A community of socially-rejecting Americans opened a survival shelter in the Utah desert after finding themselves alienated from the modern world.
Hundreds of people have decided to live off the land under ‘Operation Self-Reliance’, feeling that going off the grid is the solution to a crumbling culture.
The commune was founded by Philip Gleason, 74, a former general contractor who felt the calling to allow people to grow their own food, pump their own water and depend on nothing but themselves.
He admitted Deseret News that while some choose to live there for environmental or health reasons, its purpose was to evade the ‘madness’ of the modern world and the current political climate under the Biden administration.
“It seems like we’re going through a cultural revolution in the United States,” he said. “When we first got here, we thought it might be too far… Now, with everything going on, we’re wondering if it’s far enough.”
For those seeking to escape the constraints of America’s crumbling society and institutions, the OCR Cooperative at Riverbed Ranch in Juab County, Utah, has seen hundreds of residents choose to live off the grid.
Residents of the OCR Cooperative at Riverbed Ranch in Juab County live almost entirely off the grid.
Each of the tenants purchases their own two-acre plot, where their only option is to grow all their own food, since the farm has no municipal electricity system or sanitation services.
A portion of the co-op costs at least $35,000, but that’s before residents must meet the obligations Gleason requires, including building their own home from scratch.
Residents must also build a barn, install a septic system, produce their own solar energy, dig a fresh water well dozens of feet deep, and build a greenhouse.
These costs, OCR website admits, it could generate at least another $235,000, which the organization attributes to “the Covid madness significantly raising the cost of building materials.”
For Gleason, his two-acre plot is his chance to put his lifelong obsession with survival to the test, including planting sunflowers to provide shade because the Utah desert can barely support any trees.
He told the Deseret News that he obtained the sunflower seeds from a friend who lived in Germany after World War II, who warned him that lack of oil was a serious problem in his postwar rations.
Showing his apocalyptic attitude, he joked: “We’re not that far away here.”
Residents buy two-acre plots for $35,000, where they are expected to live entirely off the land and even build their own houses and solar generators.
The survival commune was created by Phillip Gleason, 74, who said he decided to launch the initiative because the United States is “going through a cultural revolution.”
Gleason said he fears that a variety of apocalyptic scenarios could unfold in the coming years, from a power grid failure that wipes out the U.S. power supply to nuclear war and cyberattacks.
“This is simply history repeating itself,” he warned. “At the beginning of any cultural revolution, the people who control their food are the ones who emerge victorious.”
While Americans constantly share that they are losing faith in the nation’s institutions, those who have made a new life at Riverbed Ranch have essentially established their own national survival state.
OCR residents vote and take roles on their own Board of Directors and have a court-like system for resolving arguments through the Disputes Committee.
Like many in Utah, most of the commune’s residents are followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And the cooperative has even found a way to avoid using cash, as many also trade in their own products, such as bread and livestock.
More than 70 children reportedly live in the commune, all of them home-schooled by their parents, who seek to raise the next generation of anti-society residents.
However, with no nearby hospitals in arid deserts, medical emergencies seem to be a challenge.
Gleason said he has suffered two heart attacks since establishing the base, and only one resident is a registered nurse for house calls, while another is a midwife, who has delivered three babies so far.
One of the homes built from scratch by an OCR resident, which could cost more than $235,000 and which the organization attributes to “the Covid madness significantly raising the cost of building materials.”
Residents warned that if their worst apocalyptic fears come true, they feel more prepared because “the people who control their food are the ones who win.”
And while some choose to vote by mail in a city two hours away, many residents deliberately avoid politics; one shareholder admitted that she brought her children from California to the commune because her former deputy director “was gay and openly promoted it.”
Another couple said they fled Democratic-run Portland because of the same illiberal sentiment, saying the city “lost its mind” and they “needed to get out.”
But Gleason insists that despite residents’ distaste for society, they are far from anarchists, stressing that “we’re not tax protesters, we don’t have a militia, we just want to live off the land.”
He ended with a chilling warning about what could happen if his predictions – and his preparations – come true.
“When we get this all built, we could be the third or fourth largest community in the country,” he said.