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by shalmanese 20 days ago
One test I now use on survival related material, especially ones written pre-COVID, is how long does it take them before they start talking about how to cut hair.

One thing we learned during COVID was a significant limitation in people's willingness to stay isolated was their hair was getting out of control. It's the exact, boring, unsexy topic that you omit if you're selling the fantasy of survival and you include if you want to cover the boring, day to day logistics.

The entire survival industry is not acquitted well in being revealed as how much the industry is an aesthetic movement.
1 comments
palmotea 19 days ago
> One thing we learned during COVID was a significant limitation in people's willingness to stay isolated was their hair was getting out of control. It's the exact, boring, unsexy topic that you omit if you're selling the fantasy of survival and you include if you want to cover the boring, day to day logistics.

COVID wasn't really a survival situation though, and least not in the traditional sense (i.e. staying at home for long periods ordering stuff of Amazon).

In an actual survival situation, I'd suppose you hack away at your hair with a pair of scissors or a knife, because you're dirty and starving and have more important things to worry about.

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shalmanese 19 days ago
"Survival", as conceptualized as an industry, is that you're holed up in a secure location with adequate food, ammunition and other essentials to last months to years. Plenty of preppers who diligently prepared bunkers for the end of the world emerged from those bunkers, not because they ran out of food or ammo, but because their hair got too annoying to deal with and cosplaying survival did not extend to actually learning how to cut their own hair vs giving up the pretense and having a professional do it..
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palmotea 19 days ago
> Plenty of preppers who diligently prepared bunkers for the end of the world emerged from those bunkers, not because they ran out of food or ammo, but because their hair got too annoying to deal with and cosplaying survival

Sure, but what I'm saying is haircuts are more of a problem for survival cosplay scenarios than actual survival scenarios. It's actually legitimate to omit haircuts when you're planning an actual survival scenario (or you treat it very briefly: scissors are a tool you should have in your bunker).

For instance: there was a Ukrainian soldier holed up in a front-line bunker for the better part of a year, did he emerge from his bunker when he needed a haircut? Or did he hack away at it with whatever was available?

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