How The Survivalism Movement Started – Survivopedia

What unites us is that we actively prepare for emergencies. But how did survivalism begin?

When and why did the term prepper come about and whats the difference between a prepper and a survivalist?

There are many reasons why understanding our own history is of value to us. It is important to know yourself, but to us, perhaps the most relevant is that it helps us to adapt to future disasters and volatility by learning from the past.

While theroots of the modern survivalism movement grew from financial instability in thelate 1800s, the Second Boer War, the Spanish flu, the great depression, andtwo world wars followed by the specter of global thermonuclear war, they are inturn rooted in traditions of agriculture which required farmers to store foodthroughout winter and spring to the next harvest and also to protect againstlean years.

These are inturn predated by still earlier traditions of preparedness that can arguably betraced back for thousands of years. When tzi the Iceman was foundpreserved in the tztal Alps between Austria and Italy, he was carrying abow, a knife, a copper axe and iron pyrite and tinder fungus which where usedwith his flint blade as the copper age predecessor of flint and steel,preserved by the cold, dry environment since 3100-3400BC. If you carry thisequipment today, youre a survivalist, but carrying it before the 1900s didntmake you a survivalist. It made you normal.

By the year1900, people living in the rural American West were the descendants of pioneers,miners and trappers and it was their grandparents who settled the West. Gunownership, gardening, canning and hunting were simply their way of life.However, urbanization had people moving to cities in record numbers and withina couple of generations, camping, hunting and gardening became recreationalactivities instead of a way of life.

The earlyinfluences noted above resulted in the establishment of the National ParksService, Scouting and the implementation of food storage practice by the LDSchurch, all of which influenced the early survivalist movement.

The 1960ssaw the first writers of the modern survivalism movement such as Harry Browneand Don Stephens. The nuclear threat and the civil defense program developed inresponse to it now had Americans building fallout shelters in addition toarming themselves and storing food.

The late1960s and early 1970s also saw the birth of the primitive survival movementwith the establishment of the Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Boulder UT.Originally established as program of BYU, led by Larry Dean Olsen, theuniversity ran into problems insuring such a program and cut it loose. BOSSchanged hands over years and resulted in the establishment of primitive skillsgatherings such as Rabbit Stick and Winter Count by David Wescott, an earlyowner of the school. Olsen, Wescott and BOSS chief instructor David Holladaybecame some of the grandfathers of the modern primitive skills movement. Manyof the instructors who would later star in survival TV shows trained at BOSS orwith former BOSS instructors, such as Cody Lundin, Matt Graham of Dual Survivaland Les Stroud of Survivorman. According to Holladay, instructors trained byTom Brown Jr. or his schools can also trace their lineage back to the BOSScrowd as Brown Jr. first learned primitive skills with them. Brown Jr. maintainsthat he was trained by an Apache named Stalking Wolf who relocated from Arizonaor New Mexico to New York, however, the author is inclined to believe Mr.Holladays version of these events.

In the1970s, a number of survival writers who would influence the modern survivalistmovement came onto the scene such as Bruce D. Clayton, C.J. Cobb, Jeff Cooper, KarlHess, Dan Ing, Howard Ruff, Kurt Saxon, Joel Skousen, Mel Tappan and others. Soldierof Fortune Magazine was founded in 1975 and while it was not specifically asurvivalist magazine, it did cater to them and was one of few choices. In 1976,the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) was established and JeffCooper founded the American Pistol Institute in Paulden, AZ, which would laterbecome Gunsite Academy. Massad Ayoob published his first book in 1979.

The 1980ssaw more publications by the same writers from the 70s, with Bruce D. Claytonpublishing Life After Doomsday in 1980, plus new writers like RagnarBenson. Lofty Wiseman published the SAS Survival Guide in 1986. I alsorecall seeing and reading American Survival Guide Magazine around this time.Backwoods Home Magazine was also first published in 1989. Massad and Dorothy Ayoobestablished the Lethal Force Institute in 1981. The Urban Firearms Institutewas established in Mesa, AZ in 1988.

In the early 90s I read a copy of a shareware screenplay called Triple Ought by James Wesley, Rawles which would later become the book: Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse. This book was widely read and came to strongly influence the commonly held perception of what a survival group should be. The late 90s saw additional growth in firearms training schools with Clint and Heidi Smith founded Thunder Ranch in 1993. Front Sight Was Established in 1996.

During the 1990s, the Clinton administration launched a massive propaganda campaign that vilified the survivalist movement, attempting to brand us as racists, white supremacists, and domestic terrorists. Under the direction of the Clinton Administration, the FBI and ATF paid informants to infiltrate survivalist and militia groups, befriend lone survivalists and attempt to get them to break the law. Several such cases were dismissed as entrapment. Other informants successfully entrapped militia members. Survivalists have paraded around in handcuffs and their preparations were displayed on their front lawns. Their gun collections were deemed arsenals and owning food storage, waterproof primers, or purchasing army surplus gear were determined to be sound reasons to report neighbors to the FBI.

The attack on the survivalist movement resulted in atrocities at Ruby Ridge and Waco and provoked the tragic Oklahoma City bombing. The result of the Clintons massive propaganda campaign for the survivalism movement was that militia members were driven underground and that the term survivalist was turned into a pejorative. In the aftermath, although dedicated survivalists still prepared, most ceased to advertise the fact. Most militias disbanded or broke down into independent rifle cells. They were largely driven underground, melting into a leaderless resistance.

2000-2010

By the early 2000s nobody wanted to be called a survivalist but with 9-11, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes in Haiti, Kashmir, and Sichuan, and multiple hurricanes and tornadoes and the 2008 financial crisis, people were flooding into the survivalism movement in hordes and droves. They need something to call themselves that distanced them from being a survivalist, because now the world believed that all survivalists were racist, child-molesting, domestic terrorist and the label prepper came into usage. Those formerly known as survivalists now identified as preppers.

Midway through this decade, survival TV shows and survival blogs came about, and the survival/preparedness industry began a growth phase. In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, a market that could barely support a magazine or two now had more than one TV show and was growing fast. SurvivalBlog.com by James Wesley, Rawles came online in 2005, and Survivorman by Les Stroud also first aired in 2005.

During thefirst half of this decade, both the survivalism movement and the market itdrives kept growing. It seemed there was a new survival TV show every couple ofmonths, the number of survival-related internet content ballooned, the numberand quality of survival expositions grew, and preparedness-related volunteerismreached levels not seen since the height of the Cold War. Disasters kepthappening and the disasters of the previous decade were too recent to forget.

The continued growth of social media and connectivity brought survivalists together as never before and the popularity of survival TV shows brought survivalism into the mainstream. On the upside, this meant an infusion of new blood that brought new talents and innovation. The influx of people into the movement also means that today, 70-80% of survivalists identify as newbies.

With survival gone mainstream, it became cool to be a survivalist for a while. Many of the new folks hadnt lived through the 90s and some who had forgotten, so some militias once again began to operate openly. Sometimes even brazenly. The 2013 revelations that resulted from the Snowden leaks did little to dissuade them to operate underground as a leaderless resistance as so many learned so painfully in the 1990s.

In 2011, Hollywood did its level best to poke fun of the survivalist movement with the Doomsday Preppers reality TV series. The model of the program was that each prepper was preparing for some singular threat to the exclusion of all others the more ridiculous the better. Preppers who appeared on the show reported that production staff bribed them to say things that they were unwilling to say because they were untrue and cast them in an unfavorable light. In the end, enough people saw past the producers motives that the show eventually changed strategy, and instead of convincing the public that preppers were all crazy and paranoid, it ended up swelling the ranks of the survivalist movement.

However, theshows initial negative portrayal of preppers now turned the term prepperinto the pejorative and now many of us once again began to identify assurvivalists instead of preppers. Eventually, writers began to attempt todifferentiate between the definition of the two labels and although the OGsurvivalists who were the same people they had been for decades, they tried toseparate the definition of survivalists from that of preppers. Bloggers andYoutubers also attempted to segment bushcrafters from primitive skillspractitioners, although I can assure you that many of these are one and thesame and have been doing what they do long before the Mors Kochanski fistpublished the term in 1986. Before then, it was fieldcraft, but I can appreciatethe need for a writer to differentiate their work from that of others.

Sheeple being who they are, poor coverage of emergencies and the election of President Trump combined to devastating effect for both the Survivalist Movement and the survival/preparedness market. Politically oriented websites that had received users covering the threat posed by President Obama and Hillary Clinton saw up to an 80% reduction in traffic. Personally, I fail to see how the POTUS can prevent pandemics, solar flares, or even financial meltdown. After all, the government has as little to do with the generation of wealth as it does with solar cycles and pathogens. Unfortunately, with the infusion of all this new blood, theres now no shortage of sheeple in the survivalist movement.

We cantpredict the future and our world is steadily growing more complicated andtherefore more fragile. By looking to our roots and understanding our past tothe end of becoming more self-reliant, we can become more resilient and even moreantifragile meaning that we can grow stronger in some way in response to thevolatility and change we face instead of letting it damage us.

Ourancestors stored food and carried weapons and the tools they needed to makeshelter and fire for sound reasons. They knew where their food came from andhow to get more. I think most folks could use a little more of that these days.After all, our food doesnt really come from the grocery store.

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How The Survivalism Movement Started - Survivopedia