Over my many years interacting with various Doomer communities, I've seen a lot of nonsense that just keeps popping-up again and again. Let's start off by addressing some of the most frequent categories of the stuff so that I can reference them as we progress with the more practical portions of this tome...
-Hate-Filled Doomster Nonsense. (Doom-Hipsters.)
Counter-intuitive as it may seem, prepping and doomsteading are essentially optimistic pursuits. We may call ourselves "Doomers", but it's the Cornucopian paradigm that we see as doomed, not ourselves or the world. We intend to survive and come through the discontinuity in as good a shape as possible.
But some people just want to watch the world burn. There's always a faction of malcontents who insist that any prepping is a waste of effort, since global extinction is inevitable and impending. These Doomsters hate hope, humanity, Christianity, Western Civilization (especially America), and themselves. They tend to have a zealot-level religious devotion to Anthropogenic Global Warming (aka Climate Change when it's cold out), which allows them to declare the situation hopeless and lay the blame for the rapidly-approaching End of All Life ON Earth on evil, greedy, Capitalist Western men.
Basically trolls. If these Doomsters believed what they claim, they'd be out partying with wild abandon to make the most of the little time we have left. Or they'd take a long jump on a short rope and get it over with. They certainly wouldn't be using a corporate-logo smartphone over a global network established by the Western military industrial complex to post thousands of messages to forums that are fundamentally about doing what they say is pointless.
-Too Clever By Half Nonsense.
Sort of an offshoot of the Hate-Filled Doomster Nonsense which operates with the conviction that everything ever espoused by Western Civilization must be considered automatically wrong, and promptly discarded, even if it worked well for centuries before the rise of the Cornucopian era.
When considering ways to weather the collapse of modern infrastructure, I tend to turn first to how the generations just before the rise of said infrastructure coped without it. They were, after all, the culmination of millennia of human survival without an electrical grid, automobiles, etc.
Of course, technological reversion isn't a large-scale solution. We can't support 21st Century population levels with 19th Century tech. But, on the individual doomstead level, it's a good place to start.
Going old-school isn't always the best avenue even on the small scale. Some of our grandparents' approaches were dependent on 19th Century infrastructure and resources that were bulldozed by the 20th Century. In other cases, modern tech is superior to what they had, and can be maintained without continued 21st infrastructure support.
Some people are so hellbent to get away from anything in the Western tradition that they'll glom onto any newfangled, theoretical, or imported alternative to the Tried And True.
Keeping an open mind to innovation is fine. But it's no good to keep reinventing the wheel SQUARE.
-Wishful Thinking Shortcut Nonsense.
Recently saw an ad for prepackaged doomsteads in boxes. Supposed to be everything you needed to set-up a self-sufficient doomstead on a small plot of land, capable of feeding your whole community, delivered in a shipping container.
Shameless hogwash, of course. But nothing new. As long as I've been paying attention, there have been stories and writings about setting-up super-productive micro-doomsteads that can be up and running in no time with little effort. Gardening techniques that produce bushels of food from a tiny back yard (or less). Doubters of these miracles will inevitably be told of how someone's grandma fed her neighborhood through the Depression from her little garden. (I'll get to that in the Flora section.)
The truth is that doomsteading takes resources, tools, skills, time to get up to speed, and a lot of work.
-Moonbat Nonsense.
In their cannabis-fueled reveries, the hippies of old often embraced vegetarianism, pacifism/hoplophobia, ideals of perfect "oneness with Nature", and various other warm-and-fuzzy notions. Some actually tried to put these into practice on Back To the Land communes, and quickly modified their views to something more in-line with reality. Others held onto their delusional ideas and passed them down to the current generation.
These conceits will not long hold without the support of Cornucopian infrastructure.
-Absolute Nonsense.
You run across the nonsense of absolutes a lot on Doomer forums. Especially when it comes to Self-Sufficiency. Since one cannot be absolutely self-sufficient, some claim that any attempt to stand-alone doomstead is futile.
Self-Sufficiency is an inherently relative concept. There are people who can walk alone into the wilderness in their skivvies and survive without contact with other people or civilization for years. Others would be buzzard bait in mere hours. Doomsteading is about moving toward the more independent end of the spectrum. It doesn't mean that you won't interact with the rest of the world... Whatever is left of it at any given time.
-"Saving Up" Procrastination Nonsense.
There is some wisdom in saving up to buy quality. Some truth to "You get what you pay for." But that also goes for "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Waiting until you can afford the fancy, top-of-the-line whatever can just be an excuse to procrastinate and do nothing.
Sure, an expensive, state-of-the-art fire suppression system may be better a cheap extinguisher. But, when your house is ablaze, actually owning the latter will be far better than having a plan to eventually install the former.
-Cheating Nonsense.
I think it was Eustace Conway who said that someone accused him of 'cheating' by using chainsaws on his Turtle Island Nature Preserve... He said he didn't know he was playing a game.
We use a lot of 19th Century technology because it is tried and true in a non-Cornucopian world. But we aren't Luddites or historical reenactors. We're working towards being able to continue a decent standard of living in the face of Cornucopian infrastructure collapse, using whatever resources are currently available to get there. Some solutions are actually modern tech. And we'll certainly put the electrical grid, Internet, and petroleum to good use as long as they remain available and affordable. We just won't be ruined when they're not.
Counter-intuitive as it may seem, prepping and doomsteading are essentially optimistic pursuits. We may call ourselves "Doomers", but it's the Cornucopian paradigm that we see as doomed, not ourselves or the world. We intend to survive and come through the discontinuity in as good a shape as possible.
But some people just want to watch the world burn. There's always a faction of malcontents who insist that any prepping is a waste of effort, since global extinction is inevitable and impending. These Doomsters hate hope, humanity, Christianity, Western Civilization (especially America), and themselves. They tend to have a zealot-level religious devotion to Anthropogenic Global Warming (aka Climate Change when it's cold out), which allows them to declare the situation hopeless and lay the blame for the rapidly-approaching End of All Life ON Earth on evil, greedy, Capitalist Western men.
Basically trolls. If these Doomsters believed what they claim, they'd be out partying with wild abandon to make the most of the little time we have left. Or they'd take a long jump on a short rope and get it over with. They certainly wouldn't be using a corporate-logo smartphone over a global network established by the Western military industrial complex to post thousands of messages to forums that are fundamentally about doing what they say is pointless.
-Too Clever By Half Nonsense.
Sort of an offshoot of the Hate-Filled Doomster Nonsense which operates with the conviction that everything ever espoused by Western Civilization must be considered automatically wrong, and promptly discarded, even if it worked well for centuries before the rise of the Cornucopian era.
When considering ways to weather the collapse of modern infrastructure, I tend to turn first to how the generations just before the rise of said infrastructure coped without it. They were, after all, the culmination of millennia of human survival without an electrical grid, automobiles, etc.
Of course, technological reversion isn't a large-scale solution. We can't support 21st Century population levels with 19th Century tech. But, on the individual doomstead level, it's a good place to start.
Going old-school isn't always the best avenue even on the small scale. Some of our grandparents' approaches were dependent on 19th Century infrastructure and resources that were bulldozed by the 20th Century. In other cases, modern tech is superior to what they had, and can be maintained without continued 21st infrastructure support.
Some people are so hellbent to get away from anything in the Western tradition that they'll glom onto any newfangled, theoretical, or imported alternative to the Tried And True.
Keeping an open mind to innovation is fine. But it's no good to keep reinventing the wheel SQUARE.
-Wishful Thinking Shortcut Nonsense.
Recently saw an ad for prepackaged doomsteads in boxes. Supposed to be everything you needed to set-up a self-sufficient doomstead on a small plot of land, capable of feeding your whole community, delivered in a shipping container.
Shameless hogwash, of course. But nothing new. As long as I've been paying attention, there have been stories and writings about setting-up super-productive micro-doomsteads that can be up and running in no time with little effort. Gardening techniques that produce bushels of food from a tiny back yard (or less). Doubters of these miracles will inevitably be told of how someone's grandma fed her neighborhood through the Depression from her little garden. (I'll get to that in the Flora section.)
The truth is that doomsteading takes resources, tools, skills, time to get up to speed, and a lot of work.
-Moonbat Nonsense.
In their cannabis-fueled reveries, the hippies of old often embraced vegetarianism, pacifism/hoplophobia, ideals of perfect "oneness with Nature", and various other warm-and-fuzzy notions. Some actually tried to put these into practice on Back To the Land communes, and quickly modified their views to something more in-line with reality. Others held onto their delusional ideas and passed them down to the current generation.
These conceits will not long hold without the support of Cornucopian infrastructure.
-Absolute Nonsense.
You run across the nonsense of absolutes a lot on Doomer forums. Especially when it comes to Self-Sufficiency. Since one cannot be absolutely self-sufficient, some claim that any attempt to stand-alone doomstead is futile.
Self-Sufficiency is an inherently relative concept. There are people who can walk alone into the wilderness in their skivvies and survive without contact with other people or civilization for years. Others would be buzzard bait in mere hours. Doomsteading is about moving toward the more independent end of the spectrum. It doesn't mean that you won't interact with the rest of the world... Whatever is left of it at any given time.
-"Saving Up" Procrastination Nonsense.
There is some wisdom in saving up to buy quality. Some truth to "You get what you pay for." But that also goes for "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Waiting until you can afford the fancy, top-of-the-line whatever can just be an excuse to procrastinate and do nothing.
Sure, an expensive, state-of-the-art fire suppression system may be better a cheap extinguisher. But, when your house is ablaze, actually owning the latter will be far better than having a plan to eventually install the former.
-Cheating Nonsense.
I think it was Eustace Conway who said that someone accused him of 'cheating' by using chainsaws on his Turtle Island Nature Preserve... He said he didn't know he was playing a game.
We use a lot of 19th Century technology because it is tried and true in a non-Cornucopian world. But we aren't Luddites or historical reenactors. We're working towards being able to continue a decent standard of living in the face of Cornucopian infrastructure collapse, using whatever resources are currently available to get there. Some solutions are actually modern tech. And we'll certainly put the electrical grid, Internet, and petroleum to good use as long as they remain available and affordable. We just won't be ruined when they're not.
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