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Survivalist types?
I found this on another site and shamelessly jacked it for presentation to you here. I thought it was kind of enlightening, and kind of humorous at the same time. I think most people are actually going to identify with multiple categories, as nothing is ever that black and white. Anyway, here ya go:
SURVIVAL CATEGORIES
Working Citizen - Concerned with paying rent & utilities, keeping or getting health insurance, paying taxes, inflation, car repairs, leaky plumbing, back pains... May work two jobs, does without personal luxuries, hopes their children will do better than themselves. Emotional, physical and financial survival is the focus of daily life.
Upwardly Mobile - Concerned about aging, retirement investments, cholesterol levels, loss of employment, lawsuits, burglaries, bandwidth, clothes dryer lint fires. Takes vitamins, exercises, eats oatmeal, wears seatbelts, has smoke & carbon-monoxide detectors, requests medical tests, has numerous insurance policies, files lawsuits, pampers themselves wherever ,whenever possible. "Survival" to them means living long enough to take full benefit of extensive retirement plans and long term care insurance policies.
Medical Crisis - Has very complete medical pack in house and in car. Donates blood and is active in the Red Cross. Has taken paramedic EMT & CPR courses, knows vital signs, stockpiles medicines, etc. Concerned with vehicle accidents and emergencies involving injuries. Focus is on helping family, friends & community survive medical emergencies.
Safety Preparedness - Learns principles and techniques needed for surviving worse-case scenarios that can occur anyplace, anywhere. Makes preparations for such common calamities as building fires, dog attacks, physical confrontations, lightning strikes, car breakdowns, third-world travel problems, flash floods, home invasions and even train wrecks. Reads: Survive Safely Anywhere, Worse-Case Scenario Handbooks
Wilderness Survival - Being able to stay alive for indefinite periods in life threatening wilderness scenarios. These can include: plane crashes, shipwrecks, being lost in the woods. Concerns are: thirst, hunger, climate, terrain, health, stress, fear. Prepares with: knowledge, training & practice. Kit includes: water purifiers, shelter, fire starters, clothing, food, medical supplies, navigation & signaling gear. Reads: Nessmuk, Kephart, Angier, Mears
Personal Assault Survival - Individuals concerned with surviving brief encounters of violent activity. Focus is on personal protection & it's legal ramifications, danger awareness, Boyd's cycle (also known as the OODA cycle - observe, orient, decide & act), martial arts, self defense tactics and tools (both lethal & less-than-lethal). Reads: Ayoob, Cooper, Jordan, Applegate, Sanow, Marshall, Taylor, Steele, Sun Tzu
Natural Disaster, Brief - People that live in tornado, hurricane, flood, wildfire, earthquake or heavy snowfall areas and want to be prepared for the inevitable. Investment in material for fortifying structures and tools for rebuilding & constructing temporary shelter, perhaps have a below ground shelter, food, water, medicine, and supplies, enough to get by until contact with the rest of the world resumes.
Natural Disaster, Years Long - Concerned about long term weather cycles of 2-10 years, unusually cold or warm periods, that have happened on and off for thousands of years. Might stock several tons of food per family member and have a heavy duty greenhouse with packed in nitrogen non-hybrid seeds.
Natural Disaster, Lifelong - Possible scenarios include: severe global warming and the coming ice age, the greenhouse-effect-gone-wild, warming/cooling of gulf steam waters, large meteor strike, shift in earth's axis or reversal of geo-magnetic fields... Owns maps of previous ice age glacier patterns and are hopeful they live south of the permafrost line. May have purchased snowshoes. Reads reports by National Academy of Science and Woods Hole Physical Oceanography Dept.
General Social/Political Decline, Liberal - Concerned about growing cultural problems and the slow destruction of the constitution & the bill of rights. Into anti-crime measures, both passive (alarms) and active (neighborhood watch). Most often anti-gun, pro-choice, pro-environment, anti- war, against prayer in school, against death penalty... Supporters of the ACLU, Amnesty International, Ban Handguns in America, Greenpeace.
General Social/Political Decline, Conservative - Concerned about growing cultural problems and the slow destruction of the constitution & the bill of rights. Into anti-crime measures, both passive (alarms) and active (Rottweilers & guns). Most often pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro-business, pro- national defense, for prayer in school, pro-death penalty... Supporters of Attorney General Ashcroft, Rush Limbaugh, NRA, the Alaska "Support Industry" Alliance.
Cold War "Survivalists" - Fear homeland invasion by nation's enemies, whether foreign or domestic. This was a group of substantial size before the fall of the Soviet Union. True-believers currently suspect the U.N. of one-world domination plans and fear black helicopters, government intervention & taxation. The majority of these people have relocated to other groups. Favorite movies: Red Dawn, Mad Max trilogy.
Nuclear War - These folks know all primary, secondary & tertiary targets, downwind fallout patterns and chose to live in locales they deem to be safest in the event of all out nuclear war. They've built fallout shelters and have the necessary food, water, tools and skills to see them though. Other groups also prepare for nuclear war as an exercise, in that if you are prepared for nuclear war, you are prepared for all other scenarios. Reads: Tappan, Kearny, Clayton.
Bio-Chem - Concerned with the spread of fatal diseases and terrorist use of biological agents & nerve gases. Examples: E.Coli 0157, botulism, dengue, Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease, SARS, rabies, hantavirus, anthrax, plague, cholera, HIV, ebola, marburg, lassa, saron, VX ... Might own NBC (nuclear, biological & chemical) full-face respirators, polyethylene coveralls, PVC boots, Nitrile gloves, plastic sheeting and duct tape. Reads: CDC reports, Haz-Mat manuals, Preston's "Hot Zone"
Knowledge-Enabled Mass Destruction (KMD) - Concerned with unintended consequences of genetic manipulation, nano-technology, transgenic crops, psychological engineering, genome hybridized cloning, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, engineered organisms, self-replicating molecular robotic assemblers ("gray goo problem")... Techno-luddites fear human extinction. At the other end are the bioethicists who believe policies and self regulation will avert disaster. Reads: Kurzweil, Kaczynski, Moravec, Dyson
Over-Population - Soaring increase in world's uncontrolled human growth impacts available freshwater, food, health-care, environment, economics, consumerism, spread of diseases and just about every other facet of life. projections indicate that world population of 6.2 billion may again double in fifty years. Followers range from those who've foregone children & have had voluntary sterilization to those who've embrace large families and only then sound the alarm, like Al Gore, David Packard (H-P founder) and Sripati Chandrasekhar (India's birth control advocate). Supports: Family planning, birth control and voluntary sterilization.
Monetary Disaster - Reads lots of Ayn Rand and believe the Federal Reserve system is evil. Newsletters suggest hard assets of gold & silver bullion/coin and similar precious-metal oriented investments. They are preparing for paper money to become worthless, thus have a good burglar alarm system and enough food/ supplies to last a couple of months, or perhaps even a year, until a new monetary system (formal or informal) is re-established.
Biblical Revelations - The Savior is going to return very soon, the final battle with the devil will occur in their lifetime, the rapture is eminent. Very wide range of beliefs and attitudes in this group. Pacifist to armed camp, no food stockpiles (leave that to God) to decades of food storage, etc. The ability to put trust in faith, above all else, is essential to members of this group. Usually follow one very charismatic leader's interpretations of the bible.
Post-9/11 Reactionaries - Are convinced that government should have unlimited powers to do everything and anything to stop all potential terrorist threats. They want greater protection through increased governmental controls over citizens and foreigners alike, both within the country's borders and elsewhere. Willing to preemptively strike the enemy. Willing to surrender civil liberties and human rights in order to feel safe and secure. Believers rarely take any personal action, relying instead on the government to make changes.
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To some extent, I identify with most of those, Sapper.
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I could pull something out of each also.
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Well, if you didn't have anything to worry about, now we have a list. I'm starting to worry about me because I don't worry about any of that stuff :eek:
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I used to be a little paranoid. Now I'm paranoid that I'm not paranoid enough. Something like that?
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Well just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get me!
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I have a headache now. So much to read, so little place to store it.
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As with everyone else i can identify with multiple aspects of each. For me, knowledge that is classed as survivalist is not about survival. It's simply about life. We should understand the natural world, the animals, the flora and the weather and how these affect us. Survival skills are basic skills, there is nothing special about making fire but its now seen as a niche skill. They are just life skills, we use fire everyday in some form and i think its reckless to use things you do not understand. People eat canned and processed foods - they should know where the food comes from and how it is caught and harvested. Technology like electricity is just a bonus it is not something to be relied upon, most people in life are like tourists - they just wander around aimless sampling everything but understanding nothing. That may sound patronising but i don't mean it to be, we are just very far removed from the reality in front of us.
My reason for joining this forum was to make use of the knowledge to better understand things around me. Some people call this knowledge survivalism but i just call it life :). I may not live in the woods, i may not even camp more than once every one or two years but i am aware of the world around me.
Sorry for the long post, just felt like ranting briefly :P
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