The article suggests that they are relying on solar panels for power. What happens when they eventually wear out, assuming that civilization has already collapsed?
The myth of the individual is deeply embedded in a lot of places these days: who needs civilisation?
Nothing to scoff at. Very little was about creating self-sufficient compounds and arming them, and a lot more about being sustainable. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
But despite this, there is some of discussion of armed compounds, marauding hordes, and the like, that you would probably not see in a similar article in Europe. I suspect that those of us who have lived in the U.S. for a long time read articles like this differently, having encountered survivalists like this before. These guys always seem to be reasonable, in precisely this way, but there always seems to be an undercurrent of antisocial lunacy just under the surface.
One possibility, though, is that the movement is indeed rational, like you suggest, with only a few survivalist lunatics, but that the journalist has automatically written the article in a way that fits the standard narrative.
Survivalism makes a kind of sense in the US because there's enough space to live relatively self-sufficiently far enough away from marauding traumatised survivors. And they still have remnants of that pioneer spirit - which was quite a thing, in its way. The genocide of the Indians wasn't pretty, but it takes a certain kind of person to survive a trek across a continent in a covered wagon.
Survivalism makes no sense at all in Europe because population densities make survival unlikely, even with a gun and a small holding. The best solutions - but currently the least likely ones - have to be political.
