"You are not a pie. You are never done."

[brainwane]

"My Mother In Law is queen of 'that sounds hard, so you shouldn't even try.'" On the connections among fixed mindset, conservatism, and unconstructive survivalist prepping. From the same author: on survivalism and prepping and silver and gold.

So yeah this may be an issue of me out-crazying you because I’m not coming at this from a perspective of “fiat currency is good” I’m coming at this from a perspective of “precious metals are actually pretty worthless as a survival strategy if you’re anticipating a society in which people will shoot you to take your diesel so start a compost pile, learn how to mend clothes, keep chickens, grow vegetables, and load ammo if that’s the society you’re worried about.”

Comments

[lilysea]

Thank you for sharing these links! ^_^

[seekingferret]

The kind of apocalypse we imagine says a lot about us, but I don't think that a gold-less apocalypse is necessarily any more realistic.

We have plenty of apocalyptic history where gold was valuable- there's thousands of stories of vulnerable people surviving the Holocaust by trading their gold to Nazis, who still lived in a society where gold had value and who sometimes found it more convenient to trade it than take it. It's possible we'll face an apocalyptic future where gold is valueless, maybe in our atomic world it's even the most possible apocalypse, but history says that often in an apocalypse gold is still of significant value.

Some of the poster's mother in law's behaviors sound worrisome, and obviously the poster is in a better position than I am to judge, but I find it surprising that the poster's response to people defending the MIL is to concoct an equally elaborate fantasy scenario of a highly specific apocalypse that's not necessarily more plausible or grounded in the history of apocalypse.

I realize this is somewhat orthogonal to the point you're making about the value of community and self-improvement.

[the_siobhan]

These are great posts.

And I love the "you are not a pie" quote. I've been trying to act on that philosophy and that quote sums it up so beautifully.

[naomikritzer]

FWIW, I read Human Pet Guy's post as a straight-up joke about accidental time travel (pay attention to your MIL! You NEVER KNOW when you might find yourself magically transported to ancient Babylon!) but other people in the conversation may have context I'm missing.

Anyway, yeah, my advice for years to anyone who wants to survive an apocalypse is to learn bike repair. You can't eat metal; your storehouse of coffee or cigarettes or Z-Pacs can be taken from you by force; if you have a genuinely useful skill, someone will feed you.

[azurelunatic]

One of my dream items is a foot-powered sewing machine. For the pretty, and for the Just In Case.

[lilacsigil]

My grandfather, a pharmacist, (who would be well over 100 if still alive) hoarded gold for this very reason. When my dad pointed out to him that antibiotics and painkillers would be much more precious in an actual apocalypse he agreed and started hoarding those too. Cleaning out his house after he died was...interesting.