Now THAT’s effective defense!

India is teaching Kashmiri school children how to fight back against militant attack. With guns:

(looks like they still need to work on trigger control a bit)

Survivalism even a hippy could love

The more enamored I become with the idea of living off-grid, the more I’m coming to realize that there’s a great deal of natural overlap between right-libertarian survivalists and leftist hippy farmers.

We can sometimes scoff at what we consider eco-hysteria and gimmicks like solar power (the cost/benefit ratio is still too low for replacing fossil fuels), but let’s think about it another way. A lot of these hippies we look down on live out in the middle of nowhere, off the grid, generating their own electricity, recycling their drinking water, and growing their own food. In the event of a global collapse, where would you prefer to live; out there, or in a 2,800 square-foot suburban McMansion with gasoline-powered vehicles, fossil-fuel heating, grid-dependent electricity and water, and thousands of angry, starving, possibly armed neighbors? Me neither. 🙂

You know what I see when I look at this building?

I see freedom from government control.

Here’s the rosetta stone:

Sustainable = Independent

Think about it; when a lefty hippy type says something like “I want to live more sustainably with a lower carbon footprint, away from industrial agriculture so the man can’t beat me down,” don’t scoff, because she’s basically saying, “I want more independence, away from a fragile ponzi-scheme global economy, and free from government intrusion into my preferred way of life.” Of course, she’ll probably smoke more pot and own fewer guns, but still, the goals are largely identical, and there’s even a lot of commonality in the battles we face.

For example, rural hippies who want to build naturally to alleviate global warming frequently wind up on the wrong side of building codes, zoning laws, and other forms of petty bureaucratic fascism. This is simply one of many natural areas of overlap, as we too are irritated by these needless intrusions on our freedom. The key is to understand that their reasons may not be identical to ours (They’re more likely to place the blame with the corporate homebuilders and insurance companies that pushed for the laws, for example), but we truly have many common enemies.

Yeah, they’re freaking out about global warming, but we’re freaking out about the coming economic apocalypse. Is either of these really any more or less likely? What does it matter what we prep for? Besides, preparing for either of these situations is likely to bring benefits in the event that the other comes to pass. For instance, in a global warming scenario, much productive agricultural land and many cities will be destroyed, leading to mass rioting, looting, starvation, and refugeeism, resulting in our stockpiles of food and weaponry becoming useful and valuable. And in a global economic catastrophe, supply lines will be paralyzed, resulting in dependent urban areas devolving into, again, mass rioting and looting, starvation, and refugeeism, making their self-sustaining off-grid earthships valuable. I say let’s do it all! Let’s build sustainable houses out in the middle of nowhere that generate their own electricity, and let’s fill ’em with guns and homegrown food! That’s my plan, at least.