Here's a nice quote from the equipped to survive website on the subject...
I am occasionally asked what we mean when we say that Equipped To Survive™ is "not a 'survivalist' site." A few decades ago, a survivalist was someone who was interested in the tools and methods used to survive in an emergency. More recently the term has been usurped by the popular media to describe individuals and groups that foresee a general collapse of our society via internal or external political forces, catastrophic environmental destruction, nuclear war, the apocalypse, and other such unlikely (though not impossible) holocausts.
Added notoriety has become associated with the term because among modern day survivalists there is often an element of extreme paranoia and anti-government hostility. There may also be elements of nationalism, racism, religious prejudice, or similar bigotry. Some act as individuals, others form or join groups with agendas of various extremity. Some pursue an active anti-social agenda and we then call them hate groups, or worse, terrorists. Any wonder the term "survivalist" has taken on a negative connotation?
You see, bushcraft and perhaps more importantly, BcUK is not a survivalist site. It's about enjoying nature and learning some of the skills our ancestors used to live harmoniously with it. No death clouds, black helicopters, bunkers, perimeters, food stockpiling, men in black or invasions from the outer hebrides. That is pure fantasy and has
absolutely nothing to do with bushcraft.
On a less serious note, if apocalyptic survival fantasies ding your bell, then peak oil is not the best to indulge. You see there will be no mass death of the majority of the poipulation, which means you will be in competition with 70 million other survivalists, for every inch of arable land they can steal. Not good. It'll also be a slow onset crisis, which will probably result in martial law before it gets to full on disaster scale.
Nahhh, you see yer better survivalist fantasy involves a thinning of the population as well as a general collapse. Mass death is what you need, bird flu is much better. Then you would be free to get a few of yer mates together and go and take over some stately home, snag some automatic weapons and do yer thing, with no police or army to stop you. The only problem with that is bird flu is indiscriminate, it's just as likely to knock off Jhonny Rambo as anyone else.
My personal favorite is a zombie plague. Much better this, as you can use your wits to avoid getting bitten, while at the same time benefit from the mass death of most of the population. Only the swift and clever would survive, you can steal weapons and raid for food, and you have plenty of slow moving targets to shoot at ....and the threat persists, so you have to stay on yer toes. Great fun.
C'mon fellas, lets have a bit more imagination. I'm so bored with peak oil and bird flu, how about an alien invasion? We havent done that one yet and it has so much more scope.
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