About this Site

The goal of this site is to capture and collate as much knowledge as possible that could soften the fall of industrial civilisation, and to reimagine or reinvent the tools, techniques and systems of the early 20th century using the technological developments of the intervening years — but in a way that doesn't assume the indefinite production or availability of modern parts or services.

Our reason for doing so comes from the assumption that the system and culture which has colonised this planet — industrial civilisation — will, and must needs fall, and that the more practical skills and knowledge we lose in the meantime, the harder life will be for the members of our species that live through the fall (and for the subsequent couple of generations), and particularly for those living in the cities.

Until then — not just collapsing biodiversity, but also loss of the living soil required by all heterotrophs

Worst case scenario? We find ourselves in the 'techno-explosion' scenario described by Holgrem (2008), in which case this project will just become another historical curiosity.

In explaining the premises that underlie and motivate this project, I will draw quite heavily upon End Game, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization by Derrick Jensen — partly because it was this book, more than any other, which started me down my journey to the edge of the abyss¹⁾, and partly because, even after this journey (and the all the years that have passed since it was first published in 2006), so much of what was in this book and its companions, Endgame, Volume 2: Resistance and Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, still resonates with me.

From Volume 1:

If you agree with all this, and if you don't want [or are currently not in a psychological place, Ed.] to dirty your spirituality and conscience with the physical work of helping to bring down civilization, and if your primary concern really is for the well-being of those (humans) who will be alive during and immediately after the crash (as opposed to simply raising this issue because you're too scared to talk about the crash or to allow anyone else to do so either), then, given (and I repeat this point to emphasize it) that civilization is going to come down anyway, you need to start preparing people for the crash. Instead of attacking me for stating the obvious, go rip up asphalt in vacant parking lots to convert them to neighborhood gardens, go teach people how to identify local edible plants, even in the city (especially in the city) so these people won't starve when the proverbial shit hits the fan and they can no longer head off to Albertson's for groceries. Set up committees to eliminate or, if appropriate, channel the (additional) violence that might break out.

We need it all. We need people to take out dams and we need people to knock out electrical infrastructures. We need people to protest and to chain themselves to trees. We also need people working to ensure that as many people as possible are equipped to deal with the fallout when the collapse comes. We need people working to teach others what wild plants to eat, what plants are natural antibiotics. We need people teaching others how to purify water, how to build shelters. All of this can look like supporting traditional, local knowledge, it can look like starting rooftop gardens, it can look like planting local varieties of medicinal herbs, and it can look like teaching people how to sing.

The truth is that although I do not believe that designing groovy eco-villages will help bring down civilization, when the crash comes, I'm sure to be first in line knocking on their doors asking for food.

People taking out dams do not have a responsibility to ensure that people in homes previously powered by hydro know how to cook over a fire. They do however have a responsibility to support the people doing that work.

Similarly, those people growing medicinal plants (in preparation for the end of civilization) do not have a responsibility to take out dams. They do however have a responsibility at the very least to not condemn those people who have chosen that work. In fact they have a responsibility to support them. They especially have a responsibility to not report them to the cops.

It's the same old story: the good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look, there is great work to be done. Do what you love. Do what you can. Do what best serves your landbase. We need it all.

This doesn't mean that everyone taking out dams and everyone working to cultivate medicinal plants are working toward the same goals. It does mean that if they are, each should see the importance of the other's work.

As for the timeframe for such knowledge-sharing and preparatory projects, one could argue that the work should have begun, in ernest and on a larger scale, if not in the 1960s, then certainly in the 1970s, when a confluence of factors — not least amongst them the increased awareness of the predictions of Peak oil and the increasingly convergent warnings of climate scientists, the publication of models describing the phenomenon of Polar amplification and the widespread coverage of the 'holes' in the ozone layer — should have made their immediacy unquestionable.

Once more, from Volume 1 of 'End Game':

When at talks I've mentioned the three premises … — that civilization will crash, that the crash will be messy, and that the crash will be messier the longer we wait — nearly everyone who has thought about these issues at all agrees with it's time to get out the premises immediately. But at a talk I gave yesterday, one man was looking at me dubiously and shaking his head. I asked him what was up.

“I don't think we're going to crash,” he said.

Oh Lord, I thought, a cornucopian.

But he surprised me. “It's not future tense,” he said. “We're already in it.”

Whilst these might not be, at first blush, directly relevant to this project, I am including the following list from End Game, Volume 1, partly as a distillation of what we're up against, and partly because many of the themes and 'chapters' of this website relate (sometimes more, sometimes less directly), or exist in response to one or more of the following premises:

PREMISE ONE
Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

PREMISE TWO
Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted.

It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

PREMISE THREE
Our way of living — industrial civilization — is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

PREMISE FOUR
Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

PREMISE FIVE
The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

PREMISE SIX
Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

PREMISE SEVEN
The longer we wait for civilization to crash — or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down — the messier the crash will be, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

PREMISE EIGHT
The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

Another way to put Premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) require the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

PREMISE NINE
Although there will clearly someday be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by a crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence — required and caused by the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich — and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world.

Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps long-term shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively — if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it — the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

PREMISE TEN
The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

PREMISE ELEVEN
From the beginning, this culture — civilization — has been a culture of occupation.

PREMISE TWELVE
There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something — or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with.

These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

PREMISE THIRTEEN
Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

PREMISE FOURTEEN
From birth on — and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case — we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

PREMISE FIFTEEN
Love does not imply pacifism.

PREMISE SIXTEEN
The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here — the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

PREMISE SEVENTEEN
It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from them will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

PREMISE EIGHTEEN
Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

PREMISE NINETEEN
The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

PREMISE TWENTY
Within this culture, economics — not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself — drives social decisions.

Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there is any heart left—you will find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.