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Post by mountaindweller on Aug 22, 2012 3:04:58 GMT -5
The next depression will be far worse than the great depression. There are more people on the planet and farmland dissapears under suburbia every day. Most people live in big cities and don't have any skills.
We all want to live and as comfortable as possible, but you cannot prepare for everything. You might forget to live while preparing your whole life and we all will die anyway sooner or later.
While it is not unreasonable storing some food, I garden because I like it and not because of preparing.
Our present life is completely unsustainable anyway, even if we try hard to be sustainable. I chainsawd some timber this afternoon, o my how much would we heat if we would have to cut all by hand?
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Post by circumspice on Aug 22, 2012 4:34:22 GMT -5
We sound so "doomy-gloomy" don't we? I agree in principle with much of what you say. We should live our lives fully & not hide in fear of what might happen. I also feel that people should prepare for unexpected circumstances. I don't have any grandiose plans & I don't feel doomsday is imminent. What I do believe is that there will be a gradual breakdown of the infrastructure that supports the unsustainable lifestyle that we now live. I see shortages & belt-tightening in the near future, nothing really dramatic. I see our world gradually changing from a global economy to a more local economy. I see communications & commercial trade breaking down slowly but surely. Humans are extraordinarily adaptable & inventive, otherwise we would not have reached the point where nearly 7 billion people inhabit this planet. We'll survive & adapt to the conditions in which we live. I want to be able to pass down a legacy to my son, something that he can use if there is need or keep in reserve as a sort of insurance policy for the future. That's the best I can manage. I've told my son much the same thing I've expressed here.
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Post by atash on Aug 23, 2012 0:40:21 GMT -5
Mike, a Mt. Tambora event is quite survivable--by SOME. Not all. The same is true of most of the rest of the list, including an EMP attack. Actually, a CME event on the order of magnitude of the Carrington Event of the last century would effectively take out the banking system (the internet, crash every airplane in the sky, fry out the electrical grid, take out telecommunications, etc). Once the banking system is down, so is the remittance system.
The truck drivers don't deliver food and other goods if they're not getting paid. Nobody would be paid, because the remittance system would be down.
The problem of survival would come down to having enough food in storage until the next harvest. Plus defending it, etc.
But this is quite doable.
Now then...
Unfortunately lists like these are distractions. You have to ask which hazards are the most likely, and weigh your planning accordingly.
Let's look more closely:
a volcanic eruption: this is a certainty
a historic earthquake: local disruption only, though it might take out a critical chip plant in Japan or Taiwan. That already happens from time to time.
an EMP attack: relatively low probability at the moment, though over time becomes increasingly likely. I suggest getting ready for a Carrington-class Coronal Mass Ejection which will have a similar effect
a solar megastorm: see above
a war: we've already got wars. The problematic ones are nuclear or extreme bioattack
a major terror attack: not a real hazard unless they get their hands on a doomsday device (or germ...); local impact only EXCEPT TO THE DEGREE THAT IT CAUSES AN OVER-REACTION. I suspect the most dangerous kind is the false-flag kind, because then an "over-reaction" is precisely what they are after.
an asteroid strike: well if it's a dinosaur-killing magnitude event, this one is hard to plan for, though actually a few people could survive just like a few mammals survived the last one. You have a chance with a well-enough equipped bunker, if it's not a direct hit. This one is not worth planning for due to infrequency and logistics.
a killer pandemic: natural or artificial? It makes a difference. This one comes down to hunkering down, mostly
mass rioting in U.S. cities: Not a real threat; body count is significantly lower than the other threats, unless it escalates to civil war, but even then you'd have plenty of warning.
martial law: a disruption, but not necessarily life-threatening if you're not a dissident, and can hunker down for a while. Unlikely for a while yet in North America, barring bio-terror attack, nuclear war, etc, which are risks in their own rights.
Some of the list like a Carrington-magnitude CME are worth keeping in mind because they are eventual certainties. In general, if you have the means to hunker down and enough food to last a year or two you'll live through most of these.
The real issue that "preppers" should be getting for is not only an eventual certainty, BUT IT'S ALREADY IN MOTION!
We passed peak petroleum some years ago. I realize that there are stories regarding "oceans of oil"...in Alaska...in the tar sands of North Dakota and Montana...under the Caspian...under deep water, etc... It would take a long-winded explanation to explain why some of these stories are outright lies designed to sell worthless assets to gullible foreigners, and even the true parts are grossly exaggerated. You can take my word, or not.
Quite a while ago when I realized the situation, I thought about what the impact would be. I was under the vague impression that raising crops is fuel intensive. I looked it up. Yes, it is.
Interestingly, though, I think that crisis actually happens before fuel shortages turn into crisis. I suspect we are "post peak food".
There are a number of reasons. One of them has to do with the financial crisis mentioned in the original post. Production is being cut back due to lack of financing, which, during the bubble years, had been a de facto subsidy on food production.
The situation is such that food riots have been breaking out in some countries already on the edge, for a few years now. And they're spreading.
This year was a poor harvest for corn, soy, and wheat, certainly here in North America and to a degree elsewhere as well. India and Pakistan are having below-average harvests due to a weak, late monsoon which they plant their crops around.
If food production has peaked, but population growth has not, I see an inflection point ahead. A 100% certainty. Population growth could not be slowed down fast enough to avoid a catastrophe. I can't think of any obvious way to increase food production significantly and efficiently, that could be implemented quickly.
It looks to me as though the fuse is already lit. I suggest planning accordingly.
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Post by steev on Aug 23, 2012 1:08:31 GMT -5
"No way to delay the trouble coming everyday".
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Post by mountaindweller on Aug 23, 2012 1:43:28 GMT -5
Peak food, yes because of climate change and crazy weather and too many people.
We think we are so intelligent because we can use computers build a rockletship and fly to the moon. But in the same time we are gaining knowledge we are loosing knowledge at the same pace. How many people are still around to make a wooden cart wheel?
I don't know weather out civilization dies slow or fast, both is probable, but it is dying.
I myself find "preppers" which hord freeze dried food for years, build a bunker buy heaps of arms creepy. I prefer people who grow a garden, swap seeds try to do the best out of what comes.
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Post by MikeH on Aug 23, 2012 9:39:30 GMT -5
The truck drivers don't deliver food and other goods if they're not getting paid. Nobody would be paid, because the remittance system would be down. Parsing a bit: so nobody will do anything because they aren't being paid because the remittance system is down? Maybe but I suspect that people will improvise and adapt. It's doable, maybe, if you have the arable land; water; proper & replaceable cultivation, harvesting, and processing tools (anything having any connection to oil doesn't qualify); sufficient labour; sufficient and appropriate (calorie & energy) seed; and KNOWLEDGE (first hand, not Internet). A very tall order indeed. Perhaps we'll learn be forced to cooperate with each other instead of being isolated individuals. My point exactly. Interesting that your thoughts about pandemic are hunkering down, mostly. I suspect that it would be a great deal more than that. You just have to look at the SARS outbreak to get a sense of what will, not could, happen - www.cbc.ca/news/background/sars/crowe_mysteries.html. And we Canadians are very well behaved. ;D I don't dispute any of your outline although I see bits of it differently. In particular, the financial mess. It will take years, decades probably to sort out balance sheets - longer for governments and shorter for individuals. That will likely result in slow to no growth with resulting declines in government spending and personal consumption. Both of those are good things as we learn to live within our means. I'm struggling with your outline of food and population. I think that you need to separate the world into those who do not feed themselves - primarily the developed world - and those who do, albeit it poorly at best - primarily the developing world. Population growth has been slowing in the developed world for years while the opposite has been the case in the developing world. But it's not just the population growth in the developing world by itself that is a problem. These populations, China and India in particular, are starting to have the wealth that, combined with the impact of Western lifestyle advertising, will chew through finite resources at a rate that will make adjustment difficult at best. And who are we to say that they shouldn't aspire to 60" flat screens?! Concerns about food are something new to the developed world while they have been a fact of daily existence in the developing world for longer than forever. Food riots come and go but are only significant if they bring down governments. You have to go a long, long way to see a poor or failed harvest for corn, soy, and wheat in the US or anywhere in the developed world leading to food riots in those places. It's not impossible but one failed year won't make for riots. I haven't spent a lot of time looking at prepper sites. The little time that I have spent has made me shake my head. If we are indeed headed to a smaller world, as I believe that we are, then prepping that includes high tech - generators, solar panels, wind generators, cooking oil fuel converters - seems to be an attempt to continue life as we know it and a non-starter for the long run. Simple seems to be a much better and safer bet to me. There's some interesting work on a simpler way done by Ted Trainer, a radical sociologist at University of New South Wales - socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/. Figuring out simple when one has both feet planted in the here and now is a very tough exercise. For a bit of fun, go into your workshop if you have one and pretend that it has no electricity other than lights. Then figure out how you'd build a bluebird house.   |
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Post by MikeH on Aug 23, 2012 9:42:40 GMT -5
But in the same time we are gaining knowledge we are loosing knowledge at the same pace. How many people are still around to make a wooden cart wheel? But that's nothing new. We change and adapt which is a good thing. Wooden cart wheel making will come back if needed and the knowledge will be regained. |
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Post by bunkie on Aug 23, 2012 10:37:03 GMT -5
living out here in the 'sticks', prepping is just a normal part of life. we've had winter storms leaving us with no electricity and unable to get to town for a few weeks. supplies for us are an hour plus away, so planning ahead is important for living here.
as for future and bigger forseen problems, s mentioned before, just a matter of extending our practices.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 23, 2012 11:33:19 GMT -5
I have not participated in "The Banking System" for some time. I get along fine without it. Many of my day to day transactions are not conducted in dollars, or in any government issued currency. Works for me today. It could work for others tomorrow. I believe that people are inventive and will adapt to whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.
I keep a small stash of steel, and of irrigation pipe, and of nails, and of cement, and of screws, and of dimensional lumber etc... Both because they are useful day-to-day, and because they are less expensive to buy today (and in bulk) than they will be next year. I also have a bucket in which I keep compact high value scrap metal like brass, bronze, etc that are not in a useful form now, but could be smelted into something worthwhile. I'm not currently keeping bulky low value items like aluminum cans or broken appliances, but I do have an out of the way corner of a field for compact iron scrap.
I see people every week who are riding in a wagon behind a team of horses, or who are working their fields with 100 year old technology pulled by horses. Individuals may have forgotten, but as a people we have not.
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Post by atash on Aug 23, 2012 16:03:03 GMT -5
Yes, you do see things differently. Historically, governments and civilizations expand until the resources they are exploiting run out. Then they do not adapt, they fail catastrophically at the inflection points. The Roman Empire didn't curtail spending once it ran out of territory within easy reach to conquer; it exhausted itself trying to maintain the growth curve, and collapsed as hyperinflation destroyed its money system, and invasions cut off its supply of imported goods whose production had been "offshored" just like ours for identical reasons.
You said yourself different perspectives. I'm not trying to save the system; it is beyond salvation. I am only claiming that groups of organized private parties can take their destiny in their hands.
Doing so requires "thinking outside of the box". If you cling to existing paradigms, then I'm even more skeptical than you are.
Thinking outside the box means committing to courses of action that are totally outside the conceptual space of 99.9% of the population. If people can eke out a living in various hellholes of the world, still relatively affluent North Americans can prepare for system breakdown. The obstacles are more a matter of concept, intention, and determination than cold hard reality. Mountaindweller for example stated that she finds us "creepy".
Mountaindweller, I don't think you would find me particularly creepy. Just a free spirit, and probably one of the most soulful persons you would have ever met in your life. I sing when I work, take good care of my family, am kind to children and animals, fanatically loyal to my friends, and take just about any harsh words like water off a duck's back.
As for preppers who are going off in unhelpful directions, I don't find them "creepy" I find them misguided. Nothing to hold against them. I've been planning some lectures at prepper meetings to help them find their way back to reality, to the extent that they're open to it.
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Post by 12540dumont on Aug 23, 2012 17:01:33 GMT -5
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein.
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Post by castanea on Aug 23, 2012 19:26:26 GMT -5
Nice summary, Atash. Your thoughts about Fukushima?
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Post by templeton on Aug 23, 2012 19:52:29 GMT -5
Mountaindweller for example stated that she finds us "creepy". . Atash, I think there might be a bit of transPacific cultural dissonance happening here (I hope Mountaindweller doesn't mind if I pipe in). There isn't much survivalist stuff going on here - what I encounter is mostly US based stuff, only the more extreme of which probably gets any media attention. (My mental parody of US culture is fat people eating supersized burgers, dressed in camo gear driving to a white timber church to burn copies of the Koran, in a pickup truck loaded with automatic weapons and handguns being scowled at by big latino men wearing shades, gold chains and baggy orange fatigues ;D) That mix of militarism, gun culture, xenophobia and fundamentalist christianity which gets highlighted here sure looks creepy. Thank goodness for the makers of South Park and their delightfully offensive Team America - World Police movie, it reassured me that not everyone in the US thinks like Cheney. T |
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Post by steev on Aug 23, 2012 23:39:49 GMT -5
Paranoia: it's as American as apple pie.
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Post by atash on Aug 24, 2012 1:53:03 GMT -5
Not ignoring everyone else: someone asked me a direct question, so I'm answering it first. Nice summary, Atash. Your thoughts about Fukushima? I was worried before it blew. There had already been accidents at Japanese nuclear plants, despite reassurances. I don't know what the possible outcomes might be, but it has been somewhat officially admitted that when ("if") there is another major earthquake in the vicinity within so many years, there will be a new level of crisis. I suggest as a precaution those on the west coast have plans to stay indoors, preferably in a basement and definitely away from open skies, rain, and dust, for days, possibly a few weeks, in case of a direct hit by a radioactive cloud. I remain leery of Japanese food products since Fukushima was right in the midst of their biggest agriculture belt along the northeastern coast of Honshu. Bear in mind that US nukes have the same vulnerability: if the power grid goes down longer than the backups hold out, the control systems fail catastrophically. The reactors are supposed to shut down in an emergency for what it's worth. Not sure that they can always shut them down; probably depends on the emergency. Not a lot of time to react in a major quake. One of my big concerns is what happens when potentially hazardous infrastructure is not kept in repair, due to widespread system failure. For example, here in Washington we have dams that are getting dangerously close to failure. We have earthen dams past their life expectancy, and we have 1920s concrete dams that are full of "honeycombing". The problem is widely-realized, but there does not seem to be any meaningful action to do anything about it. Like most states, this one has a budget crisis. Thankfully, the agency building our nukes went bankrupt, and the projects were such a mess they were unable to salvage them, not to mention there was a major taxpayer revolt. There's a dead nuke near my farm. I suggest staying away from the flood zone of dam failure, and away from nukes. I also suggest caution vis a vis old bridges that are not being kept in repair. |
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