To Live & Die in Interesting Times
A guide to dealing with the chaos of the 2020s; community, food security, practical skills and mental health during The Great Depression Part Deux, the threat of war, and the climate crisis.
“May you live in interesting times.”
This apocryphal, supposedly Chinese curse has made its rounds in our current age, as though it’s undoubtedly been cast on us. A list of each ‘interesting’ event or circumstance we find ourselves in would be both exhaustive and exhausting, and therefore counterintuitive when there is new life to be breathed in; new purpose to take on.
No, my goal is not to make a list of everything wrong with the world today. This is not another doomscroll circus. My goal is to drum up solid actions, one by one and little by little, and to expose the opportunities that are buried in these interesting times. I should disclaim here that I am not a guru, preacher, cult leader, or expert, nor is this financial advice, and nothing I could possibly suggest is a real solution to the deeply enmeshed global crises we’re living through, they are purely small-scale measures we can take to be better off as individuals, families and communities during these interesting times.
Note from Butterfly: As much as I’m writing this for others to read and hopefully benefit from, it is just as much for myself, to help myself get a better grasp of what I should be doing personally. So take it with your own personal grain of salt.
I’ve split my suggestions into five sections:
Community Is Fuckin’ Important
Food and Water Security
Practical Skills and Tools
Mental Well-Being
Nomadic Living and the Silk Road
Keep in mind that this list is not meant to overwhelm you, or to make you feel like you’re not doing enough. Nobody can do everything listed here - lord knows I don’t - and the best thing you can do is what is within your own scope, even if that’s just simply taking care of your own mental and physical health to the best of your current ability and being kind to the people around you. If you can take on even just one or two of these suggestions, the benefit may be extraordinary.
Community Is Fuckin’ Important
Well, it is! In the event of any sort of disaster, your family and community will likely be where your strength comes from, and if you do not have a community it is likely that you will be thrust into a makeshift version of one via necessity. It may be beneficial for you to start forming connections with various people that are near to you now while you can still choose to do so.
If you live in an apartment, which are notoriously secluded and atomized, consider becoming actual friends with some other people in your building. This doesn’t mean to go around saying “hello, I would like to start a community with you and all the strangers in this building”, no, you’re better off to just make small connections with them. Give people a knock and some homemade cookies and let them know if they need anything that they are welcome to give you a knock. If you live in a neighborhood you can do the same thing.
In a situation where food becomes incredibly expensive or difficult to obtain, a group of people who trust and care about each other will have much more to offer the group as a whole. Someone will have loads of flour, someone else will know how to bake bread with it. Someone will have a whole bunch of extra eggs that will go bad if they don’t share. Someone will know how to identify wild edibles, and someone else will know how to process and cook them. Someone will know how to grow a garden, while someone else will be able-bodied enough to tend to it. If a small group of people in a neighborhood decide to utilize just one house’s yard fully as a permaculture/hydroponic garden, and another group of people utilized another house’s yard to raise chickens, ducks, turkeys, and/or goats, they might be able to supply produce, dairy, and meat for the entire neighborhood. Another group of people can make soaps and sew clothing, another can cook and preserve food, another can forage and hunt, another can build things and do regular maintenance for the neighborhood, and (barring a lack of the right skills, knowledge, and training) another can provide medical care. This as an ideal, and often considered to be a utopian dream, but really, what is making it such an impossibility? Fear of communism? Please.
This kind of agrarian economy can combat inflation and rising prices of goods, too. Instead of working longer hours and padding corporate bank accounts, or getting a second job, or starting a side hustle in order to meet the rising costs, I propose we find every little way possible to own the means of production ourselves. Very little money would have to be spent on high-priced stores or forced out of us by plutocratic monopolies if we had communities that produce almost all the food and goods for those communities. Of course, it will not be easy to form these types of communities; it will require great willingness to change and give up or limit certain amenities. People cannot be coerced into this change, they have to choose it themselves, and it might be considered a nightmare to work out the logistics how these communities would operate. At this point, simple conversations and small steps will go a long way; a trade of homemade goods between friends, surplus from someone’s garden passed out to neighbors, a skill taught in return for a skill taught.
A community benefits from itself. Many heads being put together to solve problems is better than one, many hands are able to work faster and more efficient than two. Many different lifestyles and pockets of knowledge are more collectively beneficial than only your own. It’s not at all a stretch to say that the lone wolf will not make it very far during a crisis. Turn your neighbors into friends while still in relative peacetime. Plan with your family and friends to maintain continuity. If your family or neighborhood is already tight-knit, talk with them, maybe assign everyone a skill to learn or a task to focus on. Even if no catastrophic event occurs, you will still be better off than you were before by building bridges and coming together with the people around you.
It is not always an easy thing to connect with strangers or build deeper connections with acquaintances, so I’ve made a small list of possibilities to help bridge that gap.
START A MILITIA (nah really though, please don’t start a militia)
Find a community garden and contribute to it. Not only will this help with food security, but it is also an opportunity to find like-minded people and do something productive with them. If you are unable to find a community garden, try starting one wherever you can.
If you are starting to grow food yourself, try inviting some of your friends or relatives to join you one day. They may not be interested, but if they are it will go a long way towards beginning a strong community.
Start local groups on social media that pertain to whatever your interests/ideas are. If you want to form a kind of mutual assistance group, start a social media group for it and invite all your friends, then tell your friends to invite all their friends. From there, you can form meetups and brainstorm ideas with like-minded people and even get some non-like-minded people to take interest.
Knock on your neighbors doors, wear a mask, give them something homemade, awkwardly introduce yourself and tell them that if they need anything they are welcome to come to you. In an age where isolation seems like the normality, it will break down barriers to be face to face and candid with the people around you.
Talk to your actual friends about the issues going on in the world and tell them you want to do something about it. Often times our friends are just casually around, but if you make the move to say you want to be of mutual assistance to others, it might inspire them to want to do the same.
Here is another resource to help you start a mutual aid group
Again, it is not necessarily an easy thing to just form a community out of thin air. Not everyone will be interested and it’s not always simple to put yourself out there like that. But it will be worth the try, it will be worth it to build something stronger than just yourself as an individual. This also doesn’t mean you have to be so heavily involved in the lives of the people around you or start a cult; it is perfectly plausible to maintain privacy and a strong community at the same time.
I’d like to open these next two sections with a written quote from Paul Zamora, the last great Wyoming fur trapper, a brilliant artist and philosopher, and a personal friend of mine.
“Unpreparedness shall be the downfall of all those that inhabit areas and regions prone to high winds, low valleys, heavy snows, wildfires, drought, tornados, earthquakes, small grocery stores, large religious groups, hurricanes, broken cigarette machines, totalitarianism, and any other forms of excessive fear and ignorance.” - Paul Zamora
Food and Water Security
Regardless of the threat of war, natural disaster, or mass power outage, food prices are rising. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you do not have enough money to eat well, and you don’t want to rely solely on the provenly unstable supply chain. In other words, don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. Consider all your options and have a backup stash in case anything goes southerly.
Oh Shit Food
Ever since I was young, my mama always kept a large bin full of non-perishables, that she called the “Oh Shit Food” bin, which has stuck with me for my whole life. Throughout my adulthood I’ve also kept a bin of Oh Shit Food with me in all my living spaces and during all my travels; it’s come in handy many, many times. Be sure to choose items that you already eat on a regular basis, because absolutely no one wants to eat tinned potatoes, and also remember to rotate your stock; eat the items that are closest to expiration first. I have provided a list of common, well-rounded, nutritious, and relatively inexpensive non-perishables to consider when creating your stock of Oh Shit Food. Keep in mind, a stock of Oh Shit Food does not need to be thousands of dollars and years worth of food stashed away in a basement, you can and should start with even just $25-$50 worth. Try buying just one extra item each time you go to the grocery store for other things.
Tried & True Silk Road Gourmet Oh Shit Foodstuffs
Grains: rice, pasta, oatmeal, flour, quinoa, farrow, etc.
Canned vegetables: green beans, peas & carrots, corn, asparagus, beets, artichoke hearts, etc. Keep in mind canned vegetables are not great, but they’re better than nothing.
Canned fruit: peaches, pineapple, pears, mandarin oranges, tomatoes, olives, mixed fruit cocktail, etc.
Beans. Canned beans, dry beans, black beans, pinto beans, chili beans, chickpeas. Beans are the savior of the world.
Pickles and other pickled vegetables: pickled peppers, pickled brussels sprouts, etc.
Sauces: red pasta sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, etc.
Oil and vinegar
Salt, pepper, herbs, spices: garlic and onion powder, chili powder, crushed red pepper, cumin, cayenne pepper, curry powder, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, dried basil, dried thyme, dried oregano, dried rosemary. You don’t want to be eating bland during a crisis. Shit’s already bad enough.
Broth, stock, and bouillon
Dried fruit and nuts
Granola bars or protein bars
Snacks: crackers, chips, popcorn, beef jerky, etc.
Ramen cups and packets
Peanut butter
Jams and jellies
Honey and sugar
Coffee and tea
Dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) are the absolute best canned food ever. They’re super nutritious and filling and taste wonderful.
If applicable, extra pet food
If applicable, extra baby food/baby formula
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A MANUAL CAN OPENER, YOU FOOL
Of course, Oh Shit Food is going to run out eventually, and the best way to make sure that you can stay fed is to grow and forage for your own food!
The Victory Garden, Guerilla Gardening, and Foraging
The term Victory Garden was coined during WWII. Victory gardens were planted in public and private residences all over the US in order to ensure food supply for both civilians and troops, and consisted of vegetables, grains, fruits, and herbs. Now is the time for us to start growing our own victory gardens.
While it’s not easy to start a backyard garden, there are countless free resources to learn, and often times it just takes trial and error. I have linked a few great resources below:
How to Start a Backyard Garden Article
Epic Gardening Youtube Channel
Self Sufficient Me Youtube Channel
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible (Book for Sale)
Remember, you can find gardening tools for free and cheap on places like Craigslist, so do not feel as though you need to go broke in order to get the essential tools to start a garden. I even found most of my indoor planters and containers in a grocery store dumpster of all places!
Guerilla gardening is the practice of finding unorthodox places to grow plants, such as indoors, in window-wells, or in public parks, and is often considered illegal or illicit. I would still recommend finding ways to do this if you have no other options, damn the man.
If you live in an apartment and do not have the backyard space, it is entirely possible to grow some foods indoors in containers. All you will need is the right containers, the right lighting, the right amount of water and drainage, and the space for it. Potatoes can grow in 5-gallon food grade buckets, for example. Green onions can be propagated in glasses of water then easily transplanted to pots. If you do not have sufficient natural lighting, you can purchase grow lights for relatively cheap that will aid in the growing process. I’ve been taught that indoor plants respond very well to lighting that rests on either side of the color spectrum (red and blue). Two grow lights (one that is firmly red and one that is firmly blue) should be sufficient enough to help your indoor plants grow. The only other things you’ll need are containers with drainage holes and drip trays, potting soil and fertilizer.
Here are some great options for indoor food growth:
How to Grow Vegetables Indoors (Easy Beginner's Guide)
Foraging
Foraging is one of the most beautiful acts that a human can partake in in the modern world. Whether it’s common berries like blackberries and raspberries, or harder to find roots and chutes, being able to properly identify and utilize wild edible plants can be beneficial in more ways than just food security. Foraging is the opportunity to reconnect with nature, to exercise your body and stimulate your mind, as well as taste something new and different. There are hundreds and hundreds of wild plants that can either be eaten as is, or processed and cooked to become edible and delicious.
(DISCLAIMER: Absolutely do not consume any plant that you are not 100% positive you can identify. There are many edible plants that have near-identical poisonous cousins, and if you are not entirely sure, you are better off starving than dead. Cross reference all your identifications with multiple sources and ask some online forums as well. Also, remember that mushrooms and fungus are a whole different class than roots and plants. Basically every single mushroom has a poisonous identical twin; do not forage for mushrooms unless you are a pro.)
Here’s an easy one that is not region-specific: dandelions grow abundantly, and nearly everywhere in the US. The roots, flowers, and leaves can be turned into tea, and the greens alone can be cooked with spices, vinegars and oils like any other green to become edible and tasty. That is, of course, if you’re averse to just popping those beautiful yellow flowers directly in your mouth right when you pick them (they are bitter, I wouldn’t recommend this, but you can). Be sure to clean your dandelions first; I suggest soaking them in apple cider vinegar and rinsing afterward. Similarly, oak trees grow everywhere in the US and acorns can be easily turned into nutritious and edible food, as long as you boil them a few times to get rid of the bitter tannins. Often times, rotten acorns have edible grubs burrowed inside them too, hint hint.
Aside from the countless available books on finding and identifying wild edibles, there are phone apps that allow you to take a picture of a plant and identify and tell you if it is edible or not. There are some apps (like Falling Fruit) that have already mapped out edible plants in your area that you can refer to. Don’t be afraid to get a little bit grimy and go out into the woods to find some food. The grocery store is not always essential, and we were put on a planet full of abundance.
Recommended North American foraging books for beginners based on region:
Northwest: Pacific Northwest Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Alaska Blueberries to Wild Hazelnuts
California: California Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Evergreen Huckleberries to Wild Ginger
Southwest: Southwest Foraging: 117 Wild and Flavor Edibles from Barrel Cactus to Wild Oregano
Mountain States: Mountain States Foraging: 115 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Alpine Sorrel to Wild Hops
Midwest: Midwest Foraging: 115 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Burdock to Wild Peach
Northeast: Northeast Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Beach Plums to Wineberries
Southeast: Southeast Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Angelica to Wild Plums
How To Get Started Foraging (Youtube)
Cooking and Preserving
Remember, you will need the tools and basic skills to cook no matter the situation. Consider purchasing a small one-burner or two-burner propane stove and some backup cannisters of propane. An outdoor propane or charcoal grill is a good option as well, just be sure to top off your propane. Also, consider learning how to build, maintain, and contain a small cooking fire in your backyard. If you are not culinary-minded, it might be a good time to start practicing some basic cooking skills like boiling pasta, chopping and stir-frying vegetables, cooking dry beans and rice, eggs, potatoes, and other staples.
Learning how to preserve food is also a very strong skill to have in this day and age. Canning, pickling, dehydrating, and freezing are all sufficient forms of food preservation. Invest in a pressure canner or use the water bath method for canning higher acidic foods. Just be sure to do your research and strictly follow preserving guidelines in order to avoid foodborne illnesses.
The Ball Blue Book is a good place to start with food preservation
Water
As important, if not more so, than a steady source of food is a steady source of water.
You will need a few things in order to purify water
Cheesecloth to strain out solids and particulates
Iodine/water purification tablets
Remember that you will most likely need to use a few of the above methods at once in order to ensure your water is safe to drink. Commit yourself to plenty of research before diving into the water purification process blindly.
Consider stocking a few backup jugs of drinking water with your Oh Shit Food just in case. A good rule of thumb is that each person will use minimum one gallon of water per day. Consider also building a rainwater collection system.
Other Tips for Food Security
If you have the backyard space, consider keeping a passel of chickens. They are one of the more low-maintenance farm animals and if you take care of them they will provide you with a near endless amount of eggs. Remember to feed them plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and their eggs will taste amazing. I even have a friend who has a chicken coop in their backyard in a large city, so this is not limited to rural or suburban areas.
Be very frugal, don’t spend money on anything that you do not consider essential. Compare unit prices, check the clearance section, and learn how to get the most bang for your buck at the grocery store (everything is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s).
Try dumpster diving. There is an insane amount of quality food wasted and sent to the landfill in America. Many grocery stores do not lock their dumpsters and you can find tons and tons of good food that would otherwise be wasted. Be sure to stay safe, wear boots and gloves, avoid perishable foods like dairy and meat, look up product recalls, and have an excuse at the ready in case you get caught (i.e. “I went to throw something away and my ring came off in the dumpster, I’m just looking for it, officer, I swear!”)
This may be an unorthodox suggestion, but try cooking or buying hot food for some of your unhoused neighbors. The state does not care about them, and any help that you offer will come back to you in some way.
Practical Skills and Tools
In this day and age, practicality is king. It is no longer pragmatic to chase dreams of being a millionaire, or a popstar/famous rapper, or the next genius technological entrepreneur, in the same way that it is no longer even plausible to go to college, find a well-paying office job, get married, buy a house, have children, retire, and die happy. No, this is not the way anymore. We are far from normalcy (a word I despise) and never will have that again. We may just have to thrust ourselves into a form of survival mode in order to thrive.
More important than stocking up on beans and bullets is to have an array of skills that are conducive to making a life for yourself regardless of your circumstances. These are not just disaster/crisis skills; they are skills that will make you a more well-rounded person, and give you the opportunity to be a net positive to yourself and the people around you.
Remember, there are countless resources and opportunities to learn these skills. Do your research, be creative and open to learning new things, and look to the world around you for help.
Basic first aid: how to properly clean a wound, how to apply a tourniquet, how to support a sprain, how to treat a burn, how to help someone having a seizure or heart attack. Almost every county of every state has a free monthly basic first aid class, you need only to sign up and show up. (I am not linking any Youtube videos because it is best to get professional advice for matters of first aid, instead try googling first aid classes in your area)
Basic vehicle maintenance: how to change a tire, change your oil, change your headlights
How to bow hunt and fish
How to forage
How to grow food
How to cook/preserve food
How to exercise/stretch properly
How to build things with your hands/use basic tools
How to build a fire or make a Dakota Fire Hole
Make sure you have some basic emergency gear as well, you never know when you’ll have a power outage or a natural disaster hit your area. Do not be caught unprepared.
Flashlight and extra batteries
Lighters/matches
Candles
Flares
N95 masks/dust masks
Duct tape
Pocket knife
First aid kit: gauze pads, adhesive tape, bandages, antibiotic ointment and antiseptic wipes, splint, etc.
Thermal or wool blanket
Whistle
Hand-crank or battery powered radio
Basic medications: ibuprofen, aspirin, cough medicine, decongestant, etc.
Extra prescription medications (if applicable)
Sanitation, personal hygiene, sundries: all purpose soap (I recommend Dr. Bronner’s cult soap), hand sanitizer, wet wipes, toothbrush and toothpaste, petroleum jelly, bug spray, sunscreen, feminine supplies, etc.
Warm gear: blankets, coats, long underwear, gloves, hats, hand warmers
It will help you to keep at least a minimum amount of these essential items, including food, water, personal documents, and cash in a single bin that you can easily grab, just in case you need to bug out or evacuate your home.
To conclude these sections on preparedness, we must understand that at this point, it isn’t about being a wacky doomsday prepper. We live in a deeply entrenched risk society, and you are best served to be prepared for anything that you possibly can be. Preparedness does not mean to sit in a bunker of hoarded goods like Scrooge McDuck or Smaug while polishing an AR-15 and reading the bible, it doesn’t mean to fall into fear traps, constantly look over your shoulder, or go into a state of panic at every new headline, it is simply to protect yourself and your loved ones to the best of your ability no matter the scenario you find yourself in.
When you have your basic necessities covered, it is much easier to thrive in this world. It is much easier to see the larger picture and find out where you are best suited to focus your energies, where your passions lie, and what matters most to you.
My grand suggestion to the people of America and beyond, is that you ought to take on practical skills as if they were your hobbies or passion projects. That is to say, don’t be burdened by the difficulty in learning them; be in love with the fact that you get to learn them, and that you should learn them. Become self-sufficient to the absolute best of your ability, rely on not a single outside source to provide for you; no supply chain, no electric grid, no politician, no corporation, no employer, no proverbial mother and father, no machine, no god.
There is no one coming to save us, we have to save ourselves.
Mental Well-Being
If there’s one thing to note, and realize about yourself, it’s that we are actually quite sturdy, durable, and stoic when it comes to matters of global collapse. Young people are made out to be too soft and too comfort-oriented, but I think we’re handling the situation quite well. We have artists who are focusing on their art, writers who are focusing on their writing, young men, women and non-binary people turning to their most practical skills, learning to heal themselves from generational and circumstantial trauma. We’re adapting, and we are still finding ways to eke joy, understanding, and stability out of the chaos. Irony has been a crutch for less-than-mentally-healthy leftist spaces, while individuals are becoming so fed up with the barrage of bad news that they are seeking action to do different, to be different, to stabilize themselves, to not contribute to the chaos. Neoliberal practices are being refuted by a desperate lunge toward our own humanity, an unwillingness to be another commodity or exploited laborer. More and more people are allowing their voices to be projected, rather than whispering into the void. In other words, we’re figuring things out.
That’s not to say it isn’t incredibly bleak, or that just because we’re figuring things out that we’re all happy, healthy, well-adjusted, or that we even have the slightest clue in what to do about our own situations, let alone the grand scheme of the world. We are a petri dish generation, test-tube babies of modernity, with no choice in matters that were decided before our birth and hardly a choice in any future global decision.
So where do we go from here?
Mental health is not to say that we should be well-adjusted. I believe that nobody is well-adjusted, and if they are, they are sheltered from or misunderstanding of the scope of the crises we’re living through. Stability does not come through fomenting action against a common enemy (of which we have many, but hardly any recourse against them), it is more accurate to call this collective folly. Mental well-being does not come from ignorance to, nor does it come from oversaturation of crisis news. It may come from acknowledgement and a form of stoicism in the face of crisis. Mental health often comes from having a strong system of support, having good people in your life, being able to spend time with them and do positive things together. It comes from love and support, and being accepted, not individualism and isolation. It comes from seeing the people around you as just as stupid, ugly, burdened, traumatized, funny, beautiful, interesting, and intelligent as you are, and interacting with them on a human level. We are not going to come up with any sort of positive outcome if we simply search for the “other” to hate, or live in fear of all other people and isolate ourselves from them. Mental well-being comes from community. It comes from knowing that you are able to fill your pantry and pay your bills and still have enough leftover to enjoy life. It comes from having some sort of purpose, and processing existence in a meaningful way, even if that meaning differs from person to person, and even if you’re not entirely sure that your meaning is all-inclusive. Sometimes it’s just your own interpretation that doesn’t need to be shared with anyone else, so long as it does not harm anyone else. But to see all of this as entirely meaningless, whether it is or isn’t, is to doom yourself to nihilism, and there is hardly anything productive or useful about nihilism. In other words, to be mentally healthy, it is likely that you must have a clear-cut purpose in your life. People who can only eat if they hunt and gather are less likely to be burdened by the anxiety of global conflict and geopolitics. They have a purpose, and that is to find food. We must get our homes in order if we’re to find any sort of stability in this world. That is why practicality and pragmatism matter so much.
But this is where our growth as human beings comes into play. It is quite clear that the way things were before (i.e. “normalcy”) weren’t quite working for us, otherwise we wouldn’t be waist-deep in these crises, we wouldn’t have such severely declining mental health in our country and beyond, we wouldn’t have such a massive wealth-gap bordering on oligarchy, a morally and politically divided population damn nearing civil war, nor would we have a long list of lies, false advertising, and straight up coercion and manipulation spewed at us in our every day lives. We do not need any more “normalcy”. Normalcy is actually quite abnormal and absurd, but it is normal, so we rarely questioned it.
That is until now, where everything, and I mean everything, seems to prompt the question:
“What the hell is actually happening?”
And we have no answers, really. All we can do is deduce and then react accordingly.
But that’s not say our only recourse is reactionary. We have the opportunity to form strong communities, to become kinder and more caring, to become more stable, prepared, and grounded in our every day lives regardless of what is going on the world. We have the opportunity to become genuinely useful and supportive of each other, and this is the normalcy that I think we should be striving toward.
Do not feel as though you need to constantly be informed, or have an opinion on everything going on in the world. Remember that nothing is ever quite as serious as it seems, and much of this life is nothing more than a long-winded cosmic joke. Sometimes you just need to take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, and express yourself in whatever way you want to. In all the struggle and strife, don’t forget to brush your teeth, take a bath, exercise a little, and eat something healthy. Make art, write songs and poetry, play instruments, listen to your favorite music, read a book, work on your hobbies, meditate if that’s your thing, get out in nature, spend time with your friends and family. These are the best ways to maintain your mental health during these times.
Complexity is becoming a curse, and what more is there to life than simply being in love, having friendships, eating good food, exploring the world and creating things? If you wish to maintain your mental health, you will need to narrow down what is most important to you.
Nomadic Living and the Silk Road
Choosing to live the grungy life of a nomad is actually a highly sophisticated choice in the current climate, depending on your personal situation, and there is a reason so many people are turning to van-life nowadays. It’s not just a bohemian artist fantasy though, the practicality of being able to move freely should be clear.
In one way, it is easy to escape any difficult situation such as a natural disaster when all your personal belongings are in one mobile place. In another way, it’s a chance to avoid soaring rent prices and live without the confines of a regular job and set off to see the world. That’s not to say it’s any easier than living in a house or apartment and working a 9-5. It’s just as difficult, only in different ways. Obviously there are a lot of considerations to keep in mind, such as where to shower and use the bathroom, how to cook and store food without a refrigerator and kitchen, how and where to sleep safely and comfortably, how to make enough money on the road in order to purchase gas and necessities, but there are options for all of these, and countless tried and true resources to help you figure out what setup and practices are best for you. Nomadic living is another case of trial and error; getting out there to test the waters and identify how to live based on your personal requirements. I would suggest that if you’re considering nomadic living, try a week-long road trip first, get into the grit of it and see if you’re really cut out for living on the Road.
Nomadic living will harden you, make you resourceful and cunning. It will show you what is truly important in your life and prevent you from falling into many material and consumerist traps. It gives you a kind of freedom that cannot be found by staying in the same house, in the same town for all your life. Mobility gives you an upper hand in case of any destructive event or evacuation scenario. You will not need to scramble to pack your most important belongings and leave a city on crowded highways, you will likely already have everything you need handy be able to be one of the first to evacuate.
One of the most difficult aspects of living on the Road is making enough money to get by, because there is not the security of a full-time job to fall back on, but there are many options. I would not shy away from doing gig work, freelancing, seasonal jobs, or starting some sort of online service, these are ways to make money and still keep your mobility. If you are still living in one place and working a job but preparing to begin a nomadic life, start saving up now. My suggestion would be to save up at least three months of paychecks in order to ensure that you can get by while you transition into mobile work. Many people who are considering living on the Road question how much money they actually need, and will put off beginning their journey for fear of running out of money. But again, nomadic living makes you very resourceful and thrusts you into situations where you have to figure it out quickly, so you’re better off setting a launch date, and sticking to that date no matter how much money you have. I promise, from my own many years of experience living on the Road and traveling the country, that you’ll figure it out as you go.
Nomadic living is the ideal lifestyle during a worldwide climate crisis. You can much more readily escape natural disasters, travel to where resources are plentiful, and make many helpful connections along the way. Some very good friends of mine who have helped me in tight situations and provided me with food and shelter during times of need are people that I’ve met in my travels.
If you are considering this lifestyle, it is all the more reason to re-up your self-sufficiency skills. Learn how to properly maintain your vehicle, how to cook for yourself, how to do basic first aid in case emergency services are not readily accessible.
Aside from the basics that everyone needs, I have provided a list of items that I consider essential for nomadic living:
Backup stash of motor oil and a filled 5-gallon gasoline can
Two-burner Coleman stove and extra propane cannisters
Dish tub for cleaning dishes
Road atlas
Road flares, jumper cables, tire pressure gauge
Some basic camping supplies: tarp, tent, flashlight, lantern, ice chest, thermos, mess kit/cooking supplies
First aid kit
Pour-over coffee maker or French press
Sleeping bag and wool blanket
Strong boots
Nomadic living is not something to rush into or decide on a whim, it should be carefully considered, planned out, and prepared for. Take the time to research, observe how other nomads go about their daily lives, and do some practice runs of sleeping in your vehicle to ensure that you are built for it. Despite having to forego certain amenities and lacking many creature comforts, a nomadic lifestyle is both practical and thrilling and should be taken very seriously as an option for those who wish to stay on their feet during crisis times. You have my blessing to go this route, and the Road is waiting.
If you’ve read up to this point, thank you for lending me the space in your mind, and I sincerely hope you have gained some sort of positive perspective or idea from this. To end this, I would like to cite three experiences I’ve had in which preparation, backyard food growth, communal trading, and mutual aid have saved my measly life as well as the lives of others.
In spring of 2019, I set out from the mountain states down to Panama City, Florida. I volunteered to aid in hurricane relief in cooperation with a local church, a few other mutual aid groups, and a handful of random people and families from around the country who wanted to help. It had been almost a year since the hurricane had devastated much of the Florida coast, and many people were still living in squalor despite FEMA’s tepid intervention. It was a small but earnest effort from a bunch of random people and families throughout the country to meet up in Florida and pass out food and supplies to struggling residents of the area, as well as fix up some damaged houses and clear out debris. I was compelled to join in and offer my help, and I am still in contact with some of the people I met there to this day. It ended up being a brilliant example of how communities can be formed in the most unlikely ways and have extraordinary benefits for all involved.
In September of 2020, I found myself dead in the middle of the raging wildfires in Southern Oregon and Northern California. I was living out of my truck in Ashland, Oregon. While I was in a nook of a large forested park that had dodged the brunt of the wildfires by only a couple of miles, most of the area had evacuated and I seemed to be stuck, along with a few other travelers and people without homes in the area. Every direction we could drive to escape would be just as affected by the smoke and fires, if not more so than our mountain park, so we decided to stay. This is where I came to know Paul Zamora, the writer of the quote on preparedness. Although some grocery stores in the area had stayed open for people who could not evacuate, I found myself digging into my backup food stock, offering as much as I could to those who lived in the forest and had no means to leave. My friends who were in the same predicament and I had formed a kind of communal watch over the once thriving area, that had turned into a hazy ghost town of itself inhabited by straggling wanderers and weirdos. It felt like limbo. For nearly a week we stayed there in the smoke, huddled near the creek in our vehicles, surviving and offering help to others in our situation. A friend of mine who lived in the woods named Michael regularly walked into town and returned with goods for us and the others in the area to share and pass out. We all regularly traded goods based on each other’s needs and surpluses of supplies. A good friend of mine named Dan Nicoletta (a legendary LGBTQ photographer) who lived about 30 miles North grew fruits in his backyard. I drove up there and he gave me 2 large paper bags full of fruits to hand out to people back in Ashland. These kinds of situations often bring people together, they make us want to help each other and survive together. Eventually the fires were contained and the smoke cleared, but many of those random strangers are still my friends to this day. People are good.
In the winter of early 2021, I was on my way back West after traveling the Southern United States and visiting my partner, who was living in South Carolina at the time. I had just driven through Louisiana and slept at a rest stop on the Texas-Louisiana border. The next day I stopped at a Walmart outside of Dallas to get some supplies for the Road and my phone began to yell at me about a severe winter weather warning, issued to every county in the entire state of Texas. While I was sitting there dumbfounded in the middle of Texas, I weighed my options out and decided I needed to hunker down in the Dallas area until the weather cleared. Although I’m used to driving on icy roads, I did not trust a Texan to be able to do the same, and there was a 133-car pileup on the interstate about 20 miles from where I was, proving my instinct. I stocked up on a few more supplies while I was at Walmart and then found a nearby empty parking lot, where I sat and waited for the worst to come. I was stuck there for about a week. During that week, temperatures got to as low as -25 degrees with wind chill, and I spent the whole time huddled up in my truck with every blanket and coat that I had. It was brutal at times. The lack of infrastructural preparation from the state of Texas caused widespread power outages, so there was only one grocery store in the area with power, and when I went there, most of the shelves were empty; it was a madhouse. I ate up much of my Oh Shit Food because it was all that was available. It was so cold that it was almost impossible to bring myself to set up my stove and cook outside my truck, but I had plenty of food that did not need to be cooked to keep me from starving. Most of the gas stations were either closed or out of gas so I had to conserve what gas I had and bundle up inside the truck. I only used my vehicle for heat at the coldest hours, which were usually first thing in the morning when I woke up. There were some unpleasant things I had to do to survive, but regardless of how rough it got, I am incredibly grateful that I had the foresight, the food, the supplies, and the means to survive that week. And here I am today, with such a… lovely story to tell about it. I am blessed that I was prepared, even for unlikely situations.
“May you live in interesting times.”
The Earth is begging us to live more simply, to cut down on our waste, to lean towards pragmatism, to prepare accordingly, to be there for our loved ones and strangers alike. We are to a point where industry, commodification, and the pursuit of wealth are no longer sustainable, no longer even moral. It seems that even finding a job and going to work are frivolous acts, if that job is not of genuine service to the people around us. We are in times where art should be for the sake of art, and down-to-earth goals are far more meaningful than lofty ones. These days, the average person ought to be an insane doomsday prepping maniac, honestly. But even if none of us are destined to survive, even if it all eventually collapses, at least we can do something meaningful while we’re still here.
There is much more to discuss and plan for.
Silk Road Gourmet
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Thank you.
Saw the writing on the wall by the time read LtG in '72, got vasectimized and planned and saved, pretty much what you have layed out here. By the time the economic crisis of 1984 hit we lived aboard a 10m sloop and took off. No refrigeration or eletronics as GPS was rare and $$$ and "cruised" around for six years crossing the Atlantic, the Med and European canals. We spent close to ten years prepping. Cheers and good work.