Ah my favorite - the nuclear power issue. Even if not by war, I can’t see how we are going to avoid a series of nuclear plant failures over time. All plants require functioning power grids and functioning institutions to keep from melting down. Eventually, one of the nations that currently has nuclear power is going to become a failed state. Countries like Armenia, Pakistan, Romania all have nuclear power reactors. North Korea has 30 according to Wikipedia!
PaulJam wrote:
Ah my favorite - the nuclear power issue. Even if not by war, I can't see how we are going to avoid a series of nuclear plant failures over time. All plants require functioning power grids and functioning institutions to keep from melting down. Eventually, one of the nations that currently has nuclear power is going to become a failed state. Countries like Armenia, Pakistan, Romania all have nuclear power reactors. North Korea has 30 according to Wikipedia!
Thank you for the excellent reference to Greer’s article, written 6 years ago. His arguments are very persuasive
The Onset of Catabolic Collapse
CHS's observation that "My estimate is we could cut 60% - 75% of our consumption and live quite well." is spot on. I have already achieved that myself and found a better lifestyle on the other end, as I am sure many on this blogsite have done themselves. In this optimistic context, I want to mention a couple things that are overlooked when lamenting the passing of an empire that has become corrupt and damaging to everyone that has contact with it. A review of the catabolic collapse of "The" American empire could be clarified with overlay of two more concepts that affect the analysis and conclusions.. One, the negative connotations of collapse of "The" American empire is necessarily subjective from a viewpoint of the Exceptional American and does not apply to many, and perhaps most people. Actually MOST of the humans on this planet have greatly increased lifestyle, improved standard of living and are more optimistic compared to their position in 1974, when the first step down of "The" American war empire took place. I have discussed this with several Chinese who state that they are optimistic for their future and have vastly improved life in recent years. "THE" American empire does not include everyone on this planet and perhaps not most of the people. It is game over and catabolic collapse for Team America, but not necessarily for the other teams. It is not the end of the world or of human progress or happiness, just the end of "The" American empire, and perhaps of a minority (5%) of all people who have become too overconfident, too wonderful, too smug and perhaps just a little bit too exceptional over the years. Two. The real and important changes to human society are based on technology improvements and overshadow any notion of what happens to the precious American death and debt empire. Changes to "The" American empire are merely a footnote to broader and more important evolution in civilization. Importantly, all great/significant changes in human civilization arise from advances in technology, particularly in the use of energy and NOT from politicians or sociopaths and their organizations such as the present debt and death empire.1. the technology of taming of fire energy 100,000 years ago allowed the greater extraction and use of more calories and other nutrients from the same food and allowed evolution of larger brains, which are energy intensive. This tremendous change arose from the technology of using exogenous energy to denature food before our bodies digest, and thus unlocked a serious change in civilization. 2. technology of seed storage/farming allowed the control of human energy (calorie) sources as permanent settlements/agriculture which had profound affects on our language, habits etc (this has been extensively documented for the rice based civilizations of East Asia and I suppose for the maize civilization of the Americas, wheat civilization of Egypt etc. ) The technology of annual planning, long term community control of soil and water unlocked much greater sources of human energy. 3. harnessing of fire-steam energy allowed even larger energy sources to be used in the industrial revolution which provided more energy for yet more control over the environment. This energy technology and its effects on humans was much more important than any sociopathic leader or group of learders or their political organizations of that age. 4. the oil age gave another major input and increase in energy, particularly for vehicles. Sociopaths acquired control of the nation that most benefited (the original oil nation) and that kept its currency alive by backing that currency with oil via discipline from a military. SO, that nation's oil, or oil backed Empire is coming to an end. Big deal, so what. From an outside-of-the-corrupt empire viewpoint, the sustainable future looks pretty good, particularly if "The" empire's debt and death machine stops enslaving the rest of the planet to benefit the Exceptional People via its war machine that drops bombs and creates copious death and refugees as its main televised spectator sport. Many advances in energy harnessing continue unabated. We are surrounded by an ocean of energy, be it solar, wind, geothermal etc. We have all the technology we need to create our own sustainable, resilient communities. Entire regions are moving in this direction. In particular, the extremely cheap, abundant and increasingly growing EROI solar electric technology will make dramatic changes to our lifestyles, at least for those who embrace a future where a person has to create value. Time is limited and it is not helpful to pine for a past, for an exceptional country that stole resources and created planet wide misery to support an inflated lifestyle. The concept of specific countries such as U.S., France, Germany Russia China etc. were a convenient invention and useful in an age where information was only found in concentrated points such as London, Paris, and the like, language differences caused borders, and valuation such as money was necessarily centralized in central banks, which attracted the majority of sociopaths for obvious reasons. But those political entities are no longer needed. The answer to all of the basic problems is the next step: development of sustainable communities that produce wealth at the local level and that produce excess for trade with other communities No need to look back wistfully at "a better time and place." The world is much better off after the debt and death empire collapses and the future is more exciting and prosperous for those who build wealth for their families and neighbors.Nigel Wrote:
“t some point you are going to try and convince the local mayor/governor/warlord that he can either get his people to dump the rods into the local river and live with minor pollution or he can do nothing and everyone dies. Perhaps they use convict labor, perhaps the engineer moves them himself.”
That will not work. First off when the Grid goes down there will be limited options to deal with the reactor core. At best the plant operators can shutdown the reactors by inserting the control rods, and flood the reactor with Boric acid will kill futher nuclear reactors (or at least drop it by 99%). The issue is that imediately after the reactor is shutdown it still generates about 200 MW(th) power and drops to about 10-20 MW(th) after about 10 days.This residue heat is produced by the spit isotopes as they decay and emit radiation. Presuming the plant can operate on Diesel generators for about 3 days (presuming they function). Its still going to meltdown after the diesels run out of fuel. simply because of residue heat.
The rods in the reactor cannot be removed out of the reactor for many weeks. The rods have to remain in the reactor and constantly cooled until the residue heat drops. To remove the rods a special crane and contaiment system so that the rods are keep submerged at all times. This equipment requires electricity and lots of it. So if the grid is down, and fuel for the diesels is impossible, there is no way to remove the rods.
Dumping them in a river would not prevent problems. The only option is to keep spent/used rod in contaminate that isolated them from the evironment.
The other issue is the 30+ years of spent rods that are in spent fuel pools. These pools also need constant cooling. Without cooling the water in the spent pools will eventually heat up boil away. Once the rods are exposed to air, they can will begin to react with steam and catch fire and decompose in the fire.
Nigel Wrote:
“If I was an engineer at a plant, I would switch the pumps to run from the power generated by the plant”
Its likely in a war, that the primary generators will be destroyed, either by EMP, or if the grid transformers or transmission lines are shorted. The other issue is that the generators need a minimum load to operate, other wise they are unstable (un able to maintain voltage or frequency). Over voltage or under frequency will cause the plant transformer to overheat and destroy itself. The bottom line is that Nuclear power plants are not designed to function without a functioning grid.
When the nukes are lauched, Plant operators will take there family and head for the hills as soon as they shutdown the reactor (presuming that a nearby nuke strike doesn’t kill them first… There is nothitng they can do, except flee. Its likely that power plants will be secondary targets.
Technically the Grid & communications are the primary target, even before miltary target are hit. The first detection will likely be HEMP, High-Altitude EMP detenations that take out the grid and disabled non-hardened communication systems. This will probably occur with then 5 to 10 minutes via sub launched ICBMs since they can reach high Altitudes quicker than ground targets can be hit.
Perhaps if Power plants are given ample notice, that reactors can be shutdown days or weeks in advance, which would give them time to prepare the reactors. For instance the operators can flood the entire contaiment building, as well has get the residue heat down. That said, I am not sure how much they can do with spent fuel pools. Perhaps the can remove fresh rods (also stored in spent fuel pools, and disassemble them (unused rods can be handled safely). if they have empty dry fuel rod caskets that can probably pack them too. But the issue I see its unlikely that plants will be given much notice, and operators will be relucant to shut them down unless they are ordered because it means a revenue loss. If the US does got war with North Korea will have a idea how Nuclear power plants will address a future nuclear war. My guess is that they will remain power up.
Nigel Wrote:
“Perhaps in your preps you should make sure you don’t live down river from a nuclear plant.”
I am not sure that it will make much of difference over the long term. Yes, when plants begin to fail, distance will help. But over a longer period the meltdown reactors will continuously release radioactive isotopes into the evironment. Much of the contamination will end up in surface water and be transported just about everywhere.
In additional to contaimination from radioactive isotopes, The toxic pollution from burning cities will probably be nearly as bad. I think Bomb cities will catch fire and burn for months. When the World Trade Center collapse, Fires in the rubble burned for weeks even with firecrew pouring water into the fire.The burning towers released a toxic black smoke that caused health problems for many emergency responders. I can’t imagine the volume of toxic smoke release with every major city is nuked and catches fire.
Just a comment: I am convinced that the permian extinction coincided with the Atlantic bursting open and the formation of the second moon which later collided with the main moon.
This was initiated by an asteroid hitting the African Karoo / Scotia plate at a shallow angle, and forcing a Ca/U berg collection in the mantle into a supercritical state. That was followed by the shockwaves forcing another collection under the Hudson Bay/ Carribean Plate, also into a supercritical state. The contamination was worse than anything you described, and threw off Pb-Pb dating around the Karoo.
Point being, things didn’t go extinct. Rather, animals died young, so baby features were retained, while adult features became pointless. Thus, dinosaurs were able to evolve into birds; and other animals also evolved.
Robie Wrote:
“move all animals from fields with surface water. Put in barn for month.”
I don’t think that will work:
- Barns are not air tight nor have a air filteration system to remove airborn fallout.
- The Fallout for the first two weeks will emit high energy gamma radiation. You would need at least 12 inches or more of dirt, sand, concrete (mass) to provide shielding. Other wise the livestock will get a lethal dose.
- You need to stock up on an awful lot of feed that is stored so it does not get contaminated. Its likely the soil will be contaminated, unless you protect your land or have extensive greenhouses. Consider that fields will become contaminated from fallout (both radioactive and chemically toxic from burning city fires). If you let Livestock graze on contaminated grass they will get sick and the meat/milk will become contaminated.
- I think its probably going to take much longer than just a month. Cities will very likely burn for months and the nuclear power plants will probably be releasing contamination for decades. My best guess is that it will take a full year or more before air pollutions settles down to a semi-safe level (presuming you are located distant from a nuclear power plant and targeted city).
This is just an initial reactive thought. That farmer with the shotgun won’t be able to get parts for his tractors, let alone fuel. That predicament will be universal. One farm family with even a small 100 acre spread won’t be able to work it without biologically based power. ‘You work? Then come work here and if we are successful this year you can eat.’ Obviously this is not a gradual descent. Those who can’t do physical labor may take other skill sets and leverage them.
Medical, chemical and engineering skills could be adapted by those with a good risk taking attitude. Learning something like Permaculture would be very useful. Farmers today don’t think far outside the fertilize-incecticize-weedicize-tractorcize paradigm. Being a successful share cropper would work well for many.
Yes, a lot would die, but many more would be needed to make whatever the new paradigm is workable. That’s an initial run at possible scenarios.
This is just an initial reactive thought. That farmer with the shotgun won’t be able to get parts for his tractors, let alone fuel. That predicament will be universal. One farm family with even a small 100 acre spread won’t be able to work it without biologically based power. ‘You work? Then come work here and if we are successful this year you can eat.’ Obviously this is not a gradual descent. Those who can’t do physical labor may take other skill sets and leverage them.
Medical, chemical and engineering skills could be adapted by those with a good risk taking attitude. Learning something like Permaculture would be very useful. Farmers today don’t think far outside the fertilize-incecticize-weedicize-tractorcize paradigm. Being a successful share cropper would work well for many.
Yes, a lot would die, but many more would be needed to make whatever the new paradigm is workable. That’s an initial run at possible scenarios.
how many farmers, real “farmers” not folk on the cover of Progressive Farmer do you know? I know alot, most folk I know are Farmers and they are engineers,veterinarians,meteorologists,gamblers,physicians,( no coders, they think c# is the same as D flat) the list goes on. They are all good shots and most reload,cast,hunt,sneak,creap. suburbtopia doesnt stand a chance…now they are also generous, generally kind, and… get to know some,really know some.
it seems they are also the last folk standing in a civilization collapse. its a shame they are so few and often portrayed as oafish drolls.
Touche! The point is well taken. I know a few and also a few more of the first generation off the farm. In this part of thr country most farmers that are still running their own places have at least 5,000 acres. The rest are company farms. On the good shot part of their qualification I agree. Most of them I know have at least an ag degree and also an MBA.
My argument rests on the fact that when we start stepping (or tumbling) down the collapse rabbit hole there will be a huge deficit of energy to run a 5K operation. It will require utilizing as many willing strong backs and minds as you can recruit. What do you do when there is no fuel or parts for the 500+ HP tractors? Four oxen/mules/draft horses per team. That’s a lot of drivers. Thats a lot of acres suddenly devoted to feed and annual veggies.
I’m not saying the current farmers aren’t brilliant, they are. They won’t be doing their farms without lots of manpower help. It would be more helpful if a lot of that humanity came with some cranial as well as striated muscle. I don’t think we really have a disagreement. I just think we will find ourselves in a feudal situation really quickly.
I’m sorry, but if you aren’t already living out your “Plan B,” you aren’t going to get there very easily nor quickly. Better hope for the “slow crash” scenario.
I’ve been on “Plan B” for ten years, and would still have trouble in a fast crash. The good news is that I only have to drive once a week, to deliver food to town, and to get supplies we don’t grow. Almost all our farming is by hand. Although we do some rotovation now and then, we could get by without it. But that tractor is mighty handy for hauling stuff around, even if not working ground very much. We could put in some oil crops to get a very limited amount of very necessary tractor and pickup truck power.
Most of our amendments are from the site. We used eight cubic metres of goat and chicken manure last year to produce nearly 6,000 kg of food.
We currently use a fair bit of hydro and grain. We’d be hurting without either, but not fatally. The goats would give less milk, and the fowl would give fewer eggs. I’ve put them on “diets” before, to see how it might go. The well would be useless without hydro, but we have two streams with potable water that oozes out of the mountain behind us.
The hardest part to be without would be hay. We share-crop it with another farmer who has the equipment. At 61, I don’t fancy doing enough hay to get 20 goats through the winter by hand. I’ve hand-mowed an acre before, stacking in shooks. It is a lot of work! We would count on younger help for the hay we need.
Despite global warming, hard winters will come up. Last year was one. Goats and geese can get through the winter if there is not extended snow, but we used a lot of hay last winter, and the geese killed a number of young apple trees we had been prepping for an orchard, and set our blueberries back two years, all because they couldn’t graze with snow on the ground.
The good news is that we are only superficially attached to the economy. I personally made a whopping $2,200 last year, mostly squandered on camera gear. 
The farm itself (organized as a co-op) depends on rent to pay a mortgage. (We keep hoping to recruit more member-funders to pay down the mortgage, but it hasn’t happened.) Unless the financial system survives enough to foreclose us, we could “work share” the rent in order to feed everyone living here. And who knows — if the local credit union survives, they may just accept food for payments!
I guess my long-winded point is that we have been working hard at this for ten years, and would still struggle in a collapse. I can’t imagine how the poor folks living out their “Plan A” would do while they attempt to rapidly put together all that we’ve done over ten years.
So don’t kid yourself. Do you believe this “collapse” stuff, or not? If you are a believer, make the cut to “Plan B” immediately.
And by the way, we could use your help!
Or, just sit around planning your bug-out bag. There’s going to be a lot of skeletons one of these days, surrounded by emergency food wrappers, next to empty bug-out bags…
Agreed, when looking at the depth of what needs to be covered it’s pretty daunting.
Below one of the overviews (work in progress) that I use when discussing resilience with people (sorry about the poor quality, not allowed to upload larger files…). All field have to be covered if you want to survive (obviously the weight of the different elements depend on the specific context).
They all have to be covered in short-, medium-, and long-term to (physically) survive in the longer term.
It doesn’t consider mental resilience (doesn’t get much attention in the development sector).
It doesn’t cover what is needed to produce/ address these needs (that’s another overview).
The perspective is individual/ household level. Yet we cannot split resilience at this level from the resilience at community/ (inter)national level, governance issues and the underlying issues that create vulnerability (yet another overview).
All have to line up/ be understood and effectively be addressed to get through.
Plan B should be actively worked on…
I am sometimes surprised by finding out how many farmers are here at PP. I would like some advice.
How would a suburban middle aged guy start looking for a small subsistence farm?
What factors do you zero in on when considering a property?
Location? Water? Soil? Neighbors?
How much land is it reasonable for a single family to farm? 5 Acres? 10?
What if we are thinking a couple of horses, chickens and cows?
I would love to hear thoughts on this.
My thought is that you should maintain your job where you are, but also get to know the neighbors and start supporting the farmette’s local economy while times are still “good”.
Therefore, I would look for a SMALL farmette within weekend distance, in an area where the fundamentals are still sound. Then get to hiring the poorest neighbors who are willing to help, for 170% of their normal wage, part time help only, odd jobs only.
I think for you, anything in the direction of buchanon county, as far as newcastle, might be pretty good. In Newcastle, get to know the old centenarian cafe proprietress, perhaps.
I wouldn’t overdo the horses. I’d get READY to have a single horse, or even a cow, but leave that till it’s needed.
I’d focus on getting the rest transferred from (initially) gas/electric to (later) wood and manual power, with a small augmentation of solar.
Let it be known that you are of good will, but extremely limited excess resources (say, fifty dollars a week, hundred every two weeks, can go to the locals FOR NOW, and that sporadic.)
“What factors do you zero in on when considering a property?”
Neighbours, neigbours, and neighbours. And availability of work-trade labour.
Don’t fall for the temptation to “go it alone.” That is an artifact of a high-energy civilization. Before fossil sunlight, nobody could even think of “going it alone.” People who think isolation is important are going to die the first time they have an accident or get too sick for the daily work. If I don’t milk my goats twice a day, they get mastitis, and that’s a whole lot more work, especially without antibiotics.
If you’re “middle-aged,” and if you’ve had a desk job and limited exercise, you have a lot of “shaping up” ahead of you.
I would absolutely not go out and buy land if you’ve never farmed or gardened. Rather, volunteer to “WWOOF” on a functional farm. Learn on someone else’s dime and time. You can pay a modest fee and sign up for lists of hosts throughout the world. (Wwoof.ca for Canada.) If you’re tied to a “day job,” you must spend your annual vacation on such an activity, and as many weekends as you can.
This has other advantages besides learning. If the excrement gets applied to the ventilator while you’re learning (and you’re a hard worker), you’ll have a relationship that might become long-term. There are many WWOOFers that we’d welcome back in an emergency. (We even have a “sweat equity” plan, but no one’s taken us up on it so far.)
Knowledge and relationships. Those two are “gotta haves.” The rest can be fixed.
Afridev wrote:
one of the overviews (work in progress) that I use when discussing resilience with peopleAfridev,
I agree with Bytesmiths. That is a wonderful work in progress! I’m having a difficult time reading the individual bullets. Could you at least transcribe the text for each box? That would be very helpful for me.
sand_puppy,
Growing up, I had a family friend who told me that the best land in any given area was usually under a dairy. Successful dairies had to have good soils and water along with access to markets. It had to be good enough for them to want to invest in the infrastructure that was needed to ply their trade. (Modern dairies depend on trucking for everything.) Look for remnants like silage towers or old dairy barns. If those have been destroyed to facilitate “progress,” look at historical photos to see where they were.
I agree with Bytesmiths that you can’t go it alone. The threat of solitary confinement is about the only punishment that works for some prisoners. I certainly don’t want to choose to live that way. A good community can supply many of the critical items that Afridev listed. Of course, there is a trade component as well. Communities work best when there are more givers than takers. Giving takes effort. If you don’t add value to the community, you’ll eventually be shunned.
Grover
Not allowed to upload a larger file size (fiddled around for some time with .jpg, .tiff (think that one was refused) and .giff, but this was the best I could get up…)
I assume that the PM system is like e-mail and that I can attach a larger size file, will try to send it to you that way
Tried to send it through PM and through e-mail, but didn’t seem to accept it either.
Working around the system: try the link https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/8iASCPhs78
I assume that this works
How about it? Adam / Chris?
Your link works, though.