Australians are Born Survivors

Australians are born survivors. It's in our genes. Our ancestors were either members of the world's oldest culture — or hardy enough to travel across thousands of miles of ocean, and begin a whole new life far away from their homelands. Many of them came here in tiny sailing ships. Many of them bound in chains, including most of the initial white settlers. Most of them living and surviving in harsh and "extreme" conditions by any standards of history, geography, or level of survival skills.

With generations of toughness and the spirit of adventure behind us, Australians are as capable, or more capable, of surviving "the collapse" than just about anyone on the planet.

Our huge land mass, low population, and Southern location make Australia one of the very best places on Earth you could possible be in the case of a massive disruption of modern society. Yet the amount of Australian prepping resources online is still quite small compared to some other places. (Most notably the USA.)

Perhaps part of the reason for this is that most Australians just like to get on with doing things, rather than write about them, or make movies about them.

Our ancestors were tough, adventurous, and collectively they knew a great many different ways to survive and thrive without modern technology. Photo by Queensland State Archives / flickr. Wool bales from Claverton Station at Wyandra Railway Station, c. 1897. This dray is typical of the general purpose farm vehicles used in south-east Queensland.

Though perhaps another part of the reason is not as positive: We're one of the most highly urbanised countries on Earth, with around 90% of our population living in urban areas. We're one of the first countries to adopt new high-tech gadgets as they come out.

We're sometimes known as the "lucky country". In modern times our export income, economic independence, modern technology, and a high standard of living have allowed us to get away with a large degree of isolation from the natural world. And from the basic, self-sufficient, low-tech ways of living of our ancestors.

Whether native or immigrants, our ancestors were experts in basic, low-tech living 'off the land'. Etching by Gustav Mützel / Wikipedia. Domestic occupations in the summer season on the Lower Murray River, 1857.

Whatever the reason, there's a shortage of easily-accessible Australian-specific prepping information on the internet. The aim of spysafe.com.au is to make it as easy as possible for a beginner to prepping to get involved, and start making progress. It will be part encyclopedia-style with information and facts, and part blog where I just write about whatever I feel like writing about.

You're Already Way Ahead of the Pack

Just the fact that you're reading this article means that you're already ahead of the pack in terms of prepping, compared to modern people on average. If that sounds unrealistically optimistic, then keep reading this section... I really do think that most Australians have barely any idea how good we really do have it here in terms of our opportunity to prepare for and to survive "the collapse". And that this great opportunity is currently vastly under-utilised by the majority of Australians.

As a rough estimate, for 90% of people in modern Western countries (which includes Australia), their greatest weakness in terms of prepping is that they're not even interested or motivated to be preppers at all. In fact it's probably more than 90%, but a round/approximate figure is close enough here.

Which means that even if you're just getting interested in prepping for the first time, you're already in the top 10% of Australians in terms of success at prepping.

With our Southern location, very low-population density, rural heritage, and no shared borders all the way around — Australia is one of the very best places in the world to be a prepper. Photo by Reto Stöckl / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Wikipedia.

I read somewhere that an Australian pensioner with no other income is in the top 10% of the world's richest people, as measured by income. So, without getting too technical or precise about the numbers, if you're an Australian and just interested in prepping — without doing any more than that — then you're already in the top one percent of world achievers in terms of your potential to succeed in this important area of life. (Ten percent of ten percent equals one percent.) And which will sooner or later become a very important area of life, as the fabric of modern civilisation continues its downward spiral, and finally reaches an eventual tipping point into collapse.

Now add to that the fact that Australia is one of the very best countries in the world to be a prepper in. In most other countries, preppers hope and wish and dream that they could get residence here (or in New Zealand, which probably rates slightly higher even than Australia by jealous preppers around the globe).

If you combine all three of these then you're already in the top small fraction of one percent of people in the modern world in terms of prepping success just by being an Australian, and interested enough to be reading this page, and following up with that interest.

Next page: What is Prepping — A Guide for Normal People to Get Started.

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