Won't The Zombies Just Take Your Food Storage Away Anyway?
Sharon January 29th, 2009
Whenever I do these classes and start posting about food security, we come up against what I would call “the zombie issue” – the idea that marauding hordes of some sort will immediately emerge if we ever need our food storage, and promptly take it away from us. There are a host of reasons I don’t buy this, one of them being that I think the “0 to Zombie in 30 seconds model skips over the fact that a whole lot of grey areas exist in between 0 and zombie 
, and most of the middle territory is far more likely to be enacted than the most apocalyptic anxieties/fantasies.
But for the purpose of the discussion, let’s imagine that there’s been some major disruption in food supplies and the undead are getting hungry.
Now I’m still somewhat skeptical of the “zombie theory” for a number of reasons. They include:
1. The assumption is often made that the zombies all come from cities, and by implication are often one of those “thems” - which to me suggests that underneath our zombie worries are some older and uglier assumptions about who we’re really worried about. We saw how this played out in New Orleans, where reports and assumptions about violence were far greater than the reality – most of the violence that actually occurred was caused by people who thought they knew that bad guys were coming for them – even though they weren’t. Our fears of the other from the city are complicated, and not always rational. Sometimes, they create the situation they fear.
2. The zombie theory tends to assume a well organized, armed populace of people who have guns and maybe gas (or maybe walk in an organized fashion), but no food, descending on a population of unarmed, pacifist agrarians. This is seriously messed up for a host of reasons.
a. The trip out of the cities is longer than most people think. Let’s say that a mass of angry, hungry zombies plan to march out to the countryside to get food, say, from New York City. Well, before the zombies get to me, they’ve got to cover 200 miles of suburbia, not filled with food. Then, they have to be able to recognize and obtain food from the farms – that is, they have to be able to look at the oats and say “yum, let’s take those…and thresh and hull them and roll them into oatmeal and eat them!” If they are on foot (and let’s assume this isn’t winter), they are going to run out of steam somewhere in White Plains, long before they hit my neighborhood. If they might make it here, and run into the harsh reality – most rural areas don’t have a lot of gardens, and the things they produce often are the components of food, rather than food as most people who don’t cook recognize it.
b. Rural people are armed and work together well. Guns are usually among the tools of ordinary work out here – people hunt, they run off predators, they butcher livestock and use their weapons. Is it possible that zombies could overrun things? Sure, but it would take a fair number of zombies. How did they get trained? Where did they master the territory?
3. For the most part, and there are historical exceptions, zombie hordes are not what you have to worry about most in difficult times. That is, if people are truly hungry, what people will worry about most is not the “random evil folk from far away” but their near neighbors who compete with them for resources. This is much more likely to be expressed as a rise in the crime rate – less zombieism, much more “I beat you up and took your cash and food on hand.” Now that’s not good either – but preparation for dealing with those basic crime security issues is rather different than for preparing to fight off the local zombie warlords. In that case, your community is needed and essential.
Crime rates against people didn’t rise much in the great Depression, although light theft of food or small amounts of money did. For people who wandered about looking for work or food, they were more likely to be victims than the perpetrators – in many towns the homeless during the Depression were thrown in jail, and used in forced labor, simply for the crime of being poor. They were victims of crime quite often. Crime rates did rise in places like Russia after the Soviet collapse, but the zombie reality never kicked in. More crime has its tough parts, I don’t diminish this, but people who live now in extremely high crime areas find strategies for dealing with it. I’ve lived in such areas myself.
My point isn’t that no one will take your food away – maybe someone will. Or maybe you’ll lose it to fire, flood, or having to evacuate. Life doesn’t really come with certainties. But I think we have a disproportionate fear of being targeted, in part based on the idea that we’re all going to experience things equally. Now if everyone stops getting food all at once, it may be pretty obvious who has the food. But how often does that happen? There will be some rich folks and poor folks in most likelihood. We probably won’t know what our neighbors have – some will still have a job and maybe some food coming in, some may be relying on stores, some may have virtually nothing.
I don’t find myself compelled by the idea that your stores will make you a target – or rather, any more than having a job or any other thing most of us don’t plan to give up unless we have to makes us a target. In fact, most of the victims of rising crime are poor people in poor neighborhoods – that is, right now, the targets aren’t the fortunate, but the unfortunate. And that tends to get played out over and over again – it is the refugees and those without anything who lose the most. Not always. But history stands against the “your stores will mark you” analysis.
But most importantly, all of this assumes that your stores exist entirely in isolation – that you in your house sit there with your food and eat when others are suffering. But I think that’s very much unlikely for most of us – I’m sure if things get really bad, we’ll develop some kind of insulation against suffering, simply because we can’t help everyone. But at the same time, those we’re in relationship with aren’t going to disappear, either. And we are very much unlikely to live in a world where we know now, today, that this is the last crust of bread, and there will never be any more, and thus, sharing will starve our children. That happens in novels, and not much in real life. In real life, what happens is that you share, and the next day, perhaps your neighbor shares the food he found with you.
Indeed, in most poor cultures, the obligation to share is taken far more seriously than it is here. In poorer times the fairy tales about the widow who gave the last crust of bread to a poor stranger, and about greedy rich people taught the cultural message that you shared because it was right, and also because what you shared returned to you.
Joetta Handrich Schlabach, writing in _Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook_ (a wonderful book) writes of a story a friend of hers who was visiting Lesotho. She visited a friend ‘Me Malebohang. They discussed the bad pumpkin harvest, and how ‘Me Malebohang had only 8 pumpkins for the whole winter. As the friend got up to leave, ‘Me Malebohang offered her guest the largest of the pumpkins. When the guest refused, saying she couldn’t take one of her pumpkins, ‘Me Malabohang answered, “We Basotho know that this is the way to do it. Next year I may have nothing in my field, and if I don’t share with you now, who will share with me then?”
And even if you imagine that the worst case scenarios came true, the “last crust of bread” scenario becomes a reality, there is this – for some of us, how we live our lives matters as much as the lives themselves. In the end, if, G-d forbid, we are confronted with that choice, I at least have to believe that those harshest and most uncertain moments are the ones that you most need your own moral underpinnings – doing right may be more important than one more day.
But realistically, I don’t expect that most of us will face anything like that particular set of tragedies. That doesn’t mean life won’t be harder, and that some people won’t go hungry – indeed, America has plenty of hungry right now. But not because we’re all fighting over one last crust of bread.
Sharon
- Food Storage
- Comments(51)
Good thoughts! I will say re: Crime rates against people didn’t rise much in the great Depression, although light theft of food or small amounts of money did.
Sadly, we are not those people anymore. Respect for others’ property, a person being true to their word, the ability to be self sufficient: all gone.
That said, I’m just moving forward, day by day.
Peace to you Sharon.
But the zombies really ARE coming…
http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/strange_news/offbeat_kxan_austin_road_signs_warn_of_zombies_200901282181340
Sorry – I couldn’t resist. I saw this story and your post within minutes of each other, and it really made me laugh!
Excellent post sharon! I have always believed that the fear of the “other” is one of the bigger problems we carry around with us. I am enjoying reading your book ” Depletion and Abundance” this week.
I kind of have to disagree a little. In contrast to during the G.D., people now will destroy things just to make sure no one else can have them, even if they don’t recognize it as ‘food’…so your scenario of them leaving things alone on various farms I don’t find realistic.
In parts of Africa where there is anarchy and chronic food shortages, the gangs will destroy farmers’ crops just because they can, and to prove the point that everyone must be beholden to them (the gangs) for their sustenance. It’s a power play, and one I can easily see taking hold in certain areas of the country, and in certain people.
Now, widespread? Maybe not. But definitely within the realm of not only possible, but probable.
I store more than three years worth of food, a few months of water (and a Katadyn filter just in case that water runs out) and up to 20 years of other items. I’m just as enthusiastic about stockpiling guns and ammo as I am food, etc. If someone came and asked for food–no problem–always glad to make someone a meal (note: “a meal” not a permanent freeloader situation). If someone came to forceably TAKE food away from me–well, let’s say they won’t be getting quite as warm a welcome.
All good points, and I absolutely agree with you, but you neglected to mention the point that I always thought made the whole conversation pretty funny: Exactly _how_ are my food stores going to mark me as a target? Am I putting a sign in the front yard, or will my daughter’s not-emaciated cheeks give me away? I don’t exactly keep the extra beans in the front room, and even if I did they’d just look like buckets. I guess it’s vaguely possible that some neighbor would have a pretty good idea that we had food and sic the zombie hordes on us to escape safely themselves, but now we’re imagining some pretty complex scenarios just to get out of the responsibility of providing for ourselves.
Unlike you, we do live well within range of refugees from the city, but even so, I tend to think of that in terms of possible moral dilemma…sharing food with individuals is one thing, beggaring your family to feed large groups of starving people is…hard to think about.
I’ll keep stocking my pantry and crossing my fingers that somehow this can be avoided and that we are just all having a bit of Y2K panic again…..I hate the thought of mauraders and people being forced to steal to eat….
I agree with Meadowlark that we are no longer those people but I’m not sure what kind of people we have become.
People have much higher expectations and are not use to being denied , this sense of entitlement migh make some of them more dangerous. It’s also just as likely to make many of them them suicidal zombies unwilling or unable to take care of themselves.
Depression rates are so high now in a period of excess that (assuming they are available) drug abuse, booze and deep throating a .45 will certainly take a lot of them out when things get bad. We’ve already seen a rise in murder suicides over financial issues.
The level of gun ownership makes zombies that much more dangerous but since most people, (especially urbanites ) have never killed anything themselves or even learned to use their gun properly, these wanna be zombies will be as large a threat to themselves as the they will be to savvy farmers.
I do think extravagent excess by those who store or hoard could make them targets but because I think affordability rather than shear lack of food will be the issue people will phase into hunger over time making spontanious zombie hoards unlikely . Also the employed, the rich and the prepared will share the heat making unlikely the zombies will mass against individuals. Just make the effort to lose some weight and look a little grubbier so your not the only fat prosperous person in hood.
I think there is some small threat of showing afluence which is why I blog behind two layers of alias. This however is partly because I’m not only preparing for food security but I also an advocate of hard currency(gold and silver) which in the worse case scenerio could make me more affluent than I’ve ever been (which is not saying much). I’m also Canadian so I don’t really fear my neighbour that much. Should I?
I think the best thing to do to protect you from your neighbours is to include them and educate them. You don’t need to say “I’ve got a years worth of KD in the basement” but you can say “With times getting a little harder would you like my help in starting a garden.”
“There is a great deal at the farmers market on a bushel of tomatoes/peaches/, would you like to split it and I’ll show you how to make homemade ________?”
You might just find they know how to do something or have a skill and just don’t bother, you might reawaken their motivation and learn something yourself.
We keep our food storage program a secret..doesn’t mean we won’t share with relatives and friends…but basically non of them even know what to do with wheat or beans. None, at present grow much of a garden…maybe a few tomato plants is all. We’ve actually had people steal our tomatoes, our diesel, our chicken feed until we now have to have everything locked up when we are gone…yes, even the chicken house is
padlocked. Pitiful to live like this in the country.
But I can’t afford to feed the neighbors chickens, I can’t afford to have people raiding my freezer in the garage or my garden/orchard. I’ve worked hard for this store. We know who they are but how to prove it? Same folks shot a neighbors’ cow when he complained about them four-wheeling on his property and destroying his fences…then his barn caught on fire…hmmm. So we keep a low profile.
DH suggests he ring the yard with his bees…no one ever seems to bother them!!!! But then the insurance co. won’t insure you ’cause they are a danger–found that silliness when we tried to get cheaper insurance. I could bring 1000 people here and 999 won’t go anywhere close to the bees…..DEE
Go ahead, keep stockpiling food. Zombies, vultures, wolves, Terminator mobs of unemployed people aren’t going to ASK before helping themselves. They’re going to take whatever they like by whatever means necessary.
Big hairy topic, Sharon.
One adjustment that might help- if you can make it; there’s tons of things you can do to effectively protect yourself from what I refer to as the “casual” predators.
Like mounting a 50 caliber machine gun on the top of your house. Even a dummy would be effective- if the neighbors don’t know it’s a dummy.
Security lights work. etc.
But- there should be a limit to your worry- you just cannot protect yourself against organized and determined predators; your hope there is to escape and survive. Like- a rogue Army platoon, with a tank, and RPGs. Trying to “prepare” for that kind of eventuality would consume your life.
So. Let it go. Practice escape, maybe. But DON’T let these worries own you.
Sharon is right (of course) …
But…
people seriously storing a year worth of food must be considering a very dire circumstance a real possibility, so (excuse my generalizing ) they are very likely to be armed as well – home invasion / robbery / etc. are not any less likely than a year long famine.
On a separate note – involving community / sharing – if the neighbor does not enthusiastically catch on and store a sufficient amount themselves – sharing will not work -
I would share the lemons and tomatoes that grow in my backyard, but I would not be able to share any wheat or beans – if you tip anybody off to a comfortable amount of food you have stored…
While all they did after your multiple attempts at “well we live on a earthquake fault line so we should be prepared …Katrina blah blah … FEMA blah blah…” and all they do is buy this “great bucket at costco – there is all kinds of emergency supplies + 3 days of MREs”. Great.
So this is my question, serious now:
I have 2 little kids – same with neighbor – very nice friendly people. Lets say they have no food, I have a few month to a year of staples stored.
How can I share ?
I don’t want them to starve. But if I bring over a cup(pound) of rice – I might as well put up a sign:
“I HAVE FOOD”
And then its just a matter of time before in some conversation with someone else they offhandedly mention this, and someone else (my neighbors ARE good people) will pay me a visit
How do you share? without exposing yourself to dependency or outright assault?
Besides there are more little children on our block than houses – none of them should starve.
I don’t want to have to chose between my kids and their friends. I am not a cruel person…
What would you do ?
TJ
Another factor to consider: the hordes – zombies and others – may not be so unorganized. In most places where civil order has broken down, what has developed is militias. Some are serious about protecting their territory or ethnic group. Some are just jumped-up gangs with a little more discipline and more powerful weapons.
Our country – cities, suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas – are replete with a great many military veterans, former police officers, armed private security, and, of course, the most heavily-armed private citizenry on the planet. All this is in addition to active and reserve military, the National Guard, and local, state and Federal police.
I think that serious civil disorder which is not promptly quelled by the authorities would quickly bring about militias organized and led by the aforementioned citizens with military or paramilitary experience. As in other places, these militias would range from the tightly-disciplined, well-armed guardians of their neighborhoods to barely-organized gangs dedicated to accumulating as much wealth (however defined) as possible.
Organized foraging into the countryside by such militias once their original territory is depleted seems, to me, much more likely (and much more effective and hence dangerous) than random mobs of starving folks.
If such a militia were to seek to confiscate a food stash, the personal arms of a householder and his neighbors probably wouldn’t make much difference, except maybe to turn a robbery into a massacre.
Hey ya’ll don’t forget there are a lot of us homesteading and stuff like this IN cities, we got our own local community organization. Why would I flee my city in a “zombie horde” when my city is also a farm and community of people who know s*it can go down? We’re planning here too, and storing food, and learning skills for living without power and modern convenience. Going car free.
The ‘other’ may not be so otherly. =)
[...] Casaubon’s Book » Blog Archive » Won’t The Zombies Just Take Your Food Storage Away Anyway? Whenever I do these classes and start posting about food security, we come up against what I would call “the zombie issue” – the idea that marauding hordes of some sort will immediately emerge if we ever need our food storage, and promptly take it away from us. There are a host of reasons I don’t buy this, one of them being that I think the “0 to Zombie in 30 seconds model skips over the fact that a whole lot of grey areas exist in between 0 and zombie
, and most of the middle territory is far more likely to be enacted than the most apocalyptic anxieties/fantasies. [...]
Zombies?
Zombies don’t scare me all that much.
Now, a husband and wife with nothing to feed their kids, those are the ones I’m concerned about.
A single family can travel very far even on half a tank of gas (even further with one of those modern yuppie gas sippers) They wouldn’t have to look for a prepper, any house with any food for their hungry kids would do.
My house looks like any house
So they knock the door and ask nicely, you could give them a little something, but would they leave? Maybe you deny them, right away or after having given that something, and things get tense, one thing leads to another, people are pushed around, guns are drawn …
These matters universally end bad.
At least I could in a clear conscience shoot at zombies, throw a chemical concoction at them or feed them something with amanitin/digitalis/cyanide in it … It would have to have turned very dangerous before I’d consider killing the father or mother of a present child.
And a very violent/dangerous place is not one you want to be in.
Then there’s likelyness and quantity:
The idea of zombies just existing is up for discussion, and even those who think they could come to existance will admit that confrontation with them during anything other than a lengthy depression and subsequent state of anarchy is far from likely.
Is there anybody here that thinks there won’t be desperate families abound? Anybody that doubts they will exist in great numbers and will go to great lengths to feed their kids and themselves?
Screw zombies, hell is other people.
For TJ who asks about the kids on the block… well keep talking to the moms about preparation and emergency supplies. Right now the conversation really should be pitched as preparing for economic bumps. Food storage as cushion against job loss etc. That’s the most real catastrophe for folks and IMHO it’s what we’re most likely to need the stores for anyway.
I agree that if you’re really going to need to live on that one year’s worth of food, so many other societal changes will have occurred that we can’t really predict what they all are.
If you’re a Christian, just remember “consider the lilies of the field.” But still store some food!
I have been reminding my neighborhood email list about storing food for earthquakes. About 1/3 of the population here are Asian immigrants and they store food anyway – I see enormous bags of rice going up the steps on men’s shoulders. The rest of the folk… well … there is a church that runs a 1x month food distribution. There are several other extant churches. There’s a big school. There’s a gardening club, lots of permaculturalists, a horticulture school up the hill that teaches permaculture, a feed and tack store (yes, in Oakland, serves the horse owners at the top of the hill)
Civil unrest a la Detroit riots of the 60s seems like the most pressing and possible bad outcome here. But this mixed neighborhood has survived almost a hundred years of ups and downs. We shall just have to see.
My emergency backup plan includes retreating to my mother’s property in a small city in the South, if we can get there. But they’re running out of water, tehy have climate and crime problems there, too. Hmmm
Frankly, I just don’t worry about it too much. I take certain precautions and let the rest go. We’ll cross the bridge IF we get to it.
And thanks to Sharon we do have 2 months’ supply of food stocked, plus emergency bug-out food kits including oats, bulghur wheat, canned tuna and salmon, can openers & utensils, tomatoes, beans, dried milk etc. All in two tote bags ready to go.
I’ll never forget hearing about the family from New orleans who had a plan for evacuating. They did, got a family of 6 including gramps out with supplies in good order and were reestablished in Memphis with new jobs (they’d scoped out where to go and where to get work long before) while FEMA was still plucking people from rooftops. It’s good to have a plan.
I think it’s important to point out that, if things get so bad that there’s marauding hoards of _anything_, well, current affairs and history tells me that cities are the safest place to be.
If Leningrad wasn’t depopulated during WWII, if people can keep on living in Beirut during the civil war, then it’s entirely possible to survive in a city.
And, while life wasn’t very much fun in Leningrad during the siege in WWII, it was still safer than being in the rural areas nearby. For example, there’s a small town in what is now the Ukraine, where the entire mechanized front between the Nazis and the USSR, with it’s tanks, artillery, and air power, rolled right across it 4 or 5 times. By 1945, you couldn’t tell there had ever been a town there.
Take a look at states in various stages of collapse like Columbia, South Africa, Sudan, Somalia, the Congo region, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and some parts of Mexico.
The last place where some measure of “law and order” is maintained is in the cities. Sure, compared to even a bad neighborhood in the USA, Bogota or Medellin are dangerous cities. But they’re nothing compared to how dangerous the countryside is.
The countryside in countries that are in various stages of collapse is usually firmly in the hands of bandits, militias, organized crime, or some hybrid of all these things.
I’m staying in my city, thank you.
“The assumption is often made that the zombies all come from cities, and by implication are often one of those “thems” – which to me suggests that underneath our zombie worries are some older and uglier assumptions about who we’re really worried about. We saw how this played out in New Orleans, where reports and assumptions about violence were far greater than the reality”
Actually, it’s even worse than that.
In a predominantly-white area, nearby a predominantly black area, it seems a bunch of ‘good ‘ol white folk’ got together, pooled their firearms, and went all vigilante.
Except, um, apparently being black in that neighborhood was clear evidence that you were a looter.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/thompson
Sharon, I couldn’t agree with you more. And all these folks who are unwilling to share are depressing the hell out of me. KJ, I agree that there are amazingly good things going on in the cities, including far more cohesive neighborhoods than some of these people who are sitting around out in the country with their guns waiting for their neighbors to attack. I think a lot of this is thinly-disguised racism (which makes it even more depressing), so let me say this: I have known a LOT of poor people of color in my life, and almost uniformly, they have been the most astonishingly generous people I have ever met. As Sharon pointed out, generosity and sharing are a bedrock value in most traditional cultures, and people share what they have, even when its next to nothing (and even when they barely know you).
I am certainly not going to fight over the last crust of bread – that would be, as you said Sharon, a life not worth living. And realistically, I think mass starvation is unlikely. However, malnutrition used to be quite common, and may well become common again. I’ve given a fair amount of thought to this, and I think if food is in short supply, those of us over 50 should volunteer to be the ones malnourished. Children are our collective future and they need moms and dads to raise them. Grandparents are wonderful, but frankly if there isn’t enough food to go around, we’re expendable. I would gladly go hungry to make sure my children and any future grandchildren are fed. And I would do the same for my friends’ and neighbors’ children.
People take the path of least resistance. If I’ve got guns and ammo and start shooting… and the neighbors don’t have guns and ammo… then that makes them an easier target for any maurading hordes.
Remember, when a bear attacks your campsite, you don’t need to be the fastest runner–you only need to be faster than the slowest runner.
Sharon I’m glad you wrote about this. In my group of friends, who are all suburban bound growers of food and medicine, fear that these zombies have already targeted or will target them and steal their harvests.
It’s crazy, because they are sincerely afraid of it. I try to reason with them and tell them that zombies can’t fly, that they won’t have a pickup truck and a bike sure as hell can’t carry much food. Well, it could, but it would need one of those bike trailers.
I’m going to pass this along to said friends and hope they grasp what the message written so well.
Sharon, I think the African descent into anarchy/armed thug gangs, similar to guerrilla actions in Latin America, are a more likely scenario. The civil war was some time ago – but in regions, the bands of roving vigilantes, ex-troops, isolated ex-leaders – marauders – are still common folk lore.
While civil order lasts, National Guard armories will stay intact, gun dealers will maintain control of their inventories, collectors won’t be talked about by neighbors. And gangs, thugs, organized crime, and militias will all keep their heads down. But in regions with inept or light control, or where parts of the civil order have been dismantled or hobbled by events..
One of the biggest tragedies of the zombie issue, will be that, like most robberies, more food will be wasted and destroyed that made use of. When food is scarce, communities and thugs alike will be moved to horde what they can find or seize – for black market sales as well as to feed their own people and families.
Any bars that remain open, from today onward, will be places that locals and outsiders can lurk to find out who is well prepared, has this or that equipment, firearms, ammo, food, family or alone, etc. Plus, thugs won’t worry a whole lot about grabbing folk and roughing them up for leads to caches of food and weapons.
If the zombie apocalypse happens, if what is coming isn’t the mere social and economic collapse of the Great Depression, it might instead be either local or regional failure of civil order. Maybe we should be studying “Mad Max” movies, instead of Great Depression history. Just kidding. But really.
What to do is a quandary. Look strong – and you might weather weak predators, but invite the large roving bands of pillagers. Look weak, and you invite attention less often – but may need to spend more effort defending yourself.
When I hear the folk that claim they have enough guns and will to use them to weather any storm, that bothers me. In novels (“A Company of Stars”, Christopher Stasheff, an excellent, schlocky, mild science fiction/broadway theatre of the future novel.) martial artist instructors always counsel avoiding a confrontation unless death is threatened. Heinlein’s “Door Into Summer” recommends, when any weapon through rocket launcher is available – a good knife. “Stay scared, the surprises won’t kill you.” “Deed of Paksennarian”, Elizabeth Moon – if you think you can best a lone wanderer, don’t be surprised if there are two others, waiting to ambush.
Zombies will reckon anyone with guns has something to protect – something worth taking a look at, if only just the chance at decent weapons and ammo.
I don’t know the answer. I think Sharon likely has the right of it, participate in your community, proceed as if the crisis were to be survivable, be prudent as much as possible.
And I think I want a couple geese. Geese are supposed to be decent watch animals, and goose grease was thought to be a useful lubricant in the past.
The hubby and I had similar discussions about what we would do if there was a disaster and we had food and others did not. I pointed out that 1) we do not know who else is prepared and 2) do we want to watch our neighbors desperate if we could help, even if it meant shortening our own supply. After he thought about it, he agreed that we needed to do more preparation and make decisions when and if a situation came about.
I had another couple thoughts to share with this discussion. I don’t see the logic in saving up years worth of food you can;t transport so that you are stuck on whatever piece of land you have if something goes down. You are stuuuuck. Somthing people are going to have to let go of in a possilbe crisis is ownership of shit. You have to share. American culture will be our downfall in a crisis, we are so ding individualistc and DIY instead of DIO(urselves). That thinking is going to bite you in the ass.
I have friends and acquaintances in my city, Portland OR, who are part of the anarcho-primitive moment. Although I am not as extreme as some of them, there is incredible use and value in relearning primitive hunter gatherer technologies.
The land can feed you if you know how. Relying on guns and modern weaponry and cultivated crops in a possible Armageddon is nigh foolish as all these things will run out in time. Learning how to kill game with a hand made bow, a snare a trap, how to fish, how to make nets, how to recognize edible wild plants and the seasons and areas and regions they grown in. How to skin and make clothing from your game, how to build shelters of all kinds. How to start fire without flint. Natural building, pottery without electric kilns, basket making. Skills that you can pack up and move. Things that allow you to travel with ease in a community and alone if necessary. All these skills are being taught here, not just to crazy idealistic radical leftist youngish people like me, but to kids. the next generation. Something to chew on. =)
Also, I want to point those in fear of their neighbor to the documentary on Cuba after the embargo. It better to love and help your neighbors to get through hard times than to worry if there is enough food for all. http://globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657
Fear breeds hate.
One stick is not as strong as a bundle of twigs.
You are screwed without community in a crisis. No matter how much ammo you have.
I have better hopes for us.
A couple of things for folks: If everyone has a gun and they choose to shoot anyone that ticks them off, everyone will either be a better neighbor or a better shot. Both are useful skills.
Know your neighbors, good or bad, so that you have a perimeter for the zombie attack.
Putting a .50 on the roof in peacetime is called “disturbing the peace”. I can carry a sidearm in the open in my state, but if I do, I will probably be ticketed for it (unjustly) and have to fight it in court.
Store up lots of whiskey and put it where the zombies will find it. Drunk zombies are easy targets.
That all said; a community is what you make of it. If you treat people with respect and help out conspicuously, then chances are, you will have help when it comes to the marauders.
I really like the bees idea. Gotta keep that in mind and do something with these extra hive boxes….populated or not…;-)
A couple of thoughts: The Africa example isn’t really valid for a couple of reasons. One is that Africa as a whole is extremely overpopulated. It’s one of the worst areas in the world (China and India being the other two). Second, Africa has a long history of warlords, ethnic gangs, militias, and civil wars. Remember, this is not a country but a continent and one that was ruthlessly torn apart and brutalized by colonialism and then knit back together in patchwork fashion by the same colonial authorities that cared for their own interests rather than that of the Africans. Futhermore, there have been and still are outside interests fomenting trouble throughout much of that area and these only encourage the problems rather than preventing them.
Second, I agree that casual crime is going to be much more of an issue than zombies. Working with your neighbors and being vigilant (as well as keeping a gun handy and making sure you can and will use it) are the best deterrents to that.
Third, as far as the local warlord/militia/gang scenario, if civil order declines by that much, the best way to prevent that is to be sure you and yours and your community get organized FIRST.
Finally, to whomever said Leningrad wasn’t depopulated during WWII: the majority of the people in the city starved to death during the seige and most of the survivors will severely malnourished.
I have read accounts from people who lived through the Argentinian collapse. Banditry in the rural countryside is a real threat. It does not come in the form of desperate hoards of people, bu in the form of well organized bandits who will carefully stake out a homestead before attacking. Often they would torture the farmer and his family for days to get them to reveal the location of hidden valuables.
In a rural setting, homes are farther apart and people are more geographically isolated. Safety will only come from people clustering. Having a hosestead where you know neighbors but all physically distant with not offer protection.
Having spent some time in Papua New Guinea during their revolution, my observation was that the cities were fairly scary, but the countryside was absolutely horrific. Port Moresby is one of the poorest cities on earth. There are shanty towns built on floating refuse extending over many square kilometres of ocean, and every few years they burn, people die… the next year they are rebuilt. In this environment, there are wealthy people (almost all of the white people have more money than the natives for starters) and there are people who have literally nothing, and yet the biggest threat to life in the city while I was there was rebels coming in from the countryside (certainly that was what came closest by far to killing me, although the guard dogs in my aunts compound were number two on the list).
We know our neighbours where I live. When there is a lot snow we shovel for the guy on our north side, because he is older and had a heart attack a couple of years ago. We do favours for the folks on our south side all the time, and they do favours for us. The north side neighbour uses his snow blower whenever the snow is shallow enough for a snow blower to be effective. We all share things with each other. I would trust either of these households. In fact, we pretty much know everyone on our block to some degree (and we are anti-social goth types in a middle class neighbourhood). The advantage of the city is that everyone is close to each other, you know what is going on in your neighbourhood unless you explicitly choose not to.
On the flip side, in the country you may not be able to even see your nearest neighbours house. If someone does decide to move in without their permissions (and if you read Orlov’s stuff you know that this is mostly something that happens to those who live in mansions and the like… or at least it was in the former Soviet Union) you may not know about it for a while. You probably won’t know about it if you are one of the isolated armed camp style survivalist that Jim Rawles seems to want everyone to be. That lack of information makes you fare more vulnerable than a simple lack of weapons.
I can’t even imagine being so rich that stockpiling food, or anything else for that matter, is an option. Or buying enough land to worry about learning to grow your own food. Or any of this stuff that the peak oil people worry about. The whole lot of you look ridiculous to me… like billionaires crying over having just several hundred million dollars left. YOu’re so insulated by money you have no idea what’s going on in the real world so you project the worst of your own inner tendencies onto the rest of us. I’ll tell you what — the worst crimes get committed by rich people protecting their money, not hungry people searching for food. You all need to look in the mirror… your rich, white fellow food- and ammo-hoarders are much more likely to get violent than people merely looking for something to eat. God forbid any of you try to talk to those zombies-in-waiting before things deteriorate further. God forbid you try to set up economic links between country and city to ensure things don’t get to that point to begin with. No, hoarding food, gold, and guns and cowering in fear of the urban black zombie hordes is so much more noble. The rich always want to believe themselves to be victims of the poor.
For whoever said, “I see Asians going up steps with 50lb bags of rice”, don’t assume that they are acutally storing it. Asians eat a ton of rice every month, and they buy in bulk because of that .
I’ll be buying 50 lbs of rice and 20 lbs of beans from now on, every time I buy those items. Rice is so expensive in the grocery store, and it is much cheaper to buy in bulk.
Sharon, I really enjoyed your “zombies” post.
Hm. Hey, Sharon, I just noticed something missing here!
Jan’s comments about rural isolation made me thing of it.
Radios, folks. You need to own and be familiar with GMRS hand held radios, and own several. (General Mobil Radio Service. Legally, you need a license; it’s free if you fill out the forms, then you get call letters. In reality; probably 20% of the people who buy them bother with the license- and as far as I can tell, no one cares. Yes, we have one.)
We use them all the time- 160 acres is plenty of room to get lost in.
The phone system may go down. The radios will work anyway.
And- I’m pretty sure ALL my neighbors already own them too; we avoid using the same band, as a matter of courtesy- but in a time of need- it would be very easy to set up regular check-in contact kinds of things, and ways to call for help.
Avoid Midland; they don’t last. We use Cobras; cheap and way more durable than other cheapos; we’ve never coughed up for the really expensive ones; don’t know how they perform. Get the most powerful ones.
They have plenty of daily uses too. We take them when we go to town- if we’re in a big store, we can split up and never worry about finding each other. Last night a family member leaving for the night called back to let us know he’d actually managed to bull his car through the new drifts, and was safely on his way.
Do you already use them Sharon?
Well if a family eats 50 lbs of rice in a month, and they buy 50 lb bags, then they have a month’s worth of rice, right? That’s storing. It’s not storing a year’s worth, but it’s storing. I’m saying those folks are prepared for short disruption of food supply – better than folks who don’t carry 50 lb rice bags into the house.
Chiron, Unfair.
while there are the a smattering of gun toting survivalist types commenting here at times I also see a great number of people looking for ways to connect with, help and educate their neighbours I’ve also seen enough comments on this site to know that this site is not an haven for rich compound owners ploting to kill their grounds people lest they steal a loaf of bread.
I see a lot of people questioning how to help others.
My ability to prepare is far from a sign of richness, I’ve scrounged, scrimped, gone car free, I forgo buying cloths, nice things for my home or even painting as often as I should so I could be prepared for something far more important than making House and Home.
I’m not going appologize for staying out of debt and living within my means so I can prepare, neither should someone appologize for being rich as long as they’ve done it ethically and spread some of it around to those who need it. Neither failure nor success necessarily denotes personal blame.
I also find it offensive that you assume “rich” white folks are the only ones preparing, I find that my Caribbean and Central American contacts are the most prepared in that they accept that shit does happen, they’ve already lived it at least once, they have reasonable expectations and some existing skills in these areas. In many cases they don’t even know they are preparing for a crisis its just the way they were raised at home.
Your assumption about who I percieve my personal “zombies” to be is just nasty. I fear yuppies, stock brokers, and ceos more than the average black person because I already know they have no regard for life or the planet since they caused these problems in the first place. While zombies may choose to congregate in homogeneous groupings (if they rise at all) I’m quite sure there will be representatives from all the flavours of man. Except perhaps devout Mormons who already have a years food stored away. You wanna find zombies they will be staking out the neighbourhood Mormon, Poor saps, I hope they do have guns.
Re: blockaded Leningrad, people starved and died and …. – don’t bring up things you are not able to even imagine. zombie hoards would be a picnic compare to that.
Also a note from long ago from grandma in law – one who had 3 small children on her hands during and after THE war (ww2) and no husband – and hers’ was a FIRST HAND account:
those who shared died.
those who stole, marauded, etc. survived
the noblest, bravest, etc. did not return from the front lines
supporting my earlier conjecture – my wife recounted her grandmas’ stories about those who were kind and shared – tipped off their tiny food reserves – DIED (were robbed, killed or starved).
Basically for all the wartime heroism we read were taught about in soviet schools – she had no (none whatsoever) faith in people after what she saw and had to endure.
But then again (not intending to insult anybody) none of us is likely to be able to even imagine what people went through in that time in that place.
So if you failed to get your neighbors prepared – you better look as hungry as they do, because realistically I don’t think I would be able to shoot their kids, now my wife might, but she is a special “case”
LOL
on that cheery note
back to work
TJ
to “Green Assassin Brigade”
with you 100% RE: CHIRON
i do all I can, I sleep less, vacation … not at all, don’t eat out, my car is 10years old, etc etc
i am not going to be shamed by somebody who thinks that $34 50lbs sack of wheat makes me “RICH”
may be if I looked at the lifestyle of CHIRON i would find it “ridiculous” – wasteful, mismanaged etc. or may be not, either way i don’t need to lash out at it – one thing I have learned – its impossible to get into shoes of another (hard enough to lace my own
)
I do not go to forums for “foodies” to say that their culinary acrobatics are ridiculous, or some hotrodders forum to complain that they are rich bastards wasting precious oil on their stinking/noisy hobby. That would be a pretty ridiculous pass time, don’t you think ?
TJ
Green Assasin — no, my observations are very fair. I’ve been involved with various preparations scenes since longer than most people here have known what peak oil even is, and everywhere it is the same.
First of all, fear of rampaging zombies from the city is fear of black people. It’s that simple, and continued denial of this fact is just plain dishonest.
Second of all, you think you’re so noble because you’ve “scrounged” and “scrimped,” gone without new clothes, or buying nice things for your home? You think you’re more deserving of comfort in hard times because you haven’t been driving? Those supposed soon-to-be-rampaging blacks from the city don’t have such options. “preparations” in the way you conceive the term is not something they CAN do even if they WANTED, nor can the millions of others who aren’t rich enough to “forego nice things for my home” so they can buy a year’s worth of freeze-dried food instead.
The peak oil scene is so concerned about “preparations,” but in fact EVERYTHING that it accepts as “preparations” boils down to one thing: “Gimme mine while the gettin’s good, and fuck everyone else.” All this ridiculous hot air about “community” is just a bunch of rich people banding together to get theirs, and fuck everybody else deemed not progressive/white/rich enough for admittance to the club.
“Preparations” for people who already don’t have enough to eat, who have never purchased brand new clothing or a car, is an entirely different matter. I have repeatedly tried to make this point and propose possible constructive actions that can be taken between the rich “preparations” crowd and the poor they so desperately fear — and have been met at every turn with hostility. God forbid the peak oil crowd ever listen to a thought that might help anyone not white, rich, and wired for broadband.
If marauding hordes of black people from the city show up at your doorstep, they’re not going to be mad that you have food and they don’t. They’re going to be mad that you hung them out to dry without even telling them, while there was still time and money to do something ACTUALLY constructive. And they’ll be be perfectly justified in seizing your stockpiles and throwing you and your family out in the cold.
Wow, you project your own racism wonderfully. I am white, and not in a hundred years could I afford “a year’s worth of freeze-dried food”. Hope you never throw your life away assaulting my house, because there won’t have been much Purina Troll Chow laid up there anyway.
please ignore the troll
I live in an American city with a large poor population. Beggars here want fast food or cash, not beans and rice. They can’t cook plain, basic food. I’ve offered to load a grocery cart full of basic storage supplies and fruit and vegetables for a single mom with several children, and been refused.
Even my neighbor’s son, a nice, trustworthy, but thoroughly urbanized young man, could not recognize corn plants when his mother pointed over my fence to them. Even the RACCOONS raiding our garbage cans did not recognize or raid my sweet corn!
What I’m saying is that we probably will have gang problems in the big cities- but they’ll have to have Grandma around to cook for them (and find fuel, etc.) to be able to steal your food. As long as convenience stores and fast food restaurants exist, your food (but not your money) will be too much trouble.
Chiron
And what would you have me do?, What is your grand plan?
I already expect to share my food, my seeds and probably my meagre little house (1100 sq ft), with external people who are either to poor or to stupid/unaware to do for themselves. My sole purpose for gardeneing this year is not even to feed myself but to increase my seed stocks so I can extend help when I can. A 20 fold increase in my supply of open pollinated will provide several families future food security, if they access land. I can’t pull acerage out of my ass but I can supply them seeds and tools for a few of them. I do not have hundreds of MREs , they taste like crap, cost too much and don’t reperesnt my ideal of natural food. My hoarding is simply buying a bit more than we eat each week with the additional bonus cheques that my web site for silver investing brings in.
I don’t claim to be noble just rational enough to know the lifestyle I’m expected to strive towards is not sustainable and I’m doing what I can to make things better , and I’m not going to feel guilty about having less than 2% of my income surplus after cutting corners to invest in the future be it seeds, a solar oven or a few onces of silver. If what I thinks going to happen to currency does, the vast majority of those you think are rich will be reduced to the same level as those you advocate for. The peak oil issue is not the immediate big issue, the destruction of fiat money may surprise the hell out of everyone who thought they were wealthy
Thankfully I’m a Canadian and the majority of our non anglo ethnics do not feel oppressed. The majority of our populous do not own a gun and could not even load it let alone fire a gun without hurting themselves.
We also have a social safey net that while still flawed makes the U.S. look like Zimbabwe. It’s your societal defect that will make the U.S, Zombilicious, I’m hoping for a much more genteel, kinder, gentler depression than you will suffer.
I’m also an active Green, a political movement that advocates for a minium living wage for everybody. While we only represent 10% of the populous our country and all but one of our parites is far more progressive than the two shades of corporatism you suffer under.
Our demographics are such that Asian’s and probably Indians out number blacks, any roving black gang would have to make it though the Tamils, the Viets, and the Chinese Tongs before they’d make it to me. But since our cities are actually occupied by working people it makes ghettos, Gangs, crime and Zombie warming racks are far less prevelant.
Me I’m more concerned about the rednecks who DO know how to operate a gun and are a hell of a lot closer than the gangs. Of course with only 70-80 murders in a population over 5 million in the greater metropolitan Toronto most of us are just not that scared of any flavour of Zombie. Hell I should be more worried about you guys swimming the St Larence river than my neighbours.
Maybe I should not barge into what is definately a U.S. centric conversation, but your zombies will not be my zombies, unless they run out off food and cross over the boarder at Detroit.
In the U.S., the places where potential victims are armed have much lower crime rates than areas where they are deprived of the means of self-defense and punished if they use force to protect themselves from attackers. And since our nation is densely populated with few large nonhuman predators left, we need some humans to keep hunting large animals like deer or they will overpopulate, wreck the forests, then starve. Despite the obnoxiousness of our troll (who, it occurred to me, may be a white supremacist “concern troll”), it is true that some rural survivalists have racist fearoand hatred of urban people, and everyone here disapproves of that. It is equally true that some urban people have bigoted, dehumanizing views of “rednecks.” I hope you will consider that those icky gun-owning “rednecks” may be decent people who preserve a great many skills of potential future use to YOU.
Wow. “G-d forbid”? Seriously? -_-
Just because I have more than three years of food stored, up to 20 years of other items (like soap, booze, q-tips, peroxide, razors, blankets, etc.) stored, plus plenty of guns and ammo – doesn’t mean I’m rich. I’m not rich. I’m just very dedicated to being prepared. I made a conscious decision to give up other things so I can be prepared. I use a washboard and a clothesline. I do my dishes by hand, too. I grind my own grain with a non-electric grinder. I use oil lamps and candles. I get most of my clothes and furniture either for free, or from a thrift store. You don’t need to be “rich” to practice food storage. You just have to be willing to do without some items in order to free up the money for food, guns, ammo, etc.
The less urban or rural areas are no better than the cities. In fact, rural areas are now just as prone to gangs and crime as urban areas are but have less infrastructure to deal with it.
How you view this topic will be seen through the eyes of your own personal experiences in life. My family and I own our own business and have had several large losses to people are donkey’s behinds just because they can get away with it.
People will do just exactly what they are allowed to get away with. No amount of wishing it otherwise will change that. If you’ve never been the victim of a violent crime or theft then your understanding and feeling for this topic will be more idealistic.
If you live within 200 miles of a major city … less than a tankful of fuel … you live with the potential of having a catastrophic, city-based event effect you. People along evacuation routes can tell you that evacuees can be like locust, devouring all in their path. This can be legal devouring as in they are paying for things (food and/or fuel and/or rooms for rent) but they are still removing stuff from the economy.
It is also not uncommon for people to be shocked at their neighbors’ behaviors … or their neighbors’ children.
Don’t underestimate the potential threat that exists. Don’t let it own you, but don’t just assume it isn’t real simply because you’ve never been on the receiving end of victimization before.
It would be fair to describe the human species generally as “locusts devouring all in their path,” but it seems very harsh to apply that narrowly to consumption by refugees who are paying for goods willingly offered for sale. Almost any place is vulnerable to some sort of natural disaster, and if it happened to you, I doubt that you would refuse to seek shelter or consume food in the area to which you fled out of concern that you would unbalance the local economy. Where I live, gangs occasionally run amok pillaging for sport, so I am well aware of the danger of mob action. If that comes, it won’t be hard to distinguish from people peacefully trying to provide for their own subsistence.
I agree. The threat most likely to be faced is from your neighbors vying for resources. While the possibility exists for a horde of starving “zombies” the likely hood of crime being committed against lies mostly in the hands of those around you now.
I’m wondering if I should post an item on my experiences in Katrina because, Sharon, though I totally respect your immense knowledge and thoughtfulness, sometimes what you say is totally from the Wonderful Golden City of Oz.
First off let me be clear: Racism is not the issue! Whatever the demographics of an area is, is what you’ll see in percentages of bad behavior. So if an area has 95% black and 5% all other, guess what you’ll see? If it is the opposite, guess what you’ll see!? Why do people have to totally jump on the racism thing. Jeepers…
Now as a person whose home and garden are 5 minutes by drive to the city center, but in what used to be the old suburbs of the smaller original city (if you can picture that), I already know that it will be up and out for me. Either by the river behind my house or via land vehicle.
It isn’t usually a concious grouping, it is more of an emotional following that happens and it is generally spontaneous and very creepy to watch happen. Members are completely irrational and do things they wouldn’t dream of doing before whatever emergency happens. But it takes something sudden and dramatic, (Katrina and L.A. Riots where I was for both) come to mind.
Long slow emergency or decline are probably even more dangerous because we don’t maintain a sufficient sense of urgency and eventually relax. Like another poster said, you’d be surprised what Mommy and Daddy Soccer Parents will descend to. Seriously, how safe are you the first time Mommy tries to comfort her child while her gums bleed and swell from the first stages of scurvy? If you’ve got Flintstone vitamins, Mommy’s gonna whack you for them.
Like one of the Russian Stalin-Era survivors said…”the only fat man in our town was the one eating children”. He was a businessman. So how safe is anyone is the burbs?
As for Chiron: OMG…grow up!
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