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Veritas | 05-31-2007 02:31 PM
The Slow Crash Imagine the end of the world in moderation. It's hard. We tend to imagine that either the "economy" will recover and we'll go on like 1999 forever, plus flying cars, or else one day "the apocalypse happens" and every component of the industrial system is utterly gone. I'm not ruling out a global supercatastrophe. A runaway greenhouse effect might turn Earth into another Venus and cook us all. Acidification of the oceans might kill the plankton, and with them everything that needs a lot of oxygen. An instant ice age could happen several ways, and this scenario needs more attention because some humans would survive. But what I'm focusing on here is the scenario that includes only events we're reasonably sure about: the end of cheap energy, the decline of industrial agriculture, currency collapse, economic "depression," wars, famines, disease epidemics, infrastructure failures, and extreme unpredictable weather. If that's all we get, the crash will be slower and more complex than the kind of people who predict crashes like to predict. It won't be like falling off a cliff, more like rolling down a rocky hill. There won't be any clear before, during, or after. Most people living during the decline and fall of Rome didn't even know it. We're told to draw a line at the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, but to Romans at the time it was just one event -- the Visigoths came, they milled around, they left, and life went on. After the 1929 stock market crash, respectable voices said it was a temporary adjustment, that the economy was still strong. Only years later, when we knew they were wrong, could we draw a line at 1929. I suggest we're already in the fall of civilization. In 2004 the price of oil doubled, bankruptcies and foreclosures accelerated, global food stockpiles fell to record lows despite high harvests, an apocalyptic religious cult hacked an election to tighten their control of the world's most powerful country, and we had record numbers of hurricanes and tornadoes -- and a big tsunami to top it off. If every year from here to 2020 is half as eventful, we'll be living in railroad cars, eating grass, and still waiting for the big crash we've been led to expect from watching movies designed to push our emotional buttons and be over in two hours. You know how it goes: Electricity and water and heat are off and not coming back on. Food and fuel will never again be coming into the cities. People "revert to savagery" or "anarchy," running wild in the streets killing and looting. If you live in the city, you will have to kill people to steal their food, or even eat them, and they'll be trying to do the same to you. If you live in the country, you'd better have a big gun to fend off the hordes of starving urbanites scouring the countryside. This condition will last until a strong leader rebuilds "civilization." This is a web of lies. The first lie is the assumption that breakdowns will be sudden and permanent. More likely it will go like this: As energy gets more expensive and the electrical infrastructure decays, blackouts will be more frequent and last longer, but power will come back on. By the time the big grids go down permanently, the little grids, patched together from local sources, will be ready to take their place. They will be weaker, less reliable, and more expensive, and they won't cover the slums, but by then we'll all be experts at living without refrigerators and running laptop computers from car batteries scavenged from junked SUV's and recharged with solar panels. Electricity is a luxury, not a necessity. When the lights go out, we won't go berzerk -- we'll go to bed earlier. Likewise with gasoline. The oil's not running out -- it's just getting more scarce and expensive. People who want it will not form motorcycle gangs that chase tankers and fight to the last man. They'll do what my dad did in 1973 and what they're doing now in Iraq -- wait six hours for a fill-up. If you already know how to get by with a bicycle, you just won't have as many cars to deal with. Water supplies are mostly gravity-fed. If something stops the flow, someone will be fixing it. Even the worst places, like Phoenix or Las Vegas, will not suddenly and permanently run out of water. As with electricity and fuel, water will get lower quality, more expensive, and unpredictably available. People will learn to store it and to stop wasting it by watering lawns and washing cars and shitting in drinking water. Adaptable people will learn to catch rainwater. With only 12 inches a year, a 10 foot square metal roof feeding a storage tank will gather 100 cubic feet, or about 800 gallons, enough for one person to have more than two gallons a day. Food is more difficult. It rarely falls from the sky, and industrial agriculture can't possibly continue to feed everyone. It would be easy to feed even our present bloated population if we all learned how to grow little gardens and trays of sprouts and bathtub algae, but that's not going to happen. Populations have died in famines before and will do so again. The lie here is that the food supply will end suddenly and permanently, when really, like everything else, it will end in a series of small collapses and partial recoveries. The other lie is that lack of food will make people kill each other. I challenge readers to come up with a single catastrophic event, in all of history, where it became common for people to kill each other for food. I haven't heard of anyone doing it in areas hit by the tsunami. In the 1984 Ethiopian famine, in the siege of Sarajevo, even in the Irish potato famine, when Ireland was producing enough meat and grain to feed everyone and exporting it to wealthy Englishmen, when people would have been morally justified in killing for food, they did not kill for food. The Donner party ate their own dead but did not kill for food. Napoleon's soldiers retreating from Moscow would cut the organs from fallen men and horses, sometimes before they were quite dead, but did not kill each other to steal food. Nations have gone mad and killed millions for empty abstractions of race and religion and politics, but even in Rwanda or Nazi Germany or post-revolution France, it was uncommon that anyone would kill for food. I can't explain it, why people will kill for ideas and then, when their life is at stake, will quietly starve. Maybe hunger comes on so slowly that by the time they're ready to kill, they're too weak. Maybe, in a real famine, the elite keep the food so well guarded that there's no point trying to take it, and the non-elite, not corrupted by power, would rather share what little they have than fight to the death. Imagine yourself in that position. Whatever stopped the food coming into the city, it's probably regional and temporary, and you'll be expecting it go to back to normal soon, or at least expecting help. Exposure kills people much faster than starvation, so you'll want to stay in the place you know and try to get a piece of the aid shipments. If you leave the city you'll be headed for a particular place like a cabin or a friend's house, not roaming the countryside looking for a cornfield. I've gone by bicycle from central Seattle over Stevens Pass to near Wenatchee, and over Snoqualmie all the way to Spokane. I rode freeways, highways, dirt roads, and gravel trails, and I think I saw two fields of edible crops, neither in season. What about stealing from other people in the city? Again, put yourself in that position. Do you know which houses have food? Which have guns? Would you really go to a random house and knock the door down? If you're even thinking about it, you'll be expecting other people to do the same, and you'll make a defensive alliance with your neighbors. If you're allied and you need each other for survival, you're going to share food. Those with the most food, if they're smart, will give some away to earn respect and loyalty. The situation will be all about social dynamics among neighbors, not physical conflicts against roving gangs. The popular image of "anarchy" is another lie, an elitist caricature of lower class people as stupid and randomly dangerous, mindless and incomprehensible like a tornado. In reality, in the Rodney King riots, people were intelligent enough to not harm the Korean grocery stores where the owners had been nice to them. I was in the Seattle WTO "riots," and the destructive actions were not mindless and crazy, but calm, deliberate, and focused. Notice the propaganda use of the word "streets": "mean streets," "I grew up in the streets," "rioting in the streets." Where else are we going to riot? The lawn? We're led to believe that the most dangerous thing in the streets is people on foot with free will. The most dangerous thing in the streets is the automobile. Deaths in the streets probably go down during riots because there are fewer car crashes. How many people have been invisibly killed in car crashes in the same intersection where the big media spent days making sure everyone in the world saw Reginald Denny being beaten by lower class people? The function of propaganda is not to tell us what to think but to sink us deeper in what we already thoughtlessly believe: in this case, that in the absence of central control we get a dog-eat-dog universe full of shocking crimes. That's what we have now. The every-man-for-himself morality is a symptom of a culture that uses excess wealth and zero-sum competition to maintain hierarchy. In the absence of wealth and control, people get nicer. We learn to take responsibility, to work together, to help each other... until a new dominator appears and crushes us down. All the worst mass-killings of history have been top-down. Genocide happens not when central control stops but when it stops holding back. If the killers are not direct agents of government or industry, they are ordinary people who know they have both the protection and the ideological guidance of the biggest bad-ass of the moment. Usually the ideology is utopian: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, French revolutionaries, American "settlers," and now American neoconservatives and dominionists, all have justified their mass murders with a grandiose vision of a noble conflict to wipe the world clean and build heaven. The danger is not "terrorism" or "chaos" -- the danger is a new order that declares you the danger. I expect utopian genocide to compete with famine for the number two spot, still well behind disease, which historically has always been the biggest killer. The Black Death of 1347-1350 (which might have been an ebola-like virus) killed about a third of Europe, and those people ate organic whole foods and had no jet travel or biowar labs. Still, the interesting question is not "How will people die?" but "How will people live?" In the town next to the mass grave, what will we do all day? Process data and feign enthusiasm? Get on the internet? Make crossbows? Tend fruit trees? The best I can figure it out is to look at a bunch of more and less likely modifiers to the world as we know it, and think through how they could change things. Peak Oil. Global oil extraction will peak in the next year or two, if it hasn't already. By 2008 it will be clearly in decline, though some will argue that it's only a temporary adjustment. Oil sellers will exploit the hype by raising prices even more than they have to. We will not "figure out" some new cheap energy source, but we will figure out that hydrogen is just a storage method, and not a very good one. But life will change less than the peak oilers are predicting, because we have so much room to cut out waste: to drive less often in more efficient cars, ride bicycles, turn off the heat and air conditioning, take the machines and industrial chemicals out of agriculture, stop flying food around the world. Gradually, more people will grow their own food, raise their own kids, tend their own health, do stuff with their own bodies instead of machines, and turn their attention from the stock market and TV characters to their more real lives. Those who can adjust mentally will recognize this as an improvement. When energy gets so expensive that people can't afford to drive their cars at all, or to buy the new super-efficient cars, they will abandon the suburbs to enterprising bicyclists or drug gangs or squatter communities or farmers. The abomination of the lawn will turn out to have preserved a lot of precious topsoil... which will now be depleted by moderately unsustainable agriculture. I don't see any likely way for us to go "back" to the forager-hunter lifestyle for which our bodies are made. It's not that we can't, but that most people will choose not to as long as they know any technique to gain short-term advantage by draining the life of the Earth. Economic Derepression. That's not a typo. There are many economies, and the one that's failing is the control economy. The dominant media will not even call it a depression, but some kind of temporary crisis, when really it's the permanent end of the centralized techno-industrial order. What they'll call temporary "unemployment" will be a permanent transition to self-employment in the meaningful activities of subsistence. The dollar will continue to slide, until non-wealthy Americans will no longer be able to buy anything imported. Americans will have to learn how to make stuff again, and we could get a renaissance in light manufacturing. We'll start local currencies, like Ithaca Hours, or if the rulers jealously forbid it, we'll build underground barter and gift economies. All this will be good for us. Meanwhile, economies that depend on selling stuff to Americans will also decline. Interest rates will rise and pop the housing bubble, and so many people will default on their mortgages that it will be impossible to evict them all, or to keep squatters out of all the vacant bank-"owned" houses. The elite will try to repress squatters enough to preserve their property/power, but not so much that it fuels a movement for land reform. Something similar will happen with credit card debt, but milder, because the elite are always more willing to forgive debt than to give up their claim on land. One piece of advice: If you can sell off your stocks and get enough money to pay off your house, hurry! World War III. The only way I can make sense of the coming attack on Iran is to see it as a giant cult suicide. Of course US forces will be humiliated, but not before sparking "WWIII." This is another term that's been hyped and simplified. Like "World" War II, it will actually be fought in only a few regions, and it will not destroy the world as we know it, only take it down a notch. Secret Weapons. I'm sure they exist: powerful electromagnetic weapons, weather control, trippy stuff we can't imagine. But the people who research this subject are so paranoid that it's impossible to tell if these weapons are any more catastrophic in effect than other weapons, or if they're tactically effective enough to be used. China. I don't know enough to predict this one. China is going to be the next evil empire after the USA, but what will they do? Do they have the means to come over here and turn America into an even worse police state than it already is? How will it affect their economy when Americans are no longer buying their prison-manufactured products at Wal-Mart? How much time do they have before industrial civilization falls out from under them? Serial Fallujah. If we get overt mass-killings in America, this is my pick for how it will happen. The rulers will pick off cities one by one, just like they did with Fallujah and the Branch Davidians, feeding the bloodlust of the public in a ritual as old as civilization: demonize them, seal them in, and kill them all. If a volcanic eruption cuts off food to your city, hold tight -- you'll be fine. If the bodies of soldiers or police are dragged through the streets of your city, get out and never expect to return. Disease. One that kills 10% will slow down or stop many systems, especially the medical system, but in a few months or years it will all go back to almost how it was before. One that kills 50% will reorder society in ways we can't predict -- when people think they're about to die, they do unpredictable things. Another factor is if the dead and the survivors have different cultural profiles. If we get a mad cow epidemic, it will tend to kill big red meat eaters and spare people who eat lighter. Almost any disease will go easier on people with healthier lifestyles -- in fact, this might have already happened: The insanity sweeping America and appearing in Europe could be a direct effect of a diet of over-refined sugars and starches, hydrogenated oils, and processed-to-death foods. We could see it as a slow diet-caused epidemic of mental illness that makes people do stupid things that tend to get them killed. Weather. Overall global temperatures will continue to rise, though I think the mechanism is more complex than greenhouse gases absorbing sunlight. And in any particular spot, it will look more like crazy weather than warm weather. This January in Seattle was warm and sunny. In July we might get a 110 degree day (43C) or a snowstorm. Everyone will get faster winds, bigger storms, wetter floods and drier droughts. And if the climate is being affected, directly or indirectly, by CO2 emissions, then there will be a lag, just like the lag between turning the hot water up in the shower and feeling it, but much longer because the atmosphere is so much bigger. If the lag is as long as 30 years, then what we're getting now is the effect of the relatively mild emissions in the 1970's. What will it be like when the giant car fad comes back to bite us? Astronomy. Eventually a mass-extinction-sized asteroid will strike the Earth. The chance that it will do so in the next 100 years is not worth bothering about. But some other cosmic events may be. A fringe theory of comets is that they are not "dirty snowballs" but hot and enormously charged with electromagnetism or some other kind of energy, and that a near pass of a comet can influence Earth in ways we don't understand. There could be all kinds of cosmic disasters that we don't know about because their physical traces are not as obvious as a giant crater or a layer of ash. The best place to look would be in the histories of ancient and prehistoric people -- which we are told to think of as pure fiction. For more on this subject, look into the work of Immanuel Velikovsky. One event that is accepted by dominant science, somewhat likely, and could actually give us a sci-fi apocalypse that kills the system and leaves people unharmed, is a giant solar flare. The solar storm of 1859 fried the telegraph system by overwheming the wires with electric charge. Our computer components are so sensitive to electric charge that we keep them in foil pouches so we don't accidentally burn them out with static electricity. Do you think you could burn out a telegraph line by rubbing your feet on the carpet and touching it? Then imagine what a telegraph-burning solar storm would do to computers. Solar flares are associated with sunspots, and sunspots are now at a 1000-year high, and will peak in 2012. Human Consciousness Shift. I'm not going to call it an "awakening" or "transcendence" because that would be putting it on a vertical scale, better than before. It's at least as interesting if we're not better but different. This one is fun to think about, and easy to argue for or against, because there are so many ways we are smarter, stupider, and no different than we were before. My own wild speculation is that humans are already splitting into two "races" very much like Tolkien's elves and orcs. In any case, it's obvious that without a shift in human collective consciousness, we're just going to keep reaching for the heroin, cutting the trees down as fast as they grow back, falling out of balance and crashing until we go extinct. And with a shift, it's wide open.

keehah | 05-31-2007 03:19 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Collapse and its Discontents <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> DMITRY ORLOV / Carolyn Baker.Org 1feb2007 <o:p></o:p> Many readers are familiar with Dmitry Orlov, who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and from his experience offers options for surviving the collapse of Western civilization as we know it.-CB It's been a couple of years since I started writing on the subject of economic collapse, as it occurred in Russia and as it is likely to occur here in the United States. Thus far, I remain reasonably content with my predictions: it's all lining up, slowly but surely. Because collapse will not be televised, you will not know that it has happened. You will only know that it has happened to you. Militarily, the US, followed by Israel, seem to have landed themselves in a cul de sac of their own creation, having squandered much treasure on useless high-tech weapons while losing infantry battles against motivated freelancers, with the eventual effect of losing access to the oil fields in the Middle East. Economically, Peak Oil appears to have actually transpired some time in the summer of 2005, and is now slowly coming into focus in the rear view mirror, just as it's supposed to. Politically, the country has wobbled leftward, only to rediscover that its other Capitalist party also happens to be its other War party. Internationally, hoisting the American flag is now considered a lewd gesture, and this will probably remain so for quite some time, since honor and reputation happen to be among the most difficult things to reclaim. Financially, the US economy has degenerated into a sort of cargo cult, where people feel that they can continue to attract recycled petrodollars by dancing around piles of internet servers with their cell phones and their laptops. In short, steady as she goes, and I see no reason to start worrying that history will prove me wrong. But that is where the satisfaction ends, and the problems begin. A dispassionate and ironic approach is all well and good. However, my very own mother accuses me of unsympathetic sang froid in understating the horrific suffering endured by the Russian people when I describe how much better-prepared for economic collapse they were than the United States currently is. So, for the record, I am talking about a die-off, shattered lives, a missing generation of children, and much that is precious and irreplaceable burned or buried under a tide of violence and filth. I also know that endlessly recounting tales of horror and misery is the surest way to lose one's audience, as my mother would no doubt be willing to demonstrate. Others have accused me of Schadenfreude: of not being sufficiently dispassionate, but of greeting the troubles and the signs of the coming collapse with glee. This is an ad hominem argument, boiling down to "you say such things because you are the sort of person who enjoys saying such things." Again for the record, I do not feel gleeful, see above as to why. But, to be truthful, I am not a big fan of the American lifestyle. I prefer to stay out of the suburbs, I rarely drive, and I do my best to avoid flying. I don't feel that the prospect of it all eventually going away is a bad thing. In fact, I am very much looking forward to all the fresh air, although once pollution-induced global dimming goes away, global warming will proceed at a redoubled rate, and we will be forced to seek higher ground further north sooner rather than later - a prospect that does not fill me with glee either. I suppose that if I were the sort of person who derives a deep feeling of contentment from pursuing the suburban lifestyle, extreme car dependence, shopping at malls and big box stores, jetting around, and daydreaming about full spectrum dominance, I would not be talking about collapse, because I wouldn't have the foggiest notion of such things. This lifestyle seems like sheer misery to me, but I recognize that tastes do differ. Moreover, it must be something of a blessed state, not knowing anything about resource depletion or global warming or collapse, or not caring to know. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we all die," says the preacher, and who am I to disagree? When people do find out about these things, they sometimes go through a bout of acute psychological distress, and only eventually settle down to some internal compromise. I feel almost guilty when I bring someone out of this blessed state, because it feels wrong to be breeding discontent among an otherwise pacified and well-controlled populace. They are like children when they first find out about death, and before they are consoled with stories of angels and heaven, or, in this case, hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol, biodiesel, wind farms, hybrid vehicles, or whatever other eco-props happen to be on hand. Still, they often end up with a nagging worry that not enough is being done. Such consolations are not as convincing as we would hope, and the nagging worry starts some of us on the road to questioning everything: the living arrangement, the job, the life. Some people go as far as questioning the value of technological civilization, and wondering if it is on a path to planetary-scale self-destruction. They can then become extremely tiresome and tedious company, and breed discontent in everyone they come into contact with, talking incessantly about melting ice caps, drowning polar bears, Texas-sized fields of floating plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean, dead sea birds, fish going extinct, dying coral reefs, and so forth. "Enough!" you might say to them. "If the challenge is to avert planetary self-destruction, then let's all get on the same page: formulate a project plan, define the next steps, and start executing." Then you realize that the person you are talking to is serious, and the situation becomes awkward. Because, you see, there really is not much to be done, on a global scale, and most serious people sense that intuitively. The biggest "if" in the world is the one in sentences that start "If we all..." If we all reduce our ecological footprint to a sustainable level, then there wouldn't be anyone left out to increase theirs at our expense. An additional complication is that we cannot make such a huge reduction because the current human population of the Earth far exceeds its carrying capacity: a lot of people would have to die. If this sort of thing has to be part of our little project plan, then doing absolutely nothing becomes the more ethically acceptable option, albeit a distressingly impotent one. In a culture that prides itself on keeping busy, doing nothing is actually a lot harder than doing something. I was recently invited to fly to Alaska to do a presentation, but declined the invitation, because it seemed ridiculous to me to burn a few more barrels of kerosene and drown a few more polar bears for the sake of informing a group of Alaskans that it's time for them to consider moving south. To inspire them, I could have told them stories of settlements in the Russian arctic that froze when their winter fuel deliveries failed to happen. As always happens, not all of them had been evacuated. I could have also told them that fuel isn't necessary for humans to survive arctic winters. All you need is a good double-sided fur parka with matching pants, boots, and mittens (wolverine fur for the trim around the hood, please, because it doesn't ice up), an igloo, a fat-burning lamp (because months of total darkness are not healthy, and because sewing fur and leather and working bone and flint into tools is hard to do in the dark), and a pile of frozen animal carcasses to chew on. You hack off hunks of frozen meat and put them inside the parka until they thaw. For something to wash them down with, you stuff a skin bag full of snow and put it inside your parka until it melts. It's been done this way for thousands of years, but if we are now on our way to a completely different planet, one without much ice and snow, then all bets are off. I somehow felt that drowning a few more polar bears for the sake of telling Alaskans what Alaskans should know better than me in any case was the wrong thing to do: the hypothetical benefits of my trip did not justify the quantifiable harm to the environment. But everyone I discussed this with seemed less than pleased with my decision: I got points for being consistent, and not much else. Plenty of other people have no such qualms, and feel that the means justify the ends. For them, the same industriousness that is destroying the earth can be used to save it. They fly and drive to attend conferences, champion various social and environmentalist causes, and organize energy-consuming, environment-damaging campaigns with the goal of saving energy or saving the environment. According to the news, this doesn't seem to be solving any of the big problems, or even stopping them from growing worse. The one large and uniquely solvable problem, and therefore the one Al Gore chose as his example of environmentalist victory, is the Montreal protocol limiting the discharge of CFCs into the atmosphere. Most other problems are too complex to organize around, and so the environmental movement has failed to check either mass extinction and habitat destruction, or deforestation, or land and water degradation, or overpopulation, or carbon emissions, or a host of other, equally intractable problems. Overpopulation - the mother of all problems - is hardly even discussed, because every woman has the right to have a child (at least one, and that's already too many), and also, I think, because babies are really cute. In spite of our superficial cleverness, there is a requisite base level of mindlessness to being human, and it sets bounds on what we can do collectively to control our numbers. We can pretend to be able to control nature, for a while at least, but we can't even pretend to be able to control our own natures and appetites. Nature will have to do it for us - but then it always did and always will. We can be sure that the living will not always outnumber the dead, as they do now, and that the flow of humanity will reach a peak and start to ebb. Based on everything I have seen and experienced, I can imagine that once the downward slide begins, it will not be a smooth transition, but an abrupt, wrenching change. The downward slide will acquire a logic and a momentum of its own. Taking the specific example of oil, which a lot of people focus on, I can't imagine that, a few years down the road, we will still be looking at annual production shortfalls of just a few percent. I imagine the number to be closer to 100% - not a slowdown, not a recession, but a collapse. I am also sure that we, collectively, will have little idea that this is happening. Once the lights go out for good in your neighborhood, nobody but your few nearest neighbors will know what is happening to you, and you will know of the larger world no more than you presently know of the goings on in the various places that are already largely in the grip of a permanent blackout, like Zimbabwe or North Korea. Our one world is fragile artifact, and places within it only exist while they have electricity, scheduled flights, and bottled water for the foreign journalists to drink. If our last hope is that economic collapse will put a stop to our rampaging and trampling of what's left of the ecosystem just shy of the point of no return, and even if it does happen this way, each of us will be disappointed. Because collapse will not be televised, you will not know that it has happened. You will only know that it has happened to you. And so it is only fair that I warn you: caveat emptor! Collapse - for you, the putatively satisfied consumer of information products - is a faulty product that will fail to please you. If, however, you have already dropped out of the ranks of satisfied consumers, then for you collapse is already well underway, and you have far more pressing things to consider than tilting at the windmills of climate change or obsessing over countless other issues of global import. Collapse, it turns out in the end, is a single-use product. Properly applied, it produces a deep and abiding feeling of dissatisfaction. In this, and this alone, it is quite excellent. http://carolynbaker.org/archives/col...y-dmitry-orlov: 4feb2007

keehah | 05-31-2007 03:27 PM
Re: The Slow Crash UNPREPARED, UNCOMPENSATED, AND CLUELESS: PROPHETS HAVE BECOME HISTORIANS, By Carolyn Baker May 19, 2007 <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>http://carolynbaker.org/archives/unprepared-uncompensated-and-clueless-prophets-have-become-historians-by-carolyn-baker <o:p>http://carolynbaker.org/images/208t.jpg</o:p> On Monday, residents of the Borderplex, as we call the region that encompasses far West Texas, Southern New Mexico, and Northern Mexico, awoke to a beautiful spring morning. No ecovillages, intentional communities, or new urbanism exist in our region, and living as I do in a rural area, I still own an internal combustion vehicle, and periodically, as all such monstrosities do, it needs a tune-up. Driving along a winding country road on the way to visit my mechanic on that lovely morning, drinking in the green fields of our newly-flourishing alfalfa crops and feeling extraordinarily grateful to be surrounded by farmland, I noticed that traffic was slowing and coming to a halt. A car accident? I wondered. No, off to the side of the road were parents and teachers carrying signs which read, “Celebrate with the class of 2007!!” County sheriff patrol cars, lights flashing, flanked what appeared to be a parade. Soon a barrage of cars on the opposite side of the road approached, honking horns and weaving back and forth in their lane—the cars adorned with shaving cream graffiti like “The Class Of 2007 Rocks” and “We Did It!” Inside the cars were seniors from a nearby high school, also covered in shaving cream, honking, screaming, swerving their cars out of their lane and onto the shoulder and back. On my side of the road, gridlock. Nothing to do but wait and sit aghast at the site I was beholding. I turned off the ignition and pondered how much gasoline was being mindlessly guzzled right before my eyes. Not only were at least 50 cars involved in the senior celebration, but behind them followed at least 20 school busses, half-empty, heading in the direction of the high school. Why were the busses half-empty? Because the other half of what would have been a full load were participating in the oil-sucking parade of cars in front of the busses. Now, lest anyone think I’m just an old curmudgeon, graduation is one of my favorite times of the year. I love to see young people blowing off steam—so reminiscent of my own youthful partying days—and celebrating academic success. But these days I can only witness youth through the tears in my own eyes as I wonder if they will be alive in ten years and if they are, what will happen to their grandchildren in thirty years. Throughout this same Borderplex, gas is now inching daily toward $3.50. Although surrounded by miles of irrigated farmland, major grocery chains in the region sell nothing but produce from Chile and California, and cotton, one of the principal crops of this region, consumes inordinate quantities of water. What is more, those green alfalfa fields I spoke of earlier, will be harvested and bailed for hay to feed cows in non-organic, highly unsanitary mega-dairies in the area which also consume quantities of water even more gargantuan than the cotton crops and pollute the land and water with toxic animal waste. A nearby town of 80,000 is committed to tripling its population in twenty years, and another, forty miles south, will soon be deluged by an influx of perhaps 100,000 military personnel and their dependents—all of this in an area of the United States which all experts agree will be facing horrendous water issues within the next decade. Like many of you, I am researching relocation which is one of the most daunting tasks we face given our individual needs and the limited choices we have in terms of climate change, availability of water, arable land, and a host of other issues. In fact, how many communities, including those in California, are seriously addressing drought, funding and constructing community gardens, placing a moratorium on housing construction, instituting new urbanism, educating their elementary and high school students regarding oil depletion (so that graduation celebrations can occur without consuming vast quantities of oil), mandating recycling, or funding and constructing light rail transportation? I’m not saying such communities do not exist; what I’m saying is that they are still too few, and that what they are offering in most cases is too little, too late to avert catastrophe. Last weekend when I flipped the TV channel to CNN, I saw a map that demonstrated that almost one-fourth of the United States was on fire at that moment—this at the end of the same week that horrific tornadoes devastated parts of Kansas and Oklahoma. It was also the same week that U.S. governors again lamented as they did earlier this year, that due to the huge segment of National Guard troops that have been deployed to Iraq, their states lack the manpower and equipment to even begin to address natural disasters. As an historian, I often wonder just when historians a hundred years from now, if there are any left on planet Earth, will date the beginning of collapse. Will they mark its beginning with 9/11, Katrina, the declaration by an aggregation of scientists from dozens of nations that global warming is indeed occurring, the disappearance of the honey bees, the plasticizing of the oceans, the current deaths of hundreds of seals in California from the toxicity of ocean waters, the bursting of the housing bubble, the extinction of another 30% of species beyond the current 30% extinction rate, the first nuclear terrorist attack on a U.S. city, the proliferation of pandemics worldwide, World War III, the crash of the U.S. stock market, the inundation of coastlines and entire nations with rising oceans? Or maybe today, as scientists confrimed that a chunk of ice in Antarctica the size of the state of California, had melted? Collapse is not in the future; it is happening in this moment, and unequivocally, the overwhelming majority of Americans are unprepared, will be uncompensated or assisted in whatever pain and suffering collapse inflicts on them, and will remain clueless and in denial of it until they have lost everything except their own lives. Allstate Insurance has stopped writing policies in California for fire and earthquake damage. How many more insurance companies will follow suit in every state in the nation? I do not claim to be an expert on collapse, but I am quite certain that the custodians of empire are. They have engineered collapse over several decades, and will be essentially unscathed by it—if they can control the resultant chaos. I don’t wish to speculate about what form that control will take, but I don’t need to. They are making it abundantly clear that while they are unwilling to do anything to prevent climate chaos, the devastating consequences of Peak Oil, and economic Armageddon, they are formulating elaborate plans to control and contain an unruly and traumatized population. And because collapse is happening now, those who have written prophetically of its symptoms and characteristics have become historians as I stated in a 2006 article. So much of what the individuals I praised in that article have spoken and written for so many years is now unfolding before our eyes. If you’ve been following the Truth To Power website recently, or if you are a Truth To Power news subscriber, you may have noticed that collapse and preparation for it have become the principal focus. It is, in my opinion, the hub of all current and future events. Daily I receive news stories on a variety of topics such as impeachment, Gonzo-gate, and (sigh!) presidential candidates from readers who apparently did not read my infamous article, “Why I Will Not Vote In 2004”. Some stories grab my attention; some don’t because if one has an astute “map”, it rapidly becomes apparent that endless war, scandal, rigged elections, loss of civil liberties, descent into fascism, and economic cataclysm are issues that not only radiate from the hub of collapse but also cannot be reversed by any of the means upon which we have relied in the past. In fact, collapse may be both the problem AND the ultimate “solution”. If you want to hear that collapse is not happening, don’t visit this website. If you need voices and opinions that affirm your denial of the reality of collapse or believe that a magic bullet exists to prevent or alleviate it, please look elsewhere. I do not claim to have the entire map; but I do have pieces of it, and so do you, and so do many other prophet-historians. If you care about preparing yourself and those you love for the realities of Peak Oil, climate chaos, global economic meltdown, and the terrifying but all-too likely extinction of life on this planet, then I invite you to share your pieces of the map. We need to build lifeboats, and we need to come clean in our consciousness so that we can inhabit them without further wounding each other or throwing each other overboard as we sail through terribly uncertain waters. The distinction between prophet and historian becomes more blurred with each passing day. Collapse is happening, and it’s happening NOW. http://carolynbaker.org/archives/unp...-carolyn-baker

Kahlil Gibran | 05-31-2007 03:47 PM
Re: The Slow Crash :fight: DMITRY ORLOV WON THIS ONE.

Unclad Lad | 06-01-2007 02:16 AM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
I can't explain it, why people will kill for ideas and then, when their life is at stake, will quietly starve. Maybe hunger comes on so slowly that by the time they're ready to kill, they're too weak. Maybe, in a real famine, the elite keep the food so well guarded that there's no point trying to take it, and the non-elite, not corrupted by power, would rather share what little they have than fight to the death.
I'm going to toss in my two Zincolns: Most of the societies where this sort of famine/starvation occurs is stratified--call it class, caste, or ethnic minority. To some degree, those who are being starved have been taught that their suffering is deserved. The best way to encourage that is through a belief system, that the Almighty has pre-ordained your crappy life. Very, very few Americans believe in the need for their own suffering, or that someone else is their better. I tend to believe that neighbors will generally do the right thing, and work together, but America will have more violence for food than Darfur, or Ethiopia, or Ireland.

Veritas | 06-01-2007 02:37 AM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
Originally Posted by Unclad Lad (Post 624713) I'm going to toss in my two Zincolns: Most of the societies where this sort of famine/starvation occurs is stratified--call it class, caste, or ethnic minority. To some degree, those who are being starved have been taught that their suffering is deserved. The best way to encourage that is through a belief system, that the Almighty has pre-ordained your crappy life. Very, very few Americans believe in the need for their own suffering, or that someone else is their better. I tend to believe that neighbors will generally do the right thing, and work together, but America will have more violence for food than Darfur, or Ethiopia, or Ireland.
Maybe it's chaos that they want... Ordo ab chao. The trick of creating chaos and then seizing power under the pretense of putting things back in order is a tried and true method of deception and manipulation. It's the meaning behind the Latin motto: ORDO AB CHAO meaning ORDER OUT OF CHAOS. "Their" Order....the New World Order.

Weho Dave | 06-01-2007 10:03 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
Originally Posted by Veritas (Post 624141) One event that is accepted by dominant science, somewhat likely, and could actually give us a sci-fi apocalypse that kills the system and leaves people unharmed, is a giant solar flare. The solar storm of 1859 fried the telegraph system by overwheming the wires with electric charge. Our computer components are so sensitive to electric charge that we keep them in foil pouches so we don't accidentally burn them out with static electricity. Do you think you could burn out a telegraph line by rubbing your feet on the carpet and touching it? Then imagine what a telegraph-burning solar storm would do to computers. Solar flares are associated with sunspots, and sunspots are now at a 1000-year high, and will peak in 2012. .
2012 is also the year the Mayan calendar unexplainedly ends. They possessed incredible knowledge of things astronomical. Surely, they could have been aware of the cycle of solar flares. Hmmm. Just connecting dots...

Veritas | 06-02-2007 02:06 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
Originally Posted by Weho Dave (Post 625692) 2012 is also the year the Mayan calendar unexplainedly ends. They possessed incredible knowledge of things astronomical. Surely, they could have been aware of the cycle of solar flares. Hmmm. Just connecting dots...
You are right on target, Dave. The Mayans knew exactly what they were talking about. We are going to see a lot of changes leading up to and including 2012. The world as we know it is in it's final chapter.

AMforPM | 06-03-2007 05:40 AM
Re: The Slow Crash What a superb thread. I see the collapse as slow and in progress as well. On people killing for food, one reason is that after 2 to 3 days of starvation hunger vanishes. You still have reasonable vigor a long time after the anorexia of fasting sets in. So you could think, as you starved, that you would manage to get food tomorrow then gradually get weaker. But it is true that across a very wide range of circumstances, including Americans in the Great Depression, people kill people for food vanishingly rarely. The agents of government may make house to house food raids and I think hidden storage might be a life or death matter then, but I do not think I will have many additional problems except garden raiding and I hope the dog will do her usual stuff there and alert me. I used to garden where passersby could see, but my collapse garden is behind 8 foot privacy fence. I already feel the collapse in our budget. Food and fuel going up is notable and numerous services are going up fast as well. We have quite a bit of elbow room in the budget, but I have not had extra to buy silver or shares for the past few months. Of course we are still getting some prep things and I have put money there instead, but there is clearly less elbow room. I was glad to see you mention that solar event from the 1850s. I am planning to build an EMP protective box and put a computer, crank LED flashlights, LED headlamps with rechargeable batteries (those things rock!), crank radio, solar battery charger and batteries and a bunch of other items in it. I am still looking at EMP protection designs. As for the net.. I get mine by underground fiberoptics and I have no idea if that would survive. But I think, in keeping with the whole slow crash concept, that some kind of net will get cobbled back together. Till it is, or if it isn't, I may be very grateful to have a crank radio unfried. In reading about protection I stumbled on the information that merely grounding your car might save most of its components according to how severe the fry was. Just a chain hanging from the trailer hitch touching the ground is some help and connected to a grounding rod a bit more. I am no EMP expert so I am passing on unverified net gleanings here. But there might be some warning. Extra activity then I think they see big flares a few minutes before they arrive, though I am pretty shaky on why and how. But if one connected the car to ground when you parked it, you might only need a few components to function again. I will put our smallest gasoline generator in there too. It is hard to say what might be repairable, or even survive. It depends on how severe it is where you are. And gasoline may be available at higher prices or on a black market for many years. Like the russian above I may be trading booze for gasoline. He has a funny story about crossing post collapse Russia swapping vodka for gasoline. The serial Fallujah concept is one I have been having on my mind a lot. I very much hope freedom fighters do not do that job in neighborhoods bringing bombs on the population. I am considering a combination root and storm cellar that would also be a good refuge if there is fighting near my home. Of course getting out if you can if your town draws the black marble is best. I really hope I need none of this preparation. A slow enough collapse might translate to no worse than a significantly lower standard of living in my lifetime. I don't really feel as selfish as that sounds. I intend to try to be a positive contributor to my local community, but thinking about worst cases, I certainly cannot help but hope for a milder collapse and simultaneous rebuilding along more sustainable lines. World population is so high that I also do not see a way around a serious die off. I wish that were not true but unless we stopped having kids close to entirely for 50 years or so, which we won't, things look past the point of escaping a die off. If the wires do not fry a lot of our power here is hydro and there may be rationed elecricity for a very long time. Really, if you think about how much of our population is incarcerated (and counted as employed) and how much unemployed, and how much living in the street... someone from 1930 might think the Depression never lifted. Things have been collapsing a long time, it seems to me. It is finally getting bad enough we can't blink it away. Homeless people in the streets seemed like a very ominous sign to me way back when they first started being numerous. On yard gardening, I know from doing it need not deplete the soil. Small plots that are cherished can be made richer every year. It is trying to produce food like widgets on an industrial scale with no bond between the gardener and the soil that mines soil. Knowing you depend on your plot will add motivation, but it is satisfying to build soil. The consciousness shift is becoming really apparent. I had not thought of elves and orcs, but it rang true. I feel more hobbitish. And I work hard to remember some orcish folks may change yet.

Unclad Lad | 06-03-2007 11:24 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
As for the net.. I get mine by underground fiberoptics and I have no idea if that would survive. But I think, in keeping with the whole slow crash concept, that some kind of net will get cobbled back together. Till it is, or if it isn't, I may be very grateful to have a crank radio unfried.
Before DARPA, there was a different Net--amateur radio. Hams now have combined old-fashioned carrier waves with compressed digital data and satellite relays. As national and global networks deteriorate, we'll see a resugence in ham and "build-it-yourself".

Veritas | 06-04-2007 07:07 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM (Post 626653) What a superb thread. I see the collapse as slow and in progress as well.
Thanks for your reply. You provide some good insight. Here are my thoughts... Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM On people killing for food, one reason is that after 2 to 3 days of starvation hunger vanishes. You still have reasonable vigor a long time after the anorexia of fasting sets in. So you could think, as you starved, that you would manage to get food tomorrow then gradually get weaker.
Looting of stores will begin first. Once those shelves are clear, I believe you will see both gangs and lone individuals going door to door. This of course, all under the assumption that government doesn't bail out the unprepared. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM The agents of government may make house to house food raids and I think hidden storage might be a life or death matter then, but I do not think I will have many additional problems except garden raiding and I hope the dog will do her usual stuff there and alert me. I used to garden where passersby could see, but my collapse garden is behind 8 foot privacy fence.
You may also want to consider buying some razorwire. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM I already feel the collapse in our budget. Food and fuel going up is notable and numerous services are going up fast as well. We have quite a bit of elbow room in the budget, but I have not had extra to buy silver or shares for the past few months. Of course we are still getting some prep things and I have put money there instead, but there is clearly less elbow room.
Rising prices (inflation) is a direct result of the Federal Reserve printing more money into circulation to finance the war in Iraq. Expect prices to continue to rise so long as the war machine keeps going. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM I was glad to see you mention that solar event from the 1850s. I am planning to build an EMP protective box and put a computer, crank LED flashlights, LED headlamps with rechargeable batteries (those things rock!), crank radio, solar battery charger and batteries and a bunch of other items in it. I am still looking at EMP protection designs.
Let me know what you find. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM As for the net.. I get mine by underground fiberoptics and I have no idea if that would survive. But I think, in keeping with the whole slow crash concept, that some kind of net will get cobbled back together. Till it is, or if it isn't, I may be very grateful to have a crank radio unfried.
I think the internet will be safe. If it goes down, it's going to get very dark, very fast. Crank radio could very well become a temporary substitue for the internet. Best to keep one on hand. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM In reading about protection I stumbled on the information that merely grounding your car might save most of its components according to how severe the fry was. Just a chain hanging from the trailer hitch touching the ground is some help and connected to a grounding rod a bit more. I am no EMP expert so I am passing on unverified net gleanings here. But there might be some warning. Extra activity then I think they see big flares a few minutes before they arrive, though I am pretty shaky on why and how. But if one connected the car to ground when you parked it, you might only need a few components to function again.
AMforPM, that is EXCELLENT advice. I have also heard this before and while I don't know for certain if it would help, I believe it would and it doesn't hurt to try. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM The serial Fallujah concept is one I have been having on my mind a lot. I very much hope freedom fighters do not do that job in neighborhoods bringing bombs on the population. I am considering a combination root and storm cellar that would also be a good refuge if there is fighting near my home. Of course getting out if you can if your town draws the black marble is best.
That's a toss up for me. I think that by the time you know enough to make that decision, it is probably too late. IMO, the best bet is to stay put if you have prepped appropriately. Your success away from home is as guaranteed as a coin toss. It all depends on many factors though. It is a good idea to have a pre-planned escape route and destination. Definately increases your chances. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM I really hope I need none of this preparation. A slow enough collapse might translate to no worse than a significantly lower standard of living in my lifetime. I don't really feel as selfish as that sounds. I intend to try to be a positive contributor to my local community, but thinking about worst cases, I certainly cannot help but hope for a milder collapse and simultaneous rebuilding along more sustainable lines.
I'm with you on that. Be prepared for the worst but hope for the best. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM World population is so high that I also do not see a way around a serious die off. I wish that were not true but unless we stopped having kids close to entirely for 50 years or so, which we won't, things look past the point of escaping a die off.
It's inevitable. I suspect that if we don't kill ourselves off with WMD's, disease and starvation will do the job. The Earth can only sustain so many people...and we've far exceeded excess. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM Really, if you think about how much of our population is incarcerated (and counted as employed) and how much unemployed, and how much living in the street... someone from 1930 might think the Depression never lifted. Things have been collapsing a long time, it seems to me. It is finally getting bad enough we can't blink it away.
It does seem that way as the middle class is becoming extinct. Quote:
Originally Posted by AMforPM On yard gardening, I know from doing it need not deplete the soil. Small plots that are cherished can be made richer every year. It is trying to produce food like widgets on an industrial scale with no bond between the gardener and the soil that mines soil. Knowing you depend on your plot will add motivation, but it is satisfying to build soil.
The Native Americans have been doing it for centuries. If you live near a reservation, you should pay them a vist. You may be able to learn something.

٭ Augmenter ٭ | 06-04-2007 08:24 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Great thread! I saw this thread referenced in another forum's survival section, and I was impressed to say the least. After reading through your comments and whatnot, I would now say this is more like an inevitable collapse of the world order (centering around the United States ) would look like, at least regarding economics and culture. If martial law, a NAU-state, or a few ICBMs going off in our cities happened, it would be quite a bit different, but you mentioned that already and I have nothing to comment there.

Kahlil Gibran | 06-04-2007 09:14 PM
Re: The Slow Crash 1 Attachment(s) Attachment 29341 FEMA will provide us all new travel trailers to live in, food stamp credit cards, and even grief counseling. I can't wait for the Big One. :sleepy13: That Chertoff fellow is a hero. They don't call it Homeland Security for nuttin.

1919A6 | 06-04-2007 09:32 PM
Does anyone here understand the meaning of Pollyanna think? These people are not our grandparents or great grandparents of the 1930s - who were polite! I would seriously suggest that you get and watch "The Last of the Dogmen", and if you don't understand - then whatever befalls you, you deserve!

AMforPM | 06-05-2007 12:13 AM
Re: Does anyone here understand the meaning of Quote:
Originally Posted by 1919A6 (Post 628164) These people are not our grandparents or great grandparents of the 1930s - who were polite!!
What people are not our grandparents? I could not follow what you are saying.

AMforPM | 06-05-2007 01:33 AM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
It's inevitable. I suspect that if we don't kill ourselves off with WMD's, disease and starvation will do the job. The Earth can only sustain so many people...and we've far exceeded excess.
In the 70s my friends thought I was wacko for saying the world either had to get zero population growth fast or overpopulation would be handled by nature, or to put it more biblically, by war, disease, and disaster. I thought we should close the border then because we were slowing our population growth, but that is no help if you let overpopulation pour in. Plus by acting as a safety valve for countries not even trying to slow their birth rates, we kept starvation from forcing them to get real, thus hurting everyone while thinking we were being 'nice' to the poor of the world. If Mexico, for the most glaring example, had not been able to export their overpopulation, they would have had to face up to it. And we could have done our being good neighbors to Mexico by fair trade and helped them get their own economy going better. They have many good resources though the arable land is not nearly as nice as we used to have. Then we proceeded to continue to destroy our family farms and let agribusiness strip mine our rich land. We came here to topsoil often 8 feet deep and now there are mere inches left before we will be stuck trying to farm subsoil. But we have not needed extra people in my lifetime if we want any trees or wildlife to survive. Back then I hoped that if America set a good population growth example, sent family planning aid, but accepted no overflow population from anywhere, we could influence the future of humankind positively. Now America has a government that does not want to support programs that hand out condoms in Africa (even if the condoms are funded by private money, and the US aid is only for maybe vaccinations, child nutrition, or some kind of family planning at the same clinic.) It is nuts. If we close the border soon, we can still garden and not face famine here. If we don't the tide may overwhelm the arable land we have left. But so much of it is the economic system that is actually insane. If it were a person the system would be insane. Most countries could feed their populations if every family was permitted a yard size garden to work themselves. People try harder when it is going on their own table. But the weird twists of property rights mean in some countries it is considered legal and moral for 1 family to be vastly rich growing flowers to sell in the US on the best land while most of the children in the country have brain damage from malnutrition. That is capitalism run amok to the point of species suicide: Starvation for the sake of exporting flowers. It is insane. The other big insanities of corporate feudalism are things selling at below their real total cost (including any poison dumped etc), research done at public expense patented for risk free private profit, and economic structures that enforce thinking for this quarter rather than for long term human survival. If a company tries to not poison air or water and pay Americans a living wage they will go bankrupt. We are part of the building of this system, not its passive victims, and we better get a better plan, structure, and system going. It is easier to do something locally. Also easier to get your own family on a better path. Feeding your own family helps everybody. It is that much less that will need to be shipped in and is positive the way victory gardens were. Getting off the grid is like that too. You have power and the load on the grid is reduced. Catching your roof water means not only safety in a crisis, but pulling less water from the community system. Your garden is happier watered with rainwater you catch, and then you are not pouring drinking water on plants. Many household solutions help the community. Even stored food means one less family lining up for food aid in any crisis and that much more available for others. But we need to think about the whole country too, and do what we can there. If the collapse is slow enough, we might get the better systems first in our families, then in our community and later nationally. Most of my friends garden some, are beginning to get or want or plan for alternative power, etc. It seems to me to be something like a silent response to the collapse in progress. It has no governmental leadership. But people see things are a mess and are doing things one family at a time. I am amazed to report that we are not the only family to keep chickens on our block. I was really surprised when 2 different flocks got out on our block. Our front yard has a lot of good eats from a chicken's point of view so several wandered over to graze. I don't know which family one flock belonged to, but one was from across the street. (We keep a very 'naturalized' yard with no attempt to kill weeds. We do not water grass. We mow and that's it. So there are more different plants to graze on here. Dandelions, clovers, several grasses, several viney ground covers. Anything that prospers we let it. Mowing seems to control disagreeable weeds. I pulled up stickers the first year and have not had to since. Plus we never eat all our figs and our 3 fig trees seem to give some figs almost year round. I have harvested figs in December though it is a mystery to me. The chickens who visit always peck around under the fig trees. I bet they find some fallen fruit.) I read that backyard hens are a kind of fad in London. (Along with tiny vegetable gardens.) This is wandering, but I mention that because I think people with plenty of cash, grocery stores full etc, are feeling this sense of wanting better control of their food supply even in places as unexpected as London. It seems to me like down in that place (someone mentioned animals sensing earthquakes and the tsunami) where we know things 'somehow' a lot of us are getting things together one family at a time. The slower things collapse the better we will do getting through to a more sustainable life.

Conk | 06-06-2007 11:25 AM
Re: The Slow Crash Thanks all. Really good thread!

drafter | 06-06-2007 12:32 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Wow, some really good thought provoking reads. Great thread. I have nothing usefull to add, but just wanted to chime in to show that threads like this are greatly appreciated.

keehah | 06-06-2007 12:37 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
The slower things collapse the better we will do getting through to a more sustainable life.
Survival Acres blog (May 10, 07) makes a good case against such thinking: Why A Slow Crash Will Destroy Everything Filed under: General, Collapse — admin @ 6:59 pm http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=653 As the collapse deepens across the world, there is a rising tide of concern among crashwatch bloggers that the collapse will not happen soon enough. This story is a prime example of why a long, slow crash will have a worsening impact then a fast crash. Rising prices are only one factor among many different variables, but it does demonstrate that we’re unable to curb consumption even at the price increases we have already seen. However, according to this article, Saudi Arabia is pretty much expecting us to reduce our consumption. I have serious doubts that conservation measures will ever prove adequate enough, and we already know bioethanol and alternative fuels can’t keep up to demand. The upshot of all this is how a slow crash, i.e., the drawdown of the world’s resources to maintain our existing living standards, will ultimately destroy everything, all by itself, without considering any other factors or variables. The inability to make drastic and widesweeping changes in global consumption habits should be pretty obvious by now. Actually, to be entirely fair, in First World nation consumption habits. While many nations, particularly China are vying to catch up to our living standards, the energy and resource consumption levels of First World nations will probably remain forever unmatched. You’ve heard the saying, “this is as good as it gets”? Well, that’s true in this case, we are now living at the very apex of civilization and no other nations on earth will ever achieve this level again. Possibly for forever. If we’re not willing to truly conserve, and if gradual price increases do not affect our consumption habits, what might we expect? Assuming no other factors, a world of increasing scarcity, then “total exhaustion” of non-renewable resources, and extensive depletion of renewable resources. Collapse will then commence in earnest, followed by a massive die-off on a global scale and then a long, slow recovery towards localized communities. Of course, I don’t think this will happen, because of the deep interconnected links between energy, resources and politics. Long before total exhaustion, war, rationing and population control will be widespread. A severe curtailment upon goods, commerce, industry, travel and personal freedom will be enacted. Not too many people remember war rationing as the nation geared up for battle. But imagine this on a global scale, forever, or at least until the population levels dropped and stabilizes to sustainable limits. This will, under the slow crash scenario, last a long time, perhaps a generation or more. The linchpin is energy. As energy resources diminish, so will everything else. Prices will rise and rise and rise, and eventually, the scarcity of goods will be widespread. In time, this will be dealt with by rationing and nationalization of all resources; food, water, electricity, transportation and even medicine. A slow crash essentially means the absolute destruction of everything we’ve ever known. It is the worst of all possible outcomes in reality, because it leaves absolutely nothing for future generations and expends all of the world’s resources on trying to maintain the present generation at the complete expense of all future generations. This in reality, is “speciescide” at an unprecedented level in human history. And there is also “the promise”, called the “techno-fix” inherent in the slow crash scenario. It usually goes something like this: “Given enough time and effort and energy, mankind will miraculously resolve his most pressing problems, including energy, pollution and environmental destruction, and will save himself from the brink of disaster”. This type of belief is found very often in the writings of climate change deniers, peak oil naysayers and technogeek “environmentalist” types who base this belief on nothing more substantial then wishful thinking and corporate press releases. Time is what they demand, as the world continues it’s headlong plunge into oblivion. Time is all that is needed to find the “fix” while consumption levels remain high and the unseen cliff looms ever closer. Ironically, it is the fast crash outcome seen as the “cliff” event to be dreaded most, because of this belief in the “fix”. Fast crash is the cliff coming suddenly and almost without warning, leveling civilization to pre-industrial levels rather quickly. This cliff seems frightening, insurmountable and the most devastating, but it is the opposite that is actually true. The slow crash cliff is the worse of all possible outcomes, doing little to nothing to prepare people for the inevitable drop off. The technofix is simply not coming, and this belief is very dangerous. Don’t forget, bioethanol was one such “promise” that is already proving to be false. It is accelerating the environmental destruction. It’s quite possible, with this kind of wrong thinking and unrealistic expectations, that the slow crash response, which is in fact what we have today, will trigger the fast crash cliff far sooner then the slow crash cliff. That remains a distinct possibility. Earlier I mentioned the interconnected links between energy, resources and politics. As slow crash grinds on, as it is doing today, any one of these areas could trigger a domino effect in the others. In the real world, there are many other factors to consider, not the least which is climate change, drought, war, famine, pandemic, crop failures, biodiversity loss, rising sea levels and many more. The slow crash will deal with all of these as it progresses towards the cliff. The fast crash could avoid many of these as it heads over the cliff much, much sooner. And it also has the advantage of avoiding speciescide. It is the only crash outcome that can truly be called “desirable”. Finally, I think it’s worth mentioning again that either scenario is really not up to “us” crash watchers. What will be, will be, despite all and everything we might do. That the crash is well underway is without doubt. That up until now, the slow crash has the upper hand. But we still do not know if the domino effect will kick in adequately to trigger a fast crash. It might not. And if it doesn’t, this will be the worst of all possible outcomes. Hypothetically speaking, if I was a member of the ruling elite and I understood these things, I’d definitely be considering ways to accelerate the entire process, opting for a fast, hard crash over the slow variety. This would be much more profitable in the long run for me and mine and even ensure my own progeny a chance at recovery while staying very rich. But I don’t know if they’re that smart. Maybe, maybe not. But if they are, your time is running out. Which it is anyway, this blog has documented many global events that are all accumulating into a pixel perfect picture of catastrophic proportions. Prepare for crash as if there is no tomorrow, because one day, there won’t be. (with comments) http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=653

AMforPM | 06-06-2007 01:56 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
A slow crash essentially means the absolute destruction of everything we�ve ever known. It is the worst of all possible outcomes in reality, because it leaves absolutely nothing for future generations and expends all of the world�s resources on trying to maintain the present generation at the complete expense of all future generations. This in reality, is �speciescide� at an unprecedented level in human history.
To me this is not very lucid thinking. But to each his own opinion.

thorgrim | 06-06-2007 02:21 PM
Re: The Slow Crash I also think that a fast crash would be more destructive than a slow one. However I feel that a fast crash would be better because there is a greater chance of the sudden shock awaking the sheeple to the reality of who caused the problems in the first place and why. The slow crash is just more of the same boiling frog action that we are enduring right now.

Au_Ag | 06-06-2007 05:05 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Great thread!! linky for those who like'em http://ranprieur.com/essays/slowcrash.html

Unclad Lad | 06-07-2007 01:14 AM
Re: The Slow Crash It's possible that we've progressed too far for a "slow crash" to occur. A decline, yes--but that implies a certain amount of order, a conservation effort. A program for zero growth, or to slowly depopulate, would be an example. But enforcing something like that would require Maoist authoritarianism again, and we won't see that in China, India, or Malaysia anytime soon, if ever. But a slow crash implies that certain systems start to fail instead of being replaced. The first thing to go, if it isn't on the way out now, is an early warning alert system for pandemic infectious disease. Eventually some poor nation is not going to want to order the destruction of duck and chicken flocks (or something similar), and the "fast" scenario will kick in.

Wingmaster05 | 09-18-2008 03:11 AM
Re: The Slow Crash bump. I like to read good thoughts from the past and how they may help us understand the present and future.

reviver | 09-18-2008 12:36 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
Originally Posted by Unclad Lad (Post 630619) It's possible that we've progressed too far for a "slow crash" to occur.
The slow crash has been logarithmic. It is now in the fast lane heading straight up to hell. None of us have ever witnessed what is about to occur, and the great majority won't believe it, until it is too late. The days of putting heads on pikes in the front yard as a warning is rapidly returning.

Wingmaster05 | 09-18-2008 12:59 PM
Re: The Slow Crash Indeed, the signs for the crash have been well documented on boards such as these. The question is, where are we on the timeline to SHTF?

Unclad Lad | 09-20-2008 01:42 AM
Re: The Slow Crash AM for PM said: Quote:
Now America has a government that does not want to support programs that hand out condoms in Africa (even if the condoms are funded by private money, and the US aid is only for maybe vaccinations, child nutrition, or some kind of family planning at the same clinic.) It is nuts.
It makes sense if apocalypse is a desirable thing--and its desirable if you think that the Lord will "take" you before bad stuff happens to you. And in no small degree, these are the folks in charge right now. It's often hard to tell which are worst: The Revelationists or the One World Governmenters.

gypsybiker45 | 09-20-2008 08:04 AM
Re: The Slow Crash Quote:
Originally Posted by Veritas (Post 626200) You are right on target, Dave. The Mayans knew exactly what they were talking about. We are going to see a lot of changes leading up to and including 2012. The world as we know it is in it's final chapter.
no offense, but how the hell do you KNOW the mayans "Knew EXACTLTy what they were talking about"? Ive read their "calender" its all up to interpretation. I read it as a mesoamerican Old Farmer's Almanac. No im not falling for this Mayan hoodoo.

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