So, Thank You to the operators of this website and all the usual commenters, keep up the good work in the pursuit of Liberty.

As for rabbits — we have two, both fixed pets, so we already know that rabbits aren’t on the menu!

I believe we are discussing the practical details of shrugging in this modern world. Finding the right locale and learning to be as self-sufficient as possible is today’s version of implementing Galt’s Gulch.

For example, your posts giving glimpses into your life in AK are most illuminating, given that we visited the state with the express purpose of fact-finding.

In some ways, I’m thinking Stephen Gordon & others who do this blog, think we surely have gotten off the “Atlas Shrugged” track. And we may have…but there is one thing in all this that I think Rand was trying to get across on a very simple scale. Regardless of politics, looters or producers, the people that really do survive hard times(and/or changing times) are those that are most “flexible”. Those willing to rise to the heights – when necessary, and those willing to fall to the depths – when necessary & start over again. I know there is the theme of the “virtue of selfishness” and living life on your own terms….but those terms still have to be flexible. The looters could not ‘flex’ to learn how to survive in their own right, and the producers of the book could. Is this not simple Darwinianism? Survival of the fittest?

Am I taking this down to too simple of a concept?

Sounds like we are of the same mind, only in different places! I applaud the meat raising effort…I decided I could not do it. Once I get to ‘know’ an animal..I can’t eat it! My husband get’s disgusted with me for making pets out of spiders in the house. I know that it is not a good – or sane – attitude (maybe hypocritical too to a vegetarian?) for survival…but it is what I am. However, I do OK fishing for my own, especially here in Alaska, so maybe I will eventually break out of that. But I may end up living only on fish, ha ha.

Another great thing I could suggest for the fun of it and some wonderful info – a PBS video called “1940 House” about a family who spent several months recreating what it was like to live in London during WWII. Dealing with shortages, war, the blitz, all shorts of things. It is usually available in most library video collections. They had to deal with the raising of rabbits for food, and ran into a road block with that! – - – ((There were several other shows in this vain, “Frontier House” “Ranch House” etc, but I found these very irratating as they put together several types of people who could not work together very well – Like I said, “Pick only those you know and can trust!” Those shows quickly developed into petty bickering and for the most part failure – in my opinion. Mostly a waste of time.)) “1940’s House”, however, was great in that it showed the dynamics of what a close-knit and loving family could go through in those hard times. It brought me to tears often, and I felt like I lived it with them, not only understanding what they dealt with, but I had a much better feel for the ordeals that generation lived through. I watched it several times, and it is full of things that show “how people got by in hardship” while still trying to maintain a halfway normal life.

Hank

Soap sounds great! We do use mostly homemade, good stuff without those additives. My friends make some great stuff – sharing of skills again. – - The more skills we all become familiar with, the more independent we will become. With us, it is becoming a ‘hobby’ like we are some kind of adult Boy & Girl Scouts. Didn’t the Boy Scouts stress “being prepared” long before Galt went to the Gulch?? That may be silly (especially to the ‘looters’), but we are sure having fun with it….and that is what life is all about.

Thank you for your responses regarding locales. Such input is exactly what we are seeking – substantive information.

For now, my response is short, if a little quirky. My wife and I have just poured our first homemade batch of lye soap. We’ll see tomorrow if it sets well. Then we must wait for a few weeks before use. Here’s hoping we won’t grease or burn ourselves!

Ingredients: Olive oil, coconut oil, lard, lye (starting simple – quantities derived from various web sites and soap calculators).

If successful, it is yet another small step.

Ah well, take either or both. Or neither, if you wish.

I actually live in Oregon, but I have lived in Cali, as wall as Las Vegas (not to be confused with Nevada,) several states in the Midwest and a couple of states on the East Coast, too, so I have a wide variety of subjective experience with different areas of the U.S.

We already are withdrawing, but slowly, so that it looks more like a downwards spiral, rather than a deliberate withdrawal. We picked an area that is unlikely to be developed, with neighbors that care more about each others’ welfare than about appearances. We are learning how to spin and knit, and how to garden (not as easy as it looks, actually), and we are learning to care for animals so we can raise our own meat. That might not work out, because as city folk, we might not be able to kill and eat the animals that we ourselves have raised, but if we can’t, that’s the kind of thing that we need to find out now.

If you look at us, you might think that we are just one missed paycheck from disaster. In reality, if both my husband and I lost our jobs, we could live just like we have been for a year, and much longer if we cut back (which we would.)

Given that my husband and I are both veterans, we already know that we cannot drop completely off the map, but we are doing our best to look like the smallest blip possible.

As for Alaska, quite frankly, it is too cold for me. If I though that Global Warming was going to be as bad as they say, then yeah, it might be a possibility, but as far as I can tell, the Sun heard the warnings and took them to heart, and is now producing less energy . . . . and things are cooling off. There are cycles for that, too, apparently, and it looks like the Sun had hit a high point and is now winding it down for a while. So, no Alaska for me!

“Pulling back” from the gov’t — we’re doing it. Last year, we put in a garden, we are all learning to spin and knit and how to fix everything we can. This year we are starting the Great Chicken Experiment — can we actually raise our own meat and still be able to kill and eat it? Some former city folk, which we are, can’t kill or eat the meat they have raised, so we’re finding out on a very small scale — three pullets and a cockerel. If we find that we can’t, then we will just have to take that into account and figure out what we have to learn to have something to barter for our meat.

If you actually look at my family, you might think that we are poor. After all, we don’t have any brand names on our clothes, and we don’t take expensive vacations, and we don’t own new cars — but in reality, we owe nothing except for the mortgage, we own our cars, we have money in the bank, and if both my husband and I were to loose our jobs today, we have enough money in savings to last for a year at this rate of spending, and longer if we cut back.

Sure, the Joneses look better than us, but most of them are one missed paycheck away from disaster. We actually look like what Hollywood and the gov’t thinks “one paycheck away from disaster” looks like, but the reality is something else entirely.

We’re doing it slowly, so it looks almost as though we are on the downslope, slowly sliding into poverty, getting the protective camouflage to hide us from the gov’t, making it look as though we don’t have anything worth taking, and hiding ourselves — in plain sight — amongst the “underprivileged.”

Our aims, mind you, are still high, and our minds are still alive, but as Mister Realist has shown us, it is getting to the point that unless you have a good publicist, you are a greedy bastard who deserves to have your ill-gotten gains taken away from you and given back to those from whom they were stolen in the first place.

Could my husband or I start or run a business? On several levels, we are capable. We can make a plan and stick to it. We can (and do) budget. We both have excellent work ethics, and are capable of making — and understanding — a cost benefit analysis so as to avoid the most obvious mistakes. But that’s not everything there is to running a business, so could we actually do it? I don’t know, and the scary thing is, if the political climate were better, financially, we are in the place to find out. As it is, though, we are not willing to take the risk, because we see a point in the not-too-distant future where people will have to reconcile their dual beliefs — the stated political belief that all businesses are exploitative and all businessmen are evil — and their demonstrated belief that they really do need businesses, just as much as those businesses need them. Eventually, like a nun who is also a prostitute, those dual personalities of actions and beliefs will have to be reconciled, and right now, I cannot say that politics will come to the notion that it is the people who make the money, however they do it, and not the gov’t.

What really scares me is that people like me — voluntarily lower middle class or working class or whatever you want to call us — might get scapegoated because we don’t spend enough money to have the kind of debt that has fueled the economy in the past few years, and fueled the gov’t in the past few decades. We’re not rich and we don’t live like it — but we could have lived like it, so by not contributing to our debt, we have hurt the economy, and I am afraid that this will be held against us.