How to Survive the Tough Times Ahead by Going Back to the Basics

It’s an unhappy and uncertain time in America. Civil strife is reaching highs unprecedented in our era. Infrastructure and availability of goods and services are becoming spotty. Everything, and I do mean everything, is stupidly expensive and getting worse.

I know too many people who are working hard, way beyond full time, and still struggling to pay for even basic necessities. Luxuries, heck, even niceties, are out of the question. I know folks are beyond stressed; they are downright scared. What will they do? How will they provide? What will their life look like under these terrible conditions?

I don’t want to add to your fear, but you need to hear it from me: things are going to get worse, a lot worse, before they get better. But you don’t have to despair. It’s possible to survive and even thrive during these tough times, but if you’re going to do that, you’ve got to change your life ways. You’ve got to get back to the basics, the real basics, of living. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you need to keep reading…

Gut Check: Modern Life is Incredibly Opulent

The best way to deal with any existential problem is to face it head-on and lean into it. Don’t run from it, and don’t hide from it. Most importantly, don’t BS yourself.

Here’s a gut check that we all need if we’re going to survive: I can guarantee that 99% of people aren’t getting by with just the basics. Far from it. Most folks live a life filled with luxuries, wonders, and extravagance that would have been quite literally unthinkable to our great-grandparents living in the earlier part of last century.

Don’t believe me? Consider that they didn’t have eight different subscription content services to enjoy on one of several smart devices. They likely didn’t even have a TV. They didn’t have multiple vehicles, and they sure as hell didn’t order overpriced milkshake coffee every single day on their way to work or eat out every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

They didn’t indulge multiple overpriced hobbies, all of which revolved around conspicuous consumption of often useless goods. In short, they didn’t spend money frivolously, and they sure as hell didn’t spend it needlessly.

Modern life, even if you live under the poverty line, is quite frankly palatial for most people. You’ve got a home, TV, a car, internet, a phone, and plenty of extras. Sure, it’s easy to feel dirt poor when you’re looking at some TikTok billionaire, but you need to get your head right.

You might not want to give up some things or part with them, but want has nothing to do with it. This is about survival. You need to take stock of your life and your spending and ruthlessly cut anything which does not serve the purpose of actually living. This is especially crucial if you’re already underwater or will be so soon. Again, things are only going to get worse…

Dependency is Vulnerability

My next point is something aimed squarely at us, at our people. Homesteaders! I know that most of us understand instinctively, or else learned, that dependency on other people, on the trappings of society, and to a degree on modern technology is itself a kind of vulnerability. If you can’t do it yourself, you can’t truly be sure that it will get done.

That’s why people like us strive to live more like people always have: on our own patch, providing the things that we and our families need by our own efforts…

Yes, it’s a whole lot harder and more labor-intensive than blithely drifting along in modernity and all its trappings. But ultimately it’s more rewarding, and it provides true reassurance that, whatever happens, you and yours will be okay. This requires a radical shift in your priorities.

Is it outlandish to grow your own food? To collect and use your own water? Is it out of the question to build your own home and make your own electricity? No, it isn’t, and arguably all of this is more achievable and easier than it’s ever been thanks to the technological and information advantage we enjoy today.

Wouldn’t it be nice to not have a care about the prices at the grocery store? About skyrocketing energy costs? It would certainly be great to miss out on our increasingly contaminated public water supply. You can do all of it.

But talking the talk and LARPing about how rugged and independent you are is a far cry from actually living the life.

Hobby Homesteading Isn’t a Survival Strategy

This statement will get me run out of polite company in this sector, but I don’t care. If you are so wealthy that you can afford a little hobby property where you and your family put on denim top and bottom and tend to your pet chickens or horses a couple weekends a month, or you have a sprawling ranch or estate managed by an army of hired hands, you aren’t homesteading.

You are wearing the trade dress of homesteading, but you’re just a faker. A poser. Now, put down those pitchforks. I’m not slandering this because people enjoy it or even because they can afford it. I’m calling it out because I know too many folks like this who don’t have the skills, grit, and tenacity that is only born of doing it for real.

When the money runs out or, for whatever reason, you are forced to start living that life, you’re going to find yourself woefully deficient, and that’s going to be a heck of a shock to your system. It’s a shock that your family might not survive.

Said another way, don’t kid yourself. If you don’t know what you’re doing, admit it, and then start learning with humility.

What Do You Actually Need to Survive?

All this talk of necessities and we might not know what actual  needs are. These are the things you absolutely have to have in order to survive. Not things that are nice to have. Not things that you want. And not even things that your society and culture tell you are part of everyday life.

Real necessities are shelter, the thing that will protect you and your loved ones from the ever-deadly elements. Water is a real necessity. Without it, you will perish in a matter of days, as will most of your animals.

Food, of course, is a necessity. You can’t go too long without it. You might also call security or energy a necessity depending on how you frame your requirements for life.

Today, most of us take these for granted or else procure them strictly with money. Homesteaders, real ones, will provide for all or most of these by their own efforts. It’s time to start ordering your thoughts toward obtaining and securing these real necessities.

I promise when you start thinking about the above in this way, the way you think about homesteading will change, and so will your life.

Start Small and Scale Up

If you haven’t started your homesteading journey yet, or you’re one of the aforementioned hobby homesteaders I talked about, right about now is when a true sense of overwhelm is going to hit you like a tidal wave. Don’t give in to that!

Everybody started somewhere, even when starting over. Small changes and small successes snowball over time and turn into huge lifestyle changes. Start where you are with what you have toward what you can do, and then raise the goal next time.

For instance, you might not have a great big garden or bountiful fields of crops to feed your family. Can you start growing some potatoes in buckets or raised beds? Of course. Maybe you can get just a couple of chickens for eggs and an emergency meat supply. Do that!

You might not have the means, space, or anything else for a large set of water tanks that can take care of your entire property. But I guarantee you, you can install a rain barrel or set up a modular rain-catching system for emergency use.

A thermally neutral home might be a pipe dream, but how about installing a wood stove and heavily insulating one room? It can be done.

Focus on What You Need and Be Appreciative for What You Have

The last piece of advice I’ll give you is arguably the most important. The entire world, at least the entire Western world, runs and revolves around selling you. Selling you on what might be, what you might have, and how happy and fulfilled you’ll actually be once you’ve attained it, giving them your money so you get the thing they want you to have.

This is the hardest and final spell you’ve got to break. You already have so much, physically and mentally. If you have a family and everyone is healthy, you are already blessed beyond measure. Look around the room you’re in right now if you’re at home. Chances are it is filled with things that you love.

Gratitude is the final piece of the puzzle. If you wake up in the morning, it’s a great day, and everything else is secondary. If you wake up healthy, you should jump for joy. Gratitude, radical gratitude, is the real balm and antidote for the poison that the world pushes on your soul. That poison will corrode you utterly when the party stops here real soon and society starts to implode.

Focus on what really matters, have gratitude for what you have, and do the work cheerfully. Do that and we’ll all make it through what’s coming.