Sufficient-Self Preparedness Library

[tc556guy]

That's quite a reply. There will always be those who seek to preserve and protect knowledge for possible future wisdom. Sometimes its unwitting, like stuffing a bunch of scrolls into caves where they remain forgotten and undiscovered for millennia. Other times, more intentional in nature. We owe the monks and scribes from the so-called Dark Ages a huge debt. They preserved much information that otherwise would have been lost to us. Imagine what WAS lost to us through the passage of time and depredations of Man; the various great libraries and other knowledge of antiquity. I named my document collection after Alexandria, the most well known of those. I often think about how much of the early folk knowledge must have originally had a basis in science and study that was lost to us through time and ultimately became degraded information handed down word of mouth unless lucky enough to be copied down by some scribe somewhere.

 

[Britesea]

A good read that will give hope to those who expect the world to go crashing back to the Stone Age is "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm" by Lewis Dartnell. I may be a cock-eyed optimist, but I do believe there will be enough people left that will have the will and ability to create at least small enclaves of people that have not sunk to the level of a beast.

 

[FarmerD]

Alexandria was burned. The monks only passed on what the church deemed appropriate. Those that can maintain or rebuild society will have to defend themselves against those with power, muscle, weapons, and little to lose. We will just have to agree to disagree. I don't fault what you're doing, but I don't agree that it will make the impact you intend. Good luck none the less

 

[Icu4dzs]

take a break from all the "how-to" and cuddle up with Earth Abides, One Second After, On the Beach, Lucifer's Hammer, The Road, or any of the other classic apocalyptica....... might cure your "hope" that things will get back to "normal". if you look back through history at other civilizations that have collapsed and what happened after, it takes hundreds of years before the land and the people on it recover enough to even begin to form the starts of the next civilization. digital info, books, possibly even our language itself will most likely be lost. those future people (if any exist at all) will look upon the rusted out remains of cars and crumbling buildings and infrastructure in the way we see rocks and trees now. while it is possible for a long slow decent to preserve a lot of the information and knowledge we currently posses, the statistically more probable event will be fairly quick (plague, EMP, nuclear war, collapse of world economy, severe drought, etc). the fast plunge back into atleast the bronze age, and more likely the stone age, will result in humanity having to find a much more sustainable population. translation: about 6.5 billion of "us" will have to be composted. the idea that remaining survivors would 1. be able to find your library, 2. it remained intact and didnt get burned for heat or used for TP 3. have access to the tools and materials contained within, 4. still have the knowledge of english language to read and understand is unlikely.

having said all that..... i think its cool what you're doing. my personal library would definitely qualify as a survival gold mine should any apocalypse survivor should ever find it. its just my opinion that there isnt much hope for mankind. the world is all ready degraded to a point where long term survival for humanity will be difficult even at fraction of the pre-industrial population levels. in my opinion, after climate change wreaks more havoc on the stability of the environment that gave rise to humanity the chance that we will continue on in any fashion resembling what we are now is extremely low. now add on Fukishima and the high probability that all the remaining nuclear plants will melt down shortly after the grid collapses, the high probability of nuclear warhead exchange, highly armed and easy excitability of the US population, the dependance of food availability on cheap, available petroleum, the stability of our fragile civilization on flimsy fiat currencies, the expansion of suburbia and other development, both civilian and industrial, and its impact on farmland and wild forests and their role in our survival, the high percentage of incarcerated peoples let free to roam the wastelands of USA, and the sudden thrust of people from highly specialized societal roles into survival role slashing the education of any new generations to the bare minimum to survive thus cancelling most all accumulated knowledge from being passed down and there isnt much hope for us. this list could go on and on.

i know most on here will recoil in horror at my opinion, and thats fine. im a realist in this situation. Management, i.e. the natural world, is harsh, and without all our modern luxuries like antibiotics and such, we will become equals with all the other wildlife on the planet...... which, i might add, are going extinct at the rate of 200 species a day. i hold no illusion that ill be one of the lucky (or unlucky) ones to survive whats headed our way. im just doing all the work im currently doing to make my life as comfortable as possible while i have it. ill leave all the hope for rebuilding humanity to others.

anyway, back to the point. dont let me pee in your corn flakes....... im a doomer and have little hope for the future. more importantly, good luck with you library! ill be cleaning out some of mine when we move to the Kaczynski cabin later this year. ill shoot you a pm and see if you're interested in anything im downsizing...... lots of premium Chelsea Green stuff will be getting the axe im sure!

I guess my only comment is "why bother with going to the Kaczynski cabin..." if no one is going to survive the "big event"? You send "mixed messages".
Despite the fact that everything you said was within parameters, True, I guess my personal perspective is that you only have to go "back in time" as far as you want. I'm fairly pleased with the things I know about the 20th century and if I can live the remainder of my natural life that way, so be it. If someone or something snuffs out my life, well the only thing will be to return and go through it all over again. but then, I digress.

 

[FarmerD]

I guess my only comment is "why bother with going to the Kaczynski cabin..." if no one is going to survive the "big event"? You send "mixed messages".

its my purpose, my goal, something to strive for as it all crumbles around me. as things should disintegrate in populated areas first, it'll buy me some time before i have to face the same music as everyone else.

Despite the fact that everything you said was within parameters, True, I guess my personal perspective is that you only have to go "back in time" as far as you want. I'm fairly pleased with the things I know about the 20th century and if I can live the remainder of my natural life that way, so be it. If someone or something snuffs out my life, well the only thing will be to return and go through it all over again. but then, I digress.

if civilization dies, it wont do so in a vacuum. its not like "those" people in CA will just disappear as they run out of water. they will head east, and conflicts will begin to arise as less resources have to get divided up among more people. we on our little homesteads wont slide by completely unaffected while the cities descend into chaos. when the grid goes down, when money is worthless paper, when there is no police to call, no internet, no gas available, no seeds available in the store, no more craiglist chickens or goats to buy, then we will be in the stone age. farming will become a hand operation, and i dont believe the 300+ million americans will stand by and starve like the cubans did while we try to figure out how we are going to feed them all.

 

[Britesea]

Even your doomsday books, like One Second After, has people pulling together and protecting their community, and as a result they were able to defeat an army of baddies. Selco (I don't know his real name) survived a year of his city in Bosnia being besieged; the primary message he sends us is that you can't do it alone- you need at least a small band of brothers to help. And any time you have groups of people working together, their talents, skills and knowledge will have a synergistic effect- even if they haven't been specifically preparing for TEOTWAWKI. A slide into the stone age is highly unlikely. It didn't happen in the Dark Ages and I don't think it will happen now. We may fall back to the steam age. I know that at least here in the Pacific Northwest, the landscape is littered with old steam powered machines from the lumber industry, and a large number of people with the skills to get them running again. I think the same is true for farming equipment elsewhere. Even if all of the ores, oil and coal that were close to the surface and easily accessible are mined out, there are materials that can be recycled or substituted. And with libraries of books such as this one, we can relearn the skills needed.
During Hurricane Katrina, one of the few building unmolested by looters was the Public Library. Yes, I know the Library of Alexandria was burned (several times, actually), but books were not as pervasive in the early years of the Common Era. Every podunk town in America has a library. They won't ALL be burned. Although we only have about a 75% literacy rate (lamentable!) in our country these days, that's still vastly more than Rome in its prime. I would venture to guess that even if there is no public education available, parents who read will continue to teach their children to read.

I do agree that there will be a terrible mortality rate at first. Thousands, perhaps millions will die. But others will live- whether by luck or design, and they will rebuild civilization. It's what we do.

 

[Britesea]

 

[Icu4dzs]

its my purpose, my goal, something to strive for as it all crumbles around me. as things should disintegrate in populated areas first, it'll buy me some time before i have to face the same music as everyone else.

Given the completely dissociative approach you seem to have taken, why not just invest in a dose of cyanide and take it now? Then you could avoid the "rush" when all the city folks in LA come looking for your stash and decide to kill you to get it.

Obviously, you like to flame. Frankly, I find it boring and a waste of time. Why not post on someplace like BackwoodsHomeforum and tell them I sent you...

 

[FarmerD]

Well ok then. Wasn't trying to incite a riot, just an opposing veiw. Good luck with the library.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Wow, just wow.

Why start a topic on a public forum if you can't tolerate another person's opinion?

There is a difference between a debate and being a bully.