Zone5

When Technology Fails- A Manual for Self- Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency

Matthew Stein

Chelsea Green 2000, 2008

494 pp

Matthew Stein’s massive survival manual When Technology Fails packs into one volume everything you need to survive “The long Emergency”- (a phrase later used by Kunstler in his 2005 book of that name on peak oil and its consequences) from fire making and hunting, gardening and wild food gathering, technology and power, metal working and constructing simple shelters.

There is a detailed discussion at the start of the book on the environmental crisis, pollution and resource depletion, as well as climate change and peak oil- and the consequent need to learn many new skills to survive; perhaps this section isnt srictly necessary for such a book.

More of an encyclopaedia than a handy book to throw in your grab-and-run bag, it probably suffers from trying to do too much; nevertheless, there is a serious amount of information here to help survive emergencies, powerdowns, social collapses and energy descent transitions- most of it useful and well laid out, while some of it smacks of New Age-ism and gives advice which would be more of a hazard than a help in a survival situation.

The “When Hi-Tech Medicine Fails” chapter in particular should come with a severe health warning: a credulous mish-mash of a range of Quackeries from homeopathy and acupuncture through naturopathy, “energy healing” and even the Power of Prayer. Anecdotal “evidence” is offered about miraculous cures achieved through the services of members of the whacky Christian Science cult. He quotes Larry Dossey’s Healing Words as providing “numerous scientific studies ” which “now confirm that p[rayer does, in fact, have a positive effect on healing” when in fact it does nothing of the kind.

Futile of course to suggest that if you believed in the Power of Prayer you wouldn’t need a survival manual, but even worse is the section promoting the use of colloidial silver for  a range of illnesses including some serious conditions.

Quackwatch surveys the evidence forand the dangers of use of colloidal silver here. Stein presumably thinks that if uncritical self-medication with such stuff lead to argyria, you always have the Power of Prayer as a Back-up.

The early section on Survivor Personality Traits is also tainted with pseudo-scientific nonsense. While stories of survivors of disasters are interesting and may provide useful insights, Stein seems to make he contradictory claim that your intuition is more useful than your rational mind- at least in emergency situations.

Now, there may well be situations where intuition is simply all you have to go on- and clearly we have evolved instinctive responses to danger which have allowed our species to survive as well as it has. This doesnt mean that intuition is superior to rational thought- after all, this is an emergency preparedness manual, the whole point is to use your rational ability to prepare for emergencies ahead of time. I dont see any scientific evidence tha shows people with New Age beliefs such as those promoted by Sein are more likely to survive an emergency.

These reactionary and dangerous ideas are enough to put me off he book entirely, and it is certainly a matter of concern that Peak Oil luminaries  Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler would endorse it.

Nevertheless, there is much to offer in the other chapters, which are oddly rational and practical in  their approach(!)

Each section begins with a view of the global situation vis-a-vis current use of resources and environmental impact. There is then a survey of different techniques with a brief description, and a wealth of resources and further reading to conclude.

The section on food is wide-ranging, with good information on both gardening and wild-food gathering. Stein advocates Jeavons’ Bio-Intensive method; the section on permaculture is only a few paragraphs, with no mention of perrenial food crops or edible forest gardens, nor permaculture principles.

The sections on natural building, off-grid electricity and traditional methods of home-crafts such as soap-making, clothes-making, pottery etc provide useful introductions, though perhaps not much more than that.

In short, there are probably other survival manuals which are more useful as pocket-sized books for emergency situations; and specific permaculture books and building manuals would be more useful for long-term survival/powerdown scenarios.

Most worrying is the apparent unquestioning acceptance of the reactionary ideologies promoted here by at least some of  the wider peak oil/permaculture community.