Why ‘Living Off The Land’ Won’t Work In A Crisis

Image source: Unluckysource.com

OfftheGridNews

As the prepper movement has grown, I’ve heard more and more people talk about bugging out and living off the land. On one hand, I can understand that. Preppers tend to identify with the pioneering spirit that settled this land and fueled the westward expansion. There’s a lot of similarity between the character of the modern prepper and the people who settled this country; both are the rugged individualists who don’t depend upon society.

With that in mind, it’s natural to think of living off the land. There’s a certain romance in the idea of reliving the lives that those early Americans lived. We tend to forget that they lived very hard lives, with a lot of hard work and that many succumbed to sickness, Indian attacks and the dangers of living in a wild country.

While I am susceptible to the same dreams, I have to season them with reality. As much as I’d like to ride off into the sunset as a hero in a Louis L’Amour novel, I have a family to consider. My responsibility to them trumps my desire to climb on a horse and see what’s over the next mountain. Any survival plans I make must take them into consideration — including their needs, their faults and their weaknesses.

I’ll have to say, those pioneers that we so desire to emulate were much tougher people than you and me. The luxuries of our modern society have made us soft. There are few today who could plow a field with a horse drawn plow from sunup to sunset. Don’t bother bragging about how tough you are and how much time you spend in the gym; those pioneers could still put you and I to shame.

Living in the wild is hard; there’s no two ways about it. While I enjoy getting out in nature and even camping, I’m enough of a realist to see that I probably couldn’t survive if I had to stay out there, pulling my sustenance out of the land around me. I have enough trouble just growing a vegetable garden.

That’s why I always recommend staying at home and bugging in, rather than bugging out. Oh, I have my bug-out bag, just like everyone else does. My backpack is filled with all sorts of fancy camping and survival equipment and five days worth of food (three isn’t enough). But that doesn’t mean that I’m planning on living out there in the wild. I’ve got that stuff so that I can survive traveling though the wild to get to my final bug-out location.

Read More HERE