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HIGH TECH AND SELF-RELIANCE

When considering self-reliance, often as not we bump into the "high-tech" dilemma. One extreme opinion is that high tech is a trap to be avoided. The other extreme opinion holds that only high tech will provide self-reliance in style. Thirty years of study have convinced me that the best option lies midway between those extremes.

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE: When it comes to keeping our country intact, high tech is absolutely essential, exclamation point. We may not keep it intact even with high tech; we will surely go down the tubes fast without it. The moment we begin to dull our nation's cutting-edge technology, the Soviets start leaning on us harder because they know they can afford to. We must never forget that "Star Wars" hardware means, literally, Civil Defense—defending our citizens. The Sovs are developing it anyhow, but we have an edge today. That edge cuts deeply into Soviet plans for dominion. Soviet high tech rarely gets to Russian consumers. Ours comes to the home; and that can be good if we know how to use it on a personal level.

Many people disagree on what "high tech" means. If it simply means some new technology, there's no real dilemma. If it means something very complicated to maintain, then maybe we do have a problem. Perhaps a few examples are in order.

The all-terrain bicycles are a new wrinkle, no more complicated than older types and a whole lot sturdier. As long as you're going to depend on any bike, sooner or later you must consider repairs. If the parts and repair techniques are just as easy, and the high-tech hardware is more dependable, then high tech is the way to go. Another example? I've been designing and testing survival hardware for many years, including a two-pound backpacker's woodstove that any tinkerer can build. The only high-tech part was developing certain shapes, baffles and flues, to triple the stove's efficiency. My own "Woodpacker" stove has kept me cozy in knee-deep snow and Sierra storms, and needs to be stoked only once every half-hour. Its design is clearly high-tech—but its construction is low-tech. In the same category is the "safety net," stiff mosquito netting sewn into a yardwide sack so you can wear it, backpack and all, even while fishing.

High tech? Yes, in the sense that these things weren't previously available and had to be perfected (thin mosquito net won't qualify as a "safety net"; it won't stand away from your skin). But these gadgets can be made and repaired by low-tech means. They were new in concept, but could've been built and maintained with simple tools, generations ago.

Then there's the other kind of high tech, like solid-state electronics and the new H&K caseless ammunition. No matter how cheap it might be to buy, most of us have only the vaguest idea how to build or repair it. If a solar-powered hand calculator quits on you, chances are you'll have to toss it—but you might invest in a few cheap foil-wrapped spares. Just don't discard your old slide-rule, and make sure your kids learn how to use it. As for the new ammo: could it be manufactured locally? It takes a factory with special tooling and rare know-how to make caseless ammo. Many small-town chemistry teachers could manufacture guncotton, smokeless powder, even primers from basic chemicals, and handloading is an old art; but when you've fired your last caseless cartridge, that high-tech rifle is NO-tech!

Maybe for our purposes, high tech is anything that requires support which is beyond the means of the average small town. Has your car's fuel injection pump gone belly-up? If there's no mechanic near you with the parts and knowledge to repair it, this is the kind of high tech you must not depend on in a survival situation. Even mag wheels can be a problem if you have no special equipment to remount a new tire without gouging that tender cheesy magnesium. If you're now storing vital information on computer disks, you'd be smart to keep printed copies of it all, for that Great Gulp when permanent failure of power, or a computer chip, makes those disks useless.

None of these warnings should make you sell your fuel-injected car, or your home computer. They should make you think about low-tech backup systems for anything that requires sophisticated support beyond what's local and dependable. By "local," I mean within walking distance. And thereby hangs a tale . . .

Once, when I lived in a city, I knew a bachelor who was nuts about high tech. He didn't own a lot of things, but what he owned was nifty: foreign sportscar, solid state stereo, Cuisinart, gadgety camera and other mouth-watering boytoys. He used to joke that he " . . . couldn't survive beyond the city" because only a big city could provide the services to maintain his toys. He took pride in trading for new hardware that was so high-tech, few others had it and fewer still knew where it could be maintained. No problem, he said, so long as he kept a current list of all the wizards at adjusting Weber carburetors and trouble-shooting electronics. He was a user, not a fixer.

This guy was carefully adjusting his life so that he needed the city's high-tech services, and his lifestyle could not survive without them. He assumed that he could always drive across the city to find somebody who could fix his problems. In other words, he lived a high-tech existence with the full intent of becoming utterly dependent on it. It seemed to me a little like an addiction, and it made me more than a little sick. The more I thought about that, the less I liked depending on distant folks to maintain equipment I depended on, but didn't understand.

I thought about it so much that now I live in a small town. As soon as I learned to fix my inexpensive home computer, I bought another one like it for a spare—but I have whopping big file cabinets and a manual typewriter with spare ribbons, too. I have a transistor radio, but I also have a 1933 GE brute with spare tubes, though its fifty-two-year-old original tubes still work and they were so over-designed they'll probably survive a nuclear weapon pulse.

I admit that I enjoy high tech; it's convenient—but when it gets too gimmicky for local repair, I try to make sure there's a more primitive backup system handy. High tech is a metaphor of the city: we can use it, but we must not depend on it.

And at this point, some readers will be objecting that they must have fuel, and spare parts, and technology that requires special expertise—including medicines. Take heart; so long as small towns are in business, we can enjoy many medium-tech conveniences and necessities. Almost any small clinic could manufacture penicillin, given the need. Many small shops can rebuild electric motors and generators. We can manufacture fuel alcohol from wood and grain; lubricant from castor beans; passable (barely!) bike tires from a length of water hose stuffed with bits of rubber and wired onto rims; and we can even melt and recast aluminum scrap for machining at any small machine shop. What we must not do on a personal level, is allow ourselves to become absolutely dependent on technology that can't be matched locally.

Meanwhile, don't curse the nation's pursuit of high-tech knowledge. It gave us penicillin (which could've existed centuries ago if we'd known what to do). It taught us heat transfer so some gadgeteer could develop an efficient woodstove anybody can build. And at present, with space-age experiments, it promises you and me the first real hope of defending most of our civilians against nuclear war. After all, isn't that the first duty of a government—to defend its citizens?

 

MILLENNIAL POSTSCRIPT

You may notice a shift in tone in these last two pieces. They've been extracted from another book, The Chernobyl Syndrome, because publisher Baen and I believe readers will welcome a positive, proactive stance on the "Y2K" issue.

Chances are that most of us won't suffer much over the expected computer glitches of the year 2000. Still, it won't hurt to bias our bets. If you have important medical prescriptions, you'll be wise to be certain you have a two-month supply of medication on hand by 31 December 1999. If you don't have fifty gallons of drinking water and twice that much "gray" water (for flushing, etc.) on hand at that time, you could be sorry—and thirsty. A propane-fueled burner for cooking isn't that expensive, and the food staples you store would be eaten anyway, eventually.

We simply have no excuse for ignoring the possibility that much of our high-tech existence could flounder for a time. That's not only true for Y2K; the future has always been notoriously unreliable. Face it in good health!

 

 

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