Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

A simple note: if you live sufficiently south for p.v., in a home, you can sustain services disruptions significantly:

- p.v. with storage means freezers operational, and freezers means food, protein in particular, for potentially very long periods

- even without p.v. a home in the wood means being able to heat in the winter sourcing wood in nature, uncomfortable but still heat, also usable to cook

- you have room to store water, from the aqueduct with a personal pump in home pipes, so with p.v. you get cold and hot water, potentially for a week or two, and in nature sources tend to be common at our latitudes

In an apartment in a dense city you can just keep a bit of water, but still much less than the countryside, next to zero chance for p.v. and energy storage, very limited chance to source water in nature, even issues to walk for many stairs if elevators have no energy. Long story short: you can't be resilient. Oh, and you might be targeted because hitting a city it's easy and some damages are assured, hitting the countryside is essentially wasting weapons. Remember as well: with wood you can cook various long lasting foods, like rice, beans, ... without wood or locally produced energy your cooking ability going down to zero.

Floods? Spread homes might be or not at risk, but they are still spread, meaning few per flooded are, so rescuing it's doable as temporary shelters, emergency food supply etc. Dense areas? The same in risk terms, but extremely hard to help simply because there are too many people hit together.

Earthquakes? Very similar, plus the fact that light homes tend to allow quick escape, tall buildings do not, and even if they might be well designed in seismic terms they are still very problematic. Fires? idem.

Long story short: it's pointless to publish such next-to-obvious recommendations, some could do something, many could not.

War and survival are communal activities. Tight dense communities tend to do better as people can support each other. Isolated dwellings are just ridiculously vulnerable in comparison. The next group of hungry/angry people who turn up will roll right over you. If you want to survive you should have neighbors and make friends with them.

This is what I tell my family. If the worst comes and everyone is panicking, you need to keep calm and do not do things for the sake of doing something. If the worst comes, the greatest risk is falling and breaking a leg, infection, or getting accidentally shot. You can survive for two weeks without eating. You need to drink constantly. In modern times, I would rank the most important devices as the mobile phone and the automobile. One is for communication and the other is for evacuation. The other important things are identification cards, medicine, and cash.

Not in all known wars so far. In all wars we know cities are bombing, hungry, criminal while SPREAD (not isolated) areas are often simply ignored by the war and in nature you can both source and produce food.

Beside in spread area you have friends as well as in city, but there we are all collaborative even when we do not like each other much because we are few, in cities we are strangers in the crowd.

You don't need to live that far south for this to work. I live in Sweden at around 60°N and the ~14kW of PV panels on the barn roof provide enough power for that purpose through most of the year, the period November-February excluded. In that period it tends to be cold so keeping food for a longer time is not a problem. I live in the woods and heat and heat the house with a wood-burning stove and a wood-burning kitchen stove (which I use year-round for cooking) as the only heat sources so we're not dependent on electricity. We have our own water well and our own wastewater facilities (not dependent on electricity like 'modern' versions are) so we can keep our standard of living with or without outside power and facilities.

It is not pointless to publish recommendations because it makes people consider the possibility of regular facilities not being available. While city dwellers may not be able to keep more than a week's worth of supplies before they need resupply or evacuation that makes them more prepared for such eventualities than those who think they will always be able to use their mobile devices to order from the plethora of restaurants their city offers. It can make the difference between organised chaos and disordered mayhem if that war or crisis were to occur.

Be Prepared! is not just the boy scouts of old motto - no idea what the modern watered-down version of that institution professes - but also just a good idea. It does not mean you need to become a prepper but it does point out the need for some self-reliance because that whole fragile house of cards which is the service economy may just come tumbling down some day.

This sounds like rural beliefs about something that you personally dislike. Enjoy your bubble!

>In modern times, I would rank the most important devices as the mobile phone and the automobile.

If you're referring to those being important in a major disaster, I'd disagree. Any major disruption can knock out celular networks and in a war they'd be deliberately targeted.

Instead, your best bet would be a predetermined plan for how to get in contact with loved ones if the comms and electrical grids collapse (where to meet, when, and where to leave notes possibly).

As for cars, maybe in certain scenarios, such as having an offroad vehicle stored in some isolated place that you can reach, but if an earthquake, flood, war or some other disaster suddenly strikes, roads will be one of its major victims, rapidly being damaged and in any case clogged with heavy traffic. A car of any kind inside a city would probably be next to useless after a serious disaster.

Instead, you would be better off with a few motorbikes/dirt bikes, or even better, bicycles safely and carefully stored against possible theft. Having these for your family, and possibly some kind of compact cart that can be hitched up for pulling supplies or anyone who simply cant ride their own bike would be much more flexible and usable no matter how badly your region's transport infrastructure is devastated. Bikes (motorized or manual) can cover nearly any terrain and don't need roads if they're even minimally built for off-roading.