Earlier this week, I had a couple of conversations that helped me better understand the motivations underlying this enterprise.
I mean, at one level, it's always been pretty clear — the system of global, industrial civilisation that has displaced all other large-scale systems will, and must needs fall, and when it's no longer possible for people to satisfy their wants and needs at the click of a button (or, even, the turning of that water tap in a city apartment), knowledge of how to source essential materials; build and maintain equipment and machinery; and process, potentially concentrate or purify, and preserve important chemicals, etc., will become increasingly important, and any compendium of such information could only help to soften the fall.
But the conversations I had this week helped to crystallise the time frame that this project focuses on, and who this project is for…
One of the people I spoke to — who, I would argue, hasn't really been focused on collapse (at least to date) — made the comment that, in addition to focusing on the social and inter-personal skills needed to build the kinds of robust communities that would have the best chance of surviving significant upheavals, they would be more interested in knowing how the 'collective we' of people living in cities1) would get through the first few days without electricity and communication systems, after the water pumping stations have ceased to operate, and when it's no longer possible to access the funds needed to buy food, etc.
And, to be sure, this will be a real problem. Upon hearing this, however, my first response was that my focus is on the period between the first few months and, say, ten years after such a large-scale breakdown event. Because, if we are talking about wide-scale, but short-term interruptions, then sure, having contingency plans for that time before things return, more or less, to 'normal' is an important, maybe even sufficient thing to have. But if we think that what is coming is not a one or two week interruption to 'business as usual', but rather an irreversible breakdown of the large-scale systems of energy, food and industrial production — along with the energy-dependent means of distributing such resources — then, I think, one's focus automatically shifts to a longer time frame.
Yes, there is definitely a growing interest in, maybe even movements of people who are growing enough food to meet more and more of their dietary needs, but unless you're lucky (and/or privileged) enough to live in an area with good soil and a reliable source of water — something that even fewer people can take for granted, given recent climatic trends — will you have access to enough water to get your garden through the hottest part of the year, not to mention enough clean drinking water?
And what about the skills to maintain, even build energy-efficient dwellings and sources of heat to get you through the coldest winter months, once large-scale disruptions have pushed the costs of the currently common solutions to these problems beyond the reach of the majority of society?
To say nothing of the knowledge and equipment needed to produce even a small subset of the medical supplies — the antiseptics, sterile sutures, blood substitutes, antibiotics, painkillers, antidiarrheal agents, antipyretics, contraceptives and abortifacients — that are currently a short pharmacy or hospital's visit away?
How many people will have the necessary knowledge and skills to make it through the first few years, and how many projects have this as their focus? I could go on, but I would rather just point to the categories enumerated by Vinay Gupta in their model, "Six Ways to Die".
(And don't get me wrong — I don't actually think that whole countries, much less all of civilisation will experience sudden, catastrophic collapse; rather, the description given by Indrajit Samarajiva in their article, "I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There" makes a lot of intuitive sense to me:
As someone who's already experienced societal breakdown, here's the truth: America has already collapsed. What you're feeling is exactly how it feels. It's Saturday and you're thinking about food while the world is on fire. This is normal. This is life during collapse. Collapse does not mean you're personally dying right now. It means y'all are dying right now. Death is sometimes close, sometimes far away, but always there.
…
If you're waiting for a moment where you're like “this is it,” I'm telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says “things are officially bad.” There's no launch party for decay. It's just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol.
…
Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That's all it is.
Unfortunately, if the cause of collapse is the breakdown of large-scale systems rather than a civil war, I think most peoples' reserves of luck and/or privilege will run out, sooner or later. But I still think the scenario described above is far more likely than the relatively sudden collapses common in, e.g., most examples of dystopian zombie apocalypse fiction2)…)
The other conversation that inspired this post was with someone who shares a certain level of resignation, I think, and touched on what kinds of plans might already be out there at the governmental-level…
As someone who spent over a decade working in a federal public service — and as someone who, whilst without hope for our species as a whole, still appreciates more than a few individuals, and who still believes there are many people out there who are more intelligent, and further-looking than me — I imagine most, if not all, governments and governmental emergency response agencies have multiple plans for multiple scenarios involving short-term disruptions of the kinds mentioned above. But how many agencies (or even insurance companies, investment banks and other corporate institutions whose primary foci are the minimisation of risk and the maximisation of profit) have plans for the months-to-decades time frames?
I suspect the answer is in the range of 'very few to none', as once the food and fuel reserves have run out, and the means of bringing the essentials of life to the larger population bases have failed, we will probably see a massive spike in mortality rates — something that can only be exacerbated by the collapse of the fossil-fuelled 'Green Revolution' that has allowed us to drawdown on the life in the soil for as long as we have, and which has allowed the human population to exceed eight billion for the first time in history. And how many organisations or entities will have continuity plans to survive the loss of 80 to 90% of the human population, much less educational programmes to prepare people for that scenario? How many states would have meaningful plans that could even be executed, post-event, when the people and the energy needed to maintain their functioning are no longer there?
(This is, of course, a rhetorical question based on intuitive assumptions, and it would be nice to be able to add a few citations to the above figures, but I don't imagine that harder figures would change the reasons for, and motivations behind this project… In the best case, it will have served as a curriculum of self-sufficient and off-grid skills and knowledge development for those of us who are drawn to this kind of thing. In the worst case, it will be a contribution to the work of those small, independent groups (backed, perhaps, by some of the braver foundations out there) who will try to do, for the 10 to 20% of humans that will survive the first few years after the collapse, what governments and most NGOs have not done for the growth and climate catastrophes that could, perhaps, have been avoided if we had stopped ending our news stories with a happy, hopeful twist some 50 years ago — i.e. to say “collapse is unavoidable, and the sooner we start acknowledging this (or even just start planning for this scenario), the less painful it will be and, perhaps, the fewer people will need to die during the transition from industrial civilisation to a horticultural future”.)
This, then, might be the raison d'etre of this project — to complement the work of 'advocacy and awareness-raising' groups such as Just Collapse (whose tag line, “a planned collapse is a just collapse” would have to be one of the most information-dense distillations I've seen in a long time) by providing concrete and tangible knowledge, skills and workshops aimed at softening the fall of the systems most of us depend upon, for those who are willing (and able) to put the necessary time and resources into preparing for this eventuality.