How to Survive the Collapse of Civilization

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The first thing to know about surviving the apocalypse is this: you’re not going to survive the apocalypse. You’re not special. If everyone dies? That includes you. If the ecological crisis that triggers the collapse (my money is on runaway global warming, personally) doesn’t get you, then the further militarization of our society probably will.

If you want to survive, and I cannot express this strongly enough, you should not go run and hide in your little isolated cabin somewhere by yourself or with five of your friends!(Unless there are zombies.) If you simply retreat and wait for the world to right itself, you’re a coward and not even a very bright one; if you leave all of the work to other people, things aren’t going to come out so pretty. It is this sort of cowardice, this individualistic gusto, that arguably got us into this trouble in the first place. If you stand idly by and watch a fascistic army take control, you will, in the end, die. If you don’t try to organize with people to kickstart a permacultured agriculture to feed people, you will, in the end, die. If you live with two other people and never see another living soul again in your life? You might survive, but you might very well wish you hadn’t. When your appendix ruptures and whoops you forgot that your brother isn’t a surgeon? You will die.

Like it or not, humans are social animals. Our best hope to stay alive, and furthermore, to thrive, after an apocalyptic event is to discover social solutions.

Staying in settled areas can be dangerous too, of course. Hunger does monstrous things to people. But in most apocalyptic literature there’s this assumption that everyone else will join “roving gangs” that pillage the survivors. This will only happen if we let it. We’ve been told by civilization, with its specialized class of rulers and politicians, that we can’t organize ourselves. This is nonsense. Organization isn’t something that we simply get placed into without willing it. Power isn’t something that simply gets used against us. Power is something that we all have, as individuals and most importantly as groups. For example, there’s no reason we can’t form roving gangs that travel around and teach permaculture, medical, and post-civilization organization the survivors instead.

There’s no reason we can’t organize with our neighbors, pool what resources we’re willing to share, and begin immediately to grow food, develop a shared culture, and defend ourselves against the people who try to take it away from us.

And who knows? Maybe industrial civilization will collapse before we hit chain-reaction levels of carbon release. Maybe peak oil will save us from obliterating most all life on earth. Or maybe enough people will wisen up and begin to actively dismantle the industrial civilization that is killing us as surely as an axe might. What then?

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