Thriving Village Solution to End-of-World Dangers

Most people feel overwhelmed with all the potential problems in our future.  Media and pundits talk about problems but rarely talk about a solution.  I am a solution engine with Full of Ideas® and Get Real Alliance offering solutions to problems many think are impossible.  I have been thinking about dangers we can face and working on solutions for a long time.  I will say that my thinking has evolved with a better plan coming together this year that is much better.  To thrive, you need community, energy, water, and food, as well as both passive and active protection in a high-threat world.

Right now, we enjoy abundance for most, but very bad trends for raising children in the mainstream world.  It is telling that many young people would give up the right to vote to keep TikTok. They are not the people I am seeking for an off-grid community with all of the essentials provided. How the community develops depends on support and funding. As things stand, almost all would people die if the power grid goes out long-term, whether due to the actions of men or the sun.  I have two different models with different levels of real preparedness for an end-of-world event.  The big question is whether to be close enough to a good-sized city to be able for residents to commute to a job versus a much bigger community that has employment, medical care, schooling, entertainment and restaurants, etc. for people to be able to live on-site and not commute.  It may be that the close-to-city model gets done first as capital costs are lower, and it is not nearly as large of a commitment by residents.  But I really prefer the much more sustainable community that is far enough from a major metro area to survive even a nuclear war.  We are seeking investor and resident interest which will guide the plan.

I see a community close enough to Dallas to get there with a long bike ride if there is an EMP.  This will allow full-time residents to work off-site.  I have a great initial property that I can lease from a related party that doesn’t want to sell but is interested in good lease income.  The property is currently on a low-level agricultural lease.  It has everything needed – a big water well, a great site for a big lake, natural gas wells on property for energy, and lots of farmland.  It is away from development and on a quiet county road with some trees along the road for shielding already.  The road is on the north side of the property, and there is a ridge in the middle of the property that shields the southern part from easy view.  The lake site is on the southern part of the property, and building near the lake would be ideal for a community of about a 100 homes in a defensive arrangement where there can be watch towers.  One of my inventions is a novel way of building a defensive perimeter cheaply that also provides food for goats and small wood to make energy and biochar to improve land.  I am a Christian who hates violence, and I really want to prevent people from entering rather than getting into a dangerous defensive encounter.  The best defense is to be invisible and have an overwhelming defense.  It is also good to be out of the likely path of desperate people leaving an urban area.  The site is about a dozen miles from Denton, Texas in the opposite direction of development, so there is a minimal population.

The size of a potential community will depend on interest, investment, and support.  We have enough support for a small community, but there is much undeveloped adjacent land to build a much bigger community with more services and work.  My invention company (FOI Group, LLC) has a lot of big ideas that need manufacturing and design space, could provide a lot of employment opportunities, and could contribute to raising the needed money for a bigger community.

We are looking for a few investors who want to have a place to go in a disaster and are willing to fund the project. This would allow a larger group of people who want to lease a sustainable, off-grid home and get reduced rent and HOA fees in exchange for working in the food production.  Some may want to be full-time in producing community food and helping sell the excess in good times, so we have the production to feed some friends and family of members in bad times.  It is tragic to have a place to go that does not allow friends or extended family.  Some prepper communities are very harsh about admittance.  There is a limit to how many more we can handle, and it is critical to not overload our resources.  But I think we can allow members to have limited extra housing for crisis needs.  After the initial die-off in a loss-of-power event, the surrounding countryside will be depopulated and open for homesteading.  Having small livestock and heirloom seeds can help to settle other areas if we have a stockpile of tools and such.  Many people think having guns is a survival mode, and it is in the short term.  But if we see a permanent power outage such as an EMP or a global solar storm wipeout, we will need to be prepared for a much less organized society.

The bigger the off-grid community is, the better prepared it can be for long-term survival in a thriving way.  In the event of an EMP, the majority of the world goes on fine and can redevelop the power grid in America and colonize it from elsewhere.  An EMP would not affect Mexico (most likely) or maybe some of Canada, depending on where above the US the weapons were detonated.  It also depends on who has done it.  A country like North Korea would do less damage than China or Russia.  At this time, I see many possibilities to consider, but the prep is largely the same.  I would recommend watching American Blackout by National Geographic on YouTube.  I also recommend reading the book, One Second After.

In the case of a global solar storm as big or bigger than the Carrington Event, a small community will really struggle in the long-term – there will be no help coming as the world’s power systems will be destroyed, taking the world back to primitive times with a massive die-off.  Primitive tribes are losing their heritage to make clothing due to used clothes exported to those areas.  The bigger and better funded community in an area that supported settled Indians has a better chance of generational survival than the smaller community proposed west of Denton, which was not an area of settled Indians.  I propose north east Texas as a possible site for a big food growing community that in good times is a big food exporter to DFW using my Prairie Grass System and inventions.  It would be self-sufficient in long-lasting renewable power as well as have big warehouse full of items that are long-lasting but unavailable after a collapse. It needs a holistic hospital that doesn’t need disposable equipment like modern hospitals, but may have them in good times for more readily available care.  After an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event, many things will be unavailable, and life will be tougher.  Some people (especially those with medical conditions that require modern medicine to survive) really should not be part of a sustainable community.  The same is true of people who can’t imagine living without smart phones and the other conveniences of modern life.  If a community is going to survive an event, it has to have a good part of its population doing the critical work, such as seed saving, craft skills, and raising children with safe chores to build good workers for the future.  One of the looming problems in America is a shortage of people willing and able to do many jobs.  This is particularly true in agriculture, which has been exploited by big companies where farmers and ranchers barely survive and often have to get a job to remain on property or have other income.  So much land has been subdivided, and the countryside is nearly empty of young people now (or at least young people who will work). The drug crisis has hit hard in rural America.  I envision a different model for better living in good and bad times that is more sustainable than the current urban sprawl model, or the ranchette model of subdivided larger tracts that are turned into difficult-to-be-productive smaller properties.  The proposed smaller Thriving Village community being dependent on DFW for employment and such is just a modified version of urban sprawl.  The big community should be very novel in how it functions.  One thing would be to make a deal with Amazon for semi-truck load deliveries of goods in reusable container to a community store during good times.  There would need to be large warehouses that are very durable to last a long time with novel building technology to be storm and even tornado proof to store a lot of items that will be unavailable after something like a solar coronal mass ejection that wipes out industry globally.  Our modern world is very much like juggling where any big disruption brings it all crashing down.  Very few want to live a more austere life if they don’t have to but do like being more sustainable and being able to survive an event unlike typical families.  The whole area would be surrounded by a dense thicket of tightly spaced thorn trees and a vehicle proof trench with a guarded set of entrances to keep people who don’t belong in the community out.  Being a big food producer in good times and bad means we can provide food to needy people who live outside which is much better than letting them starve, but it is critical to plan to have Thriving Village communities far enough from population centers that people don’t walk to it in large numbers.  The urban sprawl model is unsustainable in good times, and it is deadly in bad times.  The community model is a dense core of sustainable, walkable living surrounded by productive land for food and energy.  A lot of funding can be gained by putting a conservation easement on land around the planned developed area so that it won’t be developed but give good return for leaving it undeveloped.  The value of the surrounding land around a development will be sharply higher than current land values away from a town, so investors can get some return from the large tax breaks for the conservation easement, and the community gains security with no over population and development of the crucial agricultural land for food and energy.

One way to have a cohesive crime-free community is to base occupancy on being a member of Rotary International to live there, with Rotary clubs being the basis for government.  Rotary with its positive non-religious mantra of “Service Above Self” and its four-way test (which is basically love your neighbor as yourself) is a way to have a legal test for being a good person that does not conflict with federal housing law.  In a long-term island of survival, there is really no room for bad actors or criminals, and it’s also undesirable in the good times.   I dream of living in a crime-free community with everything I need within walking distance, including being in the country.  It is bad for me to live in Dallas with a long drive to an undeveloped nice area.  Much of north Texas was treated very badly in the past, growing cotton which resulted in a lot of loss of topsoil so that even today, growth is stunted.

Go to meetup.com and join urban or rural thriving village to be active in being prepared, and if you have young children, to provide them with a better upbringing with chickens and gardens to serve as safe, productive work for them, and have a one-room school house with a huge library of good books.  I have no interest in just living a horrible life after a disaster.  I want the Thriving Village community to be great in good and bad times.  With natural gas on-site, we can fuel vehicles and equipment, including recreational watercraft on the lake for fun in good times.  We can have a community meeting hall for lots of things, including church, plays, meetings, and socials.  With enough interest from investors and residents we can build a great community – either big or small, but sustainable either way.

There are a lot more solutions and inventions that I have but need to be quiet about on this website as they probably need to be patented as I think the concept of a better more sustainable community with dense housing and productive land instead of small yards is a good one that I would love to see done around the country.  I have renewable energy inventions as well to make things work.  Sign up and join us for a meeting to learn more about the better way to live regardless.  See www.meetup.com for urban or rural thriving village north Texas group.  Please join if you have a sincere interest in being part of a sustainable community.  I need investing members and renting members who will help with food and keeping the community going.

David Munson, Jr.