Prepper/survivalist information and resource Box for the post-collapse world (updated version)
(This blogpost can be read to the beautiful sound of the songs "I could sing of your love forever" 30:50 into and "Yesterday one more" 34:25 into this collection of Bossa Nova-music, and to the beautiful sound of the reggae songs "Worthy was she" and "Holy of Holies" by "Dezarie")
Part 1: INTRODUCTION
a) Preface
My dear friends.
This blogpost is the end point of almost 18 years of blogging, the crown that crowns it. I have put a lot of effort into it. And I want it to be the most important information I can ever offer.
A big love adventure lies before us, and it is about returning to a simpler lifestyle, forced by the deepening collapse of industrial civilization, a collapse which is deepening at an accelerated rate, i.e. exponentially.
Don't take it as an accident, a disaster or catastrophe, but as a great liberation from the horrible slavery that we have lived in inside industrial civilization (think of office work 8 hours a day), a return to our real origins, to a wild and free, grounded and earthed life, in small communities, where love and relationships are our main focuses again, not serving a horrible zombie economy that destroys virtually everything, not the least community and Nature itself.
In this blogpost, my last one, I have tried to help you make the transition easier.
We begin with what you should invest in financially:
b) Prepper/survivalist things to buy, in priority order:
1) Warm blankets (täcken), preferably with down (dun), if the electric grid fails in the winter time. This is especially important if you live in some northern country. Many ordinary, cheap blankets on top of each other, is cheaper than warm winter sleeping bags. A warm winter sleeping bag is good to have if you in the winter time have to escape from the cities to the countryside to get a job in a farming community (because of collapse). Then it is also necessary to have a good, big backpack in which to carry your necessities, and a good sleeping pad. This is a very good investment. Do it early on. It can be really difficult to escape cities in cars or public transport when the collapse really hits your city. The highways and other roads will be chaotic, and your car could easily be stuck. Then it's ideal to escape by hiking with your backpack and sleeping bag. Hiking you can navigate through forests and small roads and paths, without being dependent on car roads. Traveling with bicycle does the same trick almost as well. It is therefore good to own a bicycle, if you for some reason cannot hike.
2) Warm clothes and good shoes. Preferably wool clothes. If you have to hike much, use shoes that you have used for a longer period of time, so that you avoid blisters on your heels. Don't go panic buying good shoes and then hiking long distances with very new shoes. This is the recipe for blisters.
3) Stored water for at least 3 weeks. You can collect a lot of 1,5 liter or 1 liter or 1/2 liter soda bottles and fill them with water, if you do not have money to buy bigger water canisters. Building rain water collection systems is also very useful. Here is an easy introduction to that.
4) Basic food to survive for at least 3 weeks. It could suffice to store 15 big packages of oatmeals (havregryn), which when stored in a dry place last for one year according to the grocery stores, for decades according to my experience.
5) Batteries and a manual CD-player or Cassette-player with radio. This is important in order to receive emergency information from the government, if the electric grid fails and wars erupt in your country. If you do not have one such, make sure you know where you can go to listen to a radio. And check out where the nearest bomb shelters are.
6) Candles to light up the night if the electric grid fails. A reserve of lighters or matches to light the candles. If you can, learn to make fire without advanced technology, like they did in the Stone Age. Here and here and here are some education videos about that.
7) A good and wide mosquito net so you can more easily sleep outside during the warm half of the year, if you live in the north, and the year around if you live in the south.
There is more, if you want to have comfort (as in this article), but this is the most important, from where to start.
c) Here is more to do:
Try at once to learn the basics of composting and soil improvement. This will get really important, because the soils are so destroyed by monoculture, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and tilling. You can begin with this article on composting. For soil improvement, I recommend Ray Archuleta's work, recommended by Andrii Zvorygin & co.
Try to learn the basics of home gardening. Learn first conventional gardening, and then, later, if you ever can, permaculture gardening (attending a permaculture course would be very helpful, I've done it myself), which means to work with nature instead of against nature. Begin with learning how to grow potatoes, which is the easiest crop to grow, in my experience, and which has got, among all crops, the most energy for the amount of labour you put into it, per kilogram (which means that it is a real survival crop, in emergency situations, the crop you depend on most in hunger and starvation situations. This also pertains to sweet potatoes in warmer climates). For conventional gardening of potatoes, you can start with this article: "How to Grow Potatoes in Your Home Garden". For permaculture gardening of potatoes, which is cultivating potatoes with cover crops, you can start with this article and video: "Growing Potatoes with Cover Crops".
Learn then all the rest of gardening basics, with the help of the linklists in the end of this blogpost, which is mostly about permaculture.
Learn good English skills, this will help community building in a multicultural society, which almost the whole world has morphed into by now.
If the electrical power goes out during the winter for a long time, it is good to have built in advance a teepee or cot with a fireplace, which you can make from clay and straw, where you can warm yourself without using too much firewood, this is especially important if you do not have a fireplace in your house. Here is a video of how to build a teepee from scratch. A very small timber house does the same trick, i.e. saves firewood. We cannot afford to waste firewood in a post-collapse world. A big house takes incredibly much fire wood to warm up, so it's impractical to use in a post-collapse world.
It is very important to abandon your house and seek out to the countryside if the Collapse goes too far, and much violence and wars starts taking place, which is usual during big civilizational collapses. Weaponized gangs of bandites can search for food and necessities in your area if you have bad luck. Prepare for that. But not with arms, but by building resilience. This will serve all.
Try to befriend farmers and people with allotments (kolonilotter), so that you have easier to get a job in allotment areas and in farming on the countryside after the Collapse. Observe: jobs in these places will usually go to those with money or those with contacts.
On this blog there is a lot of education videos about primitive technology. For Swedish readers I have collected the most important videos from that blog here, in Swedish. I have translated the blogpost into English here.
Here are collected lists about edible (ätbara) wild plants, both in English and in Swedish. You should know that one of the most dangerous things you can do in a collapse situation, is to, in desperate hunger, try to fill your stomach with wild plants, like grass, leaves and buds. You can die from that, your stomach is not suited or evolved for such things. Use wild edible plants with reason. Educate yourself first. Buy some books in advance about wild edible herbs and plants, or, if the internet is up, search for information on the internet.
It is very important to know that when civilization collapses, it will never recover, because of Peak Oil, overall energy decline and scarcity, and ecosystem collapse. This makes you quit all false hopes, and prepare accordingly. If you have bought into the official Green Transition boondoggle crap, you will be in for a rude awakening.
Remember especially to prepare spiritually. Prepare for death, prepare to meet your God. There is no need to advise you about where to find help for these things. It's all over the place. But I have a lot of such information on my several blogs, and on my homepage, especially in my list of my Internet Archive writings. For introduction purposes, this blogpost of mine about prophetic near-death experiences is a good starting point. For those who do not believe in a higher world or life after death, please ponder this Swedish book of mine, or this English fact collection blog about the evidence for the spirit world.
In the End Times, it's even more important to make friends with death than with farmers, people with allotments, rich people or survivalists and hippies.
d) Introductions to our predicament
- The best introduction to the present Peak Oil collapse that we are living through, I think is this classical collapse-Youtubevideo from 2011 by Russian author and engineer Dimitry Orlov: "Dmitry Orlov: Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union". It is remarkably relevant even today. Mind that Orlov has lived for several decades in the US, isn't it strange that the collapse had proceeded so far already in 2011?
How critical the situation has become today, I think can be best studied in Peak Oil Exports, about which I have written this book from 2023, about the end of global net oil exports, which I think will come in 2027-2032. Then over 160 countries will be without oil to import.
- A good introduction to the ecological collapse that we are living through, is ecological economist Chris Martenson's classical and fateful blogpost "Collapse is already here" from the beginning of 2019 (corroborated by this similar article by David B. Lauterwasser more than a year before, and this similar article by learned collapsologist and systems thinker Nafeez Ahmed later in 2019), almost exactly at the time when I, in an extremely wonderful epiphany in Poland (documented in this Swedish book of mine), saw in the spirit that the Doomsday had begun, the doom over civilization, with Peak Oil (All Liquids) in November 2018 and Greta Thunberg's revival (that started in the autumn of 2018), and I saw that the first sprouting of the seed of the Millennial Kingdom had begun in Nature (the seed being the death and resurrection of Christ) by then. A new age begun, which I call "the age of the Green Transition". Everybody talks now about the "Green Transition".
Maybe that was one of the loveliest Auroras that has ever taken place, a little like the resurrection of Christ. It felt like that. It was the most heavenly experience of my life. I was part of that Aurora, and I think I still am, and all others who feel that the wellbeing of Nature is their real wellbeing and their real riches.
After that nothing has been the same. Civilization is shrinking, and Nature is, finally, taking its "revenge".
In 2021 a very special Doomsday Sign appeared in many animal species: crazy circling behaviour. the eco-author Arthur Firstenberg has written about it recently in a newsletter here, and attributes the behaviour to radiation and high technology. Many news outlets wrote about it, scientists measured it. You can for example read about crazily circling sheep in China in this article from 2021.
- The best short course in collapse awareness I can recommend, is to watch all the Peak Oil video chats that Ukrainian-Canadian hippie and peakoiler Andrii Zvorygin has got on Youtube, with Simon Michaux, John Peach, Iver Lofving and others, they are all collected here (you can ignore those videos about spirituality, they are fuzzy New Age things). This is grounded and earthed information, that will help you to locate where we are and where you are in this grand End Times story.
Part 2: LINKLIST (information and resources for deeper studies):
a) Here are important prepper/survivalist websites:
In English:
The "Canadian prepper" youtube blog:
Shtfplan (American prepper site):
Collapse Survival Site:
Survival marketplace (here is links to more prepper sites):
In Swedish:
Survivalist (Swedish prepper site):
Preppad.se (Swedish survivalist forum):
Föreningen Naturliv (Swedish survivalist site, with among others Andris Fågelviskare):
b) It is very important to know how close we are to the big collapse. For information and continous updates about how far we are into the collapse, check out the following blogs and webpages:
b.a) The most important ones:
Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge (peakoiler and energy expert Alice Friedemann's Peak Oil blog)
b.b) Of poorer quality:
Near Term Human Extinction (open group on Facebook):
Wild Peaches (here John Peach is blogging):
OilPrice.com (the most famous website of oil industry experts):
The Honest Sorcerer:
PowerSwitch. The UK's Peak Oil Discussion Forum & Community
Un-denial:
Paul Beckwiths YouTube blogg (om klimatet)
Nybörjarens guide till samhällskollapsen (Kollapsologi):
http://kollapsologi.se/
Of two minds (Ecological economist Charles Hugh Smith's blog):
https://oftwominds.com/blog.html
Resource insights (peakoiler Kurt Cobb's blog):
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/
Collapse economist Gregory Mannarino on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gregory+mannarino
Climate and economy:
https://climateandeconomy.com/
Gains Pains & Capital (economist Graham Summer's blog):
https://gainspainscapital.com/
Climate scientist Paul Beckwiths blogg:
https://paulbeckwith.net/
The oily stuff (oily news, analysis and opinions by peakoiler Mike Shellman):
Peak Oil News and Message Boards:
The oil crash (spanish Peak Oil-blogg):
Nate Hagens YouTube blogg:
Tentmaker (Christian Universalism):
https://tentmaker.org/
Post Doom Conversations (collapsologist and ecotheologian Michael Dowd's youtube blog):
https://postdoom.com/
Ecojournalist Robert Hunziker's articles on CounterPunch:
https://www.counterpunch.org/author/robert-hunziker/
Oil geologist Art Berman's blog:
https://www.artberman.com/
Global Research:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/
Crude oil peak:
https://crudeoilpeak.info/
Aspo Sveriges blogg:
http://www.asposverige.se/
The Collapse Chronicles:
Do the math (Tom Murphy's blog):
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/
Shale Oil and Gas Insights & News Blog (peakoiler Enno Peters' blogg):
Future, science fiction and the Matrix ("The future, science fiction and the Matrix", spansk Peak Oil-blogg):
Peak Oil educator Richard Heinberg's museletters:
https://richardheinberg.com/
Ecojournalist Dahr Jamail on Truth Out:
https://truthout.org/authors/dahr-jamail/
Peak moment:
http://peakmoment.tv/
Collapsologist professor Jem Bendell's homepage:
https://jembendell.com/
Eudaimonia & co.:
https://eand.co/
Collapse of industrial civilization:
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/
Pray for calamity:
https://prayforcalamity.com/
Survival after death.info (evidence material about parapsychology and spiritism):
https://www.survivalafterdeath.info/about.htm
Zero Hedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/
Cassandras legacy (peakoiler Ugo Bardis blogg):
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/
Club Orlov (peakoiler and collapsologist Dimitri Orlovs blogg):
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
Doomstead Diner:
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/
Reddit: Collapse Studies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CollapseScience/
Let's talk collapse:
https://www.letstalkthis.com/collapse/
Goehring & Rozencwajg - Natural Resource Investors:
http://blog.gorozen.com/blog
The most important news (American prophet Michael Snyder's third blog):
http://themostimportantnews.com/
Problems, predicaments and technology (Erik Michaels' blog):
https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/
Save the bees:
https://beemission.com/blogs/news
Mercy upon all (theological blog):
http://www.mercyuponall.org
Americas Last Days (visions and prophecies about America's collapse)
http://www.americaslastdays.blogspot.com
Tillväxt-reflektera (peakoiler Stellan Tengroths blogg):
http://www.tillvaxtreflektera.se/
Surplus energy economics (ecological economist Tim Morgan's blog):
Flammor (Holger Nilssons profetiska tidskrift):
https://flammor.com/
The Seneca Effect (peakoiler Ugo Bardi's new blog):
Reddit: Collapse Studies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CollapseScience/
Collapse Survival Site:
Breaking Down: Collapse (podcast-serie):
b.c) For permaculture education and for the government to make a transition to a post carbon world, I recommend the following websites:
https://holmgren.com.au/ (Holmgren design, David Holmgren's homepage, he's one of the founders of Permaculture, from Australia)
https://permacultureprinciples.com/ (Permaculture site)
www.permaculturenews.org (Permaculture site)
https://www.permaculture.co.uk/ (The main British Permaculture site)
https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/ (Permaculture for the suburbs)
www.permakultur.se (Swedish permaculture site)
https://www.agroforestry.co.uk/ (British agroforestry site, resources for forest gardening)
https://www.holmafolkhogskola.se/skogstradgard-3/ (Kurs i skogsträdgård och småskalig agroforestry vid Holma Folkhögskola)
https://grubbygardens.se/skogstradgard-ditt-atbara-mangfaldsparadis/ (Grubby gardens skogsträdgårdsodlingssajt)
www.transitionnetwork.org (The main page in English for the Transition Movement. The Swedish counterpart is omstallning.net)
www.transitionus.org (US transition movement site)
www.postcarbon.org (Peak Oil and sustainability think tank)
www.resilience.org (One of the most important sustainability sites on the internet)
www.energyandourfuture.org (Basic information about energy and sustainability)
www.simplicityinstitute.org (Basic information about sustainability)
