The GreyMouse Presentation

“Because doesn’t it feel like right now something has gone existentially wrong at the heart of our civilization, age, time, way, maybe even in each other?”
— Umair Haque, The Issue, May 11, 2025

Inquiring Minds

GreyMouse stepped back to the stage, placed his prop bag on the stage next to him, and pulled out a triangular piece of leather and some lashing cord. He picked up the sticks that formerly went horizontally around the tripod, lashed them together near the middle, fitted the piece of leather on top to form a tripod stool, and set it up in front of the stage, closer to where everyone was sitting. He sat down on the stool and said, “I always carry this seat with me, and make up the legs wherever I land, because it’s really convenient, but who wants the extra weight in their pack?”

He sat down on the stool. “Who wants to go first?” Hands went up, and Mouse said, “One thing. Let me know if you’ve decided to form a Clan here, and use your gamer handle if you already have one, otherwise just make one up, and let me know that instead of your real name. You can always change it later.” He pointed to a female with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail threaded through a blue baseball cap who had raised her hand.

“Leaning in favor of a clan, but that leads to a lot of questions. My gamer name is RustySword, and my question is: How do you do base training when a clan is just starting out and there are no teachers in that specialty?”

Mouse smiled, “Kind of a chicken and egg thing, isn’t it?” Nods from the audience. “One would think to go to an existing teacher, like a scouting merit badge counselor, a first aid instructor, or a sensei at a local dojo. After all, they’re experienced and ready to go. That was my first thought.”

He paused, then said, “But… security.”

Another pause, then “All of the base training materials focus on doom conditions and techniques. And they call it doom. Right there in the text. This will naturally lead to the prospective teacher asking questions about this doom thing and probably drawing the wrong conclusions. They might conclude it would be better to report such an organization than support it.”

“The second thing is most of the above teaching candidates won’t qualify for clan membership, even if they were interested. Typically they are out of shape, on medications, or – and this is critical – nowhere near the acceptance stage where doom is concerned.”

Mouse paused, then said, “Remember that this is base training. It only conveys really basic skills and knowledge. You could call it specialty 150. As any college student knows, 100-level courses can be passed by just reading the text and ignoring the teacher, who is typically just a graduate student anyway.”

“150-level courses are more in-depth but still introductory; you actually have to be paying attention. Having a study group to work through the materials together makes a big difference. Base training is like a 150 course. It needs to be accomplished through buddy-study, not just self-study.”

“Base training materials primarily consist of a student guide that provides information and exercises on the topic. The guides sometimes describe specialty tools or projects that are needed to accomplish the exercises in the guide. These are sometimes provided as clan assets, because not every student is going to become a practitioner in that specialty. Some topics include or require additional texts.”

“For example, there are a couple of books needed for Dark Arts, some small tools for Maker Arts and so forth. Not every clan member will necessarily make use of required texts or tools beyond base training, so it’s easier if they become clan assets to be loaned to later students doing that specific base training.”

“Then there are the 'kits' several base trainings require each student to assemble because every clan member is expected to have and use the items in those kits. You’ll be building your own doom-compatible first aid kit, stealth travel pack, food & sanitation kit, and so forth.”

“As long as there are two of you, base training is doable just from the guide. It goes better with a teacher, but a teacher is not mandatory.”

“As the clan acquires more members, people will naturally choose to focus on this specialty or that. Typically they already have skills in the specialty that are well beyond base level. So they become the base teachers for that specialty. That’s why monthly recruiting is so important at the beginning. You’re reaching for that critical mass.”

Mouse paused, then pointed to a brown-haired male in a red shirt with his hand raised.

“Not sure yet, but my gamer name is RisingTop2333.”

“Hello Rising,” said Mouse. “If you join a clan, you can skip the 2333 part. Handles are unique within a specific clan. Your question?”

“How do you convince someone that climate change is real?”

Mouse smiled and chuckled, along with others in the audience. “Short answer – you don’t. But that question makes me ask – what’s your motivation? Is this a loved one you want to bring into the fold, something like that?”

“Well, I don’t think climate change is real, but you seem to be convinced, so I’d like to hear your reasoning.” said Rising.

Mouse looked thoughtfully at the ground for a bit, then said “You know, a few years ago I would have pulled out my handy dandy binder full of charts, graphs, and studies and engaged in a very long discourse with you. But I’ve found two things to be true: First, people are very invested in the information they believe to be valid, and second, changing their mind really isn’t in the cards with a single discussion or presentation.”

“The same thing goes for any of the other dooms – financial, political… whatever. So clan members don’t engage in this way. Doom discussions generally devolve into economics, politics or religion. Those topics violate the principle of neutrality and are specifically prohibited topics. The objective of a chaos clan is to get people together who are beyond the debating phase – some kind of doom is coming, so why sit around debating?”

Rising said, “Well, I think the scientists…”

“Stop right there!” said Mouse, cutting him off. “Ignoring someone’s statement and trying to take over the conversation is classic shark behavior. The term comes from meeting facilitation research; sharks are people who naturally take over meetings. They often don’t even know they’re doing it. Shark behavior is openly ridiculed during clan meetings – it’s not tolerated. So just stop.”

Mouse looked across the audience and said, “Meeting behavior is part of Interpersonal base training. It’s part of the Clan Rules of Behavior, aka the Seven Principles.”

After a pause, Mouse asked “Who’s next?” He chose a tall male in a khaki work shirt.

“Handle is Giant Canary, I’m still undecided, which is why I’m here. The clan concepts of working together, no money, simple life, rules of behavior and so forth are strikingly similar to monastic orders. Is this intentional?”

“Kinda sorta,” said Mouse. “Monasteries worked well to preserve knowledge through the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance as well as the rise and fall of various Chinese and Japanese empires, However, there are three things that make them vulnerable in today’s environment. First is the money thing. Who funded the castles and surrounding grounds? Generally a church or an extremely rich benefactor, and the responsibilities of responding to the funding source varied. The No Money rule is in place for several reasons, chief among them is not being beholden to rich people or bureaucrats.”

“Second, the monasteries of yore were either under the protection of a local – for want of a better word – warlord, or were constructed to prevent them being taken over by all but a significant army. Brigands of the day usually didn’t have a positive relationship with most warlords, who considered them pests, and they didn’t have the tech to deal with castle walls.”

“Today is a different situation. It’s easy to see the results of tank and shoulder-launched rocket warfare in Ukraine and Gaza, not to mention missiles. Even construction companies have access to really powerful explosives, and sometimes they’re not well secured. Strong buildings can’t survive today’s weapons tech.”

“This is the reason for the DSDO principle. In doom, very powerful weapons will be scarce and expensive, reserved only for high value targets. The DSDO principle makes sure a clan is a scattered set of low value targets, if they can be found in the first place.”

“Third, monasteries were known in their local areas only, for the most part, unless one was famous for a specific product or service. Word of mouth was the primary communications method, and since the monasteries didn’t bother anyone and actually provided some benefits to the local area, they were generally well regarded.”

“Contrast this with social media, where the word spreads far and wide and trolls get in on the action to make money. A fervent crowd can be sourced nationwide and whipped up into a frenzy. Never forget January 6. To me, it’s more a cautionary tale about the power of social media and captured media outlets than a political statement.”

“If it were not for today’s communications and weapons tech, monasteries might work. Clans are basically self-funded, geographically disbursed monastic orders, but without the religious overtones. Instead of using religion to drive obedience, clans recruit from populations that are on the right-hand side of the bell curve. People that can imagine doom and think of realistic ways to respond without mentally shutting down are almost always more intelligent than the rest of the crowd. Smarter people can choose positive reasons to cooperate instead of fear and obeisance.”

“So, like I said; kinda sorta.”

Canary raised his hand and asked, "follow up?" Mouse nodded.

"What's to prevent the 'siren song of civilization' as you called it from causing a clan to go the same way as all the communes did?"

"That's always a factor, which is why clans specifically don't abandon BAU, but rather run in parallel with it. Clan members don't move to the Doom AO until doom is actually hitting. Some members go ahead of time, sort of as a vanguard, but their focus is living in the rural area during BAU. They may have telework jobs, for example. Again, running in parallel, not abandoning."

"The only time clanners abandon BAU is when it abandons them."

"That said, BAU may last a very long time, and the circumstances of an individual's life changes as time passes. If a member with a full color bar can no longer participate regularly -- a new baby will do that, for example -- it benefits both the member and the clan that there's a hiatus capability written into the I&P training."

"A member that needs to back off participation can go on hiatus. They're not participating, or minimally participating, yet they can return to full participation whenever they want. This preserves their investment in clan skills, knowledge, and infrastructure, and preserves the clan's ability to have them come back when doom really hits and the daily level of effort goes through the roof. Basically, it's deal with life, and hedge your bets."

He paused, then said “Next question?” He chose a female with short brown hair wearing a blue t-shirt with a racing logo.

“Still neutral – I’ve seen similar things attempted before, but not as comprehensive as this. My handle is PowerKitty. Why go to all this effort when most of us won’t survive anyway?”

“Wow. That’s dark,” said Mouse. “But it comes up more than you would think. That said, the events we are going through now, and will be going through in the future, are the Great Filter.” said Mouse, “So by definition a lot of people are going to get filtered out. It’s happening right now: How many of you know someone who has decided not to have children?” He raised his hand and looked across the audience to see more than a few raised hands.

“You see? That’s demographic decline. People start filtering their own potential out, and things go downhill from there. However,” he pointed across the audience, “you guys are different. We set up the meeting notice to filter out those that didn’t consider it important enough, were in denial, or were too lazy.”

“That notice that went up here, talking about answering the question and giving lat-long coordinates serves two purposes. First, it entices those that have thought about doom enough that they don’t just shut down when the topic comes up. Second, it presents coordinates instead of an address. Those who show up are intelligent enough to think about the future logically, and that’s important.”

He pointed across the attendees. “In a way, it was a small IQ test. You were smart enough to look up the location and find a way to get here. Now here’s the problem you are facing: Smart people are consistently more adaptable. It’s in their nature to overcome hurdles large and small.”

“Intelligence either came to you naturally or you learned how to think clearly over time; either way, it’s part of your makeup now. Smart people are more likely to survive adverse events, even if they didn’t plan to, because finding solutions is what they do.”

“As a smart person, you are more than likely to wind up as an accidental survivor, and that would suck. Which would you rather be; an accidental survivor living alone and hand-to-mouth, or part of an extended family with common skills and capabilities that apply directly to the situation?”

“Who’s next?” He chose a male with brown hair in a black flat cap and red-and-black plaid shirt.

“I’m RazorEdge, and I’m leaning toward, but I want to know: What kind of doom do you think is actually coming, and when?”

Mouse grinned and said “So you want me to be your Oracle of Doom? Is that it?” The audience chuckled. Mouse paused, then said “First, we need to understand that humans usually conflate inevitability with imminence.”

“This is part of our primitive brain; hearing something rushing towards us means attack is in progress. We evolved to respond to imminent threats immediately and drop everything else. Non-imminent threats are something to be dealt with probably never. This kept us from expending energy running away from a tiger we saw on the other ridge.”

“Our primitive brains assume that if bad things are coming, they’ll arrive very soon. If it doesn’t arrive soon, we assume the bad things are either no longer coming, or really aren’t so bad after all. Only once you realize this trait is present in all of us can you start to purposely over-ride your primitive brain and think in longer time scales.”

“The short answer is kind of an evasion; it’s impossible to predict how or when, but there are a number of large forces going the wrong direction. It’s called a polycrisis. Look it up.”

He paused, then said, “The long answer is in three parts.”

“First, people can’t predict what’s going to happen in any particular situation, even when they know what the starting trigger is. For example, the 2008 real estate crash.”

“At the time, my credit was no bueno. Yet our mailbox was suddenly getting a bunch of offers for low or zero down payment loans to improve our home, purchase a new home, whatever. I’m a guy that reads the fine print and saw that every one of them emphasized a low interest rate but buried in the fine print they were all short term loans with balloon payments.

When I checked that out, the prevailing wisdom on the Web was I could just finance another low interest rate loan when the balloon payment hit. A lot of people were playing this game. What I didn’t know was that those high-risk mortgages to no bueno borrowers were being bundled up and sold as prime loans to investors, with the lying bankers and equity funds pocketing the fees.”

“I didn’t take the bait, but wondered what was happening. Eventually those balloons started to land, and lo and behold, refinancing at a low interest rate wasn’t an option. Most of those no bueno borrowers couldn’t handle doubled or tripled payments, so they just mailed in the keys instead of a check. Thus the term 'jingle mail'.”

“The rest is history. I saw the starting action, and felt it wouldn’t end well, but didn’t know how or why it would go bad. I never even conceived there would be wholesale bailouts of the firms that caused the problems in the first place, with absolutely no one going to jail for pervasive, institutional fraud that would have collapsed the banking system without massive government intervention. That was a real eye-opener for me.”

“Same thing with Covid. I myself thought that was the Big One. I had masks stockpiled already, but was able to get more for my friends and family because my doom-scrolling paid off; I learned what was happening in China in late 2019. I did a bunch of shopping in December and January of '19 and '20; more masks, comfort food, room air sanitizers, ultraviolet surface sanitizers.”

“I never saw the work-from-home thing coming – that was technology to the rescue – technology that was just barely in place at the time. We got lucky; without that coincidence millions more would have died or lost their homes. Another surprise to me at the time but in hindsight was entirely predictable was the flood of money they threw at just about everyone to keep things going. Way more than they threw at the bankers in '09.”

“The US, and the world, have usually been hit with single-focus disasters. The oil embargo, the dot-com crash, the Arab Spring, 9-11, the '08 real estate crisis, Covid, various hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and super-storms like Helene. All of them had a single main focus or were geographically constrained, and most resulted in an array of effects and responses that no one saw coming. For example, look at the price of home insurance in Florida and California – if you can get it.”

“We all operate with imperfect information, but one thing I’ve observed is that governments the world over will do just about anything to keep the lights on and the riots from happening. If a law prevents them from doing what they feel is necessary, they change the law, or declare an emergency and just do what they want anyway. Whether they’re right or wrong is only visible in hindsight.”

“But…”

“What if we have a combination crisis? Multiple causes? National or international in scope? Something that restricts food and jobs and product availability across multiple supply chains? That’s a polycrisis, and the signs are appearing now.”

“The real cause of doom will be a polycrisis, and since global temperatures are rising inexorably, extreme weather is going to be part of the issue going forward. Vital infrastructure is being burned or washed away, crop and supply chain failures are already happening here and there.”

“We’ve also hit peak oil – twice now. Once in 2005 when conventional oil production peaked, and again in 2018 when the unconventional oil in the Bakken and Permian shale formations peaked. We’ve pushed off the day of true scarcity in the US through advances in fracking techniques, but the graphs show the overall level of production has been flat and is now slowly declining even in the US. Oil is becoming scarcer and more expensive.”

“We’re seeing energy scarcity driving the cost per unit of energy up even as we’re needing more and more energy to a) support the continuous growth our economic systems require, b) recover from more and more extreme weather disasters, and c) re-tool to accommodate switching from one set of resources to another as things run out.”

“Mining, processing, manufacturing, transport, distribution, construction, sales and services – they all require energy. That energy costs more, so everything costs more. There’s no escaping that particular doom loop, so this current bout of inflation is going to run on no matter what the politicians and economists say.”

“Global warming is starting to restrict crop availability even now. Couple that with increased processing and transportation costs and you can see how times that are already hard will only get harder. The result will be persistent inflation and changes in employment patterns.”

“That political swing to the right we’re seeing now will continue to its logical conclusion, but in fits and starts. Eventually, a heavily authoritarian system with rationing and travel restrictions will be put in place for some excuse. Doesn’t matter if Democrats or Republicans are in charge, because it’ll be in response to an emergency. We already saw that with Covid.”

“Those initial causes – weather weirdness, energy and product shortages, migrations, authoritarianism, rationing, travel restrictions, and ubiquitous crime – brings me to the second part, which I call the Transition.”

“We’re looking at a time of transition from the start of the chaos I just described to what I call full doom. We’ll see a substantial reduction in population during this time, taking years to decades depending on how unlucky we are. This is all part of the great filter, and people will be filtered out because they can’t get the resources and services they need for whatever reason.”

“For example, if you require ongoing medications and / or medical services, you’d better be really rich because ordinary folk won’t have access. Warmth in winter, comfort in summer will be hard to come by, not to mention food. Most people can’t easily adapt to these changes.”

“During and after the population decline, people will be largely occupied as farm and ranch laborers because that will be the only way to grow enough food with just human and animal power. The only viable crafts and services that remain will be those that provide essential items and services to local and regional governments, gangs, farms, and ranches. Think about that as you consider what your doom specialty will be.”

“There won’t be much left over. Eventually, history will rhyme as overland and water-born trade routes are re-established. The cycle will start anew, just without the huge energy advantage provided by fuel that’s cheaper than bottled water.”

“Which brings me to the third part, which is: The first two parts don’t matter, because clans are better.”

Mouse paused, then “Huh? Better than what, you ask?” He grinned. “I’ll tell you, but first I have to tell you a story.”

“Just at the end of the Vietnam War, a soldier was assigned to a unit that was standing up a new base in the northern plains of Germany. This meant an American presence in an area that hadn’t had anything but the occasional tourist since the end of World War II. There was a little town next to the base, and of course there were bars, and girls in town. The soldier and his friends were all interested in the girls part, and it turned out so were the girls.” He smiled as laughter ran through the audience.

“Life settled into the usual pattern and most of the soldiers wound up with girlfriends. Of course they wound up in bars, because that’s what young adults did those days in small-town Germany. One day six of them were sitting around a table when an ex-boyfriend of one of the girls came to the table and asked to talk to her. She stepped away from the table and they had a short conversation. No one could hear hear anything, but they could see the guy was asking a serious question. The girl paused to think, then said something short and cheerful back. The guy slumped and turned away as she returned to the table with her poker face on.”

“They all held out for about 30 seconds and then couldn’t stand it anymore, and begged for info. She smiled and said he asked her why local German girls were going out with Americans instead of with Germans, even with the language barriers in place. She told him ‘because the Americans do it better’.”

Mouse paused, grinned, and then said “Jaws dropped collectively, like some of yours just did. She waited a beat, and then said it wasn’t what they thought. She said, ‘Look across the bar. See the German girls parked solo at the bar while the German guys hang with each other? That’s the culture. On the other hand, see the German girls sitting with their American boyfriends at their tables? Americans romance their girls. Pay attention to them. Engage in conversation. Compliment them. So, Americans do it better.’”

Mouse paused, then said “Clans are better. Here’s why:”

“A preparedness group or militia can start out strong, but if their particular anticipated doom doesn’t come soon, people tend to drift off. A constant focus on one or two scenarios and repetitive training just for combat is not optimal for member retention. People need variety, or they get distracted by some other shiny thing.”

“This is why it’s so important to keep doing all the core activities of the clan, like practitioners using their skills to help others, the clan’s regular monthly feasts, maintaining distributed gardens as ongoing research projects, caching seeds and supplies for the future, and so forth. The clan will become truly sustainable when clan members internalize the concept that the isolated, online media-based muggle world is a serious step down in quality of life when compared with life in a clan. Life is better with real life friends.”

“Full scale transition may not land for years, even decades. You’ll see it coming as society responds to all the constraints piling up. It’s important to use that gap in time to have the clan form stronger and stronger capabilities among its members instead of sitting around pining for sudden and total doom like most militias and prepper groups do now.”

“So clans are better, right now, before doom. You’ll have more friends. Having more friends enables you to take on bigger projects. For example, a mission to dig a trench in a vacant lot or on a member’s property that cars can drive over with their wheels on either side of the trench. Members can then use that trench to teach and perform auto maintenance like oil and fluid changes. Yes, it’s a BAU thing, but changing your own oil or fixing whatever’s wrong is a good skill to have and saves significant money every time.”

“Sharing the food you grow means a healthier diet. Learning frugal living skills means more money in your pocket. Working in the field means more exercise. Working on projects at home means higher engagement with reality and less engagement with tech specifically designed to addict you.”

“Even if doom never comes: Clans are better.”

Mouse paused a few beats to let that sink in, then asked, “Next question?” He pointed to a female with long silver hair and purple highlights, wearing a loose-fitting pastel green t-shirt with a unicorn.

“I’m LunaFrost,” she said, “And I’m leaning toward because of that last answer. My question is about these specialties. I would choose to be an herbalist, and there’s a lot of bottles and chemistry gear involved with that. More than I can stuff in a pack. Do you have a magic bottomless bag?”

Mouse laughed, and said “One of my specialties is woodworking. And believe me, the hand tools I have, all piled up, would squash a bicycle trailer flat. You can’t be too rich, too thin, or have too many clamps as a woodworker.”

“On the other hand, the hand tools I would use for a specific project generally fit in a canvas tote or rolling toolbox. I cart what I need to the site where I’m working. Same applies to you. You don’t have to lug your entire shop along.”

“Now, the thing to avoid is to have some muggle walk into your shop and see a full chemical laboratory and wall-to-wall ingredients. Once word gets out, you can kiss all that stuff goodbye. People will take stuff for the same reason that hoarders hoard: they might be able to use it sometime in the future, or sell it for something they need.”

“That’s what caches are for. Make it a habit to only leave enough out that you’re using for the current project, or that you’re willing to give up. Since we’re all pretty stingy, what winds up in the open is old stuff about to expire and your third-tier tools. In my case, a bunch of power tools and triplicate hand tools.”

“The rest goes into storage that is either hidden on site, or into watertight tool boxes with desiccant in them that you’ve buried below the frost line. You can get those at any home improvement or tool store. Look for the ones with really strong latches and a gasket on the inside of the lid. That will suffice until you find a woodworker that chooses to specialize in oak chests made from old shipping pallets.”

He paused, then said “It’s best to start that habit now. Set up your “normal” work area in a temporary location, then think through the tools and supplies you’ll need. Pack those up and take them to the work area. When you’re done, put everything away in it’s proper stash. Leave the bait out where it can be found.”

“Clans will always have demand for good makers that can build concealed storage. Storage that’s also easy to access. It’s a balancing act between concealment, security, and access.”

Luna raised her hand and asked, “Follow up?” Mouse nodded.

“So I’m good at chemistry, but building caches for my stuff is not anywhere near my skill set. How does this work in a clan?”

“Well,” said Mouse, “the whole no-money thing definitely throws a wrinkle into the situation, and it isn’t a barter system either. It boils down to the fact that practitioners and apprentices need to have something to practice on so they can get good at their specialty. You’ll probably need a false wall or a hidden door into a storage room, and of course there’s shelving and cabinets. That’s going to be a Maker Arts thing.

It starts with a mission plan. You will throw your hat in the ring for a mission to get you a concealed storage area. You do this simply by approaching the current meeting chief and asking. You’ll be assigned someone to help you develop a mission proposal for the next meeting.”

“New missions are selected from the ‘hats that are in the ring’ at the time of the meeting. Yours may not be selected right away, but it’ll be part of the process. Eventually it’ll percolate its way to the top. Once a mission is approved to initiate, a mission planner – in your case, probably a Maker Arts practitioner or above – will be assigned. They will get in contact with you to walk through the proposed space. An apprentice will be assigned to build a set of plans and a materials list. You will be responsible for procuring the necessary materials once you approve the plan. How you do that is up to you; buying new, salvaging, or a mix of both.”

“Once the mission planner has confirmed you have what’s needed, the mission ends the planning stage and moves to initiation at the next monthly meeting. People volunteer, especially if they’re apprentices that need the experience, and on the appointed day people show up to your place on foot or bicycle. Much activity commences.”

“So, you provided the location and the materials – and the food – don’t forget it’s a party. People contribute their labor for two reasons. First, it’s the culture of the clan just as in the past it was the culture for an entire community to come together for a barn raising. The owner funded the materials and some food, and people contributed their labor at no charge, including more food and people to prepare and serve food during the day. If you were lucky, you got a slice of aunt Sally’s legendary apple pie. A lot of teaching and learning happened at barn raisings.”

“Second, you’ll be expected to perform as an herbalist in providing for other clan members. You may choose to procure your own base materials or request donations. In the case of going out and picking plants, well, that’s what apprentices are for. You could also request some help from Dark Arts folks focusing on scouting to be on the lookout for specific plants. They don’t have to pick – they might do it wrong – they just relay the location back to you when they finish their scouting exercise.”

“When someone needs tummy medicine, the Medical practitioner on call will reach into the box that you keep well stocked for them and hand it out, thus closing the loop.”

“One last point: Choosing a specialty often leads to thinking about making a business of it. It’s all going to depend on timing. How close to BAU you are, or how deep into transition. There’s an Enterprise Guide that covers this timing and makes some recommendations for startup specialty enterprises.”

Mouse looked across the audience, then asked “Who’s next?” He chose a heavyset man in well-worn overalls.

“Handle doesn’t matter, because this won’t work for me.” He said. “I work three jobs just to make ends meet and have zero time for extracurricular stuff.”

Mouse paused, look down at the ground for a bit, then looked back up and said, “Yet you’re here, which means you’re aware that things may get worse than they are now, right?” Handle reluctantly nodded. “And you’re looking for some viable path forward, right?” Another nod. “A clan may be that path, but a clan requires significant participation, which requires significant time, which you don’t have. Appears to be a Catch-22.” Nods from the audience.

“You carved out the time to be here, and some of you had to make significant adjustments to your life to make that happen. I appreciate it and understand the predicament. And it’s my fault you’re thinking that way. In logic, really common mistakes are associated with a thing called generalization. If we’re given a set of data points with a certain characteristic, we generalize that characteristic to other situations.”

“What I did was describe the things a clan does in big, important terms. All day or multi-day missions. Monthly general meetings. Big events that take significant time.”

Mouse stood and paced to one side and back while ticking off points on his hands, then returned and stood next to his stool. “Let’s split the topic to address three common assumptions: Long duration during the day, same day and time for regular events, and members only provide support during scheduled events. None of that is compatible when you’re working three jobs and your bosses aren’t allowed to care about your life.”

“It’s true that operational periods take up most of the day, especially for the mission chiefs. But: Other people can show up for shorter amounts of time. There’s something to do in the early morning, something to do during the middle of the day, and something to do in the afternoon or evening. Even if it’s just showing up to be a lookout for a couple of hours.”

“The evening before, members can help with tool collection and staging for the mission. Even the day after the mission, someone can be the storage point for tools while owners come to pick them up. Participation is participation, and every little bit helps. So that’s the first part.”

“Yes, clans have regular events. Missions and meetings. But they don’t happen at the same regular day and time, much less the same location. A Thursday evening in the Summer is just as good for a general meeting as a Sunday afternoon. Mixing up the timing is advantageous for security, because clans need to be unpredictable. If time is a problem for a significant number of clan members, someone can volunteer to be a clan scheduler.”

“Members can report their normal schedules to the scheduler, who can then determine the date and time for an upcoming event that works for the most members, or find a slot in an upcoming event that works for a specific member. Eventually the scheduler will have a picture in their head of what works best for most clan members. Mission and meeting chiefs will be able to coordinate with the scheduler and that will be one thing off their plate.”

“The clan scheduler is an example of an activity that’s very much part time and random. Others include LDI practitioners storing and accessing records and lists, teachers teaching, buddies studying, members updating bulletin boards, fighters practicing together, and the list goes on. None of these activities need to happen on a rigid schedule, yet they all count toward participation. Clans are like families; there’s folks that can help out a lot, and others with less available time that need to coordinate their activities in advance.”

“You can even carve out smaller slices of time. Schlepping supplies on an off afternoon. Checking out a location for available surface water. You don’t have to carve out big blocks of time if your current life doesn’t support that. And who knows? Your contacts within the clan may lead to BAU job opportunities that pay better and require less of your time. Like I said; clans are better.”

He sat back down on his stool. “Next question?” He chose a male with long hair wearing a leather vest but without any biker patches.

“Leaning toward, my handle is Slider, and my question is: What do you say to people who say ‘I don’t want to survive a collapse, or war, or whatever. If times get that bad, I’ll just die.’?”

“I was surprised when a good friend took that exact same position with me,” said Mouse. “Since then I’ve encountered it several times. The best answer I’ve found is that people are surprisingly hopeful and resilient, even when they don’t think they are. There may be doom everywhere around you but maybe things are better somewhere else, and wouldn’t it be better if you had the ability to get there? That requires skills and planning – and friends. Basically a doom insurance policy.”

“There’s usually hope in most people’s minds. When it comes down to it, most people are surprised about how much hope they really have, and how strong the urge to stay alive really is. Only those that are truly hopeless actually choose to die, and you won’t know if you’re that far gone until you’re in the moment, and maybe not even then.”

Mouse stopped, thought a bit, and then said, “Actually, that question is one of the things that led me to come up with the clan concept. Most suicides are by people who don’t really have a good set of friends and activities that serve as an alternate focus in their lives. Instead, they dwell on their situation in solitude. If you’re in a clan and sudden doom happens, you’ll be too busy problem solving, working your butt off, and attending meetings with music and dancing to think about offing yourself.”

“Next question?” He saw only one hand up this time.

“Okay, back to Rusty. Go ahead.”

“On a lighter topic; does base training have a cost?” asked Rusty.

“Generally no,” said Mouse, “but some base training classes have a set of small tools and limited materials you’ll be expected to bring. Medical base training probably has the most requirements, because you’ll be building a doom-compatible individual first aid kit. Food and sanitation is the same way; another kit. It’s up to you to purchase, make, or scavenge any necessary materials and tools you’ll be using yourself going forward. Yes, scavenging is a thing in a clan.”

“Only once you decide to specialize in something and move beyond base level will you need to acquire a significant number of tools. Fun fact: In these ‘modern’ times, one of the best sources of really good tools and even supplies is boomer estate sales.”

“Next question?”

A few hands went up, and Mouse pointed to an obvious boomer male in a red t-shirt.

“I’m leaning toward, and my handle is SpeedRacer,” he said.

Mouse laughed and said “I’ve heard of that cartoon character! That’s from a long way back… and your question is?”

“I’m reading between the lines here. Are we being evaluated during base training?” Mouse chuckled and said “Yep. At the very least, your study buddy is noting how good you are at paying attention, cooperating with others, following directions, and getting your work done before showing up to a study session. This is one of the reasons why we always do base training with at least one buddy at a time. While there may not be a formal, reported evaluation process; people talk. Word gets around. So always be on your best behavior.”

“Clans are looking for participants, not slackers. Clans want people that can work together in pairs and teams. Cooperators, if you will. In a way, base training is a series of evaluations on whether a candidate is a true cooperator, and like I said; word gets around.”

“Next question?” He looked across at the attendees to see the only guy in a cowboy hat had his hand up, and pointed to him.

“My forum name is AwesomeFool, and before all this I was leaning away. Now I’m on the fence.”

“Well, at least I’m not pushing you away,” said Mouse. “Your question?”

“Reading between the lines, you seem to have an intelligence function and a defense function, but it seems to be limited? I would think you’d want to have paramilitary capabilities when real doom happens.”

“I was wondering if someone would drill down on that. There are three reasons, which I keep in my head as 90%, Brain Types, and Bad Guys.”

More than 90% of the encounters you will have don’t need a gun, or a gun will just make things worse. Most cops will agree with this even before you get a beer or two in them.”

“I’ve had more than a few violent or potentially violent situations in my life. Only one caused me to draw my gun. There was more than one assailant, and there was no viable path for me to retreat. Just drawing the weapon did the trick. Now you could ask what would have happened if they had guns, but that depends on a lot of things.”

“Did they draw first? How steady were their hands? Just as nobody wants to get in a knife fight, nobody wants to be in a shootout. Guaranteed bleeding all around. But that didn’t matter in these situations. These guys were gang bangers and they slowed down when they could see I had a certain something, and then they left when they saw the gun.”

“Dark Arts training gets you that certain something. Attitude. Situational awareness. Tactical movement and pre-positioning. Acting inside the other guy’s reflex time.” He stared directly at the front row, then suddenly stood up, stepped forward, leaned in, and forcefully said, “Do you see what I mean?” He straightened up and smiled after most people in the front row involuntarily leaned back.

“See? That’s that certain something.” He sat down again. “You don’t get that with gun training because guns are used mainly at a distance. Remember that brain-to-brain thing. When you’re up close and personal, people somehow just know when you’re sincerely ready to kick some ass, because you’re busy thinking about how to go about it. People pick up on that.”

So, more than 90% of the time, guns are useless or counterproductive, and if all you have is a gun, well…”

“The next reason is brain types. In any population you will find extroverts, introverts, and people in between. Fun fact: There are all different kinds of people.” Chuckles ran through the attendees.

“Some of those differences pertain to guns. Some can handle the training and use of a gun, some can’t. Even if you’re into guns, pretty much everyone gets PTSD from a shooting incident, and PTSD is guaranteed if you kill someone. So given that not everyone will be into guns, and PTSD definitely will cause problems after shooting someone, it’s best to focus on something that works well and provides that certain something that enabled me to clear up the other potentially violent situations with a tip of my hat, a stern look, or a quick takedown.”

“There was one other situation where a stern look wasn’t applicable, but it wasn’t a true street violence situation. One time in a dormitory back when I was young, immortal, and stupid, a black belt in some martial art challenged me to a friendly sparring match. I was only a green belt. I picked up a mop, unscrewed the pole, and kept poking it at various parts of his body until he gave up.”

“Didn’t have to swing it once, which was fortunate, since we were in a dorm room. Stick fighting goes a long way, and again you wind up with that certain something. Dark Arts base training includes a specific set of takedown and break-away moves as well as stick fighting techniques.”

“Last but not least, Bad Guys. Bad guys come in a variety of flavors, usually from various gangs like motorcycle clubs, cartels, federal agencies, local cops or street gangs. Bad guys are all about guns. When ammo prices go through the roof, they just up the ammo budget. Some of them get paid to practice as part of their work week. You won’t have their skills and weapons even if you’re a rich range rat. And you definitely won’t have their numbers.”

“Bad guys use military tactics. The most basic military tactic is to fix the opponent’s position; where they’ll be and when. They will monitor your communications, so they know when most of you will be in one place, who the leaders are, and what you’re doing. They pick their time and plan their assault, whether it’s an apartment complex, a Mexican village, a motorcycle rally, Ruby Ridge, Waco, or over a rise on a long snowy road in Oregon.”

“Bad guys always bring overwhelming force. Then it doesn’t matter how many guns you have, because they know how many you have, and they’ve brought more or set it up so they have the tactical advantage. So guns are of no real help except for very specific, low probability situations.”

“Like the computer said: ‘A strange game; the only way to win… is not to play.’ If you don’t get that reference, look it up and then stream the movie. It’s enlightening.”

“So clans don’t play that game. They don’t have a fixed headquarters or warehouse. They have hidden caches all over the place. They don’t use phones to plan or coordinate, or even have phones on them when they get together. So-called leadership changes with each mission and operational period.”

“Even sending someone in as an undercover agent means the agent winds up in at least six months of base training and more months of low-level task assignments as an apprentice. There usually isn’t the time or budget to pay an informant to go through all that, and there are never any photo opportunities of a bunch of clan members standing around with black rifles, or a bunch of cars parked at a meeting so they can scan the license plates. There are no phone numbers or IP addresses they can monitor or hack. Everything bad guys are set up to leverage for intel is useless with a clan, both pre-doom and in-doom.”

Mouse paused, looked across the audience, and indicated a male with short, black hair in a black t-shirt.

“I’m ShadowStrike, I’m leaning toward, and my question is: I live in this here medium-sized city. There’s no farmland close by, and it’s all pretty built up and unsustainable. So why set a clan up in a city?”

Mouse responded with “Have you looked at the rural countryside lately? It’s pretty much all old folks. Most young people have been moving away for a long time now. Cities are where you find smart people that are late millennials and zoomers, and it’s also where you’ll find a diversity of talent. That diversity will be critical. The clan will need practitioners and experts in every specialty on the color bar.”

“In the US, small to medium-size cities have the concentration of talent needed to form a clan. They’re also the only places with a reasonable chance of getting to actual farmland on foot or bicycle in a fairly clandestine manner. Getting out of the really big cities will be problematic when the time comes.”

“Yes, cars and trucks may still exist, but in serious doom you can bet only the largest gangs, military, law enforcement, and certain state and federal government personnel will have access to the necessary fuel and travel permits. Also, a loaded truck rolling down the road will be an instant target.”

He paused, looked down, then looked back out at the audience. “Clans form in cities. They don’t need a bunch of farmland during BAU. They do need access to technologies and supplies that allow them to experiment and figure out which structures, crops, harvest, and transport mechanisms will work in their area of operation. They practice those techniques and build caches of seeds, basic food, and supplies for the first part of the transition period.”

Mouse paused, looked down at the ground, and then back to the audience. “Next?” he asked. He selected a tall man in a green plaid shirt.

“I’m Grasshopper for a variety of reasons. I’m still ambivalent because I’ve seen instances of gardens getting picked clean in the middle of the night happening right now. If it’s happening now, it’ll only get worse over time and then there’s no food worth mentioning. How do you get past that problem?”

Mouse replied quickly “You bypass it.” He paused a bit as the audience shifted, and then said, “There’s more detail on this in the Clan AO guide, but each clan eventually has two Areas of Operation, or AOs. The first AO is the area the clan initially sets up in a town or city during BAU. This is called the Clan AO, or CAO for short.”

“The CAO is set up to find out what works in the local climate and topography. A nice juicy garden that gets picked clean doesn’t take food out of anyone’s mouth because BAU is still in place. Instead, that garden yielded two critical pieces of knowledge: First, what crops and techniques actually worked. Second, whatever camouflage or concealment techniques used, obviously didn’t work. Both pieces of knowledge are valuable, and that knowledge cannot be stolen.”

“This is the whole point of the CAO. It’s a research facility. There is no building a collapse community in a city or large town. But there’s a second phase to clan activities. One of the first tasks when a new clan is forming is identifying the clan’s in-doom area of operations. We call it the Doom AO. There’s a guide to finding and / or starting a clan that describes the two areas and a dedicated guide that covers the Clan AO and Doom AO; it’s called the Clan AO Guide.”

“The clan will need to gradually move to a nearby rural area – that they’ve already picked out – with their seed stock and the long-term technical knowledge that they’ve developed. This is the DAO. That move will take some planning so the clan doesn’t show up all at once and scare the locals into pushing tack.”

“The point to a DAO is it’s not in the city. It’s in a rural area with something like a one-gas-station village nearby. It’s within three to six days walk of the CAO, though. That distance is a natural terrain buffer against people wandering out from the city. The DAO is the place where the clan implements larger gardens and animal husbandry facilities once it knows what works. It’s a complex endeavor, which is why there’s a Clan AO guide.”

Mouse shifted on his stool, glanced at the falling sun, and said, “Next question?” He looked across the audience and indicated a female in a gray goodie.

“I’m still deciding,” she said, flipping back her hood to reveal a significant Goth style. “Call me Wednesday, and my question is: How do you decide who needs to be removed from the clan? How is this accomplished?”

Mouse said “It’s done by open vote at a general meeting. By the time that happens most people already know what the result will be. It takes a lot to build up to that level. If the clan votes to reject the member, they’re simply escorted out and not given the location of the next meeting.”

“Once a clan is up to speed, each meeting has scouts and lookouts covering the perimeter. The meeting chief would have a couple of scouts or fighters escort the person out if they somehow showed up to a subsequent meeting.”

Wednesday raised her hand again. “Follow up?” she asked. Mouse nodded.

“What happens when they get kicked out? Or they decide to leave on their own? Do they get a portion of the clan’s supplies as compensation for their participation?”

“Nope,” said Mouse. “Nor do you get a parting gift to carry with you to another clan. What would be an appropriate amount? How long have you been with the clan? Are you fairly new and haven’t contributed much, or are you an OG that needs to move to a different city due to BAU conflicts? All of that would be an incredibly complex set of calculations and rules. When you leave a clan, you leave with what you’ve got; your own skills, tools, supplies, and a very valuable asset – knowledge.”

“Next question?” Two raised hands, and he pointed to a tall male in the back with a trucker’s hat.

“Still undecided,” he said, “and the handle’s Mild Max. The question is: Why not take advantage of social media? To me, the benefits outweigh any harm.”

“That’s a really common question,” smiled Mouse. “Social media makes it soooo easy to get organized and build a following. But...”

“Too often, people confuse participating online with participating IRL. And the rules of behavior are pretty loose online. It’s so easy to be a troll and mess with people because you’re operating anonymously. It’s much harder to be a troll IRL. You might get punched in the snoot.” General laughter from the audience.

“But it’s not just trolls. Its lurkers and bad actors twisting your words with evil intent. Everything’s permanent on the internet, and written words make it hard to tell when someone is joking or serious or is emphasizing a particular word or phrase.” He raised his hand, “How many here have had their words twisted around like that?” Almost everyone raised their hand.

Mouse nodded, and said, “Using emojis and tricks like coloring text purple or using ‘/s’ to denote sarcasm are not enough. We monkeys evolved to use face-to-face multi-spectral communication. By multi-spectral I mean not just words, but tone and inflection, body language, facial expressions and that close range brain-to-brain thing we have.”

“If you have already told social media you were going to check this out, just go silent on the topic. Especially if you decide to join. You will be drawn into debates with trolls. Most trolls are sponsored in some way or make money from their behavior. You don’t need to contribute to that.”

“Then there are the social media sites themselves. Their business model depends on your continuous engagement with their app so they can keep extracting data about you and what you’re interested in. Let’s call this fictional organization “FarceTok.” Smiles all around.

“Now imagine how they would react to your saying you’re going to go do something else not them. They have AI and algorithms to monitor for that and keep you engaged. Even if you’re now engaging with trolls. Doesn’t matter to them because engagement equals money. There are documentaries on how that works, but most of us already know this in our gut.”

“The point is: Clan life doesn’t exist as far as social media is concerned.”

“Finally, there’s that pesky doom thing. The local internet is really, really fragile – just one or two vendors usually service a specific area. The internet in general is a constant war zone; just ask a cybersecurity expert. Those two things mean you can bet it won’t be available just when you need it most. Clans practice for doom, and that includes doom communications.”

“Most clans have at least one or two hams, a.k.a. amateur radio operators, and hams know how to make things happen without phones and internet. The Dark Arts specialty includes radio communications as well as totally manual communication: no radios.”

“Next question?” Mouse pointed to a dark-haired male in a blue work shirt and pall cap.

“My handle is Wildfire, I’m leaning toward, and my question is: What does a clan do, day to day? What’s its purpose?”

“Good question, and this is going to be a long answer.” Said Mouse. “What with all the principles and specialties and levels in a clan it’s easy to lose the picture of how and why all this is supposed to come together. Let’s deal with the ‘why’ first.”

“The simplest explanation is that a clan enables members to respond to, and get through, a doom event. There’s short-term doom – days to months – like a severe storm, wildfire or flood. In that case, clan members with less to no damage turn out to help members with significant damage. That may range from fixing up moderate damage to a house so it’s safe to occupy, to sharing food and water, providing medical assistance, providing a place to crash and so eorth.”

“Rapid access to help, if you will, because the government response is always overwhelmed, contractors are instantly expensive if they’re available at all, and don’t get me started about insurance. Short term doom is the 90% probability. The 10% probability is long doom, like famine, economic collapse, etc., where it’s pretty obvious that normal life just isn’t coming back, at least not anytime soon.”

“Long doom is beyond any single preppers ability to endure, because supplies eventually run out or are lost to whatever circumstance, and no one person – or even several people – can do it all. The clan’s objective in long doom is to provide security, companionship, shelter, sanitation, clean water, and of course food over a multi-generational period. I repeat: Over a multi-generational period.

“The 90/10 rule really applies here. 90% of a clan’s effort is devoted to preparing to handle long doom, even though it’s only a 10% probability. Handling long doom is the main objective, which brings us to the how.”

“Most serious preppers agree you need at least a year and a half’s worth of food. It all has to do with timing. If long doom happens in the depths of winter then you’re looking at nine months or so before you maybe get any kind of harvest out of the ground. If the harvest is bad, then tack on another year if you’re very lucky.”

“If you don’t have land prepped and ready to go, and have compatible seeds and supplies and know what to do that actually works in your area’s climate, then you’re looking at two bad harvests and probably more. Throw in brigands attacking your farmstead, government agents coming by to “share” your harvest and similar first year events… Things get really dicey. Enter the clan and the principle of DSDO – Distributed Storage, Distributed Operations.”

“Let’s think of muggles – non-clan members – in normal life. “Some will have houses and small plots of land, but not farmsteads. Of those with property, few will do anything more than a small hobby garden – tomatoes, herbs and such. Nothing really calorie dense. The rest won’t do anything and the yard is just a decorative area with a weed problem that needs to be maintained. Turning their yard into a ‘victory garden’ after doom happens is what I call a low probability event.”

“Now let’s look at clan members in the same situation. One or a few of those clan members are going to be, or know, farmers or master gardeners with local knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, because the main missions of a clan focus on figuring that out. Their biggest problem turns out to be not what to do, but where to do it.”

“Not every area has a big farm or two to work with, and remember; obvious farms immediately become targets when long doom happens. But, every area has places where clan members live, whether houses or apartments, and there are many small plots of land that can be planted. So the land is available for experimentation, it’s just naturally distributed.”

“Distributed plots are inherently more secure, since they are often overlooked by passers by. It turns out Guerrilla Gardening is a good thing. They’re also smaller and easier to manage by members coming by on a rotating basis. Add up a bunch of small plots and you have the same thing as a large plot.”

“For example, a string of potato plants running down the edge of a building provide calorie-dense carbohydrates and come back year after year given the right soil and climate conditions. Strawberries and most other berries are also perennials. Mint for tea tends to take over an area.”

“Small plots can focus on a main plant, along with herbs, flowers and other weed and pest control plants that act as camouflage and are also attractive to pollinators. Once established, you can totally cover a harvested potato patch with cover crops and it’ll still come right up year after year provided someone comes along with a load of mature in the fall. Managing many small plots is what distributed operations are all about.”

“Now we get to distributed storage. Many small storage points are inherently less visible and thus more secure than a large central facility. Part of the summer mission is not just to tend the crop, but to build additional caches to store the – hopefully – additional harvest.”

“The harvest mission harvests, preserves, and stores the harvest in the caches. The winter mission distributes food from the oldest caches first, just like any prepper rotating their pantry. All of this starts out small, as we learn what works and what doesn’t in our local area.”

“Finally, it’s not all just digging in the dirt. There’s a ton of other things going on. Small animal husbandry for one. Dehydrating and canning is a big deal in the fall, but monthly meetings also need planning and coordination, like making sure there’s someone to handle the music. The clan always needs people to conduct base training, practitioners need to work with apprentices, communicators need to manage the local radio network, LDI practitioners will be tracking activities.”

“Dark arts has regular practice sessions because those skills need to be maintained just like any other skill. Then there’s sourcing clean water and caching supplies for sand filters, and the list goes on. Different clans will have different focus areas. Those in cattle country will probably train members in horseback riding, for example.”

“And that brings us to the next question. Who’s up?” Mouse looked across the audience and chose a heavyset male in a light windbreaker and a green tractor branded hat.

“I’m Crouching Panda, leaning toward, and want more information about how you recruit people.”

“Yeah, I touched on that earlier today, but didn’t go into any detail or reasoning. So here goes,” said Mouse.

“Clans require a lot of training and participation from their members, so it’s important to start out with people that are more likely to stick with it. It takes motivation to keep participating in clan activities, and that motivation is best found in folks that are close to or have reached the acceptance stage regarding long doom. Working to live through doom is only a motivator if the person believes doom is likely and believes that being a clan member has the potential to get them and their family through.”

“The other part is we need people that are smart. These two conditions – acceptance of doom and intelligence, are why we don’t have clan members bringing prospects to normal meetings. Although they would be known by the members that brought them, they may be coming along just because their friend asked, instead of being smart, motivated folks at the acceptance stage.”

“As I mentioned before, the main recruiting activity that a clan does is posting notices on public bulletin boards. If a clan member identifies a likely candidate, they just hand them the notice and say something like ‘this looks interesting.’”

“What about family members?” asked Panda.

“That’s different,” said Mouse. Spouses and children will definitely come along for the ride when the transition hits, but going through training and earning a color bar is a strictly volunteer thing for spouses. It’s called self-selecting. That said; permanent couples often choose to join as a pair, right up front. As for children, when have kids ever been interested in what their parents do?”

Chuckles ran through the attendees. Mouse continued with “Of course, there are no secrets from spouses. Some may self-select and join. Other couples have learned the ‘you do you’ philosophy works best for them, as long as it doesn’t significantly impact home life. The thing to point out in that situation is you’re spending less time online so it’s balanced against more time in the field and that leads to improvements in health.”

“Next question?” Mouse pointed to a male wearing a red t-shirt and jeans.

“My handle is Street Cat, I’m undecided, and my question is: Why all the restrictions on clan tech? After all, no one can predict what’s going to happen, and there are bound to be places with advanced tech; probably cities located near wind or solar farms.”

Mouse stopped, looked down, and mentally lined up his points while ticking them off on his fingers. Then he looked up and said, “When you anticipate the continuation of advanced technology, you’re just one step away from anticipating Business as Usual, and BAU is what got us here in the first place. So it can be a form of bargaining – remember denial-anger-bargaining – the bargain is we’ll only collapse a little bit, or we can migrate to a place that doesn’t collapse very far.”

“Let’s assume the absolute best case: You’re located next to a hydro power plant. Nice, continuous power. All the comforts of home. But... Do you have any idea of the amount of maintenance such a plant goes through? Anything translating that much energy from one form to another is under immense stress. So things wear out all the time.”

“We’re having enough trouble with supply chains now, what happens when power becomes a luxury in many places? You can only stockpile so many parts before you’re cannibalizing one thing to keep another going. Same goes for wind power. Immense forces are happening in those big towers. Solar has the best endurance potential, but it has severe intermittency problems and batteries wear out fairly fast. And then there are hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires.”

“All three technologies are connected to the grid, and the grid will have cascading failures for a variety of reasons. Fun fact: Most residential and commercial solar installations are grid-tied with no storage and they can’t be brought online without grid power being present. When the grid goes down, they go down.”

“Most power plants are incapable of providing local power; they’re designed to supply 800,000 to a million volts depending on whether they’re pushing DC or AC into the grid. You need to do a lot of conversion to get to house current from there. So even if you’re right next to a solar farm, you may not have the gear necessary to tap into it. And then there’s the storage issue for the intermittent power, and again there is the maintenance issue for all of those bits and pieces.”

“Best case, we’ll have unpredictable power and availability will get worse over time. So tech dies, with the internet going first – it has some of the most complex dependencies on Earth. This is why clans only use convenience tech – non-internet reliant, battery powered, portable devices.”

Mouse paused and then said “Next?” He pointed to a male in a blue t-shirt with a blue trucker’s cap.

“LeezardLeezard here, I’m leaning against, because it looks like all this is going to be pointless anyway. Climate change is unstoppable and will cook the planet, so why try?”

“Ah, the ultimate doom. Everything everywhere all at once, and everyone dies.” Mouse paused, looked down and thought for a bit, then looked up at the audience and said, “Why am I here? Not in an existential sense, but why am I speaking to you about clans in this particular city?”

A few hands went up, and he said, “That was a rhetorical question. I’m here for a reason. This particular geographic area has certain characteristics that optimize the chances for people living here. It’s a specific combination of climate, topography, demographics and salvageable infrastructure that led me to think this place has a better chance than most.”

“You can look this up: Geological evidence shows that approximately 75,000 years ago a supervolcano scientists call Toba erupted and caused a volcanic winter lasting 6 to 10 years. After that came a 1,000 year cooling period. Genetic studies show that our current global population is derived from the people still in place after all that. How many were there? Genetics traces back to just a few thousand breeding pairs.”

“Think about that. A ten year global winter and they came through the other side. No wonder we’re so driven and tenacious.”

“Then there’s the three volcanic eruptions in Iceland in the middle of the 6th century. The global winter that resulted put the nails in the coffin of the Roman Empire and gave birth to the Stoic movement because economic activity basically stopped between 540 and 640 AD. A century of depression. An estimated 50% population collapse. Now only specialized historians are familiar with that period. We are a truly resilient species.”

“My point is; not every place will be uninhabitable. There will be pockets where life goes on. What if this area is one of those pockets? I think it might. In that case, would you prefer to be an accidental survivor living hand to mouth or a member of a hard-working family of mutually supportive people? Which will be the better life?”

Mouse stopped and scanned the audience, then said “Next?” He pointed to a male in a black t-shirt and windbreaker.

“I’m, ah, LawAndOrderGuy, and still on the fence.”

“Heh, you look it. You know, I’ve always wanted to get a blue windbreaker and embroider ‘Bad Guy’ on the back, just to see how that plays,” said Mouse.

LawGuy chuckled. “I’d like to see how that plays as well; we’re always looking for good jokes.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve found, working with LEOs over the years,” said Mouse. “And your question is?”

“How do you know somebody didn’t fake their level for a specialty?”

“That’s a good one,” said Mouse, “in the beginning, I envisioned qualification packets and sign-offs and such, but it turned out none of that is really necessary. During Interpersonal base training, members are taught about honesty and how dishonesty leads to a spiral of stories supporting stories. It’s difficult to keep up the facade for long. Webs of lies are very fragile.”

“For example, if you have a nearly full bar of, say, medical, everyone else is going to expect you to perform with significant skill, and that opportunity will come up. Same with the other specialties. People expect more from people with tall colors, like teaching others on that topic. That plus, as the clan grows, there will be others with the same specialty, and people quickly figure out who’s faking it and who’s not.”

“So it’s self limiting, and we avoid all the paperwork and bureaucracy around that. That said, you do build out a Full Colors certificate as you complete your base trainings. This is described in the Base I&P Student Guide. You keep it in your personal records. You need to show it as all checked off and initialed before you can go through the Full Colors ceremony, but after that, it’s on you.”

LawGuy raised his hand and asked, “One more?” Mouse nodded.

“There’s a lot of security threads running through this whole thing, and you include law enforcement as ‘bad guys.’ Why is that?”

“It’s easily observed in history,” said Mouse. “If we focus on just the US – because we’re so special – we can see the pattern of law enforcement and government agencies targeting groups for oppression since the days of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.”

“The FBI worked diligently to identify and penetrate civil rights groups because they were deemed a threat to the current set of elites. And when it came time for physical action, there were always willing deputies and police officers as active participants.”

“Sometimes it was the left wing under target. Civil Rights. The anti-war and counter-culture movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Protest groups were infiltrated and when they marched, lots of law enforcement were there to meet them with dogs and water cannon. Has anyone learned about Kent State in history class? Black panthers? Things got out of hand and went kinetic. What happened to Occupy Wall Street? The Portland protests? All of these are examples of left wing organizations under organized – and well funded – attack.”

“The point is: If you mess with members of the elite, or even show the potential for that, you become a target. And it’s not just the left wing; the pendulum swings to the right as well. As long as you aren’t impacting the income or influence of some elite person or group it’s all good.”

“Do you know about Ruby Ridge? The tanks at Waco? What about Ammon Bundy? He had serious grievances with the Bureau of Land Management and other government agencies and had his own ‘occupy government’ movement going for awhile. When he was busted on that back road in Oregon, there was a video feed from the Predator Drone the government was using for surveillance and coordination in that operation.”

“Back to the left. Have you heard what happened to pretty much all of the pipeline protests? Notice you don’t hear much about Black Bloc folks anymore. I wonder why?”

“And now for a balanced approach. The FBI and the NSA, among other agencies, have co-opted social media as a set of surveillance tools to identify and suppress people and information that might become a threat.”

“Most law enforcement organizations in cities of any decent size have received heavy duty military vehicles designed to operate in a conflict zone. Fully automatic rifles, surveillance drones, encrypted communications, training at multi-million dollar training facilities, and joint exercises to enable coordinated operations. All of that comes with a big, in-your-face, quid pro quo.”

Mouse stopped, paced from one side of the stage to the other, then returned to the podium. “Now let’s take a look at clans from the viewpoint of a law enforcement person outside the clan; let’s say this person is focused on finding threats to the current order and totally dedicated to taking those threats down. The message that clans intend to operate in doom can easily get twisted to clans are looking to trigger doom, or do serious damage to elites by taking advantage of doom events regardless of the cause.”

“That clans are purposely not political gets twisted to clans are not supporting the politics of the current people in power, so clans must be against them. Clans don’t do money; they must be avoiding the banking system for some reason. See how this can go South in many ways?”

“Clans don’t do social media or internet communications. We don’t even use phones during, or when discussing clan activities. That’s all 100% monitored. Sure, there are laws and search warrants, but there’s always an ideologue or corrupt judge useful to get around those little wrinkles.”

“Clans are designed to fly under all that radar. Hence the Fight Club rule. If you’ve seen the movie you know that the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club. Dark Arts training gives us ways to communicate without phones, and clan rules prohibit us from bringing phones or even our motor vehicles to any mission or meeting.”

“We don’t leave a digital trail. It’s all analog and distributed. Elite-sponsored law enforcement operations are not designed to handle analog anymore, because gangs and criminals have abandoned analog and switched to the internet as well. Also, analog surveillance requires a lot of time and manpower; two of the most expensive things in the world these days.”

“Finally, the closest thing to illegal activities the clan does are sometimes meeting in an abandoned building or gardening on an abandoned lot. Things that are likely to get laughed out of court when the judge finds out the reasoning and techniques behind any arrest. Clan operations are really expensive to penetrate and at the same time they yield insignificant results to government agencies once the truth is known.”

“There are other sets of bad guys. Gangs will quickly shift from selling their product to robbing everyone of their supplies when the shit hits the fan. Clans are pretty stealthy even in good times, and practically invisible in early doom. It’s called stealth mode. That’s part of Dark Arts training.”

Mouse glanced at the sun and said, “The sun is getting low, and I haven’t had dinner. Let’s do two more questions and wrap it up.” Hands went up, and he pointed to RisingTop, hoping he’d learned to behave better.

“You say no lone wolves, yet here you are lone wolfing it.”

“See that guy sitting next to two bicycles over there?” Mouse pointed to someone a little over 50 yards away. “I’m not flying solo. I walk the talk, and you need to learn to be more observant. He was there all day, and I had lunch with him.” He paused, then said, “That was too short. So we still have two more questions.”

Two hands went up, and Mouse pointed to a male in a green t-shirt and baseball hat. “You’re next,” he said.

“My handle is Stormer, and I’m leaning away,” he said. “Let’s say you’re doing something clan-related, and bystanders come by asking what you’re doing. What do you tell them?”

“That’s more common than you think,” said Mouse. “The thing not to no is try to recruit them to your cause, for two reasons: First, when you mention doom to someone, no matter how you phrase it, chances are they’ll shut down. Few people have moved beyond the denial phase. Another possibility is they won’t shut down but will get suspicious, no matter how innocent your activity is. That can lead to serious complications.”

“One thing that is true throughout human history is when a society or nation is severely stressed, they shift to the far right politically. That means authoritarianism. Humans look for a ‘strong man’ that will tell them what they want to hear; that the situation is not their fault – it’s the fault of others – and the strong man will put things right for them.”

“This is as true today as it was for the Romans at the end of their empire, Hitler’s 3rd Reich and Holocaust, Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Great Terror, China’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Many, many millions have died at the hands of authoritarians.”

“We can see authoritarianism building up in our political systems today. How far it will go I can’t predict, but the thing to remember is to never allow yourself to be identified with a group that is not one of those currently favored in today’s environment, and today’s environment can change quickly. If the group is not ‘cool’ or obviously powerful it’s going to get persecuted.”

“Instead, just tell them you’re part of a set of friends helping a friend, depending on what you’re working on. Don’t use the word ‘group,’ that’s a triggering word. Use ‘set.’ A side benefit to this answer is it’s a true enough statement that you won’t trigger any of your own tells that happen when you’re lying.”

Mouse paused, looked across the audience, and said, “Last question? Make it a good one.”

He pointed at Wednesday, who was very eagerly waving her hand in the air. “You win the enthusiasm contest. Your question?

“What about sharing food? Some will have more than others,” she said.

Mouse pointed to her and said, “Goood one. The prepper’s nightmare, and dilemma. There’s a lot of doom fiction on this topic, and we can discuss the ethics of sharing personal property for a very long time, but the reality is most people readily share with close friends or family.”

“Even if a prepper joins a clan, they’re not going to mention their supplies – especially at the beginning – because they’re not dealing with friends or family. Yet.”

“The solution to equitable sharing is built into the structure and operations of a clan. The clan’s main objective is to get enough caches in place to support everyone, and since those caches belong to the clan, sharing happens equitably because planning and operations are open to all.”

“Earlier, I talked about the seasonal missions and how they focus on growing, harvesting, storing, and distributing food. The distributing part is openly planned. Members learn what the harvest was, hear recommendations for how much to process into storage, and how much to distribute to each member. The process is all open and aboveboard, so when a member receives a package, they know how much of what is in there, and why.”

“A good clan will also have caches for medical supplies, meal prep gear, tool lubricants, construction and maintenance consumables, and so forth. Most of these are acquired by scavenging, attending estate sales, or anonymous gifting by members. I repeat; anonymous. That’s usually where the preppers make donations.”

“Sharing will happen naturally once the prepper with supplies is comfortable, and they’ll probably do it anonymously. Imagine a stack of supplies showing up in the middle of the night before, at the location of the next general meeting.”

Mouse paused, flipped his spiral pad to the first page, looked across the audience, and said, “Global Warming, Economic Collapse, Ecosystems Collapse, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot, Resource Constraints... do you remember the litany of doom I spewed at the start of all this?”

“The warnings are everywhere; how many signs do you need?”

Mouse stopped, stood up, walked to the front of the stage, reached into his bag, pulled out a set of index cards with the Web address on them, and held them up. “If you’re leaning far enough to start a local clan, this is the starting point. There’s a lot of detail there: Base training guides for all the specialties, how to manage meetings and missions, and how to recruit folks, especially at the beginning.”

“I’ve said this before; it’s a lot of work, but a lot of reward. Base training is not an easy path, but those who complete it will share a bond with each other even though they have not yet met. Shared knowledge and the sacrifice undergone to achieve it are how successful tribes form and endure.”

For those of you that are still undecided, I have an alternative approach for you. If you’re not a joiner or organizer or some kind of people person, it’s probably a consequence of our polluted, noisy environment; experiments and studies have shown that these conditions drive autism, depression, and social isolationism into the population. So it’s not your fault you’re that way. However...”

“Remember that reality doesn’t care why you are the way you are, or that you are the way you are. Reality is just going to keep motoring along. And that motoring will probably lead to – let’s say – harsh living conditions. Imagine what you will, but harsh living conditions kinda sums it up for me.”

“One, go to https://c-clans.tiiny.site and download the guides and base training materials. It’s hundreds of pages and it’s all free. Go ahead and read through them at your leisure, and practice the skills that are interesting to you. This way, when harsh living conditions come and get you, you’ll be better able to deal than you are now.”

“Two, spread the word locally by posting the Individual Web notice at libraries and library branches. This is covered in the Find or Start a Clan guide. This is minimal effort. Just print out a few and put them up. Then check back occasionally to see if a Specialty Papers notice shows up. This means someone into organizing or teaming up has emerged. Maybe you can work with them. After all, there’s power in numbers.”

“We’re clawing our way out of the high tech trap we’ve fallen into, and it’s not going to be easy. We all have to continue participating in the current world while building for a different world. If you choose to really do this, then commit to the long term. Stay the course when in doubt; it pays dividends even during BAU.”

He placed the small stack of cards on the edge of the stage, and then said “And that’s a wrap.” He signaled to his mission buddy, who started bringing the bicycles over as he picked up his stool, unwound the lashings, and put all the pieces in his bag.

“It’s on you now, but I do have a recommendation: Don’t make any final decisions until you’ve gone online and read the Find and Start a Clan guide, the Clan AO Guide, and skimmed the I&P base training guide. At that point you’ll have a good understanding of how to proceed.”

“I have to go do this in another place. Thank you for attending, and good luck to you all.” He strapped his bag to his bike, got on, nodded to his companion, and they rode away to the West.

Rev 6
JKJ0N1U3RWRN1N3DOWQZIFV,+H7.IKW2ZELPUSXLRKC