[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'W')ell, smallpoxgirl has told us that we do have enzymes in our gastric juices that will digest bugs.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('julianj', '[')b]What type of Doomer are you?

I have noticed that there are different types of doomers on this board. I am a doomer, but I deeply resent being lumped in with milder doomers than myself…they’re obviously wimps, while I regard as lunatics the more extreme types than me who believe we’ll be reduced to fighting each other over the last tin of dogfood, Mad Max style.

So as a service to you all, I have identified different traits of doomers, as a first step towards a classification system.


Note: I feel no need to try to classify optimists: there’s only a couple of them here, and they don’t count.



The Rosy Doomer

Believes we will have a rough decade or two, then society will reorganise and we will be living in a communitarian, localised, permaculture society. Works in a caring profession. Fond of plants.

The Fusionite

Believes we will have a rough decade or two, then Fusion Power/Abiotic Oil/ZPE/Hydrogen will solve all our problems. Always quotes scientific websites. Has so little grasp of practicalities that he (it’s always a he) has already put down a deposit on a Honda Tokamak 17 Hydrogen-Powered Aircar.

The Armageddonite

As in Armageddon-outa-here. Hard Core. Ideal home: apparently wilderness above, supplying game and wood, underneath a bunker with 400 firearms. Thinks recycling only applies to cartridge cases. Expects thousands of starving Nerds from the Burbs to storm the place: boy are they going to be sorry.

Gloomer Doomer

“I’m too old/sick/indebted to survive, I’ll just carry on as normal until my end comes.”

Stalag Tight

Thinks that there will only be two professions post-peak. Labourer and Overseer. Practises snarling: “Work harder or you’ll feel the lash!” in the mirror. Ideal Christmas present: a solar powered Tazer.

Economite

Believes that Peak Oil is not the greatest threat, it is the market fears and economic meltdown it will trigger. Stockpiles food, toilet paper, water, medicine, toilet paper,seeds, and panic-buys essential consumer items like iPods and Plasma screens, and toilet paper in case of shortages. Particularly fond of glow-in-the-dark coffeemugs - which will be important post peak as you will need to be caffeinated to get through the blackouts.

Party Animal

Certain PO is going to be the “Big Bad”. Spends all their money, lives for the day, still drives a big car, flies anywhere they can. Drinks, takes drugs and parties. Always checks the air miles on food, then buys the most ecologically damaging - “WTF: whatever happens will happen.”

The Obsessional

Makes vast lists of all the necessary steps to take. Then matrixes those lists by time-to-peak, and Soft or Hard Landing, to create option profiles. Exhausted by the complexity of this planning, does nothing.

The Historian

A version of the above. Obsessively studies history as a guide to what will happen. Has accumulated a lot of gruesome studies of failing societies. Family now avoid The Historian as aged relatives do not relish enquiries like: “Auntie May, tell me how you survived the Depression. Do you still remember how to cook human flesh?”

Flip-flopper

Oscillates between slightly darker version of the Rosy Doomer, and the worst fantasies of the Armageddonite. Sought psychiatric help, but explained PO so convincingly to the shrink they had a breakdown and are now incarcerated in their own institution.


What type am I? A Flip-flopper with a bit of the Historian.

[Pops]

Probably one of the top 100 posts ever on PO.com.

JulianJ where are you?

[onlooker]

Great post Julian. Kind of tough as I do not see myself fitting neatly into any of the options. When I began researching I was a bit of the Economite-Historian type. even my name Onlooker as testament to more analyzing then acting. Now I would say I am more the Rosier type. Yet not because of the reasons expounded. Rather because I believe their is a chance ET may intervene to assist. Also because I do not feel I would be around when/if it gets really bad like Mad Max. So I am at peace with our common destiny of death. Death as the Exit door.

[Quinny]

Like Pete obsessional now Incompetently Practical Permy!

[Pops]

Yeah, I still flip between Economite/Armageddonist and Rosy.

My knee-jerk is the vast economic web can unravel or lockup in a heartbeat. The Great Risk Crisis of 2008 narrowly missed a shot to the economic head when governments stepped in and covered the bad bets of the gamblers and transferred their losses to the public, where the losses still sit. At that point no one would trust anyone and nothing could get done.

Since we're now so specialized, on the global scale, not only is nothing made locally but nothing anywhere is made from local parts and the parts themselves aren't even made from raw materials sourced locally. Not only does the bagged salad green come from a thousand miles, it is printed another thousand, from ink made another thousand on a bag that comes from another thousand, from ethylene cooked another thousand from oil another thousand, ...

Little hiccoughs get absorbed. But the underlying structure, which is the credit/banking system that distributes and hedges risk is fatally flawed. Not the fact that banks make loans, but the fact that gamblers now have their hand in every transaction, to the extent that bets are made without any actual underlying transaction whatsoever. And no one is overseeing who or how the risk is distributed or how it is even quantified.

It is like a huge game of Texas Hold Em with a billion card deck and unlimited stakes, the pot just keeps getting bigger, and bigger and generations of productivity (debt) just keeps piling up.


And that is the Rosy part.
LOL

[onlooker]

Good point Pops, well is not this gambling/greed mentality most evident in the Stock Market and stock markets. From what I have read you have trillions in numbers circling around screens. You have bets upon bets upon bets. Who was it (Warren Buffet) that said these trillions in derivatives are like a nuke waiting to explode. Fatally flawed is absolutely correct. Yet the reason all has not collapsed to me intuitively is precisely how rigged the economic game (s) are. All follies and exuberance and mistakes are covered up and hidden. Why is this point crucial. Because ultimately the system depends on the faith of all within it. Conversely, whatever faith is still held by the masses is reliant on having access to basic necessities. The powers that be seem to recognize this and attempt always to at least provide for the basic necessities. Of course barely in the poorer countries. Nevertheless, hard limits being reached in resources and energy use will expose all the inherent instabilities and make evident that money is no substitute for actual goods and resources.

[sparky]

.
A happy doomer , like turtle , things happen , we cannot really control it ,
we do not know when , how or truly why , so just grab the popcorn and watch the show
in the worst ( improbable ) case ,the survivalists will be tasty snack of resources for the real survivors
......the hard core bastards !
in the worst (probable ) case the survivalists will be arrested by a totalitarian state for having a bad individualist petty bourgeois attitude , serve them right they are guilty as charged