The world is growing increasingly volatile. Do we need a lot of canned goods? A huge garden? A Ham radio? A wad of cash buried in a coffee can in the woods? Probably?
We also need to have working relationships with people with language skills, humorists, and conflict diffusers.
The internet sub-culture of prepping is largely focused on how to outfit your house or your SHTF go-bag so you’re well-stocked for whatever societal collapse might occur. More often than not the framing assumes that it’s you (and your family) against the rest of the world, a fairly limited orientation in times of upheaval or collapse. Solitary survival, or even tiny group survival, is largely a fantasy, occasionally racist, and always interwoven with America’s obsession with the colonizing of the frontier.
More often than not the framing assumes that it’s you (and your family) against the rest of the world, a fairly limited orientation in times of upheaval or collapse.
I listen to these podcasts because we all clearly need more skills. I’ve learned more about shelf stable foods and home water supplies. But I usually leave them feeling like they’re missing the biggest piece of the puzzle: community. And not just community of all our like-minded friends living in a chosen community. I’m talking about building strategic community, across wide gulfs of difference. We need a wide net.
I have danced around this topic for years, hoping to stumble on the existence of a pithy hashtag and prolific community for such discussions. Honestly, I’d rather write about rolly polys and coyotes and dead grandmothers who live inside flower petals. But a frank discussion of community preparadness feels like something that is so needed in these times.
So what is community preparedness? What makes it different than just community or just preparedness?
Here is what I think it means: Community Preparedness is actively choosing to prepare for potential instability, recognizing that you simply can not live in a make-shift fortress or an ideological bubble. Your literal neighbor has to be your…literal neighbor. You might not even like each other. But you will likely need each other. You and your neighbor may never be best friends but you and your neighbor can probably agree on the fact that you both need to eat. If they have a whole bunch of potatoes and you have a cast iron skillet and a backup propane stove, you both get to eat dinner.
If you are still in the camp where you think all this instability will pass and that the idea of American stability will return, that’s your choice. But please don’t chastise those of us who find some manner of peace in not waiting around to wring our hands, repeating the phrase: “I can’t believe this is happening!” If I hear one more person say, “Well, it’s not going to come to that,” I might scream. Shoot, at the rate we’re going we are asking for complete collapse. It can absolutely happen. It is happening.
If we acknowledged the threats we are not leaning into them. We are facing them. And in this clarity we can find joy, fortitude, and a future.
And the future demands relationship. Not the kind of relationships where algorithms shape our worlds and we hear only from those who align with our version of reality. We have to have a world where we can count on one another for food, for safety. We have to be interconnected in a way that is both strategic and prophetic. Think of it this way: the plants you can’t kill typically grow by rhizomes. That means underneath the earth they are connected by an intricately interwoven network of roots. Bermuda grass? Grows by rhizomes. Plants with rhizomes will outlast any weeding strategy you can employ.
Community preparedness is the act of weaving rhizomes. Community preparedness is about building something to weather the storms.
If we acknowledged the threats we are not leaning into them. We are facing them. And in this clarity we can find joy, fortitude, and a future.
A caveat: there are certainly dangerous people, unethical people, and downright horrible people, and one should not try and build community with abusers, people who wish you active harm others, or are known threats. This is not about surviving at all costs. But community preparedness can mean knowing the difference between a threat and a preference. All the guns and garden seeds in the world won’t help when you need the people power it takes to, say, build a structure from rubble. We will need each other. It is the only chance we have.
Ok so you’re with me in theory. “What can I DO?” you ask.
Start by taking stock of what you already have and/or can do and where you’re lacking. Who gardens? Hunts? Who is a magician in the kitchen? Who knows how to fix a broken radiator? Who is good with fixing broken tools? Who knows CPR or wound care? Have this conversation with a minimum of five people in your area. Together, make a mental map of the community resources you have as a group See where you’re lacking and look to build a working relationship with people with those skills now. And I’m not talking about just folks who have a generator, for example.
Think about the skills of being in community.
Who is excellent at diffusing unnecessary conflict? Who is multilingual and can translate well? How many languages are spoken within your community? Who is good with elder care? Who has skills in bringing down unnecessary tensions? Who can help people laugh when they’d rather cry? Who can help hold people when crying is all that can be done?
You need people with all kinds of skills. You need a real community. It will mean you need to be multi-lingual and multi-generational. It will mean you see the light in one another.
I hope that [The Seed and the Story], all of Sulphur Springs Truck Patch, and to a large degree the McElroy House organization, is an experimental answer to the question of community preparedness. No one knows what is coming. No one will be truly prepared and we may all perish quickly.
Or we may all be fine(ish).
But we can know that what we build now, however tiny or seemingly insignificant is what the next generations will build upon. We should leave something they can see a future in. What are you building?
This post was previously published on Meredith Martin-Moats’ Patreon The Seed and the Story under the title “Community Preparedness 101”. We highly recommend you subscribe! All paid subscriptions help SSTP feed its collection of animals who have been rehomed, rescued, and acquired otherwise by our farm. Subscribing is a great way to passively help fund the growth of the educational food forest, workshops, and more as we grow.
Leave a Reply