One can argue that they do give back to society by sharing their research, tools, games and findings, and I think it's really valuable. They do claim to be a research collective.
Resilience and survival are social pursuits.
But then they have in fact not abandoned society.
> As such it's an empty pursuit.
What do you believe that they are pursuing that you think is empty?
And obviously, like, they go to places and talk to people and buy equipment etc.
There’s a whole gamut of failure modes for tech from “total civilizational collapse” down to “cell tower is down”, and time periods from “forever” down to “a couple of days”
People doing this sort of lifestyle but sharing findings and ideas and ultimately maybe pointing out how more can be done with less is part of us building up knowledge together isn’t it?
These people aren’t completely offline even! They blog and post online!