Thing is, the kind of people with a strong faith in hierarchical leadership tend to think of themselves as the natural top of that pyramid… The smart survivalist doesn’t want to be the Alpha Male warrior in charge, but the doctor. Be the guy that everybody else needs to keep alive and happy instead of the one they’re plotting to usurp at the first sign of weakness.
Not just farmers, but healers and makers as well- people who know how to craft and build stuff. That’s my zombie apocalypse strategy: I have a few gardening and livestock skills, but I also know how to build water pumps and composting toilets and wind/hydro generators from scrap, and how to make a passable aspirin or penicillin from tree bark or cheese. Bunch of other skills that will come in handy like leatherwork and carpentry.
The bandits and warlords might survive, but it’s the people who do useful stuff for each other that will thrive and rebuild.
That comment needs so many more likes. That’s the kind of shit I’m talking about.
This is one place rural folks have a big advantage. Growing food takes land. Cities, even large towns, simply aren’t sustainable without that kind of infrastructure. Sure, there’s some great stuff being done with aquaponics and vertical farming, but if there’s any kind of collapse, the rednecks aren’t exactly wrong about the cities falling first, and needing to defend what they have against mobs of hungry refugees. Even the well run and welcoming hippie commune type places would have a greater influx of people than they could provide for.
Anyone who really cares about the future should be thinking a lot about widely distributed architecture and localized scalability. Focus on producing food and energy as close to the point of use as possible.
