New Survivalism

The BBC web site magazine, on the 2nd May 2008, had an article on a new wave of bunker building survivalists. Some rich people in the fear of society collapsing are building bunkers, so they can safely ride out the months of chaos to come.

They start off by saying the following.

In the 1950s and 1960s, bunkers were a feature of many American suburban homes, populated by families fearful of the prospect of nuclear war. That threat has subsided, but now many reasonable people are stocking up on essential supplies in preparation for a new cataclysm.

Of Barton M Biggs and his book, it says the following.

Yet in his latest book, Wealth, War and Wisdom, he suggests that all right-minded people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilised infrastructure".

He then lists a number of events that could occur.

• Bird flu, could be come a global pandemic and kill 50 million people, and create large problems for national health systems and a shortage of workers.
• Food price increases.
• Higher oil prices.
• Power blackouts, could create water supply problems, transportation problems, large financial losses, looting and “a mass exodus from cities”.
• Earthquakes and hurricanes.
• Major global economic crisis.
• Dramatic oil shortage.

Of Mr Biggs it also says that,

Well-off people are advised by Biggs to invest 5% of their income into creating a safe haven, which should be "well-stocked with seed, fertiliser, canned food, medicine, clothes, etc". He labels this plan "sensible" rather than "survivalist".

Of Lloyd Alter, who writes for the web site Treehugger.com, it says,

He believes the world could be rattled by a variety of crises. "There is the problem of peak oil, peak gas, peak food, peak corn, peak everything,"

There is a sound voice of reason from Frank Furedi, who says,

For all the talk of a global bird flu pandemic, in the past five years there have been 200 human deaths from bird flu. In the same period more than six million people have died from diarrhoeal diseases and more than five million in road accidents – these would seem to be more pressing, practical problems to solve.

So, if you are one of the “many reasonable people”, who are “right-minded”, and can see all the disasters coming around the corner, then you should be thinking about building yourself a bunker, or at least buying one of the books about surviving the coming chaos. After all, those bunkers are expensive and the authors need to get the money to build them somehow!