[jedrider]

Good luck. If one believes in Justice, then there is MUCH to look forward to.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'B')ut we will still have 5 mpbd of production. How it will be used is anybody's guess. But I can say with assurance it will not support your white-collar retail job. But it will support those with guns and money.

[Pops]

Lucky for me, I'm not looking forward to collapse of modern civilization because it is gonna take lots longer than I've got for that to happen.

Recurring bubbles inflating and exploding?
Increasing inequality?
Lots and lots of debt write-offs, credit freezes, market tankage?
Ridiculous volatility IOW?
Armed conflict -regional or global?

Yeah probably all that and more ...
but running firefights with starving soccer moms?

Naw. Better get another fantasy.

[TemplarMyst]

Hey Pops,

Yeah, well, mebbe the starving soccer moms won't be much of a problem. Mebbe. Then again, while I was researching the Soviet Union's response to the Nazi invasion, I did run across quite a bit of info on Russian women manning tanks and aircraft and fighting directly in combat. And they were anything but pleasant, by all accounts. The German soldiers didn't find them to be terribly dainty and submissive, as I recall.

Theoretically these were peasant women prior to their involvement.

They seemed to have learned rather quickly...

[Pops]

Hi, Mist, you can come up with just about any scenario and find some precedent somewhere I suppose. My thought is digging tank traps to defend against the mounted ladies of the Gold Coast is pretty far down the list. LOL

No one in Chicago is gonna starve anytime soon. They may not be happy, they may be pissed, unemployed and on foot, they may be carrying pitchforks and throwing cocktails but they are not going to be roving the countryside. They are city people, they won't leave the streetlights. And besides they wouldn't know what to do with a wheat berry if they could identify one or a corn field if they were lost in it.

They may decide to go elsewhere to find work - money and work is what will be in short supply is my thought - but they aren't going to descend on the countryside like locusts. The reason is simple, "The Countryside" is one huge factory. Farms around Chicago are multimillion dollar business, in the future you imagine they would be the only factory of value. Can you see the owners just standing by while a mob ransacks their inventory? And even if - especially if, there were no regular police or military you can bet those farms will be guarded. And really, field crops are only edible in a narrow season, and most animals are raised in confined, easily guarded areas, Betsy isn't out roaming the north forty anymore and poultry & hogs rarely see the light of day, they aren't out foraging in the woods.

But in the event someone passed out a pamphlet telling how to forage a cornfield in February and the locusts did descend, you are talking a one time event. Who would plant the next crop?

[TemplarMyst]

Hallo agin Pops,

Yeah, I admit I'm always looking worst case. I'm a sys admin by trade, so I wind up being the one who has to clean up the mess when the continuity plan goes to crap three layers deep. Tends to make one paranoid, I do acknowledge.

I'm hoping we don't get anywhere near the level of deprivation I'm postulating. I'd still consider your scenario above to be fairly mild. Having driven many of the routes out of Chi and into the countryside there's a lot of material out there. Agree the harvest has to be timed to be useful, but there's a lot of stored grain and other useful items. And believe it or not Betsy does wander around in many places too.

And yup, they'll all be guarded. By the time we got to the scenario I'm imagining the folks coming out of the cities are already winnowed down to the leanest and meanest. I'm thinkin' their survival skills will be pretty top notch at that point.

And the scenario I'm envisioning is grid failure. The one where it don't come back. For good.

Lots of ways we don't get to that point. Lots of ways we don't get near to that point. But it's my sys admin nature to envision the worst

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TemplarMyst', 'a')nd the scenario I'm envisioning is grid failure. The one where it don't come back. For good.

[Quinny]

I tend to agree with the General consensus that it's going to be a long hard slog rather than quick descent into barbarism. I fear that War would change this though, and that's what TPTB [and 6] seem to be wanting. Think Ukraine!

The money to buy the preps I can
The ability to improvise the things I can't
The sand to hide my head from the rest
And plenty of booze so I can get pissed with the best!

[TemplarMyst]

Yeah, I'm just postulating a worst case. Who knows what it'll actually look like, or even whether it'll actually happen.

If I reexamine all my assumptions, which I do periodically, the near term outlooks go from moderately rosy (TPTB pull a rabbit out of their hat on the global debt load, decreased demand extends PO out an indeterminate amount of time, and climate sensitivity and velocity are both lower than I fear) to it all hits the fan (reverse the rosy scenario).

I've no idea which way we're headed, really. And folks here make a good point about the current state of war in various places. I would maintain the key current fires (Ukraine, Libya, Iraq/Syria) are in areas which still have some level of grid functionality, albeit spotty. But I admit they all look like the long, slow slog at this point.

And on the flip side, the Afghans only briefly experienced a grid, in the 50s and early 60s. They've done just fine without one before, and will likely do fine without one after.

So it's anyone's guess. Though I do like the serenity prayer!

Now where did I put that sand I was going to use in the garden...

[G dubya]

Really?

What qualifications, precisely, so you have that make you think you will be in the top 0.1? Fabulous wealth, secure property guarded by a team of people eager to support you all of whom are skilled farmers; enough remote farmland to feed them all with the ability to respond to climate chaos. I assume your group has the firearms skills to survive the first year, then the manufacturing ability to replace attrition over the long term. You don't need advanced technology but you do need to stay ahead of the neighbours even if it is the medaeval skill of producing longbows and the continuous training required to be proficient. So being the benevolent well-loved and respected king of a functional castle might be good.

You are already prepared or will be "in the next 5 years" while economic collapse waits for you? Good luck.

You are not? Then you will not be watching, you will be participating.

[TemplarMyst]

G dubya,

Who are you directing that to? I've said a few times, mostly in Comments on News articles, that I'm thinking I'll be one of the early ones to be run down. Over fifty, no kids. Someone else can take my place on the commune if they want it.

I'm the one thinking worst case scenarios, and that it just ain't gonna be pretty. If my current assumptions of dire doom come to pass I'm reasonably sure I don't want to be one of the survivors.

It's why I push for a grid transition from fossil to nuclear for the big stuff and distributed renewable for the little stuff. Don't think it's gonna happen, but I think the energy dynamics might at least work. I've said it before - we have to pull down GHGs if we're to keep from circling the drain. Don't see how we do that in a low energy environment.

Just my two bits.

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SILENTTODD', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '
')But there has to be survivors to any catastrophe.

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('granger', 'D')esumaiden,
Human overpopulation will be dealt with the decline in fossil fuels, no doubt. William Canton saw it before many. I do think that perhaps you are optimistic about the benefit this will provide other wild life species during this event. Imagine if you will what 9 billion hungry humans will be capable of in their last gasp. Every remaining refuge of wildlife will be looked upon as an opportunity for a meal. With the collapse of the rule of law who will act as game wardens? Seasons, bag limits.............Ha. This will not be pretty. This current extinction event will continue unabated through the collapse. I won't live quite long enough to witness it, my children will see some of it. Evolution and the diversification of species will take a very, very, very long time, but it will happen. It may take a hundred or more years for the rubble stops bouncing. You perhaps will only see part of what unfolds, it will not be a sudden collapse, but a stair step, uneven in geographic location, timing and force.
We will eat all the birds from the trees.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '-')snip-
That is a most likely scenario. It could be a full scale extinction event worse than the asteroid event that killed off all of the dinosaurs. I certainly didn't forgot to include that in my equation, because my mom told me that could be a possibility.

[TemplarMyst]

DesuMaiden wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')hit. Looks like my goose has been cooked too, so to speak. What the heck I am supposed to do now?

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', 'W')hat the heck I am supposed to do now?

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', 'W')hat the heck I am supposed to do now?

[KaiserJeep]

Get an education. Nuclear power plants do not explode, of the hundreds throughout the world, none has ever exploded. Superheated steam did blow the top off of Chernobyl and allowed oxygen to flood superheated graphite, that is the worst that ever happened.

Nuclear energy has a safety record that puts ALL OTHER TYPES OF POWER TO SHAME.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
Nuclear energy has a safety record that puts ALL OTHER TYPES OF POWER TO SHAME.