Why a Survivor Library?

What is it and why should anyone care?

There are many websites, books, videos and classes
that teach “Survival Skills”. How to make
water safe to drink. How to build a weather proof
shelter from available materials. How to build
a fire. How to operate in a tactical combat
environment to neutralize raiders seeking your
food supplies.

All of them deal primarily with the immediate
effects of a disaster and how to survive them.
All of these are excellent skills to have. A
year’s worth of food is an excellent way to help
safeguard yourself and your family in the event of
an emergency or a large scale disaster.

Unfortunately many large scale disasters such as
Solar or Nuclear EMP events, Pandemic disease or
Cyber warfare could result in a collapse of what
has become an increasingly fragile technological
and industrial infrastructure. The collapse of
that infrastructure means the likely death of the
majority of the people affected. Some scenarios
have expected death rates of as high as 90% within
a few months.

The Survival Skills most often taught and
disseminated will get you through the immediate
danger.

Few if any of these resources focus on what
happens afterwards beyond speaking of “planting
a garden”.

What happens AFTER the Solar Flare that destroys
the electrical grid and all electronics? AFTER
the other 90% of the population has died from
starvation, dehydration and disease. AFTER the
roving gangs and raiders are eliminated and local
communities form to provide security and relative
peace.

What Then?

The factories are gone. The transportation
system has stopped. Now it’s time to start
planning for the long term, for your children and
grandchildren.

The infrastructure that crashed can’t be
“turned back on”. The local power plant
can’t be restarted when the coal it uses comes
from several states away which was transported by
trains which depended on diesel fuel refined in
other states and delivered by pipelines which no
longer function. The infrastructure is too complex
to simply be switched back on.

Tools and equipment and supplies can be salvaged
for a while but will inevitably run out. There
is only so much fertilizer stored in stores and
warehouses. There are only so many batteries and
flashlight bulbs in inventory. It will all run out
in time and no one will be making replacements.

Which means you will have to build a new
infrastructure which can eventually replace what
was lost.

But how? No one has those skills or knowledge
any longer. The cell phones don’t work and we
can’t build digital radios any longer and we
don’t know how to build a telegraph system.

The Library contains many books on telegraph
systems. It has numerous books on how to build
simple radios. It has books on how to build a wire
based telephone system from the simplest pieces
of equipment up through how to build a telephone
exchange and lay wires.

Once the fuel runs out the cars and trucks stop
do you know how to build a carriage to put behind
a horse? Do you know how to make the tackle with
which to attach the carriage TO the horse? There
are books on that. There are books on building
sailing vessels and steamships. Books on how to
build steam engines to put in steamships.

The library contains thousands of books on
technologies that can be produced by most
reasonably skilled craftsman using tools not as
sophisticated as what can be found in many modern
home workshops.