Survival seems to attract a few different types of people with vastly different approaches to emergency situations and how to prepare for and handle them. Most people will never actually be in a situation that tests their approach but I thought it would be fun to briefly breakdown and compare the attitudes and emphasis of the various survival cultures. Keep in mind, this is a personal opinion, some of it may not apply to you, or you may find that you identify with multiple segments. That’s great! I personally identify with several of these categories as well. I just find it interesting the various frameworks people take and how they differ. So what are the distinct groups in the survival community? I primarily see 4 categories: preppers, bushcrafters, military and primitive technologists.
Preppers
Ranging the gamut from well stocked 72 hour kits to complete bug out bunkers stocked with supplies for years, this group seems to find reassurance in gear. And often plenty of it. While I don’t strongly identify with this category I know plenty of preppers, and find this approach quite fascinating. Usual scenarios that they talk about are societal collapse or extreme natural disaster events. The skills they focus on overlap into some bushcraft or homesteading areas such as food preservation. But it seems that by and large this is a community who focuses on having equipment for just about any possible scenario. Stockpiles of guns and ammo, water purifiers, 100’s of MRE’s, gas masks, massive first aid kits….. Some preppers I know would be useful ’72 hour kits’ for half the town they live in! In all honesty though, this segment has some useful ideas that needs to be implemented by a greater portion of the population. For example, in the event of a semi-serious natural disaster what are you going to do for water? It is not all that rare for a storm to knock everything out for a few days to where you can’t get necessary supplies– hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes, heck even wildfires these days. It just makes sense to have what you would truly need in order to get by for a few days– I have a water filter and a few dehydrated meals in my pantry (but I don’t have three 50 gallon drums of stale water and an entire room full of MRE’s in the basement). Possibility of no power or heat? Have some flashlights and a couple sleeping bags in the house. However, most preppers take this to the extremes and have specialized gear for everything from a zombie apocalypse to nuclear war. I personally know a few people who have entire garages or basements full (and I mean FULL! To the point you can barely walk down an aisle in the middle of their double car garage– with no car in it!) of supplies…. which they have never used before, don’t know how to use, and probably couldn’t find anymore even if they remembered they had it. Food storage is a big one for folks around here, bulk beans, buckets of wheat, cans of oil, etc– but ask yourself one question, would you really want to eat your 20 year old wheat anymore? Food storage is only useful so long as you cycle through it! By and large in my opinion it’s wise to be prepared to fend for yourself for a few days. And yes, have some bulk food for longer periods, but only stuff you actually use and cook with on a weekly basis. The main problem I have with this community is it’s always focused on acquiring more gear so you’ll have what you need ‘just in case’. I always feel like I’m getting sold on some new piece of equipment (which in all honesty 90% of the time isn’t really that useful) when I browse through prepper sites and blogs. And my question is, what happens if you’re not near your house or bug out location when SHTF? Can you function without all that stuff you bought? Gear, in my opinion, is not the answer. And frankly, I don’t want to have to buy more all the time in order to have peace of mind– my house is cluttered enough as it is!
Bushcraft
This approach is perhaps a little more common in Northern Europe, Canada and Australia– at least that’s where I see most of the content online coming from. Actually, this movement seems to be picking up traction and attracting more people here as well… or maybe my computer is just sending me more stuff like this! Bushcrafting seems to focus more on traditional camping and wilderness experience with some basic hand tools. Often very nice tools though. Leather/canvas backpacks with an ax slung across it sums up this group in my mind. That may be an oversimplification though! Wall tents, log cabins, dutch ovens, good knife and ax work, bushcrafters tend to be much more focused on building a knowledge base then preppers, with an approach that is an interesting cross of early colonial America (or the exploration age of Europe) and recreation. Want to know how to pitch a shelter using a tarp, cook a fish over an open fire or start a fire using flint and steel? This might be the place to look. Perhaps similar to historical reenactment expeditions used to take (do folks still do these?). I like this approach, it gets people out in nature learning some good skills and giving them some self confidence and teaching self reliance. Knowing how to take care of your basic needs with just a few tools is a tremendous thing if a natural disaster ever did take out our infrastructure for an extended period. Besides, very few of us really desire to be truly primitive anymore. As such, you’ll find many skills and projects on this site that are representative of this group. And, in fact, there are many skills represented in this segment of the survival culture that I want to get better at– dutch oven cookery for example.
Military
I debated whether or not to make this a distinct segment in and of itself, the military guys I know tend to also fit into another one of the survival approaches. . . In my mind this type of survivalist is typified by a “suck it up and plow through it” attitude. Or maybe that’s just the survival tv dudes. I think this must be something that gets hammered into them while undergoing military training. Just learn to be miserable and force your way through it to get out of the situation. Which is great in the short term for getting out of a bad scenario….. but leads to some really stupid decisions when applied to an extended situation. Another thing which I tend to notice in this segment is an aptitude for scrounging and re-purposing urban junk into something new and useful. It’s really quite fascinating what some people can make out of stuff I would have passed by without a second thought! In fact, if you live in a really large city or urban environment, these urban survival skills might make the most sense to learn in case of a disaster or other survival situation. They would likely be the most applicable to the environment you find yourself in on a day to day basis. Knowing how to turn refuse and common urban supplies into something useful may not seem necessary at the moment– you’re probably thinking you could just go down and buy what you need– but I believe it’s valuable simply to get your brain in the proper frame of mind of trying to creatively solve your immediate problems with limited materials on hand. And that mindset is EXACTLY what you need in a survival scenario, regardless of your surroundings and what materials you’re working with.
Primitive Technologists
Primitive skills enthusiasts are the final group I notice in the survival community. They range in skill, ability and desire to authentically practice ancient skills. Some lie on that somewhat blurry line between bushcraft and primitive technology, others attempt to practice their skills in 100% stone age fashion. Ie, they may both practice basketry, but one person will be using a modern knife to cut and process their material and the other will be using a rock flake and strict primitive only materials. One will be dressed in buckskin, the other in vegetable tanned leather. Primitive technologists as a whole though attempt to learn and practice the skills of the hunter-gatherer peoples of the world. While some are purists, many of them also tend to be interested in the skills that are a little further down the civilization timeline. This is the group I probably identify most with, it’s where I began and have since branched out and become interested in much wider variety of skills and projects. Perhaps these skills may never be necessary again, but they represent a huge portion of our existence as a species and they ground you to the reality of nature in a way that many people need in our modern life. This is exhibited in how common things like foraging edible plants is becoming– it is almost seeming faddish these days! People crave that connection and a simpler more direct lifestyle in our modern era. In the actual case of a survival scenario too (something longer than a couple of days), I tend to believe that this group would fare the best. This is mainly due to the fact they have been practicing skills (and hopefully the ability to do it without their favorite tools as well!) that develop ingenuity, self-reliance and creativity. That’s assuming they’ve been focused enough to actually hone their skills to the point they can cover the basics of life in the first few days before the rest of the skills become necessary. Ie, knowing how to flintknap an arrowhead is definitely NOT necessary in a short-term scenario, making a friction fire and shelter are. If you just focus on skills like flintknapping and braintanning you would be dead in a survival situation long before those skills actually became useful. I personally find it a struggle to stay focused on the basics though. . . it’s much more fun and sexy to tan your own buckskin than it is to practice primitive water filtration techniques!
Survival as a whole is becoming more popular and with reason, in today’s uncertain world people like to feel like they are in control of their lives and are prepared for what may happen. People take many different paths towards that goal, and sometimes approach that goal from another route where they may not identify with the survival community– like homesteading or gardening. Some “survivalists” may use the same techniques (and also identify as a part of the homesteading community), but the vast majority of homesteaders and gardeners I know are simply looking for a simpler more enjoyable lifestyle. Or the quality of food produced when you grow it yourself.
Which segment of the survival community do you identify with? To summarize and simplify….. Are you someone who LEARNS the knowledge necessary to produce what you need, or someone who acquires and HAS the supplies they may need?
