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Extreme Living

6K views 23 replies 13 participants last post by  Black Blade 
#1 · (Edited)
COULD YOU SURVIVE WITHOUT MONEY?
MEET THE GUY WHO DOES

In Utah, a modern-day caveman has lived for the better part of a decade on zero dollars a day. People used to think he was crazy

By Christopher Ketcham; Photograph by Mark Heithoff




DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American-wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office-he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present."

On a warm day in early spring, I clamber along a set of red-rock cliffs to the mouth of his cave, where I find a note signed with a smiley face: CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE). From the outside, the place looks like a hollowed teardrop, about the size of an Amtrak bathroom, with enough space for a few pots that hang from the ceiling, a stove under a stone eave, big buckets full of beans and rice, a bed of blankets in the dirt, and not much else. Suelo's been here for three years, and it smells like it.

Night falls, the stars wink, and after an hour, Suelo tramps up the cliff, mimicking a raven's call-his salutation-a guttural, high-pitched caw. He's lanky and tan; yesterday he rebuilt the entrance to his cave, hauling huge rocks to make a staircase. His hands are black with dirt, and his hair, which is going gray, looks like a bird's nest, full of dust and twigs from scrambling in the underbrush on the canyon floor. Grinning, he presents the booty from one of his weekly rituals, scavenging on the streets of Moab: a wool hat and gloves, a winter jacket, and a white nylon belt, still wrapped in plastic, along with Carhartt pants and sandals, which he's wearing. He's also scrounged cans of tuna and turkey Spam and a honeycomb candle. All in all, a nice haul from the waste product of America. "You made it," he says. I hand him a bag of apples and a block of cheese I bought at the supermarket, but the gift suddenly seems meager.

Suelo lights the candle and stokes a fire in the stove, which is an old blackened tin, the kind that Christmas cookies might come in. It's hooked to a chain of soup cans segmented like a caterpillar and fitted to a hole in the rock. Soon smoke billows into the night and the cave is warm. I think of how John the Baptist survived on honey and locusts in the desert. Suelo, who keeps a copy of the Bible for bedtime reading, is satisfied with a few grasshoppers fried in his skillet.

HE WASN'T ALWAYS THIS WAY. SUELO graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in anthropology, he thought about becoming a doctor, he held jobs, he had cash and a bank account. In 1987, after several years as an assistant lab technician in Colorado hospitals, he joined the Peace Corps and was posted to an Ecuadoran village high in the Andes. He was charged with monitoring the health of tribespeople in the area, teaching first aid and nutrition, and handing out medicine where needed; his proudest achievement was delivering three babies. The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields-quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils-for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn't need, as Suelo describes it. They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. "It looked," he says, "like money was impoverishing them."

The experience was transformative, but Suelo needed another decade to fashion his response. He moved to Moab and worked at a women's shelter for five years. He wanted to help people, but getting paid for it seemed dishonest-how real was help that demanded recompense? The answer lay, in part, in the Christianity of his childhood. In Suelo's nascent philosophy, following Jesus meant adopting the hard life prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. "Giving up possessions, living beyond credit and debt," Suelo explains on his blog, "freely giving and freely taking, forgiving all debts, owing nobody a thing, living and walking without guilt . . . grudge [or] judgment." If grace was the goal, Suelo told himself, then it had to be grace in the classical sense, from the Latin gratia, meaning favor-and also, free.

By 1999, he was living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand-he had saved just enough money for the flight. From there, he made his way to India, where he found himself in good company among the sadhus, the revered ascetics who go penniless for their gods. Numbering as many as 5 million, the sadhus can be found wandering roads and forests across the subcontinent, seeking enlightenment in self-abnegation. "I wanted to be a sadhu," Suelo says. "But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A true test of faith would be to return to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping nations on earth and be a sadhu there. To be a vagabond in America, a bum, and make an art of it-the idea enchanted me."

The morning ritual is simple and slow: a cup of sharp tea brewed from the needles of piñon and juniper trees, a swim in the cold emerald water where the creek pools in the red rock. Then, two naked cavemen lounging under the Utah sun. Around noon, we forage along the banks and under the cliffs, looking for the stuff of a stir-fry dinner. We find mustard plants among the rocks, the raw leaves as satisfying as cauliflower, and down in the cool of the creek-where Suelo gets his water and takes his baths (no soap for him) -we cull watercress in heads as big as supermarket lettuce, and on the bank we spot a lode of wild onions, with bulbs that pop clean from the soil. In leaner times, Suelo's gatherings include ants, grubs, termites, lizards, and roadkill. He recently found a deer, freshly run over, and carved it up and boiled it. "The best venison of my life," he says.

I tell him that living without money seems difficult. What about starvation? He's never gone without a meal (friends in Moab sometimes feed him). What about getting deadly ill? It happened once, after eating a cactus he misidentified-he vomited, fell into a delirium, thought he was dying, even wrote a note for those who would find his corpse. But he got better. That it's hard is exactly the point, he says. "Hardship is a good thing. We need the challenge. Our bodies need it. Our immune systems need it. My hardships are simple, right at hand-they're manageable." When I tell him about my rent back in New York-$2,400 a month-he shakes his head. What's left unsaid is that I'm here writing about him to make money, for a magazine that depends for its survival on the advertising revenue of conspicuous consumption. As he prepares a cooking fire, Suelo tells me that years ago he had a neighbor in the canyon, an alcoholic who lived in a cave bigger than his. The old man would pan for gold in the stream and net enough cash each month to buy the beer that kept him drunk. Suelo considers the riches of our own forage. "What if we saw gold for what it is?" he says meditatively. "Gold is pretty but virtually useless. Somebody decided it has worth, and everybody accepted this decision. The natives in the Americas thought Europeans were insane because of their lust for such a useless yellow substance."

He sautés the watercress, mustard leaves, and wild onions, mixing in fresh almonds he picked from a friend's orchard and ghee made from Dumpster-dived butter, and we eat out of his soot-caked pans. From the perch on the cliff, the life of the sadhu seems reasonable. But I don't want to live in a cave. I like indoor plumbing (Suelo squats). I like electricity. Still, there's an obvious beauty in the simplicity of subsistence. It's an un-American notion these days. We don't revere our ascetics, and we dismiss the idea that money could be some kind of consensual delusion. For most of us, it's as real as the next house payment. Suelo doesn't take public assistance or use food stamps, but he does survive in part on our reality, the discarded surfeit of the money system that he denounces-a system, as it happens, that recently looked like it was headed for the cliff.

Suelo is 48, and he doesn't exactly have a 401(k). "I'll do what creatures have been doing for millions of years for retirement," he says. "Why is it sad that I die in the canyon and not in the geriatric ward well-insured? I have great faith in the power of natural selection. And one day, I will be selected out." Until then, think of him like the raven, cleaning up the carcasses the rest of us leave behind.

http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9817&mbid=yhp&npu=1
 
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#2 ·
Buffalo Man Lives In Underground Bunker

Buffalo Man Lives In Underground Bunker



Clarence Rounds and his Bunker Home

Posted by: Stefan Mychajliw

Believe it or not, there's a guy that's been living in an underground bunker in Buffalo for the past six years.

His name is Clarence Rounds. He's 47-years-old. His home is literally down to earth.

2 On Your Side's Stefan Mychajliw: "Why this lifestyle?"

Rounds: "I just wanted something simple, and basic, down to earth."

Mychajliw: "What is it about this lifestyle that suits you?"

Rounds: "I pretty much, am on my own. And I'm my own boss here. I do what I want to do."

The Buffalo man said he was living on Squaw Island and had to leave once the area was cleaned up and turned into a park.

He was walking in the section of the City where he lives now, found a fairly wooded area, and decided to build a bunker as his home.

It took him about two years to dig the roughly 16-by-20 foot underground home. It's close to six-and-a-half feet deep.

Mychajliw: "How did you do it?"

Rounds: "With a bucket and a shovel, day by day. I'd go to the soup kitchen, and then I'd just start digging the hole. The bunker is more energy efficient and loses less heat. I wouldn't be exposed to the wind. And I wouldn't need to build any walls. I'd just use the dirt for the walls. So I'd only need a roof. So it was more economics that I did it for."

Clarence went to the Buffalo Public Library and read engineering books to learn how to make the bunker as structurally sound as possible. The initial fear was that heavy winter snow would cause it to collapse.

"I got books on roof framing, post framing, and things like that, so that I would have the formulas available to calculate the loads properly so the roof wouldn't collapse on me while I was sleeping," added Rounds.

A car battery serves as the main source of power for a small light and clock just above his bed.

That car battery is also connected to a spliced extension cord that powers a radio with speakers inside and outside of the bunker.

There's a fireplace with a vent that serves as a heat source and stove.
And then there's the issue of a bathroom.

Mychajliw: "This is somewhat of an embarrassing question, it's the first thing I thought of: what about a bathroom?"

Rounds: "The bathroom? I use the porta-john that I got from one of the elderly people in the neighborhood. They donated it to me, because they knew I needed that."

It isn't exactly a porta-john.

It's a walker that has a toilet seat positioned over a bucket.

Some canned goods like peanut butter and pork and beans are on a small shelf, as well as a number of books, including a Bible and a paperback copy of "The Black Marble," by Joseph Wambaugh.

Mychajliw: "Do you ever get lonely?"

Rounds: "I don't get lonely. I try to keep myself busy. I've got my drafting. I love to read books. And I always try to learn stuff."

According to Rounds, he didn't know his father and his mother passed away at the age of 29. He grew up in an orphanage, spent time studying at Seneca Vocational High School, and served two years in the Army "during the Carter Administration."

He is Native American, states his family is from the Arapaho tribe.

Mychajliw: "Do you feel as though growing up in an orphanage either led to this or this type of lifestyle?"

Rounds: "It changes you for sure, especially at a young age. I grew up in an institution. I didn't have much family around me. So I didn't have a support network there to help me out with that."

Money for food is earned through a number of odd jobs like landscaping, construction and roofing.

That's how he learned how to put together his bunker.

Mychajliw: "What about the property itself? Anyone ever give you a hard time about being here?"

Rounds: "Nobody has given me a hard time. I've never bothered my neighbors. I support my neighbors. I keep people away from their fence line."
There's a fire pit outside of the bunker and some touches of home, including a Sabres flag and a "Welcome Friends" mat near the ladder to the bunker.

Mychajliw: "I think a lot of people would think, Clarence, why doesn't the guy just get a house, get an apartment?"

Rounds: "A lot of people have asked me that question. I like it here. I like nature. I like to be in the woods. I grew up as a child; I always wanted a cabin in the woods. Like Michael Landon in Little House On The Prairie."

Mychajliw: "People could think, this guy is nuts?"

Rounds: "I'm not nuts. I'm a clever person. I use clever ideas. I use the materials that are given to me in life and God's talents that are given to me, to make this a possibility. It's not easy hanging here; it's a lot of work."

Mychajliw: "Why not just get an apartment?"

Rounds: "I know. It just seems to me this is a worthwhile thing to do. It's down to earth, and it makes me happy."

Mychajliw: "How happy are you?"

Rounds: "I'm happy. I'm a happy, go lucky guy. Life in general is pretty good. I don't think of my life as being bad. Life is just a continuation of yesterday."

http://www.wgrz.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=48512


Black Blade: When things look bleak and hopeless, you sometimes come across stories like this showing that people can survive anything. Actually this looks more like an adventure and a test of survival skills.
 
#3 ·
Some interesting stories. Thanks for sharing these.

I'm not sure how many would go to these "extremes" but it does show how little is needed to live in this world.
 
#6 ·
The streets of our cities are full of these people. They are called homeless.
We all dream of living off the fat of the land, but when it comes to it, the land is anything but fat. Just not the kind of life I have in mind.
 
#7 ·
Freegans forage for food, loathe waste

Freegans forage for food, loathe waste



Sunday 08.09.09
BY NIRVI SHAH AND SIVAN FRASIER

Shoulder-deep in a Coral Springs commercial trash bin, Brian Sprinkle was feeling hot and sweaty -- and lucky.

Dented boxes of spaghetti and containers of croissants, plus potatoes, onions, bananas, plastic-wrapped hunks of watermelon and baby portobello mushrooms were stacked outside the Dumpster, in cardboard boxes he had also found inside.

``This is what happens when you have a consumer society,'' Sprinkle said, pausing for a moment between gloveless dives to the bottom of the metal bin.

``Corn in the husk,'' said Sprinkle, 25, of Fort Lauderdale. ``That's my favorite.''

Meet the ultimate anti-consumer.

Since a time long before double-digit unemployment, widespread foreclosures and the collective closing of American wallets, a sliver of society has gotten by on the rest of society's discards. Sprinkle, his friends and thousands of others across the country are freegans, people who eschew capitalism whenever possible and loathe waste.

``Freeganism is kind of a protest, a boycott against a society that is pretty much run on slavery and genocide,'' said Brian Mulligan, 22, of Coral Springs. He frequents Dumpsters on his own and with Sprinkle. To avoid contributing to a system he dislikes, he doesn't work.

Indeed, the freegan movement is a reaction to the modern global economy, said Janet Kalish of New York-based freegan.info. Many freegans believe that nearly everything produced harms the earth or its creatures in some way.

``We're trying to resist buying and contributing to this system,'' she said. ``We're built on overproduction. We have an economy based on destructiveness. For the big machine of our economy to keep on rolling means we have to be exploitive of our planet.''

Freegan practices can vary from Dumpster diving to backyard gardening, Kalish said. And though freegans get their name from a contraction of the words free and vegan, not all are vegetarian, she said.

``We're just trying to provoke creativity. People can pursue their own way of being apart from the system,'' she said. ``There are people who squat. Or build their own wigwams. There's people who manage to live on very little money. I don't think it matters whether they call themselves freegan or not.''

Ivania Reyes of Pembroke Park doesn't have a label for her daily trips to the back entrance of grocery stores, where she has become a fixture. She just wanted to figure out a way to help people get by in the mobile home park she manages.

She became friendly with store employees, who now supply her with food that is trash-bin bound.

Sympathetic workers have provided her with birthday cakes, mangoes, brownies, pineapples and watermelons. A recent coup: 86 unopened boxes of Danish she distributed door-to-door in the Lake Shore Mobile Home Community.

``I really enjoy helping people,'' said Reyes, 51, who is also motivated to rescue food that would otherwise be thrown out. ``I do it to help a lot of people who don't have jobs. I never did this before'' the economy was so bad.

Leftover food is the biggest single component of American trash, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Americans throw away more than 25 percent of all food prepared -- about 96 billion pounds of waste annually.

And the country spends about $1 billion a year to get rid of it.

Reyes said many of the tenants in the mobile home community where she works can barely afford their rent -- 47 of the nearly 100 tenants are behind on their payments -- and she hopes her contributions of salvaged food will help cut their expenses.

Sprinkle and his friends also pay forward the fruits -- and vegetables -- of their labor.

They cook their finds into curries, soups and stews that they share Friday afternoons in Fort Lauderdale's Stranahan Park with anyone who cares to join them.

Kalish, Sprinkle and other freegans acknowledge that, at the moment, the waste products of the very capitalist economy they dislike fuel their ability to live the way they do.

``A certain amount of capitalism has to prevail or there won't be any free stuff or cheap stuff for the rest of us to find,'' said Anneli Rufus, 50, who published The Scavenger's Manifesto with her husband Kristan Lawson, 48, earlier this year.

The pair don't consider themselves freegans -- they pay for medicines, housing, eyeglasses and some of their food. But they abide by their own philosophy of ``scavenomics.''

``We like to get whatever free that we can get for free,'' Rufus said.

The Berkeley, Calif., residents haven't bought new clothes in at least five years and grow some of their own food using seeds from fruits and vegetables they've eaten or seeds they acquired for free at seed swaps.

``Sometimes all you can do is cut coupons out of the newspaper. Sometimes all you can do is go to yard sales,'' Rufus said.

``Some people are in it for the environment. Some people do it to save money. Some people do it for political reasons.''

Snowbird and businessman Russ Erickson, who winters in Key West, spends nearly nothing on his modest life of thrifting and foraging for food. He lives much of the year in his van, gets his clothes from yard sales or second-hand stores and showers at truck stops.

``Everybody's got too much stuff in their life,'' said Erickson, 67, a former contractor who turned bitter about the American consumer lifestyle.

Now, he is co-owner of a doggy daycare business in North Carolina where he works occasionally. But he is more likely to be found waiting outside buffet-style restaurants until the end of the evening to eat what would otherwise be thrown away.

``People are afraid to take chances and live on the fly because they want their creature comforts and stuff like that. They're spoiled. The whole society is spoiled,'' he said.

``My philosophy in life is that less is more. You can be happy with almost nothing.''

Sprinkle said he and his like-minded friends feel the same way.

They find spending time together as fulfilling as others may find shopping.

``We're not a very materialistic bunch. We don't have the craving to buy lots of things. Our main goal is to have lots of good food and get together,'' he said, although the occasional Dumpster score of discarded books is welcome.

But a lifestyle of finding treasure in others' trash isn't the ultimate goal of freeganism, Kalish said.

``A better vision is that we won't have supermarkets the way we are now. We won't be Dumpster diving. We will have changed the system so we're not exploiting people and habitats and animals. We'll be growing more locally,'' she said.

``I would think that we can picture a system where it's about responsible disposal of things, responsible production of things and making things that are built to work -- not built to break.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1178386.html


Black Blade: Yep, we call it "Dumpster Diving".
 
#8 ·
Huh Interesting.

That is kinda neat. But I have to have my beer.
So I guess I would have to be like the guy panning for gold for booze.
 
#11 ·
Kernel..

Yes Sir. You are always thinking. :thankyou:
If it was not for these dag blasted wakey tobakey growers around here, I could have a nice still going.
Dag blasted revonoors are all over the dag blasted place. :geezer:
Wonder how much booze I can "Legally" make. Hmmm. :rofl:
 

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#13 ·
Taxes. IIRC, beer and wine under a certain gallons per year for personal use is exempt, but "distilled spirits" is taxed, just different rates depending on whether it is for drinking or drag racing.

Back in the day (70s and 80s) Mother Earth News was big into home alcohol fuel production, everything from corn squeezins to recycled M&Ms and Hershey bars from the scrap produced by the candy makers. At that time, due to the oil shortage and long gas lines/empty stations there was a lot of interest in it. ATF was gettin' calls and letters left and right about getting licensed to produce alcohol for fuel. Too many, they were getting overwhelmed.

IIRC, their bean counters figured if you produced less than 200 gallons of happy juice, I mean FUEL, per year then the cost to issue and administer a license and collect the tax was below the break even point. Their somewhat "unofficial policy" was that if you kept your output small and didn't sell it, they didn't want to be bothered with regulating you. Many people made homemade stills and tinkered with running their cars on it, then gas got available and cheap again and a lot of those stills got recycled.

Nowdays, I'm pretty sure they have a "zero tolerance" policy in regards to hard liquor. Heck, look what happened to a microbrewery because they put a nutrition label on the cans.

YAKIMA VALLEY BREWERY UNDER ATF SIEGE
 
#14 ·
Some don't have the freedom to choose to live in poverty. How about the millions living in worse conditions in the slums of Calcutta, Mexico City, Bangkok, Manila (etc etc).

Choosing a life of poverty is a luxury, afforded to the aesthetics or crazy among us. Youth ("freegans") doing so is a simple matter of delayed maturity. In a few short years most will grow out of the phase.
 
#15 ·
I used to know a few "Mother Earth News" types who did well by living cheap and doing for themselves raising veggies, fruits and small tasty critters. Some would hunt mushrooms and berries in the hills and one old boy had a truck with push bars mounted in front and would run up and down mountain roads to slay a deer or two for meat. I know some who brew their own beer and another who makes fruit wine and brandy. That reminds me, depending on how my work situation develops in the next few months I may have to get a hold of my beekeeper friend and prep some mead. In this economy I suspect that many will be buying much less and doing what they can to survive - even getting food stamps, food banks, and even dumpster dive. People will whatever they have to in order to get food and survive.
 
#16 ·
Good points. Thanks for the info Kernel. :cheers:
A professor and his student traveled the world asking people why they hated America. Blah Blah on and on they went.
They went on Fox and O'Riley asked them if they asked the young people interviewed if they would "move" to America.
Too a person they said "Yes".
Interesting that the third world is striving to advance themselves and like S.J. says, those kids want the hard life, "While mommy and daddy sends them $$$."
Picts. I have put up before. But let them move here. Live with the locals and see how long they like it.
No dumpsters, no food stamps, there garden fails. They starve.
I am not knocking there choice. Just my camping days are over.
In there defense. When the real depression hits. Which I think "is coming" they will be one step up in the survival life.
 

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#17 · (Edited)
The Tunnels of Lost Vegas

The Tunnels of Lost Vegas

The people living in drains below Las Vegas | The Sun |Features



LOVEBIRDS Steven and Kathryn share a well-organised home in bustling Las
Vegas.

They have a neat, if compact kitchen, a furnished living area, and a bedroom complete with double bed, wardrobe and bookshelf featuring a wide selection including a Frank Sinatra biography and Spanish phrase book.

And they make their money in some of the biggest casinos in the world.

But their life is far from the ordinary.

Because, along with hundreds of others, the couple are part of a secret community living in the dark and dirty underground flood tunnels below the famous strip.

Rather than working in the bars or kitchens they "credit hustle", prowling the casinos searching the fruit machines for money or credits left by drunken gamblers.

Despite the risks from disease, highly venomous spiders and flooding washing them away, many of the tunnel people have put together elaborate camps with furniture, ornaments and shelves filled with belongings.

Steven and girlfriend Kathryn's base - under Caesar's Palace casino - is one of the most elaborate. They even have a kettle and a makeshift shower fabricated out of an office drinking water dispenser.



Home comforts ... the couple's kitchen under the famous city

But their bed and many of their belongings are on crates to keep them off the damp floor.
Despite it being hot and dry outside, their tunnel is wet from water being sent down from nearby construction work.

As he gives a guided tour of home, Steven Dommermuth explains: "We use our imagination a lot.

"Our bed came from a skip outside an apartment complex. It's mainly stuff people dump that we pick up. One man's junk is another man's gold.

Gallery

"We get the stuff late at night so people don't see us because it's kind of embarrassing."

He later gives directions to the tunnels' own art gallery, a collection of graffiti by local artists and some by the underground residents.

Steven moved into the tunnels two years ago after he lost his hotel front-desk job due to a heroin problem he claims he kicked in January.

He now works the same hotels credit-hustling, and his life retains other similarities with the one he left behind.

He says: "We work our way down the strip. The most I've ever found is 997 dollars (£609) on one machine. I've found about $500 a few times. But normally $20 or so is enough to call it a night.

"We buy food and supplies like shampoo and soap. Last night I went and watched the new Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds up at the Palms Hotel."



Going underground ... the entrance to the flood tunnels

Despite his established set-up, Steven claims he eventually wants to leave the tunnels but can't because of two outstanding arrest warrants from drug possession charges two years ago.

It is estimated the population of the underground community could be as many as 700. As well as credit-hustling, they earn their money off the wildly excessive city above by begging and "dumpster diving" - raiding bins and skips.

There are around 350 miles of flood channels running under Las Vegas. Most inhabitants are in the area under the city's strip.

Another couple, Amy and JR, have lived in the tunnels for two years, having moved to Las Vegas in search of work, wealth and a slice of the famous Sin City action.

Putting down the Twilight vampire book she is reading for the third time, Amy, 33, explains: "My husband and I have been down here two years this week.

"We were living with my mom in California but the house was full and we had to leave.

"I heard Las Vegas was a good place for jobs. It's the city that never sleeps, with all the bright lights, and I'd always wanted to come.

"But it was tough and we started living under the staircase outside the MGM casino. Then we met a guy who lived in the tunnels. We've been down here ever since.

"I have my books, my CD player, crossword puzzles, some clothes and my picture of our son Brady, who was killed 11 years ago at four months old. The main dangers are the floods and the Black Widow spiders. But it's not a terrible place to be if you're homeless.

"It's much cooler than on the streets, we get a breeze coming through and the cops don't really bother you. It's quiet and everyone helps each other out down here.

"I hope to get out one day. But I want to stay in Las Vegas - I love it here."

Amy and JR met 13 years ago and even got married in one of the city's popular wedding chapels on Valentine's Day last year.

Their wedding had some similarities with the 110,000 other couples who get hitched in the city each year.

JR, 36, explains: "We got married in the Shalimar Chapel.



Gloomy ... JR and Amy at home

"We went to watch a show, then to McDonald's for dinner. We got a little bit drunk and did the other normal wedding day things - only we had to come back down here rather than go to a hotel room."

Some of those living there have been forced into the network of tunnels by the recession and difficult job market.

Food

The economic downturn has hit the underground residents in their pockets too.

Amy and JR's neighbour Jamie, showing off a wristband he found that gives him free food all day at a hotel buffet, explains: "I've been down here since May.

"I've worked at a lot of the hotels, mainly in building and construction, but not for a couple of years. The jobs are harder to come by now.

"Now I credit hustle but there are lots more people doing it these days. Hundreds and hundreds. You see little old ladies doing it."

As for other entertainment in the tunnels, the 45-year-old adds: "We're big talk radio fans. And a few of us are accomplished musicians and have
instruments here.

"One guy down here has a full-time job. I don't think gambling is the cause of many people being down here. It's more alcohol and drugs. We all gamble a bit - we're in Vegas."



Bright lights ... Las Vegas' famous strip

Local writer Matthew O'Brien, who has had a book published about the tunnel people, called Beneath The Neon, has been working with Steven and others to help get people housed. He recently founded the Shine A Light foundation to aid them.

He explains: "I guide social workers into the tunnels, show them the terrain and introduce them to people.

"They offer these people services like health and drug counselling.

"We have got 12 to 15 people into houses in the last six months.

"But a lot of the people are very resistant to help. Many don't want to give up their addictions.

"They like their freedom and that no one is telling them what to do.

"They are scared of what's out there.

"To come out of the tunnel and face the world is intimidating for some of the people. Some are very much entrenched down in that tunnel and comfortable. That's why the charity doesn't like to give out too much food, water and clothing.

"We don't want them to get too comfortable because it is really an illusion. It can be extremely dangerous.

"It doesn't rain much in Nevada but when it does the tunnels can fill very quickly. There have been 20 drownings in the last 20 years and a lot of those were people who were living in the tunnels.

"Steve and Kathryn can say they feel like they have a home. But when it pours down three inches of rain in two hours it's clear it's not a home. It's a flood channel."
 
#18 ·
If you like reading about this stuff, "possum living" by Dolly Freed was very entertaining, a father and daughter who scavenged, gardened, made their own booze near philadelphia in the 70's; the foxfire books have some good info on how rural people used to blacksmith, build, hunt, make moonshine etc in the past; mostly interviews with older people in the 70's also, good info
New on here, great posts, very informative, thanks
 
#19 ·
Death of 'Caveman' ends an era in Idaho

Death of 'Caveman' ends an era in Idaho





Known as the "Salmon River Caveman," Richard Zimmerman lived an essentially 19th century lifestyle, a digital-age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land.

"He was in his home at the caves at the end, and it was his wish to die there," said Connie Fitte, who lived across the river. "He was the epitome of the free spirit."

Richard Zimmerman had been in declining health when he died Wednesday.

Few knew him by his given name. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was Dugout Dick.

He was the last of Idaho's river-canyon loners that date back to Territorial days. They are a unique group that until the 1980s included canyon contemporaries with names like Beaver Dick, Cougar Dave and Wheelbarrow Annie, "Buckskin Bill" (real name Sylvan Hart) and "Free Press Frances" Wisner. Fiercely independent loners, they lived eccentric lives on their own terms and made the state more interesting just by being here.

Most, like Zimmerman, came from someplace else. Drawn by Idaho's remoteness and wild places removed from social pressures, they came and spent their lives here, leaving only in death.

Some became reluctant celebrities, interviewed about their unusual lifestyles and courted by media heavyweights. Zimmerman was featured in National Geographic magazine and spurned repeated invitations to appear on the "Tonight Show."

"I ride Greyhounds, not airplanes," he said in a 1993 Statesman interview. "Besides, the show isn't in California. The show is here."

Cort Conley, who included Zimmerman in his 1994 book "Idaho Loners", said that "like Thoreau, he often must have smiled at how much he didn't need. É What gave him uncommon grace and dignity for me were his spiritual life, his musical artistry, his unperturbed acceptance of life as it is, and being a WWII veteran who had served his country and harbored no expectations in return."

His metamorphisis to Dugout Dick began when he crossed a wooden bridge over the Salmon River in 1947 and built a makeshift home on the side of a hill. He spent the rest of his life there, fashioning one cavelike dwelling after another, furnishing them with castoff doors, car windows, old tires and other leavings.

"I have everything here," he said. "I got lots of rocks and rubber tires. I have plenty of straw and fruit and vegetables, my dog and my cats and my guitars. I make wine to cook with. There's nothing I really need."

Some of his caves were 60 feet deep. Though he "never meant to build an apartment house," he earned spending money by renting them for $2 a night. Some renters spent one night; others chose the $25 monthly rate and stayed for months or years.

He lived in a cave by choice. Moved by a friend to a care center in Salmon at age 93 because he was in failing health, he walked out and hitchhiked home.

Bruce Long, who rented one of his caves and looked after him, said the care center "had bingo and TV, but things like that held no interest for him. He just wanted to live in his cave.

"People said he was the only person they'd ever known who was absolutely self-sufficient. He didn't work for anybody. He worked for himself."

Born in Indiana in 1916, Zimmerman grew up on farms in Indiana and Michigan, the son of a moonshiner with a mean streak. He rebelled against his domineering father and ran away at a young age, riding the rails west and learning the hobo songs he later would play on a battered guitar for guests at his caves.

He punched cows and worked as a farmhand, settling in Idaho's Lemhi Valley in 1937 and making ends meet by cutting firewood and herding sheep. In 1942, he joined the Army and served as a truck driver in the Pacific during World War II. When his service ended, he returned to Idaho and never left.

He raised goats and chickens, tended a bountiful vegetable garden and orchard and stored what he couldn't eat or sell in a root cellar. A lifelong victim of a quarrelsome stomach, he survived largely on what he could grow or make. Homemade yogurt ranked among his proudest achievements.

He was married once, briefly, to a pen-pal bride from Mexico. The other woman in his life, Bonnie Trositt, tired of life in a cave, left him for a job as a potato sorter and was murdered by her roommate. He claimed to see her spirit in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp on the cave walls.

He rarely went to church, but read and quoted continually from the Bible.

Services are pending. A brother, Raymond Zimmerman, has requested that his remains be sent to Illinois.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/04/23/1164899/death-of-caveman-ends-an-era-in.html#ixzz0lyaoR7Qj


Black Blade: Some interesting self-sufficient people in this country.
 
#20 ·
These stories are fascinating to me.

I have long researched low-cost methods of living, getting off the grid, getting away from the materialism of the modern world.

The best answer I have found is this:

Buy some land. 1-5 acres is more than enough. Even one acre of arable land will feed 40 people for a year if cultivated with care.

Build a small and sustainable home. Strawbale is the method that I think is most doable. Use old tires as a foundation base and fill with rubble, sand, gravel etc. that is available on the land you own.

Design and build a simple recirculating heat exchanger that can run off of solar, and circulate coolant through a long "pipe" buried 10 feet deep in the back yard.

This means that the coolant will be warmer than ambient air temp in winter, and cooler than air in summer. a simple heat exchanger works both ways: cool comes out in summer and warm comes out in winter. This makes the home cool in summer and reduces the amount that you need to burn in winter.

A well and a gravity feed tank with a solar powered pump takes care of water. A simple "long leech" style septic system takes care of the waste.

My best estimate for all of the above is $55,000 plus the land. Square footage for two should be between 600-900. If you have kids, add 150 square feet per head.

Keep your design simple, and use all of the lessons of our past generations to your advantage. A cellar, a smokehouse, a barn, a windmill to pump the water for the stock. Corn feeds chickens, geese, pigs, cows, goats, sheep. Corn is easy to grow in bulk...Wheat works too, as does barley, oats, etc.

There needs to be some kind of "cash crop" or "produce" that brings in cash.

If you can do the initial investment without a loan or mortgage, then the rest becomes fairly easy. You will have to work, and you will have to take chances and risks. You will need to exchange roosters and bulls and billy goats with neighbors to ensure genetic diversity.

If you have enough land, even fuel is possible in either Gasoline (ethanol) or Diesel (Corn Oil). An acre of land will yield 40-60 gallons per year of either, with some leftovers that can be fed to the animals.

So, when you include everything that is listed or inferred above, the cost soars up to $200K or so. That is very bare-bones, but possible. $400K would be better. Some places will be much cheaper, and a persons' initiative and ingenuity will definitely work to reduce this down. Hell, we build AK-47 rifles with hand-tools! What can we NOT do???

I encourage all of you to look into Straw bale construction. I have built and assisted in building 12 strawbale structures now. They are ALL warm, comfy, and very air-tight...You need to factor in fresh-air heat exchange. All of this, and R50 to R90 insulation! A buddy of mine claims he can heat his house (1125 Sq. Feet) with a bic lighter and two candles! Having spent time there, I can tell you that a single candle burning on the night stand will bring the inside temp up to 65 F. Outside temp was 24 F that night!

Just something to think about.....
 
#21 ·
RIP dugout Dick, we need more of his kind in America. Self sufficiency is something most only dream of, he lived the life. :)
 
#22 ·
The area were "dugout dick" lived is absoulutely beautiful, of course the pictures don't show it. There is a road right above his caves that takes you into some of the best elk hunting country around. I saw those caves from the road back in 2003 when I was in Salmon River.

My hunting camp was about two miles down the road from him. I didn't realize what all the building on the side of the hill were until we hit a gas station and the clerk told us that some old guy lived in the caves there.
Small world
 
#23 ·
theres nothing wrong to want to live a frugal lifestyle-i worked with a food bank for 18 yrs and you would not belive the wast that goes on -many a time ive had to leave stuff at a grocery store because of no more room in my truck but when i delivered it to a old folks home it made my day as lots of old folks live on a limited buget and sometimes it food or meds -i could live in the wilds as i was raised in the swamps of fla in the 40-50,s with a wood stove -you get very good at finding wild foods and hunting and trapping wild game-you need very little or none of the stuff in the world that is now- sorry about the long post i was raised in another time ----always look for different ways to live
 
#24 ·
Profiles in Moonbattery: Daniel Suelo

Moonbats don’t want us to earn a profit, to build anything, to eat animals, to use energy, to take up any space, et cetera. You might think you could only live up to their expectations by dying. But Daniel Suelo lights the path to progressive righteousness by proving it is possible to exist in accordance with liberal rhetoric:

[F]or the last twelve years [Daniel Suelo] has been penniless on purpose, surviving off the land.

After a stay in the Canada wilderness Suelo renounced living with money, left his last $30 dollars in a phone booth and moved to Moab, Utah.

As well as quitting cash, he threw away his passport and driving license and changed his legal name, Shellabarger, to Suelo, Spanish for ‘soil’.

Ever since then Suelo has lived outdoors, camped in the wilderness, lived in caves, stayed in communes and spent nights in stranger’s homes, who may have picked him up as a hitch-hiker.

For several years Suelo set up home in a cave, two hundred feet across and fifty feet tall, on the edge of a cliff in the Arches National Park, Utah.

Here he carved a bed out of rock, foraged for food, drank from springs and bathed in a creek.

Any hikers were welcomed to stay with him to share his ‘home’ , his books and the wildflowers and cactus seeds that he ate.

Occucommies may smell like goats, but Suelo even eats like one.

Unfortunately there is a slight blemish in Señor Soil’s hagiology. He succumbed to temptation by going on a binge when the federal government sent him $500 in the form of a “tax return.”



Daniel Suelo lurks in a crevice.
 
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