Friday, September 17, 2010

Survival Scenerios

What make for a good survivialist scenerio?

How do you distinguish the typical worries of the many from the concerns of the specialist worriers often referred to as survivlists?

I came across an excellent starting point in the foot notes of



"Survival scenerios exhibit four essential criteria: they posit conditions that are global, caused, amenable to techniquue , and susceptible to individual solutions.  It is the combination of these elemetns that characterizes survivalism and it from nonsurvivalist world views.

Survival scenarious build on plights that are global, not individuated. They entail events and conditions, such as nuclear war or alien invastion, that are expected to affect many if not most persons rather than more selective hazards such as automobile accidents or street crime.  Survival problems are not merely circumstantial or random.  There are logical, secular reasons for these problems.   Survivalism is not action toward manifestations of inscrutable divine will or inexorable historical process.  The problems confronted are caused by agents, agencies, and processes survivalists may discover and understand with appropriate effort and acess to relevant information.  Once understood, survival problems are amenable to technique-combinations of resources, rational procedures, and standardized practices potentially at hand.  Finally the solution to survival problems lies with individuals and small groups, not collectives.  Survivalism is the exercise of individual skill and will, the expedniture of peronal effort and possessions, not political acivism, community organization, or a social movement".  (note 8, page 249: itlaics in original).

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