➡ The text discusses the pros and cons of individual versus communal survival strategies in a post-collapse scenario. It suggests that while individual survival allows for independence and control, it lacks the benefits of specialization and community support. The text also emphasizes the importance of trust and careful selection in forming a survival group, and the need for a clear set of rules or a constitution within the group. It concludes by arguing that survival is not just about the individual, but about the survival of the species and community.
➡ In times of crisis, it’s natural to focus on personal survival and those closest to you. However, as situations improve, it’s beneficial to become part of a larger community again. Trust is easier to build when resources are plentiful and times are good. Remember, being prepared is key to thriving, not just surviving.

We’re going to go and try to survive for as long as possible by ourselves. It’s like why? I mean you might as well just die completely severing yourself from the world and just living for the sake of not dying is stupid really when it comes down to it. In the initial phase of collapse dictatorships are the most utilitarian ruling paradigm. So individual prepping versus communal style prepping. What’s the difference? What are the pros and cons? Personally I would not include anybody in my preparedness plan that wasn’t outside my immediate family. Maybe your close friends, you know lifelong friends.

If you would entrust somebody to watch your kids then maybe there’s a good chance that they would be a good part of your preparedness group but you got to be very careful because trust is one of the most difficult things. If you would trust somebody to run a business with you and manage your operations then maybe that’s somebody you would could have in your group. Obviously it’s on a individual basis but even if you know somebody as an individual you don’t know who their family members are and they might not be as good natured as that particular person.

So you really have to do kind of background checks on people. You may know somebody who is a great person, compassionate, trustworthy, competent, but what if they have a bunch of drug addicts in their family? That’s going to be a burden that ultimately if you’re cooperating with that person you’re going to have to deal with. I think one of the main advantages of being a lone wolf is the ability to just do whatever you want independently. I’ll use the example of Glenn in The Walking Dead. Now his philosophy was that he’s able to survive by himself.

His post-collapse itinerary was fully under his control and he didn’t have to worry about that one clumsy person making a noise and attracting a zombie or something. He could slip in and slip out of a place. His limitations were only due to his own incompetencies but of course the problem with that approach is that you don’t get specializations so you don’t get the benefits of having a bunch of different people who all have a whole set of skills that you can leverage as a community to wage war against a group and I guess you can only get to a certain level of technological advancement as an individual.

As an individual you might be able to build a log house. It might take you a long time, you know, but in order to get to the brick house level you’re going to need people who specialize in different things. You only get that in communities. You have to relinquish control if you want capability and I think a lot of people, this is why they get stuck in business is because they attempt to micromanage and they never relinquish control and so their capability is always limited. Whereas somebody like Elon Musk, his real gift is not that he’s super intelligent engineer because he isn’t an engineer.

He is an entrepreneur that knows how to vertically build companies and delegate responsibility to subordinates who are able to enhance the capability. The other thing is group politics comes into play and so you really do need some kind of constitution amongst the group and everybody has to adhere to it. If you are going to have some kind of a post-collapse group you need like a village charter of sorts that really stipulates what the rules are and if there’s a violation of those rules there needs to be punishment exacted in some way shape or form whatever that might take and I’m pretty sure this is why lock was created in the tribe.

Things were unequal so in order to ensure that you don’t have those conflicts arising you have to have some kind of agreed upon miniaturized version of constitution and it has to be something that is democratically agreed to at least if you want to truly maximize the specialization of a group. I think there’s probably going to be a point during like the initial phase of shdf where it’s more of a dictatorship because you’re going to have like the strongest person kind of lead and you’re going to wield a disproportional amount of power and that’s going to keep people alive at the start and people will probably want that but as time goes on they’re going to have to relinquish some of that power.

We need a centralized power structure when the shit’s hitting the fan and the most centralized of power structures is just you as an individual so like you make all the decisions whereas you just add one more person and then it’s slightly decentralized because even if you are the one telling that other person what to do even if it’s your child you don’t have complete control over what they do you only have control over what you do. Now the further you expand your group the more decentralized it becomes just by definition but in the initial phases of shdf where these are pretty chaotic I think that groups will naturally be more dictatorial than they would be when things start to calm down because you need that you need centralization you need somebody saying do this don’t do that for the sake of the group in the initial phase of collapse dictatorships are the most utilitarian ruling paradigm but as things maybe start to calm down and it goes medieval you still need a bit of centralized power but you also have to bestow some of that power on the population because if it’s too centralized then nobody can specialize it’s just like what happens in communist societies where things are so tightly controlled that there’s no innovation because nobody has like the freedom to be creative and dive into their area of expertise authoritarian societies have the upper hand when it comes to shdf in a democratic society we thrive when there’s abundance when there’s enough to go around because we have a model that fosters creativity and innovation so we can usually stay ahead of the technological curve in authoritarian societies in china for example where they have a lot of smart people there but the threat of coercion they’re not going to maybe take those chances that you might in a democratic society that would allow them to make those technological leaps that we might make here which always gives us an edge in good times but when world war three breaks out it’s going to be like herding cats in north america and everybody is going to be rank and file in china you know they’re just going to all do their roles because they have a collectivist mindset if you have a group that is very collectivist i would say you’re probably going to be much better off in shdf than you would be a group of freedom loving individuals like that’s just probably not going to work you only have that luxury of being the freedom loving american if you have the edge that america has in global finance and geopolitics right now you can’t have that in a austere environment where people are trying to kill you all the time you have to have one guy who’s calling the shots essentially until things calm down a lot of people are okay being followers but you’re going to have people who are not going to want to be told what to do i don’t know what the recipe is for finding compatible people you know like i would have a hard time being a part of somebody else’s group just being at the whim of somebody else’s decisions just because i it’s in my nature i don’t like being told what to do but some people are okay with that and that’s not a bad trait necessarily because it’s a collectivist trait it’s like saying you know while chinese people are because they’re more communistic by nature then they’re at a disadvantage when really they’re not necessarily because they reap the benefits of the group working together despite whether or not they may agree with a dictator you know like the problem with lone wolf preppers is that you’re a genetic dead end for one what’s the point of just running out into the woods and trying to keep yourself alive like that’s stupid you’re just going to die anyways at some point the universe is never going to have known that you existed the whole point to prepping is at some point emerging from the lone wolf you know the lone wolf is a phase maybe where in the worst part of shdf you gotta just be you or your immediate family but this idea of completely severing yourself from the world and just living for the sake of not dying is stupid really when it comes down to it it’s actually contradictory to survivalism because survivalism is about not the individual but it’s about the survival of the species and it’s really about your progeny survival it’s about your family your community and this is why sometimes when i hear stories of people saying yeah like we’re gonna go and try to survive for as long as possible by ourselves it’s like why i mean you might as well just die if it’s just to ride something out temporarily then yeah that makes sense i would say the more acute the crisis the more you should focus just on you and your inner circle but as things start to even out and stabilize you’ll definitely want to start to become a part of something greater again right so i guess there’s there’s a couple ways to view survivalism you can view it from the very egocentric just me myself and irene or you could view it from the perspective of a species survivalism there’s a time for lone wolf prepping for sure there is a time usually that’s when things are at their absolute worst and you just don’t know who you can trust but as things stabilize the competition for resources diminishes or at least is lessened it’s easier to develop trust when times are good the best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at canadianpreparedness.com where you’ll find high quality survival gear at the best prices no junk and no gimmicks use discount code prepping gear for 10 off don’t forget the strong survive but the prepared thrive stay safe
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