Today's excerpt begins on page 118 of The Survivor Volume 1.
Survival, to the average person, is walking away from a plane crash or finding his way out of the woods after a camping trip that went wrong.
To some others, survival is escaping the divine retribution soon to be visited upon a sinful planet.
Still others see survival as overcoming the evil manipulations of alien socio-political enemies.
Then there are those who fear a nuclear holocaust or social upheaval and to them a place of temporary refuge is the answer.
Very few want to look at the overall picture.
The overall picture was illustrated a few years ago by some social scientists.
They created a paradise for rats.
The rats were pul into an environment of good weather, abundant food and adequate space.
Following their instincts, the rats bred like rats.
After a time, the only scarcity was space.
This created in the rats a demand tor identification with some rats and a rejection of other rats.
Gangs formed, with each rat considering the rat in his own gang an ally and the rat from another gang an enemy.
As territory decreased, it was fought over by the gangs.
Females of rival gangs were actually gang-raped.
As little rats became more numerous they received less care.
Mothers would often abuse and even kill their own nestlings.
As conditions became even more crowded, territory became less important.
Pairing off for mating decreased.
Any female became an object for gratification for any male.
Finally, any rat was game.
Some rats even came to prefer homosexuality.
In time, the experiment was completed and I suppose the social-scientists simply destroyed all those rats.
But was that divine retribution?
Was there a sinner among them?
And could the smartest rat, a political rat, have solved their problems?
Even in this chaos there were some rats who were close to their mothers, who still protected and showed affection to their nestlings.
Could a rat with some sense of morality have benefited them by preaching the coming of a perfect rat who would save the moral rats?
Nothing short of a system of enforced control of fertility could have held off the rats’ doom.
And unless it were applied long before their situation degenerated.
The average rat would live out the remainder of its days a confused, perverted, human-like creature.
We have nearly reached the point at which the rat experiment was completed.
The average human is a confused, perverted, mental defective.
Social and environmental pressures are building up to the point where the outwardly stable will break and head straight up the wall along with those rats.
Alter several years of freakishly good weather, our planet's normal climate is returning.
It will blight the tender hybrid food plants which have sustained our crowded cities.
Unrenewable resources are running out and becoming higher priced as they do.
Thus, fewer people can maintain a life of gentility and consequent morality.
The average person on our planet feels the effects of the mounting pressures.
But he has no way of getting the whole picture.
Without the whole picture, he can't be expected to understand what's really happening and to prepare accordingly.
He must be content to accept the popular opinions given out by whatever news media serves him.
Although network television will run a special on climate changes, a special on mental defectives, a special on crime, a special on population growth, etc., not one network station will wrap them all up into one disaster special.
The average person will not see all these specials.
Spaced apart as they are, even if he should see them all, without survival orientation, he can't be expected to combine their findings into a whole picture of coming disaster.
So a person who is survival oriented can indeed feel alone.
There is a natural urge to seek allies or refuge to help him to survive.
Taking unfair advantage of this are survival hucksters.
They are all doom shouters but all most of them really offer is an address where you can send them your money.
Some promise you their own brand of political action.
Some promise to pray for you, since you don't know God's language but they do.
Others buy a section of land out in the boondocks.
They say that for X amount of dollars you can come there and find refuge when conditions in your area become intolerable.
For my part, I can exclude the political gangs and the "Divinely Inspired" from THE SURVIVOR.
I can provide my findings and opinions and even a forum for the findings and opinions of others.
I may unwittingly even promote the survival programs of fools or even frauds.
So when you boil it all down, you are your only real hope.
The end of civilization, as we know it, may be worse than you can imagine.
But living through the coming chaos and then helping to build a better system will be worth all the hardships ahead.
If that's your goal, as it is mine, you will choose your survival mates carefully.
Just as carefully as you would choose a mate with whom to spend the rest of your life.
Choose your survival mates, not for their agreement with your ideas, but their value to you in survival situations.
Say your political opinions are leftist and you are a chemist who can make excellent gunpowder.
You meet a rightist who is a gunsmith.
He knows a deeply religious person who is an expert at reloading.
You three need each other.
Will you reject them because they disagree with you?
Can you find two others with their skills who share your ideals?
Can they?
It's possible, but not probable, and you know it.
When you get together, express your philosophy.
Hear theirs.
Next, agree to disagree and then drop it.
I don't mean shut up.
I just mean you should never consider their agreement with you to be more important than their usefulness.
This attitude will insure that you will not be stuck with any lovable, parasitic dummies who happily agree with you completely but can't do, or won’t learn, a damn thing.
Groups who band together because of a common philosophy break apart for lack of mutually helpful skills.
So forget Christian Communes, Marxist Collectives or Aryan Valhallas.
In fact, the more divergent philosophies your members entertain, the less chance they will have to form little cliques and factions.
Besides, you will be happily surprised to find how differing political ideas cease to matter when you are with people who can actually do something.
Aside from the consideration of survival mates, there is the consideration of the area and the type of area in which your chances of survival would be best.
Should you pay S10.000 or more to someone who promises to provide shelter in some sort of survival camp when conditions in your area become intolerable?
(If you have some money set aside, possibly for just such a situation, keep it at least until you've read my next editorial, "How to Become a Disaster Profiteer".)
Should you run for the hills, buy a farm, move to a small town or the suburbs?
Or should you make your stand in the city?
Before running for the hills you should realize that there is no more habitable virgin territory on this planet.
Wherever you are, any hunter you know will tell you that last season he had to go farther out for game than he did the previous hunting season.
As things worsen, there will be more poaching, more game will be killed off and the surviving game will move further from inhabited areas.
The remaining game anywhere would just be a supplement to a poor garden plot scratched out in some clearing.
Even Larry Dean Olsen would starve if he had to practice his woodcraft expertise on a permanent basis.
So woodcraft is only a temporary stopgap at best.
Learn it if you can, but don't plan to depend on it.
I would advise you to buy a small farm.
That is, if you know how to work.
You do your job eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year and call that work?
If that’s your idea of work, stay right where you are.
On a farm, you are a servant to your livestock.
Nature is your boss.
Your hours are determined by the weather and the seasons.
If you know how to work, if you can toil around the clock to beat a coming storm, you can thrive on a farm and be happy.
But before buying a farm, you ought first to learn how to succeed with a garden and a few rabbit hutches in your back yard.
If you are the average survival-oriented type, I would recommend a move to a small town.
Take some marketable craft or skill wilh you.
Try for a house with about an acre of land.
A suburban home with a quarter-acre of land would be chancy but would leave you with access to city benefits, while they last.
It you have to stay in a city, I would recommend a fireproof building which can be easily defended.
Don't worry about neighbors.
If they prove predatory you can eventually turn on them and secure the building for yourself and the people you need.
Stock up with weapons, trade goods and survival foods, whether whole grains or commercial survival packs.
If you locate on a farm or in a small town, your neighbors, regardless of their beliefs, will stand with you against invading outsiders.
In the suburbs or city, however, you can’t depend on anyone but picked fellow survlvalists.
You start by picking someone of your acquaintance you know can be of use to you.
He also knows someone, and so on.
Get together with a few of these men and women who share your concern for the future and make it a regular thing, maybe one night a week.
Hopefully, you can find from six to ten useful types in your neighborhood.
If one or two live across town, arrange for a move when the time comes.
Even such a small group would make its presence felt when the rest of your neighbors were running around looking for leadership.
In the meantime, be cool.
Assign one to collect arms.
Let another collect reloading equipment and ammunition components.
Another could stock trade goods.
Even if you are in a wheel-chair, you could collect how-to books and be your group’s survival librarian.
All you really have to be is needed.
But if you don’t fill a need, you'll be a liability.
Kurt Saxon thought civilization would have collapsed by now.
He spent the majority of his life collecting knowledge of home based business.
His goal was for all his readers to survive at a more comfortable level than those that were less provident.
He knew the importance of communicating at a level folks could understand.
Most of what he has compiled for our benefit can be easily understood by everybody.
He also includes a subtle sense of humor.
You can find the majority of his life's work here.
Hear him read his stories.
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