A survivalist is a person who anticipates a potential disruption in the continuity of local, regional or worldwide society, and takes steps to survive in the resulting unpredictable situation. Some survivalists take an interest in survival in the wilderness or at sea, while others look for opportunities to gain practice and training by assisting in government volunteer organizations. Still others look at historical incidents, either localized or affecting large regions, and put extra effort and funds into preparing themselves with all the tools and information needed to handle repeats of those same events.

Survivalists have current access to modern society, but prepare for a future loss. This differentiates them from other people who endure extreme situations like in locations isolated through winter, incursion commandos and guerrillas, and from subsistence farmers.

The specific preparations made will depend on the nature of the anticipated disruption. The natures of the disruptions most commonly planned for among survivalists include:

1. Natural disasters, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, and severe thunderstorms
2. Disasters brought about by the activities of humankind: chemical spills, release of radioactive materials, war.
3. Collapse of the socioeconomic structure resulting in the unavailability of electricity, fuel, food, water, and other goods and services. Concern over the Y2K computer bug led to a brief widespread interest in survivalism in 1999 for this reason.

History

The taking of prudent precautions as a hedge against bad times is as old as history. The modern survivalist movement in the United States can be traced chiefly to two sources:

1. The directive of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its members to store a year's worth of food for themselves and their families
2. The publication of Famine and Survival in America by Howard J. Ruff in 1974.

Ruff's book was published during a period of rampant inflation in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Most of the elements of survivalism can be found there, including advice on storage of food. The book also championed the notion that precious metals, such as gold (as in South African Krugerrands) and silver, have an intrinsic worth that makes them more usable in the event of a socioeconomic collapse than other currency.

Howard Ruff later repudiated much of the book. He has kept it out of print and claims to have purchased the undistributed copies and destroyed them. However, Ruff later published a successful financial advisory newsletter and wrote a series of books with only slightly milder variations on the same themes. The most popular of those books was How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, a best-seller in 1979.

Interest in the survivalist movement perhaps peaked around 1980, on the momentum of Ruff's How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years and the publication in 1980 of the book Life After Doomsday by Bruce D. Clayton. Clayton's book, coinciding with a renewed arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, marked a shift in emphasis in preparations made by survivalists away from economic collapse, famine, and energy shortages which were concerns in the 1970s, to nuclear war.

Interest in the movement peaked again in 1999, triggered by fears of the Y2K computer bug. Although extensive efforts were made to rewrite computer programming code in response, some people nonetheless anticipated widespread power outages, food and gasoline shortages, and other emergencies to occur.

Common Preparations

Common preparations sometimes include preparing a clandestine or defensible 'safe place' and stockpiling food, water, clothing, seed, and agricultural equipment. While some survivalists do not emphasize also stockpiling weapons, many do.

The common goal is to allow a group to remain completely self-sufficient for the duration of the breakdown, or perhaps indefinitely if the breakdown is predicted to be permanent. Specifically, survivalists assume they cannot prevent the collapse, and prepare to survive as individuals, as families, or in small communal groups.

The term 'bugging out' is commonly used to describe a survivalist who chooses to seek shelter in remote locations concealed from the rest of civilization. These 'lone wolves' are similar to hermits. Their strategy for survival is to live undetected, lying low to avoid unwanted attention.

Survivalists make different preparations depending on which events they are most concerned about happening. These concerns have changed over the years. During the 1970s, economic collpase, hyperinflation, and famine were the most common. These were prepared for with food storage programs, constructing a "retreat" in the country which could be farmed, and sometimes, hoarding precious metals and barterable goods on the assumption that paper currency would become worthless. During the early 1980s, these concerns were eclipsed by nuclear war, with some survivalists going so far as to construct their own fallout shelters. In 1999, many people purchased electric generators, water purifiers, and several months or years worth of food in anticipation of widespread and possibly months-long power outages because of the Y2K computer bug.

Other survivalists have more specialized concerns, often related to an adherenece to apocalyptic religious beliefs. Some New Agers anticipate a forthcoming arrival of catastrophic earth changes and prepare to survive them. A small percentage of evangelical Christians hold to an interpretation of Bible prophecy known as a post-tribulation rapture, in which Christians will have to go through a 7-year period of war and dictatorship known as the 'Great Tribulation'. As previously noted, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has an official policy of food storage for its members. Some smaller religious sects have also been known for belief in a coming apocalypse and the adoption of some survivalist practices; among the best known of these groups was the Branch Davidians.

Many people, who are not 'survivalists' in that they are not preparing for any total collapse of society or apocalyptic event, nonetheless make prudent preparations for emergencies. This can include, depending on the location, preparing for earthquakes, floods, power outages, blizzards, avalanches, wildfires, nuclear power plant accidents, hazardous material spills, tornadoes, and hurricanes. These preparations can be as simple as keeping a first aid kit, shovel, and extra clothes in the car, or maintaining a small kit of emergency supplies in the home and car, containing emergency food, water, a space blanket and other essentials, commonly known as a 'bug-out bag' or a '72-hour kit'.

Some businesses have arisen around providing survivalist supplies, including businesses that sell complete sets of food supplies for specified periods of time.

Fringe Groups

Some survivalists take a militaristic approach and have an uncommonly strong concern about government involvement in their affairs. This is most common in extremely rural parts of the Western United States, where a world view occasionally develops that growing interference from the federal government, and the United Nations (perceived to be, or aim for, a world government), is best countered through acquisition of suitable small arms and the setting of strategic booby traps. However, not all who take military matters into their own hands are survivalists; see militia movement, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City bombing.

Kurt Saxon, author of the book The Poor Man's James Bond, is perhaps the best known proponent of this approach to survivalism, and he claims to have invented the term 'survivalist'. Another author associated with this approch was the late Mel Tappan, author of Survival Guns and Tappan On Survival.

Such a militaristic approach is not shared by many survivalists, and is indeed condemned by many. The vocal advocacy of such an extreme position, however, gives survivalism a bad name. As a result, some writers frequently, but incorrectly, use the term 'survivalist' interchangably with right-wing radicalism.

One such group which contributed to giving survivalism a bad name was The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas, which adhered to the Christian Identity religion and had extensive ties to the white supremacist movement. Its leaders eventually faced a government raid and extensive criminal charges in 1985.

Other Voices

The back to the land movement, which has been sporadically popular in the United States, especially in the 1930s inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing, and more recently in the 1970s inspired by The Mother Earth News magazine, shares many of the same interests in self-sufficiency and preparedness with survivalists. They differ from most survivalists in that back-to-the-landers have a greater interest in ecology, and sometimes the counterculture, than most survivalists do. The Mother Earth News was, as a result, widely read by survivalists as well as back-to-the-landers during that magazine's early years, and there was some overlap between the two movements.

Ernest Callenbach's 1975 novel Ecotopia, about the secession of the Pacific Northwest from the United States to form a new country based on environmentalism, named the political party governing the new country the Survivalist Party. However in his 1981 sequel to the book, Ecotopia Emerging, he qualified that choice of names by having the party leader state that the name Survivalist referred to the survival of the planet's ecosystems, not to people who hoard food and guns.

People outside the survivalist movement who have encountered similar situations to those survivalists are preparing for, either in third world countries or as a lifestyle choice, usually assert that the survivalist's emphasis is misplaced for a number of reasons: The low likelihood of a scenario involving socioeconomic collapse serious enough to require exhaustive preparations but mild enough that such preparations would not be overcome by disease, looting, fire, war, or other external forces.

Advocates of nuclear disarmament are critical of survivalists in general and preparations to survive nuclear war in particular, on the grounds that attempting to survive a nuclear war would be neither possible nor desirable.

In Fiction

The Postman is a novel and movie that depicts a post-apocalyptical future in America. A survivalist militia is organized and preys on weaker communities.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is an older classic dealing with life in Florida after a nuclear war with the USSR.

Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, is about a cataclysmic comet hitting the Earth, and various groups of people struggling to survive the aftermath in southern California.

Edward Abbey's 1980 novel Good News is not often thought of as survivalist fiction, but it is about small bands of people in the Phoenix, Arizona area trying to live free and fend off the rise of a military dictatorship, after the collapse of the economy and government.

Two made-for-TV movies made during the 1980s, The Day After in the United States, and Threads in the United Kingdom, portray a nuclear war and its aftermath. Both movies were, at the time, among the most controversial movies ever made for television.

The Survivalist is also the title of a series of paperback novels by Jerry Ahern.

External Links

Survival Center

A website called "Survival-Center" maintains free access to survivalism-related topics. Located at http://www.Survival-Center.com

Frugal Squirrel

A website called "Frugal Squirrel", published by Preparedness Educational Services Inc. maintains a free digital library for survivalists. The library is located at http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/survival-lib.html and their survivalist forums are located at [1] (http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php)

Survival Forums

A website called "Survival Forums" maintains free access to survivalism-related topics, as well as promoting free discussion of survivalism-related interests. http://www.SurvivalForums.com

SurvivalRing

A website called "SurvivalRing", started as a webring in 1997, has grown to offer over 800 megabytes of survival and preparedness related information, most of which are digital versions of government documents on shelter, disaster preparedness, WMD training, FEMA, and Red Cross files, all of which are free. Files, links, and articles are available at http://www.survivalring.org