Black - Survival Retreats: A Practical Guide to Creating a Sustainable, Defendable Refuge

Survival
Retreats

Survival
Retreats

A Practical Guide to Creating a
Sustainable, Defendable Refuge

Dave Black

Copyright 2011 by David Black

Cover: An artist's rendition of an effective retreat, with high ground, difficult remote terrain, and a structure designed to provide cover and firepower from multiple directions and on all sides.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is av

ISBN: 978-1-61608-417-2

Printed in TK

Dedication TK

This is the third book in a trilogy of what could loosely be called a survival series. Twenty years ago, I wouldn't have ever imagined myself writing a series like this. I would not consider myself a survivalist in the current sense of the word. If I had to describe myself best, I think that the word prepper would be most appropriate, though probably not entirely accurate. It sounds wishy-washy, and that's most likely because I'm a moderate. I believe in moderation, and survivalism in the minds of most people is not considered moderate.

This book touches on everythingfrom construction, to power production and farming, to armed combat. In a volume this size, it would be impossible to provide a detailed discussion of everything that one could possibly want to know and understand about survival retreats. I just scratch the surface here. What you see is the tip of an enormous iceberg of knowledge.

In today's world, it only makes sense to be interactive with the most powerful source of public information available: the Internet, and it's right at our fingertips. This book refers to numerous websites where you, the reader, can find more detailed information than I am able to provide in this book. I highly recommend that you sit next to your computer or have your laptop handy while reading. Become one with your browser. Print off as much as you can afford, because if you truly do believe that the shit will someday hit the fan, then you believe the Internet will then be vulnerable and you will lose that resource when the service providers and servers crash.

Finally, as I have seen in my research, and as the world has witnessed so many times throughout history, survivalism and retreatism can be risky. Don't go off the deep endit's bound to go bad. Just remember:

The world is not your enemy.

The zombie hordes have not been unleashed.

The world and civilization will still be here in 2013.

I promiseDB

So what is the difference between a prepper and a survivalist? Years from now, the definitions will still be obscure, but today there's an identifiable difference. For our purposes, let's define preppers as individuals or groups who actively prepare for minor-to-moderate disruptions in public works and services due to disasters or national emergencies that might be accompanied by brief glitches in political and social order. In other words, preppers do basic disaster preparation and planning, which may or may not include an emphasis on continuing self-sufficiency and sustainability (growing food and producing energy). This is a rational and reasonable idea, fueled by the understanding that we are not invulnerable to small- or large-scale disasters that could temporarily set us back in our standard of living and societal stability.

Preppers are often known to distrust politicians and the economy, but they usually have a basic belief in the continuity of community ethics and the survival of technology. They know that even if 90 percent of the world's population were snuffed out by a megapandemic, there would still be 30 million survivors in the United States alone. That's 700 million worldwide! The survivors of this megapandemic would most likely include politicians, doctors, law officers, lawyers, firefighters, scientists, teachers, and techniciansthe same cross section of the working world that existed before the event. The infrastructure might be temporarily shut down, but it would still remain structurally intact, as would the knowledge to build, repair, maintain, and manufacture. Our sheer numbers and the redundant storage of knowledgefrom the brain pool and books to computer files and the Internetensures the eventual survival and revival of both society and technology once outbreaks of unrest and violence are addressed.

Survivalism, on the other hand, is a movement of individuals or groups who actively prepare for apocalyptic, cataclysmic disastersnatural or man-madethat result in societal and economic collapse and the breakdown of normal community protection systems, culminating in widespread pandemonium and chaos. This is Prep-ism Gone Wilddisaster planning with the added components of aggressive self-defense and fundamental survival measures to counter the resulting anarchy and lawless bedlam.

This book is on survival retreats, which can be defined as refuges for survivalists, and which are also known in survivalist terms as BOLs, or bug-out locations. Retreats run the gamut from a simple food storage cache at an individual's home apartment to massive fortified high-tech retreat communities. Retreats are generally intended to be well stocked, self-sufficient to varying degrees, sparse but comfortable, and easily defended. They are also usually located in low-populated rural areas.

The triad that characterizes survivalism consists of disaster preparation, self-defense, and wilderness survival. Unfortunately, survivalism often has overtones of violent political activism, conspiracy theorism, religious fanaticism, science fiction, and new age extremisma world fraught with end-times apocalypse, Planet X, zombie attacks at dawn, alien invaders, and Soylent Green. This vision of survivalism frightens most of us, as does the frequency with which survivalists are blamed for domestic terrorism and deadly conflicts with the government and law enforcement.

American survivalists prior to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were most often males who had antigovernment sentiments and who were essentially preparing and waiting, perhaps hoping, for the final conflict. This group mainly consisted of individuals and groups who were ready to provide their own versions of civil defense and vigilante law, and the rest of us wondered if they were indeed far too dangerous to tolerate.

Except for some bad press caused by the occasional antigovernment or religious conflict, preppers and many survivalists went unrecognized, fitting into the crowd. Survialists, though, as opposed to preppers, seemed to be driven by darker plans, searching for trouble because trouble was one of the few places in society they seemed to fit in. In the movies, ordinary people become extraordinary heroes: Survivalists save the world and fix what's broken. It would be reasonable to assume that the opportunity to become indispensable was one of the big reasons many people were drawn to survivalism, a phenomenon discussed by Dr. Richard Mitchell in his book