Survivalism
This article is about the subculture based around preparation for survival after social upheaval. For the belief about the afterlife, see Survivalism (life after death)A
survivalist is a person who anticipates a potential disruption in the continuity of local, regional or worldwide
society, and takes steps to survive in the resulting unpredictable situation. Some survivalists take an interest in survival in the
wilderness or at sea, while others look for opportunities to gain practice and training by assisting in government volunteer organizations. Still others look at historical incidents, either localized or affecting large regions, and put extra effort and funds into preparing themselves with all the tools and information needed to handle repeats of those same events.
The way in which survivalists prepare for some future loss while maintaining access to society is said to differentiate them from other people who endure extreme situations, such as those who live in very remote or isolated locations,
commandos and
guerrillas, and
subsistence farmers.
The specific preparations made by survivalists depend on the nature of the anticipated disruption, some of the most commonly anticipated being:
#
Natural disasters, such as
tornadoes,
hurricanes,
earthquakes,
blizzards, and severe
thunderstorms# A disaster brought about by the activities of humankind:
chemical spills, release of
radioactive materials,
war.# General collapse of civilization, resulting from the unavailability of electricity, fuel, food, water, and other goods and services. For this reason concern over the
Y2K computer bug led to a brief widespread interest in survivalism in
1999.# Widespread descent into chaos, or some other
apocalyptic event.
Taking precautions as a hedge against bad times is as old as history. The modern survivalist movement in the United States and Britain can be traced to several sources:
 |
A Duck & Cover movie poster |
# The Cold War era
Civil Defense programs; while emphasizing public shelters and local government function after a nuclear attack, they also promoted a survivalist mindset, and it became trendy for a home to have a well-equipped
fallout shelter in the 1950's. A prime example of the Civil Defense training is shown in the short training film
Duck and Cover of 1951, intended for training elementary school age children to protect themselves against the atomic bomb. # The directive of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its members to store a year's worth of food for themselves and their families# The publication of
Famine and Survival in America by
Howard Ruff in 1974.
Ruff's book was published during a period of rampant
inflation in the wake of the
1973 oil crisis. Most of the elements of survivalism can be found there, including advice on storage of food. The book also championed the notion that precious metals, such as
gold (As in South African
Krugerrands) and
silver, have an intrinsic worth that makes them more usable in the event of a socioeconomic collapse than other currency.
Howard Ruff later repudiated much of the book. He has kept it out of print and claims to have purchased the undistributed copies and destroyed them. However, Ruff later published a successful financial advisory newsletter and wrote a series of books with only slightly milder variations on the same themes. The most popular of those books was
How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, a best-seller in
1979.
Newsletters and a number of books on the topic of survival followed the publication of Ruff's first book. In 1975,
Kurt Saxon began publishing a newsletter called
The Survivor, which combined Saxon's editorials with reprints of old
19th century and early
20th century writings on various
pioneer skills and old technologies. Kurt Saxon used the term "survivalist" to describe the movement, and he claims to have coined the term. Around the same time, survival bookseller and author Don Stephens in
Washington (author of
The Survivor's Primer & Up-dated Retreater's Bibliography, 1976) popularized the term "retreater" to describe the movement, referring to preparations to leave the cities to a rural retreat when society breaks down. For a time in the 1970s, the terms "survivalist" and "retreater" were used interchangeably. The term "retreater" eventually fell out of favor, perhaps because "survivalist" has a more macho connotation. [
1] Another important newsletter in the 1970s was the
Personal Survival Letter published by
Mel Tappan, who also authored the books
Survival Guns and
Tappan on Survival. These newsletters functioned as important networking tools for the movement during the pre-information age.
Interest in the first wave of the survivalist movement perhaps peaked around 1980, on the momentum of Ruff's
How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years and the publication in 1980 of the book
Life After Doomsday by
Bruce D. Clayton. Clayton's book, coinciding with a renewed
arms race between the
United States and
Soviet Union, marked a shift in emphasis in preparations made by survivalists away from economic collapse, famine, and energy shortages which were concerns in the 1970s, to
nuclear war.
Interest in the movement peaked again in 1999 in its second wave, triggered by fears of the Y2K computer bug. Although extensive efforts were made to rewrite computer programming code in response, some people nonetheless anticipated widespread power outages, food and gasoline shortages, and other emergencies to occur.
The third and most recent wave of the Survivalist movement began after the
terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center in
New York in
2001 and similar attacks in
Bali,
Spain, and
London. This resurgence of interest in survivalism appears to be as strong as the first wave in the 1970s. The fear of a war or
jihad against the West, combined with an increase in awareness of
environmental disasters and global
climate change, energy shortages resulting from
peak oil, coupled with the vulnerability of humanity after the
2004 tsunami in the
Indian Ocean and
Hurricane Katrina on the U.S.
Gulf Coast and
avian flu has once again made survivalism popular. Preparedness is once more paramount in the concerns of many people, who now seek to stockpile or cache supplies, gain useful skills, develop contacts with others of similar outlooks and gather as much advice and information as possible.
Many books have been published in the past few years offering survival advice for various potential disasters, ranging from an energy shortage and crash to nuclear or biological terrorism. The old books from the 1970s have found new readership and are enjoying attention from anxious individuals and families as well. At the start of the 21st Century,
blogs (such as
SurvivalBlog) and Internet forums have replaced many, if not all, paper-based news bulletins. On sites such as Yahoo! Groups, one can find discussions and debates on subjects such as survival vehicles, survival retreats, and emerging threats, as well as general purpose survivalist groups- [
2].
Common preparations sometimes include preparing a clandestine or defensible 'retreat' or 'safe place' and stockpiling food, water, clothing, seed, defensive weapons, and agricultural equipment. Some survivalists do not make such extensive preparations but instead incorporate a "
Be Prepared" outlook into their everyday life. While some survivalists do not emphasize stockpiling weapons, many do.
The common goal is to allow a group to remain completely
self-sufficient for the duration of the breakdown, or perhaps indefinitely if the breakdown is predicted to be permanent, such as a the Second Dark Age concept, as popularized in the 1960s by Roberto Vacca of the
Club of Rome.
Specifically, survivalists assume they cannot prevent the collapse, and prepare to survive as individuals, as families, in small communal groups ("group retreats") or "covenant communities."
The specifics of these concerns and their related preparations have changed over the years. During the 1970's, economic collapse,
hyperinflation, and
famine were the most common fears. These were prepared for with
food storage programs, constructing a "retreat" in the country which could be farmed, and sometimes, stockpiling
precious metals and
barterable goods (such as common caliber ammunition) on the assumption that paper currency would become worthless. During the early 1980s, these concerns were eclipsed by nuclear war, with some survivalists going so far as to construct their own
fallout shelters. In 1999, many people purchased electric generators, water purifiers, and several months or years worth of food in anticipation of widespread and possibly months-long power outages because of the
Y2K computer-bug. Instead of moving or making such preparations at home, many people also make plans to remain in their relatively unprepared current locations until an actual breakdown occurs, when they will "bug out" or "get out of Dodge" to a safer location.
Other survivalists have more specialized concerns, often related to an adherenece to
apocalyptic religious beliefs. Some
New Agers anticipate a forthcoming arrival of catastrophic
earth changes and prepare to survive them. A small percentage of
evangelical Christians hold to an interpretation of
Bible prophecy known as a post-tribulation rapture, in which Christians will have to go through a seven-year period of war and dictatorship known as the "
Great Tribulation." Jim McKeever helped popularize survival preparations among this branch of evangelical Christians with his 1978 book
Christians Will Go Through the Tribulation, and How To Prepare For It (ISBN 0931608023).
As previously noted, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an official policy of food storage for its members. Some smaller religious sects have also been known for their belief in a coming apocalypse and the adoption of some survivalist practices. Among the best known of these groups were the
Branch Davidians, an offshoot of Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Many people, who are not "survivalists" in that they are not preparing for any total collapse of society or apocalyptic event, nonetheless make prudent preparations for emergencies. This can include, depending on the location, preparing for earthquakes,
floods,
power outages, blizzards,
avalanches,
wildfires,
nuclear power plant accidents,
hazardous material spills, tornadoes, and hurricanes. These preparations can be as simple as keeping a first aid kit, shovel, and extra clothes in the car, or maintaining a small kit of emergency supplies in the home and car, containing emergency food, water, a space blanket and other essentials, commonly known as a
bug-out bag, go kit, Get Out of Dodge (G.O.O.D.) kit, or a 72-Hour kit, named for three days' worth of supplies.
Some businesses have arisen around providing survivalist supplies, including businesses that sell complete sets of food supplies for specified periods of time.
Some survivalists take a militaristic approach and have an uncommonly strong concern about government involvement in their affairs. This is most common (though still rare compared to the total population) in rural parts of the Western United States, where a world view occasionally develops that growing interference from the
federal government, and the
United Nations (perceived to be, or to be aiming for, a
world government), is best countered through acquisition of suitable small arms and the setting of strategic
booby traps. However, not all who take military matters into their own hands are survivalists; see
Ruby Ridge and
Oklahoma City bombing. Since these are the ones who receive the most media attention, much of the public may associate the term "survivalist" with such
stereotypical individuals.
Kurt Saxon, who besides publishing a survival newsletter is also the author of the book on improvised weapons,
The Poor Man's James Bond, is perhaps the best known proponent of this approach to survivalism. Saxon's writings on survival tend toward
social Darwinism, with survivalism defined by Saxon as "Looking out for #1" and a need to be sufficiently armed to defend your refuge and your belongings from hungry people who might demand that you share them if society breaks down.
Such a militaristic approach is not shared by many survivalists, and is indeed condemned by many. The vocal advocacy of such an extreme position, however, gives survivalism a bad name in some people's opinion. As a result, some writers frequently, but incorrectly, use the term "survivalist" interchangeably with
right-wing radicalism. In particular, the mainstream media tends to abuse the term, mislabeling militants and miscellaneous extremists as "survivalists" when they are not at all the same.
There does exist an extreme and marginal fringe of survivalism whose motivation could be labeled
racist. One such group which contributed to giving survivalism a controversial name was
The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in
Arkansas, which adhered to the
Christian Identity religion and had extensive ties to the
white supremacist movement. Its leaders eventually faced a government raid and extensive criminal charges in 1985.
Some governments have from time to time encouraged citizens to prepare for emergency situations, including a situation which would result in breakdown of the infrastructure. An earlier
civil defense effort in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s fell into disrepair by the 1970s. These included the designation of many structures as official
fallout shelters, and
duck and cover drills in schools.
The U.S. government civil defense program was minimal during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, despite efforts by a few including Christian Dominionist writer
Gary North to lobby the government to resume civil defense efforts and build fallout shelters. Gary North co-wrote a book,
Fighting Chance to advocate for the return of the civil defense program. A renewal of U.S. government interest in preparedness and training did not happen until the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters. See:
Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).
Official government preparedness training has often been ridiculed or discounted by those in the survivalist movement. This goes in particular for the 1950s/1960s era duck and cover drills. One main tenet of the survivalist movement has been that people should prepare on their own or with like-minded people, not rely on the government to take care of them in emergencies. On the other hand, there is a growing body of thought in favor of community based efforts, widespread involvement in CERTs, and working together with
first responders. Many of those in favor of this approach reject the term "survivalist" [
3] because they see preparing in conjunction with government agencies, and preparing completely apart from the government, as two separate things; also because they emphasize that they do not anticipate any permanent or long-term breakdown of society which they say survivalists do.
Adherents of the
back to the land movement, which has been sporadically popular in the United States, especially in the
1930s inspired by
Helen and Scott Nearing, and more recently in the
1970s, as exemplified by
The Mother Earth News magazine, share many of the same interests in self-sufficiency and preparedness with survivalists. They differ from most survivalists in that they have a greater interest in
ecology, and sometimes the
counterculture, than most survivalists do.
The Mother Earth News was, as a result, widely read by survivalists as well as back-to-the-landers during that magazine's early years, and there was some overlap between the two movements.
Ernest Callenbach's 1975 novel
Ecotopia, about the secession of the
Pacific Northwest from the United States to form a new country based on
environmentalism, named the political party governing the new country the Survivalist Party. However in his 1981 sequel to the book,
Ecotopia Emerging, he qualified that choice of name by having the party leader state that the name Survivalist referred to the survival of the planet's ecosystems, not to people who hoard food and guns.
People outside the survivalist movement who have encountered similar situations to those survivalists are preparing for, either in third world countries or as a
lifestyle choice, usually assert that the survivalist's emphasis is misplaced for a number of reasons: the low likelihood of a scenario involving socioeconomic collapse serious enough to require exhaustive preparations but mild enough that such preparations would not be overcome by disease, looting, fire, war, or other external forces. Others who do anticipate and advocate preparation for response to a serious depletion of non-renewable resources are critical of survivalists on the grounds that their approach engenders paranoia and suspicion in contrast with
preservationist approaches that they argue increase cooperation and increase the likelihood of long-term sustainability.
Advocates of
nuclear disarmament are critical of survivalists in general and preparations to survive nuclear war in particular, on the grounds that, they believe, attempting to survive a nuclear war would supposedly be neither possible nor desirable, also saying that surviving requires rather a good attitude, which they presume such "pessimistic" individuals do not have. Counter-critics again respond with the fact that it's possible and desirable if you're far enough away from the blast radius of nuclear strikes and have an adequate
fallout shelter.
*In
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) John Connor's mother, Sarah Connor stores weapons in a coffin and in a rural farm, as instructed by Kyle Reese, John's father, in preparation for a machine-precipitated apocalypse.
The Postman is a novel and movie that depicts a post-apocalyptical future in America in which a survivalist militia is organized and preys on weaker communities.
Hatchet is a novel that follows the life of a
teenage boy as he survives in the
Canadian wilderness after the plane he was on crashes.
Alas, Babylon by
Pat Frank is an older classic dealing with life in Florida after a nuclear war with the USSR.
*The antagonist of
The Ghostway by
Tony Hillerman is a survivalist who finances his preparations for nuclear war by working as a
hit man.
Lucifer's Hammer by
Jerry Pournelle and
Larry Niven, is about a cataclysmic comet hitting the Earth, and various groups of people struggling to survive the aftermath in southern California.
Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse by
James Wesley, Rawles (the editor of
SurvivalBlog) is a novel about a full-scale socio-economic collapse and subsequent invasion of the United States. It was described by one reviewer as "A survival manual dressed as fiction." It is one of the most popular survivalist novels. An earlier draft edition of the novel was circulated as shareware and had nearly 90,000 downloads in the mid-1990s, well before the Internet became heavily populated.
*
Edward Abbey's 1980 novel
Good News is not often thought of as survivalist fiction, but it is about small bands of people in the Phoenix, Arizona area trying to live free and fend off the rise of a military dictatorship, after the collapse of the economy and government.
Lights Out, an online novel written by David Crawford (aka Halffast) that depicts life after an atmospheric nuclear explosion that causes a world wide black out. Link below.
*Two made-for-TV movies made during the 1980s,
The Day After in the United States, and
Threads in the United Kingdom, portray a nuclear war and its aftermath. Both movies were, at the time, among the most controversial movies ever made for television.
*The 1984 movie
Red Dawn portrays
Colorado high school students who take to the hills after a fictional invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union.
The Survivalist is also the title of a series of paperback novels by
Jerry Ahern.
*
Fallout, a post-nuclear role-playing game, is set some 70 years after a global nuclear war, and is centered around the character's own survival instinct, skills, and communities who are survivalistic.
Dawn of the Dead, both the
original and the
remake, deal with survival in a zombie-apocalypse scenario.
*
Robert A. Heinlein used survivalism as a common theme in much of his science fiction. For example,
Farnham's Freehold begins as a story of survivalism in a nuclear war, before veering off to explore other themes.
Tunnel in the Sky, explores isues of survivalism and social interactions in an unfamiliar environment. Perhaps more relevant however would be several of his essays such as
How to be a Survivor, counsel on preparing for and surviving nuclear war.
*
Sean Kennedy's
Tales From the Afternow follows a character who life in the wasteland of post-
nuclear holocaust America and must live his life by the survivalist creed to survive in the dangerous lands.
*The
Zombie Survival Guide is a serious-toned survival handbook written by
Max Brooks. It deals with the implications of various levels of
zombie outbreaks.
Patriots by James Wesley, Rawles (1998, updated version: coming soon): [
4]
Pulling Through by
Dean Ing (1987)
Le Temps du Loup (2003)
*
John Wyndham's 1951 novel
The Day of the Triffids is the story of the survival of a small group of people in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by carnivorous plants.
*
The Rubicon The public-side page, with numerous articles and a vast range of information, of the Rubicon survivalist network.
*
"Lights Out", Location of Online book "Lights Out" in PDF
The text of some classic survival books and other writings from the 1970s and early 1980s can be found online:
*
Fallout Protection (1961) [
5]
Nuclear War Survival Skills by
Cresson Kearny (1979, updated 1987 version): [
6]
Possum Living by Dolly Freed (1978): [
7]
*
Survival Under Atomic Attack (1950) [
8]
Tappan on Survival by
Mel Tappan (1981): [
9]
*Textfiles.com archive of articles that circulated online during the
BBS era, includes several Kurt Saxon articles from his old newsletter: [
10]
