Slow or Fast?

There are several long-running debates in the prepping world. One of these concerns the best survival firearm. Another is about which vehicle is the ideal bug out transportation. But the one that I want to talk about is the fast vs. slow collapse.

While we talk about be prepped for any circumstance, once you go beyond the 72 or 96 hour bag, the BOB for natural disasters and so on, what are you prepping for? If you’re honest, you are prepping for a collapse of society, or at the very least, an extended period of civil disorder where food, medicine and shelter may be difficult to obtain and keep, a time in which you cannot look to local or national government for aid.

That’s fine. Given the way we’ve messed with nature (climate change) and our own institutions (financial crisis), it is not an unreasonable assumption that we are reaching a limit, some sort of tipping point. It is only sane and reasonable to attempt to safeguard yourself and your loved ones. But when does the SHTF, when is TEOTWAWKI? When does the balloon go up?

And therein is the heart of two opposing viewpoints. One camp would have you believe that collapse is imminent, that you need to move away from fiat currencies into gold, silver, beans, bullets, and band-aids. The collapse of world financial system, or peak oil, or a Carrington Event sized CME or other dire event is just around the corner. Time is running out, Chicken Little, the sky is falling!

AT the other end of things are the slow collapse folks. Things will be okay for three, five or ten more years, and even then there will be a slow genteel slide, allowing plenty of time to set up that off grid energy system or to get a few more pails of wheat stocked up stocked up. It’s okay, relax, and don’t panic, lots of time left.

At this point, let me introduce a concept from evolutionary biology called punctuated equilibrium. The concept arises from the fact that in the fossil record, there is little evolutinary change in species over millions of years, until in a relatively short time, geologically speaking, there is an explosion of evolution, with many species suddenly appearing before things settle down once more.

The explanation for this is that it is very hard to disrupt an ecosystem, but once it happens, things occur very quickly and species rapidly evolve to fill the niches created by whatever upset the normal conditions, whatever event disrupted the equilibrium.

There is some evidence that this happens with human societies. There is a normal equilibrium state which is very hard to disrupt. After all, the society that created that state desires that it continue, and will do everything it can to maintain it. That’s why you saw the US government intervene rather than let everything crash in 2008. It’s the reason Europe keeps trying to bail out the weaker economies like Greece. They are trying to maintain the status quo.

But if you look at history, you see that no matter what a society does to patch up the ship of state, they eventually have more patches than boat, and more leaks than patches. Sooner or later, the society in crisis will collapse under its own weight or other external political factors. Disorder will abound, populations will be on the move, and life gets orders of magnitude more difficult. Think Libya here.

Sometimes the triggers for a collapse are not social or political, but environmental. A series of droughts, earthquake, or other catastrophic event can pull down a society that seems otherwise healthy. Think Mesa Verde, or perhaps Haiti. It was and is bad enough with massive aid. Think what it would have been like without it.

Once that equilibrium is breached, there will be a nasty period until some sort of stability is regained. New ideas, institutions, and societies will rapidly evolve to replace the old ones. The trick for you is getting from one stable point to another in one piece.

Don’t panic, but don’t think you have forever to prepare. Things may very well decline slowly for years, but once we hit a certain point, slow collapse will become fast collapse in a blink of an eye. And once that happens, the time to prepare has ended.

Originally posted May 23, 2011 @ MPN