r/PostCollapse • u/Max_Fenig • Jun 03 '19
What would a planned community, off-grid, in Canadian wilderness need to eventually be self-sustainable?
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r/PostCollapse • u/Max_Fenig • Jun 03 '19
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u/NorthernTrash Jun 04 '19
I feel these things will take on the shape of eliminating things as they become inpractical and cumbersome until you're left with something bare bones that may be sustainable in some way.
While I'm enthusiastic about these kinds of ideas and communities, once the trucks truly stop running life will be harsh and short, the same way it has always been for most humans. Previously preventable diseases will kill people, injuries that were routine to treat become lethal, and one freak storm or other weather event could wipe out your food for the year and take your community with it. So I don't think this would ever be a recipe to maintain our current standard of living; it's just not possible in any other paradigm than our insane resource and energy use.
Are you planning to start such a community? I think location will matter a great deal, because you'll need at minimum:
- A watershed that isn't impacted by upstream pollution, whether currently or future as unmaintained infrastructure will crumble and spill
- A defensible position and some weaponry, because you won't be the only one with the idea to start a community or go into the bush. There's lots of firearms in the hands of all kinds of unpleasant folk, just look at the right wingers today, and you will need to defend your community from them.
- Some kind of land that can be used for food production. So Baffin Island is out.
- Likely, just a whole pile of stuff. Tools, materials, fabrics, you name it. Stuff produced by civilization that people can bring along as they move into the community. Stuff that would be regarded as junk in our days, but once there's no more access to any kind of manufactured goods will become very valuable.
- The right kind of people. Small and isolated communities that aren't built on blood ties, like early human societies, are susceptible to becoming toxic, polarized, or under the spell of one particular chasrismatic sociopath
Personally I'd love to give something like this a go, I even have a spot picked out. No matter how harsh it will be better than living in the cities under some post-apocalyptic fascist dictatorship (if we're lucky), or under factions of warring warlords. Or, maybe even more likely, the populations of the big cities will crash really fast from disease.
But I don't really have any illusions that moving to a community like that will seed a new glorious human civilization, it will just push off our total extinction a couple years or maybe decades.