"It was just a matter of doing what you could before the fire arrived."

January 18, 2017 7:34 AM

The world surrounding my father's Montana homestead could disappear tomorrow, and he would make out just fine. I went to see him to find out how he does it—and why

The "adjacent possible" is a kind of shadow future, the way small incremental changes can give rise to complex systems and ideas, not through large discontinuous leaps.

posted by the man of twists and turns (38 comments total)

Aside from the quite obvious artifacts of civilization, I suppose it's true.
posted by jgooden at 7:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I have a close friend-- through blind luck in the software world in the early oughts--and some canny investment-- finds himself in a similar situation. And trapped in a similar 'Fallout 3/Maybe Fallout 4' myth.

You can't 'be just fine if the world around you disappears tomorrow.'

There's that day when you're out on the back 40 and you trip and fall and crack an ankle. You need to be seen by a doc... right away.

There's the other day when you're out of composite carbon fiber [a high-end industrial product, by the by] bowstrings, and you need to pick some more up in town...and there isn't any more 'in town.'

And so on and so on, through the whole thread of 'Doomsday Prepper Fantasy' right through the boring rubber seals in the $15,000 EtOH-based genny out back-- which need to be tuned and maintained every 30 duty cycles--by whom, exactly?

Throw in some climate change, and yeah-- that one year, not too far from now, when the blackberries don't fruit at all-- and the mushrooms come up twisted and rotten-- and a roaring forest fire rips through three miles away, courtesy pine beetles (which has happened to my anonymous friend mentioned above)-- and the whole fantasy starts to unravel rather quickly.

It's a fun read. It's Doomsday Prep Porn. It's Popular Mechanics. My Fallout 4 character is a sneaky melee build. I don't have any hopes of doing it in reality.
posted by mrdaneri at 7:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [48 favorites]

Aside from the quite obvious artifacts of civilization,

Plastics .... plastics everyhwere!
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:44 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Nowadays, all kinds of modern devices make self-sufficiency easier.

You gotta love that line, in all its self-contradictory glory.
posted by jgooden at 7:46 AM on January 18, 2017 [43 favorites]

Yeah, OK. There've been years of my life where I used less gasoline than this guy goes through in a paragraph.
posted by enn at 7:47 AM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]

I don't need to be self sufficient, I just need some alone time out in the country.
posted by freakazoid at 7:48 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

Splash picture features gas-powered chainsaw.

Okay then.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:48 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

I do remember one of those reality shows where they dropped a modern family into an 1800s homesteading situation, and the Dad was an aerospace engineer. Adding 150 years of additional engineering know how, even without the amazing tools of modern civilization, gave that family a serious leg up.
posted by rockindata at 8:06 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

I found the mentions of the author's kids super distracting -- like he drops that he sees his kids a few times a year, and then adds something about how much his one kid likes Radiolab. There's some kind of backstory there -- you see your school-age kids a couple times a year? That made me (maybe unfairly) unsympathetic to the author and I wish he'd left that detail out.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

We go out for a hike with his bow. I want to see the whole getup—the camo, the GPS, binoculars, and rangefinder.

"Several days earlier, I watched in awe as my father firmly grasped the global positioning satellite he had built from mail-order plans and, in one fluid motion, hurled it into orbit."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:22 AM on January 18, 2017 [37 favorites]

I hope his dad is planning how he's going to put himself down when he gets one of the inevitable diseases of old age.
posted by praemunire at 8:26 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

The difference between "completely self sufficient" and "minimally dependent on civilization" is a massive step-function jump - like the difference between static and dynamic friction, or between underwater and treading water.

Modern engineering and field medical knowledge - hell, knowledge of correct hygiene protocols like "wash your hands" - would be a huge boon in a truly self-sufficient scenario. But still, that's a big step between those two situations.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:29 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Most of Houston lost power for ten days after Ike hit. Preparing for short term disruptions makes sense in some parts of the world, but if civilization permanently shuts off, like The Road, I'd rather be dead. I wouldn't want to become what it would take to survive, not that I'd be tough or ruthless enough to do so.
posted by Beholder at 8:33 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]

I could do without the prepper dream-world wrapping, but I've adopted this sort of outlook the past 5 or so years and I've found it to be mostly true:

He is always tinkering—playing with a step just beyond the place where he already is. It looks like a lot of work to build a log house or put in a root cellar or install a shed-size external woodstove or hunt with a bow or go after a mountain goat. To me, it looks downright impossible. But step by step, it is not only possible, but happening right in front of me... it is not that my father is afraid of what the future holds—prepping for the apocalypse or whatever—but that he is excited about what opportunities it will provide for him to be even more engaged with life.

Many of us could do with this sort of thing, and not as it relates to tinkering or hunting or the apocalypse, but simply to get more out of life and to start to head towards what you want. To paraphrase the old joke, it's much easier to eat an elephant one bite at a time.
posted by nevercalm at 8:37 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

I hope his dad is planning how he's going to put himself down when he gets one of the inevitable diseases of old age.

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, just over there;
So that's where I stood the second time.
posted by biffa at 8:43 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

It's like the challenge of dogfighting in an airplane, or surfing a forty-foot wave, or writing a novel.

One of these things is not like the others.
posted by StephenF at 9:05 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

There's the other day when you're out of composite carbon fiber [a high-end industrial product, by the by] bowstrings, and you need to pick some more up in town...and there isn't any more 'in town.'

And so on and so on, through the whole thread of 'Doomsday Prepper Fantasy' right through the boring rubber seals in the $15,000 EtOH-based genny out back-- which need to be tuned and maintained every 30 duty cycles--by whom, exactly?

Compound bows don't put more total force on a string than a really strong recurve - and they used natural fibers.
One of the largest seal manufacturers is CR (you'll still see many axle, pump and gearbox seals with a part number starting with "CR"), that stands for "Chicago Rawhide". Rawhide seals work just fine, rubber is just more convenient for mass production.
posted by 445supermag at 9:11 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

To paraphrase the old joke, it's much easier to eat an elephant one bite at a time

Wrong thread!
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 9:12 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

dogfighting in an airplane, or surfing a forty-foot wave, or writing a novel.

One of these things is not like the others.

Trump may never write a novel or surf a 40 foot wave, but he might put cages and a fighting pit on Air Force One.
posted by biffa at 9:15 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]

Good to know about the bowstrings. That might(?) come in handy in terms of knowing which bodies to loot in the aftermath of the bloody-hand-to-hand raucous at street level over cans of beans.
posted by mrdaneri at 9:20 AM on January 18, 2017

I've watched some video of jets fighting in Libya and it didn't seem very exciting. They pressed a button and you couldn't see anything and then they said the target was hit but you still didn't see anything. Maybe he means fighting in an older propeller plane.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:35 AM on January 18, 2017

I don't think this dude ended up writing the article he says he wrote.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:54 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

In one of Richard Bach's later books he had a brief moment in an alternate universe where dogfighting was a big international sport, they used biplanes because otherwise there'd be no action. Also laser tag type shooting because it was a sport not actually about killing people.
posted by sotonohito at 10:01 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

As for all the doomsday prepping stuff, as others note it's reasonable and proper to keep supplies on hand for disasters likely to hit your area. The Red Cross has excellent guides on doing just that.

But clearly the other sort of prepping is more akin to LARPing. And also the sort of thing only the wealthy can indulge in. I'm damn sure not making enough to buy a few hundred acres of land and the equipment and employees necessary to build a house there.

I do have to say, I have a touch more sympathy for the preppers lately. Since Trump's theft of the election I've had to remind myself a couple of times that buying a gun would, statistically, put me at greater risk than not owning one. And I'm giving semi-serious thought to how to flee Texas for California in the event that Trump passes some sort of "State's Rights Restoration Act" or declares himself dictator for life.

Since I'm not actually paranoid, I didn't buy a gun and I think the actual likelihood of needing to flee to California is low enough that it might as well be zero.

But I can feel a bit more sympathy for them now that I'm experiencing some (I think vastly more justified) anxiety about the future. Even during Junior's horrible misadministration I never even contemplated buying a gun, Trump isn't even in office yet and I've thought about it (and dismissed the thought) a few times. So yeah, I get that anxiety can kick in our more primitive survivalist type thinking.

It's still bad thinking that won't produce positive results, but I get it a bit more these days.
posted by sotonohito at 10:12 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

Post-apocalyptic Metafilter: knowing which bodies to loot in the aftermath of the bloody-hand-to-hand raucous at street level over cans plates of beans.


posted by otherchaz at 10:52 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

...if civilization permanently shuts off, like The Road, I'd rather be dead.

With you there, but I'm pretty sure that will be happening, one way or another.

His one-man-standing-bravely-against-the-demise-of-civilization shtick is pretty ludicrous. However, if you're rich enough to build a walled fortified compound and stock it with the necessities, you might be golden. Unfortunately, the necessities to maintain your desired lifestyle would include a doctor, plumber, engineer, yadda yadda as your first tier citizens. You'd need second tier enforcers. (or maybe that would be reversed?) The bottom tier would consist of slaves to do planting, harvesting, and all the scut work. Ta-DA, you've basically created a feudal society.
posted by BlueHorse at 11:46 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

I get the urge to snark but on the other hand watching my snarky coastal liberal friends totally freak out during a two day countywide power outage ("no restaurants?! How will I eat?!" Is an actual quote), I was grateful for my back country survival skills like keeping canned goods and a flashlight or two on hand.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:19 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I hope his dad is planning how he's going to put himself down when he gets one of the inevitable diseases of old age.

I'm not really a big fan of this sort of thing or anything, but... this, to me, doesn't seem like any of the major barriers. I like civilization. I don't really want to live without civilization. But if the entire rest of the world all died tomorrow and you were perfectly happy living on your own and self-sufficient in day-to-day terms--do we really think that person considers it a big "gotcha" that this comfortable life might be cut short at age 60 instead of age 80? My dad used to be into this kind of stuff, and he didn't die very well at all, but he did die at home, and he used to talk about how he'd rather shoot himself than live in a nursing home, and he was the one who made all the choices that wound up with him gone before he hit 70.

Not everybody wants to live as long as they possibly can, at all costs, and I think the sort of person who finds this fantasy desirable is not necessarily enamored of the idea of dying in bed at the age of 95.

Now, "what are you going to do if you fall and break something alone out here and you can't get back to shelter/food"? That's the post-apocalyptic kind of scenario that really gives me nightmares, and I think a lot fewer people would be fine with that particular scenario than would be fine with suicide due to something we'd consider treatable, late in life.
posted by Sequence at 12:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

A moat of wet grass might not stop a forest fire from sending a fusillade of burning embers the size of fists onto the cedar-shake roof of his log home, Ron figured, but it could keep the flames from running up to the front door.

Cedar shake roof? He might as well have build his house out of matchsticks. Either the author is wrong about the roof composition or the the house was intentionally built with a very short half life.
posted by euphorb at 12:47 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

"what are you going to do if you fall and break something alone out here and you can't get back to shelter/food"

That would suck, but only for a fairly short while. So, there really isn't that much to worry about.
posted by oddman at 1:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Cedar wouldn't my first choice, but shakes are easy to make and attach. Master Thatchers are still a thing and are still reroofing 500 y/o buildings. There's a cost/benefit and a risk/benefit to almost every choice people make.
posted by ridgerunner at 1:59 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I didn't read this article as a musing on the doomsday prepper mentality so much as a story about a man from a part of the country where EVERYONE hunts, fishes, gardens, builds their own homes or outbuildings, etc. I mean his dad built a bigger house in the evenings after work when the author was a kid...they had previously lived in a two room cabin! So what if he has GPS and fancy rifle scopes and fish finders now? There's nothing in the article to suggest Ron believes those things will keep him alive when the zombies come-but they will make it easier to do the things he's always done. Do y'all realize how physically difficult it is to hunt a deer, let alone an elk? Especially as you get older? Like, why begrudge someone the use of TOOLS?

Maybe it's because I'm from a family where many of my relatives lived in rural areas and had to hunt and fish and build and tinker just to get along in the world, but I find a bunch of the comments upthread needlessly snarky. I was happy to read that during the wildfire Ron was able to save the house he built WITH HIS OWN TWO HANDS.
posted by little mouth at 4:02 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]

Speaking to the 'adjacent possible' part of the post - I've recently been interested in biogas and methane harvesting from waste, and man are people creative as hell: H2S scrubbers made of steel wool, even farm uses for carbonic acid from the water that filters out the CO2. I saw a video on putting the harvested methane in 20lb tanks for easy transport somewhere in India: they used a repurposed refrigerator compressor hooked up to a battery. People figure things out with what they have around, and survive and thrive in varying degrees according to how well they do that.
posted by eclectist at 5:18 PM on January 18, 2017

Yeah but in Montana, in a wildfire-prone area? Cedar roofing is such a spectacularly bad option that they're being increasingly banned for their fire hazard. Fire is an actual season out here, we get it the way Florida gets hurricanes. And like a flimsy house in Florida, an inflammable roof in Montana is so bad they run PSA ads on TV against them every year.
posted by traveler_ at 7:03 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

watching my snarky coastal liberal friends totally freak out during a two day countywide power outage ("no restaurants?! How will I eat?!" Is an actual quote), I was grateful for my back country survival skills like keeping canned goods and a flashlight or two on hand.

Feel free to come over any time and look in my city-ass girl's closet stocked with up-to-date emergency supplies. Whether or not you have the common sense to keep a few bottles of water around really has zero to do with your location. Although, frankly, when you actually have a dense network of neighbors and nearby stores, you've got a much better chance of being able to get what you need in a time of crisis. People died from Hurricane Sandy, but, as far as I know, no one starved, and when my friend lost power, all she had to do was walk uptown to stay with me. Not an option for isolated preppers.

But if the entire rest of the world all died tomorrow and you were perfectly happy living on your own and self-sufficient in day-to-day terms--do we really think that person considers it a big "gotcha" that this comfortable life might be cut short at age 60 instead of age 80?

I don't understand. Are you asking why a person otherwise living in comfortable conditions might mind dying of a perfectly treatable condition at 60? Especially if the death itself ended up slow and painful, as with a cancer that could have been easily dealt with if detected in stage 1 but got to progress all the way?
posted by praemunire at 7:13 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I would bet that his dad spends little time in front of a TV, and probably uses the internet to look for specific information and gather new techniques for his "tinkering", rather than surfing.

I think I'm going out to the shop building and adding some work lights now- Later on, a friend is going to help me with the interior work. We have to finish the parts needing 2 guys before maple syrup season, he will be too busy then...

Yes, he uses stainless steel pans, is adding a reverse osmosis system to de-water the sap substantially and reduce the amount of firewood needed to boil it down to syrup. And a vacuum/tube system, rather than gravity and buckets for collecting maple sap- He started out making syrup with a hand drill, spiles made out of whittled wood, buckets hung on trees and a wash tub for boiling over a wood fire.

With the new hardware and engineering- It's still working in the woods, and he loves it.

I kind of like it myself.
posted by bert2368 at 5:45 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Among his hunting essentials a GPS receiver. A constellation of low earth orbiting satellites, replaced at regular intervals by the US government and funded by his fellow tax payers. The receiver itself is built from raw materials mined in the Congo and chips designed in Texas, the U.K. and others from Finland, plastic made from Saudi oil and the whole thing assembled in China. The interconnected global supply chain held together by the US military and US created post WWII trade and currency systems like the WTO, World Bank and the US Dollar, the Euro and other reserverce currencies.

Yeah really self reliant there old man living retired in your homestead with Medicare, investment income and social security.
posted by humanfont at 6:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

I was happy to read that during the wildfire Ron was able to save the house he built WITH HIS OWN TWO HANDS.

I wasn't. As a Westerner, I was first enraged that he used shingles for his roof when any fool knows not to use them because they are widely warned against in fire country. Then I was further enraged when I read that he did the ol' hose and sprinkler trick.

He's far enough out in the country that he's not drawing down the water pressure for fire fighters (the usual issue in suburban areas) but he's still using water that could be put to better purpose and putting himself in the kind of danger that needs rescuing if it goes just a little awry. Every year, some dumbass--and it's always a guy--decides to rescue his castle. Every year, some dumbass either gets rescued or gets dead.

That's just really bad manners in fire country.
posted by librarylis at 8:41 PM on January 19, 2017