It seems the word ‘Survivalist' is changing, thanks to author Neil Strauss and FOX News coverage of his book, EMERGENCY, This Book Will Save Your Life.
Before you get revved up about a medical book content, it's much more along the lines of philosophic truths learned traveling and elsewhere.
However, it's news, this change in perceptions. I like this book for several reasons, the first being that it makes a difference. It shares some powerful insight in outlook, and the paradigm shift that comes with it makes Strauss an interesting thought leader on more than one subject.
FOX's interview with Strauss the week of June 15th, 2009 made me buy the book. Others conducting preparedness courses around the country also change the complexion of the term ‘Survivalist" this week (maybe), which was the thrust of the FOX coverage, but EMERGENCY is more about a total paradigm. The subtitle, This Book Will Save Your Life, will probably be fulfilled on a more profound level of independence than first-aid, food, and waiting for first responders. It could turn the entire country around thanks to a paradigm shift, which is what thought leaders do, and the timing is great, too: more and more Americans are realizing that the term is no longer a pejorative.
As a Paramedic, I can tell you how important this content is to the average household, that is some of his remarks about his medical experience and how it figures into the paradigm. As a liberty purist, I can tell you how important it is to the spirit of the electorate in experiencing in profound terms how Independence is much better for the individual than dependency on the State ever will be. I didn't say the State, I said Dependency on the State. America has a use for her servants, though utter dependency is not one of them.EMERGENCY is a great place to start for the layman because of how the lessons unearth the truths independent persons must know always. I could dwell on the first-time shooting experience he chronicles, but I found this at the tail end of Lesson 30 a smarter bet to recommend. Strauss wrote, "The lesson of Katrina wasn't that the United States can't protect it's own. It was that no country can protect its own. No place is safe and no government can guarantee the well-being of its citizens. There's only one place to find true safety: from within." This could sound like a fundamental, but the way he supports it almost with a case-study format clarifies it well.
EMERGENCY isn't a political book, though I see various lessons which have inescapable truths for the self-rule and independence purist, and thus political avenues to make oneself safer. Strauss mentions within how unsafe he feels, but evolves into feeling safer. Exactly how he arrives at this is priceless.
Preparedness is not only a mechanical action, it is more of an ongoing spirit you might say, the concept of realizing that you are truly on your own no matter what the subject is, be it business or outright survival. Some view being on your own as an abandonment, and for them, the case-study or journal style of his conclusions will help them enormously. I hope. Others view being on your own as a personal dignity and in fact insist on it. It's good to see a view of how this applies in all things. I am of the belief that nothing will ever change that, which makes this a very useful book even to the dependent electorate and into the next generation. We hope. It could be soon that the term ‘Survivalist' blends into the American lexicon of the electorate as a dignified, patriotic and admirable term of integrity, as it leaves the lexicon of officials who utter the word as derisive and isolationist.
Strauss turns the term on its side so you can look in. I found it under the Biography section, for instance, and it reads like a diary and cookbook blend. Though he's written some books with fresh titles of fresh treatment of topics and generally being fresh, I'm behind this one.
Strauss reports how he signed up and completed EMT School. Though it's not the same as Paramedic School, EMT is what I would also recommend as a survival skill. EMT is available at many colleges. As he undertook the course ".. preparing for the apocalypse," as he logged it in, he experienced at first the very same throes every new student does, a sort of depression of learning nothing but how people die for eight hours a day. I can relate, and for its abundance of wisdom, it's a good book form of the medical training practice of see one, do one, teach one.
The Chapter on his first time shooting a gun (page 208) is right on. The entire book is of an experience or series of them survived and brought back for a useful social and political alignment of the country: self-reliance and independence. You can apply the philosophy to providing for disaster management, that is. But it's not really for groups, it's for individuals. It's all up to you. It always has been.
EMERGENCY is what I would call a good diary, a frank confession, and profound guide all in one, based on the perspective of reasonable apprehension as the dilemma and personal preparedness as its very best answer.