I’ve been working towards a simple model of survival for some time. The Hexayurt Infrastructure Package is based around a “substitution” model:

* instead of your electric cooker, a wood gasification stove
* instead of your toilet and the sewage plant, a composting toilet

and so on.

The problem with this model is that it is too far removed from basic human needs: it’s organized in “solution space” (i.e. terms are defined and mapped relative to the solutions that westerners commonly use.) But that was never satisfactory, because solution space carries with it the historical baggage of all previous solutions. Easy to understand, but carries a lot of very deeply hidden implicit assumptions.

I’ve come up with a new model, based in “problem space” – what people need to stay alive. It is much, much simpler.

I call it the “systemic risks model” because it lists the risks that one can prepare for and do something about, the risks which are mitigatable and preventable. It doesn’t cover accident, and medical contingencies like childbirth, which are rather in a separate category that I’m still mapping (something along the lines of “medical emergency” but how to fit eyeglasses and dental care and contraception and child birth together into that map, eh?)

Work in progress.