technical points to check was adapted from New Shelter(Rodale Press, 33 E. Minor St:, Emmaus, PA 18049, $9 per year).
Zoning. In rural areas zoning sometimes reflects localpreferences. Houses amid crop lands might not be popular,or there are acreage restrictions on which to build.Water. Be sure ponds are not under state conservation restrictions,that you can pump from the creeks and that wells in the area aresuccessful.Title. Purchase should be contingent on a clear title.Title insurance may be demanded by the mortgage company.Access and boundaries. Get a survey; fences do not proveboundaries. Also get assurance in writing of any access roads tothe property.Utilities. Determine costs to add power poles or sewer and waterhookups and whether they are required. If not, consider in-housewaste composting, on-site power generation and a radio rather thana telephone.Flooding. Check with neighbors and local soil and water conservationpeople about flood plains.Mineral rights. Especially where mining is heavy, request a mineralrights check during the title search. Rights may be held by federalagencies or private interests.Renewable energy. Determine amounts of renewable energy, such astree crops. Investigate wind patterns. Choose building sites to takeadvantage of solar and geothermal energy.Soil. Have the soil tested to find out if it is good for growingcrops. Be sure that it meets local criteria for soil on whichresidences may be built.Nearby planning. Check local building and highway departments forpermits, chat with prospective neighbors, merchants and the newspapereditor to learn about upcoming construction.
 Time Bombs Events that may seem quite remote from your immediate interests, or even supportive of them, may be time bombs that could blow apart your plans for a secure future.Transformation of the Amazon Basin from the world's largest jungle into a sort of agricultural tableland may seriously alter our weather patterns.Federal policies favoring westward migration will jam areas once regarded as the most survivable because they have been least populated. Defense policies, such as the MX missile system, will steadily attempt to shift nuclear strike damage away from central cities and toward the very sorts of remote areas that once seemed prime survival sites.Use of remote areas as either hazardous waste disposal sites or for hazardous industrial processes can change the desirability of many such areas as survival havens. Chemical and radioactive waste disposal already is having a serious and spreading effect on water supplies.Need, over the next few years, to begin dismantling each of our existing nuclear power plants (they only last about 20 years) will create an economic crisis as well as a vast new waste disposal problem. Constant transportation of radioactive waste over public highways presents what may be an eventually irresistible terrorist target.This is a time to reassess your position on these matters personally, politically and socially, as well as to reassess your long-term planning in light of these situations.Before discussing them in more detail, it's important to understand how most of us get trapped into positions on such matters without full regard to our own best self-interest.First, there has been a disposition by many hard-working, middle-class Americans to dismiss, almost out of hand, the various warnings about ecological damage that have proceeded from liberal political centers. Many have seemed to smack of a desire to preserve wilderness areas for people with leisure enough to indulge in month-long canoe trips or winter-long ski vacations. And many have been nothing more than that.Dangerously, this has obscured real problems. If "they" are against it, many of us have said, then we're for it. No attitude could be more harmful to survival.Ecological and environmental matters have to be considered without ideological heat. The cool and calm consideration must be the very practical one of how it affects your life and future. We simply cannot continue to define progress in terms of short-term corporate profits or political boasting about national goals. We must define it in our own personal and local terms.In the Name of ProgressOn that basis, cutting down the Amazon may seem like exciting progress. Actually, it may be a massive mistake. Just consider one reason for doing it. The hope is to grow food there because prime agricultural lands in America are becoming too economically valuable as building sites to continue being used for food.Two points must be made: Jungle soil is notoriously thin; stripping it of trees is resulting in the exposure of iron-hard subsoils that threaten to turn the area into a desert rather than a garden.Also long-term survival interests of Americans are not served by turning food supplies into another OPEC-type situation, with less and less local production, more and more dependence of foreigners.Beyond all of that is the weather problem. At the moment, the Amazon Basin is the largest heat-sink in the world, a major cooler of the world's winds. Heat it up and changes are bound to occur. Destroying jungles elsewhere has resulted in rainfall decreases in surrounding areas, for instance.This is all the more reason to make sure that your home, wherever it is or whatever the current weather pattern, is as energy self-sufficient as possible and has good groundwater supplies.Threatened Water SupplyThere is hardly an area of the United States in which there is not some infiltration of chemical wastes into local groundwater supplies. Rivers and streams, of course, have been afflicted by such wastes for years, so that a pure, clear stream has become a rarity and an asset.This is far from a matter of just protecting sport fishing streams or communes. Now that groundwater is being seriously affected, it is a matter of life or death for almost everyone.One thing for sure, it is an external cost of modern production that has not been borne by the people responsible for it but has, instead, been passed along as a hazard for all to share. The proposition has been that if you want such things as disposable plastics, pesticides, and so forth you just have to accept some risks. Most Americans bought that argument before drinking water became involved.Survival plans must include a thorough search of your area for chemical and other legal or illegal hazardous waste dumps.Visual inspection is the first step. Are there places where buried metal drums have begun to surface; where unexplained, foul odors are increasing; where strange soil discolorations have appeared? If so, either private or community efforts to take samples are needed. If chemical analysis shows dangerous substances, hydrological advice will be needed next to see if the seepage threatens local water supplies.What can be done if chemical seepage is getting into your water? First there is social and political action to dig up and secure the waste site (usually very expensive, often involving building new, tight containment areas or moving the old waste to other, secure, sites). There also is the possibility of taking such actions now as can prevent future unsafe chemical dumps in your area.In extreme cases the only practical approach may be to move to a new location. In between there are possibilities of filters and other safeguards as described in Water Fit to Drink.Incidentally, don't make the mistake of thinking that this is just a city or suburban problem. Many dumps are in remote, hidden rural areas.Two important books to read if you are concerned are:
, a report of the Senate Subcommitteeon Oversight and Investigations, 1979 (available from the U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, Washington, DC 20402, $6.50). It includes a listof more than 3,000 dump sites, not all hazardous.Waste Disposal Site Survey, by Carol Keough and Patrida Nesbitt(Rodale Press, 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $5.95).This is a good what-you-can-do book, practical and comprehensive.Water Fit to Drink
 As of this month a new element has been added to the concern, however. Low-level radioactive wastes from experimental and medical sources, once prohibited from casual dumping, will now be permitted in ordinary landfills. Inexpensive Geiger counters can inform you of the levels of such radioactivity if you happen to know of any in your area. The effects, over time, of low-level radioactivity are still hotly debated. 
The Increasing Threats
Everything from rising heating costs to heavy defense spending is encouraging a Sunbelt migration. Even though the main migration seems headed for the southwest, the spillover in vacation homes, displacements and so forth could have serious impact throughout the West, even into such hitherto desirable areas as Oregon. A possible compensation is that this movement could make areas such as Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, the rural south and Appalachia relatively more desirable.
As for using remote areas of the world as hazardous waste dump sites, nearby areas such as the Caribbean figure to be under consideration first.
The dismantling of nuclear reactors becomes necessary at about their twentieth year of operation because they become, figuratively, soaked with radiation and altogether uninhabitable. The costs of either dismantling them and hauling them to safe waste-disposal sites or simply entombing them, where they sit, in gigantic concrete mounds is estimated to be about equal to the cost of construction. No utility has yet set aside money for those costs. So there could be a brand new, multi-billion dollar energy crunch beginning in the next few years.
Nuclear reactors and nuclear war always have been prime concerns to survival-minded Americans who have not been swept away by the simple claims of energy necessity made by the utilities. At the industrial level these claims make sense. In terms of personal survival they are questionable. Energy self-sufficiency in the home or at the community level remains a high survival priority.
The major, regular routes used to transport nuclear wastes are shown in a map accompanying this report. Any point along those routes represents a place for a serious spill of such wastes or, worse, a deliberate terrorist incident, perhaps explosively spreading the hazardous wastes over a wide area.
Nevada and Utah have already been called, by a military spokesman testifying in Congress, "nuclear sponges." With the MX missiles installed there, those states are expected to soak up a Soviet first-strike. It makes them terrible bets for survival.
Beyond that, another insistent military policy, the move toward national service for every young American, is also a move toward full, national registration and regimentation of all citizens, with attendent national identification and police power over them.
That too is a consideration that people concerned with the survival of free individuals and communities will have to cope with in the years ahead. How? By direct opposition where feasible and as long as possible and then by personal planning to be as remote from official systems as possible.
Should that step ever be made necessary by some ultimate nationalization of the American people, you might want to study such instructive works as The Paper Trip, a two-volume work discussing ways to avoid national efforts to get us all into an official computer. It is available from Eden Press (P.O. Box 8410, Fountain Valley, CA 92708, vol. 1, $12.95; vol. 2, $14.95).
Complex Matter of Simplicity
"The products of our high-technology society require a supply pipeline that simply may not be functioning when we need it most. In the final analysis, the best survival tool is a good mind well-packed with useful information."
With this statement, in a thought-provoking letter raising some fundamental questions about survival, an ST reader from Cape Charles, Virginia, summarized his position.
In making his case, this reader wrote that survival is best seen "in the sense of avoiding imminent death." Any other approach, he believes, is "dilettantism."
He cites three ST stories as illustrative of this sort of dilettantism.
A note commending the diesel as a "survival engine." In a "truesurvival situation," the writer explained, "we would be hard-pressedto maintain a fuel supply let alone obtain spare parts."A reference to a "survival helicopter," about which he comments that"in a real survival situation, complex high-maintenance equipmentis the first that must be abandoned as it is a real liability."Mention of the homestead of one of our contributing editors,Dr. Logan Robertson, in which his use of a waterwheel to power thecompressors for his refrigeration equipment is described. Our reader'scomment was that "in any real survival situation, the failure ofa compressor could wipe out Dr. Robertson's food supply and thusinsure his demise. . . ."
Beyond Imminent Danger
My great interest in this thoughtful reader's letter is that it goes directly to the heart of some of the most significant points in the entire literature of survival, raising points on which I both agree and disagree. In spelling out what I mean, I hope also to spell out the heart of my own personal survival strategy.
First there is the definition of a true survival situation. To many it is simply and solely a situation in which the immediate alternatives are living or dying. Being threatened by a mob or a mobster would be one such situation. Evasive action, physical defense with hands, feet, firearms, knives, rocks or anything else would be one response.
But there are more complex responses. The martial arts discipline of aikido, besides teaching lethal force, teaches peaceful conflict resolution. Living with good neighbors always suggests the response of unified resistance even in the worst life-threatening situations. Such matters move into the very complex areas of getting along with people. Yet I believe good neighbors are a good defense.
One attitude is that the back to the land movement shows a superficial expression of survivalism. Yet, in a good part of that movement there is the basis for unified resistance to life-threatening situations and, certainly, the basis for moving away from the technology pipeline that is so undependable.
What may seem dilettantish at first glance may, instead, and on second glance, be just what our reader is talking about. My own view is that survival includes, but is not limited to, immediately life-threatening situations.
Any well-versed human being should be interested in knowing what to do when physically threatened either by another person or by some sort of disaster. This newsletter, steadily, covers such areas. But there is a long-term survival problem.
A vital example is starvation. You can go without food for many days. That is not an immediately threatening situation. One response is simply to know what local weeds can tide you over or how to roast a snake. Another is to get busy with a garden. The garden is, literally, for survival tomorrow.
So, for real survival situations, I agree absolutely that a well-stocked mind is essential. But so are a well-prepared body, reflexes and location.
My own prescription would be along these lines: Takes advantage of the survival lore already specified in the bibliographical supplement (Part II) in order to know about wilderness survival and unarmed self-defense. Become proficient in the use of weapons, not just knowledgeable, but proficient , for even grimmer possibilities. Study one of the martial arts to bone your mind and body.
Expanding beyond that, explore the possibilities of such disciplines as aikido for nonviolent approaches that may be appropriate in some circumstances. Also, think in terms of neighborliness as an actual element in defense.
Real survival situations are not as neat, as cut and dried, as some survival manuals make them seem. Unarmed defense against a slowly deteriorating general social situation simply isn't as neat and tidy.
As to such matters as diesel engines and other technologically complex survival items, it is absolutely correct to say that there are situations in which they would be of little use. One of the goals of survival in the terms of this newsletter, however, is to prepare for tomorrow in such a way as to appreciate that there is a possibility that technology may be preserved.
Our enthusiasm for diesels, for instance, was heightened and reported on in ST because of successful experiments in which such crops as sunflowers produced abundant, usable diesel fuel. Growing sunflowers does not, of course, deal with an immediate life-threatening situation, but it does suggest a long-term solution both to using engines and avoiding the delicate supply lines that our reader so wisely decries.
As for spare parts, it is one of our major concerns in this newsletter that people planning for survival tomorrow consider the home or local production of machines and parts -- not as the answer to any immediate life-threatening situation, but as a proper preparation for surviving in the long-term or after an immediate life-threatening situation or the possibility of one passes.
Our mention of a survival helicopter was in the same mood. Simple rotary-wing aircraft can be built in your garage today. While it is wise and correct to point out that high-maintenance equipment has little place in survival considerations, there is another consideration. If you can build and maintain a simple aircraft, it might be the most appropriate transportation tool for a community or person that has any reason to travel -- or reconnoiter.
My approach to machinery is to work toward the sort of self-sufficiency in regard to them (fuel, spare parts) that I also advocate in terms of food, water and shelter.
Dr. Robertson's water-driven compressors are another good example. Of course, if someone bombed them, they would be useless. That would indeed, involve an immediately life-threatening situation. It would, indeed, wipe out Dr. Robertson's stored food supply. But in addition to this supply, Dr. Robertson knows which weeds to pick and eat, and so does his family. In short, he agrees with the reader that a well-stocked mind is the best tool, but he adds to that stock the knowledge of maintaining his waterwheel.
Actually, the sort of calamity that could knock out Dr. Robertson's waterwheel is the same sort that could knock out anyone's own food system no matter how simple, even a stored cache of container food. The final point is that the waterwheel or any other machine supplement to a survival system is just as dependable as the people operating it. If they can maintain and repair it, it's dependable. If not, neither the machine nor the situation is.
My own approach would be to advise that everyone be prepared to survive immediate disaster but also be prepared to plan for the longer term as well. Dr. Robertson's waterwheel, for instance, enables him and his family to survive a disaster which, although not dramatically life-threatening, is perhaps even more likely, such things as a public utility power brownout, long-line sabotage, or deterioration of the system so that outlying customers are cut off in order to concentrate on crisis-stage urban needs.
What all this means to me is a reminder that survival can be seen as either a matter of seconds or as a matter of years. I see it as both. Surviving the crisis-seconds in which life is directly and physically threatened is a true and decent human responsibility. Self-defense, emergency procedures and first-aid are all integral and important parts of that.
But having survived such a crisis, which can be precipitated as easily by a general social crisis as by some strictly isolated one, there is the question of surviving generally -- into the future.
The old folk wisdom sums it up. Give a person a fish and you may save his life from starvation today. Teach him how to fish and you have taught him how to survive today and tomorrow.
The letter I received raises issues that are taken very seriously here. What we hope to do, and what we hope all our readers will do, is offer incisive comments and suggestions to extend the concept of survival into actual ways of life as well as ways of avoiding death.
Inside the Alpha Strategy
John A. Pugsley is a man of good, common sense. In his book, The Alpha Strategy, he makes this point: "The Alpha strategy is a plan by which an individual invests his surplus wealth in real goods, and stores these goods until he is ready to either consume them or trade them for goods he wants to consume."
The sorts of real goods he has in mind are:
Raw materials, such as metals, lumber, chemicalsCapital goods, such as tools, computers, informationConsumer products, such as food, clothing, housing, transportation.While Pugsley emphasizes accumulation as an inflation-fightinginvestment technique, the Alpha strategy appropriately lends itself tosurvivalism. The following approaches his strategy from the point ofview of what are the most valuable survival items to accumulate.
First of all, there is the crucial matter of where you live. If you are restricted to an inner-city apartment or house, and if in your survival scenario you envision a total breakdown of services and civility in the city, raw materials may be of little value. Your primary concerns will have to be with immediate physical survival.
Your short-term survival will depend on food, medicine, energy and defense. Looted grocery stores will be battle-zones to avoid. Apartments or blocks of houses will quickly become cooperative communities or will fall into chaos. Having food, medicine, energy and means of defense should enable you to take an active role in pulling things together in your own building or block.
However, it is essential to add to any cache of survival foods a supply of vitamins to supplement the inevitable vitamin losses in any stored food. A multi-vitamin supplement would be advisable but, most of all, you will need vitamin C to prevent scurvy.
Medicine includes bandages, antiseptics, aspirin, zinc oxide (for burns and other skin injuries), other first-aid supplies that are readily available. Equally as important is medical information.
Energy is probably the least considered of urban survival matters. Yet, obviously, power disruption would be a consequence of a major disorder or disaster.
For electrical power, if you can afford it, photovoltaic cells, devices that convert sunlight directly to electrical energy (see June, 1981, issue of ST), are the most easily stored and dependable of real goods. The cells would be used to recharge storage batteries, another real good that would be an energy essential.
Wind generators are another inner-city possibility. There is a government publication that covers this exact area: Windmill Power for City People (Community Services Administration pamphlet no. 6143-8, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, $2.60.)
Bottled gas (propane) for cooking is another energy item that could be stored.
On the Defensive
Real goods for defense are not just guns, although, obviously, in a socially deteriorated situation, they would be essential. Defense includes personal training in, for instance, the martial arts and the more social, long-sighted defense of knowing your neighbors, having talked with them in advance about cooperating in bad times as well as good.
The basic self-defense weapon, for my money, remains the pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. The Remington 870, Winchester 1200, and Ithaca M 37 are fine ones.
In lethal confrontations it is a supremely effective weapon even for the unskilled. With varying loads for its shells (from the small but numerous pellets of lightly loaded skeet ammunition to the cannon-power of magnum cases loaded with buckshot), the 12-gauge can be more discreet than simply spraying indiscriminate destruction.
For a person willing to become adept, of course, a handgun is advisable: models such as the Walther P5 semi-automatic pistol in 9mm; the Smith & Wesson 39 and 59, also in 9mm and semi-automatic; the Heckler & Koch P7, another semi-automatic 9mm, or, among dependable revolvers, the Colt Python or Smith & Wesson Model 19, both in .357 magnum.
For long-term survival, however, the key to city possibilities will lie in using what is left -- buildings, tools -- to slowly rebuild. The real goods you may be able to store can be seen as a bridge to that time.
To many people, however, survival in a city disaster probably means getting out and, for that purpose, the most important stored, real goods will be means of transportation. Road transport is vulnerable in virtually every sense.
Rubble-strewn streets can halt any vehicle. An individual with a large bar of iron and a clear-shot at a passing windshield can also stop a car or track. And the person who could afford an armored vehicle could probably more sensibly afford a helicopter on the roof.
You might think of another transport possibility. In many major cities, either a coastal harbor or an inland waterway may actually be closer and more open to travel than any part of the highway system. Driving, walking or even broken-field running to the waterfront and to any sort of boat might be a more practical exit than on jammed roads.
People who already live away from major cities, in or near small towns or in rural areas, have the greatest flexibility in basing their survival on real goods.
Even in a small house in a small town, it is likely that you will have that absolutely most basic real good: land. A yard that may be just a lawn today can be a garden by next season. Any south-facing part of the house can become a greenhouse.
Next in importance is that raw material without which we could live even less long than without food: water. The rate at which even remote water supplies are being polluted today suggests that alternative water provisions, such as a cistern for catching rainwater, should be a top-priority survival consideration.
Water purification tablets and distillation equipment would be valuable. With them even polluted water could be made potable.
Household chemicals are another real good worth considering. Activated charcoal is an excellent filter material. (Pulverized, and in combination with an equal amount of sulfur and seven parts of potassium nitrate, it also makes a crude gunpowder.)
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is a good fire extinguisher. Mixed into a paste with hydrogen peroxide, it is one of the best toothpastes available. Also, hydrogen peroxide is a good antiseptic.
Other household chemicals that might be of use will depend on your own needs. Such a book as The Formula Book, by Norman Stark (Andrew & McMeel, Inc., 6700 Squibb Rd., Mission, KS 66202, $5.95) might help you decide what other household chemicals you would be best advised to store.
Two-by-fours and the widest possible one-and two-inch thick boards (they can always be cut down) are good lumber sizes to store, in a dry and neatly stacked manner.
Bricks and concrete blocks are always useful, but, as an alternative, you might store a press to make rammed earth blocks. Such a press is available, for $330, plus shipping, from Schrader Bellows Division (200 W. Exchange St., Akron, OH 44309). A complete manual, Soil Cement, on the use of such presses and on the earth blocks that they produce is available (United Nations Publications Office, Room A-3315, United Nations, New York, NY 10017, $7).
As a building material, energy source and potential chemical source, it would be hard to beat trees growing in your community.
Among metals consider storing old-fashioned wrought iron in flat plates and in bars and rounds. It can be worked handily in a coal forge by blacksmithing.
On the other hand, if you are sure of enough energy to keep a welding rig going, then high carbon steels and regular steel will be useful.
Wire of all sizes, particularly copper wire, is a recommended real good for any person or community that is also capable of generating electricity.
Coal, a first-class energy source, is also relatively convenient to store. Its bulk, for energy delivered, is half that of wood and twice that of gasoline, while being a lot safer to store and less susceptible to contamination. In relatively inexpensive bins, coal can be stored for long periods.
When it comes to liquid fuels, consideration should be given to the ability to produce it rather than store it.
Alcohol stills, using agricultural wastes, corn and other such natural raw materials are widely available. They can be built and are a way to store raw materials and also are useful tools. An excellent survey of plans for stills, as well as names and addresses of suppliers, can be found in The Alcohol Fuel Manual for Home and Farm, by Stephen W. Mathewson (Ten Speed Press, P.O. Box 7123, Berkeley, CA 94707. $7.95).
Tools
Personally, I consider tools to be the foremost investment a person can make in terms of material goods. Hand-tools are essential, as are the skills to use them. If you have no familiarity with tools at all, and no skills, you may be in real trouble if any of the systems on which you rely collapse.
Take courses from vocational training centers with regular specialized courses or adult education programs.
Carpentry skills are vital. Machine courses are good and, of those, I would urge that your first one be in the repair and maintenance of automobiles. The various systems and the engine of the automobile provide a good introduction to mechanical systems generally.
Next on my list of desirables would be small-engine repair and, then, electricity. Plumbing would be very useful for anyone interested in solar energy. Most solar energy devices are nine-tenths plumbing. Welding can become an introduction to metalworking generally. Any of these skills can be regularly applied both for personal needs and as a barter item.
But assuming you nave some familiarity with tools and just want to start planning a supply for survival storage, I would urge that you get a book entitled The Great Tool Emporium, by David X. Manners (Popular Science Books, P.O. Box 2018, Latham, NY 12111, $16.95). It is as complete a descriptive catalog of tools as is available.
Get a complete set of wood chisels and gouges of the highest quality you can afford. Such tools can replace power tools in doing woodwork. Also, invest in a high-quality hand drill, or brace, and all the bits you can get for it. Even with power available, such drills are easy and fast to use and provide complete latitude as to where you use them.
When it comes to wrench sets (the tools most people use more than any others), get the best. The Snap-On brand is an example of the sort of tools that are high priced, but excellent. They are available only through local dealers who service garages. Ask a garage mechanic about them and also when you could meet a dealer. Proto, Crescent and Mac are other producers of high-quality tools.
As a general rule, when buying tools, operate on the notion that there are no bargains available. Look for quality. Get advice from tool users if you need it.
This has been a relatively shallow dive inside the good common sense of the Alpha strategy. In his book Pugsley details many of the real goods he would store. Ultimately, the responsibility for settling on goods of value for your survival is your own responsibility. It will be fulfilled as much by your knowledge and skill as by suggestions from others.
That brings me to what I consider the bedrock of any strategy for survival: frame of mind. Self-esteem and self-confidence are essential. If your life has been spent establishing them on the basis of status or possessions alone, then surviving in an uncertain future may seem shaky, scary, a realm of nightmare possibilities.
With Alpha strategy, or any other strategy, you might find yourself stockpiling objects. Don't forget, unless you can use it, a tool is just an object, no more useful than a piece of bric-a-brac. Even if you have stored objects in hopes of trading them, you'll be in a poor position if you lack genuine self-confidence so that you can make face-to-face encounters.
Your health, skills and ability to deal with people of every sort are the lightest survival tools you can carry -- and among the strongest.
Another essential attitude is to understand that survival bookkeeping and standard bookkeeping are quite different. There is no such thing, in cold reality, as not being able to afford whatever course or action will best lead to your survival.
It is not loss of money that is involved in thinking about a survivable future; it is loss of life or liberty or both. Any move you make toward a truly survivable future is worth it, regardless of the dollar accounting.
Finally, there are the values of family and community. Many people have let family solidarity and strength lapse as they attend to today's all-consuming definitions of success. In the very long run a strong family may be an asset stronger than gold.
The same applies to having good neighbors. In survival terms, good neighbors are the best connections you can have.
Virtues -- of honesty, loyalty to friends, courage and cooperation -- will be the most important in a survival sense. Opinions that people hold about such matters as politics quickly pale when compared with those enduring values.
Many long-haired counterculturists have recently found that they do share more basic values with older, hard-core conservatives than they had realized. The same goes with older conservatives, many of whom have found in the food coops, nonchemical farms and self-help health care of the counterculture more compatible ways of doing things.
People who had previously regarded concern for the land, air and water as vaguely suggestive of opposition to the American way are lately more likely to realize that despoilation of the environment is actually a grand-scale form of mugging. The victims are all the people who live in a threatened area and who actually bear the true cost of the pollution.
What seems to draw most people together across diverse ideological lines is a basic recognition that, when it comes to survival, it is individuals who count. These people now deeply feel that they cannot depend on familiar institutions to either preserve or create civilization. The institutions themselves have become major perils to survival.
Survival of a culture or a community must be counted in terms of the survival of people -- one by one, family by family, neighborhood by neighborhood. It is on this that all other survival strategies ultimately rest.
--- The Alpha Strategy is available, for $14.95, from Suite G6, 711 W. 17th St., Costa Mesa. CA 92627.
=========================================================================== Survivalism's New Day
To the media these days, people interested in survival are heavily armed paranoids, stocking up on gold and dehydrated foods. Actually, people interested in survival are a representative cross-section of the entire population.
It is religious groups such as the Mormons, Quakers, Amish and Mennonites; countercultural groups such as the hippies; and inner-city groups such as the Black Muslims who have provided foundations for modern interest in surviving. They have advocated self-reliance, detachment from major institutions, simplicity of life and strong dependence on community and neighborliness.
Advocates of isolated, fortress living have always represented just a small part of the wide sweep of interest in survival. Basically, survivalism is just a conscious attention to being responsible for material and spiritual survival rather than passively dependent on others.
ST is a reflection of the abiding awareness that community and neighborliness represent powerful survival attitudes. There are impressive evidences that this awareness is powerful in every part of the survival movement in this country.
One of the pioneer survivalist publications is Miles Stair's The Practical Survivalist Newsletter (P.O. Box 1818, Roseburg, OR 97470). Here are several relevant paragraphs from Issue 15.
Community Involvement"There are, as we all know, various types of survivalists. Somewish to remain completely silent, maintaining an 'arms length' withtheir community. Others are more vocal, and go public with blanketstatements on the decline of our society, and the possibility ofkilling their neighbors who might be after their food. Neitherposition, I feel, is completely responsible."Many survivalists feel as I do that a low profile is the safestway to be secure into the future. By keeping a low profile one isnot placed into the position of constantly defending one's positionas a survivalist, can to a large measure avoid the 'moral dilemma'questions of defense that can lead to hysteria among naive neighbors,and avoids the 'one-issue' labeling that can result from a positionthat may be contrary to the majority opinion at the time. But byadhering too closely to the principle of low profile you may bemissing a chance to improve your own community and thus actuallylessen your own chances for survival!"It is possible to become involved to a limited degree in localcommunity affairs as a 'concerned citizen.' In this role you wouldnot be placed into the category of 'resident flake,' but couldactively ask questions -- and almost orchestrate a response --to better your survival environment."Another way many can participate in community affairs is to be avolunteer for the library, public forums, etc. By doing what everyother group with a directed viewpoint has done -- manipulate newsbias and books, including the bias of guest speakers -- you couldarrange for uninformed members of the community to become awareof positions and events that would normally escape them. Suchmanipulation of the public is not basically dishonest unless itexcludes other viewpoints! There has been a tremendous amount ofdishonesty fostered on the public by activists in the past who havedemanded that only their point of view be heard. In no way am Isuggesting you participate in that dishonesty! I am merely sayingthat you might suggest that some might like to hear a differentposition! Remember, every additional convert to the position ofresponsible survivalism enhances your own chances for survival!"
Survival of the Fittest
Of all concepts, you might think that survival of the fittest would be the most appropriate for readers of publications such as this. There seems to be power in the very words. There also is considerable confusion. What has it come to mean?
To liberals it has come to mean something altogether vile. They find in it a code phrase meaning that the poor and the minorities are to be abandoned. They also, tacitly, demonstrate that when they think of the poor or minorities, they are thinking of people whom they actually regard as unfit to survive -- unfit unless helped by liberal programs.
To conservauves it has come to mean an almost mechanical way to salvation. People who vote right, belong to the right organizations, and own the right kind of property are fit to survive.
Both views are shallow and dangerous for anyone seriously interested in survival. What does survival of the fittest actually mean?
Defining FItness
The original concept derives, of course, from Darwinian notions of natural selection among living organisms. The ones that survive are those that display survival characteristics; for example, the giraffe in evolving a neck long enough to reach edible leaves inaccessible to other creatures; human beings by evolving with an opposed thumb that made it possible to make and wield tools of a sort conceived by that other specialized human organ, the brain.
Religiously, the fittest have been the most devout, the most meek, the most charitable. The point is that either physiologically or socially, species have survived because of the ways they behave, coupled with physical characteristics.
In the case of human beings, whether you look to the evidence of archaeology or the witnesses of religion, there is overpowering evidence that what has been involved in the survival of the fittest is a far cry from the current versions of that contentious phrase.
Religiously, the most obvious evidence comes from the fact that in every major surviving religion on the face of the earth there is disagreement aplenty but specific agreement about one thing. In every one of them there is some statement of the golden rule, of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is a specific statement of a specific survival characteristic.
It's not the mushy statement of the liberals with their idea that the poor are unfit and can survive only with special help. It's not the reverse feeling of so many conservatives that it means the well-to-do or the physically toughest are the only ones fit to survive.
It means that, in effect, the equitable will survive; the people who treat their neighbors fairly and squarely and expect exactly the same back from them -- no matter whether they are poor, humble, rich, arrogant, strong, or weak.
The evidence of archaeology is as powerful. It shows that mutual aid, people helping people, has been the longest-term characteristic of surviving human settlements. It definitely does not show that the toughest settlements have survived, Where is Genghis Khan's cavalry? On the other hand, where are the settlements of small farmers, of peaceful towns, of honest merchants, of craftsmen, of families? They are everywhere.
Survival Havens
A powerful problem for many who are interested in survival is that the sense that prompts the interest -- a sense that things are coming apart -- also can prompt a sort of panic. In panic a person may reach for any proposition that promises a quick and easy solution to what is, in fact, a long and complicated problem.
Take the question of remote survival havens. Some very well-to-do people have spent, literally, millions of dollars in preparing survival havens in out-of-the-way corners. The act of buying the land, contracting for construction, stocking the retreat and paying a resident staff to keep everything ready and waiting may seem to reflect the attitude of a person fit to survive.
That may not be true at all. The sheer technology of such advanced survival havens could be beyond the skill of the person paying for it all. If so, that person's ability to survive will actually depend on the skills of those who are, in fact, fit and able to maintain the technology.
A resident staff at a survival haven is actually living in and operating a presumably survivable site. The owner, if disaster strikes, will arrive as a virtual newcomer and, most importantly, will arrive in a disrupted world. The resident staff, in such a case, may or may not respect the owner's privileges. They could, as easily, point the prudently stored guns at him and tell him to get lost.
Under any circumstance, the people arriving at the survival haven will be depending mightily on the honesty, good nature and cooperation of the people already there. Fitness to survive has suddenly shifted back to the ancient truths of the golden rule and mutual aid, plus a heavy dose of learned skills.
The most popular versions of survival of the fittest are essentially collectivist in nature. They depend heavily on complex institutional relationships remaining in place, particularly on the ability of people to be able to buy whatever they need. The truth may not be so neat.
Even gold seems a weak currency in an area where people are hungry as a result of something as simple as a prolonged transport disruption or as sweeping as a nuclear explosion, either of a bomb or a reactor. The collective collapses quickly in such and individuals are dependent on their singular abilities.
It is right here that there emerges the that the physically powerful (either armament or natural endowment) are most fit to survive. For a time, in a situation, this is probably so, although many who cling to this notion are sadly unprepared personally. Just having a gun is hardly the same as being a ready and trained warrior. Just being muscular is hardly the same as being skilled in ways of unarmed combat.
But at any rate this sort of strength is at best a short-term answer to a long-term problem. Survival isn't just measured in the seconds of an emergency. It is measured in the years of a life.
Again, in the long term, the people most fit to survive in the future will probably be the same sorts who have proved fit to survive in the past: the skilled, the cooperative, the wise.
What actually is so urgently required is a synthesis of the ability to survive short-term disasters with the will and wit to survive long-term.
High-Tech vs. Primitivism
On the one hand there are those who advocate the highest-cost, highest-technology approach in which, for instance, a survival haven may literally cost upward of a million dollars just to get under roof. Only people with that kind of money to spend are interested in the scenarios that proceed from such a position.
On the other hand there are those who stand firmly with what could be called hippy primitivism -- going back to the land literally, with just a grub hoe, wooden spoons and candles. A proper synthesis, it seems to me, would mean that you consider your situation as absolutely unique, involving a unique individual or group or family of individuals.
Starting with the "hippy" basics you would want to have land and skills pertaining to working the land. Rather than having to depend on others, you would be at least prepared to go it alone and in the most simple fashion; but you would also take prudent advantage of other things.
Technology is a blessing for those who understand it and can develop and maintain it. It can be a snare for those who can only depend on getting it off the shelf. If it malfunctions they are lost. Tools, supplies and technological equipment should play a part in anyone's survival plans, but they should not play a part that overreaches the person's abilities to deal with it.
In a good synthesis, the survivalist would attend to social skills, to the common sense work of getting along with other people -- not as some simpering Milquetoast, always fawning and grinning, but as a strong, principled neighbor willing to do a favor, willing to pitch in and willing to share, but not willing to be exploited.
The fact of the matter is that this synthesis always has existed, and it has flowered particularly well right here in America. We are talking, after all, about what can be seen as rural virtues, that have often been transplanted right into big-city neighborhoods, particularly those with ethnic or some other cultural cohesiveness.
If going back to the land means simply putting on buckskins and working with a mold-board plow, then I share the cynicism of my many friends who regard it as a pose. But if it means getting back to a strong sense of craft (high technology included), of cooperation and of self-reliance, then I say it defines the survival of the fittest.
Survival Checklists
Each issue of ST features a summary of skills, tools, and qualities which one of our writers or editors personally feels to be important.
By Karl Hess
1. Most basic survival skill: Gardening. My favorite is the biodynamic, or French intensive, system with yields many, many times greater than those of any highly-mechanized, large-scale conventional farm.
2. Most important survival characteristics: Cooperation, working with other people without losing one's individuality or forcing others to conform to it. Resistance to any ideologies that substitute statements or opinions for common sense observations of the actual world and the people around you. Development of personal skills and creativity to the maximum, trying to be inventive, knowing more about the natural world, shifting attitudes from that of consumer to that of producer, letting your mind range across the entire spectrum of knowledge without being trapped into narrow areas of expertise. Trying to be good at everything you do.
3. Worst threat to survival: All of the institutions devoted to fanatic faith in ideologies. Even the ones that may seem to be "on your side" can be counted on to sacrifice you or anyone else to their grand plans if the need ever arises. And it usually does.
4. Worst personal threat to survival: Fear. Fear is the mind killer. Being afraid is often prudent; it can lead to calm, sensible planning. Fear doesn't; it leads to panic.
5. Best bet for future energy source: Photovoltaic cells.
6. Favorite books pertinent to survival:
,by Baumeister and Marks (McGraw-Hill Books);Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers (Reader's Digest);Reader's Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual, by Paul Williams (Warner Communications);Das Energi,by Robert Pirsig (William Morrow Co.);Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by John Jeavons (Ten Speed Press).How to Grow More Vegetables
7. Most important social or political activities toward survival: Networking with as many people as possible to share as much knowledge as possible. Being a good neighbor, concentrating on strengthening local community. Acquiring skills that have local value.
8. Most important psychological step in changing the way you live for best long-term survival possibilities: Detaching from considerations of status and conventional success and security; being prepared to drop back in terms of fame and fortune if those or any other terms leave you vulnerably dependent on the status quo. Deciding which things in your life are most and least important, and then acting to put those first things first. My own decision: family love and neighborliness are more important than any other form of success or security. Creativity can be part of your life anywhere.
9. Most difficult phase of that step after it is taken: Living with the notion that everybody's decision is likely to be different and that it's a waste of time to try to force agreements; that all people have to make up their own minds; that example is a better argument than polemics; and that freedom, after all, is a matter of infinite variety, with people being responsible for their own actions, including actions involving agreements with other folks.
10. Most likely scenario for immediate future: America and the world move toward benevolent fascism in which Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor and Big Education combine to "rationally" plan everything. It will result in increasingly incompetent and huge institutions and increasing failures of everything from the money system to agriculture. In the meantime, at a second tier of society -- in the cracks, so to speak -- very competent, scientifically and culturally creative people working at local levels will, as in the monasteries of the so-called Dark Ages, preserve the best of human capacities and develop strong communities that will endure the slow collapse of the big ones.
By Joe Campbell
1. Favorite retreat: The foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I plan to take my last breath. Besides the marvelous scenery, the land is still productive; the sparkling brooks are still clean; the air is reasonably fresh; the people are hardy, warm survivors. I have the people around me with whom to build a new world, if that becomes necessary. My dear, near neighbor, for example, has put away working scale models of all of the known hand tools in the world. All of my loved ones are within a few minutes of me. We have all taken the trouble to learn building, gardening, animal husbandry and teaching skills.
2, Greatest threat: To us as a nation, the greatest threat is dependency on corporate America to deliver our necessities. Take one aspect: As long as food, for example, is processed with plastic ingredients, and there is no thought among suppliers concerning contaminants of sugar, salt, cumulative chemical poisons and empty calories, we can expect our health to keep deteriorating. Imagine four-and five-year-old children with high blood pressure.
3. Best shelter: Mother Earth. It costs very little to live underground. Maintenance is essentially zero. With nothing but body heat, if it comes to the worst, you can still survive. lt's a cool place in the worst of surface heat.
4. What books? Well, knowing me, to sustain the inner me, I need to have my library of the world's religious thought, with all of the world's religions represented. To help get things going again, I have technical books: The Merck Manual (Merck and Company) for illness descriptions, Modern Herbal, by Grieves (Hofner Publishing Co., 866 Third Ave., New York, NY 10022) and others dealing with acupuncture, foraging, construction, animal husbandry and food production. In short, I have a library with which to start all over again if we have to. And knowledge of and experience with construction has been and still can be a way to make a living, one that pleases me.
5. Most valuable skills: If it all comes down in the shape of physical disaster, such as a polar roll-over to the equator, then for survivors the most important thing will be skills developed to shelter, forage, hunt, defend against hungry animals and perhaps defend against marauding bands of fellow humans. For that contingency, our band of survivors has taken the trouble to learn self-defense and methods of dealing with violence directed toward us.
6. Science and natural resources: There's enough fossil fuel left to insulate all the homes on the planet even with population predictions for the year 2000. There's enough hydroelectrical potential on the planet to make energy for everyone. So we're not doomed because we're running out of energy. What is lacking is commitment. You can't have that until and unless humankind realizes how much we all are in the same boat, rather than a few being more concerned with how much they can sell bits of the oars for.
By Tom Bender
1. Some of the most important improvements in ways we do things are likely to come out of a rethinking why we do them rather than how we can do them. One of our most interesting improvements in the transportation system, for example, is likely to be a dramatic increase in the importance of "armchair" travel.
As we realize that transportation is merely a cost of getting where we want to be, we are going to put a lot more energy into making where we are the place we want to be! It lessens energy and resource use, replaces commuting time with armchair time, improves our communities and lessens pressures on vacation lands.
2. Looking at whys offers an important new focus for science and technology -- our emotions. Incredible amounts of our work, time, energy and resources are consumed in activity whose end goals are pleasure, prestige, respect, security or any of our other passions.
Yet we know very little about those powerful feelings to which so much is directed. Changes are necessary to develop new ways of dealing more directly with our desires, emotions and goals.
3. In the realm of energy, our most important new source is already turning out to be -- you guessed it -- people! This is not only people energy taking over physical tasks that provide exercise, physical fitness and satisfaction at being able to affect things directly but also people creativity and cleverness energy that have already figured out 100 mpg automobiles, no-energy houses, heat-pumps nine times as efficient as resistance electrical heating and farming practices that are net energy producers rather than energy sinks!
4. In the marketplace one of the most dramatic and important developments of the next few years involves the replacement of outdated management techniques that have, by and large, ignored the real roots of employee non-productivity and turnover.
There are new techniques involving consensus derision-making, sharing of profits, and self-managed work units that have demonstrated the dramatic human and economic improvements possible by rethinking business operations.
5. Mining trash cans rather than land is becoming more and more valuable as we deplete reserves of many natural resources. We're beginning to recognize the absurdity of digging things from deep in the ground, shipping them long distances and spending vast amounts of time and energy to process them, only to pay to throw them away after we've used them.
Our growing insecurity of depending on the natural resources of other countries can largely be escaped once we realize that we've already mined and have laying around on junk heaps enough resources to operate any sane society for centuries. Already economically important material-recycling industries are thriving as a result of such rethinking of why we mine resources.
6. Even in areas such as homesteading, close attention to the whys can increase the odds of success. One of the most important areas for a homesteader to pay attention to is the interface between the sweat-fueled homestead economy and the petrodollar-fueled economy outside it.
Feed, shelter and clothe yourselves with sweat dollars, or trade them with others, but save petrodollars earned outside your homestead to pay for gas, mortgage and other such bills.
7. Possibly the most difficult skills that most of us brought up in twentieth-century America have to learn today are the skills of giving and loving. Being able to give requires the breakdown of a lot of the obsolete economic and tit-for-tat thinking of a materialistic era.
Love and trust-based relationships are the most durable and most rewarding kinds and require the least work and energy to maintain.
When people clearly know their goals and use their resources wisely to attain them, they open some new and rewarding ways of attaining what is important in life.
By Sylvia Ehrhardt
1. Worst personal threat to survival: Breakdown of the nationwide food distribution system. You can be sure of maintaining health and energy only by growing food for yourself or finding local sources. In the cities every corner of land should be cultivated. Postage-stamp plots will be a necessity, along with acquiring the tools and skills of home gardening.
2. Most important survival characteristics: Attitude and maintaining perspective of what is important in life. When faced with a decision affecting my life-style, I opt for those actions and solutions that will provide immediate benefits as well as maximize future survival opportunities: A positive attitude toward oneself and others, self-confidence in one's ability to survive, a can-do approach to life, and the development of inner strengths.
3, Most important social activities toward survival: Finding groups of like-minded people who can serve as a mutual support system. This system provides material goods (through barter), ideas, and labor exchanges, as well as solace in time of personal crisis.
4. Most important psychological step in changing the way you live for best long-term survival possibilities: Becoming open to new ways of doing things. Remembering to look for the opportunities that are hidden but present in every problem situation. The individuals who survive are those who are flexible, think on their feet, and are ready to give up old ways when they no longer work.
5. Favorite book pertinent to survival: Living the Good Life, by Helen and Scott Nearing. These folks have been self-sufficient for over 50 years on their homestead and have done it joyfully. This has been a constant source of inspiration to me since I first read it 12 years ago.
6. Most valuable survival skill: Acquiring tools and learning how to use them, to repair, to fabricate and to improvise when things stop working.
By Russ Kerkman
1. Survival skills: The single most important ingredient in survival is food production. The skills needed depend on the diversity and quantity of food desired. For me the acquisition of sound horticultural, agronomical and livestock skills is necessary. Implied in the above are requisite skills in the building trades.
2. Survival characteristics: Personally, I am not a survival soloist. More can be accomplished by many doing what they do best than by a single practitioner applying his trade. A side benefit from the resulting comradeship is the opportunity to acquire new skills. Making contacts and establishing working agreements with people of varied skills, sharing elementary values, is the basis for a survival community. As far as values go, I am a traditionalist. I cherish liberty, in order that I, and others, may explore. Tolerance is essential if diversity is to flourish. Community demands cooperation to some degree; clearly, I prefer noncoercive cooperation. Cooperation that retains individuality allows human fulfillment. A community without justice cannot survive; therefore, justice is the cement for survivability.
3. Worst personal threat to survival: Isolation of the members of the community. The more people turn inward, the less they cooperate. The less they cooperate, the more intolerant they become. The more intolerant, the less they are concerned with justice. The less they value justice, the more violent they become. And then one has the total disintegration of the community and, of course, of everyone's survival.
4. Best bet for future energy source: Photovoltaic cells appear to have promise in the long term. However, the short-term will require the use of many energy sources. No one of these will satisfy all needs and desires. The prudent approach is the selection of those sources compatible with community values. Therefore, solar, wind and hydro are all alternatives to be evaluated along with traditional energy sources.
5. Direction of survival: Development of a working network-and-barter system is indispensable to the evolution of a survival community. Preserving and promoting an understanding of the many social-political theories will serve to enlighten the community. Therefore, the development of a local industrial and agricultural market, in conjunction with a fundamental understanding of eighteenth-century philosophy that fostered American liberty, will serve the community in its quest for survival and continuity.
6. Short-term outlook: Coercion is the order of the day. Most people seem to want leaders. There are attacks on free press and speech, proposals for censorship, imposition of dogma, attempts at unleashing the national police and a foreign policy of interventionism. These and many other insults endured by the populace raise a fundamental question: Has the social contract been negated by the state? If it has, then the state ceases to sit with legitimacy.
7. Survival library:
, by C. D. Bowen(Little Brown & Co.)The Most Dangerous Man in America, by K. Hess (out of print)Dear America, by the staff of The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (Rodale Press)OrganicGardening and New Farm (Rodale Press)Organic Gardening (Reader's Digest)Reader's Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual (Mother Earth News Inc.)The Mother Earth News,by G. Wills (Doubleday & Co.)Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, by G. Wills(Doubleday & Co.);.Explaining America: The Federalist (Cornell Maritime Press)Modern Marine Engineer's Manual (CRC-Chemical Rubber Co.)Standard Mathematical Tables, by the editors ofBuilding it Better Yourself (Rodale Press)Organic Gardening and New Farm (McGraw-Hill Book Co.)Electronics Designer's Handbook, by J. L. Faust(Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co.)The New York Times Book of Vegetable Gardening
A Personal Survival Library
This special supplement is a review of the personal survival library of the editor, Karl Hess. Because it is the result of personal choice and personal experience it is not offered as definitive. It is one person's reasoned list. In particular, it does not suggest that anything not listed is not worth having. Far from it. There are undoubtedly many fine volumes that could be substituted for those included here.
This emphasis on books and other publications is not because the editors believe that written materials are the most important tools in survival. Individual attitudes, skills and health are more important, of course. But written materials are basic survival tools, as basic as any working tools. Survival is, to put it simply, knowledge intensive.
The listing of Karl's collection will follow, roughly, the categories that are covered regularly in Survival Snapshots, beginning with what could be called an Overview selection of books, those few that he considers to be the heart of a survival library, books ranging from nuts-and-bolts hardware to heart-and-mind "software."
Overview
If I had to be pinned down to one book on the basics of survival, I'd have to pick one that is about food. That, when you get right down to it, is the bottom line.
The best one that Therese and I have in our library is How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method, by J. I. Rodale, (Rodale Press Inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $15.95). The choice of nonchemical growing is not ideological but simply practical. You can always grow without chemicals if you know how, but a chemical grower faces some problems if the supplies of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are disrupted. Incidentally, this big, fine volume also covers many methods of food storage as well as food growing.
When it comes to actual nuts and bolts I have no hesitation at all in picking two basic books. One is Mark's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1221 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, $44.50). It's technical but complete, covering everything from the strengths of materials to solar, wind and water power. The technical nature of its coverage shouldn't discourage you if you are seriously interested in the material side of self-reliant living.
The other book is nontechnical and an absolute masterpiece, the finest single volume I have ever seen on building and repairing things. It's the Reader's Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual (W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10036, $19.95). I have, literally, hundreds of other books on the subjects covered in this one. Since Therese and I got it, we hardly refer to anything else. There's just nothing else nearly as good.
Along with food and shelter there's clothing, and, here too, the Reader's Digest has scored a bull's-eye with its Complete Guide to Sewing (W. W. Norton & Co., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10036, $18.95). It is to needle and thread what the Do-It-Yourself Manual is to wood, metal, mortar and bricks.
And then there's health. My choice for the basic book here is How to be Your Own Doctor (Sometimes), by Keith Sehnert (Grosset & Dunlap Inc., 51 Madison Ave, New York, NY 113010, $5.95, paperback). One reason for the choice is that besides full coverage of how to treat yourself, Sehnert devotes significant attention to not getting sick in the first place, which is the best point.
What about the "nitty gritty" survival skills, the ways to cope with ultimate survival questions? My personal choice is a fairly old manual, published by the Air Force, entitled simply Survival. For one thing, it's small enough to fit in a pocket. A current edition, designated A.F. Manual 64-5, is available for $6 from Paladin Enterprises (P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306). This little gem of a book covers everything from wild food to first aid and signals to navigation.
Now for two books that are about as far removed from the nitty gritty as you can get and, yet, seem to me to be essential reflections of the spirit of survival in a decent, humane sense, as opposed to just reverting to brutishness.
The first of the two "software" books is The Universal Traveler by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall (William Kaufmann Inc., 1 First St., Los Altos, CA 94022, $5.95). It's all about creativity and problem solving, about the ways we think and the processes for reaching goals. The reason I'm so fond of it is that it is a constant reminder that our most valuable, flexible and powerful tool isn't a piece of hardware at all. It's our mind. This book is like a set of exercises for keeping that tool supple and strong.
My second choice in this category is, admittedly, a totally subjective one, but it is a long-time best seller. The book is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig (Bantam Books Inc., 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10019, $2.95, paperback). Actually, it's two books. One is an excruciating story about the relationship between Pirsig and his son. The other is about what Pirsig calls values, but what I would call the complete unity of mind, spirit and world. Embedded in it, among other things, are some of the sharpest comments I have ever read on the spirit in which a good mechanic approaches a project.
Food
The good earth is, of course, the source of good food. The Nature and Properties of Soil, by Nyle Brady (The Macmillan Co., 866 Third Ave., New York, NY 10022, $19.95) is a college text. For a simpler volume sticking just to down-home practicality, you might want The Gardener's Guide to Better Soil, by Gene Logsdon (Rodale Press Inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $4.95).
Another Rodale Press book covers the next step, seeds: The Seed Starter's Handbook, by Nancy Bubel ($12.95).
For the highest yields of all, as far as I know, there is How to Grow More Vegetables, by John Jeavons (Ten Speed Press, 900 Modoc Ave., Berkdey, CA 94707, $5.95). This is a working outline of the so-called biodynamic method of growing in raised beds. The yields are stupendous.
For conventional gardening there is the standard, America's Garden Book, by James and Louise Bush-Brown (Charles Scribner's Sons, 597 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10016, $19.95).
To preserve the food you have grown there's a comprehensive book entitled Putting Food By by Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughan, and Janet Greene (The Stephen Greene Press, P.O. Box 1000, Fessenden Rd., Brattleboro, VT 05301, $8.95). It covers everything from freezing (the easiest method) to root cellars, drying and conventional canning.
Health
A real "sleeper" among survival books is a fine, fat volume that the Public Health Service publishes for use aboard merchant ships. It figures that such a volume would have to be more complete than the usual civilian publication since ships are really on their own. Its title is The Ship's Medicine Chest and Medical Aid at Sea (Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, $10.25).
The Merck Manual -- Diagnosis and Therapy (Merck and Co., P.O. Box 2000, Rahway, NJ 07065, $9.75) is written for physicians but can be a gold mine for anyone who can work his way through the technical language. The book covers virtually every sickness known, discussing symptoms and treatments. The real key to working this mine of information is a good medical dictionary.
The one that Therese and I use is a standard and convenient one, Blakiston's Pocket Medical Dictionary (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1221 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, $7.95). Incidentally, don't take that "pocket" business too seriously. The dictionary is almost a thousand pages thick.
There is a Merck manual covering the ailments of animals, also, but it's handled by a different outfit: The Merck Veterinary Manual (Dairy Goat Journal, P.O. Box 1808, Scottsdale, AZ 85252, $17.75).
A far less technical manual is A Veterinary Guide for Animal Owners, by C. E. Spaulding (Rodale Press Inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $12.95). It covers dogs, cats, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, rabbits, goats and poultry.
Back to human health, for those who want to dig into what some call the natural or nonchemical, nonsurgical approach to health, there is Health for the Whole Person, The Complete Guide to Holistic Medicine (Westview Press, 5500 Central Ave., Boulder, CO 80301, $12.95).
Rounding out the medicine chest part of your library, you might want to include A Dictionary of Symptoms, by Joan Gomez (Bantam Books Inc., 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10019, $3.95). Among other things, it has a remarkably good index of symptoms from which you can cue into the Merck Manual.
Finally, for a really comprehensive look at the whole concept of medical self-care, there is Medical Self-Care (Simon & Schuster Inc., 1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, $8.95), a collection of the best material from the journal of the same name, which, as described in the periodicals section of this list, is outstanding.
Retreats/Communities
Since I, personally, don't have any faith at all in hushed recommendations for ideal places to retreat, I favor books that tell you how to go about evaluating places on your own. After all, you are the one who is going to have to live there. Besides, if everyone took those "confidential" recommendations for retreats seriously, there would be just the sort of crowding that most people want to avoid. I'll make one exception: ocean-going cruising vessels. Aboard such a craft, you and your crewmates are your own community and can go anywhere the wind will take you.
There is an absolutely outstanding book on just that subject: Sailing the Farm, by Ken Neumeyer (Voyager's Press, 3790 N.E. Linda Drive, Jensen Beach, FL 33457, $11.95).
When it comes to more conventional places under the sun, there is a good book on buying rural property entitled Finding and Buying Your Place in the Country, by Les Scher (The Macmillan Co., 866 Third Ave., New York, NY 113022, $7.95). It doesn't tell you where to go, but it does a great job of telling you what to look out for when you get there.
A sort of city-oriented version is entitled Close-Up, How to Read the American City, by Grady Clay (Univeristy of Chicago Press, 5801 Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, $6.95).
For evaluating a small town, an exceptionally good book is The Small Towns Book, by James and Carolyn Robertson (Doubleday & Co. Inc., 245 Park Ave., New York, NY 113017, $5.95).
For an international version there's The International Man, ed. 2, by Douglas Casey (Alexandria House, 901 N. Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314, $19.95). Since this is a country-by-country evaluation of places where someone leaving America might want to take up residence, it is hard to keep it up-to-date. Conditions change; but, as a place to start a global search, it's very good.
Shelter
Architectural Graphic Standards (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 605 Third Ave., New York, NY 10016, $65) is the reason that architects know what is available when you build as well as what size to make things, how heavy to build them and everything else connected with construction. Get this and you'll know too.
From the Ground Up, by John N. Cole and Charles Wing (Little, Brown & Co., 200 West St., Waltham, MA02134, $7.95) is particularly useful because of its emphasis on basic principles.
Modern Carpentry, by Willis Wagner (Goodheart Wilcox Co., 123 W. Taft Dr., South Holland, IL 60473, $13.28) is a standard book for union apprentices and vo-tech schools. It could be the only one you will ever need on basic carpentry.
Modern Masonry, by C. E. Kicklighter ($10.64), also from Goodheart Wilcox Co., does for stone and brick what Modern Carpentry does for wood.
The Integral Urban House (Sierra Club Books, Box 3886, Rincon Annex, San Francisco, CA 94119, $12.95) has the details on just how self-reliant a house in the city can be made, but also contains a load of information that can be used anywhere, including valuable materials and references on waste disposal.
Energy
The Passive Solar Energy Book, by Edward Mazria (Rodale Press Inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $24.95) is the most essential, basic book on using solar energy for home heating.
Energy Primer, by Richard Merrill and Tom Gage (Delta Books, Change Bridge Rd., Pine Brook, NJ 07058, $7.95) is a fine across-the-board book of basics on wind, water, solar and bio-fuels (such as the production of methane from wastes).
The Power Guide (ITDG, P.O. Box 337, Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520, $16.50) was compiled at one of the truly outstanding survival research centers, the Intermediate Technology Development Group in England. It is an international catalog of small-scale power equipment, solar, wind, water, bio-gas, internal and external combustion engines and generators. There's nothing else quite like it. Includes some basics that everyone should master.
To keep very much up-to-date on all the same subjects, there is Alternative Sources of Energy (107 S. Central Ave., Milaca, MN 56353, $15 per year, six issues). It's really more than a periodical, more like a continuing series of fine books.
Weapons
One book absolutely dominates the field, that of the late Mel Tappan: Survival Guns (Janus Press, P.O. Box 75455, Los Angeles, CA 90075, $8.95).
The Complete Book of the Bow and Arrow, by Howard Gilleland (Stackpole Books, P.O. Box 1831, Harrisburg, PA 17105, $9.95) has just been revised. It really is complete, but its emphasis is on the most advanced equipment.
American Indian Archery, by Reginald and Gladys Laubin (University of Oklahoma Press, 1005 Asp Ave., Norman, OK 73019, $12.50) is useful, particularly because it concerns simple makeable weapons.
Also, for a continuing look at weaponry, and many offerings of books and equipment, you can refer to Soldier of Fortune magazine and The Rifleman, noted in the periodical portion of this list.
Wilderness Survival
There are so many books on this subject that it is difficult to try to pick a couple of volumes for a survival library. My own choices would be the Air Force manual cited at the start of this list and A. F. Manual 21-76, Survival, Evasion and Escape (publication No. 008-O20-00157-1, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, $6.05). The Army Manual is not a book for sportsmen. It's a book for, let's face it, people on the lam. Because of that it stresses the most basic points of hunting and fishing. It also is a superb manual of edible wild plants. And, finally, it even covers the more social aspects of wilderness survival, such as how to evade and avoid people who might be looking for you, as well as getting in and out of urban troubles.
Specialized Books
A list covering narrow-focus topics could, of course, go on forever. The ones I am including are, again, personal favorites. In this area you have to scout out things for yourself, based on personal needs.
KNOTS. I am convinced that one of the most neglected skills is the tying of knots. You don't need to know many, but you need to know some and to know them well. The super-book on knots is The Ashley Book of Knots, by Clifford Ashley (Doubleday & Co. Inc., 245 Park Ave., New York, NY 10017, $18.95). It has just about everything you can know about knots. On the other hand, you can order the May/June 1979 issue of The Mother Earth News (P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville, NC 28739, $3) and find a superbly illustrated article on 10 basic knots.
BOATS. No matter what else, there's one book you have to have: Piloting, Seamanship and Small Boat Handling, by Charles Chapman (Motorboating and Sailing Books, 224 W. 57th St.. New York. NY 10019, $13.95).
COMPUTERS. I know that you can easily imagine surviving forever without computers (or in spite of them). On the other hand it doesn't hurt to know about them. Among other things, programming a computer can be a mind-helping exercise in good, old-fashioned logic. There's one book that I would recommend: Computer Lib, by Theodore Nelson (The Distributors, 702 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 836, South Bend, IN 46618, $7).
AUTOMOBILES. There are two steps you should take. First is to get a very basic book on what makes any auto tick and how you can work on it. The standard is Basic Auto Repair (Peterson Publishing Co., 6725 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028, $12.95). Next step is not to fool around. Get the shop manual for whatever car you are going to work on. If you can't get one from the factory, check libraries and bookstores for one of the many commercial manuals that covers your particular model.
For an odd but, it seems to me, very practical approach to the automobile as basic transportation there is Drive It Till It Drops, by Joe Troise (The Distributors, 702 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 836, South Bend, IN 46618, $3.95). It urges buying the cheapest car available, after applying a couple of simple tests, then running it with absolutely minimum upkeep until something major goes wrong, then shucking it.
COOKING. There are more books to choose from in this category than any other -- and also less disagreement about which one you should start with: The Joy of Cooking, by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker (Bobbs-Merrill Co., 4300 W. 62nd St., Indianapolis, IN 46268, $12.95).
MOVING. Two or three people can move just about anything, if they know how. Moving Heavy Things, by Jan Adkins (Houghton Mifflin Co., Wayside Rd., Burlington, ME 01803, $6.95) tells you how.
TOOLS. Although there are fancy books aplenty, the best basic bet is still the Sears catalog, particularly the specialized catalog, just on tools, that you can get from the local outlet.
As a next step there is Tools for Homesteaders, Gardeners, and Small-Scale Farmers (Rodale Press Inc., 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $12.95). It not only suggests special equipment that you can make but lists suppliers of hard-to-get items.
WEATHER. The Weather Almanac (Avon Books, 959 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10019, $6.95), covering weather right down to the city level, has just about everything you need to know about the air around you.
Source Books
Finally, to sum it all up, there are four books that amount to a master cataloging of everything else that's useful and available:
The Next Whole Earth Catalog (Whole Earth Household Store, Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D, San Francisco, CA 94123, $16.00) is the most complete catalog of resources.
The Harrowsmith Sourcebook (Camden House Publishing Co., Camden East, Ontario, Canada KOK 1J0, $7.95) is a free Canadian version of The Next Whole Earth Catalog, but with even more product listings and, of course, with information on things only found in Canada.
Rainbook (Schocken Books, 200 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016, $7.95) stresses the notion of community in survival. This is a highly refined mining of available materials.
The Great Survival Resource Book (Paladin Press, P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306) repeats much of the material in the books listed above but adds a particular emphasis on what could be called hard-line survivalism -- isolated retreating, weapons, surviving nuclear attacks and hard-time economics.
Periodicals
These periodicals are listed separately because many overlap categories. Like everything else in this collection, it is a personal list, but it provides a good cross section of information essential to survival and good living. The list is alphabetical.
Alternatives (P.O. Box 27043, Houston, TX 77027, $20 per year, quarterly). Free-market solutions to contemporary environmental and urban problems.
Applewood Journal (P.O. Box 1781, San Francisco, CA 94101, $10 per year, bimonthly). Homestead how-to-do-it, with western emphasis.
CoEvolution Quarterly (Box 428, Sausalito, CA 94966, $14 per year, quarterly) by The Next Whole Earth Catalog people, about alternative technologies, future-probing, community-building and survival with great grace.
Farmstead (Washington Square, Philadelphia, PA 19105, $12 per year, monthly). Circulation restricted to farm owners or operators, for whom it is a standard, emphasizing farming as a family work.
Fox River Patriot (Box 54, Princeton, WI 54968, $7.50 per year, twice a month). Homesteading, with midwestern emphasis.
Guns & Ammo (P.O. Box 3292, Los Angeles, CA 90028, $11.94 per year, monthly). Popular coverage of weapons and hunting.
Harrowsmith (Camden East, Ontario, Canada KOK 1J0, $12 per year, eight issues). First-rate coverage of most things related to survival of individuals and communities; very strong on natural systems.
Medical Self-Care (P.O. Box 717, Inverness, CA 94937, $17 per year, quarterly). Pioneering and exceptional journal of home health care.
The Mother Earth News (P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville, NC 28791, $15 per year, bimonthly). Jammed with survival hints, including small business suggestions.
New Shelter (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $9 per year, nine issues.) One of the publications from tried-and-true Rodale Press; in depth coverage of construction alternatives).
New Farm (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $10 per year). Another Rodale magazine, concerned with nonchemical farming.
New Roots (P.O. Box 548, Greenfield, ME 01302, $10 per year, eight issues). "Counterculture" and homestead coverage with northeastern emphasis.
Organic Gardening (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $10 per year, monthly). An essential tool for survival in the city or in the country, also by Rodale Press.
Popular Science (Subscription Dept., Boulder, CO 80302, $11.94, monthly). My personal choice for the best general interest magazine to keep you up-to-date on technologies that could affect your survival.
Prevention (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $10 per year, monthly). Rodale's old standby of natural cures, home remedies and nutrition.
Rifleman 0600 Rhode Island Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036, $15 per year, monthly). Journal of the National Rifle Association; weapons, hunting, target shooting and gunsmithing.
Rain (2270 N.W. Irving, Portland, OR 97210, $15 per year, 10 issues). One of the best of the alternative-life-style, appropriate technology journals.
Science (1515 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20005, $38 per year, weekly). Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; astonishingly broad coverage of current events and all techological matters. A vital addition to any survival library.
Soldier of Fortune (P.O. Box 693, Boulder, CO 80306, $24 per year, monthly). For anyone who is convinced that it's all going to come down to a fire fight, but with some bonuses in the form of good wilderness equipment and survival articles even for those who do not.
SURVIVAL SNAPSHOTS
Energy
There's new hope for old masonry chimneys, a major peril point in houses that many retreaters, homesteaders and others find attractive. Any cracks or other weaknesses in chimneys can result in fire engulfing the entire house. Remember, chimney temperatures can rise to the 2,000-degree F range.
New liners for the chimney are a possibility. Stainless steel ones are offered by Dura-Vent Corporation (P.O. Box 2249, Redwood City, CA 94064). Prices, depending on chimney size, are in the $300-$400 range.
Liners made from volcanic rock, clay and concrete are available from Norwegian Wood Stoves (P.O. Box 219, Clarkson Station, Missauga, Ontario, L5J 3Y1, Canada).The cost is about $16 a foot, plus labor.
Brand new from England, where it got National Coal Board approval, is a liquid "mortar" that is pored into the old chimney, around a metal form that leaves an open flue. It seeps into cracks, seals the old chimney and, when the metal form is removed, leaves you with what amounts to a brand new chimney. There are not too many franchises for the system yet. The cost is about $600 for an average chimney. Information is available from National Supaflu Systems (Howe Cavers Rd., Cobleskill, NY 12043).
Do you use a heat pump for air conditioning? If so, you can also use it to heat up to about half of your household hot water needs -- just by using energy that would otherwise be wasted. The trick is to install a waste-heat water heater.
A heat pump cools by extracting heat from inside the house and passing it along to the outside air via compressed gas. The heat of that gas, as it circulates, can be picked up by a special attachment for your hot water system.
Most major air conditioner manufacturers make them. The cost is anywhere from $500 to just under $1,000, installed. If they ever are included as an integral part of heat pumps, the cost should be cut at least in half. In the meanwhile, there is a problem.
Manufacturers' specs on which unit to use with which pump have been widely varied. The American Refrigeration Institute has been working with manufacturers to straighten it out. If you're interested, the best bet so far is to make sure you deal with a factory-trained installer handling the particular kind of heat pump you have and also to make sure that your heat pump warranty remains valid after the waste-heat water heater is installed.
Is it worth the hassle? Reports are that savings in the range of 2,000 kilowatt hours a year are probable by letting the heat pump's waste energy supplement your electrical hot water heater. For many people that's more than $100 a year right now and, with electrical rates zooming, possibly twice as much in a couple of years.
Here's an unusual alternative to the usual woodburning heat systems. It's called Heating and Heat Storage Apparatus (HAHSA). Essentially, it's a woodburning unit surrounded by 18 tons of sand. How can it fit in your house? It doesn't. The unit is built as a small, shed-like brick structure at any convenient distance from the house.
Insulated pipes carry water through the fire box and back into the house, where some of the water is cycled through regular hot water radiators. Water for washing and other uses in the house is cycled through other pipes, from the water source through the heater and then to the hot water faucets.
Because the firebox is larger than most house units, the HAHSA can burn three-foot logs, 15 inches in diameter. It can also handle bulky wood scraps, newspapers, cardboard and just about any other combustible trash.
Great advantage: Because so much heat is stored in the 18 tons of sand surrounding the unit, a full day's heat can be provided in winter, and three day's hot water in summer, even after the fire goes out.
The cost of building the unit yourself from scrap is estimated at about $500. The cost of using new materials is close to $2,000. Complete plans and a parts list are $220 from HAHSA (P.O. Box 112, Falls, PA 18615).
The HAHSA is not, of course, the only central wood heating device that you might want to consider, although its great mass and location outside the house make it something of a one-of-a-kinder.
For a complete survey of other central wood and coal heating systems (as opposed to single fitreplaces or stoves) there is a brand new book that covers the field very well indeed. It's Central Heating with Wood and Coal: Using Solid Fuel for Heat and Domestic Hot Water (The Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, VT 05301, $8.95) by Larry Gay, who has a very appropriate Ph.D. in chemical physics.
For anyone considering switching to a wood or coal system or building a homestead or survival retreat around such a system, this book offers a complete survey of types of techniques that are usually overlooked in wood heating surveys, which concentrate on stoves and fireplaces. Highly recommended.
Foods
Wild game and fish can be an excellent source of protein to supplement garden produce and stored food in a survival situation. It is not necessary to live in a wilderness area either to harvest game for consumption.
In an interesting book we've found, "Ragnar Benson" (a pseudonym -- the author is now a prosperous businessman) explains how he and his new bride survived a lean year in a Chicago suburb; that year the author killed and the couple ate 63 squirrels, four racoons, several possums, about a dozen rabbits and "too many" pigeons.
Benson claims that in the last 20 years, he has spent less than $200 cash on meat for his family; he keeps his two freezers well-stocked with deer, elk, trout, bass and ducks taken in defiance of existing game laws. In Survival Poaching (Palladin Press, P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306, $12.95), Benson details the art of poaching: traps, effective weapons, evading game wardens and farmers, using silencers, radios, fish poisons, and more.
Game laws prescribe seasons and limit the amount of game and fish that can be legally taken. ST does not recommend poaching, but does suggest that this book would be a useful addition to a survival library. In a food scarcity the advice of a poacher with 40 years experience will seem timely and helpful indeed.
There's a new tomato bred specifically to stay fresh for extended periods of storage. With a growing time of 78 days you could, literally, plant them in July, harvest them early in September (except in early-frost areas) and then keep them in the pantry, good to eat, until the end of November. They'll stay fresh six to 12 weeks! Some people claim longer.
Called Long-Keeper, the seeds are available only from Burpee (Warminster, PA 18991; Clinton, IA 52732; or Riverside, CA 92502, depending on which is closest to you). The price is $1.50 for two packets containing 60 seeds.
Here's a quick planning guide for a year's provision of food for one person, based on an average of dietary needs for child, teen and adult.
You need: 75 gallons of milk; 26 pounds of butter; 175 pounds of meat, for those who are not vegetarians; 30 dozen eggs; 15 pounds (one-fourth bushel) of dried beans, peas and nuts; four bushels of potatoes and sweet potatoes; three bushels of tomatoes; four-and-a-half bushels (155 pounds) of leafy green and yellow vegetables, or double for vegetarians; six bushels (300 pounds) other vegetables and fruits such as beets, onions, berries, peaches and apples; three gallons of honey and sorghum for sweetening; and three bushels of wheat and corn.
You can get all of that for your family from: one dairy cow, which should supply about 300 gallons of milk a year; one 600-pound beef animal that should dress out to about 300 pounds. Lambs average out to about 45 percent meat when dressed; a 200-pound hog will yield about 140 pounds of meat; and a half-dozen chickens should supply all the eggs one person needs. One-tenth of an acre per person in an average garden should supply the needed vegetables; an acre of fruit trees and berry bushes should supply a family of four.
With soil warmed up and weeds on the rampage, you probably already have mulched your garden. Did you use enough? Old hands keep saying you can hardly use too much and that many people simply don't use enough. Weeds keep poking up, and the ground dries out.
Here are some recommended mulching depths: wood chips, six inches or more; hay, six inches if baled, up to 10 inches if loose; grass clippings, four inches when you put it down (it will shrink some); sawdust, three inches; leaves, up to 10 inches; newspaper, about a half-dozen sheets thick.
You can also use the increasingly popular black plastic, the thicker, the better. It can be laid along already planted rows or can be laid down when you plant, with holes punched in it as you set the seeds, through the holes, into the ground.
Just how sensitive food supplies are, and how liable to disruption, is suggested by some original research recently completed by staffers at one of the most important of all food publications, Organic Gardening (Rodale Press, 33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $10, 12 issues).
In the April, 1981, issue, editor Robert Rodale, reporting just on his home state of Pennsylvania, says that "almost 70 percent of the food eaten by Pennsylvanians is imported from other states." The figure was far higher than had been expected because the state has nearly seven and one-half million acres in farmland. About a third of what is produced on that acreage, however, is exported. Every week, the Rodale study shows, 4,700 truckloads of food come into the state from as far away as California, Arizona and Texas.
If the state concentrated on growing all of its produce and meat at home, the editor estimates, it would take just half as much land as is now being fanned to produce everything needed except beef. If beef is added, cornfed the way most is today, it would take a third more than all the current agricultural land just to take care of that one item alone. Cattle raised in local pasturelands, however, could change that picture.
Overall, the study's message seems clear: food systems, stretched thin and stretched far, as in the case of Pennsylvania, are a crucially weak point in the country's ability to survive truly troubled or disrupted times. More local growing is the clear antidote, right down to the home garden.
You will soon be able to store fresh milk on your shelves -- unrefrigerated -- for eight months, thanks to a new packaging system. This is whole milk (3.25 percent butterfat), not powdered or evaporated.
The system, just recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, has been used for years in other parts of the world. In Australia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and elsewhere, the "brick-pack" UHT (ultra-high temperature) system has been a commercial success.
The system involves flash heating the milk to 280 degrees F, and then immediately packing in sterilized, vacuum-packed cartons under aseptic conditions. Because of total destruction of micro-organisms in the milk, the product will remain safe for longer than the rated eight-month shelf life, but flavor begins to deteriorate at that time. Once open, of course, the milk must be refrigerated and used.
The cartons are foil-lined, air-tight pouches, which are immersed in a hot hydrogen peroxide bath, blown dry with sterile hot air, filled, vacuum packed and sealed. The FDA allows up to 100 parts per billion of hydrogen peroxide to remain in the carton, but the manufacturer claims to have kept the residues at one part per billion.
The vacuum packing removes air from the milk itself, which may produce a barely noticeable taste difference from regular refrigerated milk. This can be solved by aerating the product, by stirring it or pouring it back and forth between two containers.
Real Fresh (P.O. Box 1551, Visalia, CA 93279) is a producer who is marketing only in the western states. The product retails for $8.57 for a case of 12 quarts and is available in many major food markets in the West.
A spokesman for Real Fresh stated that the price may come down slightly, but that it will remain between 20 and 30 percent higher than conventionally packaged refrigerated milk.
The firm is also developing other milk products, peanut butter and margarine in similar packaging that may be available later this year.
Another firm soon expected to offer milk in containers is Stow-A-Way (166 Cushing Highway, Cohasset, MA 02025), whose product, called Kan-pak, comes in whole or chocolate milk.
For many years whole milk in cans has been available to the military, ship caterers and Alaskan retail markets. (Dave Scholl)
Health
Was the winter tough on you? Here's a hint for the next one, one of the lowest-cost heating systems ever invented: a hat. Even indoors, if your house in kept economically cool, you'll lose about one-third of your body heat through the top of your head. At 50 degrees F, you'll lose 40 percent, and if you go outside without a hat when it's freezing, half your heat loss will be through your head. So wear a hat, even indoors, when the cold comes again.
The four most useful over-the-counter drugs, as listed in the winter issue of Medical Self-Care (P.O. Box 717, Inverness, CA 94937, $15 per year), are as follows:
ASPIRIN. Fever-reducer, anti-inflammatory, mild pain reliever, exceptionally good to relieve many forms of arthritis, muscle strain, low back pain. Caution: It is also a leading poisoner of children and should not be used as a substitute for alleviating the root causes of such problems as frequent headaches.
ZINC OXIDE. Skin protector. Major usefulness for early or small hemorrhoids, rectal itching, particularly in conjunction with the addition of bran or other fiber to the diet.
PSEUDOEPHEDRINE and CHLORPHENIRAMINE MALEATE. The first one is a decongestant, marketed as Sudafed. The other is an antihistamine, marketed as Chlortrimetron. They don't cure colds, but they do ease symptoms when that's important. Caution: Antihistamines can make you very drowsy.
According to the article, about half the patients at one clinic were helped significantly by using one or a combination of these four over-the-counter items.
Yogurt is a good investment. It's healthful and tasty. But here's howone economist figures it on a straight financial basis: For about $15you can get an automatic yogurt maker. It'll save you about 30 centsa cup over store brands. Deducting the cost of the machine and eatingyogurt regularly, you'll save $78 per year.Failing eyesight is surely a survival peril. The very positive resultsof diet and exercise on arresting it are detailed in the February issueof magazine (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $10per year). Minerals such as chromium and vitamins such as the B complexand C seem to help as does circulation-building exercise.Biofeedback is a way of learning to relax. Usually it requires expensiveequipment. As you, in effect, learn to calm yourself, the machinery givesyou "feedback" in terms of your brain waves and other appropriate vitalsigns. Now there's an inexpensive version.Conscious Living Foundation, a highly regarded medical self-care,nonprofit group sells a simple little thermometer that you tape to yourmiddle finger. Your skin temperature can range from 60 to 90 degreesF. The warmer you are, usually, the more relaxed you are. The cooler,the more tense.The thermometer, with a 16-page guide to handling stress, is only $1.50(Conscious Living Foundation, P.O. Box 513, Manhattan, KS 66502). Itdoesn't work for people with steady high skin temperatures, but itdoes for most.As many as 60,000 women a year may be staying home to have their babiesrather than going to a hospital. In home births the traditional role ofmidwife has been revived but with substantial modernization.Now there's an American College of Nurse-Midwives, with 1,700 members,who are registered nurses who have undergone a year or more specialtraining in obstetrics and gynecology. These CNMs have been officiallyrecognized for 10 years by the American College of Obstetricians andGynecologists, the major professional organization in the field.For anyone interested in this alternative to regular hospital procedure,the American College of Nurse-Midwives can be reached at 1012 14th St.,NW, Washington, DC 20005 or by phone at 202-347-5445.Roger J. Williams, D.Sc., is one of the most respected vitaminresearchers. Here, from his various writings, is a list of what heconsiders to be proper daily amounts of vitamin supplements for an adult(in every case the amount is greater than the government's suggestions):Vitamin A, 7,500 International Units (I.U.); C, 250 mg; B1 (thiamine),2 mg; 132 (riboflavin), 2 mg; niacin (a component of the B complex),20 mg; B6, 3 mg; B12, 9 micrograms; D, 400 I.U.; E, 40 I.U.Although arguments and research regarding natural versus syntheticvitamins goes on and on, there are many people who prefer the naturalvariety. If you want to check on whether a vitamin is made directly froma source found in natural growth, without chemical or biological change,you need to check labels. Here is a list of natural sources for variousvitamins: Vitamin A, fish oils; B1 (thiamine) and B2 (riboflavin), yeast;B12, liver or yeast, biotin, liver; F, unsaturated fatty acids; niacin,yeast or bran; C, citrus, rose hips, acerola berries; D, fish oils; E,wheat germ oil; K, alfalfa.Few things are more painful than losing a dental filling when there'sno dentist to replace it. Fortunately, there's a first-aid, emergencykit that has been designed to help. Called Dent-Aide, it includes atemporary filling powder to repack the tooth, toothache drops, dentalmirror and tools for the filling, plus a dental first-aid book. LandsEnd mail order supply house (Lands End Lane, Dodgeville, WI 53533,800-356-4441, in Wisconsin 608-935-2788) is one supplier of the kit,which is item number 772554 in their catalog and costs $15.95.For anyone who wants just a temporary tooth-filling kit, without theextras, Indiana Camp Supply Co. (P.O. Box 344, Pittsboro, IA 46167,317-892-3310) offers a filling kit, catalog number 1828, for $4.75. Thetin it comes in doubles as a mixing cup for the filler.One of the latest comments on proper diet as a defense against cancercomes from T. Colin Campbell, professor of nutritional biochemistry atCornell University, writing in the May issue of Prevention,journal of the American Museum of Natural History (Central Park West at79th St., New York, NY 10024, $15 per year):" . . . a diet lower than the current American one in total fat,linoleic add, and protein, but higher in vitamin C, fiber, andselenium would hypothetically yield the lowest cancer risk. Such adietary balance can be achieved by an increase in the consumption ofwhole grain cereal products, vegetables, and fruits, and a reductionin meats and foods prepared in fat."Natural History
Products
Strictly for emergencies, and strictly for people who don't want to put together their own kit, there is a 14-ounce gem of a survival kit from the famous Eddie Bauer outdoor outfitting company (P.O. Box 3700, Seattle, WA 98124). It's not just for short-term emergencies but for anyone who might get snowbound, lost or briefly marooned or stranded; it could be an easy-to-carry life saver.
The kit itself is a cylinder, a little less than four inches in diameter and a little more than four inches high. The kit container can also be used as a stove, pan and cup. Inside are the following: plastic tube tent, windscreen, ground cloth, spoon, three solid fuel tablets, waterproof matches, magnesium rod with a flint to strike fire from it, survival booklet, signal mirror, whistle, knife, wire saw, water bag, 12 water purification tablets, surgical tubing (tourniquet), 10-inch snare wire, four fish hooks, 20 feet of line, mosquito netting, six aspirins, six small bandages, soap, four safety pins, razor blade, 36 inches of one-inch duct tape, three packets of broth mix and four sugar cubes. The cost of the kit is $29.95.
Concrete blocks, although easy to use, strong, and relatively inexpensive, have virtually no insulating qualities. Blocks a foot thick have about the same insulating value as about an inch of familiar fiberglass insulation. One way to beef up the insulation is to fill the spaces in the blocks with high-value insulation, such as styrofoam. Now there's another way.
An architect by the name of Arnold Perreton is marketing a special concrete block that takes a ready-made polystrene insert that raises the block's insulating value to the equivalent of about five inches of fiberglass and, additionally, is said to provide a better moisture barrier than poured-in insulation. The cost is about 30 cents more per block and insert than a conventional block plus poured-in insulation. So far the blocks have been used in more than 200 buildings. For more information, write to Perreton directly (P.O. Box 546, Concord, NH 03301).
The old saying that everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it is wrong. You can do something, if you know about the weather. You can prepare for it, avoid it and survive it. One way to know about it is to purchase a low-cost weather-alert radio. They aren't the same as radios set up to receive regular broadcasts from the National Weather Station and its continuous output on the public service VHF band (162.400 MHz, 162.550 MHz and 162.475 MHz). Listening to that continual flow of data (which even includes water temperatures and tides on the coast and soil temperatures inland) can be valuable, of course; but for the most urgent weather information you need something that will automatically tune in and inform you 24 hours and day.
The gadget that does that is either a special triggering device on a regular weather radio or a simple, emergency-only radio. In either case, the circuits of the radio are on standby, tuned to the Weather Service emergency frequency. In an emergency (any condition judged to be a danger to life or property), the Weather Service sends out a 1050-Hz tone that triggers any receiver monitoring for it. Most such sets have an alarm device that goes off at the same time. Any such device, of course, should be battery powered. No emergency equipment should depend on regular power supplies.
Basic sets, just to receive the emergency signal, sound an alarm and then permit you to hear the announcement and can be had for about $20. Panasonic, Regency, Midland, Bearcat and other manufacturers make simple as well as complex sets that can tune in other than the emergency transmission. If it alerts you to just one tornado or flood, the cost would be worthwhile.
The best multipurpose screwdriver that ST's editor has ever seen is now being offered for $26.90 postpaid by Garrett Wade Co. (161 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013). Six inches long, it comes with four Phillips head and three standard bits, plus a four-inch extension.
The screwdriver body has a three-inch lever that folds down to provide a turning handle to give extraordinary power to the driver. ALso, the screwdriver ratchets so that you don't have to take it off the screw head while you're turning.
Garden Way Research (Charlotte, VT, 05445) is one of the most dependable manufacturers of things for independent and self-reliant living. They are associated with the group that builds the famous Troy-Bilt Roto Tiller, for instance.
Two of their latest offerings are a solar greenhouse and a cider press.
The solar greenhouse is to be added to the south side of an existing structure. It's made of tempered, insulated glass on an aluminum frame with a curved top made of a translucent plastic, trade named Exolite, that admits just the light that plants need to grow. There is a built-in heat storage system so that sunlight warmth picked up during the day also can keep the greenhouse warm on cold nights.
Bill Yanda, one of the authors of the definitive greenhouse book, The Food and Heat Producing Solar Greenhouse (John Muir Publications, P.O. Box 613, Santa Fe, NM 87501, $8), helped design the greenhouse. The price of the greenhouse has not been established, and the structure itself won't be available until August.
The other new Garden Way product is a family-size cider press that can grind and press a bushel of apples into three gallons of cider in about a half-hour. The press comes as either a kit with just hardware ($95), a complete kit ($216), or fully assembled ($246).
Homesteaders, retreatists, suburban and urban householders, motorists and boaters all store at least a few gallons of gasoline for everyday use. The containers they use are, at best, the ordinary hardware store cans made of very thin sheet metal and fitted with a flexible pouring spout.
What makes them "acceptable" in a legal sense is that they are printed with warnings that say the container holds explosive or flammable liquid. But gasoline has the explosive force of 14 sticks of dynamite per gallon -- too much to fool with.
There are really safe containers, however. One is the Explosafe can, which the maker claims is safe even if exposed to fire or heavy impact.
Five-gallon cans of this type are available at $42 each from Travel Information Bureau (14 Mulberry Drive, Huntington, NY 11743). Money-back guarantee. Two-and-a-half-gallon cans are $34; one-gallon cans are $27.
The best way to get a waterproof basement is to build it right the first time around, with heavily waterproofed exterior surfaces and good drainage. If you get a place that wasn't done that way or goof it yourself, the next thing is to try waterproofing on the inside walls.
New Shelter Magazine (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $1.50 per copy) recently tested 22 commercially-available, popular waterproofing compounds that can be painted on the concrete blocks, the usual problem material.
Here's a summary of the results: The best of the products were: Z-Z-Poxy Waterproofing Kit (two gallons, $50); Atlas Epoxybond Waterproof Sealant (one gallon, $35); UGL Drylok Ready Mixed Sealer (one gallon, $76); Bondex Ready-Mixed Waterproof Cement Paint (one gallon, $18); Moore's Waterproofing Masonry Paint (one gallon, $14); Super Sahara Waterproof Masonry Coating (one gallon, $16); Akona Sealer Paint Waterproofing (10 pounds, must be mixed, $7).
In the mid-range of effectiveness were: Thoroseal (10 pounds, must be mixed, $6); Montgomery Ward's Masonry Waterproofing Paint (one gallon, $11); Durabond Waterproofing Coating (10 pounds, must be mixed, $8); Xypex (15 pounds, must be mixed, $24); UGL Drylok Double Duty Sealer (10 pounds, must be mixed, $9); Glidden Spred Basement Waterproof Paint (one gallon, $14).
Here are the makers of undersink water filters recently tested by Popular Science Monthly (380 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10017) and found to be satisfactory to remove odors, sediment and bad taste: Amatek, Plymouth Products Division, 502 Indiana Ave., Sheboygan, WI 53081; Aqua-Pure, 400 Research Parkway, Meriden, CT 06450; Everpure Inc., 660 N. Blackmont Dr., Westmont, IL 60559; Filterite Consumer Products, 2033 Greenspring Dr., Timonium, MD 21093; Fulflo Carborundum Co., Filters Division, State Route 32W, Lebanon, NH 46052.
Projects
Food co-ops, people getting together to buy food in bulk, sharing the work and the lower costs, have long been a powerful point around which survival interests could be organized. Now there's a spreading interest in an energy version of the idea.
In many parts of the country people have gotten together on a neighborhood basis to take advantage of bulk fuel purchase prices. By offering a substantial concentration of customers in a single, easily serviced area -- often by handling most of the paperwork so that the fuel distributor only has to bill the co-op itself and even by reinvesting the funds made available during the summer when members pay on a year-round schedule but when the co-op doesn't have to pay out -- the co-ops are bringing down the cost of heating fuel. In addition they are getting neighbors together in an effort that can lead to other survival-oriented projects.
Not only fuel oil has become the focus of such energy co-ops. Some have negotiated for waste wood, others for regular cordwood, still others for gasoline.
For information on how to start a fuel oil co-op, write to ANHD Fuel Consortium (424 W. 33rd St., New York, NY 10001), enclosing $3 for their publication Cheaper by the Million: How to Start a Joint Fuel Purchasing Consortium.
Readers interested in our article on greenhouses (ST, March, 1981) have asked for advice on what types of glazing to use.
Ordinary glass is good and, if you get it second-hand, economical. One eighth-inch tempered glass holds up under ordinary hailstones. Plain window glass will not. Glass with a green cast to its edges contains a lot of iron and isn't as good a sun transmitter as glass with a bluish color to its edges.
Of plastics, the best bet overall is reinforced fiberglass (marketed under such names as Filon and Kalwall). This material is milky and diffuses sunlight considerably -- and plants love it. Ordinary fiberglass panels from the local lumber yard are not likely to let in as much good growing light as panels specifically designed for greenhouse use.
Polyethylene film (the most familiar plastic sheet in the hardware store) is the cheapest but doesn't last long. Acrylic plastics, such as Plexiglas, are good and tough, but expensive. They also yellow and crackle in very sunny climates. Super-tough polycarbonates, such as Lexan, are better but far more expensive.
Whatever glazing is used, remember this important rule: The side or sides of the greenhouse that receive the most sun should be slanted so that the light strikes the surface as close to perpendicular (90 degrees) as possible. For every degree off the perpendicular that the sun strikes, there is a growing loss of radiation due to reflection. After about 45 degrees, most of the sunlight is being reflected rather than entering the greenhouse.
Retreating
An underground condominium development with a deliberate survival emphasis is nearing completion in the southwestern corner of Utah. Called Terrene Ark 1, it is a 240-unit apartment complex completely underground and with provisions for nuclear fallout decontamination, a year's supply of food in each unit, independent power, water and air filter systems, and a clinic.
The company offering the units is Survive Tomorrow Inc. (no connection with this newsletter). Prices range from $40,000 to $80,000.
Of particular interest is the philosophy behind the project, as expressed by its creator, Ronald Brent Boutwell:
"Only group survival allows for pooling of resources and a continuingcohesive society unit. You know who your friends are . . . smallgroups are weak prey of the desperate, and each outsider is a potentialenemy. Only group survival can provide the necessities of civilization. . . pick a place, choose your friends and then get prepared."
The high mountain lakes area of the western Adirondack mountains, upstate New York, has been a favorite vacation site for many easterners and a possible retreat haven for some. But there's a problem: Pollutants, airborne from midwest industrial plants hundreds of miles away, have been regularly settling in the area thanks to fairly consistent wind patterns.
The State Department of Conservation in New York now admits that most of the lakes in the area have been, in effect, killed by the pollution. When this pollution fails with rain, it raises the acid levels of the lakes by several times, with the immediate effect of killing all the fish. Long-term effects of it on humans and other life forms in the area are still unknown. In other parts of the world where this acid rain has been significantly present, forest growth has been blighted. The Scandinavian countries have been particularly affected. Wisconsin also is beginning to suffer.
ST suggestion: It is more important than ever to take broad weather patterns into consideration when viewing the survival problems where you live or might want to live. It is not just some distant problem of nuclear fallout that should concern you but the immediate ones of airborne pollutants, some of which form acid rain or other problems. Studying national weather maps over a long enough time to give you an idea of patterns is a good first step in this direction. To get weekly weather maps you can contact Superintendant of Documents (U.S. Gov't Printing Office, Washington, DC 20420, $32 per year).
Such relatively short-term, albeit massive impacts, as that of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, may have far less weather effect than might have been expected. A computer modeling of the weather effects, recently completed at the University of Maryland and reported in the June 19 issue of Science Magazine (journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1515 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20005, weekly, $43 per year) makes this point: Climate effects from the extensive spread of ashes in the air will be greatest in the north polar area, involving a temperature drop of about a tenth of a degree centigrade next year. But that is less than regular variations in the temperature them from all other causes. The modeling experiment did leave a loophole, however. The computer model could not be nearly as complex as actual weather systems, so all the data actually isn't in yet.
The southwestern corner of Wisconsin has for some time been attractive to people seeking a self-reliant way of life. Decent land is available for around $500 an acre. There is a small-farm, neighborly feel in the area. There is also a newspaper devoted to the community of interest among people who have settled there as part of their own personal survival planning. It's The Ocooch Mountain News (Gillingham, WI 54633, $8 per year).
However, it certainly is not suitable for anyone planning on total isolation. One great advantage, although the area is within 200 miles of Chicago and Milwaukee and adjoins the Madison area, is that it's off to the side and out of the way of the major routes away from population centers. Also, it is bounded on the west by relatively open Iowa and rural Minnesota.
Warning: Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reports that the Niagara Falls area, stretching all the way to outskirts of Toronto and Kingston, is the most heavily polluted in the hemisphere, with 105 old dumps that have been accumulating hazardous chemical wastes from as far away as Puerto Rim and Taiwan.
Some researchers think the situation affects not only the 150,000 U.S. and Canadian residents in the area but may also be affecting, or soon affect, other cities and millions of residents around Lake Ontario.
Most affected so far is groundwater, lakes and streams. Air pollution, however, is said to be expected to be the most serious problem upcoming.
Security
With major hotel fires back in the news and with arson a plague in many areas, a few fire survival basics seem in order.
In case of fire, stay low, since toxic gases and smoke rise. The safest place is on the floor. Roll out of bed, if that's where you are when fire starts. Crawl if you must move around.
If a doorknob or door is hot don't open it. Try to seal cracks around the door with anything available. Open a window or break it. If you're too high to jump, wait for rescue. More people die in hallways than in rooms.
If you do go into a hallway, be sure your door doesn't lock behind you; you might have to get back in. Do not use elevators. If, in a stairwell, you encounter heavy smoke, get out, go to the nearest unlocked room, seal the door and await rescue there. Running back up stairs is bad news; smoke and heat will already have risen to the top areas.
If your clothing catches on fire, do not panic or run. Stop, drop and roll.
Not all security problems are crime related. Some are simply part of everyday living, the little emergencies that arise in any household to cause sudden problems. Often, women are left to cope with such emergencies without much preparation.
Reader's Digest, which has steadily moved to the forefront of preparing how-to manuals of all sorts, now has one of particular interest to women. It's called Women's Guide to Household Emergencies (Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, NY 10570, 75˘ each or 50˘ for orders of six or more) and is small enough (8 x 5 inches, 48 pages) to keep in a purse, to hang by a door or to slip into a drawer.
It includes plumbing, electrical and heating system emergencies; discusses appliance problems; graphically illustrates what to do about the six most common causes of car failure; has instructions for natural disasters and fire, along with first-aid reminders and a section on poisons and drug overdoses. Actually, it's a good little booklet for anyone.
The lowest cost radiation detector ST has seen so far is being offered by Radiation Detection Inc. (P.O. Box 1223, Tulsa, OK 74101, $29.95 each, $22 for 10 or more units). It's a small, two-and-a-half-inch high plastic cylinder enclosing a smaller plastic tube that is ridled with lightweight plastic beads. Shake the gadget and the beads float in the inner chamber due to static electricity.
When exposed to radiation at the level of half a roentgen (200 roentgens of radiation in a short period will make you very sick; 600 will probably kill you; lower levels accumulate and may cause illnesses also), the plastic balls drop down as their electrical charges are knocked off by the radiation.
If the beads fall within one-half minute, the radiation dose is approximately 120 roentgens an hour; within five to seven minutes, the dose is 10 roentgens per hour; and within 20 minutes, it's three roentgens per hour.
The detector is also sensitive enough to warn of excessive radiation from microwaves, x-rays, television sets, industrial waste, radiation spills and so forth.
One great advantage, of course, is that the detector uses no external power and is totally self-contained and made to last for years. Also, the fact that it reacts to accumulated charges means that it can be used as a standing monitor, with the little balls beginning to fall whenever accumulated radiation in its vicinity reaches half a roentgen.
For people who have any reason to keep conversations or computer data absolutely private there is a company with some outstanding know-how and products: Cryptext Corporation (P.O. Box 425, Northgate Station, Seattle, WA 98125, 206-364-8585). Head of the company is Carl Nicolal, young, libertarian cryptography and electronics genius whose devices are so sophisticated that the National Security Agency has been waging a long fight to have them declared secret and for government use only.
One such device, a telephone conversation scrambler, has, after considerable controversy, been made available for private use. The company also produces programs for encrypting computer data.
When neighbors get together to form "watch groups," regular volunteer agreements to watch out for each other's homes, observe strangers closely and report suspicious activities promptly to police, the results are dramatic. In two very different but adjacent counties of Maryland, adjoining the high-crime District of Columbia, almost 500 neighborhood watch groups have been formed over the past few years. Recently, some statistics regarding their effectiveness were compiled by local police officials.
While burglaries generally in the area have been soaring, the neighborhoods with watch groups all experienced significant declines in crime. The police estimate: "Without watch groups, your chances of being burglarized are 1 in 38. With watch groups, it's 1 in 260." That's a seven-fold decrease in burglaries just by getting together with your neighbors.
In many areas, local police would be happy to advise on the formation of such a group. Also, information on the subject can be had from Ray Shonholz of the San Francisco Community Crime Control Program (149 9th St., San Francisco, CA 94103). Enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope.
Shelter
One of the first and simplest steps in turning any home into a more survivable one is to install a greenhouse, both for collecting solar heat for the house itself and to provide a growing space for vegetables and even fish.
ST has recommended various books that can help you add a greenhouse yourself (March, 1981). For those who prefer to have someone else do the work there's a good new catalog of add-on greenhouses, ranging in price from $1,600 to $14,348. The catalog is called Four Seasons Passive Solar Greenhouses and Sunspaces (Four Seasons Greenhouses, 910 Route 110, Farmingdale, NY 11735).
Survival home builders usually are on the lookout for new materials to permit stronger structures, such as earth-sheltered or underground buildings. Here's a new one to check out if you need its special qualities: a new type of I-beam that weighs about a quarter less than conventional ones but has greater structural strength.
It's done by making the beams with an embossed (deeply pressed in) ribbed pattern all along its web (the wide flat part between the two cross pieces of the I). The process yields great strength with less material. Although the beams are now being built by a plant in Japan, they were developed by Paco Engineering Co. (19826 S. Alameda St., Compton, CA 90220, 213-537-6375), whom you can write for information.
Adobe is one of the most overlooked building materials. Yet, it is one of the best. Adobe (clay blocks) and stabilized earth blocks (soil mixed with a little Portland cement) are virtually cost-free, except for labor.
They are strong, very durable (if roof overhangs or coatings protect them from water) and fire resistant. Also, walls of one-foot-thick adobe help a house maintain a comfortable temperature.
Thanks to Hollywood and story-book Westerns we've come to think of adobe as a building material of the dry, hot southwest. Actually it has been used traditionally everywhere in this country, including the coldest climates.
An adobe house might be a perfect family project for a survival house. Being labor intensive, with unskilled labor easily able to make the adobe or earth blocks and lay them into walls, this form of construction is just right for groups of people as well as for the individual.
For an introduction to the technology and possibilities of using adobe in your own survival planning, there is a free brochure available entitled Building with Adobe and Stabilized Earth Blocks (Leaflet no. 535, U.S. Department of Agriculture, GPA, Room 507A, Washington, DC 20250, one copy per request).
One of the most successful builders of energy-efficient houses, Bruce Brownell of upstate New York, now has a first-class catalog of his homes available (Adirondack Alternate Energy, Edinburg, NY 12134, $5). The secret of a Brownell house, which costs a very modest $15-30 per square foot, is that a lot of solar energy is collected through extensive south-facing windows, and a good deal of that energy is stored in 150 tons of sand and gavel under the house.
Characteristically, his houses use less than 25 percent of the energy required to heat average houses. That figure, incidentally, isn't a pipe dream. It's the result of a study made of his houses by the Brookhaven National Laboratories (Upton, New York 11973). If you aren't going to build your own, but are interested in having an energy-efficient house built for you, this is a catalog you should see as you shop around.
Skills
How are your survival skills? You may be able to manage a business, but perhaps you've forgotten all your Boy Scout training. Outward Bound, a survival skills training school started in England during World War II, sponsors special "Creative Leadership" courses for executives. The week-long sessions, held on (and off) Hurricane Island along the coast of Maine during the summer months and in the Florida Keys and Everglades from November to April, teach sailing, rock climbing and other outdoor survival skills. Each participant is on his own for a special two-day solo session.
The program is especially designed for managers and leaders, and Outward Bound emphasizes that participants are not expected to be skilled in outdoor living. "You'll learn everything you need to know during the program," they say. The course fee is $1,000. Contact Outward Bound School, P.O. Box 429, Rockland, ME 04841.
Even some experienced carpenters don't know exactly the best way to toenail one piece of wood to another. Toenailing is driving a nail at a slant through one end of a piece of wood in order to fasten it to another piece.
Here's how: Use the largest nail you can that won't split the wood. Start the nail about one-third of its own length from the end of the piece of wood. Drive the nail at an angle of 30 degrees.
Learn what 30 degrees is like by checking it out with an ordinary dime-store protractor. Make a cardboard template to help you get the hang of that important angle the first few times you toenail. Toenailing is the strongest way to nail when you need to attach one piece of wood, edge-on, to another.
Communications is a survival essential for most people. With any disruption in phone service, many people would be left stranded. One way to prepare for that is to become a radio operator yourself.
The simplest class of radio operator's license now available is the novice class, for which you only need to be able to transmit and receive Morse code at the rate of five words per minute, memorize some basic radio theory and know about FCC regulations. Except for the FCC regulations, which would scarcely concern people in an emergency, this is a good basic survival requirement for communications.
Code transmitters and receivers are low cost and often get through dearly where voice transmissions might be garbled. Also code transmitters can be more easily jerry-rigged if it ever came to that.
Code practice keys are available from places like Radio Shack for about $6. Radio Shack also has a tape recorded, code practice cassette for $5.75. Transmitters and receivers vary from home-made sets that you can get plans for in electronics stores to multi-hundred-doilar super sets. On the average, you should be able to "get on the air" for well under $500. And it's a skill that you can use in good times and bad.
One-day workshops on solar, wind, water and wood energy; energy-conscious home remodeling and building; organic gardening; and family nutrition are held on the second Saturday of each month at Total Environmental Action, Inc., Church Hill, Harrisville, NH 03450. Workshop fees are $35 apiece. Write for a schedule.
Rules of thumb for sprains and strains (sprains are stretching or tearing of the ligaments that bind bones together at the joints; strains are when it happens to a muscle or tendon): Stop using the part. If you don't use it, you won't do any further damage. Elevate the injured part above the level of your heart, if you can. This helps decrease swelling.
A key rule is to apply ice or cold compresses during the first 12 hours. DO NOT APPLY HEAT.
An elastic bandage may make you feel better, but it shouldn't lull you into thinking you can use the injured part.
Here are some additions to our listing of places where you can learn the practical skills of housebuilding, a crucial part of survival preparedness.
Heartwood Owner-Builder School, Johnson Rd., Washington, ME 01235, offers three-week courses from May to September for $425 per person, $775 a couple.
Homebuilder Resource Center, 2 Hancock Place, Cambridge, MA 02139, offers evening courses at $150 for eight weeks; the home renovation program is $300 for eight weeks. A three-week summer building program is $450.
Northern Owner-Builder, Route 1, Plainfield, VT 05667, has Saturday sessions in which they emphasize design and site visits. No hands-on work, and its cost is $125 per person, $150 a couple.
Yestermorrow, Box 344, Warren, VT 05674, has two-week summer courses for $350, with room-and-board for an additional $250.
Like the previously listed courses, these are all in the northeastern United States. ST would welcome information about similar courses in other parts of the country.
Full preparation for survival demands more than possessing essential survival equipment and supplies. Prudence demands training and practice in the use of equipment and the development of appropriate skills and attitudes. Though much of this can be done at family level, attending one of the intensive survival training courses beginning to be available might be beneficial by speeding up the training process.
Just as survival philosophy can range from the "soft" (food storage only) to the "hard" (well-armed with a "kill-or-be-killed" attitude), so can survival courses. Preparedness Northwest offers a series of six-day courses, with a combination of "soft-hard" content, at its site in southwestern Oregon's Rogue River valley.
Content of its basic course, which alternates weekly with an advanced course, includes: survival residences and retreats, food storage, medical training, radio communications, survival gardening, financial preparation, emergency travel, community and government programs and alternative energy. Cost is $500 per student; for details, contact David F. Spray, Security & Preparedness Inc., 515 NE 8th St., Grants Pass, OR 97526, 503-476-9034.
A course with a "harder" approach, mainly because of its greater emphasis on survival weaponry, is offered by the Magnus Training Center in northwestern Pennsylvania. Their "Survivalist Orientation" course covers food storage, retreats, medical preparedness, ammunition reloading, survival vehicles, and more; it includes intensive practical shooting of pistols, assault rifles and combat shotguns in which over 1,000 rounds of ammunition per student are fired. Cost is $595. Shorter, less expensive, weapons-only courses are also available. For a schedule and more information contact the Magnus Training Center, Star Route, Lewis Run, PA 16738, 814-362-2642 or 216-221-1720.
Technology
Much of the energy technology of survival planning depends on battery storage. Familiar lead-acid batteries such as you have in your car are rated at about 20 watt-hours per pound, meaning they can produce and store that much current per hour per pound of battery weight. It's not much, compared with the needs of most people.
General Motors has announced plans to market a battery, for electrical vehicles, that will pack at least 30 watts per hour per pound; Gulf and Western has announced that it's working on one that gets close to 90 watts per hour per pound.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (P.O. Box 808, Livemore, CA 94550) now says that one of its scientists, Dr. John Cooper, is developing a battery that can put out 200 watts per hour per pound. Such batteries could propel a highway-speed vehicle from New York to Washington without needing recharging.
Actually, this battery is more like a fuel cell in which aluminum plates and humid air are separated by flowing caustic solution to cause an electrical current. Water has to be added regularly, unlike a conventional battery. But whenever the water is added, the battery is ready to go again. Six gallons of water would drive a light electrical car 300 miles.
From a study on electrical energy availability in the 1980s, the Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association concludes that the nation is headed for an electrical energy shortage in 1985 resulting from curtailment of construction of coal-fired and nuclear plants. They anticipate that this shortage will cost the economy three million jobs. The study also predicts regional electrical shortages as early as 1983, with New England, the South Atlantic, and both the east and west South Central areas being especially hard-hit because of their reliance on coal and nuclear power.
"It now seems likely that electrically-powered automobiles will stage an end-run in the late 1980s for the small-urban-vehicle market." That's a quote from a knowledgeable man, John B. Heywood, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Along with John Wilkes, a writer and assistant professor at MIT, Heywood has just surveyed the field.
For ST readers who want to get ahead of the game and see what's available right now, we recommend The Complete Book of Electric Vehicles, by Sheldon Shacket (Domus Books, 400 Anthony Trail, Northbrook, IL 60062, $7.95).
Transportation
So-called experimental aircraft, the kind you can build yourself, offer special advantages for survival planning. Some of them, such as powered hang gliders, require no licensing. Most of them are exempt from the close scrutiny that conventional aircraft routinely receive. But, best of all, they can be built and maintained just about anywhere and by just about anyone willing to take the time.
For a remote homestead, for instance, a small, home-built plane might be just the ticket for emergency transportation, for limited trips or for surveying. Planes that can be built at home range from 40-mph midgets to those that can transport pilot, passenger and a payload at more than 100 mph for up to 500 miles.
For anyone interested in the possibilities, there is an entire organization devoted to home-builts. There are chapters in most states as well as in Canada, Japan, South Africa, Norway and Belgium. lt's called Experimental Aircraft Association, and to get information about a chapter near you write the Chapter Secretary (Experimental Aircraft Association, P.O. Box 229, Hales Corners, WI 53130).
Diesels are moving up fast as survival engines, with newer research indicating the ease with which they operate on vegetable oils or vegetable oil-alcohol combinations -- all renewable resources.
The January issue of New Farm (33 E. Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18049, $10 per year) contains a report on the operation of diesels on sunflower oil. South Africans have been using it in tractors for some time. High-oil varieties of sunflowers can yield about 67 gallons of diesel fuel per acre, which might seem a costly technique except for a bonus in the picture: The residue, after the oil is pressed out, is a good livestock feed. Together, using the fuel and selling or using the feed residue, brings the fuel cost down to about 85 cents per gallon.
Another vegetable oil fuel that has been around for a long time is soybean oil. The September/October, 1979, issue of Mother Earth News (P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville, NC 28791, $3 per back issue) reported on its successful use as a diesel fuel both by the author of the article and by a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who made it the study of his master's thesis.
Caution: The vegetable oils, by all reports available, are sufficiently thicker than conventional diesel fuel and cause long-term problems, such as lubricant contamination. One antidote is to mix the oil with lighter fuels, half-and-half with regular No. 2 diesel fuel or with farm-produced alcohol.
Electrical vehicles have always been practical. Literally thousands were sold and used in this country in the early 1900s. Now, with better batteries and motors, they are coming back into the picture. To get up-to-date on what's available and what you can build yourself, there's a fine new book, The Complete Book of Electric Vehicles, by Sheldon Shacket (Domus Books, 400 Anthony Trail, Northbrook, IL 60062, $7.95). With home-based electrical systems (solar, wind and water) appealing to more and more people, the electrical vehicle is a natural addition.
As road systems become either crowded or collapse, the temptation to take to the air may be great. Fortunately, you don't have to depend on big companies or big bucks if that temptation comes your way. You can build safe, practical aircraft of your own and at low cost.
The book on the subject is entitled 31 Practical Ultralight Aircraft You Can Build, by Don Dwiggins (TAB Books, P.O. Box 40, Blue Ridge Summitt, PA 17214, $4.95). Some of the designs get 100 miles to the gallon. Many are buildable for under $5,000, some for just a couple of thousand dollars. All are well-designed, tested, altogether practical airplanes for personal use.
They're not for just fooling around because they take skill and care to fly. They are survival vehicles of the first order either for an individual, a family or a community that might want to build and share several.
About the Authors
TOM BENDER. A founding editor of Rain, a highly respected and pioneering magazine about alternative energy sources and ways of living. Tom lives the self-sufficient life in a house that he built on the Oregon coast. He co-edited the Rainbook, an outstanding survey of survival information sources. Tom is also the author of The Environment Design Primer.
JOE CAMPBELL. A homesteader and survival home builder, Joe has made a successful transition, from being a successful radio executive and personality to establishing rural self-sufficiency.
SYLVIA EHRHARDT. Survival Tomorrow's food and gardening editor, Sylvia has written a special ST supplement on seeds. She practices what she teaches, on her homestead near Harper's Ferry, Maryland.
THERESE HESS. At one time a cytology technician, Therese has been an editor of national publications for the past fifteen years. A woodworker and gardener, she is also an active small businesswoman, an aggressive barterer and a community communications expert. Therese utilizes both her editorial background and her experience with self-sufficient rural living as Associate Editor of Survival Tomorrow.
RUSSELL KERKMAN. An electrical engineer who has worked in the research departments of America's largest corporations, Russ is now building, with friends, a self-sufficient farm community. He is continuing his research into complex switching systems and is into alternative ways of generating electrical energy for self-reliant individuals and communities.

