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.
“It’s an inevitability that we’ll be facing a crisis within our lifetime, within my lifetime and certainly within my daughter’s lifetime,”
The most ridiculous part of this story is that it is based on mis information. If this musician spent a half hour researching REAL data he’d realize he’s operating under a false premise and he can save his family a lot of angst.
(Just think how he unintentionally passed false information and alarmed his daughter to explain why he want away!).
“…and light fires by rubbing two sticks together.”
That seems a bit advanced.
They should stick to banging rocks together for the present (after they’ve learned how to manage fire properly, of course).
Rub sticks together to start a fire? It is possible, but why not just stock up on cheap wooden matches and keep them in a waterproof plastic baggie? That could start lots of fires if needed!
Of course, wood fires emit lots more CO2 for the amount of heat obtained than natural gas or home heating oil, plus the CO2-absorbing ability of the tree is lost, which would exacerbate any “climate change” effects these people were supposedly fleeing.
Some of the forests “75 miles north of New York City” can be pleasant in midsummer, but they are 10 to 20 degrees F colder than NYC year-round, meaning that cold rainstorms in NYC are frequently snowstorms 75 miles to the north. Most edible plants don’t grow in the winter, and most game animals are hibernating, and would be difficult to find. Anyone trying to eke out a “survivalist” existence near the Catskills or Berkshires would be better off camping near a river and living off fish.
Or better yet, stay in NYC and hope the gangs don’t shoot you.
The true irony of this is that the likelihood of the “grid dropping out” and “all this tech failing” has nothing to do with the unnoticeable changes to the climate and everything to do with what the same idiots taking these courses have been voting for and protesting for and clamoring for to “save us” from an imaginary “crisis.”
It is if these idiots get their way that such skills will be needed, because the grid and tech failure is guaranteed once a sufficient level of electric grid and transport is dependent upon stupidities like windmills and solar panels.
Survival training isn’t a bad idea. Not for climate change, since that is a non-issue. But the training might come in handy if the U.S. is invaded by a foreign enemy, or attacked using electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) devices.
The Chicoms seem to think they are up to an invasion. Here’s a hint, Chicoms: Invading the U.S. would be like grabbing a tiger by its tail.
6 million people in Toronto consume 250,000 chickens daily! There’s not enough game in Ontario to feed them all for a week. In order to survive they’ll have to eat each other.
One of the better prepper preparations I have heard of is where a person digs themselves a swimming-pool sized hole in his yard and then fills it with coal and covers it over with soil, and saves it for a rainy day.
A person could last a long time on the amount of coal in a swimming-pool-sized hole in the ground.
It’s the economic collapse resulting from run-amok Progressive green & economic policy consequences that will require these skills, not any actual “climate collapse”.
On November 9 1965 there was a multi state power outage in the north east. The outage included NYC. 9 months later there was a population surge.
Unless they REMAIN in the forest none of this will do them the least bit of good, other than a weekend out and some light camping, in their $60-70,000 SUV and massively over priced sleeping bags and pop up tents.
Learning to live off the land can give you a great sense independence, resiliency.
Mountain Scout Survival School would do well to add on a Bug In course. Shortly after SHTF cities will be killing zones for weeks. Desperate people will do things they never thought they would to survive. Then there’s the roving gangs.
If you do not Get Out Of Dodge in time you are stuck behind enemy lines. Better to plan surviving that. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands will all be heading to the woods. Consequently not a place I would choose to be for at least 3 months.
Having said that why would a Climate Change Alarmist think heading to the woods is a good idea. Given their claimed decimation of nature what makes them think there would be anything beneficial in heading to the woods.