“Military analysts pretty much agree Japan lost the war in the Pacific because they were playing chess while we were playing checkers. Overthinking all but guarantees failure. Engineers will tell you complexity increases as the square of the subsystems involved, or near enough, something survivalists should keep in mind when they attempt to replicate their ‘normal’ life. And no, being a nice, deserving person with good intentions won’t make failure modes go away.
The cost of maintaining complex systems eventually exceeds the value they provide and fail when they become too complex to effectively manage. A trivial glitch that won’t affect fencing, say, will bring down an airliner through propagation. Few systems fail because they’re too simple, resilient or robust. Said another way, put your money on the cave man. Or Admiral Spruance.” – Ol’ Remus, The Woodpile Report