The American Redoubt Series Preparedness and Self-Reliance
By Bill Harp Reader Contributor Editor’s Note: This first article of the American Redoubt series focuses on the preparedness community and self-reliance — a key principle of the Redoubt as proposed by one of its original proponents, James Wesley, Rawles. Next week, we’ll take a closer look at how Rawles affected the movement. It is written by a contributor with personal experience in the preparedness community. The preparedness community is a diverse movement of many types of folks. They are united by the belief that modern society is far less resilient than most people think, that an unexpected calamitous event could sever access to the many systems that we depend on. With electric power, fuel, food, medicine, water and law enforcement cut off, the well-ordered social contract of civilization could slip away. The preparedness community understands how fragile modern society could be under these circumstances and takes steps to ensure a better chance of enduring such a life-changing disaster. Calamitous Events
Not everyone agrees on the what the calamitous events could be and what type of event is most like to occur. They fall into three general categories: natural, social and hybrid. Natural events could be floods; wind, snow and ice storms; fires; earthquakes; volcanic eruptions; meteors and electromagnetic pulses from the sun that could disable sensitive electronics and the power grid. Social events include financial meltdown, war, terrorism, cyber-induced energy grid failure, nuclear events and political instabilities. And then there are hybrid events such as famine and far-reaching disease outbreaks. In the Inland Northwest, you could add a serious chemical spill on the railroad or highway. Any of these events could have complex and difficult-to-predict effects on communities, regions, states or nations.
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Part 1
The event could be short term and local, or it could endure for years and be global in scope. Two popular expressions for defining events are TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) and WTSHTF (when the shit hits the fan). Response
What might be an appropriate preparation for a calamitous event? Well, that is the source of a lot of debate within the preparedness community. Some might buy a couple of how-to books, store 40 gallons of water and two weeks of freeze dried food in their garage and call it a day. Others might outfit a complete off-grid retreat in the North Idaho back-country along with a year’s supply of food, water, fuel and medicine. And, of course, there’s every combination of in-between responses. Each member of the preparedness community researches and decides exactly how they are going to prepare for a TEOTWAWKI event. Information Sources
Detailed preparedness resources and discussions are available online as well as in print. One internet site stands out in its quality and scope of information and its political and social philosophy. This is www.survivalblog.com, a web site operated by James Wesley, Rawles (author, founder, owner-operator) and Hugh James Latimer (managing editor). The more than 1.5 million unique visits per month indicates the massive and global level of interest in this site. Although many folks in the preparedness community may not share all the components of Rawles’s preparedness philosophy, he is widely recognized as a world-class authority on the preparedness subject. The Survival Blog website houses more than 27,000 articles on all aspects of prepping, offering a sort of one-stop shop of information. Enter the Redoubt
Rawles is credited with the invention of the concept of the Redoubt. The Redoubt identifies a geographic area (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the eastern halves of Washington and Oregon) as meeting
the requirements important to maximizing survival in calamitous events. Requirements include primarily conservative, agrarian communities; low population densities; far from large population centers; good subsistence horticultural potential; affordable property; low taxes; abundant wood-fuel and timber sources; diversified economies; minimum of natural disaster risk; excellent hunting and fishing; good and abundant water; no strategic nuclear strike targets and a minimum of governmental intrusion. North Idaho is one of the surprisingly few areas of the U.S. to meet these criteria. Many embrace the concept of the Redoubt as a political movement, too, and have moved to the Redoubt. Rawles’s thought leadership and philosophy can be reviewed at: https://survivalblog. com/redoubt/. In many ways, then, the Redoubt movement is a subset of the preparedness mindset. Many families who consider the threat of a TEOTWAWKI event have relocated to the North Idaho area. Existing residents, too, may consider themselves members of the Redoubt movement because of their preparedness mindset and sympathy for the Redoubt movement’s philosophy. Movement Genesis
Historically, traditional smallscale cultures and homestead pioneers developed skills and a
mindset oriented toward energy efficiency, appropriate technology and local food production. The preparedness movement draws heavily on these traditional skills and technologies. After World War II, the Cold War impressed on an entire generation the concept of preparing to survive a nuclear holocaust. A wave of blast-resistant bunkers mushroomed in American suburban backyards in the 1960s. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the term “survivalist” showed up in mainstream culture. It mostly referred to families that moved to rural homesteads to develop the skills and resources to survive life-changing events. The Rogue River in southern Oregon became one of first noted survivalist safe havens, due, in part, to the influence of Mel Tappan, perhaps the intellectual father of modern survivalism. The 1977 book “Survival Guns” by Tappan, along with his other works, influenced a generation of survivalists and thought leaders in the preparedness community. However, a defining moment came in the buildup to the Y2K event in 2000. As most may remember, there were dire warnings about the many ways that society could crumble if critical systems failed because they depended on a 20th-century year-date system (1900-1999) and were not prepared to accept “2000” as a date. Fortunately, a lot of smart people worked hard to patch critical legacy computer code, and disaster
was averted. However, en masse preparations took place, and out of this event came many of publications that supported the modern prepping movement. The Survival Blog website started up in 2005 when many of the current generation of preppers were scoping out the mountainous Inland Northwest as their potential new home. Natural and political disturbances on the global scene and disenchantment with the national economy and political systems precipitated this major preparedness social movement that has much in common with the back-to-the-land movement of the hippies in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The many parallels included growing your own food, practicing energy efficiency, reclaiming the mindset and skills of the pioneer generation and honoring the value of hard work and self-determination. The destination of both movements was a parcel of land. As geography would have it, our local community was right in center of what many considered an optimum location to shelter from a WTSHTF storm. Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog” (first published in 1968 and the bible of the back-to-theland movement) and the Survival Blog web site (the core resource of the Redoubt moment) have a lot in common. Even a cursory review of preparedness websites will reveal articles on organic gardening,
< see REDOUBT, page 17 >