A freight train carrying a load of toxic chemicals through the south side derails. Thousands of residents are exposed to poisonous gases. Even though authorities make an attempt to evacuate, many people are overcome by toxins and end up in the hospital.
The members of Live Free International see the answer to that question in survivalism: emergency preparedness by the individual, not the state. They don’t think there’s anything silly about having a few gallons of water, a couple of days’ worth of canned food, and a firearm in the closet–or in the case of the railroad-riddled south side, a gas mask for each family member.
They are individualists with an array of radically different interests and a touch of paranoia, perhaps brought on by the press’s image of them as nuts sporting bandoliers and flourishing Bibles. “The news media know that a guy with a machine gun is a lot more exciting than someone learning what type of berries to pick,” says Jones. “We’ve been doing this for more than 25 years, so we got pretty upset when a lot of these right-wing [crazies] started calling themselves survivalists.”
“I’m not a very religious person . . . I base my movement primarily on my study of history, and what I think is important. For instance, look at gun legislation. If you trace the history of the people who have stayed alive and stayed free, they generally did so through having firearms–not necessarily using them, but having them.” Jones compares the results of the American Revolution, where citizen-soldiers had firearms and used them, and the recent events in Tiananmen Square. He points out that the bad guys–drug dealers, criminals, invaders–will always have access to guns: “The reality historically is that you can’t disarm everyone. They talk about the AK-47 being so terrible. But if you talk to the people in Afghanistan, they don’t think it’s so terrible!”
“Everyone who lives in the industrial world today has to be prepared for a breakdown in the support network,” he explains in a quiet voice. “There’s a very complicated and delicate support system for anyone in the first or second worlds–the food supply, for example. I don’t think there’s a reason to differ between urban and rural; a survivalist, as Live Free sees it, is prepared to survive wherever he is. It’s harder. We’re often forced to live in apartment buildings, we’re dependent on supermarkets and functioning highways. But most of the jobs are in the city. We just have to be prepared.”
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One of the things that survivalists own is firearms, a hot button for many of their critics. “There’s a weapons requirement as well as one for food, and that’s probably the most sensitive item,” observes Planck. He notes that, because of the recent anti-gun push in the mainstream news media, Dial-A-Survivalist tapes have focused more on gun rights. Planck says, “It’s not that big a deal normally. We like to have a spectrum of firearms–not just a single firearm for hunting, self-defense, and varminting–because one firearm won’t do a spectrum of things. Our requirements are more complicated than most people’s.”
