I have the book “The Modern Survival Manual” and one of the problems of during the collapse in rural areas was safety. Authors claim that people returning to rural areas were followed by criminals and when destination was reached, criminals would take over rural household. Watch dogs would be posioned and there didn’t appear to be much in the way organized securtiy or check points. The one percent that grows our food is very troubling, talk about dependency and loss of skill for our most basic needs. This next downturn could happen at many different levels, it’s hard to predict. I believe we are at greater risk cause we haven’t had any bumps in the road without food, water or power and when it does happen so many panic and there will be a severe burden on all resources. I think of how loss of power will affect our housing, like how many homes would have to be abandoned cause of flooding of basements due to loss of power to sump pumps. How about interruption of medications to millions of American’s? How many people have never slept in a tent or cooked outdoors? The amount of soft westerners is way off the charts.
is close, not much occurs,
naw, I will remain quiet
settle your mare (should have been done decades ago) and enjoy the fruit of your community.
On this Canadian Remembrance Day, we here in Canada realize the sacrifice thousands have made during WW1 and WW2 to defend the freedoms we all take for granted. It’s communities that make an area resilient and learning to live with each other that spawns the acknowledgement that “no man’s an island”.
So, go ahead and hunker down in your bunker and when you come out, pray there others that have taken another approach. If conflict has taught us anything, it’s when stand together the greater good wins, despite the sacrifices.
Lest we forget!
I think we have to ask ourselves how self sufficient we really are and whether that’s a better goal than a more resilient interdependence between city and country.Agreed again. We systematically became self-sufficient over the last two decades re: food/water/transport (mainly for health/lifestyle reasons) but it's not something to learn in books nor to learn quickly, nor have done in a remote area. Plus it's very area-specific, making moving a two-decade setback. Most importantly: these are easy times of peace and prosperity...it should never be easier than today, no matter where we live.
There are soo many ways that what is coming is different from anything homo sapiens have experienced in the past. You can, perhaps, delineate them as well as I.
One of the differences is that there is, for the first time, the potential for refugee migrations in the billions. Half of the world population lives in or near China and India. Both countries have advanced sea faring capabilities. The California coastline is 6 to 8 thousand miles from China and India, but, never the less, I’d be concerned over that potential, not to mention people walking North from Los Angeles, or Phoenix.
Got this off the Survivalblog.com, more BS from government, in regards to property rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4-fSSDoAU
a good read on the same vein…“The Camp of The Saints”, Jean Raspail.
https://www.amazon.com/Camp-Saints-Jean-Raspail/dp/1881780384/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+camp+of+the+saints&qid=1573609622&sr=8-1
Reading these comments, it seems that preparing for the “worst” is kind of a Rorschach test for our fears, biases, and experiences. For example, I grew up in a blue collar California suburb. I moved to the Big City to get an education and escape the dead-end job, truck on credit, hang out at the strip mall lifestyle. So I have this inherent bias against exurban living as it represents the worst case scenario (meaningless, dumb, unsustainable) to me. Thus, I tend to worry more about ecological and financial fragility in my personal spreadsheet.
Even as I understand the problems with the inputs required to sustain today’s mega-cities, I like urban living. I admire artists, musicians, engineers, and craftsmen who dedicate their lives to perfection in their field. I find the idea that everyone has to be an isolated subsistence farmer / half-ass carpenter/electrician/plumber depressing. Furthermore, I feel that large cities are where they are (harbors, waterways, railways, fertile land) for a reason and that in 100 years, the cities will remain in some form while the exurbs will vanish or become farms again. So I maintain hope that some level of urbanism is sustainable and I look to find a model that will work between urban people and rural farmers during the Long Emergency.
So I have this big blind spot when it comes to concerns about cities, population density and immigration. When I see “Camp of Saints” referenced, can I look my Mexican-American and Filipino-American neighbors in the face (literally my next door neighbors), the same guys who watch my house when I’m on vacation and participate in our Neighborhood Watch… and say that I don’t want them here because… some vague ideas about the Anglo foundations of American values? I guess this is what Jean Raspail was worried about - empathy.
I’m not trying to virtue signal but rather to examine my own biases. Am I being willfully ignorant to the threats we face? Possibly. Are mega cities, illegal immigration, and hyper globalization bad? Yes. Does that ergo mean that cities, racial diversity and international trade are always bad? No, quite the opposite. And so on. Resilience assessment is complicated, localized and personal, especially in the context of The Long Emergency.
Cicerone: I find the idea that everyone has to be an isolated subsistence farmer / half-ass carpenter/electrician/plumber depressing.
Hi Cicerone I feel the exact opposite, I like being able to do a lot of different things. Ive done all of them while building my house. Some of the jobs are better than others of course but the resiliency in being a jack of all is nothing but a plus to me. I definitely agree that isolated anything is depressing and I like being alone :) Its all about fomenting local community. Personally Im not big on cities because they require vast amounts of resources to feed its populations. Its roughly a 1 to 1 ratio of productive acres per person and this is with all the mechanized, artificially fertilized processes. https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-can-be-fed-year-round-off-of-one-acre-of-crop-growing
How it works out in specific areas is somewhat a guesstimate. But if we look at examples from history the ones to suffer first and most are the urban poor. My belief is that cities will slowly begin to wobble then suddenly fall over like a top at the end of its turn. Its tricky to make a change, we have our ups and downs. The whole social/community reset is tough, but when we go back into the burbs we know deep down we did the right thing. The city, its pace and convenience is addictive. I have friends that come for visits and ask me if I get bored :). I ask them if they are anxious to get back.
Good luck with the rational response.
S.
But if we look at examples from history the ones to suffer first and most are the urban poorMaybe, but are we forgetting our ancestors? I don't know about you but I did genealogy research and they were mostly rural poor exploited by elite interests (taxation, property rights) forced to flee to America during economic/political turmoil for some hope of a better life on the factory floor. Throughout history, this is what repeats. The rural people get pillaged. If you're really a totally independent gentleman farmer with an army, more power to you, but try to view the dependencies in your life (got a car? got roads? got machined lumber, steel knives, a computer, the internet? Safe from foreign invasion, polio, malaria? Etc) with clear eyes.
view the dependencies in your life (got a car? got roads? got machined lumber, steel knives, a computer, the internet? Safe from foreign invasion, polio, malaria? Etc) with clear eyes.
Fully agree with above statement, There are so many ways for one to work on resiliency. Many of these dependencies just wont make it through the long emergency. It depends on the pace of change, what can make it through. Personally my residence is 30 km from a town of 20 000 people. I have 9 acres of which about 6 I am starting to put into a permaculture food forest. Is that better resiliency than my previous 1/4 acre urban lot? I think so…will I hold on to it and prosper from here on in? who knows. It sure seems like a better option than paying off a 250k mortgage for the next 25 years for a 1/4 acre plot with an old house. No matter what things are going to get harder on so many fronts. How is living in an urban setting where consumption in general is the norm better than a rural setting with space that allows for more of a production based economy?
Quote from cicerone: “Reading these comments, it seems that preparing for the “worst” is kind of a Rorschach test for our fears, biases, and experiences…”
END QUOTE
And hopes, I would add. One of the articles which has most affected me was one written by Eric Janzsen in the lead up to the Great Recession titled “Recession Without Romance”. In it he took on the assertions that a recession was needed and that it would help to clean out the system, strip the market of government interference, and lead to a stronger, healthier US economy. It was (and still is) a brutal beatdown of the romantic notion that hard times will result in a return to the good honest days of yore when a man could work hard and win big in the tough but just US system.
I have come to believe that this is just one aspect of a type of escapism which allows one to honestly hope for disaster so that all your dreams come true… as insane as that sounds.
I don’t know when the economic reset we have managed to avoid for so long will come. I ~think~ a lot of this avoidance will have made it much harder than it needed to be. But I ~know~ that it will be anything but romantic. Poverty isn’t romantic.
There ain’t going to be roaming hordes of city dwellers descending upon your garden to steal your carrots and snow peas. There will be neighbors children who cause you pain when you see their scrawny, malnourished builds and worn out shoes with holes in them. There won’t be armed bands of miscreants shooting you and stealing your farm. There will be the local sheriff overseeing the repossession of your home after you lost your job and could not afford the mortgage payment. No one is going to be rummaging around in the basement to make off with your stash of dried pinto beans. What there will be is a couple somebodies sneaking in while you and your family are grocery shopping, breaking off the lock on your tool shed and stealing your tiller, your chainsaw and most hand held tools in less time than it takes for the UPS guy to drop off a delivery… and you cannot afford to replace them.
Country living is cool and I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China. And I think it the current environment it makes all the sense in the world for a lot of people. But it won’t save you from the apocalypse. But it won’t need to. We aren’t headed for an apocalypse. The reality will be much tougher and much less romantic than that. IMHO.
Will
Will, it doesn’t seem to me that your opinions about how our future will NOT be apocalyptically violent can be supported by a look at history or a recitation of current facts.
There ain’t going to be roaming hordes of city dwellers descending upon your garden to steal your carrots and snow peas. There will be neighbors children who cause you pain when you see their scrawny, malnourished builds and worn out shoes with holes in them. There won’t be armed bands of miscreants shooting you and stealing your farm. There will be the local sheriff overseeing the repossession of your home after you lost your job and could not afford the mortgage payment. No one is going to be rummaging around in the basement to make off with your stash of dried pinto beans. What there will be is a couple somebodies sneaking in while you and your family are grocery shopping, breaking off the lock on your tool shed and stealing your tiller, your chainsaw and most hand held tools in less time than it takes for the UPS guy to drop off a delivery. Country living is cool and I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China. And I think it the current environment it makes all the sense in the world for a lot of people. But it won’t save you from the apocalypse. But it won’t need to. We aren’t headed for an apocalypse. The reality will be much tougher and much less romantic than that. IMHO.I’m hoping for a non-violent collapse too, “just” poverty and making due with a lot less. I’ll come through that in good shape. However, I’ve seen too much violence during economic collapses in history and in current events in places like Venezuela and South Africa to hope that the economic collapse right around the corner for us won’t come with significant violence in many places. For that matter, I’ve seen too much violence in Philadelphia to naively hope for a low violence collapse. Maybe the most romantic notion is that the violence that regularly accompanies economic collapse nearly everywhere and is already evident in the most economically depressed US cities today is not going to be a significant aspect of our future. That would be appealingly romantic: a collapse with very little violence. We can always hope, but in this case we should hope while preparing for the violence anyway.
I believe the pace of change/descent is what will manifest different levels of violence. Take Argentina, over the last 80 years it went from a country with a large, flourishing economy and a fairly well educated civil populace to a have and have not, go and dont go to kind of place. For most of that time you would be fine to walk around just about anywhere and be ok. At certain times (2001 crisis) you would get mugged for your groceries. Larger cities of 50k+ were worse, where people didn't know each other as well. The higher the density the more individuals in dire straights looking to survive. But this seems obvious no? I cant think of a good argument for staying in a city long term... but Im open to hear the counter argument. I have some city friends that agree with my opinion on city vs country living but making the shift is super hard for a number of reasons.
Take Argentina, over the last 80 years it went from a country with a large, flourishing economy and a fairly well educated civil populace to a have and have not, go and don`t go to kind of place.By no means am I an expert, but I did spend a month in Buenos Aries in 2016. I stayed in the Recoletta district (very nice, but on the downslope like pretty much everywhere there) and took daily walks pressing myself farther and farther afield until it felt unsafe. Everybody I met was super nice but I got a similar safety download from everyone. Don't wear your backpack on your back because zippers can be opened without you knowing. Don't place your phone on the dinner table no matter how nice the restaurant because snatch-and-bolt criminals often came dressed very well. An approaching motorcycle, especially with two riders warranted your full attention. And so on. I never had any trouble but I am a fully alert kind of guy. I imagine that the more obviously clueless you are to your surroundings the more these warnings would need to apply. Criminals are observant and tend to pick easy over hard. But I did not wander far from my good district. Perhaps 10 blocks was the limit. Then the vibe changed. I could feel it. I was being watched in a different way. I was clearly an outsider, as was anybody not from that precise neighborhood, or 'favella.' There were many favellas that even the police would not dare venture into. Too dangerous. At the time I was there things were okay, but not great. The Arg peso traded at 16:1 to the dollar officially, but 18:1 from a guy the doorman in my building knew down the street. Today that exchange rate is 60:1 officially, and I can only guess what unofficially. Things have gotten worse. I would suspect the warnings I'd receive today would be more urgent than before. Maybe the ten block safe radius is now 5 blocks. Who knows? But the idea is that as things get more dire the safe zones shrink and the level of alertness you need to maintain increases. Together they make for a smaller life.
I was in BA, Dec 2016, we stayed in the San Telmo region. Buenos Aires is like a run down Paris, for a city it does have its appeal but visiting Argentina is bittersweet for me. So much missed potential there. All the natural resources a country could need and such mismanagement. I`m very glad I told my young half-siblings to change all their saving over to dollars a few years back now.
Smaller Life indeed, its quite sad. I have a small life these days but its safe here and meaningful. My hope is for my young children to find meaning in a simpler life. My youngest two are doing ok with the changes, and my daughter will get there with time, I hope.
“One of the articles which has most affected me was one written by Eric Janzsen in the lead up to the Great Recession titled “Recession Without Romance”. In it he took on the assertions that a recession was needed and that it would help to clean out the system, strip the market of government interference, and lead to a stronger, healthier US economy. It was (and still is) a brutal beatdown of the romantic notion that hard times will result in a return to the good honest days of yore when a man could work hard and win big in the tough but just US system.”
At the risk of getting a little off topic, I agree with this. What the great depression did was realign the economy’s capital back towards true profitability and growth. This caused pain as those people who had previously gotten their income from the vacuous bubble preceeding it suddenly lost their apparent wealth.
Fundamentally this is how free market capitalism is supposed to work. The private sector produces net profits and the efficiency brought on by competition creates growth and opportunity for everyone. Governnent is funded by taxing the private sector and is therefore deemed to be “unproductive”, and therefore the extent of the public sector should be minimized and only used to support the private sector and create a safety net for those who need help. This model certainly seemed to work and be validated by the bubble preceeding the great depression, during the depression and the many decades of subsequent growth afterwards.
However, this model has critical flaws. Firstly, the growth in the US economy in the decades since the depression has been facilitated by the US dollar’s hegemony and manipulation of the currency post 1971. It might not have been so dependent on efficiencies and innovations by the private sector.
Secondly, many equate the profit created by the private sector to be equivalent to the optimal allocation of society’s / the economy’s resources. But this is unnatural and unsustainable because it is not possible for the majority of the economy to enjoy net profit (with true inflation factored in), where profit denotes an increase in claims on wealth or ownership of the planet’s resources and everything we make from them, in a finite world. It’s simple math.
Now that the world is reaching maximum resources and can no longer grow in real terms, the result is that the tertiary financial system that is supposed to represent those claims on wealth has been stretched like a rubber band and is now verging on collapse.
Unlike the great depression, we are not going to emerge after the everything bubble on a new path to organizing, once the pain of this bubble subsides, because the world’s financial system is still essentially geared to equate wealth with profits and growth. What the new system will look like, who knows, but I can be sure that it wont be positive for the average person. This is unfortunate because we are currently able to comfortably feed everyone today, and there is no fundamental reason why that would change over the next 5 to 10 years. What will change is the distribution network for wealth when the current system ends. This will leave many out in the cold and cause massive social upheaval.
I’m not trying to beat up on capitalism because some form if it is essential for price discovery, capital allocation, and rewarding innovation, good work and effort. But what we need to change is the widely accepted belief that the only capital allocation that is worthwhile and “productive” is one that creates net profit and growing income. That won’t work anymore.
Enjoy your thoughts cicerone. Comments:
...preparing is kind of a Rorschach test for our fears, biases.For us, living a resilient lifestyle is merely a rational choice for a healthier living, not a fear-based reaction. But then again, we don't believe the evidence supports a "Long Emergency" either (as a technical guy I was wholly unimpressed with JHK's 2005 book, correctly so as said predictions have been wildly off-base).
I find the idea that everyone has to be an isolated subsistence farmer / half-ass carpenter/electrician/plumber depressing.Even if rural, why consider it "isolated" (all can have active family/extended family/friends/community ties)? Also, why be a "half-ass" anything (nearly anyone can become a decent or even gifted plumber/electrician/carpenter)? Urban or rural can both be a great life, and both have a focus on people.
Throughout history rural people get pillaged.This is true. Cities are wealthier, more efficient, and control the rural areas. Always have, always will. Why? Wealth is generated by people, ideas, and things (Romer) and cities have more of all three. Romer's 1990's work put the fork in Malthus but it isn't well known (Warsh did a good job of explaining this).
You do realize that your water is piped in from the Sierras, right?
It is an interesting part of the world, but very vulnerable to many different potential problems.
Wish you luck.
The climate is changing far faster than the worst-case projections of 10-20 years ago and how that plays out is anybody’s guess at this point, but it is apparent that our governments from national to local are NOT going to be prepared and most of our neighbors will not be either.
Within the life span of your children, the climate of Cascadia will be more like the SF Bay Area and that only relates to the climate. What damage that will do to the natural world that cannot adapt very quickly is a wild card. The life forms native there may not be able to adapt or survive and the ones adapted to the Bay Area probably will not be able to migrate to the north that quickly.
As to water, the cities that have good supplies under their feet will have a huge advantage over places like NYC, LA, and SF that have to import water over great distances through different jurisdictions. The list of cities with adequate water supplies within their jurisdiction is pretty short.
I am about a decade from retirement. If I were a young adult, I would be looking at the Great Lakes region. By that I do not mean Chicago.