What will it take to rebuild civilization from the ground up?

There is Power in numbers

A civilization is impossible without people. But the key is having enough people, and the right mix of people.

It’s unlikely that a group of about 10 to 12 people, for example, will be successful at colonizing.

Demography simulations suggest that groups of 20 or more have a better chance at long-term survival. That’s because having more people minimizes the chance of a skewed sex ratio and prevents the first generation from being too closely related to one another.

But besides wanting a diverse group to avoid inbreeding, the skills people bring to the table should also be diverse.

If I were in charge of one of those isolated communities surrounded by timber palisades and sheet metal, I would try to keep as many people with diverse knowledge around as possible, if I had three farmers, I would try to swap one for a potter or a weaver or a chemist.” 

Protect yourself

Protection from the elements, and zombies is a basic need for human survival. Without shelter, there would be no hope of building a civilization. But as communities expand, people need more than a roof and walls — they need protection, like barricades.  

Part of survival would be not getting invaded by another group of people who just come and take everything and leave you for dead.

Fortifying the settlement not only prepares the community for conflict but may also prevent conflict altogether by displaying the strength of the community.

For example, the people of Easter Island used their enormous statues to display their strength to other communities.

They were a way of saying “Our family is smart and capable and collaborative, and the size of our statue is competing with the size of yours.” It’s a way to protect the community from potentially violent competition. Vlad the Impaler had a much more gruesome, yet very effective, way of scaring his enemies.

Societies do this all the time, only now, displays of strength might be in the form of military parades or weapon demonstrations.

Food and water

Besides shelter, a community needs a reliable food and water supply to survive.

These are absolutely fundamental, even if it’s just a few people, you still have to have access to food and water, and you have to have a distribution system of some kind.”

And not only do they need to learn how to produce and share the food and water, but there has to be a way of managing fluctuations or risks.

Say a neighboring community comes by and raids an entire field of crop. Does the community have enough food to make it until the crop can be replaced?

You’ve got to think about making it through the worst circumstances.

Shared goals

Teamwork makes the dream work — for real.

The communities that own something together are going to do better than those that don’t have a sense of shared-ness.

Once a community is driven toward a shared goal, the people will also be more inclined to help one another as individuals, too.

In today’s communities, sports teams serve a purpose of comradery. When someone meets a stranger who cheers for the same football team as they do, they’re both more likely to be interested in one another’s well-being than if they don’t have anything in common. That’s better for the community.

Fair Consequences

One of the more challenging aspects of building and sustaining a civilization is deciding on punishment for intolerable actions. More specifically, what to do with the cheaters, because civilization can’t sustain itself if it’s based on a “winner takes all” structure.

People are always going totry to get something for nothing. How do you make that work so that everyone sees that it costs too much to cheat, without it being totalitarian?

And, who decides on the punishments?

That’s where a lot of conflict will come from. Hopefully we will have the knowledge of thousands of years of history and an infinite number of political systems to help guide us.

Whether the communities can agree to uphold the agreement would remain to be seen.

Document and share knowledge

I can not stress enough the importance of inheriting information and sharing knowledge.

One of the challenges with a post-apocalyptic world is, how do you retain knowledge in your community, so you can remember conditions that may not have taken place in recent memory?

People who were born after the apocalypse will have no knowledge of what life was like prior to the apocalypse and therefore no vision of what life could be like in the future if that knowledge isn’t shared.

In a post zombie-apocalypse civilization, people would need to quickly develop a way to retain the knowledge they have and record it with limited technology.

For the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island and in several European cultures, story telling was an effective way to share important information across generations.

We inherit a lot of information that is shared, crucial information, like what to eat, how to get food or maybe something like how zombies function. We learn those things so that we don’t independently experiment.

Technology and manufacturing

In today’s world, there are retail stores for nearly everything you could ever want or need. But that wouldn’t be the case in a zombie apocalypse or in an early civilization.

Someone has to make the clothing, tools, and weapons. There needs to be some sort of manufacturing of basic commodities.”

And people will need to somehow find the resources to produce those commodities, even if you’re making stone tools, you’ve got to go find the right kind of materials.”

Even rudimentary tools like the stone ax changed the world when they were first invented.

We have an advantage over early civilizations, because we’ve seen what technology is capable of. If the communities can foster a culture of continued technological development, we’ll be more likely to have a sustainable civilization.

Health care

Perhaps the most daunting enemies of ancient civilizations were the diseases they contracted from outsiders. The Rapa Nui people of Easter Island were doing just fine for 500 years until the Europeans arrived and brought disease with them. European diseases decimated the population of Easter Island and the early civilizations of North America.

Having public health strategies for minimizing contact with infected others would be critical to the success of a civilization rising during the zombie apocalypse.

Ideally, you would want a system of health care. You’ve got dead people all over the place, and that’s a huge, huge health concern.

Because it’s a modern-day apocalypse, we would have a very basic idea of how to take care of ourselves. But the average person’s common-sense notion of health is not so great. Specialized care would be critical for survival.

Trade

Having communities that aren’t isolated from one another means they can help each other succeed if they’re willing to trade and cooperate.

The biggest problem in building civilizations is when the lack of sharing resources creates divisions and then forces communities to go to war with each other. That’s exactly the kind of stuff that will break us down because that’s when we no longer share values as a community.

Sharing with other communities and depending on one another for help is a way of minimizing risks and avoiding competition. That is part of community formation.

If one community produces far more potatoes than another, but the other community has more livestock, they could significantly benefit one another if they work out a bartering system.

Having contact with other people who are facing independent risks is a really good thing. That’s a key to survival.

So I have faith that we can survive… Well… at least the strong ones can! My other piece of advice would to have a vetting process before allowing people to be a part of your community. No criminally minded persons, no “weak” people, etc.

Also, if you haven’t started saving items for rebuilding that community yet, items like Non-GMO seeds, weapons, tools… you better start! My books make a great resource for surviving and stocking up. Also visit my advertisers to the right for great survival items! There is also links to both my books to the right of this post as well. Happy Survival, and have a GREAT Apocalypse! ~ Leethal

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