[DesuMaiden]

I made this short video on how to survive in a world without oil...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t40sqYK ... e=youtu.be

[SILENTTODD]

Quick and easy summery of the concept of "PEAK OIL" that has been discussed ad infinitum for at least the last eight years I have read this site. But nothing about how to survive it!

[davep]

I only watched a minute or so (I'm busy), but good on you for tackling the subject.

If you want more information on the subject, there is a trove of information in the Planning For The Future forum http://peakoil.com/forums/planning-for-the-future-f8.html

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SILENTTODD', 'Q')uick and easy summery of the concept of "PEAK OIL" that has been discussed ad infinitum for at least the last eight years I have read this site. But nothing about how to survive it!

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SILENTTODD', 'Q')uick and easy summery of the concept of "PEAK OIL" that has been discussed ad infinitum for at least the last eight years I have read this site. But nothing about how to survive it!

[dashster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SILENTTODD', 'Q')uick and easy summery of the concept of "PEAK OIL" that has been discussed ad infinitum for at least the last eight years I have read this site. But nothing about how to survive it!

[Pops]

The problem of surviving without oil is a ways down the road yet. The immediate problem is not getting caught in the pinch points presented by the transition away from dependence on cheap energy. As Dave points out, like it or not, we are all as oblivious to our reliance on FFs as a fish is to water.

Growing food for example may not be required specifically to keep fed, agriculture is not grinding to a halt. But growing your own or maybe better, supporting your local producers, is one way to reduce exposure to reliance on this current model.

You really don't have to be a whack job tin-hatter. You don't have to buy guns and dig a bunker. Fact is the world can go on in the constricted little economic space we're in for any number of years; maybe Lockheed will invent fusion or who knows?

In any case, the way to "survive" is the same as it has always been, find your place and learn to make a living. Live in the present, don't mortgage your future by going into debt and learn as much about as many things as possible.

[GHung]

What Pops said. Oil isn't going away, like it or not. That doesn't mean that all of the things with embodied oil (just about everything) aren't going to get more constrained and expensive relative to incomes. Develop a lifestyle similar to third-world lifestyles where the utility of oil and everything else is high. I only use a couple of gallons cutting firewood every year to heat our home and get a pretty good EROI from that. My wife's weekly commutes only use about 3 gallons per week ( a pretty good return there) and her job is tax related (taxes arent going anywhere either).

I expect that the decline in oil production will have a pretty fat tail, giving those who focus on adapting to lower energy levels and falling GDP to do so. As Pops mentioned, don't get locked into paradigms that are utterly reliant upon current levels of oil consumption. Those who make their livings in discretionary sectors will setting themselves up for trouble. There is no perfect plan, so have a plan B for anything critical. Dealing with those who have no alternate plans is another matter. Co-operating with others on a local level is preferable to going it alone.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SILENTTODD', 'Q')uick and easy summery of the concept of "PEAK OIL" that has been discussed ad infinitum for at least the last eight years I have read this site. But nothing about how to survive it!

[Quinny]

I chose Village

[RepublicanfromEngland]

Having known of this subject for about seven years, and I have been a longterm job seeker benefit claiment throughout that time, I have no debt, I haven't made any preparations. I had been made to volunteer at a community garden in the summer for a month. I had the opportunity to learn how to grow vegetables but I didn't take it. I'm too much of a techie person to have the desire to do so. Ofcourse one employee who was eventually fired, he knew of the energy subject, but didn't realise that everything is fossil based.

I live in the north central of Greater London. I only need to walk into a shop or a supermarket like Tesco, which that company never quite worked out in the US and to observe all the products I could never produce, what a situation. And just walking through an aisle and realising that few care or even understand the problem faced.

I was just looking at the old graph images of Hubbert's peak, and thinking well it is almost that end point of few years where the peak is supposed to of caused problems, but it is a long decline which is incremental not all of a sudden.

I had given a couple of books in early 2009 to a few political representatives, which I never did meet in person, but nothing will change in energy policy until the effects of the peak will change, obviously as everyone states it begins with the individual, and then a group of like minded people.

[AndyA]

If you look at failed states, Syria, Libya, Ukraine etc. you will see that violence is a pretty big issue and I think failed state is the most likely outcome of peak oil, for every country. The timeframes will vary, some countries have a long way to go, others not so much. Its a fact that in wars civilian casualties outnumber military. So if you want to have a good chance of staying alive and being well fed "noij eht ymra". Otherwise the seclusion of living on a mountainside may offer a good defence until you get spotted, in which case, you better hope the incoming are friendly.

Seriously though I think we have a long way to go between here and there, and it's not going to be a straight line.

[Deputy Barnes]

Listen up son, because I'm going to teach you about how to survive a world without oil. I see you're thinking about growing food to survive. You won't. Take your garden hoe pawn it for candy. It'll be the best decision you ever made.

It takes 1 acre of highly fertile land to generate enough food to feed one human being for a year. Of course you cannot actually take one plot of land and use it to grow the food necessary for a healthy diet. You can't herd cattle, grow pecans and harvest rice on the same acre. It's more accurate to say that a human being requires 1 acres worth of several different types of land.

How many of you have the dozens of acres of varied terrain and climate to pull that off? I'd reckon none of you. Most of ya'll are probably living in an apartment or a mortgage house. Shoot, I'm a Texas man and I don't even have enough land for that. Even if I did, how the f()ck am I supposed to be driving around the State of Texas to farm in an oil crisis?

Ya'll better not be thinking you're going to be farming and gardening in an oil crisis. None of you own your land. You pay rent in the form of taxes to the government in order to stay on it. It's the government's property. You better believe mean old Mr. Policeman is going to sieze that land in the event of a crisis. It happened in Latin America. It will happen here, too. Shoot, the government cracks down on backyard gardens even today.

That is to say nothing of marauding thugs who will raid your crops in a crisis. They'll also wanna raid your household for family jewels, but we'll get to that later. Some of these thugs may even be the police/military themselves when things get really bad.

Now. As I was saying, you're not going to feed yourself on gardening. You can't live on vegetables, son. They contain f()ck all in the way of calories. A human being requires 1800 calories a day just to stave off death. You're gonna need to double that if you're doing any work. There is only one way to get enough calories to survive when the system fails. It is the same way people got calories before the system existed: Fat. Fat is the most vital dietary nutrient you can consume besides water. It has double the calories of protein and carbs and is essential for your physical and psychological wellbeing.

Now you can fry your potatoes in olive oil and be good to go as far as calories are concerned. But can you grow enough olives to make you some f()uckin olive oil? Do you have a press for those olives? If not, that means you are counting on a store bought commodity you can't produce on your own. You can't grow fat in your backyard. It is too precious of a resource for man to yield control over. Only Nature can produce fat, and it takes a hell of a long time to do that.

Primitive man got his fat by hunting animals. Indeed the Plains Indians got marvelous amounts of fat from the buffalo they hunted. Civilised people weren't able to hunt if they weren't aristocrats, so they substituted meat with milk, cheese and oil. Nuts, too, were a dependable source of fat for sedentary savages.

You cannot expect to rely on any of the aforementioned food sources if the system breaks down. The United States was home to more wild animals than any other place on Earth prior to White man's arrival, but even then Indians often spent days on end away from home just to get a successful kill on their neverending hunts. Hunting is difficult, time consuming and rarely successful.

You can't leave your family for three days to hunt. The people you leave behind will be hunted.

Today there is little wildlife left in America and you will have limited success in hunting the sparse game available in light of all the competition you will face. With over 300,000,000 people in this country, many of them armed, all of the major wild animals (buffalo, moose, reindeer, white tail, wild hog, etc) will go extinct. This is exactly what happened in much of China 100 years ago, but wIth different animal species. You put guns in the hands of that many unregulated human beings and four legged animals tend to vanish spectacularly.

Livestock, too, will be rapidly exterminated..

This is not to suggest that all hope is lost. There is one surefire way to survive when the system tanks. It is the tried and trusted method that has been with us for eons: cannibalism.

The United States of America is home to over 300,000,000 human beings, many of them containing every bit as much fat as a buffalo. They cannot run quickly, are easy to catch and are safe to eat raw. Note that you probably will have to eat them raw, because you had better believe this country will be a treeless wasteland when people can no longer afford central heating. You'll want to hang the meat out to dry. Don't forget to break the bones open to get at the marrow; it has lots of fat in it. You can also dig a big hole in the ground and fill it with water to boil them. Fat rises to the top like cream and can be sipped through a straw. The Korowai are doing that to this day.

Of course I don't speak from experience here and I don't recommend eating human flesh... Unless of course your ass needs savin'. Which it will.



With this advice I leave you an important essay to read.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')It’s the autumn of 2025 AD. The technoindustrial system fell apart a year ago, but you and your friends are doing alright. Your garden has flourished this past summer and in your cabin you have a good supply of dried vegetables, dried beans and other foodstuffs to get you through the coming winter. Just now you’re harvesting your potatoes. With your spades, you and your friends uproot one potato after another and pick the plump tubers out of the soil.

Suddenly the friend at your elbow nudges you and you look up. Uh-oh. A gang of mean-looking men is coming up your trail. They have guns. They look like trouble, but you stand firm. The leader of the gang walks up to you and says,

“Nice looking potatoes you got there.”

“Yeah,” you reply. “They’re nice-looking potatoes.”

“We’re going to take them” says the gang leader.

“The hell you are!” you answer. “We spent a long summer of hard work growing those potatoes…”

The gang leader points his rifle at your face and says, “—— you, punk.” To his men he adds, “Dick, Ziggy, check the cabin and see what kind of food they got. We might just move in and spend the winter here. Mick, grab that bitch over there before she gets away. She got a nice ass. We’ll all screw her tonight.”

You get angry and start shouting, “You bastard! You can’t…”

The rifle goes BANG. You’re dead.

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'Y')ou get as far from the sprawl zone as humanly possible. The suburbs will be hell as the burbs are dependent on cheap fuel and a retail economy now in the state of collapse. Either go to a large northern city well supplied with water like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland . . . or a small town very far from the city. Note: zombie hordes (ie young suburban men 25-40) will be on the move (as they always have been) in search of territory, either in the city or the country. This demographic has few social skills. That is why if you choose to go small, you must move far away. And have a gun.

Cities are good for several reasons:
--installed and maintained railroad/interstate/barge system
--Multi-unit dwellings are energy-efficient, cheaper to heat/cool.
--walkable, less dependent on fuel
--full of wealth. You can leech/suck-up and protect wealth, and/or bottom fish from corrupt black-markets. Your caloric intake will be maintained (as grain-gruel, porridge, slop and an occasional turkey-tetrazzini ie shit-on-a-shingle for good behavior) so as to ensure peace and calm for the Masters.

Or choose a small remote town in a temperate climate with abundant water (to grow additional food). This town must currently has a net-export economy, and the capacity in the future to supply natural capital (farm products, timber, mineral, fisheries) to distant cities. Such a small town will be (almost by definition) connected to a major transport system (rail line, interstate, river) to said city. Food/ore destined for the city will pass by you, ripe for the pickings. The transport system will also be defended (drones) by the Masters, in the city, to ensure their comfort.

[Deputy Barnes]

Most Americans are in some form of debt. If the system collapses it will all be effectively forgiven (or should I say forgotten) since there's not gonna be any debt collecting going on when there are cannibals running around named, f()cking in the bushes. So if you were as smart as you say you are you'd rack up all the debt you can since there will never be any consequences. Go ahead and buy yourself $40,000 worth of salt and high powered flashlights. It just might keep those Ontario vampires at bay.

[joyfulbozo]

May be that will become true as oil prices are on hike... And recently i have read news regarding price hike on oil in Kuwait... And somewhere I can sense Ebola can be a reason for that.. As Ebola has started affecting market... Let see what s on our way....

thank you..

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Deputy Barnes', 'M')ost Americans are in some form of debt. If the system collapses it will all be effectively forgiven (or should I say forgotten) since there's not gonna be any debt collecting going on when there are cannibals running around named, f()cking in the bushes. So if you were as smart as you say you are you'd rack up all the debt you can since there will never be any consequences. Go ahead and buy yourself $40,000 worth of salt and high powered flashlights. It just might keep those Ontario vampires at bay.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Deputy Barnes', '
')The United States of America is home to over 300,000,000 human beings, many of them containing every bit as much fat as a buffalo. They cannot run quickly, are easy to catch and are safe to eat raw.

[RepublicanfromEngland]

Well the alternative for someone who doesn't have much is to take their own life, which could very well happen in that kind of future.

Nobody wants to be a cannibal.

There is a small cat in the neighbours garden that spent more than a day until it left trying to get the attention of the occupants of the propertly, only for no one to be there. The cat was certainly nibbling on grass.

Goes to show how animals can change their position temporarily for food.

As Mr Heinberg states true survival is local change, I pondered the thought about contact my local area's top political representative for the area. But ultimately it is 'peak oil London' that is the challenge.