More Thoughts On The Collapse-Proof Housing Tract

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Variations.

I re-read the previous post and got to thinking that the layout I proposed was very large and space-intensive.  It might work in a relatively isolated area that has not previously been built up and does not have easy access to grid utilities.

In space-constricted areas, the housing could be clustered together in a more traditional tract blueprint.  Yards could be small.  The housing area could be surrounded by a wall, and fortified.  It could contain a tight micro electrical grid, a community garden, a few community buildings, perhaps a commercial area.  Farmland could be nearby, divided into personal holdings, or perhaps it could be within the compound.  The clustering of households together would allow for security and energy conservation.

Perhaps housing could even be in fortified apartment blocks, rather than houses, for added efficiency and safety.  Of course, this design would be less like a tract and more like a village or fortress town.

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The Collapse-Proof Housing Tract

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The collapse-proof housing tract would incorporate many recycle-reuse, passive and closed-system elements into the buildings, as well as innovative design ideas for the community as a whole.

The buildings would be designed to use as little energy as possible.  They would have "tight envelopes", incorporate rain water catchment into their roofs, have water tanks, re-user gray water, generate their own energy via solar and wind power as well as with bio-fuel-powered generators, utilize passive heating/cooling and lighting, be oriented South, use LED lights, etc.  Some would have steam engines, others might be built partially underground or hacienda-style with a naturally defensible courtyard.  Wells would be strongly discouraged, as they disrupt the water table.  Tree planting would be encouraged.

Each residential parcel would probably be a 1/2 acre in size, with the possibility of multiple contiguous parcels an option.  Each parcel would be large enough to have a house, outbuildings, a large garden and livestock.  In effect every parcel would be a mini-ranch.  All residential areas would also be zoned for small home/cottage businesses, thus allowing small-scale enterprises such as cafes, restaurants, dairies, cheese-making, bicycle-repair, auto-repair, bio-fuel production, etc, to flourish on a community scale

The tract would be a grid with square blocks, oriented North-South.  Asphalt paving would be discouraged at all levels.  Gravel, plastic panels, etc. would instead be used to fortify roads.  Bicycling and walking would be encouraged at all times as a primary form of transportation.  Any cul-de-sac would have a through-path for pedestrians.  Although most houses would provide their own energy, the tract as a whole would be wired to create its own micro-grid, and the central "energy park" would have a large scale wind and solar array to assist the grid.

Small commercial areas would be incorporated into the tract to provide cultural and economic focal points.  Community areas would include a swimming pond w/beach, an outdoor theater, a "great hall",  a central square with a park, a community garden, a town hall, a marketplace, a tool-lending library, etc.  There would be a basic medical facility.  Charter schools would provide local education.

Commerce would involve any one of several "currencies" - US dollars, timeshares, barter, local currency, precious metals or barter tokens.  Innovation on all levels would be encouraged, but so would simplicity, effectiveness, conservation and minimal environmental impact.

Security would be an important aspect of community life.  The tract would be surrounded by a berm, fence and concertina wire, Kibbutz-style.  Citizens would form a volunteer militia.  Crime would not be tolerated.  Friendly citizen patrols would police on "beats".  Households would be armed.  Open carry would be commonplace, as would vehicle-carry.

Any elected "tract" officials or workers would be volunteer only, serving without pay.

Each residence and business within the community would attempt to be self-sufficient, as would the community as a whole.  The tract's motto would be: "Get It Done".

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Good Stuff

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I may have found the ultimate Hippie Survivalist website at Resilient Communities by John Robb, the genius who also runs the Global Guerrillas website.  As far as I can tell, Global Guerrillas is a website in which John Robb tracks and plots the future of warfare in all and any of its manifestations.  And Resilient Communities must be his solution to the emerging chaotic world that he sees/imagines/predicts/distills.  Today's RS blog entry concerns a new portable milling machine, housed in a shipping container, which can custom manufacture an entire house on site.  Go at it!

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Another cool blog with a strong Facebook presence is Homestead Survival.  It's a bit girly, a bit cutesy, a bit on the feminine side.  They don't discuss guns.  But it is chalk-full of real-life info that will help you in all ways build a homestead.  Check it out their FB page HERE.

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If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area East Bay and want someone to build you a shed for your backyard, consider The Shed Shop.  I'm ordering a shed thru them right now and I'm impressed with their quality and professionalism.  I suggest going to their business in Fremont and looking at their model sheds, as they cover a wide range of options, sizes and styles.  I will post more when this project is complete.

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Below, more Mad Max 4: Fury Road pre-production photos I culled off the internet.  These are interesting vehicles, but I'm disappointed overall.  I don't want Mad Max manga!  I want Road Warrior realism.  We'll just see how the finished product sizes up and go from there.

 

 

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Below: A 1943 Dodge Power Wagon WC-54 Military Ambulance.  My favorite vehicle of all time?  Maybe.  Just look at those lines...  I believe they had 4 wheel drive, a 6 cylinder engine, dual batteries and could be set up with dualies in back.  What a machine!

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The Ruger 10/22 Takedown + Random Stuff

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Well, dammit, if Ruger had offered this rifle 4 years ago I surely would have bought it instead of the standard all-weather 10/22 I ended up getting.  I like the look of this piece.  I never did like the Henry floating survival rifle - it just looks too much like it's only good for plinking at birds or squirrels and nothing else.  A stainless 10/22 can at least offer some minimal defensive protection if TSHTF.  It's about time, that's all I can say.

A homemade pickup bed cover, spied in sunny CA:

The very definition of fun: Throwing the Russian (Spetsnaz) Fighting Shovel:

 iPhone photos taken during the recent solar eclipse:

A homemade motorized bicycle parked near a Farmer's Market one recent Sunday.  Note the ammo can over the rear tire and the gas tank over the front tire.  This puppy looked fun.

A genius DIY hammock:

The Truth As We Know It To Be:

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The Art of Survival

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Gettin that eclipse-y feeling again.

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Here's a good song: AWESOME.  Don't let the tinkle-bell beginning dissuade you.  This song builds and builds.  It gives me goosebumps.  The video rocks, too.  The very last words Pastor Jenkins sings are my favorite, after the song ends.  Two stanzas.

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This eclipse is awesome.  I've been staring straight at it since it started, 45 minutes ago.  It's just getting dimmer and dimmer.  Actually, it's pitch black now, and we've still got an hour to go!  I can't see a bloody thing.  I had no idea that the moon literally blocked ALL light from reaching the earth during an eclipse, and for so fucking long!

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You know that survivalist dude up in Washington who recently went batshit insane, killed his girlfriend and kid, then hid in a remote bunker for a week til the cops tracked him down and blew the lid off his hole, at which point he blew his own head off?  Yeah, that guy.  Well, I'm not going to comment on his crimes, as they are heinous and we can all see that.  He was the far end of Survivalist, taking the ethos to it's cold, creepy, (il)logical extreme.

BUT.  I liked his bunker.  Maybe he should have stocked it with better food and had a secret exit, but it was impressive.  It was a handmade labor of love, is what it was.  My point here, though, is that his bunker, like so many survivalist bunkers and vehicles and gear, was kind of grim and unsightly.  That might not sound like much to your average macho survivalist, but it strikes a chord in ME.  So, why not make your bunker look nice?  Why not lift spirits with a little creativity, some humor, some color, some brightness?  Even a small amount of artistic spirit can lift a grim edifice to a higher beauty.

That's what I mean by The Art of Survival.  Let's spread a little cheer with our survivalist lifestyles. Make someone, somewhere, crack a smile.  Wear your handmade skin jacket with pride.  Paint your rifle like the Indians did.  Add magical charms and symbols to your bandolier.  Name your BOV.  Bless your bullets.  Slap some fake bullet-holes on your front door.  Embark on some projects that are whimsical as well as "important", like sewing a Cloak of Invisibility or grinding a blade out of a railroad spike or building a 3-barrel muzzle-loading pistol shotgun with a laser sight and 2 pistol grips.

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The binoculars must have magnified the sun's laser rays. When I stared at the eclipse thru them for 2+ hours they burned rings of fire into my eyes.  All I can see is white light, and the eclipse ended hours ago.  It's nighttime.  I'm outside, I don't know where.  Crickets are chirping.  A dog barks.  How can I greet the new dawn tomorrow, when the sun is already inside my head?

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Backyard Food Production Notes

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Tomatoes in self-watering earth boxes.  The boxes are expensive and synthetic, but this is their 4th year and they have done me well.  I don't use the mega-fertilizer packs they come with - don't want to grow or eat FrankenFood.  Two plants in each box: The two on the far left are heirlooms, the four on the right are Early varieties.  In this position the plants get direct sunlight from dawn til 4:00 every day.  Tomatoes are beginning to appear.

A latticework for pole beans, fashioned from a used lattice, pieces of bamboo and a CB antenna.  Fun to build, vaguely amusing to look at.

Today I made a salad from home-grown lettuce, strawberries & basil, as well as organic lime juice, white peaches and pumpkin seeds.  Hella yummy!

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Portable Shelter Bundle

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Here is an idea for a small kit that could be used to construct shelters in a rural or wooded environment in a bugout situation.  The kit would consist of a roll of chicken wire, a roll of wire, a roll of visqueen, a roll of braided cord, a bundle of metal fence posts, an axe w/hammer, an army shovel, a knife & a folding pruning saw.  I don't have dimensions for any of the materials, but you could figure them out yourself with a bit of research.

In a nutshell, you'd cut saplings with the pruning saw & make usable posts/beams/ridge poles out of them.  You'd use existing trees to build off of, probably wedging/attaching saplings to existing branches and stretching them between two or more trees to create ridge poles, then strengthening those ridge poles with vertically-placed poles or fence posts.  Any poles that touched the ground could be packed into holes &/or placed on stones to add support strength.  Metal fence posts would only need to be pounded into the soil.  Poles could be attached to one another with wire or cord.  Over the frame you constructed you would attach a layer of chicken wire (with wire or cord), which could stretch all the way to the ground (to form walls) if you wanted.  Over the chicken wire you might insert a layer of insulation, such as blankets, sleeping bags, old clothes, etc.  Over that would go a layer of visqueen, & over that would go more saplings to hold the visqueen down, plus layers of dirt & foliage (for further insulation & camouflage).  You could build any size structure you wanted, from a tiny 1-man emergency structure to a large, semi-permanent, multi-room "home".

I've seen visqueen/sapling living structures built in the forest, & the example above is a combination of multiple structures.  I've also had a small amount of experience building such a structure, using only natural materials.  Building shelter using the "kit" materials listed above would be creative, fun & relatively easy.  You could build a very livable structure in less than a single day.  There would be no straight edges or right angles to maintain, nor any nails or precise measurements, & you could free-form the structure into the forest landscape.  It would be fully waterproof, too.  I personally would also build it low to the ground & dig the floor down into the earth, for further insulation & camouflage.

One last thing: The kit supplies listed above would be too heavy to carry, so you'd need a vehicle to haul them.  However, you could design a simpler & lighter kit (of visqueen, cord & a saw) for your BOB if you wanted to.

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Paradise

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A little piece of paradise: Shade, sun, a breeze.  A hammock, a bench, a fire pit.  Lawn.  Tomatoes, strawberries, citrus, apricots, almonds, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, pole beans, carrots, collards, aloe, summer squash, potatoes, blueberries.  Time does not exist in this place, except in terms of the seasons.

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What I need to do is put together a bag that is more than a bugout bag.  A pack for long-term nomadic travel.  Real basic, some hi-tech gear but also a lot of low-tech gear.  Get rid of the bullshit.  Real food, simple tools.  

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The British re-make of The Survivors is good, and has grown on me.  Yet I am continually surprised by the lack of preparedness shown by the characters.  They are almost always completely unarmed.  There are almost no firearms.  People wear regular, brightly-colored clothing.  People don't have EDC kits, they don't carry survival gear.  Many of them don't have gardens, no one is hunting.

If I lived in that world, I'd have a Leatherman and a Mora knife on me at all times, plus a blade strapped to my ankle.  I'd have a firearm, preferably a sawed-off shotgun, with shells.  I'd have a pack in the vehicle, and food and fire on me at all times, as well as a sharpener, cord, a poncho, a canteen.  I'd wear green clothes and have a black jacket for nights.

The scene where they are trying to break the slaves out of the coal mine: I'd be running around with a razor-sharp Mora knife in hand, stabbing all the guards.  No time for anything but straight-up CQB assault in a situation like that.

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Spring

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Dear God in Heaven.  You have an awesome day and think everything's fine and then you spend twenty minutes hunched over the toilet bowl, pissing out of your ass.

There are no ass-pissing atheists, let me tell you.

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So, my new house has a unique energy field.  It is located within a Cone of Silence.  Well, it's not QUITE a Cone of Silence, because I can hear everything that goes on around me, but it's got a very unique vibe to it nonetheless.  You see, my cottage is surrounded on three sides by a school, a park, and a pedestrian thoroughfare.  And together they all emanate noise, mostly talking and shouting.  But my backyard seems to exist in a sort of nexus or "eye" in which all of this activity goes on around it while none of it touches it.  It's just so damn perfectly peaceful and warm in the center of it all.  It's a blessing, this house, nothing less.  I know when I have it good.

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Have you ever noticed how EVERYTHING GOES BETTER WITH ZOMBIES?  I am watching the 2-season British TV show SURVIVORS (the recent re-release) and it's great, but it's a boring world they've created.  Why?  Because civilization collapsed and almost everyone died...but there are no zombies.  It's just too easy.

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If one pursues the Survivalist Path far enough, one comes to the conclusion that Humanity, at this juncture in the cosmos, is poised at the edge of a perilous possibility.  The possibility is that of profound spiritual advancement, and the peril is the turmoil and upheaval that will accompany the birthing process of a new consciousness.  What I am saying is that Survivalists who miss that part of the collapse equation are not seeing the whole picture.  They will not fair well if they don't understand that the spiritual element of the coming trying times will require them to adapt to new paradigms.  If they don't adapt, they will perish with the old paradigms.  This is fact.

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A fatal flaw in the Survivalist mentality is the reliance upon "stuff", by which I mean guns, ammo, canned food, fuel, generators, etc.  There is nothing wrong with these things per se, but none of them are sustainable.  They are all one-shot items.  You eat the MRE and it's gone.  You fire the bullet and it's gone.  You burn the diesel and the truck won't run.

The truth is that the individual himself is the tool.  If I want to truly be ready to survive apocalypse, then I need, in addition to my material stores, the adaptability, knowledge, imagination, and skill sets to survive.  Because I will bring those things with me everywhere I go and I cannot run out of them.

Community is absolutely essential for survival.  Community can change the world.  A smart survivalist will figure out how to create community - that is the greatest survival tool beside adaptability.

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I have begun meditating again, the way I used to when I was a teenager.  Back then I had many profound experiences while meditating, and I have recently learned that this is because I was practicing "concentration" meditation (as opposed to "awareness" meditation), and it caused me to experience some of the inner states that the Buddhists call janas.  Among other things, I experienced energy phenomena, ecstasy and profound peace and stillness.  Those experiences changed me forever, in profound and lasting ways.  I went from being a non-believer to distilling a metaphysical cosmology and worldview.

In Eastern traditions much emphasis is placed on aiming for enlightenment and ignoring things like the janas.  I would like to say that I have a problem with that.  I understand that everything in existence is a dead end and that God-realization is the only escape/cure.  I am willing to acknowledge that yogic powers and the janas and even samadhi are not truly spiritual in and of themselves, that they are more akin to powers than to wisdom or spirit.  But yogic powers, the janas and samadhi ARE all metaphysical in nature, and herein lies their value.  They allow us humans to expand our range of experience, and to understand that the world is far vaster than we previously realized, and I find that vital.

Let's be honest.  God-realization is pretty much a pipe dream.  We are all caught up in this grand Illusion, no matter how much we struggle and strive.  No matter how hard we strive to find God, we're gonna be captives to Existence for a long, long time.  How long?  Meher Baba said that the human soul experiences 8.4 million lifetimes before finding spiritual release.  And that's AFTER the soul has evolved from the subtle gas states up thru the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms...each of which takes an eternity also.  I happen to believe that Meher Baba knew what he was saying.

Read THAT and weep.

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I try to be spiritual, but then I find myself craving pussy and wanting to drink whiskey while I fire an automatic rifle.  That's my plight.

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The author and two of his trusted minions, discussing war and world

domination from the safety of the Urban Fortified Food Farm.

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