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A Plan To Survive Societal Collapse - Fail!

Posted on 7th August 2022

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I found this report on the Guardian interesting but ultimately disappointing.

The article features Ben Green, who is living a largely self sufficient vegan life on a 12 acre plot in East Germany. This is his plan to survive the "collapse of capitalism". He is not alone in his belief that this collapse is coming (many experts predict the collapse of society within the next 10 years). His plan, however, seems to have a number of flaws and peculiarities:

  1. He has 12 acres, and this web-page suggests that 5 to 6 acres should be enough for one person (he seems to live alone) to live comfortably, so there should be enough surplus to sell or barter for his luxuries (tea, coffee and chocolate). In fact, to sustain a vegan, less acreage should be needed than the 5 to 6 acres suggested.
  2. One of the reasons, he claims, that he is not fully self sufficient is the cost of feeding his 3 rescue-pigs (obviously not for eating). This makes no sense. Pigs do not need industrial feed, and eat vegetables. According to this web-site, fully grown pigs can be raised 3 to 4 per acre (more with a proper rotation plan). I therefore do not understand why he is buying feed for his pigs. I do not even understand why he has the pigs at all; they don't seem to enhance his lifestyle or survival prospects.
  3. There is no mention of where he gets his vitamin B-12 (which most people get from meat). Vegans usually take vitamin supplement tablets; B-12 can also be obtained from nutritional yeast (which I guess he could produce, but doesn't seem to) or marmite; vitamin supplement tablets and marmite, as industrial products, will not be available if society collapses. As a vegan, he doesn't eat eggs which contain some B-12, although you need to eat 4 per day to get the daily recommended dose. Without vitamin B-12, people suffer from low energy levels and general poor health.
  4. If the capitalist system collapses, so will law and order. In that case, how will he stop people from stealing his food? He is going to need good fences, some guard-dogs (which need to eat meat), and probably a rifle. Such measures seem entirely missing from his plan.

It is not that I think his reasons are wrong; I think societal collapse is very likely. It is just that his plan needs some serious work.