How isolated should we be?

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#1

During the collapse, i can’t see anything but bad stuff going on in major population centers. with starvation, disease, and how stupid everyone already is, i foresee a lot of strife and people killing eachother.

Yeah it’d be nice if after SHTF we all made nice and planted gardens together, but there are way too many people on earth to feed after industrial agriculture goes to shit.

I have a big parcel of land to build the metaphorical boat on, and yes, i am aware of the irony of noah building a boat, but in imagining how things may play out, 20 or thirty miles away from a major city isn’t really that isolated.

I was wondering any of your thoughts on how far away from civilization would be considered safe from crazy marauders and the like.

#2

just off the top of my head, i feel like accessibility (and lack thereof) may be more important than physical distance. as well, i think a lot about being able to blend in with the folks in my area who are probably not anti-civ, but good at living off the grid, and the rural areas and whatnot.

#3

‘should’ always sounds like a dirty word to me.

we will all fail and succeed in varying amounts. I can guarantee your failure in isolation.

if there existed fail-proof strategies of safety, civilization would have adopted them long ago…

civilization didn’t form to oppress more and more people in different, more cruel ways, it simply doesn’t care to what ends it secures the safety of those nearer and nearer the top of the pyramid scheme.

I think prudence calls for ways to avoid threatening the safety of the pyramid scheme.

Prudence may call you to organize your land into a CSA, or to have other appearances or actualities of social benefit.

Remember, ‘the man’ doesn’t exist to fuck you, but he will if it makes him feel safe.

You are in the collapse now, are you being threatened?

Why do you anticipate ‘crazy marauders’?

Do you have something that will make ‘them’ feel safe?

Perhaps, if you were a source of safety in your community, together you will all have a reason to defend each other, thus ensuring your personal safety through providing safety to others.

Or, I guess you can set motorcycle traps? Build Mad Max walls of pain?

What are you interested in talking about?

Perhaps, not being cynical about the transformative power of community food?

First you must experience it. Then you must recreate it. Then you must sustain it. The experience will give you courage to move forward. The recreation will give you the knowledge lost as a born consumer, and sustaining the transformative power of food means sharing it with others so they too may have the courage to join you.

#4

I agree with TonyZ about the transformative power of food…but I think that self-defense (of ourselves and our communities) will also become very important.

Unfortunately, the toxic memes of civilization have had a deep impact on just about everyone living in it, and while many will be able to see a better way, when faced with the collapse of everything they believed they needed to survive (and the only way of life they have ever known), quite a few will simply go berserk. Just like in a crisis situation, how one (or more) will freak out and endanger everyone in their frantic attempts to save themselves, in the collapse there will exist a need to protect the community from people like that.

So the more we prepare ourselves for that, by developing our ability to defend ourselves and others, the better. Especially for women, and those with children to protect.

Jessica

#5

Noah,
In the early stages of a collapse, people will ransack what is closest to them first. As supplies dry up, people will spread out in search of more. The key to this is, will fuel be available? 20-30 miles when fuel is available could mean problems for you. My feeling is fuel will not be available for long, maybe a week. I this case, people will have to resort to walking, bikes, horses etc, thus making 20 miles safer. My property is 20 to a town of 2k people, but over 200 miles to the nearest city, with only a handfull of other towns 50+ miles out. I picked a very secluded, but accessable spot with much thought to what you have asked.

#6

How many Americans do you know consider a 20 mile hike impossible? I mean in their guts. They may know 20 miles is only two days at an easy pace, and one if you huff it, but for most people 20 miles might as well be a 1000 miles. Psychology doesn’t change that easily, even in the face of starvation. They’ll drive 20 miles. They won’t bike or walk 20 miles (most of them). And very few people know how to ride a horse. Those people who do make it twenty miles to your place you might as well recruit. And if they turn out to be really bad folk, well…in the end you and yours are first and in a world without police or jails that means exactly what you know it means.

But, being isolated from the craziness will be more a matter of psychology and knowledge than geography. Get your people together. Train yourselves mercilessly. And prepare each other mentally. Make up scenarios. Have the hard discussions. In the city, this kind of training maybe the difference between being the king of the hill and dinner. In the suburban and rural areas…probably the same thing with less death. Geographic isolation will ultimately be impossible. But without having a strong group identity, and the preparedness to defend it, that one person who made it to you 20 miles away with ill intent will be more than enough to destroy you.

  • Ben
#7

I have those conversations all the time.

Is it bad that me and my friends make up plans for the circumstance we have to kill my neighbors?

#8

I agree about most Americans finding a 20 mile walk undoable, though someone with military experience might see it as a walk in the park. Or someone who’s braved a 200 mile walk through a desert to feed their families sans collapse.

I have difficulty seeing mauraders coming in droves too far in the countryside, though it may depend on how densely populated your part of the country is and how harsh the countryside is. I feel pretty safe in my neck of the woods, or rather, I would if I had a parcel of land here. Over half of the population in my home state lives in one of two cities, only 40 miles apart, the rest of the state is ghost.

#9

Yes.

#10

I honestly do not imagine roving bands of marauders forming, or at least lasting long. Part of the fatal flaw of this society, even from the civilizationist standpoint, is that everything is so far away that it requires a car (at least at this society’s breakneck pace). I doubt folks will form bands that will try to travel on foot for miles on end, day after day, week after week to occasionally find some rice.

If such things do occur, the prime targets are the rich. If there’s a large mansion on a hill with the lights on, they’re going to attract attention. If you have a little cabin in the backwoods with a few bags of rice and beans, chances are people aren’t going to try to find you. If folks are limited to foot travel, they’ll conserve their energy and choose targets that are highly visible and likely to have supplies.

I don’t see things descending into some kind of Octavia Butler nightmare situation. But, what do I know?

#11

Of course, most of the wandering marauders/raiders in the Parable series were in the cities, anyway. The only ones with the fuel to attack people in the countryside were the well-funded fundamentalist paramilitaries.

#12

People will form groups to help ensure their own survival during the collapse regardless of whether they happen to be on this forum or not. Regardless of whether they read Quinn or Jensen or not. Regardless of whether they are otherwise so stupid they occasionally need to be reminded to breathe or not. Forming groups is in our nature, and when the best other alternative is a quick death people will do so. They will gather and fashion weapons. They will steal from each other, and the rich will only be the prime targets until people realize that they can’t eat big screen TVs. The people who will be targets will be the people who have something worth stealing. The rich don’t even have anything worth stealing now, and only the fiction of money makes them targets. During the collapse people will target those with food, shelter, or water who they believe they can defeat in combat.

Avoiding this fate then becomes an obvious exercise: make sure they either perceive you to have nothing of value or to be too dangerous to attack. If you actually are too dangerous to attack more power to you. But the real trick is the perception.

#13
make sure they either perceive you to have nothing of value or to be too dangerous to attack. If you actually are too dangerous to attack more power to you.
I would say:

-appear to be of no value

-be ‘formless’. Don’t let people know what your capabilities are, and they will likely not take the gamble.

*If you look really dangerous, intimidating, etc, then you increase the chances of attack ("what are they protecting?"). Give them nothing to judge by.

*"They [i]might[/i] have food, they [i]might[/i] be unable to defend," isn't exactly a rallying call to arms, and at the very least it will drop their morale in the event the group actually decides to attack.

-Be able to defend, should “formlessness” fail.

-If unable, appear able. You could try to prevent conflict by appearing to be far too dangerous to attack.
In the crazy situation we’re talking about, people will do very irrational things, though.

Read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. It’s available free online:

[center]http://www.sonshi.com/ [/center]

I bought the physical version they put together, and its pretty good. I like the effort they put into proper context and translation.

#14

i personally think that more important than isolation is evasion…being on the move almost constantly to evade disease and threats,and being invisible while doing it.