Nightshade

Please visit and read the info on this site to decide what or how
you can survive the changes that loom large in our world today.

Lot's to read here so poke around.........

https://www.sustainableliving.info/fa...n_overview.htm

Please......share this link with as many as you care to.

bragi

Do you have any information about what indivuals can do to prepare for this (rather dismal, at least for a awhile) future?

cooker

few ideas:
Personal: eliminate debts, and learn to live sustainably so it won't be such a shock when it becomes the only option. Keep a small "kitchen garden" and learn to grow fruit and vegetables and make preserves. It'll be a usefull skill.
Civic: pressure governments to invest in public transport, high density development, sustainable agriculture and sustainable power generation.
Social:talk publically about what you are doing.

ReptilesBlade 

These topics are why I come here.

Alekhine

All good ideas.

Related to number 2: I have taken to a rather maverick habit that might be seen as "tinfoil hattish" or straight out of 1950s nuclear scare times: I buy canned foodstuffs with a long shelf-life (just about anything without a high acidic content, as over time it reacts with the metal in the can and spoils) and weekly bury 10 cans in the wilderness on my bike rides, encased in plastic bags and in various locations that I mark on a map - kind of like pirate treasure. Sounds drastic, but it's relatively cheap and if there's ever a serious crisis, I'll know where to go and I'll presumably be able to eat, albeit sparsely. Believe it or not, the idea was given to me by my scoutmaster in Boy Scouts, but I never took it seriously until a couple of years ago.

I'm moving to Thailand soon though, so I'll probably give the locations to my friend Jennifer.

nedgoudy

Great article. I believe firmly in everything said
on the page you suggested. It also confirms that
I am already busy getting prepared for such
eventualities. While I am 55 and may not experience
the worst of it, I am prepared to go Car Free in 18
months (probably less) and the only other thing I
really need to do is take up gardening and maybe
plant a few fruit trees in my backyard. That, and
maybe buy a goat for milk to drink. I have never
drank goats milk but imagine I can find it palatable
if it is the main alternative to starvation. :O)

wahoonc

Interesting read. I will be interested to see how it really pans out. I don't doubt there are going to be issues, there already are. I think I am better placed than a lot of people to handle something like this. Everything we own we own free and clear. We have the skills to be self sufficent (comes from years of choosing to live near the bottom of society ) and living in a country setting. Run a google search for "After Peak Oil" and you will read for days. I wonder how much is hype and how much is real. Remember Y2K? Personally I will prepare for some lean times ahead. A lot of the signs are already appearing.

Aaron

filtersweep

Move out of the country? It worked for me.

cooker

The crunch hasn't hit yet.

Nightshade

Yes, I do have one very good suggestion to help all here.

While there are many "End of Oil" books the best how to live a sustainable
life books ever written are the FOX FIRE series. These books are a collection
of old knowledge that was the way America lived before oil changed all our lives.
This series is a project to capture all ,or as much of, this everyday knowledge
that our grandparents lived by as a norm.

While this series of books provide much info the are still only books unless you
turn them into action.

https://www.foxfire.org/

crtreedude 

I moved to the tropics... does that count? We also have enough land to be able to grow all our food (and we do)

We are working at using as little fuel as possible - our reforestation does require fuel currently - but we minimize it by never using a bigger vehicle than we need.

Often that vehicle is a ox for hauling logs.

Most of the time I use a bike for going between work and back. it is about 9 kilometers each way - but pretty rugged roads.

cooker

You're doing your part. Unfortunately the day may come when other people feel they need your land to produce their food.

CTAC

The article made me shiver. I've been through the Soviet Union collapse and all the pictures are very realistic and predictable. There was no a safe harbour where you can wait out bad times. Whether you are working for goverment or private business and feel pretty secure - it's only temporary. Any asset you have might lose value at any time. The only asset that was never losing value was frendship. Friends and relatives were helping each other to go through hadrships, sharing money and helping to find jobs. Invest into friendship.

cyclezealot

In the US depression, the US government handed out script. Do supermarkets accept script. I hope I do all I can to help out oil dependency. The car stays parked every possible moment. Commuting to work to the 2500 miles a year on my bike. There is a couple gallons. My wife has started using the bike for work/errands.
Living here in Europe for awhile, I find nationals seem to not get as upset about rising gas prices. Few drive anywhere like commuters do in the US. Gas here has always been treated like a luxury. Maybe that is why housing patterns are rational here.
The way US commuters drive hours to/from work. It is a crime against humanity.

becnal

+1!!!!

ReptilesBlade 

Agreed.

CTAC

-1. When crisis hit you'd be the first target for people's anger and last to get a job.

rajman

If you read through the article they mention a few things that catch my eye:

"In the 70's a 5% shortfall in oil supply resulted in prices rising 400%. "

"In an slower developing supply:demand mismatch prices may only double, as they are coming off an already much higher baseline."

Let's take it for granted that supply may not be able to match demand. In this case a small (5%) increase in demand has a huge (100-400%) price signal. The corallary of this is that a small decrease in demand will have a huge influence on prices.

It is true that many of our necessities have their backing in cheap energy and and specifically cheap petroleum. However, to imagine that none of our demand is elastic is silly - only 5% of elastic demand is required to mute a price spike.

This was seen recently in the electricity shortage in California. The top 5% of electricity demand created huge price spikes that bankrupted utilities and caused brownouts and blackouts in the state. The solution - send the price signal to the consumer, so that they could decide to turn down their air conditioners based on price spikes, and other conservation measures.

While I agree that people will not be able to do without food - they will be able to trade in their SUV's for honda civics or whatnot if they feel it is worthwhile. At issue is not the price of oil or gasoline, it is what people are willing to pay for these things before they reduce their usage marginally. Current evidence suggests that people are willing to pay quite a bit more for gasoline before they even consider alternatives. This is because people have a lot of money relative to the price of gas/petroleum, and it really doesn't matter to them, they would rather spend an extra $50-$100 dollars a month at the gas pump rather than spending it at starbucks or the mall.

People choose what vehicles they own, they choose wether or not to own a vehicle, they choose where they want to live, they choose wether or not to use air conditioning, they choose wether or not they should use public transit, they choose wether or not to use efficient light bulbs, they choose wether or not to buy efficient appliances, and so on. I find it very difficult to believe that these choices don't amount to 5% of global demand (remember that 40% of oil use in north america is related to personal transportation - based on an average fleet that is as efficient as the model T ford - off the shelf technology is available to at least double if not quadruple the average fuel economy in north america).

China and many other countries currently subsidize petroleum use. China in particular is changing from an exporter to an importer of petroleum, as this continues, they will have to reduce the subsidy or get fried in terms of balance of trade.

The fact that there are people in the US discussing how to live car free demonstrates that it is possible, and that it is possible to reduce petroleum use.

The real issue is that by the wealthy bidding up the cost of petroleum for recreation (what other reason would people choose an inefficient vehicle/lifestyle over a more efficient one), the poor of the world will suffer. This will occur because the high cost of petroleum (price supported by discretionary spending on the whims of the wealthy) will increase the cost of necessities (food/basic transportation/etc) for which the poor pay a much greater fraction of their income.

My $0.02

becnal

Germany isn't Russia.

CTAC

Certainly not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust

becnal

Since you're such a fan of Wikipedia:


Joseph Stalin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stalin became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, he prevailed over Leon Trotsky in a power struggle during the 1920s. In the 1930s Stalin initiated the Great Purge, a campaign of political repression, persecution, and killings that reached its peak in 1937.

Confiscations of grain and other food by the Soviet authorities under his orders contributed to a famine between 1932 and 1934, especially in Ukraine (see Holodomor), Kazakhstan and North Caucasus that may have resulted in millions of deaths. Many peasants resisted collectivization and grain confiscations, but were repressed, most notably peasants deemed "kulaks."[2]

Stalin's rule - reinforced by a cult of personality - was characterized by state terror, mass deportations and political repression, resulting in the death of millions of Soviet citizens. Stalin fought real and alleged opponents mainly through the security apparatus, such as the NKVD. Many of his victims died in the Gulags and as the result of deportations, while others were executed. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, denounced Stalin's rule and the cult of personality in 1956, initiating the process of "de-Stalinization" which later became part of the Sino-Soviet Split.

cooker

Germany...Russia...? Wha...? I thought Filtersweep moved to Norway. Anyway CTAC makes a good point. New immigrants and "foreigners" can be the first to suffer in hard times. Anywhere.

Eatadonut

yawn. This civilization still has several hundred years before its time is up.

In any case, in the event of total collapse of civilization, I know a little out of the way place that me and 20 of my good friends can go, and we all have the ability and equipment to live completely on our own. I suggest anyone who's really paranoid about this recession/end-of-the-world crap do the same.

CTAC

And your point is?

C Law

it's not at 'The Beach' with leonardo is it?