Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Urban high-rise dwellers are increasingly flocking to survival skill camps, to learn how to trap game and light fires by rubbing two sticks together.
Climate change fears spur more Americans to join survivalist schools
“If something breaks down, if the grid drops out, all of this modern technology fails us instantaneously,” instructor Shane Hobel said. “These skills will keep you alive — period.”
Aug. 1, 2021, 6:30 PM AESTBy Ethan Sacks
Manhattanite David D’Alessio spent a recent Saturday cobbling together a shelter out of muddy leaves and twigs in a wooded stretch 75 miles north of New York City.
While the wilderness training on the 90-acre grounds of the Mountain Scout Survival School has traditionally attracted outdoor enthusiasts, the musician was among several of the 18 attendees who weren’t learning to drink water out of a vine or set traps for rabbits just for fun.
Those are skills D’Alessio, 49, the father of a 6-year-old girl, fears will become essential in the coming years — as the impacts of climate change continue to worsen.
“It’s an inevitability that we’ll be facing a crisis within our lifetime, within my lifetime and certainly within my daughter’s lifetime,” he said.
Survivalist school instructors across the country say there has been an increasing interest in their wilderness and urban-disaster preparedness courses from Americans worried about climate change. As rising temperatures bring more wildfires, droughts and destructive storms, those types of courses are no longer the domain of campers and hunters. One of these schools’ fastest-growing demographics is now young families.
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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/climate-change-fears-spur-more-americans-join-survivalist-schools-n1275474
Healthy outdoor exercise and all that, probably does them good to get out of their high-rise apartments and experience nature.
Unless you have a supply of seed they’ll be lost. Meat is great, but hard to find. Your heifer will not become a cow and be giving milk unless you have a bull to freshen her every year. Also, you’re in competition with far more experienced predators for any bush meat. Unless you produce an over abundance of crops, the local critters will eat it for you, long before harvest time.
Exactly, first and foremost you need seeds. I save seeds from everything I grow.
Very smart idea, if for no other reason than that the price of seeds has skyrocketed. Keeping back seed is as good discipline as always saving a portion of your income.
pity the squirrels in central park
How utterly moronic.
If TSHTF – 8 million New Yorkers are all going to be trying to get out at once. The Manhattanites aren’t going to make it.
That will be ground zero for zombies.
If tshtf I have no doubt the government would blow up the tunnels and bridges out of NYC to keep the hordes in.
Are they going to trap Picas?
75 miles from NYC.
Pace Picante: See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvIRh-qt9EQ
The picture is of a Pika which is related to rabbits ( same order). There lots of them here in Montana but they are high mountain critters here. I don’t think I’ve seen one below about 7500 ft elevation.
My first encounter was also on a mountain, but that seems not to be necessary. When expanding I-90 east of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington — including an animal overpass — Picas were found colonizing the new road bed — the rocks transported during the cut and fill operations. Elevation there is about 2,600 feet. Elsewhere, north of Ellensburg, at about 4,400 feet I found one of their small “hay stacks.”
I wonder if there are differences, but have not investigated.
Alas, if only those (otherwise intelligent I’m sure) urban dwellers took the equal amount of time to research the climate scam they could direct their energies to useful pursuits, but as has oft’ been repeated “it is easier to fool someone than to convince them they have been fooled”.
The need for the survival skills are for the wrong reason but useful none the less.
“trap game and light fires” – ?????
You can’t do either of those things, because of climate change. Eating meat causes the oceans to boil. As for lighting fires …….
How to open a can.
You have got to be ‘schisting’ me! I do that routinely. It is a little more challenging if the only thing you have is a rock hammer or a large hunting knife. I also have a couple of the war-surplus can openers that fit on a key chain. The rock hammer worked great for the old-style beverage cans that didn’t have pull tabs.
Now let him try it with those can opener thingies on a penknife. It’s actually better than most modern can openers, they’re pants.
OMG the ineptitude and effort…
truly funny
and even more truly frightening that such an effortless skill seems to be new and novel
Climate change fantasy leads to survivalist fantasy. Seems rational..
I guess if it was people from San Francisco, they would be taught how to rub two boy scouts together the light a fire but then after, the Big One, I don’t think fire will be a problem.
they are taking the courses due to the urban unrest they have experienced first hand … not climate change …
These idiots will was cash on anything!
Cue the dueling banjo music…
I’m guessing a deer living in the wilds of NY state will have some advantage over a 225 lb man from NY city, rubbing two sticks together hoping to start a fire to cook his hoped for catch out in the wild.
If the conditions become intolerable in NY city, I suspect hoping to find a tolerable existence in a rural haven, is all these hopeless climate alarmist believers can hope for.
What was it Bill Clinton said? Oh yes, ” we believe in hope”
I think he was looking at Hilary at the time, so he is allowed his hope.
He may have hoped, but I don’t think his wishes were fulfilled. Someone else had to manage it.
Biggest danger in NY woods: ticks and Lyme.
I would have thought that it was the “Great Reset” which was spurring people on to live off grid, and/or in the wild, as there will be shortages of everything, not just power…
PT Barnums one born every minute sprang to mind
fleece the sheepies who may have done a day or two camps but are still not going to handle sudden changes very well.
It’s sort of a Frankenstein meets Dracula moment, innit? I guess if you’re willing to accept one type of whackjob ideation, you’ll accept any number of them.
Too little and too late.
Wilderness are wilderness because it is really difficult to live survive on a slope, and all the good spots are already taken by hard men..
I bugged out more than a decade ago to an island in the middle of the largest body of potable water in the world.
What a fun thread, city rats versus country mice.
I’ve been to up state New York (gorgeous country). Having spent an evening drinking beer with some of the superb no bullshit locals I know they’d very quickly f*(k up any Manhattan wimps who tried to steal their resources.
Well, I may opt for this type of training as well, not because of climate change, but because of climate change politics. If the lunatics on the left get their way, – that is, shutting down reliable energy infrastructure and replacing it with weather dependent, intermittent, and unreliable energy sources – grid collapse is inevitable
Blackout – Tomorrow will be too late
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(Elsberg_novel)
A nice story, also well researched as it seems, some crime around as it is a novel.
It starts with a hacked smart meter…
I live on a small farm just outside Daniel Boone National Forest. I do a little hiking and camping there. If/when SHTF I’ll avoid the forest like a radiation zone. I’ll leave it to all of the Les Stroud wannabes. When they start starving (won’t take long) they should keep in mind how protective people are of their property.
On the positive side maybe a little time in the woods will give them an appreciation for the outdoors.
Survival isn’t just a matter of taking some classes; it’s a mindset, one which many of these folk don’t have.
But maybe getting outside a little more will help them connect with reality a bit better.