Survivalism & Solidarity Prepping, How We Negotiate The Bottleneck Ahead.
What Aee We Going To Do When Supermarket Shelves Are Empty?
Something Dr Gail Bradbrook has already called for, identifying 2 key areas of need for organisation around the collapse of this civilisation. "What are we going to do when the Supermarket Shelves are Empty" or more to the point, what are we going to do when agriculture collapses?
Because this is not a distribution issue, it's one of disrupted seasons, precipitation, and climate. Bradbrook identifies mutual aid and food banks as community forces for good, and I agree with her: Community cohesion is important for survival. In the context of new age emergence, however, AMOC collapse and the world beyond 1.5°C are very different to the world we leave behind. Surviving catastrophe and localised collapse takes more than imaginal space and personal development. This has left a vacuum in the prepper conversation on Youtube to other people doing the hard sell for sponsorship and donations. Perpetuating old prepper myths and far right ideology. In some cases. Climate collapse is marginalised or completely denied.
I have met climate aware people wanting to learn on forums run by right wing climate denying bullies. There are a number or bushcraft/survival forums where climate change is banned because they can police denial because it ingrained in the culture.
Rising Food Prices & Shrinkflation
The 2025 UK Grain and oilseed harvest was 20% lower than the previous year, and the spring drought and summer heatwaves were identified by agricultural experts as the cause.
The protests on the streets of Iran are bread & water riots, coupled with the hardships of sanctions, corruption and despotism
1.5° C is the tipping point for losing the Goldilocks niche for agriculture, and it's already in the rear-view mirror.
Interbecoming: The Inner Transformation which we need to evolve?
"In an era where our planet whispers tales of distress through the rustling of dying forests and the mournful chorus of species fading into the silent night, the urgency for a profound reawakening beckons. This reawakening is not merely a call for technological advancements or policy reforms, but a summons to the deepest quarters of our being, to embark on a journey of inner transformation."
"Even if the climate crisis were somehow brought under control, our current growth-oriented economic juggernaut will bring us face-to-face with a slew of further existential threats in future decades. As long as government policies emphasise growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe." (2021)
"In an era where our planet whispers tales of distress through the rustling of dying forests and the mournful chorus of species fading.." (see above)
Climate change is the Juggernaut now too.
Species are not fading, they are going extinct, never to be seen again. Forests are dying, catching fire and being washed away, completely transforming environments. But the single biggest threat to humanity is the collapse of agriculture which is not addressed by any aspect of of any philosophical or emergency planning ideas.
Survivalism & #SolidarityPrepping
The people who build stuff, mutual aid networks, and the ceremonialst while they are pointing in the right direction politically and spiritually. They have not yet come into the idea of Solidarity Prepping which combines mutual aid, backwoods engineering, having fun, addressing gender stereotypes (we train anyone irrespective of gender, race etc), how to build compost toilets, off grid showers & basic solar (PV) charging setups for keeping basic devices running and DIY solar thermal for heatwave driven hot showers
Solidarity Prepping is a term which originated in Germany.
"A growing part of the climate movement is turning to "solidarity prepping." At a camp in Brandenburg, activists prepared themselves for the inevitable collapse with workshops, first aid courses and discussions."
I take it Several Steps further.
This is no longer a time for discussion.
By regularly taking temperature and humidity measurements during heatwaves, I can manage my safety outdoors, through understanding Wet Bulb Temperatures. If this feels like another National Emergency Briefing, I'm taking that as a compliment, thank you. Then think of it as an emergency briefing with updates and hot tips and its free here and on my other channels:
Through research into climate resilient food plants which could survive extreme heat and humidity, it's is interesting that typha is the plant coming out ahead. It's the survival staples of our indigenous hunter-gatherer ancestors, and probably includes pre-Homo sapiens. It is inconceivable that our distant ancestors did not seek out and process carbohydrates from rhizomes and roots as well as nuts.
XReadiness took a punt at it. But the problem with rewriting anything relevant to survivalism is that you have to know what you are doing in the wilderness already, and I'm not talking about hiking and camping on trails and campsites.
A Go Bag needs to last 24 hours at the bare minimum, it needs a shelter, a wool blanket, 3ltr of water, soap, some food, a tinder box and a well-trained and practised user who has a plan more comprehensive than their version of the Go-Bags.
Unfortunately, XRreadiness buys into prepper myths that are perpetuated by Prepper channels across YouTube, such as the myth of running to the hills when things go bad. The reality of every localised collapse is that cities are safer and people from rural areas go there because that is where the aid is. Rural areas on your own or in a small group are more dangerous than cities, where people organise, and cooperation is obviously mutually beneficial.
Solidarity Prepping has nothing to do with stacking cans, right-wing ideology, and being stereotyped as bands of "Plucky humans, post-collapse, roaming the countryside", :dystopian survivalism", "primitive" or "bbackward"
"Our aim is to remove prepping from the right-wing discourse and combine it with solidarity-based, practical and political action. Because crisis preparedness can be done differently – collectively, inclusively and fairly."
"Everyone's talking about prepping
Everyone is doing it, and most … admit it not without fear of ridicule. I wrote in June that "we've ... managed in recent months to finally wrench the concept of 'prepping' from the stranglehold of that incredibly unproductive framing whereby you must be a right-wing crazy person if you're thinking about practically preparing yourself for catastrophes and system collapses." But since the blackout, the debate about catastrophe preparation has really arrived in the mainstream, and it was probably to be expected that the trigger would be a severe catastrophe that deeply encroached upon the everyday normality of people who are, on a global scale, rather spoilt for stability, one that for several days demonstrated this simple truth: regardless of which major catastrophe hits us, we're probably not adequately prepared for it, and a lack of preparation for catastrophes means concrete suffering. (This statement holds true on average at every level, from the state level right down to the individual one."
This is my aim too. But toxic-exclusivism and dismissing a cultural movement looking beyond collapse and hope at what we might need to eat and how we grow it is shortsighted.
Germanys example should be an example to us all about preparedness and how we work together in crisis. The crisis is here now, a slow simmering decline.
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