Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:30 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
Anyone seen/read "Into the Wild"? The young protagonist was remarkably resourceful as a modern day hunter-gatherer, surviving as a serial "bug-outer" for (from memory) about one year.
Until he ate the wrong berries in Alaska and died alone in an abandoned bus. _________________ "Who knows what the Second Law of Thermodynamics will be like in a hundred years?" - Economist speaking during planning for World Population Conference in early 1970s
Joined: Aug 26, 2005 Posts: 447 Location: Windy City No Longer
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
RedStateGreen wrote:
benzoil wrote:
if your choice is stay put and die in a nuclear blast, then flight is probably a better option!
That is, if you can reach a safe distance. Sometimes it's better to face the inevitable with dignity rather than spending your last remaining minutes in a frenzy.
Yeah, but the view is so much better from the clogged highway out of town. You can really see the mushroom cloud from there...assuming you weren't blinded by the initial flash. Besides, this is 2008 America. We don't have any dignity left. _________________ TANSTAAFL
Last edited by benzoil on Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:44 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 4927 Location: Southwest WI
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
Just read or watch some Dick Proenneke... The guy did it all. He did have supplies flown in, but they were just staples. Plus he hardly ate any of the local wildlife, just what he found dead and some fish. _________________ Clothing should be optional.
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:34 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
Fiddlerdave wrote:
Small and large game was rampant, seafood in the the many coastal sloughs and ebaches was rich, and seasonl events like salmon runs made getting an enormous supply of meat to dry and store was fast (although the preparation took some work). Various edible fruits, nuts and vegetables grow year round, and edible mushrooms are everywhere. Sardines took little work to catch in large numbers. A rain-tight shelter made of the ever-present tulle reed with a few other bodies to keep it warm was the basic technological need.
It basically had 3 or 4 groups of people who lived off the land in Alaska for several months. They had to hunt big game, catch and can as much salmon as possible, cut their own firewood, live in tiny shelters, etc...
It was very interesting especially to see everyone get cabin fever during the winter months.
joeltrout
Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 2130 Location: kiwibush
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:48 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
Cashmere wrote:
I don't think it's a myth. I think it's very doable. Think about it. Thousands of men did it when the country was being colonized (invaded).
There are plenty of fairly vast, forested areas where you can disappear into the forest. Life would be difficult. And simple. Very simple.
I guess my perspective is this: I don't love my own life enough to want to protect it by living in the woods by myself for the next X number of years. Simple as that for me.
I've never got that about people. I met some 70 year old guy who was desperate to live. I'm thinking, "why?" What the hell is it about being on this parasite infested sh1t-hole of a planet that you find so endearing? 70 years isn't enough?
You took the words right out of my mouth. This place really is a flea bitten hole. It;s probably why higher life forms (if there are any out there), more than likely give us a wide berth.
I did do the wild bit soon after university on a bleak Scottish Island in the North Sea and despite the few inhabitants, you had the same old dramas. One billion or one hundred or ten...or even two...you get the same crap. Why bother. Drink and be merry and let tomorrow take care of itself. _________________ Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:36 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
DoomWarrior wrote:
RedStateGreen wrote:
It seems as though people just think there will be some idyllic mountain area (that no one ELSE knows about) that they can just somehow find (because we're "bugging out into the UNKNOWN"), without being arrested for trespassing, coming across thugs/druggies who have staked out the area already, or falling prey to the elements.
I plan on hiking into the mountains and finding an abandoned lakeside log cabin, complete with fireplace and a kitchen. Please don't destroy that fantasy for me.
I won't destroy your fantasy. Just make sure it isn't my cabin you get to before I do, because I may not want another person there with me and mine. Or, maybe I would. What do you have to offer? There is safety in numbers. The point is, that cabin is someones, and that someone will most likely be showing up eventually.
I disagree with most of the posts so far. I would rather trust my fate to that cabin in the woods than expect the gubermint to save us. The response to Katrina speaks for itself. Do I really need to elaborate?
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13191 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:53 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
katnipkid wrote:
I would rather trust my fate to that cabin in the woods than expect the gubermint to save us.
Why do you think anyone in this thread expects the guvmint to save them? _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:02 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
aflurry wrote:
Fantasy wish-fulfillment. The religious apocalypse ushers in the the union of the self with God in the Rapture, where the self is remade and its divinity revealed. Secular apocapypsies imagine a similar reformation of the self through a union with the unknown, the wilderness, whatever chaotic rupture.
I agree. I think this goes much deeper into the American cultural dreamscape than any possible reality of peak oil or nukes in the cities. After all, there were survivalists and survivalist ideologies long before several thousand of us found peakoil.com.
I haven't really figured it out though. The secular Armageddon is certainly part of it and synchs right up with religious Armageddon which itself plays directly into our puritan ethic (as well as does environmentalism I might add)
We also have the cowboy figure - the antisocial hero who cannot live amongst the rest of us, but can come in druing times of trouble and disorder. He straightens out the lawlessness and restores order, but cannot stay. He cannot stay because it is society itself that is flawed and he is pure - because he is not of society.
Deeply in our cultural mythos is the idea that society is morally flawed and nature is sacred (makes a nice replacement for god in moving towards environmentalism). All of the examples above tap into that.
Somehow - I haven't figured it just out, the bug-out plays into all this mythology. Peal Oil is just another channel or mechanism that can allow this mythology to play out.
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1851 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:02 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
Wilderness bugout is my absolute last option. I will do everything I can to make something else work first, and things would have to get pretty god awful before I'd seriously consider heading for the hills.
I consider myself to have learned a decent bit about surviving in the wild, more so than most Americans I daresay... but even so, I think there's a pretty good chance I wouldn't make it through my first winter. Gotta be honest about that.
If you don't have any training at all... well, as Ludi said, good luck with that. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:04 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
vision-master wrote:
The story of Dick Proenneke See photo aboveAlone in the Wilderness
That's the PBS guy - he was awesome. There's also a character in ill Holm's Eccentric Islands, in the chapter on Mallard Island, who is intriguing in similar, but very different ways.
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:05 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
I heard stories about Death Row inmates in Siberia in the old USSR being given the choice between a straight up firing squad, or 50 bullets and a rifle (actually 50+1... last one being to shoot yourself if it became unbearable).
95% of them died within weeks, eaten by bears or wolves... but those who survived in the vast cold wilderness rehabilitated themselves as pretty damn good woodsmen who were able to trade furs with the local outposts.
Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 769 Location: northern California
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:40 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
mgibbons19 wrote:
vision-master wrote:
The story of Dick Proenneke See photo aboveAlone in the Wilderness
That's the PBS guy - he was awesome
I'm glad Dick Proenneke (sp?) made it into this thread. Ironically, he was amongst the last of a dying breed... _________________ "When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
Thomas Paine
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: The myth of "bugging out into the wild"
Cashmere wrote:
I guess my perspective is this: I don't love my own life enough to want to protect it by living in the woods by myself for the next X number of years. Simple as that for me.
I've never got that about people. I met some 70 year old guy who was desperate to live. I'm thinking, "why?" What the hell is it about being on this parasite infested sh1t-hole of a planet that you find so endearing? 70 years isn't enough?
for once, i am totally with you. and i don't even carry all that "sh1t-hole of a planet" baggage around.
I just feel like, man, if peak-oil happens while i am alive and it's as bad as all that, with the wars and brown-shirts, and starvation and brother killing brother, and the radiation sickness and cats and dogs living together.... welp, that'll be it for me then..
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