tools of the devil 1 of 3

TOOLS OF THE DEVIL

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note: Gary in TN, thanks for the snail mail donation.  Glad you're still reading my crap and Happy Festivus to you also!
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note: Sixbears-a long overdue shout out.  Your site is the only consistent large source of traffic I get.  Many thanks ( http://sixbearsinthewoods.blogspot.com/ )
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Man is a tool using animal.  You can blather and postulate all you wish as to how knowledge is the most important tool, but I think you would die long before you put all your knowledge to work.  First, you need tools.  Then knowledge gets you far more tools, more sustainable tools, tradable tools and whatever else.  If you were suddenly stranded in the woods because your dumb ass lived in the big city and instead of watching TV you took karate classes and knew how to knap rocks and were in great physical shape going to the gym and everything else, you would still die without tools if you were in a resource scarce area.

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Now, I’m not discounting Stone Age Tech or wilderness survival knowledge.  It certainly could be helpful.  But it doesn’t GUARANTEE survival.  You might be a really good Ninja Warrior with your M4 and red site, clearing rooms all tacticool like the big boys over in Iraq, but if the town has been stripped of supplies you can’t fight and steal and take food that isn’t there.  You’d have been better off with wheat than more ammo.  If you are in the wilderness and the food supply is less than your daily needs, you will die surrounded by edible weeds and insects.  That crap is for getting rescued, not survivalism.

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And I think most of us realize the primary importance of tools.  Without them we are naked apes at the mercy of Mother Nature.  We hate that vile bitch so much that we engage in more destruction of Nature than is even necessary, as a form of retribution, and all the primal screeches of the Tree Huggers shan’t change our minds.  We don’t care about  preserving nature.  At most, we just don’t want to run out of resources for our grandchildren.  Birkenstock wearing Volvo driving female armpit hair weaving freaks have no idea how insane it would be to be IN nature rather than visiting her fully equipped.

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The problem with Yuppie Scum Survivalists is that they rely too much on the wrong kinds of equipment.  No one thinks it is a great idea to Stone Age Survival ( a great strategy that falls apart when you don’t have enough hunting and gathering space empty of other people ) the apocalypse, but they go far too far going High Tech.  A middle ground is much more desirable.  We all needs tools.  There is no such thing as being able to be self sufficient in tools ( other than Stone Tech ).  As soon as man started smelting ores for metals, he entered the Agricultural Age trap of depleting resources.

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Depleting soil for food and depleting ores for tools, which both farmed and protected the farm.  I’m under no romantic illusions of hunters and gatherers.  Theirs was a much better social structure and a much better profession ( warriors and hunters are our natural occupations, not farmers or merchants or craftsmen exclusively [ crafting your weapons of war was another matter ] ).  But they were just as bad at depleting resources as their successors the farmers-the big difference was there weren‘t enough of them to do as much lasting harm.  The hunters depleted game and firewood, where the farmers depleted ore and soil ( and game and wood ).  Man never could survive without depletion. 

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All you can do in your generation is to minimize the depletion.  Which you won’t be able to do with high tech tools, because as soon as they break or run out of consumables, you will be forced to waste resources replacing them.  Without the proper tools, you waste resources, the most obvious being wood.  If you don’t have a proper stove, you burn much more wood for far less retained heat.  If you can’t salt or smoke or can, you butcher an animal and feast until sated and then the rest of the meat is wasted.

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Without middle tech prep, you don’t have the means of conserving resources.  In a conventional stick built McMansion, you need that chainsaw to fell forests to deliver a lot of heat from a hog of a stove.  In a dug-out with solar gain and a rocket stove mass heater, you need far less wood.  So much less you don’t need the chainsaw.  Even an AR, which needs jacketed bullets rather than lead, makes ammunition a higher tech item.  As if ammo wasn’t problematic enough once the factories shut down.  This is what I mean about going to a lower level of technology.  So that you can lessen your vulnerability.

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That said, sometimes it is harder to go low tech and sometimes it is far more expensive to do so.  There is a compelling case to be made for all the Yuppie Scum Kit.  The only restriction is that it must be recognized as more temperamental, less resilient, less repairable and having the certainty of being wholly abandoned at the end of its life.  You can enjoy them, but don’t rely on them long term.  Have your lower tech in place FIRST, then you may gay up your preps with higher tech.  Don’t get the fiberglass compound bow with Dacron string first.  Get the longbow made of hardwood.  Then get the modern bow.

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I’ve been content to stay at 1900’s level of preps.  Most folks prefer to get to 1950 for theirs, a time of lightweight metals and advanced plastics and progress towards computer chips.  And while I certainly emphatically do NOT recommend any Yuppie Scum gear, I can see a use for it if used sparingly, somewhat modified and not relied upon for your long term preps ( even if you are a selfish old humper and know you won’t last long and so are content with MRE’s and AR’s on high volume of fire, try to think of your descendents or at least your tribe being able to use what you leave behind ). 

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Tomorrow I’ll cover all the crap you want but which I don’t recommend and do my dandiest to make a compelling case for each one of them.  Concrete bunkers atop the mountain, MRE’s and freeze dried foods, AR-15’s, property in the redoubt, bug-out bags, chainsaws and whatever else I can come up with.

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