How Do You Prepare For The Unimaginable?

…Sharon [Astyk] says she is not a survivalist, and most of her commentariat claims not to be as well – they say they are something much more positive. But some of the stuff that runs through the comment threads leans toward survivalism, albeit with a heavy na

Maybe I’m wrong, and they are right. Maybe enough people will turn away from excess, and to gardening, and living simply and with less, and we’ll find our way through.

Or maybe as famine becomes more widespread, so too will behaviors like those seen in North Korea. In a book review of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Frank Langfitt notes

In a chapter entitled, “The Good Die First,” [author] Demick points out that those who lie, cheat, and steal for food survive, while those who follow the regime’s edicts – don’t buy food on the black market – are among the first to die.

Langfitt also recounts a story told to him by a Chinese trucker who hauled food into North Korea to trade for scrap metal.

[He] had a gash on his forehead from his latest trip. He told me a teenage boy had hit him with a rock as a crowd leapt on his truck, cut through inch-thick ropes, and made off with 30 bags of flour. Other Chinese traders described children so weak they didn’t have the strength to climb onto the trucks to steal.

Well, maybe things won’t get quite that bad here in the U.S. We won’t be starving (at least…not all of us…), but everything, especially energy, is going to cost a lot more. Maybe electricity use (will there be electricity?) will be rationed. People might have to give up using some of their big energy hogs. Maybe…who knows…maybe even their precious, yesssss….the big screen t.v. What will happen to all those big screen t.v.s when the lack of cheap oil makes them obsolete? Let’s see…angry peeps plus ammo plus t.v.s no longer good for anything means….

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