How do/did you survive post-war social disarray and unreliable/non-existent supply chains?
This started as a post on asking about how long you think you could survive a massive supply chain disruption and associated collapse of authorities ability to intervene.
But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to paint a picture of a postwar context. Post-Yugoslavian War, post-Korean War, etc. Also, I don’t know if we’ve had any recent memories of sudden, total plunges into anarchy.
I wonder if the modern economy has lengthened the farm-to-table too much that no one could reasonably expect to sustain themselves for any longer than they have food in storage.
What strategies would you use/did you use to survive? Did society break down into roving gangs? If such a thing happened now, do you feel like you could weather the storm?
You can thank my being snowed in the last few days and watching World War Z, The Last of Us, Book of Elijah, Elysium, the Alone TV series and the Band of Brothers for inspiring this post.
One of the best comments I've ever read, from a MetaFilter member who survived the war in Bosnia and its aftermath:
I remember reading this, I think over a decade ago, and it very much stuck with me. A valuable experience and point of view that I am glad I got to read.
Thank you for the moving and insightful comment from a survivor.
Don't by any means let me stop the fun, for those who like to game out scenarios.
But for those who read topics like this and start to freak out --
I have been in a fair number of conflict zones. By and large, in hard times people tend to band together, not degenerate into roving gangs of rapists and killers. In a very real sense, that's what we're hardwired to do. We are social animals, born to work together and cooperate.
War and mayhem bring misery, there's no denying that. But most people live through it.
I've never been in the situation you describe, but I thought it would be fun to answer your prior question.
I am a little paranoid, I suppose. I grew up poor and never felt comfortable without a full pantry. That was only worsened when I had kids. To indulge my anxiety I put together a pantry system that stores 1-2 million calories of food we use regularly on a 2 year rotation. This includes flour, sugar, multiple beans, rice, dried corn, peanut butter, yeast, baking powder, baking soda, jams, salt, syrups, etc. About every 6 months I refill the stock with a bulk order of some items and a Costco trip others. Also includes water filter systems and medical supplies.
I used to live in a rural area and am a good woodsman, and grew up helping on farms. Wouldn't help me much on the short term.
So in a complete collapse things would be pretty bleak. We'd have food and water (I have water filters and treatments) for maybe a year. I have a woodpile still, and a shotgun with bird and buckshot on hand. Lots of camping supplies so we would be warm and could continue to cook with wood if nothing else. I have a small portable wood fueled stove I could use in our fireplace.
Realistically, I'd have to keep this all a secret. Looters would be the big concern. If probably try and get the family and our food away from the city. If possible, getting to my family back out in the rural area, but it would be a risk with likely gas shortages outages.
Even if I got there, rebuilding the supply chain would be hard, but I know many farmers and we might be able to make it. The problem is there isn't a lot of regional variety where we would go, but we would have beans, legumes, and corn, which is something.
But yeah, no illusions. It would be terrible and it would quickly become kill or be killed. Society is 3 square meals away from collapse.
This is what stops me from stockpiling more than about two weeks of canned/dry supplies - in most situations, that will be enough to ride out a temporary disruption. I live in a suburb outside a major city, so there's no practical way to set our house up to provide for us for permanent disruptions, and it would not be defensible at all. The kind of "off grid" sustainability we'd have to build (and defend) to sustain a permanent disruption would require either a complete lifestyle change or a lot more spare time and money then I have. Even just looking at land where we might "disappear" to turns up very little within an hour of the city.
So, from what I understand (and speculate), you are quite unlikely to see anything like the hollywood post-apocalyptic take on such things.
That is not to say that war and supply chain failures won't happen, but rather that the effects from such things tend to come across not as a total and complete collapse of supplies and services, but rather a sliding scale of degraded quality, quantity, and number of options. Also increased financial costs.
COVID and natural disasters give us examples of what to expect: shortages on certain items (but not all items) lead to panic-buying of the shorted items and you see some shelves empty of a specific product or range of products at your local stores.
For a current-day country-at-war example, look for information on impacts to civilian life in Ukraine. You end up seeing a mix of various degrees of deprivation: regions of the country further from the front have intact or mostly intact infrastructure and the response capability to make repairs and get power / water / fuel going again after an outage is faster than areas closer to actively contested territory. Some areas are fully functional, some will have stores but limited stock or unreliability in when they get various items restocked. Other areas, more damaged and more likely to get damaged again (in active conflict areas or close to them, or just in range for missile strikes) will see utilities out - perhaps not 100% downtime - but you'll see longer downtime and more difficult, time-consuming response to gradually restore various services. Food is more likely to come from aid off the back of a truck than from a grocery store, energy more likely to come (if at all) from trucked in fuel deliveries instead of gas stations or power grids (static targets that can't be moved to keep them from getting hit). And of course in areas where civilians cannot be provided for at all we get (hopefully) evacuated refugees moved or moving to areas that have intact infrastructure.
I suppose what I'm getting at is that you aren't likely to see any 'complete and total collapse' scenario, but are more likely to encounter a 'degrees of damage and failure but not TEOTWAWKI (the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it)' scenario.
From that change of viewpoint, the question of 'how long could you survive total collapse' is perhaps not the right question to ask, but rather 'how long, and to what degree of infrastructure degradation can you still thrive and be comfortable in, what degree can you live acceptably in, what degree can you survive through, and what degree do you need to evacuate from?'
The more I ponder it, I think this rings truest. I don't think it's just Hollywood either, you have the preppers and the TEOTWAWKI (I love this acronym btw; sounds like an Aztec god) proponents that preach the idea that somehow things will go down catastrophically overnight. The graduated decline you speak of seems to be more plausible and historically observed.
If it was war, at least you'd be in a posture of war. If it was a killer-of-worlds asteroid, at least we'd be somewhat prepared for it as a concrete actuality (as opposed to the spectre of fear).
Governments are not great etc. etc. but the idea is that, yes, someone somewhere would be sending aid. That is to say, local society may collapse but a broader community will (hopefully) be altruistic enough to lend a hand, provide a skeletal infrastructure (and get rich off of rebuilding).
Living through that period will suck but at least there will be an afterwards. It seems the best you can do is prepare enough to ride out the temporary vacuum of authority, or at least minimize the pain until "someone comes to restore things". It's a hopeful outlook that people will be more willing to band together than go every man for himself, at least after the initial panic.
I feel I should mention that I have been / thought of myself as a 'prepper' for decades now. But there is the stereotype associated with that word, and then there is a wide range of very different people doing very different things who either consider themselves to be preppers, or who others would consider to be preppers (or both).
For me, it means I have money in the bank (and cash) to cover most any random financial emergency. My girlfriend and I have a reasonably sized pantry: such that if for whatever reason come time I would usually do a grocery run, say instead we needed to not go out for anything for an extra few weeks? We still wouldn't be out of (nearly) anything except a few fresh produce items. We have water filter pitchers which we use all the time (tastes better after being filtered) - but this also means we keep water filtration capability in the home. I keep a can of spare diesel in my van (my van is a diesel), and a can of spare gas for helping out others on the roadside. I trained in, and later taught martial arts when I was younger and carry a pistol because I believe in the right to self defense and also that I don't get to choose or know ahead of time what day might be one of the worst of my life. I keep some spare non-perishable food and drink items in my van in case I get stuck somewhere (or just to have a snack available without needing to stop somewhere first), and reasonable equipment to get myself unstuck (shovel, maxtrax, jack and tire change stuff). I keep what many would call a bug out bag in my van - I just call it an overnight bag - with a quality power bank to charge my phone if the battery dies, a change of clothes in case I fall in the mud and get filthy, stuff like that which is actually likely to be helpful in commonly occurring minor inconveniences to moderate emergencies. I was a paramedic and keep a medical bag with me in the van as well. We have 2 cats, and I buy their catfood and litter in bulk every few months - saves fuel (in picking up the cat litter), saves shipping on ordering the catfood, and if, say, the company I order the catfood from was out of their preferred food for some reason, I could easily wait a few weeks or a month without having to transition my cats to a different food.
For me, being a prepper is just learning things that I think are likely to be useful and having stuff on-hand ahead of when I might need if for things that are reasonable / actually likely to happen. I don't, for example, keep iodine tablets to prevent the uptake of certain isotopes if a nuke goes off near me - that.... doesn't seem like a reasonable or likely thing in my view.
This has largely been my thought on maintaining a large pantry. Very little I can do will affect a total collapse scenario, but a reduced supply, shortage, etc scenario can be well mitigated with a large store of food. Of course, my main reason is to not worry about food for my kids if I was ever let go and struggled to find work. But it works well for the sort of shortage scenario you describe.
And how can you pull together as a community. As another comment noted, the psychological stress can be the worst aspect and respite comes from others. Communities survive and thrive by pulling together and supporting each other.
I mean, probably not for very long, but it would depend far more heavily on the availability of prescription medication than food imo, as the former is likely to be disrupted by supply chain issues way earlier.
I know someone who conducted a survey of Bosnians who lived through the war. The survey was pretty focused, specifically on preexisting knowledge of edible wild foods and its impacts on diet and survival during the war. As you'd expect, because of food supply chain problems, they were forced to subside on the wild foods they had knowledge about finding and identifying.
My knowledge is limited, and Ive never experienced war, so it's all academic to me. Still, imo it makes some sense that foraged wild foods could play an important role in subsidence. I have a good few years experience in larger-sized (personal, not commercial or anything) veggie gardens and basic preserving, and while I think I could now scale up decently, they can be HARD; every year it's a different issue with disease, pests, or animals (or possibly humans in your scenario), and countering bad weather. And, for people who don't already garden, where are the basic supplies coming from? (eg, seeds + garden plot at the minimum, but also compost/fertilizer, tools, pest deterrents...).
Id think a similar rationale (of having knowledge and not just supplies) could be applied to other basic needs, whether that's you in particular or in your community.
I'm reading Pachinko. I've reached the time just before Japan surrenders in the story and food is extremely scarce. The black market plays a big role for people who have assets to trade. Farmers are getting rich.
I've also read Alas Babylon, a classic about the aftermath of nuclear war.
In our household, we make jam and pickles and keep beans and rice in bulk. We would be ok for six months if no one stole from us.
If we're talking complete and utter societal collapse and depending on the time of year I would be able to survive anywhere from a few days to perhaps a couple of weeks. Luckily, neither me nor anyone in my house depend on medication to live.
Ever since my country, the UK, was threatening complete abandonment of the EU and defaulting to WTO rules back in the late 2010's I've kept a small cache of emergency supplies in my cupboard.
It was just a few things like tinned foods and soups, toilet roll, tea bags, chocolate, granola bars etc. This was eventually used during the early stages of the pandemic when toilet roll and some food supplies became constrained.
Now it's my general apocalypse box and I just switch out stuff as and when it's close to going out of date and have expanded it a little to include water, UHT milk, paracetamol and ibuprofen, bandages etc. It should last me, my partner, our daughter and dog around 3 days before running out of food.
If this collapse of civilisation took place in the Summer when my vegetables were coming in we could stretch this out further. I have two huge grow beds, a large planter, about 6 baskets, a herb table and a small greenhouse which would be stacked full of potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers, strawberries, spring onions, butternut squash, peas, tomatoes etc. so assuming there's nothing environmentally that would stop my veggies growing we might be able to stretch this survival out for 2-3 weeks depending on the haul from the garden.
After that though if there's still no help from some central authority, whether that's whatever remains of the old government, local council or perhaps some neo-local government or self proclaimed king I'd need to start resorting to venturing outside of the home to try and find food.