Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: March 04, 2024 11:32PM
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/03/04/dont-call-them-preppers-meet/This is a "premium" story, so I assume guaranteed paywalled, but that doesn't matter much. The general outline of the story is pretty straightforward.
The Riverbed Ranch is part of a 1,250 acre "agricultural cooperative" in the Utah west desert, about 2/3rds of the way between Nephi, in southern Utah County, and the Nevada state line. Talk about middle of nowhere.
Riverbed Ranch has been divided into 250 2 acre shares that can be purchased for $35,000, which includes water rights. Currently 130 shares have been sold, and about 120 people live in the cooperative.
The article presents a rather long list of what they say they are not - they are not tax protestors, or making a religious statement, or anti-government, or preppers. What they are doing is living a self-reliant lifestyle. The ranch owner has suggested that residents have a 7 year supply of cooking fuel, which sounds kind of "prepper" to me.
For some reason rabbits seem to figure prominently in their food supply. I have a personal friend who is also living a "self-reliant lifestyle" in the Midwest, and raising rabbits and goats for meat. Braised Thumper for dinner. Yum.
While it may not be a religious statement, by coincidence, 70% of the residents are LDS. Funny how the works. One family is quoted as saying the Spirit™ convinced them to move there. A fair number work in Delta or Nephi, both an hour drive away, each way.
I get a real kick out of people claiming they are living a self-reliant lifestyle. I used to hear farmers in the Midwest brag about how self-reliant they were, when in fact they couldn't change a flat tire on a tractor if their life depended on it, without the help of a second person with a flatbed truck to deliver the tire and wheel, and a forklift on the truck, to get the tire off the truck, and then to jack up the tractor. Self-reliant, my ass (a small farm animal common in the Middle East).
What they mean by self-reliant is not being connected to utilities. OK, fine, they have gardens and rabbit warrens and solar panels and wells, and they know how to can stuff in glass jars they can't make.
One of the interviewees was wearing a North Face jacket. That jacket sits on the top of a dizzyingly high industrial pyramid that they would have no hope at all of reproducing locally. They don't even have the right animals for making wool, not that I expect any of them would know how to take a sheared fleece and turn it into wool cloth. So, they can't even make a decent jacket.
Other things where they are not self-reliant - insulin supply for diabetics, or most any other pharmaceutical. Satellite phones. They can't make cell phones either, but I am sure there is no cell service out there. Computers. Car and truck brake pads. Eyeglasses. Sheet metal. Shoes. A/C refrigerant. There aren't many trees in the west desert either.
And on and on and on. Their little self-contained oasis would grind to a halt in a few months without the vast industrial infrastucture of the wider world to keep them afloat.
The one thing I found comical in the Mad Max movies was the total collapse of society, except that oil refineries, arguably the second most complex industrial thing we do, after computer chip manufacture, seem to still be functioning. How does that happen?
People who think they can live for years completely cut off from the larger society are delusional. They have no idea how much they depend on the Costco-Industrial Complex. I'd love to see them try to go for a month without a trip to the hardware store.