Survivalist References Saturday, Oct 10 2009
nuclear 9:13 pm
Since Popular Mechanics is focusing on survivalism, now is a good time to reference Nuclear War Survival Skills and Patriots. The latter was written by a right-wing Christian bigot, so apply salt as necessary, but many of the logistical points address what would be necessary to survive if there is a nuclear war or a hydrogen bomb is detonated over the US (EMP, lol!) It would be hard. In fact, I know it’s impossible for me to both maximize my effectiveness to the Singularity and care too much about survivalism. Survivalism is important to consider, however, because the fact is that human society and civilization is a delicate thing. Food and water go away, and you have millions of psychos — fast.
For a real underground survivalist text, see the The Killer Karavans by Kurt Saxon. Again, written by a bigot, but still, very realistic and sad.
It could happen tomorrow. Cities need constant trucks to bring us food, water, and gasoline, otherwise everyone will get desperate.
Nuclear War Survival Skills is also funny/sad because it points out how essentially all bomb shelters built throughout the Cold War had insufficient ventilation. If there were a nuclear war, there would have been a hell on Earth as people in bomb shelters would be forced to kick each other out into the fallout cloud just so they would have enough oxygen to breathe.

October 11th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Most survivalists are kooks, and I’ve known people with that sort of mentality in the past. I see survivalists as humanity’s insurance policy. Under ordinary conditions they’re people with strange views whose sanity seems questionable at best, but if some disaster were to strike it’s the semi-delusional redneck who had dug a nuclear bunker in his back yard who might stand a better chance of survival than average.