Very good point! To raise food animals, you need to also raise feed for them and have enough land to do it on. Self sufficiency cannot be obtained in an urban or even semi urban environment. Even those in rural areas that are growing and raising their own food, using wooded areas for heat and raw building materials need to purchase some consumables and equipment. Complete self reliance would not only mean having enough land to raise and grow your own food and procure other materials, but would require some level of sacrifice and doing without.

There was a story on the CBC a week or two ago about a woman who got lost in the sticks for five days after getting into an argument with her spouse. She survived be eating berries, drinking from creeks, and huddling in at night. Far, far from self sufficiency however she did manage to survive. When she finally found a forestry road she stuck to it until she was picked up by a logging truck. Now I'm not recommending this strategy as a home game however with your BoB one would think you should have a significant advantage, no?
The CBC didn't say what she and her hubby were arguing about or whether her hubby looked for her after she got lost ;).

Antsy

Specialization vs. Self Sufficiency

Feel free to disagree here but I've got a feeling that human society abandoned the notion of self sufficiency in favour of specialization. In a pre-shtf environment it makes complete sense and one need not look far to see the advantages that our general society has enjoyed because of it. Technological, medical, industrial, and scientific specialization has allowed for exponential growth in subject matter. The victim of course, is self sufficiency. Even the trades have become specialized in the extreme. There was a time when carpenters were responsible for rough and finish carpentry, flooring of all sorts, drywall, concrete work, limited masonry, and more. Now there are separate trades for many of these scopes of work and carpenters don't know the first thing about drywall taping, or ceramic tile installation. Most framers don't even know how to build stairs as this work is all subbed out to specialized manufacturers.

The problem as I see it, is that we are so far down that garden path that we (our society in general) are barely able to survive a week independently. We can't do our jobs in isolation because we are dependent on many other specialized hands, we don't grow or farm our own foods, we don't sew our own clothes, or build our own homes. That's just the basic needs for survival. It gets worse as one broadens the scope beyond the basics.

I'd love to write more but I have to run to the grocery store to get fixins for breakfast ;).

Antsy

Yes

Even among farmers, there's specialties between those who know how to raise but a couple of crops really well and those who know how and are geographically situated better to raise livestock. Then there are those specialize in the engineering and production of tools and those who can make the sales to the farmers.

Someone who is a whiz at computer programming or R&D might have a rotten life if they had to grow their own food. But the farmer would also then never be able to improve their yields or more easily conduct business over the Internet.

Specialization has been a good thing for civilization. However, it has lead to conditions where some people are so specialized that they are utterly worthless in a survival situation. Because so much of one's time, life, education, training, practice, study, work ...on and on and on, is spent being competitive and competent enough in the specialty that many other life skills are simply not learned.

Then there are those, who because of the incredible progress and "miracle" of such a system that they are in effect "spoon fed" everything. Hardly anything requires much thinking, hard work or skills to get done. Most things are just made easy and highly convenient.

Even though large numbers of people are extremely poor in the world today by our lofty standards, we stand today with the greatest amount of people to ever inhabit this planet with the largest percentage having better living standards than before.

Breaskfast, yes it is that time, a bowl of hearty Fruit Loops and a couple of Pop Tarts to start my day..... 😀

Reading this makes me more convinced that even after SHTF that community will be better than the lone wolf scenario. Now maybe not better for everyone on a personal level because some just don’t play nice with others, but better on a truly surviving and looking to the future level. No offence meant at all, but I think Crier has done a great job of prepping from what I have seen and will be able to weather the "storm" for a while, however no way he is 100% self-sufficient. We all know he uses UFA to buy fuel and feed for his animals, I am sure when he needs plywood he runs to Home Depot/Rona/Lowes, and having seen his cloths I am confident that he does not make them himself from cotton grown and worked all the way through on his own land. He has done some great work but I just do not believe that it is realistic to think he could accomplish complete 100% self-sufficiency on his own. From how far removed we are from true self sufficiency, I am not sure if this is even truly able to be accomplished even in a small community but I think the chances are a heck of a lot better.

The best part is, with specialization in the workforce, the quality of work has gone way down. Figure that one out

Buggie that is because it is all about how much we can CRANK OUT, not how good it is. The more we can crank out the cheaper it is and the more often it will break and the more often folks will buy it again and again and......well we all know how it works.

Hey, my genuine Harley Davidson shirts are made China, by very specialized workers crashed.

I'm not sure how many of you are farmers here. I am some what, but am not self sufficient or even close to it.

But doing this as long as I have (one day), preps are put in place to counter my shortfalls.

Would be a great discussion on this today.

Specialization has always existed. Back in the mists of time there were those who excelled at knapping flint to make knives and spear and arrow points. Others did better at making shafts for spears. Still others made hides useful. I am sure everyone was capable of doing all these things but some were just better than others. As mans knowledge expanded it became to be too much for one person to hold. Farmer, weaver, miller, blacksmith or mason all had specialized knowledge and skills. In most cases it was still learned from doing. Today we have specialization because the process has become knowdge or machine intensive. The Industrial Revolution. People are trained to do one thing because it is seen as more efficient. It has nothing to do with sustainability... only profit. Those with higher education design and build the processes... those with less perform the processes. All in all it works because it is easy for everyone. NOT sustaining. NOT fulfilling. NOT rewarding. Just easy and meets base needs for the majority. We have become parts of a system.

JAB I would have to agree that this has certainly been the case since the middle ages, keeping in mind that we are predominately talking about western society.

I think Western society has become the epitome of specialization but in any society it takes place if for no other reason that one person will be inherently better at something than another. Groups will employ that for efficiency at the most basic level. IE you make me a spear and I'll make you a basket..?... Deal?!!! LOL

thanks alot henry ford... long live the assembly line 😯

Henry Ford and his ilk have made Western Society what it is today. It has spread round the world and become the goal of every society. Sadly they only see the good and not the mind numbing reality and dependancey it fosters. They embrace it and we are trying to get away from it. On the bright side we CAN choose to decide how much we let it run our lives. We can choose to buy into it completely and follow blindly or we can use it to get what we need and spend our remaining time learning self sufficiency. That too is a choice.

you may want to check into this:
http://opensourceecology.org/

<<<The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. >>>

Haven't had time to dig deep into it but it looks interesting.