Food staples...

How much time and effort do you put into growing your own food? Can you support yourself if things were to go bad in the long term? How much of your food planning revolves around having a quantity of a food staple that you can't readily grow?

The problems are several... One is economies of scale - it's much more efficient to grow a lot of one thing, hence having mega-farms. Different plants have different needs, and if you're growing to sell, trade, or preserve, you generally want as much available in one go; when you're growing for immediate eating, you only need moderate amounts. It is easier to process (eg preserve) a lot in one go, rather than the time, effort, and fuel needed to do lots of small amounts.

But - you often need more than just one thing.

I raise this thought often when I make jam. Usually a few jars at a time, from fruit and berries that I grow. The simplest (and often best) recipes are simple - the fruit, a large quantity of sugar, and the juice of a lemon. The lemon provides pectin - the setting agent. The fruit is obviously needed. It's the sugar which could be the problem - I do not have the space to grow enough sugar, be it in cane or beet form, to deal with what I use. Easy enough to solve in the short term - it keeps for many years if kept dry. What if it was more than a short term problem?

Does the space required for growing sugar balance the space needed for wheat/corn/barley/etc.? Who around here would grow grain, and trade for what I choose to grow.

Some problems would be solved with having more space to plant & grow - but that would also mean needing more help to harvest, weed, maintain... This is one of the reasons that scales of economy work - it's easier to grow more of a few things that some of a lot of things...

Gang violence

If there's one thing that does concern me, it's gang violence...

I would like to specify that I do not condone violent acts, but we must consider them in context...

Who are you going to call when there is no chance of police protecting you?

The best answers that I've seen are the suggestion that you build a community around you, support your neighbours, have your neighbours support you.

You need to be small enough to not be noticed - but if you look small, vulnerable, and resourced, you risk attracting the wrong sort of attention. If you're sitting in one spot, you become exposed to those people who have mobility; you can't afford to make a mistake, and an attacker only has to wait.

If you do decide to take an attacker on, you really need to follow Machiavelli's advice and hit hard, fast, and without quarter. Some of the best examples come from wars - if you're in an invaded village, and kill one or two soldiers, the entire town will be hit harder...

Maybe if attackers started disappearing, without any evidence of them remaining (especially none of their weapons), that would spook others enough to leave you alone.

There is the question of the morality or ethics of the situation - what actions would a response be justified? How much is justified?

Does a father stealing food for a starving child justify hanging the man? No, I don't think so; that's an easy one to think about, but scale it up from there - a group of people come to your area, and start stealing from everyone without at least offering to give some of their labour. Where is that line?

When are you justified in taking action against someone?

That, I would love to have the wisdom to answer....

My only thought is to make sure that you and your new community have some sort of judicial process. I might have to look into becoming a Justice of the Peace, if only to begin to understand some of these problems.

Perpetual motion scams

It's amazing how many Perpetual Motion scams seem to go with enthusiasm through the survivalist/prepper communities.

Be they Perpetual Motion, "Over-unity energy", "Stop bowing to the government/energy companies"... For a small price, you can buy the plans for a machine guaranteed(*) to produce more power than it uses.
 (* Assuming you've built it correctly. We know it will work, therefore if it doesn't work for you, you haven't built it correctly, therefore you can't collect on the guarantee.)
Plus the many people who will sell you information on how to construct your own solar panels (as previously discussed).

One of my favourite authors in one of his books (fantasy, set in a world where magic exists but is unpredictable) says as part of the storyline how "dwarves had managed to make gold from lead - but what they hadn't heard is that they were doing it the hard way. The difference between the hard way and the easy one was that the hard way works." As the book progresses, you find that they had created a movable-type printing press (previously unknown).

So it is with anything - if anyone is selling you as easy something normally difficult, you can probably bet that it isn't going to work.

It's understandable - you look at situations, realise that you are vulnerable, or paying money that could be spent in other ways, and you'll want to cut expenses.

If people in such groups were of a more experimentalist bent, and more willing to go "See, it doesn't work" - and to listen to people who said such (without saying that said people are in league with commerce or government), then it might be something...


Likewise, you have plenty of communities being talked about - For Preppers, By Preppers - and if you don't subscribe to their beliefs, convenants, etc., you're not welcome. I've seen one or two planned that were based around the majority of people being involved in the community's single industry, typically fire-arms manufacture. With a noticeable lack of the normal amenities, gardens, farms, and... well, real self-sufficiency to which they claim to aspire.

I think, like perpetual motion scams, they might look good on paper, but probably aren't going to work as intended....