Come to think of it...the really nice thing about NB is the total non existance of threads like this...can't we just close it and be do away with it?
Come to think of it...the really nice thing about NB is the total non existance of threads like this...can't we just close it and be do away with it?
Victory awaits the one, that has everything in order - luck we call it
Defeat is an absolute consequense for the one that have neglected to do the necessary preparations - bad luck we call it
(Roald Amundsen)
Bumbling Bushcraft on Youtube
Nordisk Bushcraft - The Nordic bushcraft blog and forum
Although more survival than bushcraft I think threads like this have their place as especially here in the UK we have two weeks worth of supermarket food at normal consumption rates. Any global disruption will hit here and hit hard so we would have to bunker down and hope the lights and internet stay on to prevent total meltdown. I was in gloucester during the floods when the entire city lost water and the county was nearly evacuated due to possible loss of power as well.
I don't class having a month or twos worth of calories in the house prepping just common sense, after that if the govt hadn't come up with a plan then we are buggred anyway. we couldn't feed ourselves in 1917 so have no chance in 2017, we would have to socialise the whole economy and introduce compulsory euthanasia.
My brother in his early 40s has suddenly discovered infowars and conspiracy theories and is doing my head in with it. I knew most of it and more besides having read to much milder alternative news and truth sites for the past 20 years but I grew up with it and have always 'prepped' and planned for the worst for want of a better word for it.
what I do find interesting is the morphing over the years to the term zombies to satisfy the need for political correctness as it's allowed to say you will kill zombie trespassers but not people. many of the forums that discuss such things ban the suggestions that you will break any laws such as moving into walmart and living there with the doors locked to outsiders as of course that is theft. although if there is no law and order just who is to say what is theft or not.
I'm not sure what I would 'prefer' zombie outbreak, Nuclear war, alien invasion or a global man flu pandemic, just so long as it's not triffids.
My guess is though that the US economy will finally fail as it sold all its gold and being unable to peg to a gold standard they will take everyone else down with them. For over 100 years it has been the number one exporter of false flag terrorism so they will find someone else to blame for it.
So the question is should it all fall apart could you and your family survive on the contents of your house. being generous and allowing for a four hours of electricity rationing a day to keep the freezers cold for a few days at least (no gas - all diverted to power generation) and how do you think the public would act if the govt failed to feed the people, it was ugly enough in gloucester when the water was rationed, free but rationed and they struggled to get enough at first. I supplied half my street with rainwater for general use and we made sure the old folks got their share of bottled water but we were not the norm.
No, I don't think we do need threads like this.
This is a Bushcraft forum, not a Survivalist forum.
There is a MASSIVE difference.
Bushcraft is a past-time where middle-aged males (mostly) go and sit in the woods for a few hours, maybe do a bit of carving, have a brew up and a bit of innocent escapism for a little while.
Survivalism is a past-time where middle-aged males (mostly) go and sit on their computers feeding paranoia and conspiracy to each other to justify their gun/knife/weapon collection.
There is no cross over.
If survival is what you want to discuss, in case your local Morrisons run out of bread, then you may find this forum more use to you:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/
'What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare' - William Henry Davies
Kestrels:
https://foraknave.wordpress.com/
Thinking:
https://thinkingthink.wordpress.com/
Agree 100% Humakt.
Richard
South Wales UK
sigh is that the best result a quick google could get you (you should have suggested the ludlow survivors group - closest thing to survivalists this side of the pond I've found, (bit too obsessed with bird flu though and their top secret bug out location) - standard reply I should have expected I guess. It just shows up your lack of understanding in the subject and a prissyness to protect something so much it dies in the process, the internet is littered with half dead bushcraft forums who refuse to chat about anything else but the glory days of saint raymond and how we wish he would make just one more series. most born again bushcrafters I tend to meet fail to grasp that you learn to survive before you really learn bushcraft, you learn survival because bushcraft can and does go wrong but survival gives you understanding of how it works why it works and how to bypass it when it goes wrong. it's very easy to die even in the UK Spent a few nights chatting with Mors Kochanski about it a few years ago now, his publisher made him call his book bushcraft because survival had gone all SAS on the same subject. McGee had the same problem competing with the SAS type 80s vibe at the time and felt rather robbed when ray mears started his gig and nicked the format off les hiddins. even the old scout handbook was packed full of 'bushcraft' tips. I probably bought the raymond mears survival handbook long before 99.9% of bushcrafters has ever heard of him and before he got the tracks tv slots.
learning survival does not make you a survivalist - I don't think we ever found a name for it because the public splurge only lasted a few years with no internet to back it up. survival forums and survivalist forums are totally different places. survivalist forums are prepping, survival forums are more make do and mend or at least they were until the gun nuts started going on about bug out bags and load outs.
I did my first course at 14 at the wait for it - ninpara survival school near whitby which forced the basics into you the hard way and you do not forget it. Though I went past the living in the mud chewing on bracken fiddlers phase and into the realms of making natural oils from nuts, foraging, trapping, hedgerow farming, knife and tool making, tanning shelters and so on. In the military you learn that the much maligned survival tin so scorned by modern bushcrafters is just a repair kit for you and your stuff in the smallest possible format. Survival as I taught the kids is camping without kit and improvising the situation to normalise it and improve your mental well being - first you take away their tent.
Bushcraft is nothing without survival. the skills you pick up and utilise are repairing your axe, fixing your torch/phone/car, sewing up your torn ventile smock, rolling around in the snow to dry out your sodden swandri or socks or staving off hunger while making a crutch because you slipped and sprained your knee. its the improvise, adapt, improve and overcome that most bushcrafters fail to pick up on.
those same skills get you out of trouble when things go wrong in civvy street too, the mindset stops you panicking after a traffic accident, knife slip, power cut, flood, blizzard or riot. as they say failure to prepare is preparing to fail so having a decent store of portable food and spare batteries is not being a survivalist but sensible. too many bushcrafters have all the gear and no idea, the ones that do you find also do some small scale prepping and some more extreme than others.
You meet two types those who know how to do it the hard way but choose to enjoy the ease of sitting around a fire under a parachute drinking beer and chatting because it reminds them of day with mates when they served or whatever. and those who regard it as some form of hardcore camping. I find it most amusing when you see the camper vans set up with a hammock and tarp next to it or the 4x4 to carry all their minimalist back to nature kit into the woods. (it's more like glamping when they are all down merthyr mawr) and you spent so much time ruining your environment you lose the very thing you were looking for.
When I did jungle training we did the course with the local natives, bamboo saws, fire drills the works. while we were sweating away on the basics of fire by friction the little indian fella stands up and lights his fag with a clipper. train hard fight easy.
I suppose its a bit like the jesus was a jew not a christian debate, Ray Mears taught survival long before he worked out he could triple his prices and halve his workload by calling it bushcraft, you get out of it what you want at the end of the day. I've chatted with many instructors over the years to see how they run courses and most will charge a middle aged man 700 quid to sit under a tarp spoon whittling and string making because they don't want to learn anything else from it. I also find it amusing the sheer variety of names bushcrafters try to invent to escape being called bushcrafters, I understand the problem those of us interested in survival are stuck with the US gun toting snake chewing image rather than the jeramiah johnson one we really want (oh wait hang on - damn) and bushcrafters are stuck with the image of being overweight balding knife obsessive spoon whittlers
I've taught at big scout events where every instructor has a handmade knife, floppy hat and possibles bag try to teach 100+ scouts survival skills without a coherent plan or decent knowledge of anything but their chosen base - lighting a fire, building a shelter, collecting water, finding food are good things to learn as bushcraft skills but the plan of action to implement them gets left by the wayside. similar to camping or expedition skills when I used to run expeditions or teach recruits on cadre, you have to show them the order to camp in to maximise their efficient use of time and energy, very few do it naturally. The island has just finished again - as usual they failed to learn what they had been taught and struggled to survive because they failed in the basics, once they settled in then they did develop their bushcraft skills improvising aplenty but they still starved themselves because nobody was doing ediblity tests, building fish traps, bird snares night lines etc... makes you wonder what they were taught in their 12 day primer.
I suppose the simplest example is the fire drill, or canoe capsize routine. you are developing the muscle memory to aid in survival for when it goes wrong.
Fishy up in norway will be teaching his lad to stay alive first, spoon whittle second. You don't mess around with semantics up there even in summer.
nothing wrong with being middle aged and too lazy to learn anything else while having the money to buy all the gear but the guys I know who live and breathe bushcrafting spend a lot of time and money doing some very extreme courses far away from parachutes, hammocks (and moderating bcuk). in fact they are on survival courses - or extreme bushcrafting I suppose you would call it. and if you are to proud to learn it then carry a small manual in your pocket just in case you ever need it.
Probably the best response to the question why are we not allowed to be called survivalists anymore is Political Correctness - something else it has ruined.
so if you don't want my input that's fine, your loss so delete my account and I'll drift off elsewhere. the american survival forums do have a lot more proper bushcraft stuff in them though, once you get past the guns pages. zombie squad can be quite good fun though once you work out the rules.
the US approach to what to do in the event of shtf - wait for the local bushcrafters to starve to death cos they spent all their money on fancy gear then go make proper use of it, it should still be good, it's hardly been used.
And that's what it's really about, eh, Dave?
You really want to tell us about the people (not zombies!) you want to kill, don't you?
You brought the topic up, after all. It must be something on your mind.
Go on, then.
Get it out of your system.
Go on. Tell us about the people you want to kill. I presume it's going to be the gubermint coming to take away your rights. Or will it be those damn libruls. Or maybe the Iraqistanis wanting to take us over with their sharia law. Something like that, eh?
Or maybe it's some other demographic you don't like. Whoever it is you want to be able to say you can kill just tell us and get it over with.
And after you've done that, tell us why you thought that was an appropriate subject for a bushcraft forum.
'What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare' - William Henry Davies
Kestrels:
https://foraknave.wordpress.com/
Thinking:
https://thinkingthink.wordpress.com/
Mors it a good man, met him at the Bushmoot.
I was with Ludlow survivors for a while, a nice bunch and I arranged a Winter camp for a few. Half went home as it was too 'hard core' lol
This is not a prepper forum Dave.
Richard
South Wales UK