incoherent rant fn(5,6,1)
[1] Ok, those of you who can Google and have googled "peak oil", "hubbert curve" and "oil depletion", and have joined the dots the right way, will have realised that the global economy, and our precious "superior" lifestyle, will cease to exist after the CRASH which will come sometime in the next three to five years.
[2] I was going to post some sort of great Personal Survival Plan, but people will work out for themselves that they'll need to get away to somewhere where they can subsist by growing their own food. Cities will become crime-riddled disaster zones. The countryside will not be able to support the millions who will head out of the cities to scratch for a living. Thinking it won't happen will not save you. Thinking that the lunatics who run things will be able agree on what's needed to fix things is a delusion of the mentally impaired.
[3] So, by the time the shit hits the fan, if you aren't nicely ensconced in a little dead-end valley in some really out of the way piece of good farming land with its own good water supply, and you haven't yet developed your subsistence fruit and vegetable plot (and that takes about three to five years to set up, so guess when you'd have to get started), you'll be what we here in Australia call "ratshit".
[4] Now, not everyone will have the means to go buy their own piece of good dirt in a good secluded place, but those who are thinking that they'll sell their house and buy a small farm had better realise that this has to happen right frigging now. Why? Because by the time the signs become evident to most people, no one will give you zip for where you're currently living, and where you want to go will have become hellishly expensive (supply and demand). And anyway, having bought your little survival farmlet is only the beginning. As I said, it'll take you three to five years of city-slicker-mistake-making to grow enough to feed you and yours.
[5] If you think that staying where you are is smart, then you must know something I don't, or you must be filthy rich and living in Fort Knox.
[6] The last depression in the thirties? That was sheer luxury compared to what's coming.
[7] The emergency measures your wonderful fatcat leaders will put in place? Friend, they are going to be too busy getting a free ride to some rich dude's secure enclave to bother about you.
[8] Public transport? Forget it. You're dreaming or deluded.
[9] Soon this kind of blog post will be outlawed on the grounds of causing "unwarranted panic". The bastards who run things will shut the public side of the internet down or price it up so that only the rich and privileged will be able to communicate through it. Slavery will be how the rest of us will earn our keep.
So what's the point of this post?
[10] Well, to convince you sell up NOW, buy a farm and get busy. And to get you thinking about afterwards... For those who have not starved to death, been murdered, or committed suicide, there will be an "afterwards"...
[11] If during this coming depression, the masses don't dismantle the capitalist system and set up some kind of communal system which prevents the rich and greedy from dominating production, then it'll be curtains forever. Forever. Have you noticed that each recession and depression have been times during which the rich have inceased their stranglehold on the means of production?
[12] After this one that's coming, because the beast has now gone fully global, they'll own you, your government, your land, your water, your babies, and your babies' babies. Nice things like "good working conditions" will have disappeared for all but the essential few needed to service the rich.
[13] Keep bad-mouthing communism. Keep bad-mouthing socialism. Whatever you do, don't do the intellectual hard yards to explore alternatives to capitalism (such as Parecon). Don't inform yourself. Don't get politically active. Don't concern yourself with these things. Leave that to others. Someone will come along and look after you. Your job will be safe. Your suburb will be fine. It won't be as bad as that lunatic over at diogenesian discourse says it will. He's lost it. He's ranting.
[14] OK, I'll put it to you another way: A depression is a breakdown. A breakdown is an opportunity for breakthrough. If the coming depression is not used as an opportunity to throw out capitalism once and for all, you will be a slave to it forever. For an alternative to capitalism to come out of the coming depression, you, yes YOU, will need to get active on the left side of politics, wherever you are, RIGHT NOW, so that there is a viable and cohesive movement for change already established when the shit hits the fan. And when I say "the left" I don't mean Labor (or the Dems in the US), they are parties committed to capitalism. And why engage "right now"? Because Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. And then, in three to five years' time, when you're busy dismantling capitalism in all its forms and installing the alternative, remember that Peaceful People Power is the way to go about it.
[15] But who am I kidding... The only people reading this either already agree and are involved in social change, or they like having a giggle at my rants, or they are working for the spooks and glad they're getting paid for having to read this shit. Imagine that. Getting paid to read this shit.
[16] Anyhow, now you can't say you weren't told. From here on in, you can't say you didn't know. You can only say "I failed to act whilst there was still time because I was busy 'thinking positive' and convincing myself this wasn't going to happen." Psssttt... Heard of the Boy Scouts motto?
[2] I was going to post some sort of great Personal Survival Plan, but people will work out for themselves that they'll need to get away to somewhere where they can subsist by growing their own food. Cities will become crime-riddled disaster zones. The countryside will not be able to support the millions who will head out of the cities to scratch for a living. Thinking it won't happen will not save you. Thinking that the lunatics who run things will be able agree on what's needed to fix things is a delusion of the mentally impaired.
[3] So, by the time the shit hits the fan, if you aren't nicely ensconced in a little dead-end valley in some really out of the way piece of good farming land with its own good water supply, and you haven't yet developed your subsistence fruit and vegetable plot (and that takes about three to five years to set up, so guess when you'd have to get started), you'll be what we here in Australia call "ratshit".
[4] Now, not everyone will have the means to go buy their own piece of good dirt in a good secluded place, but those who are thinking that they'll sell their house and buy a small farm had better realise that this has to happen right frigging now. Why? Because by the time the signs become evident to most people, no one will give you zip for where you're currently living, and where you want to go will have become hellishly expensive (supply and demand). And anyway, having bought your little survival farmlet is only the beginning. As I said, it'll take you three to five years of city-slicker-mistake-making to grow enough to feed you and yours.
[5] If you think that staying where you are is smart, then you must know something I don't, or you must be filthy rich and living in Fort Knox.
[6] The last depression in the thirties? That was sheer luxury compared to what's coming.
[7] The emergency measures your wonderful fatcat leaders will put in place? Friend, they are going to be too busy getting a free ride to some rich dude's secure enclave to bother about you.
[8] Public transport? Forget it. You're dreaming or deluded.
[9] Soon this kind of blog post will be outlawed on the grounds of causing "unwarranted panic". The bastards who run things will shut the public side of the internet down or price it up so that only the rich and privileged will be able to communicate through it. Slavery will be how the rest of us will earn our keep.
So what's the point of this post?
[10] Well, to convince you sell up NOW, buy a farm and get busy. And to get you thinking about afterwards... For those who have not starved to death, been murdered, or committed suicide, there will be an "afterwards"...
[11] If during this coming depression, the masses don't dismantle the capitalist system and set up some kind of communal system which prevents the rich and greedy from dominating production, then it'll be curtains forever. Forever. Have you noticed that each recession and depression have been times during which the rich have inceased their stranglehold on the means of production?
[12] After this one that's coming, because the beast has now gone fully global, they'll own you, your government, your land, your water, your babies, and your babies' babies. Nice things like "good working conditions" will have disappeared for all but the essential few needed to service the rich.
[13] Keep bad-mouthing communism. Keep bad-mouthing socialism. Whatever you do, don't do the intellectual hard yards to explore alternatives to capitalism (such as Parecon). Don't inform yourself. Don't get politically active. Don't concern yourself with these things. Leave that to others. Someone will come along and look after you. Your job will be safe. Your suburb will be fine. It won't be as bad as that lunatic over at diogenesian discourse says it will. He's lost it. He's ranting.
[14] OK, I'll put it to you another way: A depression is a breakdown. A breakdown is an opportunity for breakthrough. If the coming depression is not used as an opportunity to throw out capitalism once and for all, you will be a slave to it forever. For an alternative to capitalism to come out of the coming depression, you, yes YOU, will need to get active on the left side of politics, wherever you are, RIGHT NOW, so that there is a viable and cohesive movement for change already established when the shit hits the fan. And when I say "the left" I don't mean Labor (or the Dems in the US), they are parties committed to capitalism. And why engage "right now"? Because Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. And then, in three to five years' time, when you're busy dismantling capitalism in all its forms and installing the alternative, remember that Peaceful People Power is the way to go about it.
[15] But who am I kidding... The only people reading this either already agree and are involved in social change, or they like having a giggle at my rants, or they are working for the spooks and glad they're getting paid for having to read this shit. Imagine that. Getting paid to read this shit.
[16] Anyhow, now you can't say you weren't told. From here on in, you can't say you didn't know. You can only say "I failed to act whilst there was still time because I was busy 'thinking positive' and convincing myself this wasn't going to happen." Psssttt... Heard of the Boy Scouts motto?
posted by The Editor at
3:56 AM
17 Comments:
I think most people feel that somehow the shit is going to hit the fan. The three to five years thing I heard about three to five years ago, so when is another thing.
Aside from water issues, (now thinking windmill for borepump, because presumably there will be no electrickery that we can afford) it will be good to see the land around here get used to grow food that people can eat. A novel idea, rather than it being used as holding paddocks for cattle stock that live only to get slaughtered and shipped off to Japan, or the other industry here, the broadscale farming or lucerne.
Oedipus is getting worried. Link may have to bite the bullet and learn how to shoot bunnies. Dang.
The three to five years thing I heard about three to five years ago, so when is another thing.
Yes, but there's a more expert group of people saying it these days. Oil industry geologists and economists exchanging information to figure out the effects and projected timings. Computer modelling. And three to five years keeps getting mentioned by "a better class of citizen" these days.
If you don't get rid of capitalism then one of two things will happen to your bore water:
[1] You will be told you are not allowed to do it because it's robbing the corporate bore just down the road which is owned by a global giant (like Coca-Cola Amatil for instance) who is shipping your local water out to the highest bidders on the planet.
[2] Your bore will go dry because of the corporate bore just down the road is sucking deeper and faster than you are.
And if you don't own the land, don't waste your time developing anything. They will evict you when they want your patch for their cousin Alastair who's just escaped from the city and is looking poorly... "Sorry, but you do understand that blood is thicker than water..." But you can stay on as a slave if you work hard enough and produce more than you eat... Of course, marrying Alastair might not be such a bad idea - if you like slavery of the other kind as well...
The problem is that the poor people are just trying to get through the next 24 hours and not thinking 3 years ahead.
As for finding a safe spot in the hills, haven't the dingbats with guns been doing that in America for years?
Anyway, we'll all drown when the icecaps melt or get irradiated when Shrub gets up for a pee and pushes the red button thinking it's the flusher.
And spare a thought for the poor ASIO bastards reading your blog. How many have already gone blind?
JahTeh, poor or rich, those who keep their eyes wide shut don't stand as good a chance of survival as those who bother to look around a bit and perhaps, by doing so, happen to notice a great big Mack truck bearing down on them. No use just sitting there, a mesmerised bunny caught in the headlights...
This idea that we're helpless is a phurphy. A lie. It's the cornerstone of disempowerment. We can all get involved at some level of politics. For instance, your local Greens need people to make sandwiches, sell raffle tickets, or T-shirts, answer phones. Or we can blog our heads off and make as much noise as possible. "You're the voice, try and understand it..."
I helped Andrew Wilkie try to unseat Howard in the rodent's own electorate at the last elections. Wilkie didn't win but he scored something like 22% of the vote - the highest Greens vote anywhere anytime and in Howards electorate too! I felt good for having done my little bit in achieving that result. All I did was stand in shopping ccenters handing out leaflets on a couple of Saturday mornings. but if no one had been out there doing that, Wilke would have scored zip.
There's only action or excuses for not acting, and you'd be surprised at the stupid reasons we invent for not acting - and it always amounts to one thing: self-disempowerment.
Any ASIO twerp being paid to read this blog is a total waste tax payers' money. Piss off, ASIO, you're a very expensive joke. Get a REAL job, or as JahTeh says, YOU'LL GO BLIND !!!
Fortunately security of tenure here is more or less guaranteed, its just whether I want to stay. But having been thinking about your post and doing a bit of googling; (would you describe yourself as a 'peaknik' or a 'doomer' gerry?) I'm wondering that here maybe not such a bad option. Very small community, feed-lot cows abound as do abbatoir workers living down the road. (ick, I know, but protein will be something we will all hunger for). Coke are not down the road, only lucerne farmers. The place is obscure enough that mining the groundwater would probably go unnoticed and of course if the government said no, we could always say yeah, right, eff off go and do something useful.
I wonder that Howard's push for nuclear power isn't in the knowledge of this.
sLinky (silk-loving Link), I don't know if I'm a peaknik or a doomer. They sound like pejoratives cooked up by critics of the theory.
Sounds like you are well positioned to ride out the storm. I envy you. I know, it's *so* neo-moralistically incorrect to for me to admit to experiencing envy... So shoot me...
Howard? Oh yeah, they know exactly what's coming. They just won't admit it publicly for fear of accelerating the onset of The Crash. Mere delaying tactics. They'll deny it and talk-up the future till the day AFTER The Crash, then they'll look suitably puzzled, disappointed, horrified, etc, and say shit like "no one could have forseen this disaster..."
Howard is the archetypal Ferengi trader. Trust him at your peril.
Well, since we are all tippin' our cards to show the ace we're saving for when $400/bbl oil has us petroladdicts over a barrel:
I have ground water to spare and set the house for solar heating up on a defensible rock promontory with swamp on two sides. The whole of the property is 2.75 acres all but the garden patch and septic are oak and pine woods. Since I heat with a woodstove for backup, I think I can sqeak by with 2 acres managed as a wood lot. The house is well insulated. The garden patch is about a 1/2 acre, flat, low, rich soil with ancient sod and protected from north winds by the shelter of a cliff along its north side.
Rain in our area, more or less in accord with newer climate models, has increased a bit: I predict our 40inch/year to go to 48.* So if I can't find gas for my generator[electric pump], I will set up cisterns and filter my downspouts into them. That makes 4/15 or about 1/4 of an acre foot of water per year if I don't arrange any further collection surface.
May not be worth much but I also live a 15 minute walk from a train station. I don't see a screeching halt with outbreaks of looting but a decade long spiral of unemployment, starvation and the return of diseases [because, mind you, while this cheery scenario of no petrol is playing out we ALSO have a good hundred years of global warming as coal burning will, out of sheer desperation, be widely permitted in any form at all] that plagued us before we had hospitals and means to get to them at will.
My to do list is not complete: I have to buy the lexan for green houses while I still have the cash and the stuff hasn't become as valueable as diamonds.
You will need green houses because, unless you tried organic farming, you might be dismayed, or starved, by what simple little flies, beetles and worms can do to your garden...not to mention I only get a 4 month season now, call it 6 with global warming and I still have nothing fresh to eat for 6 months unless I put up a greenhouse.
How am I doing on the preparedness, Gerry? Should I buy a few scatter guns and teach the missus how to use one?
I am still smilin' Gerry but I am quite with you on this matter, its not one damn bit funny.
*
the 90 year precip average hereabouts is 40.7 inches/yr, but the for the 10 years ending in 1989, its 41.9...you figure out whats happening if you don't want me drawing obvious conclusions.
Ironically, Greenie, between '74 and '76, I was involved at a very intimate level with military operational and contingency planning. And later I was involved in counter-disaster contingency planning with the State Emergency Services.
So, analysing worst case scenarios, second guessing, and working out what the respose should be and how that might be achieved was my bread and butter for years.
My assessment of your position? Nice spot, maybe wrong location. Ask you yourself in what way and to what degree your community (say ten mile radius) will disintigrate during The Mother Of All Depressions.
Will there be murdering, marauding, pillaging mobs of starving people where you are? Starving people will steal livestock, fruit and vegetable from wherever they can get them. The survival instinct turns humans into the most vicous beasts. Marauding mobs will be highly mobile because they will specifically steal petrol and vehicles to obtain mobility, so you may need to be quite a ways out of the way.
Watch the Mad Max movies if you want to get a bit of an idea... :-(
You guys will be seeing a different dynamic to us, because of your "right to bear arms" laws. Your communities, where they remain cohesive, will be armed communities able to defend themselves and sort out their own internal troubles.
We'll be sitting ducks here because whilst the underworld is awash with guns, the population as a whole has been more or less disarmed. Despots do that, you know... "It's for your own good."
The trusting public think the police and military will protect them. They dream. They are naiive deluded fools. The very limited resources of the police and the military will be used to protect the rich and powerful. The rest will be abandoned and left to their own resources. "We're sorry..." will become the catch cry.
If you think that you should move,
sell up NOW while you can still get a reasonable price for your property and whilst you can still get the type of property you need at a reasonable price, and as I said, you'll need a few years head start to develop the subsistence yeild of your new property anyhow, so now would be that time...
Have you noticed how the rich have already got their enclaves, their bolt holes? If you take a good look at some of them you might notice that they are easily defended and very secluded indeed.
Up here, a Unitied Arab Emirates corporation recently bought a whole pristine valley with cliffs on three sides, good water, good land, and only one road in through a narrow neck. Ostensibly it is being developed as holiday resort for the very rich. It's just pure coincidence that it can be turned into a bloody impregnable fortress at the drop of a hat. Secure the road, chopper in, chopper out. Neat. Couldn't have planned it better myself. And there's a handy high-unemplyoment community nearby which will soon be starving, from which the required amount of slave labor can be "recruited". Oh yeah, don't tell me they don't know what they're doing... And the locals fell over backwards to seal the deal... Saw it as "employment opportunity" didn't they... Wombats...
Of course, I'm just a deranged, paranoid Vietnam vet. I wouldn't know zip... We'll see...
I'm still a committed pacifist, but if someone comes at me or mine, and if they leave me no choice, I will kill them. It's called survival. Anything else would be called suicide or stupidity.
And now all the deluded wannabe buddhist hippies out there will think I'm awful... Sometimes just sitting there going "Ommmmmmmmmmmmm" is not a smart thing to do...
I should stop now...
Yeah, BB. You're thinking straight. Have you made a list of all the friends and relloes who will come abegging? Worked out how many you'll be able to take in and who they will be? Have you rehearsed the "We're so sorry" speech you'll be dropping on the rest?
Is reality getting too scary for you yet? Am I the Antichrist? Wanna blame ME? Well, yeah, you might actually have a point. After all I did spend years in the military - the acquisition machine of MegaCorp. "I'm so sorry..."
Now bust your gut to correctly suss out the future, so that you can prepare and respond in the best pro-survival way. The dead won't be part of the future. Not unless they reincarnate...
Never thought I'd become a fully fledged survivalist... Weird job for a suicidal vet...
I should stop now...
"the limited resources of the police..." No shit! that is the whole story of hurricane Katrina.
The rich have their safe spots: yup. Old man Forbes was selling off huge lots in the Sangre De Cristo mountains near the Colorado/Utah border 20 years ago...it is the absolute middle of nowhere if you don't have a private plane and that could be a virtue looked at in a certain context.
As to my location. I am an hours drive from about 2 million residents of boston and suburbs who could not feed themselves longer than about a week if the trucks stopped running. In that respect, I have a problem. I am in the middle of about 16 square miles of over priced, rocky low density suburb...the towns with the highest and 3rd highest net worth per capita in the state...but we have nothing to speak of for police and the housing stock is so new few firefighters are needed either...we spend all our taxes on schools. so if the crash is not gradual enough, we are going to be caught flat footed.
Guess I will get the shotguns.
interlopers buying up the most defensible spot: every fortress is also a prison. bury a few explosive chages in the cliff tops at the choke point, if any, for access to the canyon. Set them up so you can radio a code to seal off the canyon. Take their money, let em build the places where they can drink and sing and all those other things they aren't allowing anyone to do back home in the UAE. Take their money...they certainly took yours. If they get upity, cut 'em off. If they finally cave in and want to got home...take their money.
watched too many kung foo movies to believe buddhists of one flavor or another haven't found an acceptable rationale for self defense.
mad max movies? much as I admire the good will and good sense of the Aussies I have run into, yerself particulary included, I do not much care for anything with Mel Gibson in it.
Sounds like you'll probably be ok Greenie, because:
[1] Your community will probably hang together and work together.
[2] Yours is the sort of rich neighbourhood which will get military and/or police resources.
When it happens, can you send the Learjet to come and get me and my partner? We'll be slaves for board and lodgings. I'll wash the Cadillac and polish the Bell Jet Ranger... ;-)
Don't have a Learjet. But I have a stockpile of bicycles, bicycle parts and tools that will last me about two lifetimes. By the time there isn't enough cheap #2 bunker oil to run the cargo container ships from China, we in the US will have forgotten how to make anything but meth. A stash of low tech hardware, cheap to aquire now, could come in handy then.
Just struck me who is bound to come out OK if all this EOTWAWKI peak-oil crashes as badly as weve been imagining: the Amish. They don't need or use any of the resources most of us have become unable to live without.
And when you track it all the way back, politics, whether in the guise of Bush vs Bin Laden, Zhou Enlai vs Robert McNamera, Toyota vs General Motors, Rommel vs Montgomery, Hitler vs everybody, TR vs Spain, or any of the purported contests of "isms" ...really all but a handful of religiously inspired wars for useless bits of desert... ALL come down to contests about who gets to plunder nature and who does not. I wonder if the squabbles over the scraps , once its obvious we have left ourselves only scraps, will be as hard-fought.
Greenie, yes, I think low-tech will be the way for a while during the depression, but it will still be juxtaposed with high tech as well. I'd certainly be selling shares around about now and buying gold or oil futures. Sounds very capitalistc, I know. Since I own no shares it's amoot point.
The Amish, yes.
Fighting over the scraps: Hmmm... That's a tough one. I think we'll see more resources-driven wars, especially water resources. I think the drift will be away from globalisation and back to local, regonal, and national subsistance and economic self-sufficiencey.
We will have learned that globalistion brings treachery for the poor and booty for the rich. We'll see that globalisation is piracy and slavery under another name.
I had forgotten about the Amish.
Bear, there's only one thing we can do, we'll pinch Link's horse.
You and I, Horsestealers Inc., but you take the end with the teeth.
That thing's ready for the knackery, innit?
I'm going to tell her you said that especially since she looks like having to shot her car too.
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