Heathen Survivalist
Most people make assumptions about their conditions of life. They assume that things will carry on much as they have been doing in the recent past, and they prepare for the future on that basis. Other people make no such assumptions. They understand that a peoples' way of life depend on a whole set of preconditions being met. Things can easily change and what we once took for granted in our lives can suddenly no longer apply.
Heathen Survivalists take this latter point of view. They don't make too many assumptions about the ability or willingness of the wider world to look after them, but instead start thinking about how they might cope under all sorts of possible future conditions.
While all Heathens are concerned to take more responsibility for their own lives, Heathen Survivalists feel a particular urgency. Many think that the world is on a course to imminent disaster and that it is best to take a cold look at what could happen and start preparing for the worst. Perhaps we face a major economic crisis, businesses collapsing, jobs disappearing, oil prices rising, extreme weather increasing, food getting harder to obtain. Perhaps terrible military weapons will be used, destroying whole cities, spreading contamination across the earth, covering the sky with a dust cloud that blocks out the sunlight and stops the crops growing. Perhaps the normal quiet habits of people break down under the pressure and criminality and disorder increase. Perhaps a strong-arm government comes into power and becomes very intrusive into formerly private lives.
Heathen Survivalists don't get too despondent at such scenarios, rather they see it as a great challenge - to prepare for the worst, to survive through it all , to maintain their health and happiness as best they can, and to leave something positive that continues after them.
If the Great Chaos comes upon us then those few, that small handful who have seen it coming and prepared, it is they who will survive through and plant the seeds of a new beginning. Just as the ancient Heathens took refuge in the underground Vara during the time of the Great Winter, surviving for many generations, so must todays Heathens prepare a place to live, sheltered from a harsh world, and containing all that is needed.
Being a Heathen Survivalist is hard. You need to create all the means of physical survival in a place that is well protected
and inaccessable or invisible to others. You need to create a way of life that is bearable and sustainable for long periods of time,
and which can reproduce itself into the next generation.
You should also take with you as much as possible of the seeds of life - both physical seeds of plants, and cultural seeds as is held in the books
and films and electronic media of mankind. You should be prepared to re-start the process of life on a planet degraded and denuded and
to take the light of morality and culture to the rulers of the new world.
June 2010 CE & March 2011 CE