# The Amish Model



## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

A lot of preppers seem to look to 3rd world countries as a model on which to base their "post collapse" ideas of what life would be like without modern technology. While there is nothing wrong with this, I think that the Amish way of life is probably a better example of what could be accomplished.

First of all, I have to say that I see 3 basic "flaws" in the Amish ideals. The first of these is their strict adherence to their interpretation of religious law. Basically, they live under a form of Christian sharia law, and I think religious tolerance is a better principal. The second "flaw" is their rigid system of gender roles. I think this limits them in many ways, and is an idea that can't long survive in a modern world. Likewise, their shunning of modern technologies is quaint but counter-productive.

Strictly speaking, I would consider them to be communists. No, they don't follow the rabid rantings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Chairman Mao, but they practice communism in the purest sense... that of community. (Keep in mind that communism, commune, and community all derive from the same root word)

The basic unit of an Amish community is the extended family. 20-40 households combine to make a district, which is defined along geographical lines. There is no central authority, each district is self-governing. Once a district gets too big, it divides into one or more smaller districts. Districts combine to form "settlements," and these can contain as many as 200 districts. Sometimes districts that share common beliefs form loose "affiliations," which are linked more by lifestyle than anything else.

The Amish generally live comfortable lives in what could be seen as a "post collapse" type framework. They maintain self sufficiency without electricity, motor vehicles, or high technology. Instead of having this lifestyle as a fall back position, they live it every day. As such, I think we can learn a lot from them.

What say you?


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## Salt-N-Pepper (Aug 18, 2014)

The biggest flaw with the "Amish Plan" is that they depend upon a stable outside society to remain secure. The don't fight, ever. 

We are surrounded by Amish in my part of the country, and they are good people... but they do have their faults, like everybody, of course. 

They go out of their way to be non-violent, which is fine as long as they are in a stable society that respects their rights and keeps them secure.

If there is an EOTWAWKI situation, then they (those that survive the raids) will end up pawns for whatever power-broker takes the area.

I could go further into this, but you will have to wait until my book is ready to publish


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## bigwheel (Sep 22, 2014)

Have an old pal up in Ohiya who is around them a lot. He dont have many good things to say. He says they stink..beat their wives and mistreat their animals. Not sure about that as I aint never seen one except on TV. I will grill him for more info and report back.


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## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

I agree that they need some AR-15s and wouldn't fare well in a total collapse.

But still, they have a lot to teach us about co-operation, preserving food, making cloth, blacksmithing... well, basically most of the things they do. They have a lot of the skills that would be needed, and they practice them day in and day out.

So I guess what I'm asking here is.... can anyone give us a few examples of HOW they pull this off? How do they preserve their foods? I know they can a lot, probably smoke hams and such, but is that all?

One of my favorite YouTube personalities is Misty Prepper, who I believe is Mennonite. Her videos do give a lot of insight into exactly how they do the things they do. Here's her YouTube page if anyone is interested...


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## Denton (Sep 18, 2012)

First one I ever saw was when I was driving trucks. A fella from lower Alabama behind the wheel of a big truck and a horse drawn cart on a two lane road. You can imagine what danged near happened.


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## Sasquatch (Dec 12, 2014)

I saw a show once where they were building something and asked a group of Amish to come help. They stated they are allowed to use power tools but can't own them, which makes little sense to me.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

When I saw Harrison Ford and that big amish girl from TopGun get a little freaky in that movie, I wrote the amish off. :Confuse:

Seriously, I think that Prepadoodle brings up a great point about the Amish Way as a "roadmap" to self sufficiency. However, the amish of today, like everyone else in this crazy fubare'd world, have probably lost their way a bit 

The older generations probably have wonderful insight into purely living off the land, The Amish Model, as Prepadoodle calls it.


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## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

Yeah Slippy, but since they are wife beating, cart driving, peace loving, animal mistreating idiots, nothing can possibly be learned from their way of life.

Huh?


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## sideKahr (Oct 15, 2014)

The Amish believe in the old ways, allright, until they get sick. My wife worked in a hospital when she was younger, and saw many an Amish receiving state of the art treatment. Since they don't pay into Social Security or believe in insurance, the bill was paid by the community, in cash.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

Prepadoodle said:


> Yeah Slippy, but since they are wife beating, cart driving, peace loving, animal mistreating idiots, nothing can possibly be learned from their way of life.
> 
> Huh?


OK Prepadoodle...Seriously, I'm confused now. I didn't say that about the amish. All I said was my that my assumption was that the current generation probably has little to offer but the older amish have excellent knowledge.


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## Makwa (Dec 19, 2014)

OP you bring up a good point about "living it". We have an Amish community about 100 miles east of us, they have their faults and internal problems to be sure......... as do all of these sorts of communities. Same can be said for Mennonites and Hutterite communities............ or mankind in general. Faults and anomalies aside, for the most part they do live it. Which brings me to my point................

Most people, preppers included, are in love with a concept or the idea of living a post apocalypse lifestyle. Lots of yacking and what ifs, but sadly very few have ever gone for extended periods of time living in a really rustic fashion. A weekend at the local campground does not count, nor does the annual 4 day deer hunt. I am talking about living for a number of months in a row like a pioneer. Go live in a tent with wood heat and prepare your meals over a fire, cut your own wood, walk or ride a horse and never leave the woods. Hot water has to be heated over a fire or a tin wood heater. Drinking water packed from the stream or bucketed from a hole chipped in the ice. Only then are you going to get a true feel for how all consuming living that sort of lifestyle is.

I am sure a few on here have done it, but I bet not many.


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## Spice (Dec 21, 2014)

The Amish around here no longer make their own cloth. Canning and smoking are very popular, as is making cheeses, and they have some basement storage for medium-term egg storage. They've got some sweet pulley systems for getting barns built using just manpower (build the supports first, have them ready, on barn raising day lots of manpower pulling on the ropes to get things into position and solidify the skeleton of the building, so the rest can get done without the big community get-together.

I really admire our local Mennonite disaster relief organization. When our local farm store flooded, there were a fair number of 'english' volunteers to help the next day, but nothing like the organized, efficient team of Mennonite men who descended as a group, complete with their own lunch wagon. The same organizational structure does more standard things such as barn raisings, but they also respond to other community disasters (say, someone's farm burns down). If sickness makes a guy unable to harvest, his neighbors show up to cover it.


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## Salt-N-Pepper (Aug 18, 2014)

bigwheel said:


> Have an old pal up in Ohiya who is around them a lot. He dont have many good things to say. He says they stink..beat their wives and mistreat their animals. Not sure about that as I aint never seen one except on TV. I will grill him for more info and report back.


Well, they are not "two time a day shower" people so, yeah, they smell like people did up until the 1950's (and like most people around the world still smell), but I've never noticed women with black eyes, ever. I've also never seen a lot of abused livestock either, and I've lived around them for 30+ years.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

I do have one story about the Amish;
My buddy is an above average woodworker but he knows that he isn't a great woodworker. So he commissions an Amish gentlemen to make a table for him. The agreement was that my buddy would provide the wood and the Amish guy would build the table and charge for his labor. Fair enough right?

Well, the Amish dude never came through with his end of the bargain and essentially stole the wood from my friend. Yes, my friend should have gotten a receipt from the Amish guy but he didn't and now has no recourse to get his wood back. The Amish guy just avoids him and uses the "Amish Community" to hide and they help him. The last thing I heard from my buddy is that he went to the woodshop and found the Amish thief. Of course the other Amish guys at the woodshop stood up for their little thief and got some "Elder" involved who claimed that my buddy never gave the guy the wood. 

It wasn't a lot of money, my friend salvaged the wood and re-planed it. But it was the principle of the issue.


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## Camel923 (Aug 13, 2014)

When too large dividing into smaller more manageable groups is an idea of republicanism. I am around a lot of Amish. For the most part they are very nice. They do tend to be self reliant as much as possible. All groups have good and bad eggs. Most farmers of any sort care for their animals because they depend on them. Like anyone else learn what you feel is useful and discard the rest. Religion and politics tick off people faster than anything because everyone thinks they are right. There is a reason why these communities function beyond being self reliant.


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## Salt-N-Pepper (Aug 18, 2014)

Spice said:


> I really admire our local Mennonite disaster relief organization. When our local farm store flooded, there were a fair number of 'english' volunteers to help the next day, but nothing like the organized, efficient team of Mennonite men who descended as a group, complete with their own lunch wagon. The same organizational structure does more standard things such as barn raisings, but they also respond to other community disasters (say, someone's farm burns down). If sickness makes a guy unable to harvest, his neighbors show up to cover it.


I was all like "Holy Cow, this person must be from around here!"

Then I realized it was the wife.

Oh.

Yeah, the Mennonite Relief Corps are great, the men, women and children drop everything and go to where there is an emergency, doesn't matter if they people in trouble are Mennonite or "English" (their word, not mine... and yes, they actually call us that)... The Amish show up as well, I worked along side a group of 20 Amish men back in '93 when we were sandbagging along the Mississippi during the great flood, they worked me into the ground but I was bound and determined not to be the first person to quit for a rest. Fortunately, a couple other "English" broke before I did and the Amish leader of the crew had mercy on all of us...

BTW, totally beside the point, I have to say I had the best Anheuser-Busch product EVER that day... it was broiling, in the 90's with 95 percent humidity, and the stink from the river was so thick you could cut it with a dull knife.

As we were working, we saw two AB trucks pull up... the driver got out, popped the portable fork lift off of one of them and started unloading case after case of canned water. A-B had shut down the St. Louis canning facility and ran a large production of purified canned water... the cans were just aluminum with a quickly produced "PURE WATER" and the A-B Eagle in black paint on the can... supplied relief workers all up and down the river, no charge. That was good of them.


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## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

Slippy, most of that wasn't in response to what you said, it was about the majority's focus on the negative aspects from which we learn nothing. You seem to be the only one who gets that we could learn a lot from them.

I'm not suggesting that we all become Amish. I'm not suggesting that every aspect of their way of life is perfect.

Hey Jacob, your mother dresses you funny! hahaha

Hey Wilbur, try standing a little closer to your razor next time. hahaha

Hey Thomas, how many horsepower is that Buggy? Oh yeah, one!! hahaha

We done now?

Did you know many Amish families freeze food? Many Amish households have a part of their basement insulated with sawdust. They go out and chop ice from ponds and streams, stack it in their basement freezers, and keep stuff frozen all year long.

You can borrow this idea without all the trouble of chopping and hauling ice. You can use milk jugs, soda bottles, or whatever and fill them 3/4 full of water. Set them out when it's freezing and store the ice in any well insulated space. This will let you have a walk in freezer with no electricity and little effort. As a bonus, you will have a lot more stored water too.

This is the kind of thing I would learn from the Amish. This is the kind of stuff they can teach us.


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## AquaHull (Jun 10, 2012)

The "Amish/Mennonite" in my area do most everything the "English" Community does.

They have guns and know how to use them. They will not be a pushover like some think.


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## Slippy (Nov 14, 2013)

10-4 Prepadoodle,

When I posted I had not read the other posts but I went back and found where others said that stuff. Its all good!



Prepadoodle said:


> Slippy, most of that wasn't in response to what you said, it was about the majority's focus on the negative aspects from which we learn nothing. You seem to be the only one who gets that we could learn a lot from them.
> 
> I'm not suggesting that we all become Amish. I'm not suggesting that every aspect of their way of life is perfect.
> 
> ...


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## Deebo (Oct 27, 2012)

People poke fun at anything different. 
I only know the tv version, so my only addition to the thread is that they may not be perfect, buy they are doing it. 
Like my Alaskan friend said, try living a year like they do. Would be the ultimate test, for me.


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## Salt-N-Pepper (Aug 18, 2014)

AquaHull said:


> The "Amish/Mennonite" in my area do most everything the "English" Community does.
> 
> They have guns and know how to use them. They will not be a pushover like some think.


I've seen Amish buying hunting guns and rounds, so perhaps some of the young guys would fight back. The elders, however, would not approve.


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## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

What do you call an Amish man with his hand up a horse's butt?

A mechanic!

Here's something mildly interesting, and kind of in line with what Spice was asking on another thread...


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## Arklatex (May 24, 2014)

I think there is alot to be learned from them. Never met any, just seen them on "breaking Amish" and "Amish mafia". 

I am interested in their carpentry. And would like to learn how to make furniture with only hand tools.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

Actually I have wondered for years why the Amish didn;t make extra scratch teaching their skills to preppers. They could even sell primitive tools to preppers. None of itwuld violate thier religious values. People pay bux for surivalist retreats.

But I agree with the original poster; I got no use for the rest of their lives. I think their archaic skills have definate prepper applications, but all that church stuff makes me wanna flee the scene.

If I had the time I would love to learn from the amish, mebbe stockpile a spinning wheel or two. Seriously. They know some critical stuff.


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## Prepadoodle (May 28, 2013)

When I lived in northeastern Pa, I would go to a lot of estate farm auctions. There was always a ton of horse drawn farm equipment, and nobody wanted it, except now and then if someone wanted an old plow to use as a mailbox holder. If the "iron" was in good shape, I would buy it cheap and stash it until I had a truckload, which I drove down to Lancaster county and sold to the Amish there.

As long as the "iron" was good (their word) they would fix it up and put it to use. They always paid me a fair price and dealt honestly with me.

There's nothing like watching an Amish crew bailing hay with horse-drawn equipment. Beautiful 4 horse teams pulling a big bailer, guys in the back stacking, other teams offloading them as they move... it reminded me of a military operation.

Yeah, there is a lot I don't like about their culture, but if there was ever a big EMP that fried the grid, someone would have to run over and tell them, they wouldn't even notice. They have mad survival skills, yo!


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

Carpentry, farming, these would be the big areas I would wanna learn more about. I used to watch This Old House because all the old tools were so damned fascinating.

We can all figure out how to farm a small garden, but what do you do when you have ten acres of alfalfa to process without a tractor? 

But where would I plug in my vaporizer?


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## BagLady (Feb 3, 2014)

We've had a lot of interaction with the Amish. Three of whom we can call on as we need. We met Noah at a hardware auction, where he singled me out to ask if we had a trailer there to deliver some windows he bought. We did, and there after our friendship developed. (He's a real character!!)
Joe is the guy that does our horseshoeing, as I am not able to do it anymore. Johnny is a carpenter, along with his sons.
We've bought harness, milk, seeds, recipes, and home baked goodies from them, and we've learned a lot.
Once an Amish person accepts you, they will try to help you out in any way they can. 
It takes time, and mutual respect, as with any relationship.


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