(Continued from Part 7. This concludes the article.)
4 – How Much Food Can We Afford To Share With Others?
Now, let’s consider the controversial topic of sharing our limited food resources with a neighborhood group. Think of this option like investing money in start-up companies, high risk for the chance at high rewards but in this case the money is our food and the companies are people that need some of our food to have the strength to work on survival projects with us. I will do my best to outline facts and calculations that will help us to consider our options wisely.
First, this will work best if we have a very deep larder. If we only have a month or two supply of food, we don’t have enough for a Type 2 Emergency (T2E) for our own family and friends let alone to share with others. If we have a 6-month or more supply for ourselves and our own family then we start to have some options.
Second, this is an option if there is a reasonable chance to resupply our calories with foraging and emergency crops. If resupply efforts are failing or have failed than sharing our food will just cause us to starve with our neighbors. This is the horrible math of losing our modern food supply.
Third, if we have a deep larder and our calorie resupply efforts are or are likely to succeed than sharing can be another bridge to future calories. These can be the calories used to forage, grow crops, and provide for a mutual defense. Unless we have a bottomless larder sharing our limited calories will be an act of faith in God, our plans, and in our community. I recommend only walking this path with study, prayer, and a willingness to accept the possible outcomes.
If we can share and we choose to share, consider the following suggestions. If one of our neighbors request food, they need to be willing to have their home food resources inspected first to “trust but verify” their needs. My church follows a process like this if people fall on hard times. It is an uncomfortable inventor but it helps to provide the basics for a larger group of people because we “trust but verify.” Also, start a food triage right away and only share 1,200 kcal/day for adults, subsistence levels. I would also recommend that supplies are bartered and not just given away as a one-sided effort.
The minimum barter I recommend would be hours of the recipient’s physical labor to replenish what we have supplied, supporting the group’s common defense, or some other personal or community need. Benjamin Franklin had a tough practical attitude in helping the poor. “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” In a T2E the unprepared will, be the new poor. The only help we can afford to give will be if we help increases people’s capacity to start supporting themselves and to help the broader community. If we decide to start sharing food assume we will not be able to stop sharing and the pool of people reaching out to us will likely expand.
Our personal calorie bridge to the future should only be extended if we trust we can reach the other side. The tables below show 4 different situations of how far our resources could stretch. The first is a family of 5 adults with a 6 month supply of food stores, 2,600 kcal/day. Second is a family of 5 with a one-year supply, 2,600 kcal/day. Third, is a family of 5 with a two-year supply, 2,600 kcal/day. Fourth, is a one-year supply for 1 person that can be used to scale up or down to your situation, 2,600 kcal/day.
Here is how these tables could be used.
Example 1:
The family of 5 with a 6-month food supply could afford to help 5.8 neighbors for 6 months if everyone was on starvation rations. If successful cambium harvesting has started and we were collecting 600 kcal/person/day we could help 16.7 neighbors reach 6 months. If the target was 3 months we could help 38.3 neighbors.
Example 2:
The family of 5 with a two-year supply could afford to help 38.3 neighbors for 6 months if everyone was on starvation rations. If successful cambium harvesting has started and we were collecting 600 kcal/person/day we could help 81.7 neighbors reach 6 months. If the target was 3 months we could help 168.3 neighbors.
Hopefully, these tables will help us to see how our ability to help others is physically constrained in any prolonged emergency and the absolute importance of adding extra calories into the equation as fast as possible. I believe in the capacity of the human family to solve impossible problems if we willingly pull together. Our current prosperity is built on this principle. If circumstances give me a viable plan to literally grow our way out of an emergency, I will choose to go all in like the US founders who pledged their “life, fortune and sacred honor” to such and effort.
5 – Some Thoughts On Leadership During An Emergency
The entire strategy I mentioned above would require significant group leadership to pull off successfully in normal times, let alone during an emergency. How could a community of many strangers be organized into an effective group? I will not try and re-invent the wheel here but I will point us to Jethro’s advice to Moses in Exodus chapter 18. After the Israelites had escaped into the wilderness Jethro visited his son-in-law. He watched Moses dealing with the people’s problems alone, all day long, day, after day. Jethro then gave him this timeless warning. “The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is a too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.” He then taught Moses how to delegate. He recommended breaking the people up into groups of 10s, 50s, 100s, and 1000s. The groups of 10s would each choose a leader and these leaders would choose a leader for 50 and the leaders of 50 for 100 until we had leaders for each group of 1,000. These leaders solved problems at the local level and worked their way up for bigger problems until they got to Moses.
A similar process could be set up to provide a leadership structure during an emergency. People choosing leaders among their own friends and family and having representative leaders at the higher and higher levels. This group of leaders would lead the whole community since we don’t have Moses on hand. If our local civic leaders were still “in-charge” and actually serving the people they could be at the top with the top representatives helping them govern and solve the problems that required community wide level actions.
Another helpful feature of this structure is it will help people to have buy-in to feed the community in an emergency. Most American we are not fans of random strangers bossing us around but we are okay following a representative that we had a chance to choose, especially if they are local. This would help hold things together much better than if we just let chaos emerge. It will also create lots of local leaders who can act independently to solve problems and take ownership. This will develop people’s talents and it will give a community a deep bench of leadership. Many organizations fall apart when key leaders leave but if we set Jethro’s plan in place, our organization will be strong from the bottom up and losing a few leaders will not cause our community to collapse.
Another wise move would be to make sure everyone has work to do. In the aftermath of a T2E there will be lots of instantly unemployed people who just lost one of their main purposes in life, their work. Plus, we will have youth and children that no longer have a school system to focus their daily efforts. To fill this void, encourage the newly chosen leaders to give everyone work to do that is tied to their families or communities survival. Focusing on what we can do to improve a bad situation is much better than just wallowing in our misery. Work can do that for everyone, it is noble.
A more cynical thought is that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” So the more hands that are at work to improve things, the fewer hands there are making things worse. A final aspect of work is that it builds unity. Over the years it has been the people I have worked hard with side by side that have become my friends as we gained each other’s trust and loyalty. The same would happen in our community if we work side by side to overcome an emergency.
6 – The Missing Pieces To Make A Plan Like This Work
Like I mentioned before, what I have presented above is a skeleton with a bit of meat on the bones. For cambium harvesting I did not list the specific tools and detailed methods to fell and delimb trees. I gave no specifics on how to run site security or how to vet people to join our projects. I didn’t talk about how to till soil with low-tech methods or how to grow cover crops to fertilize the soil. These and many other topics are our homework to grow our knowledge to bless our family, friends, and community.
We don’t have to learn it all ourselves. We can divide the critical topics with people we can count on and have them teach us about what they have learned. It will help both of us to learn a subject at a deeper level. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”, but good preparations and sufficient planning will allow us to follow the US Marine Corp’s challenge to “adapt, improvise, and overcome”. I lay out a chance, a possible pathway to thrive in the aftermath of a T2E, but it is not a promise of success. Regardless, if you take just a couple of ideas or the whole plan, I hope you will be successful in becoming more prepared to face the future.
7 – Victory Gardens and Freedom’s Forge
The idea that Americans can quickly pull together in emergencies is not a fantasy but our heritage. In both WWI and WWII Americans grew victory gardens both large and small in size. In 1944, US Victory Gardens grew 40% of fruits and vegetables for the US. The keystone to the Allied victory in WWII was the USA’s insane war-fighting materiel production speed and capacity. An amazing book on this topic is Freedom’s Forge by Arthur L. Herman. This book highlights many forgotten United States heroes in this arena, who organized the processes to unleash the American People’s industrial might. I have no doubt that when hard times come again we can also come together, if a small minority are prepared and can lead with practical knowledge and tenacity.
Our nation is divided, our national debt is just stupid, organized crime has too much control, the impacts of illegal immigration is a serious challenge, and people are turning away from family and God. We have real challenges, just like almost every other time in human history. We have votes to impact the outcome. We can vote with our time, money, the relationships we build and strengthen, the things we learn, the way we serve others, and our political vote. Most importantly. God is in this fight. He loves all His children past, present, and future. He has, is, and will continue to intervene our behalf. If this was the story of Joseph in Egypt we are living in the “seven years of plenty”. In all of human history no people have ever had more “plenty’ than us. We shouldn’t squander this time to prepare and gather our loaves and fishes for our needs and to “love our neighbors as ourselves.”
My grandmother kept a poem tacked on the outside of her bedroom door that was written by Edwin Markham.
“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!”
― Edwin Markham
I think the direction of my preparation efforts are successful if they allow my family to draw larger and larger circles not to keep others out but to take them in. Be wise, be aware there are things we can’t control, cherish human life and potential, and don’t doubt our ability to be a force for good in this world. Listen to the spirit of love and not of fear. We have the wealth to make a difference today and in the future.
8 – Wealth Is Knowledge, Invest It In Others And Grow Wealth
The final topic for this article is a discussion on what wealth really is and how infinite it can be. I wrote this article to transfer wealth from myself to you the readers. George Gilder is one of my favorite thinkers. Over the years I have read or listened to most of his books. He is one of those rare individuals that is always willing to trade up, to give up past errors when truths is discovered or better understood.
His most recent book Life After Capitalism is the culmination of his study of economics throughout his 85-year life. He chops away at the currently assumed foundations of both socialism and capitalism to replace it with a better model. In a nutshell he makes the claim that economics are not built on just physical stuff but physical stuff connected to knowledge of how to make it valuable. Not just access to crude oil but the knowledge of how to refine it into fuel and the materials of modern life. Not just access to a forest of trees but the knowledge of how to turn them into buildings, food, chemicals, and more. If our nation loses its stuff but keeps our knowledge we just have to rebuild. If our nation or any nation, state, or city stops learning or loses enough knowledge we will stagnate or fall into a new dark age.
George Gilder’s 4 key truths are:
1. Wealth is knowledge
2. Growth is learning
3. Information is surprise
4. Money is time
I highly recommend this book to better understand economics and how the world really works around us.
Thomas Jefferson spoke about an aspect of the truths George Gilder champions when he said, “he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” In writing this article. my knowledge has not been diminished in sharing it with you and the same is true when you share your knowledge with others, the world get wealthier. True wealth is not in having an abundance of finished goods but in having the knowledge to transform raw materials into valuable resources and the knowledge of how to use those resources.
There are 118 known elements and there are more than a billion ways to combine them into different compounds. These elements and compounds can then be arranged in more than a trillion different ways and these inventions can be applied in at least a quadrillion more. The chief engineer on the Panama Canal, John Stevens once said, “I believe that we are children picking up pebbles on the shore of the boundless sea.”
Just because there are challenges ahead of us does not mean the future beyond that can’t hold wonderful days for us. We have hardly scratched the surface of the great possibilities ahead. I hope our preparations will never be needed for a T2E but if they are I hope they will be used to bless our families, friends, and as many others as possible. We can only share so much physical food, seeds, and supplies but we are basically unlimited in our ability to teach others how to forage, grow food, and apply other survival skills to overcome an emergency and turn a disaster in new victories. May God bless each of us to have our personal loaves and fishes multiplied as we do our best to love those around us.
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JWR Adds: For some further reading, see the gardening books and other reference books listed at the SurvivalBlog Bookshelf page. Also, this article: BARK-PEELING, FOOD STRESS AND TREE SPIRITS – THE USE OF PINE INNER BARK FOR FOOD IN SCANDINAVIA AND NORTH AMERICA.
Read the full article here