I have been interested in self-reliance off and on for the last 3-5 years. I believe self-reliance may be the only path to liberty in our society. Modern society has made us dependent upon systems that we have no control over. When something goes wrong with the systems we depend on, most people have nothing to fall back on.
Not long ago people planted gardens and raised a lot of their food not because they wanted to eat organic produce but because they needed the extra food. Today we have lost much of that self-reliance. Most of what is available in the grocery store comes in pretty plastic wrap with no connection to how it was grown. We have lost the connection to where our food comes from. My children don’t think vegetables with dirt on them are clean and good to eat. Most of the Vegetables I grow are not pretty like the ones in the store. My wife is even somewhat reluctant to enjoy some of the fruits of the garden. I grew Valencia tomato’s which have an orange color when ripe. What is funny is that the tomatoes tasted great but they were orange not red. Getting over the orange vs. red color was difficult for my family.
There are couple key systems that we are dependent upon in our daily lives. What do you think will happen if food deliveries stopped at the local grocery store, a virus wiped out all the round-up ready crops, the electrical grid stopped working or city water was not available for just a few days?
Food
All major grocery stores in the United States use a just in time inventory management system. This means that if deliveries are not made daily the store shelves start to look bare in just 1-2 days. I know people that have no food in their home other than the leftovers they brought home from a restaurant. Storing as little as 10 days of food could most of us through most disasters. We can do this by adding a little to our weekly grocery shopping. If most people had 10 days of food stored bare store shelves would be merely an annoyance. Keep in mind most disasters will be relatively short in duration and some services will usually return in a week or so.
Most of the food in the local grocery store is grown using monoculture. Monoculture is the practice of growing just one crop in a large area (think corn, wheat and soybeans). These crops have very little genetic diversity and in recent years genetically modified versions have been introduced to increase harvest. Plants that are genetically modified are changed by directly manipulating the genes of the plants in a very unnatural way. Apparently the folks doing genetic modification have never watched any 1960 era horror films. Once these genes have been introduced it may not be possible to remove them from the environment. Since the plants are genetically identical the right virus or other disease could wipe the entire crop out.
In a recent mother earth news there was an article that explained changes in the type of pesticides used in the US. We move away from pesticides that just coat the surface of the plant to ones that actually become part of the plant. So there is no way to wash off these pesticides since they become part of the plant tissue. What if these pesticides are really bad for humans? We may not know since the EPA study will not be complete until around 2013.
Electrical
In Phoenix, our electrical usage in the summer is extreme. I don’t think we could live here comfortably in the summer without AC. Even during the spring and fall, I have found no way to cool the house without AC. The amount of power required to cool the entire house would be about 80 AMPs (At least a 10,000 watts generator to run three AC units, fridge, and maybe a fan or two). The Electrical system is vulnerable to lots of events (including but not limited to storms, solar flares, squirrels, drunk drivers, terrorists,…) Just about anything can cause the electrical system to fail. Most of the time failure is short term, but there have been extended power outages all across the country after large scale disasters. Some of the equipment in the system is very difficult to replace quickly. In 2004 an electrical substation was damaged by fire leaving a large part of phoenix constrained on their electrical usage. It took over one year for a new transformer to be delivered and installed.
Water
The water delivered to my home comes from the Colorado River via the CAP (Central Arizona Project). The CAP is 200+ miles of canals, pipelines, and pumping stations to deliver the water to the phoenix area. Any number of things could go wrong with this system. Including the local water treatment facility failing (Like this failure a few years ago http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/0125Water25-ON-CP.html )
Modern society has made us dependent on these fragile systems. I don’t think it would take a large scale disaster for some of these systems to stop working for several hours. However a large scale disaster could take these systems off line for a week or more. Being able to produce your own food and rely on stored food is critical. Having the ability to generate some of you own electricity and store water is critical. Having these capabilities will soften a catastrophe and make it just a mere inconvenience.
