It is in order to be there, at that decisive moment, that we must 572 See in general: Jim Cobb, Peppers Home Defence: Security Strategies to Protect Your Family by Any Means Necessary (Ulysses Press, Berkeley, 2012).
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survive now. So, do not be ashamed: let us build our refuges!
Remember that a rebel wins if he can hold out one hour longer than his adversary. Let us organise ourselves to do so.
- Michel Drac573
This chapter has given a guide to survival preparations for the coming col apse of civilization, the zombie apocalypse. Rather than adopt a
“how to” approach, to cover the field, I have reviewed the literature which beginning survivalists should consult to acquire information about all aspects of survival preparations. Most disaster preparedness books and wilderness survival books say that the mental aspect of survival is the most important, the sheer will to keep going and not to give up. Some speak of people having a “survivor’s personality,”574
remaining calm and clear-headed when facing a survival threat and avoiding impulsive behaviour, careful y analyzing the situation and assessing options, and then taking decisive and correct action.575
Where does this mental edge come from? Is it something a person just has inside them or is it a skill that can be developed? There are many fine books examining people in extreme survival situations;576
the take home lesson is that knowledge, conditioning, survival kit and even sheer luck are all very important, but without the will to survive—the sheer, stubborn refusal to surrender and give up, the persistence to slog on however much it hurts and however hopeless things looks—people perish.577 This question of survival will arise in another form regarding combat and self-defense and it is a matter 573 Michael Drac, “Foreword” to Piero San Giorgio, Survive the Economic Col apse: A Practical Guide (Radix/Washington Summit Publishers, Whitefish, 2013), pp. xx-xxi.
574 Al Siebert, The Survivor Personality: Why Some People are Stronger, Smarter and More Skilful at Handling Life’s Difficulties… and How You Can be Too (Berkley Publishing, New York, 1996).
575 Laurence Gonzales , Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why: True Stories of Miraculous Endurance and Sudden Death (W. W. Norton, New York, 2005), pp. 262-263 and pp. 270-274.
576 Les Stroud, Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival (Harper, New York, 2011), p. 222; Richard Harper, Extreme Survivors (Collins, Glasgow, 2013).
577 Kenneth Kamler, Extreme Survival: A Doctor Explores the Limits of Human Endurance (Constable and Robinson, London, 2004), pp. 302-303.
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that I will address in the next book. My own view is that the mental edge of survival and combat is both innate and environmental; some people lack the capacity to fight and struggle for existence. Others have raw “guts,” “nuts” and “true grit,” which can be intensified by knowledge, learning from the mistakes of others (experience), and training. Survival prospects will be increased by knowledge and learning – hence the importance of learning as much as possible before the final curtain fal s.
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This completes the argument of book one in this two-part series. Here it has been shown that the zombie apocalypse is something of an outpouring from the Jungian collective unconscious of the hard times to come – in particular, that our number is up and the phenomenal luck of the human race has come to an end. The coming col apse of civilization means that ecological scarcity and natural forces will return with a vengeance, destroying our comfortable consumer world, and all of the ideologies that we presently live under. This should not be a startling revelation since such a conclusion was always lying on the surface of much environmentalist/col apseology work. But, as true cowards, environmentalists always offered false hope, that humanity will wake up just in the nick of time. However, dumb suffering Homo sap will not, and the future is doom, doom, doom.
Hence, it is time to prepare for the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of a savage Dark Age that could spell human extinction, or at best, a die off of the majority of people on the planet.
Many would not wish to live and perish in such a world, so they will die quickly, as their spirits are weak. Others, like me, and I hope you, may wish to persist regardless of what punishment this vicious and metaphysical y absurd multiverse hurls at us—out of sheer cussedness—to be able to raise a “one finger salute” to the Cosmic Fates.
The next book in this series, The Barbarian Reborn: Weaponry and Survivalism in the Near-term Post-Apocalyptic Wastelands, is 215
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for those existential y stubborn warriors. In that book you will learn how to cast off the ideologies of modernity and postmodernity and express your inner barbarian. Be prepared for blood and profanity, as no sacred cow remains free from decapitation and impalement.
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