Island Adaptation

First shipwrecked, then washed ashore, now we start to build...

Island Survival Kit

“…more intent upon getting at the ship, where I hoped to find something for my present subsistence.”

Robinson Crusoe’s story essentially shows how a man can survive on an island with the only supplies salvaged from his ship. These items collectively create Crusoe’s Island Survival Kit which enables him to live quite comfortably for 28 years.

“Then it occurred to me again, how well I was furnished for my subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not happened, which was a hundred thousand to one, that the ship floated from the place where she first struck, and was driven so near the shore that I had time to get all things out of her. What would have been my case, if I had been obliged to have lived in the condition in which I at first came on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them?”

The following images list the items and resources that Crusoe obtained from the shipwrecks and from the island itself:







The following list is compilation of the items that Crusoe fabricates from the materials he has salvaged from the shipwrecks and gathered from the island:

Political Implications of the Counterculture Proposed by Island Adaptations

As an isolated self-dependent functioning unit that is legally part of China but is unconstitutionally ignored by them, the denizens of this highly dense urban centre known as the Kowloon Walled City lived in an enclave of Hong Kong. Abandoned by civilization, the residents of the Kowloon Walled City were forced to create their own civilization from the scraps and leftovers of the urban decay of the surrounding socioeconomic fabric. In a similar fashion, Crusoe was physically expelled from the European Civilization he had been accustomed to his whole life and was forced to deal with the implications of living in his colonial Christian converter mindset as a savage. Literally with only the scraps of his past life, he assembled the wreckage of his ship and built himself more than just a humble abode in his own interpretation of a personal utopia.

In this highly sociological manner, both the Kowloon Walled City and Robinson Crusoe could be said to represent a kind of counterculture movement against the established status quo also known as the dialectic of enlightenment. The two distinct but very similar island adaptations reached their climax but as is the case with most opposition to dominant culture, the fledgling civilization crumbled under the weight of the establishment of hierarchy. Both civilizations also met their demise with the introduction of an invasive isolated force, completely separate from the local biome it encountered. When Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese, the first act of the Communist regime was to show their dominance over a society that run effectively without any form of centralized government by violently demolishing this fragile but important element of human culture. Violently extinguishing the spark of freedom. When a European ship arrived off Crusoe’s “Island of Despair,” he immediately abandoned his utopia. Both civilizations essentially failed, seizing to become elements of unique human existence and instead fell into the decline of mediocrity.