The Butcher, the Baker, and the Candlestick Maker - Why the Best Survival Plan Is Each Other

Introduction

When I was a child, like many of my generation, I learned the old nursery rhyme:

Rub-a-dub-dub,Three men in a tub,And who do you think they be?The butcher, the baker,The candlestick maker,Turn them out, knaves all three.

Like many nursery rhymes passed down through generations, it is easy to dismiss these words as a bit of childhood nonsense. Yet hidden inside many of these old rhymes are observations about human nature, society, and the way people once understood the world. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker were not just three random characters floating around in a tub. They represented the village. They represented the skills, trades, responsibilities, and cooperation that allowed communities not only to survive, but to prosper.

There is another message hidden there as well: they were all in the same boat. And when you think about it, that little wooden tub is a wonderful metaphor for humanity. It does not matter whether you are the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the farmer, the doctor, the teacher, or the richest person in the world. If the boat sinks, everyone eventually gets wet. That is civilisation.

A civilisation is only as strong as the willingness of its people to put the common good alongside their own.

The myth of surviving alone

In recent years, there has been growing interest in what is commonly called “prepping”. Around the world, people are storing food, buying remote properties, creating emergency plans, and, in some extreme cases, wealthy people are building luxury bunkers designed to withstand social collapse. These underground facilities may have filtered air, independent power supplies, food stores, security systems, and every modern convenience money can buy.

Apparently, New Zealand, including the beautiful Wanaka region, has become a favoured destination for some of the world’s wealthiest people seeking a safe retreat should things turn unpleasant elsewhere. My sister happens to live in Wanaka, with an office near the airport, so I have jokingly given her an important responsibility: if she ever notices a sudden influx of billionaire private jets arriving one after another, she is to let me know immediately because it might be my signal to check whether the world leaders in the Northern Hemisphere have finally lost their minds!

Joking aside, I understand the motivation. History reminds us that civilisations can fail. Wars happen. Economies struggle. Natural disasters occur. Here in New Zealand, having emergency supplies for earthquakes, storms, and temporary disruption is simply common sense. A responsible family should be capable of looking after itself when things temporarily go wrong.

However, there is a vast difference between sensible preparation and believing we can somehow disconnect ourselves permanently from the fate of everyone else. A bunker may buy time, but it cannot replace civilisation. It may keep the lights on for a while, but who keeps the lights on after the person who understands the electrical system is no longer there?

Sooner or later, the generator stops. The solar inverter fails. The computer system needs repair. The water pump breaks. The batteries degrade. The medicines expire. The equipment wears out. People age. Skills disappear. Someone gets sick. Someone needs a dentist, a surgeon, a midwife, a teacher, or simply another human being to sit beside them and share a conversation.

Humans are not machines that require only food, water, and shelter. We require a purpose. We require belonging. We require each other.

Civilisation is not built by isolated geniuses. It is built by millions of ordinary people doing their part.

Civilisation is humanity's greatest team success

The story of human success has never been the story of the lone survivor. It has always been the story of cooperation. Our earliest ancestors survived because they formed tribes. One person hunted. Another gathered. Another cared for children. Another understood plants. Another made tools. Another remembered where water could be found during droughts. The older members of the tribe carried knowledge and wisdom gathered over a lifetime. Everyone had a place. Everyone had a contribution.

As civilisation developed, we did not abandon that tribal system. We expanded it beyond anything our ancestors could ever have imagined. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker became the farmer, engineer, mechanic, builder, electrician, doctor, nurse, scientist, computer programmer, truck driver, teacher, researcher, and millions of others.

The division of labour became finer and finer until today almost everything around us represents an extraordinary orchestra of human cooperation. Every small task contributes to a larger whole. A person may spend their entire career perfecting one tiny component of a machine, a medical device, a computer system, or a manufacturing process, never meeting the millions of people who depend upon their work.

Think about something as simple as switching on a light. Behind that small action are miners, engineers, power workers, electricians, manufacturers, transport operators, designers, scientists, administrators, and generations of accumulated knowledge. No single person knows how to recreate everything required. No billionaire, no genius, no survival expert can rebuild a modern civilisation alone.

The more advanced civilisation becomes, the more we depend upon one another. Our greatest strength is also our greatest vulnerability.

A bunker can preserve supplies. Only people can preserve civilisation.

No man is an island

More than 400 years ago, the English poet John Donne wrote:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

He went on to write:

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

Those words are as true today as when they were written in 1624. They are even more important now. Your fate is my fate. From the wealthiest person in the most advanced city to the poorest person in the smallest village, we are connected by countless visible and invisible threads.

A world that allows large numbers of people to become desperate, hopeless, unhealthy, and disconnected eventually creates consequences for everyone. Walls can only be built so high. Gates can only remain locked for so long. The greatest security system humanity has ever developed is not concrete, steel, or surveillance technology. It is trust.

The lesson from the free-range flock

The FreeRangers philosophy is sometimes misunderstood. Freedom does not mean wandering through life caring only about ourselves. Nature teaches us a much wiser lesson, and much of what I have learned about health, resilience, and community has come from simply watching nature at work.

As a boy growing up in Putāruru, in the rural central North Island of New Zealand, animals were a big part of my life. We had a wonderful menagerie of pets. I kept all kinds of birds, including an aviary full of them, a flock of pigeons, and chooks of all shapes and sizes, including bantams. Without realising it at the time, I was getting an education in biology, behaviour, family, cooperation, and survival that no textbook could provide.

When you spend time quietly observing animals, you soon realise they are not randomly wandering around doing whatever they like. There is structure. There is communication. There are roles and responsibilities. There are relationships. Nature is not just about competition and “survival of the fittest”, as it is sometimes portrayed. Survival is also about cooperation, adaptation, and knowing your place within the group.

Watch a flock of free-range chickens and you will see a small example of how successful communities work. The hen does not abandon her chicks in the name of independence. She keeps them close. She scratches through the soil, finding grubs and nourishment. She teaches them what is food and what is danger. When they are cold, frightened, or vulnerable, she gathers them beneath her wings.

The rooster has his role as well. He is not simply strutting around showing off his colourful feathers. A good rooster is always watching. While the flock feeds, he remains alert. When danger appears, he sounds the warning. If a predator threatens his family, he may be the first to step forward and, if necessary, sacrifice himself so others may live.

Nature understands something we sometimes forget: freedom and responsibility belong together. The strongest members of a healthy community do not use their strength only for themselves. They protect, guide, teach, and serve. This is what parents do for children. It is what good leaders do for communities. It is what each generation should do for the next.

The responsibility of success

There is an old French expression: noblesse oblige. Loosely translated, it means that privilege brings responsibility. Historically, the idea was that those who had been blessed with wealth, influence, education, or position had a duty to serve the wider community.

This is not an argument against success, ambition, or wealth creation. Quite the opposite. Every healthy civilisation needs inventors, entrepreneurs, risk-takers, builders, and people with the courage and determination to create something new. The question is what happens after success arrives. Does wealth become a wall that separates people from the fate of others, or does it become a tool that strengthens the society that made such success possible?

No successful person truly succeeds alone. Behind every great achievement is a civilisation that provided roads, education, customers, workers, communication systems, laws, security, scientific knowledge, and generations of people who built before them. Even the greatest entrepreneur stands on the shoulders of countless others.

A society begins to weaken when its most successful people stop seeing themselves as custodians and begin seeing themselves as separate. The billionaire bunker may be the ultimate symbol of this thinking: “If everything fails, I will escape.” But perhaps the greater question is this: if someone had the resources to build a fortress against collapse, could those same resources, intelligence, and energy be used to help prevent collapse in the first place?

Freedom without responsibility is not resilience. It is isolation.

The best preparation is preventing collapse

We are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how a few people can survive after everything falls apart, we should be asking how we build societies that are less likely to fall apart.

True preparation is not only about storing food, water, fuel, and equipment. These things are sensible. But the deeper preparation is maintaining the human foundations that allow civilisation to continue: strong families, healthy children, capable adults, meaningful work, respect for nature, honest leadership, and communities where people know they belong.

Civilisations rarely collapse overnight. They slowly weaken when trust disappears, when greed overwhelms service, when people become isolated, when families fracture, when leaders forget their responsibilities, and when people lose the feeling that they are part of something worth protecting.

The best way to prepare for the collapse of civilisation is to build the kind of civilisation that is less likely to collapse.

A FreeRangers future

Being prepared is wise. We should all have practical skills. We should know how to grow food, repair things, maintain our health, cope with hardship, and look after ourselves when circumstances become difficult. Resilience is a virtue. However, true resilience does not mean withdrawing from humanity. It means becoming the kind of person, family, and community that others can depend upon when times are challenging.

The FreeRangers way is not a retreat into isolation. It is a return to balance: freedom combined with responsibility, independence combined with connection, and personal strength combined with service. Like the rooster watching over the flock, strength has its greatest value when it protects something beyond itself.

The greatest security for the future is not found beneath the mountains around Wanaka, hidden behind reinforced doors. It is found above ground, in the communities, farms, workshops, homes, and families we build every day.

In the end, the greatest survival strategy humanity ever created was never the bunker. It was the village. It was the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the farmer, the healer, the teacher, the builder, the parent, the child, and the elder all understanding that they were travelling together in the same boat.

The opposite of collapse is not survival. It is service.

Your fate is my fate.

Be free. Be strong. Be FreeRange.

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