Given the recent prediction from Michael Ruppert that the oil economy is about to collapse following the predicted model of Peak Oil, it seems prudent to hurry up and write this. This is partially a continuation of the previous essay, and partially a counterpoint to it. If you haven't read my previous posts, please check the links to them that I'll post below.

What we need to discuss is what can help us when our efforts to soften collapse aren't enough. We need to talk about hard collapses, and subjects of defense and security for individuals and community in this sort of situation. I think it's also smart to discuss these subjects in general, because being able to defend yourself and your 'tribe' lessens your dependence on the exploitative and violent government systems, and deprives them of some of their attempted monopoly on violence. It can also just simply keep you alive.

This essay is going to have more technical components than most of my previous ones. In part it's because the subject warrants it, but it's also because it seems the shit is hitting the fan right now, even if we won't get splattered much until a few months from now. I therefore feel the need to help you all prepare yourselves in the best way possible, and giving you the best advice I can to help you make your own decisions about that. It's something I largely avoided for a time, focusing on all the other essential survival skills. All of the things I've discussed for softening collapse are also just smart things to do that will help you through a hard collapse as well. And the subjects of this post are also applicable and useful in soft collapse scenarios, but much more so in a hard collapse.

I've been wanting to write something like this for awhile anyway, because I've noticed that the subject of defense and security is completely taboo in the sustainability scene, and mostly absent in radical political scenes these days (to my knowledge basically since the Civil Rights Era). The former I can credit likely to the insistence on dogmatic nonviolence that so many naturalists shove and have shoved down throats for decades, or perhaps simply the denial that not thinking about it will make it disappear, the latter likely caused by decades of psychological operations aimed at demonizing militants willing to defend themselves combined with popular images of ultra-conservative zealots preparing for the Second Coming. I do, regularly enough, hear the politically active discuss the right to self- and community defense, and even the political power in being armed, but all save a few every actually bother to take measures to defend themselves and their families. To put it simply, the lack of the will to fight to defend your very life has been brainwashed into civilized humans, just like any other domesticated animal, and I want to tear that particular aspect of domestication to shreds.

So I want to discuss with all of you, and urge you, to think realistically about defense. I want you all to be able to defend yourself because I want you to survive, and I don't want those that do survive any coming hardship to be the racist, sexist, homophobic, hierarchal capitalists and religious zealots. I want those that live to be the people who will actually work with me, or work on their own, to build sane, sustainable, egalitarian cultures post-collapse. And I don't want to do all the defense work myself!

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
-from Derrick Jensen's Endgame

This culture creates a lot of sociopaths and violent personality types. In fact, it encourages it. People who exploit others to "get ahead" are praised and rewarded, particularly when it takes the form of doing business. But even for those who aren't businessmen, abuse and control is the normative form of relationship in this culture. This is particularly true for those who have more privilege in the society, and especially when dealing with those who have less. This is the hierarchy of violence I've written of, articulated by Mr. Jensen, manifest in macrocosm with the government of occupation's attempted monopoly on violence, and in microcosm in countless homes and streets.

People with privilege who don't recognize it, or see it as natural, or deserved, and particularly if their wellbeing and income depend on not recognizing it or seeing it as natural, will feel threatened when that privilege is taken away. They may attempt to reassert it. In the case of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we see that racial hierarchies of violence manifested in response to the imposed collapse of the city. Numerous reports came out after the fact of gangs of white men shooting numerous black men, with the professed excuse of stopping looters, despite overwhelming accounts that many were just out to shoot black people.

I don't have easily available statistics, but I know that incidence of rape and domestic abuse go up during a hard collapse. Again, violent, this is sociopathic types asserting their dominance when it's threatened. We see some of the highest rates of rape in countries that have gone through severe economic hardships, like small scale collapses.

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
-from Derrick Jensen's Endgame

I'm as much worried by those in power as I am by those lacking food or asserting dominance. Scratch that, I'm way more worried about those in power. This includes corporations as much as it does government, insomuch as there's a difference. For one, they are trying to assert power, in another, more broad way. They are trying to stay in control. With this culture's psychotic, abusive tendencies, it seems highly likely that both those in power trying to keep that power, and those other psyhopaths looking to gain power, will attempt to use violence and coercion to achieve their goals. They can quickly switch from friendly fascism to a much meaner kind. Considering that those in power already have massive weapons, and that they've proven time and again that they care more about power than human and non-human life, I see no reason to assume that they'll go quietly, meakly, into the night.

The powers-that-be use violence every day to maintain this insane system we call civilization. Those of us at the heart of empire perhaps don't see it directly, because the bulk of the violence perpetuated by the rulers is exported to the periphery of the empire's reach. We see this in oil wars and puppet dictatorships. I said in the last essay that the collapse of civilization will mean the drastic reduction of violence by empires trying to maintain their hegemony. The other side of that, though, is that the violence of the empires sometimes turns inwards towards its own subjects, either in attempt to maintain control, to vent its collective anger like an abusive husband does, or both. It is possible, though, for many soldiers and police to simply defect when they can't be paid any more, and we can only hope that AWOL troops don't decide to use their skills and stolen firepower to set up fiefdoms.

(Luckily, some military units are learning permaculture, and hopefully the philosophy along with the skills, as it could mean people versed in both defense and sustainable food production capable of setting up decent communities)

Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.
-from Derrick Jensen's Endgame

At this point it seems stupid to even have to debate with the dogmatic pacifists that will certainly object, claiming that violence only begets violence and throwing a mountain of quotes from Gandhi and Dr. King(selectively, as those quotes from King chosen by white pacifists are only ever those that make the white power structure feel good). So I'll only give it a small amount of my time (since Derrick Jensen has already done a better job), and let dogmatic pacifists know that their shit doesn't fly here.

Violence does not necessarily change you. Fighting back against an attacker does not turn you into them. Killing attackers is sometimes the only way to stop them, so violence can stop violence. And even Gandhi once said "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."

That's all I'll say about that.

We as sane communities attempting to forge together some sort of sane, sustainable, and egalitarian existence for ourselves need to understand that not everyone else is, and that some people are evil. Some people will behave in an evil manner whether collapse is hard or soft, even on the (impossible) chance that collapse doesn't occur. In collapse situations, some people will likely become desperate to simply stay alive, and given this culture's conditioning they'll get violent. These people simply trying to survive aren't likely to be the major cause of our need to defend ourselves, though. It is those people who are attempting to assert the privilege and dominance mentioned above, or who simply have no concern for other beings and have no problem hurting and killing them to gain power for themselves (as many of them do indirectly today with economics). Some sick people inflict pain for fun.

It follows that communities and individuals need to establish ways to defend themselves from attackers. The most obvious aspect of this seems to be simply being armed. The presence of effective weapons alone is often a deterrent (I wrote elsewhere of the number of sexual assaults stopped each day from women simply pulling guns on attackers).

For most of the people reading this, the most readily available and practical weapon available is a firearm. Firearms are relatively easy to operate, requiring minimal training. They aren't cheap, but they aren't yet prohibitively expensive, either. Most working class people can afford one or two, even if they can't afford to target practice that often. They are also somewhat level the playing field; a small woman will do just as much damage with a particular firearm as a large man, given the same training. Actually I've heard more than once that women tend to have better aim (so I plead to all my women allies to train so you can protect me!)

It needs to be mentioned every time someone talks about guns for defense and/or hunting: learn to use them as safely as possible. They are very dangerous if used or handled incorrectly. Taking a course on firearms safety is a good idea, even if most of the stuff is common sense.

I have a few recommendations for people getting firearms. The first is that everyone should have a .22 caliber rifle/carbine available to them. It is perhaps the single most useful survival firearm, used mostly for hunting small game but also capable of doing damage for defense. It also makes little noise compared to other firearms, and the ammunition is very cheap. In particular I recommend a semi-automatic gun, like the Ruger 10/22 I recently bought. The AR-7 survival rifle is also supposed to be pretty good. The most common home defense firearms are 12 gauge shotguns, though 20 gauges are good too and are lighter. The 12 gauge can use a variety of ammo types, and is a very standard hunting gun. They also depend to be fairly inexpensive for the ammount of firepower you get. Depending on the shell type, you can hunt most types of game, and it's a highly effective weapon at short and medium ranges for intruders, in fact viciously so. And finally, a proven military style rifle is always a good idea for defending a homestead. I say military rifle because many of them are capable of taking abuse without malfunctioning. Some of the military surplus guns are affordable, too. I went with a semi-auto AMD-65, which is a modification on the most common rifle in the world, the AK-47. I hear that a Mosin-Nagant can be bought for $100-150.

I also think it's really important to understand as much as you can about firearm mechanics, or at least have someone in your community who does. It's about as useful as having someone around who can fix cars, and they tend to overlap. If it is too expensive to arm yourself, prohibited in your area to own firearms, or you just want to expand your community's defenses, it is really usefuly to be able to make firearms. There are a handful of sites and books that have basic plans. Shotguns are the easiest to home-produce. Generic disclaimer: obviously I won't tell people to go break laws; you're all hopefully smart enough to figure out whether or not to break laws depending on your own circumstances.

Also consider weapons like pepper spray, clubs, knives and other blades (I recommend machetes for both practical tool use, and as weapons), spears, longbows, and crossbows. Hell, even a heavy pipe will do. Firearms might be highly effective, but there's always a place for the big stick. Molotov cocktails are just glass bottles filled with gasoline (and often motor oil or some other thickener) with a rag for a wick. With the collapse likely being caused by the oil economy decline, I doubt making a ton of these will be practical, but knowing the basic premise behind them is good. And again, that's illegal, and I don't condone it outside of emergency situations. But definitely use whatever means you feel necessary to keep your family and community safe.

Not all of defense is armament. Understanding defense is at least as important as having functional weaponry. A defensive position can amplify the defensive capabilities of a community's firepower many times. In particular, I suggest learning about funnelling attackers and creating chokepoints. There's a reason the military puts up so many of those sandbag walls; they create cover, and can force enemies to go certain ways and slow their approach. The Mohawk Warriors at Oka in 1990 created barricades out of wrecked cars. Tires packed with dirt and stacked up, like is done to create the walls of a earthship, are effective barriers for defense.

Body armor is highly useful, of course. Modern kevlar vests and tactical armor originate in homemade experiments using the fiberglass linings in truck tires. Famous Hollywood bank robbers used armor made from tires, which apparently was quite effective. I've read instructions for saturating tight-knit felt with silicon caulk, which apparently binds the fibers so they disperse force like kevlar. Atilla the Hun's soldiers used layers of silk to catch arrows. The Inca made armor that was combination basket-work and thick wool, which reportedly stopped musket rounds as well as steel breastplate, and at half the weight. The main thing to understand is how armor works, which is by force dispersal. Combinations of hard materials with interlock layers have huge potential, even if they'll be bulkier than kevlar.

Finally, when you have no chance to stop an attacker from overtaking you, you need to get away. Stealth, avoidance, and evasion skills will be useful to individuals and maybe even small groups, but medium to large communities probably won't benefit much from the skills. More important for larger groups will be some people occupying attackers, perhaps with suppressive fire, while the others escape.

I hope this piece didn't come out sounding too much like some crazy manifesto or the ravings of a gun nut. But I care less about that than getting intelligent people to be honest about the need to defend themselves, and how important it will likely be in the coming decade. Food, shelter, warmth, and clean water are certainly more primary than security, but security can be more urgent when the need arises, and when you need it it's too late to start thinking about it then. Please start thinking about it. Please start taking measures to defend yourself.


Essays of mine to read:
Foundational Acorns
Community Organizing and Planning for the Future
An Appeal for Community
Tyranny, Exploitation, and Unsustainability
Collapse, Hard and Soft Collapses, and Why You Should Care

Other Resources
The Survival Podcast
No Bullshit Survival Library

I wrote this some months ago, and pondered whether to post it. It's a semi-serious list of reasons I think individuals and communities need to be realistic about self defense. It's also a good teaser for what I'm planning for my next post.


1.) Civilization*
1a.)racism
1b.)misogyny
1c.)fascism/corporatism
1d.)mercenaries like Xe(formerly Blackwater, USA)(see 1c)
1e.)police violence and state sanctioned murders(see 1a and 1c)
1f.)corporations are "people", and I'm not sure if we are (see 1c, 1d, and 1e)
1g.)sociopaths/controlling personality types (see 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f)
1h.)psychopaths (see 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f)
1i.)lack of access to food (see 1c, 1f, 1g, and 1h)
1j.)religious fanaticism
1k.)militias (see 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1g, 1h, and 1j)
1l.)vegans, apparently(see 1a, 1b, 1g, 1j)

In my previous essay, Tyranny, Exploitation, and Unsustainability, I covered why societies based on unsustainable lifestyles, those that take more than they give and reduce rather than maintain biodiversity, necessarily lead to systematic violence, slavery, and a host of other illnesses of civilization. This is obviously important to anyone who wants to better the world, since we need to have working models that are just to replace those that are unjust and unsustainable. So many activists overlook this fact, because our culture as a whole discourages direct relation to the land, to physical reality, in order to keep subjects dependent on empire. So political theory ends up flawed, simply by virtue of ignoring the physical limitations of the world.

This essay picks up where that one left off. Now that we understand the effects to humans (and non-humans) that civilization naturally engenders, it is necessary to understand its ultimate terminal result: collapse. Collapse is inevitable for any unsustainable system. It's the fate we've seen countless other civilizations meet in the past, the Romans having been one of the best recorded collapses. Geomorphologist David Montgomery notes in his fantastic book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations that all past empires have collapsed as their soil turned to sand after centuries of agriculture. In case you don't understand this simple fact, I'll quickly explain: if you use more than is freely provided by the creatures you share the landbase with, and/or are not giving back enough, you will necessarily degrade that landbase and its ability to support life. You therefore have to either collapse down to a manageable size, or expand. And you can only expand so far until one constraint or another, usually energy or logistical concerns, stops you, and you collapse. Clear enough?

Collapse is, overall, a good thing, particularly in the long run. Collapse of civilization will mean that empires will no longer be able to use military might and economic exploitation (insomuch as they're separate) to kill, enslave, and emiserate the vast majority of humans on the planet. It will mean a reduction and eventual end to militarism. It will mean corporations will no longer be able to destroy landbases, to poison rivers and fields, nor will they be able to keep control of over 90% of our food supplies in the hands of six companies. It will mean human communities will be able to once again create autonomous cultures with self-determination. As fellow rewilding writer Jason Godesky explains, Collapse is an Economizing Process, and the bulk of people do better economically after a collapse. Derrick Jensen describes his definition of taking down civilization as "depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor, and depriving the powerful the ability to destroy the world".

The likely cause of this culture's collapse seems to be Peak Oil, if Peak Soil or Climate Change doesn't do it first. I'm hoping for Peak Oil, which luckily seems to be going according to projections. I see it as preferable because the other two are either dependent on or cause massive ecological breakdown. Because our economy is based on oil, and because it takes twenty years at best to convert an infrastructure to another source of power like wind (which is also unsustainable, by the way, and requires oil), as the oil costs get too high it will not be worth the effort to extract the oil to run the industrial machines, and industrial civilization will collapse. This is obviously a simplified explanation. For more thorough explanations and nuanced understandings, I recommend searching for LATOC (Life After the Oil Crash) and Mike Ruppert.

Collapses occur in two ways, or at least that's how I'm going to simplify it for the sake of this piece (they occur in numerous ways, but I think two categories can help us characterize these collapses in a useful way to understand the similarities). The two types of collapse are hard and soft. This is of primary concern to those living in cities, as cities are places that resources flow into. They require constant importation, because too many people are living there for the land to support. This importation is largely true in the suburban and rural areas, but because this is imposed by lifestyle and not generally population concentration, the effects of collapse do not hit as hard there.

So what is it that make collapses typically softer in less populated areas? To simplify it greatly, there are more resources. Because in our current society "rural life is just city life with a view", everyone is effected by collapse, but not equally. Resources available outside of the cities, like more small farms and wild spaces to hunt, fish, and forage, are more common, even as they're divided up for fewer humans. There might still be too many people for the landbase to support indefinitely, but the difference isn't so great as in cities. In most cases, it's more a matter of people living in the suburbs don't even recognize the resources available, and therefore won't utilize them. In some cases, their cultural bias stops them from even using available resources. The Donner Party resorted to cannibalism, reportedly while camped in a grove of Pinon Pine.

Cities, once the just-in-time delivery systems of the supermarkets dry up, have little in available resources, and far more people vying for them. Add to this the fact that city populations are generally already more stressed from being packed in, from economic factors, and from lack of connection to wild nature, and the picture doesn't look so good. And while those living in cities with more privilege (whether it's white, male, and/or socio-economic privilege) have more to lose from the collapse of the system that gives them those privileges, it is those with less privilege that can be subjected to further violence and exploitation in the initial stages. As it has been for a while in this system, the deck is stacked against them. A collapse in a city could easily turn out to resemble Octavia Butler's post-apocalyptic (and eerily prophetic) novel Parable of the Sower, in which issues of race, class, and gender during collapse are examined.

Luckily, there are factors that change the character of collapses. Dmitri Orlov, a Russian man who moved between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. during the former's collapse, notes in his book Reinventing Collapse that one of the reasons the Russian people weathered the collapse of the Soviet Union relatively well was that the bulk of the population was already used to supplementing their food with gardens and forage from wild spots right outside the city. The system was inefficient, so they were less dependent on it.

While gardening is certainly increasing in popularity, it's still not that common, particularly in cities, and particularly among the working class. Since these people make up the bulk of the city population, and since they are the ones who can most benefit from gardening and foraging to lower food costs, I feel that increasing the frequency of these activities in cities is one major way to soften the coming collapse. Indeed, it is why I try earnestly to teach basic foraging to anyone who will listen, and intend to buy copies of permaculture books to donate to community garden projects in poorer neighborhoods.

Another of the factors Orlov cites include the closeness of family, which meant available supportive community. Areas with supportive, cooperative communities will fare better. This is something I think will actually exist more in certain areas of cities, and will help in softening collapse. It's largely enforced by economics, wherein a lot of working class folks, particularly ethnic minorities, still live multigenerationally. It's just cheaper and more practical, in some sense. It's also more like how we're adapted to live as a species, albeit not in cramped apartment buildings.

Any sort of ecological restoration softens collapse, for reasons I've discussed thoroughly elsewhere. There is also the matter of basic defense, but I'll cover that in an upcoming post.

I discussed in An Appeal for Community the socio-political implications of self-sufficient communities, which is based on the understanding that civilization specifically acts in such ways as to deprive traditional communities and cultures of their self-sufficiency (think purposely destroying bison populations to bring down the Lakota, or the damming of rivers to make the indigenous of the Pacific Northwest dependent on outside resources), that is when it doesn't outright kill people, or enslave them at the point of a gun. In a sense, lack of access to land on which traditional cultures are based forces subjugated people into dependence slavery, a slavery not enforced by physical force but rather by economic force with the veneer of consentual involvement. There's also the simple financial benefits of economic self-sufficiency of this manner; if you are able to gather/produce some or all of your own food, that is less money you need to spend on groceries (and for doctor's bills, since the homegrown food will at least have fewer toxic chemicals, even in cities, and more nutrient density).

So these sorts of economic self-sufficiency soften the effects of collapse, since this economic freedom correlates negatively with dependence on the collapsing system. Fostering higher levels of community and individual self-sufficiency is a major goal in my rewilding, and I'm confident to say it is the same for many rewilders. The common misunderstanding is that we're basically anachronistic reenactors, but the reality is that we're agents of a cultural rennaissance that understands that we civilized humans need to change our way of life at a fundamental level in order to be sustainable and equitable. I've discussed the fallacy of techno-progressivism and the term "Stone Age" in other posts, and while I might do another post on the ideas again soon, I won't here. So our work may look more like a series of primitive skills workshops, and that's important. But rewilding can also look like a permaculture homestead tended to by a few families. It can look like rockers singing songs on stage. It can look like a survivalist making bugout bags so her family has as much chance to live no matter what, or punk freegans tearing up asphalt in vacant lots. And it can look like starting community gardens in the middle of the city, and strolling down crowded streets picking up acorns on the sidewalk with some friends. It can look like forming gift economies between neighbors. It can look like all those things at once, even within a single community. The point is not to be purists about living like hunter-gatherer-gardeners, but to make significant efforts to make the transition to that state easier. If small communities do manage a sustainable, self-sufficient, egalitarian hunter-gatherer-gardener lifestyle, then all the better to help others!

Hopefully those radicals who read this, and even those who don't consider themselves radical but just care about human rights and freedom (remember, 'radical' just means getting to the root), will see the importance of fostering conditions to soften collapse. It's as much a way to lessen the sting of economic inequality and systemic violence as it is a way to lessen the sting of collapse, so in essence even those of you in denial about collapse can't argue that these aren't good things to do.

I've been listening to The Survival Podcast lately (feeding my renewed interest in more mainstream survivalism) and the host's first rule of survivalist mentality is that you shouldn't do something unless it improves your quality of life, regardless of whether or not there is an emergency or collapse. Gardening does this, as does foraging. Having sensible systems of food storage, particularly those not reliant on electricity, improve quality of life. Finding even a little time to do these things, to just grow some tomatoes in a pot on your window sill or harvest those edibles in a vacant lot, will improve the quality of your life. Fostering community and individual self sufficiency can only improve quality of life. And that alone can have profound effects to communities and societies. It might not fix everything, but it can do a hell of a lot of good.



Look forward to an upcoming post that builds upon this one and the earlier ones mentioned above.

My partner Kris has been saying that I should post one of my recipes that always goes over well: venison adobo. I've made it for Rewild New England gatherings, as well as in general from time to time. The last time I brought it to a gathering, a friend of mine who hadn't eaten red meat for ten years chowed down, remarking that it was the right way to eat red meat. I also quickly became the best friend of his canine companion.

As most of you know, I've been making efforts to get closer to the Filipino side of my family, since the rich heritage of the islands is something I didn't get much exposure to growing up. The name adobo might easily be recognized as also being used to describe Mexican dishes. This reflects the common history of colonization by the Spanish, and in fact the Philippines were governed under the same colonial government centered in Mexico. The term adobo I've heard means 'sauce', so it was easily applied to a common dish which has as it's means of cooking simmering ingredients in a broth/sauce.

The following recipe is part of my synthesis of traditional Filipino cooking, wild cooking experimentation, and my own style. It's one of my favorite ways to prepare meat, because it's easy and it makes the meat very tender. You can put any meat in substitute for the venison, and maybe even some vegetables/fruits. I once tried making eggplant adobo, but messed up the recipe.

Ingredients:
-Venison, cut into chunks of about 2"
-Water or broth
-Vinegar
-Garlic
-Fish Sauce
-Ginger(optional)
-Black Pepper(optional)
-Coconut milk(optional)
-Hot peppers(optional)

Most recipes say to use water and vinegar for the broth to simmer it in. I prefer replacing the water with a homemade bone broth, particularly deer bone broth simmered for over 24 hours. Put your venison into the pot or crock pot, start cooking it, and put just enough of the broth (I usually go for about 2/3 bone broth and 1/3 vinegar) to cover the meat. Add a couple splashes of fish sauce, about 1/2 cup (I use the Filipino patis fish sauce, which can be found at most Asian markets. Some are more concentrated and only require a few shakes). Crush several cloves of garlic into the broth; for a couple pounds of meat 6-10 cloves of garlic is usually good, though I like a lot of garlic. Add the optional ingredients if you want for variety. Simmer this for at least 20 minutes, though my preference is to simmer it for over an hour. In the crock pot I often let it go overnight. I generally prefer to rapidly boil down the broth into a sauce at the end.

Traditionally adobo is served with rice, though I often serve it with veggies.