The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency

A pioneering book from 1976, from one of the early British pioneers of the "back to the land" movement.  For people in both cities and rural areas, a treasure trove -- multiple troves and a couple of plethoras -- of practical info. 256 pages.

Total "self sufficiency" is, of course, a modern myth.  Nobody is an island, everyone is part of a community.  But there's also no doubt that there is much that needs to be done to bolster the --

constancy -- the ability of a system to support itself,
persistence -- the ability of a system to defend itself against attacks, and
resilience -- the ability of a system to recover after damage.

In the United States, we tend to focus on resilience. We buy insurance, cities and states have disaster recovery plans, the feds deploy FEMA, the National Guard is always on hand.  But as the number of disasters increase and the general system continues to devolve, we need to pay more attention to our ability to support ourselves over time (constancy) and our ability to resist damage (persistence). This book is a good start.

http://files.diydharma.org/other/John_Seymour-The_Complete_Book_of_Self_Sufficiency.pdf