diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/multibyte.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/multibyte.rb
index a4caa83b74..8f8f0968fd 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/multibyte.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/multibyte.rb
@@ -55,7 +55,11 @@ module ActiveSupport #:nodoc:
 
           unless '1.8.7 and later'.respond_to?(:chars)
             def chars
-              ActiveSupport::Deprecation.warn('String#chars has been deprecated in favor of String#mb_chars.', caller)
+              # FIXME:
+              # ActiveSupport::Deprecation refers to RAILS_ENV
+              # and is a show stopper for 3rd party applications
+              # that only want ActiveSupport
+              ActiveSupport::Deprecation.warn('String#chars has been deprecated in favor of String#mb_chars.', caller) if defined?(ActiveSupport::Deprecation)
               mb_chars
             end
           end
diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/minimalistic.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/minimalistic.rb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..ecb5de9eaa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/minimalistic.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+$LOAD_PATH.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)
+
+require "core_ext/blank"
+# whole object.rb pulls up rare used introspection extensions
+require "core_ext/object/metaclass"
+require 'core_ext/array'
+require 'core_ext/hash'
+require 'core_ext/module/attribute_accessors'
+require 'multibyte'
+require 'core_ext/string/multibyte'
+require 'core_ext/string/inflections'
+
+class String
+  include ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::String::Multibyte
+end