Agreed, but if you read accounts of people who have lived through, say, war, you’ll find that that works out a lot less swimmingly than the right-wingers always assume it will be. They quickly become social pariahs, and it doesn’t matter that they have the guns, because they can’t stay organized due to infighting of people internally vying for power. There have been entire books written on this, but I think this great comment from Dee Xtrovert on MetaFilter 15 years ago about the siege of Sarajevo really sums it up.
Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.
Of those who couldn’t leave my city, Sarajevo:
Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the “long haul” - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.
Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of “preparation” to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don’t know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it’s worth something.
But here’s the main point: “Preparing” for the disaster really didn’t do anyone much good. Those who “prepared” ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.
We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren’t attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I’d take a bite of a friend’s salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I’d never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.
Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.
You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn’t. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn’t have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.
Those who’d prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can’t swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can’t swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.
Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It’s no way to live.
I’d like to build on your comment and the comment above yours by mentioning elite panic. Behind the bastards did a great episode on the topic for people who want more than a Wikipedia page.
The TL;DR is that the idea that average people panic in a disaster situation is verifiably false. More often than not, people look out for one another and, through tactics such as mutual aid and direct action, self organize to ensure one another’s safety as much as they can. If there is any chaos or disorder in a situation (outside of the disaster itself) it’s usually by authority figures such as government agencies, the military, police, etc trying to enforce order through violence against victims of the disaster. A good companion piece to that behind the bastards episode would be this video by anasi’s library on the response to hurricane Katrina in the US as well as A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit.
If you think the world is going to shit and that the powers that be will do little if anything about any of the problems posing a threat to society; you should be working on building community around you. Establish mutual aid netwotks, learn to be self reliant and pass that knowledge on to others, stockpile and make resources that will enable you and your community to survive for extended periods of time. The state wont help and is more likely to do something that gets you killed before it saves you.
Agreed, but if you read accounts of people who have lived through, say, war, you’ll find that that works out a lot less swimmingly than the right-wingers always assume it will be. They quickly become social pariahs, and it doesn’t matter that they have the guns, because they can’t stay organized due to infighting of people internally vying for power. There have been entire books written on this, but I think this great comment from Dee Xtrovert on MetaFilter 15 years ago about the siege of Sarajevo really sums it up.
https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-getting-worse#2430771
If there’s a best of community, your comments in this thread belong there. They’re informative and subvert expectations
Well to be fair, that’s not my comment, but rather someone else who I am quoting. I’ve just had it bookmarked for years.
Best of can definitely include curation. Thanks for share this post.
I’d like to build on your comment and the comment above yours by mentioning elite panic. Behind the bastards did a great episode on the topic for people who want more than a Wikipedia page.
The TL;DR is that the idea that average people panic in a disaster situation is verifiably false. More often than not, people look out for one another and, through tactics such as mutual aid and direct action, self organize to ensure one another’s safety as much as they can. If there is any chaos or disorder in a situation (outside of the disaster itself) it’s usually by authority figures such as government agencies, the military, police, etc trying to enforce order through violence against victims of the disaster. A good companion piece to that behind the bastards episode would be this video by anasi’s library on the response to hurricane Katrina in the US as well as A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit.
If you think the world is going to shit and that the powers that be will do little if anything about any of the problems posing a threat to society; you should be working on building community around you. Establish mutual aid netwotks, learn to be self reliant and pass that knowledge on to others, stockpile and make resources that will enable you and your community to survive for extended periods of time. The state wont help and is more likely to do something that gets you killed before it saves you.
Absolutely stellar addition. Thanks for the links!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Behind the bastards
this video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
So, crafting supplies.