By David Futrelle
The stunted human beings known as Men Going Their Own Way love to imagine apocalyptic scenarios in which women are forced to beg them for help, offering sexual favors for cans of beans.
Now, with something truly apocalyptic barreling into Florida, they’re … well, doing the exact same thing, with Florida-based MGTOWs boasting of their preparedness and mocking all those allegedly hapless women they think will soon be beating a path to their home fortresses in search of food and shelter.
In a post on the MGTOW subreddit on Friday, one MGTOW Redditor seemed positively eager for Irma to do its thing to Orlando.
I would be surprised if even one “single woman riding the carousel” has approached him to ask for anything at all.
Naturally, cleats4u’s fellow MGTOW Redditors agreed that women are a bunch of helpless hypocrites who talk tough but then have the gall to … sometimes depend on other people.
![DangZagnut 98 points 2 days ago I'm in Florida too. I have noticed a reduction in feminist independent empowered women lately. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]Paladin2903 84 points 2 days ago As soon as times get tough (war, natural disaster, economic crash, etc.), they immediately revert to the 1950's little helpless fawn/damsel in distress. This generally applies to even the most ravenous feminazi, unless she munches carpet and looks like a dude. As soon as times get good again (because MEN made them good) then they're "independent" and "empowered" women. Lol.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/mi2.png?resize=580%2C497&ssl=1)
I’m sure if an when these guys accidentally set fire to their homes with their balky generators they will steadfastly refuse the help of emergency services, because relying on others for help is for pussies.
This fellow, meanwhile, imagines a fun and kicky Mad Max scenario that for some reason involves a great deal of macaroni.
Another fellow fantasizes about trading sandwiches for sex:
I’m pretty sure most women would rather starve.
Which, apparently, is what most of those on the MGTOW subreddit would prefer for them as well.
![DagonNaxos 43 points 2 days ago Give them nothing. They deserve nothing. Let em starve. Be safe and lock and load permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]mthrowaway52 5 points 1 day ago They can get a lead sandwich if they trespass.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/mi5.png?resize=561%2C411&ssl=1)
And MGTOWs still try to convince people that their lady-hating cult is all about “self-improvement.” Nothing about these guys is new or improved.
Note: I am not an expert. Your brain is your best defense. Im’a just ramble on it a bit because I like the topic! Take with salt.
Food
The best food is the food you’re already eating.
My suggestion is to go out and buy a big bag of rice or flour, or something you’re already cooking for meals. Get a great big jumbo bag of it, something that makes you think you’ve got enough for a month or two – and then get a second one. Or three if you’re ambitious. And just use it normally. When the first bag’s empty, go get another one right away, so that you always have that several-week reserve of rice or whatever.
Supplement with canned goods – again, the sort of stuff you’re eating already. WWTH I think mentioned refried beans, those are great. That plus wheat and you can make flatbread with beans, and add a little hot sauce for very filling, healthy food. That plus rice and you get a very complete meal. Beans and rice is a great combo, almost your complete requirements.
May want to keep around a jar of multivitamins for a truly long-term survival situation, but that’s up to you.
There are two survival scenarios, the ones where you need to extract yourself and the ones where you need to wait for extraction, and they’re very different from one another.
If you’re working to extract yourself you’re going to need a lot of calories to burn – and you’re going to need to prepare and eat those calories while you’re wet, cold, and mindless with exhaustion. You’re going to need food that you know how to prepare and can do so quickly, without thinking about it. Rice and a timer. Don’t worry as much about flavour – everything is delicious when you’re that hungry. You will literally be able to chow down on a raw stick of butter and it will be the tastiest thing you’ve ever eaten.
If you’re just sitting around and waiting, food that’s tasty and interesting becomes very important – dull, bland food is morale-sapping and also entirely unneccesary. Maintain a spice rack, hot sauce (that can be stored at room temperature if possible), and a variety of things you can prepare. Slow-cooking food is great for these situations, so don’t be afraid of doing baked beans from scratch – those are absolutely delicious and the smell of them baking will keep you excited and enthusiastic in the long hours while you wait.
In either of these cases, food should be familiar. And don’t forget that kitties need to eat too!
Heat
Cooking heat and comfort heat are the same, really. The little fire blocks Alan suggested are great – but you will need a lot of them to last a long time. Identify sources of flammables and be ready to harvest, and make sure to have the tools needed to harvest them. Furniture and construction material is absolutely applicable here. That said, if you’re in a long term survival situation then a city is going to be an awful place for finding cooking fuel in very short order. There’s no way around that. Conserve your fuel as much as you can, and talk to your neighbours. Sharing heat will go a very long way in conserving fuel.
Buy yourself a magnesium striker block. You shave off the block of magnesium with a knife, and then use the striker on the other side to ignite it. The stuff burns at thousands of degrees for a few seconds when it’s hit by a spark, so it’ll catch any dry flammable tinder almost immediately. And it’s safe to use as a keychain otherwise, completely inert when not in shaved/powdered form.
Water
As soon as you think you’re going to be in a survival situation, fill up the bathtub, the sink, the other sink, the big pots, the little pots – you get the idea. Store all the water you can. Cities are terrible for getting fresh water if the pipes are empty.
Don’t throw water out if you can help it. Cook with it and drink with it. Cleaning water can be used multiple times – and you should certainly clean yourself and your cookware to avoid infections, and to keep your morale up.
If you have to gather water, boil it at least seven minutes before using it. You can make a cheap filter by using a sock filled with charcoal and clean sand, but there’s still going to be nasties in there, especially in a flood situation.
Water’s incredibly important. Don’t let it get low. As soon as your immediate problems are dealt with and you’re ready to start waiting it out, you should start thinking about how you’re gonna get more water.
Community
Other people are incredibly important in survival situations. They’ll get you out of jams that you aren’t able to prevent, they’ll share things that you don’t have, they’ll keep you from plummeting into depression from isolation. Get to know your neighbours, before the disaster if you can. Even if it’s just a couple of days before, saying hi and saying “I’m safe if you need help, and I’ll dig you out if a tree falls on your house” will go a very, very long way towards making sure you survive.
Frankly, the latter one is way more important than people let on. We have this mythos of the lone survivor, and it’s complete nonsense. Humans break when they’re all alone. I can recall a solo survival experiment I did which involved me being all alone for 72 hours in the muskeg with nothin but a knife, a striker, 2L of water and a pot. I could handle the lack of food (oh gosh was I hungry) and the lack of water (I was seeing stars and spots as I walked out), but it was the isolation that really did me in. And I was getting checked in on regularly. A week of that would be enough to completely addle one’s sense of “good plan” vs “bad plan”.
This one’s way more important than almost anything else, in my opinion. Don’t be a stranger. Cause people are strange, when you’re a stranger; streets are uneven when you’re down.
Shelter and Tools
You’ve got a home but a) it might get some holes in, and b) you might have to abandon it quickly. Get a tarp, some rope, some pitons. You can patch holes in the roof, seal up a broken window or wall, all that stuff. Duct tape, too – it’s a trope, but that’s because it’s a useful trope. Duct tape should be in every survival kit. You can use it to cover blisters to prevent them from growing (works really well), seal wounds after washing them, patch clothes, and so many other things. It’s really good.
For collecting wood a saw is better than an axe; axes take a lot of energy to use, and you can be lazy with a saw. Axes are useful as hammers as well, though, and can be used as shovels and for general wreckin’. Both are useful.
A good pot is invaluable for so many reasons. A good knife, invaluable for so many reasons. Good shoes. Shoes with holes in them or with worn-down soles can be real hazards in slippery or dangerous ground. Don’t buy “survival shoes” though. Just make sure your shoes or boots are decent.
Clothes, same thing.
A good bag for toting stuff around. Having a crash-bag is not a bad idea, but the problem there is that you’ll be unfamiliar with how to use the stuff in it, and you won’t know what condition it’s in if you never use it. I’d prefer to just know what to take and where it all is if I have to go. (That said, a bag with a sweater, knife, striker and pot is an excellent idea)
Sorry for the ramble! I’m happy to take critiques or opinions.
“If gaffa tape can’t fix it, it can’t be fixed”
Context is for the weak!
Scildfreja:
I once read Jack London’s To Build a Fire (1908 version), which is like a PSA on this subject. It convinced me that going outside is generally a bad idea.
It’s really going to depend on what type of disaster is likely. I live in Milwaukee and I figure pretty much tornadoes, blizzards, or if that fault line ever makes it an actual devastating earthquake. It’s possible we would have flooding but that would depend on what kind of season we’re facing.
It’s helpful to have canned food, a way to cook, and a way to secure or repair your shelter. Also a way to get fresh water. And even with those things, if your apartment building is decimated, you may have to seek shelter elsewhere, so knowing if there’s alternative lodging through friends or neighbors is a good idea as well. Make sure you also have a way to feed/transport/protect the kitties.
If we’re talking general economy collapse, those same things would apply but then it would be the long haul, so you need more of those items. You’d also need a plan for what you need to do after you run out of food. If that means collaborating with your neighbors/friends, for growing food, cooking food or anything of that sort, then that’s what you would need to do. Also keep in mind that you live in a large city, and with that possible crime but also possible shelter and food. I know that in my neighborhood, that crime could be a problem but we also are good at growing food, so in a growing season we’d be able to trade food for other services. And there will be some sections of town where people will have abandoned their houses.
Just some things to think about. Living in a bigger city might bring some more advantages but also some disadvantages.
@Scildfreja
The teachers stopped them? Where? Here they just turned a blind eye. 😛
@Bina
Could we not tho?
@Alan
The flowchart killed me, I am ded. Which, by the flowchart, means I should use tape, correct? Just tryna figure out the best path to resurrection 😀
@Surplus, that’s true enough!
And eugh, WD40. The worst lubricant. Would rather use Pam cooking spray. Otherwise, yeah, basically 😀
@Moggie, I know, right? Outside is scary D:
@Sporkey, and on surviving in a city: It’s a nice enough idea, but …. I don’t see it working. A person needs about an acre or so of farmland a year in food, given typical food crops/vegetables/etc. If you want meat or variety, that’s even more. There’s just not enough land in a city, even if you tore up every lawn and public space to turn it into farmland. Could possibly get some local power generation going and do intensive hydroponics – some lovely stuff going on in that field right now that’s actually fairly feasible – but in general, cities are food deserts that rely on highly productive hinterlands.
If you’re thinking it’s going to turn into long term survival where you actually need to worry about food production, get out of the city and get to a farm. Those farms will be running out of fuel to run tractors, so it’ll be back to arm-powered farming techniques. They’ll need lots of people to get producing, so there’s a good chance you could find somewhere to either work some land on your own or cooperate with others doing the same.
Gotta admit, now, though. I’m really wondering how fast a small group of smarties could put together a high-intensity hydroponics stack together. Need lots of water and basic equipment, need a way to regulate heat and provide light (so generators, heaters, and salvaged LED lights), but I’d bet you could convert an apartment block or car parkade into a pretty robust city-farm, enough for a small community! Would need to have people who could handle power generation well enough that it could be uninterrupted, but those skills will be fairly common – lots of electricians and the like out there.
Pipes, water pumps, heaters, construction to replace walls with glass, seeds, fabric (to hold seeds in place), nutrient supplies. LEDs for extra illumination. Anything missing?
@Alan:
The first thing I thought of when you said ‘hexamine tablets’ was ‘wait, weren’t those what we used to run that little tabletop model steam engine we had?’
(And now that I’ve just gotten lost down a rabbit hole of old model pictures, I think we had a Jensen model 65. Good lord, those are about $200 these days. My parents were encouraging the young scientist and my uncle was an old railway fanatic, so of course we had a model steam engine. Not that it worked all that reliably.)
Back more on topic, we actually had a ‘survival’ course in high school, which involved making up a tin with lots of stuff you would need if lost in the woods. Water purification tablets, matches, salt, garbage bags, shredded paper, twine… and, of course, once you unpacked it all the coffee can itself was the right size to use as a makeshift pot.
I may be mostly a city person now, but I originally grew up in smaller towns with camping quite close by, so I’ve got some experience with that.
And I agree with one of the previous commenters from Quebec: ice storms are no fun when they shut down power for days, like the 2013 one did to Toronto. We were lucky where I lived, power was just taken out by a tree that fell over on the power lines, and it only took a couple of days to clear out the immediate repair backlog to get to us. In other parts of the city, power was taken out because water leaked inside the transformers and then froze, cracking them open. The city had lots of spare transformers to replace ones that literally blew up… but they didn’t have enough back stock to handle the sheer number of them that all blew up at once during the ice storm. Some people inside the city limits were without power for over a week mostly because they were waiting on replacement transformers to be shipped in.
@ Scildfreja Unnyðnes (and whomever it might concern): Don’t forget the water in most canned goods, which can go toward reconstituting your rice/pasta/whatever (and that pot liquor contains valuable flavor and nutrients, and can at least be drunk if cooking is absolutely impossible.)
Macaroni guy won’t do so well when he realizes that he doesn’t have clean water to cook it with, and everything is too flooded to start a fire!
@Scildfreja
Surprisingly fast… (I know, those are mostly premade, but some folks with the materials and knowhow could jury rig one pretty fast)
I live in florida and I have no idea what these guys are on about.
Where I live it’s been mostly women offering help, food, water, ice and even shelter for free to anyone that needs it. There’s been a handful of men, but mostly women.
All the men here want to charge people $100 to do anything or have been caught scamming peopl.
Thanks for the advice!
I’m just thinking short term/in home making-it-through-a-blizzard-with-no-power kind of deal, so I should be able to assemble the necessary stuff fairly easily. Will definitely check out your suggestions.
In any Mad Max sort of situation I think I’d be hopeless so I’m just going to keep assuming that’s not going to happen.
A few thoughts:
1. Maybe the real reason macaroni man bought so much pasta was because he had tons of Ragu and/or Prego sauces he wanted to eat it with?
2. Do these guys honestly think that the aftermath of Irma would be a real life recreation of the old Batman story No Man’s Land? Where the US government responds to the disaster by essentially putting up a fence around Florida, ordering the military to shoot anyone trying to escape the area? And meanwhile the folks inside the disaster area organize into rival gangs battling for supremacy? A premise with so many holes that a convoy of semis traveling side-by-side could easily pass through?
Because from where I sat in Indiana, there were a few folks who spent last weekend gathering supplies to send down to Florida (one couple spending several hundred dollars total in my store to do so), plus the local electric company, Duke Energy, preparing several teams of linemen to go down and help the Florida power company linemen get their grid up and running again.
And I’m quite sure they are not alone in this, either. I’m sure several other linemen crews from other states are going down to help, plus several other people from all over the country buying clean underwear and water to send down to Florida. So the place isn’t going to be abandoned to a ‘Lord of the Flies’ society.
Or do they truly believe they’ll come out on top in that kind of anarchy just ’cause?