[wisconsin_cur]

[align=center]The Upper Midwestern United States[/align]

I was driving on some unknown country roads, traveling to a part of the county that is generally poorer than my own to answer a "for sale" ad in our local trading post for some large egg incubators. As I drove I took notice of the homes around me and the differences in their ability to cope with a resource scarce future that they represented. All too often we speak of rural versus urban when there will be no single rural, urban, or even suburban experience. I want to talk about some of the differences that will be found in the rural experiences of peak oil (I would recommend anyone with something to say about the pluriformity of urban or suburban experience to start related threads).

With only the passing thoughts of my drive to guide me let me attempt to outline what some of those different experiences will be.

1. The double-wide/mobile/older home: these are the most screwed. These options were chosen because there was no other option. These are the people who work at the gas station or are a CNA at the nursing home. They either did not complete high school or have little education beyond high school. Generally poorly insulated and with small lawns there is little experience or resources necessary to mitigate peak oil. These will be the first refugees either when inputs (food, electricity, LP) become too expensive. Perhaps they will go to live with a family member or, if it is available, to some urban relief center.

2. The middle-class wage earner's home: these are larger but, generally are newer, better built, and come with larger lawns. Perhaps the owners commute to an urban area or are higher on the food chain within the rural community. They generally have some college or a four year degree. These have the ability to mitigate peak oil if they have time to make significant changes in their lifestyle. Vacations need to be canceled. Toys sold and bills paid off. They have the ability to invest in alternative energy and heat sources. They can build outbuildings They have the room and ability to learn post-peak skills, but they need to know and be motivated to adapt.

3. The former farm: this is a tricky category. Some are able to be reclaimed for self-suffeciency purposes and fall into catagory 2 above. Others, like the one I visited to see the egg incubators, are owned by individuals typically found in group 1. The gentleman was a junk collector in failing health, a diabetic, missing one leg and with a catheter. He was groggy on pain meds when I arrived and his daughter-in-law (?) showed me where the incubators were. There were plenty of great buildings, in some ways cared for, but chalked so full of junk that it would take an able-bodied man 18 months to empty them. I have no idea what the garbage bill would be. If someone was lucky they might be able to get a scrap buyer to take it all for free. This man will be a refugee or, more likely, dead.

4. the working family farm: right now they are often treated as "charity cases" by the local creameries. The creameries break-even by sending the truck out to them but do not make money. the creamery's margins are so small that they only make money on the larger factory farms. These family farms might be just fine, supplying the market just as they are now. If the future turns more sharply against them they still might be able to fill a nitch as the price of transport increases. If they can switch over to supplying the local market, such as it will be, they might be able to stay in business. The more creative and self-sufficient the farm the more likely it will be able to make ends meet.

5. The large factory farm. I didn't pass any today. They should remain fine as long as the system as a whole remains functional. Whoever is writing the check trucks will be sent out to collect the milk for urban centers.

6. The Mcmansion: Again there is more than one possible future. Some may be sold at a lost,as those who were able to afford them move closer to their jobs in the urban areas. they might lose their short but they will still have options. They also might be retrofitted with many "alternatives" in regards to heat, electricity and other inputs. Those that are retirement homes (the majority closer to my own home) they might become multi-family homes as adult children return. They are more likely to be able to buy garden seeds (from me or the catalogs) and chickens (again I hope to have some to sell) and whatever else they need to decrease their dependence upon inputs. There are usually outbuilding which now house toys but could easily be converted to house animals.

It strikes me that it all comes down to a home's ability to decrease their dependence upon transport of inputs. Root cellars will be reopened and gardening relearned. others will not have either the mental or the physical resources to cope and will have to move or die. There will be accidents as people learn to use woodstoves or build their own because they cannot afford, let alone afford to have installed, a manufactured woodstove. People will have to choose between LP and meds and will suffer or die from the absence of one or the other. Local grocery stores may go out of business, as suppliers decide not to supply them (or the store cannot afford it as the local population find themselves unable to afford the local food and make monthly trips to urban areas for their grocery shopping). People will loose local jobs and then the cycle will propagate itself.

There will not be one experience. What we are faced with depends upon a future of which a trend can be discern but not the specifics. The best any of us can do is try to stack the odds in our favor.

[UncoveringTruths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '[')align=center]The Upper Midwestern United States[/align]

I was driving on some unknown country roads, traveling to a part of the county that is generally poorer than my own to answer a "for sale" ad in our local trading post for some large egg incubators. As I drove I took notice of the homes around me and the differences in their ability to cope with a resource scarce future that they represented. All too often we speak of rural versus urban when there will be no single rural, urban, or even suburban experience. I want to talk about some of the differences that will be found in the rural experiences of peak oil (I would recommend anyone with something to say about the pluriformity of urban or suburban experience to start related threads).

With only the passing thoughts of my drive to guide me let me attempt to outline what some of those different experiences will be.

1. The double-wide/mobile/older home: these are the most screwed. These options were chosen because there was no other option. These are the people who work at the gas station or are a CNA at the nursing home. They either did not complete high school or have little education beyond high school. Generally poorly insulated and with small lawns there is little experience or resources necessary to mitigate peak oil. These will be the first refugees either when inputs (food, electricity, LP) become too expensive. Perhaps they will go to live with a family member or, if it is available, to some urban relief center.

[ALBY]

Interesting thread.

I am honestly at a crossroads. do i spend the time and money developing this place i love, with good neighbors and fine schools ? or do i empty out my bank accounts and and buy some farmland in pennsylvania or upstate ny. on some days, i think doomsday is around the corner and i should be prepared for combat and we are too vulnerable by the road. on other days, i feel that a long term collapse will empty the rural countryside and we'll need to be closer to population and that i should be in an area with more poulation density.

[gnm]

Sorry but 3200 sq. ft is modest?



-G

[Kingcoal]

Why not just look at what life was like before the hydrocarbon age? Back then, there were rural and urban areas and people of all social classes. I think that the thing that becomes apparent is that oil has allowed us to produce an artificially higher standard of living for everyone. Back then, the average person was destitute by modern standards. Healthcare was basically non existent for average folks who had a life expectancy of around 45 years. Average folks tended to have big families because kids are cheap labor. Everyone had to work doing something, be it preparing dinner, which was much more involved because everything to be made from scratch, to sweeping up the house (no vacuum cleaners or petrochemical cleaners) to going out and finding employment. Most all employment was temporary by modern standards with no benefits. In all, labor was dirt cheap because there were tons of hungry poor people. Contrary to popular opinion on this board, hungry poor people are not particularly riot prone because that requires a lot of personal energy that starving people don't have.

I like Mr. Bill's signature; "the modern State is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can at someone else's expense." That someone else is cheap hydrocarbons.

Regarding modern homes, since most people routinely live beyond their means, they will probably lose their home. Apartment living will become the norm because it is so much more efficient. Supplying utilities to a big apartment building with 100 apartments is orders of magnitude cheaper than doing the same for 100 single family houses. In other words, the houses and trailers you are describing may well just be foreclosed on or abandoned. Before oil, rural people were involved in agriculture. They either owned a farm and/or worked on one. The rest of the people lived in cities for the reasons above. There were no suburbs by any modern definition; farmland began at the city limits. City people were involved in finance, trade, politics, law or they worked for those people.

I think that the biggest change that PO will bring is that everyone will have to work or convince someone to take care of them. There will be no more entitlements. Before oil, it was a well known fact of life that you had to work until you dropped. Free lunches were few and far in between. In comparison, our modern life amounts to being good at finding the free lunches that litter the economic landscape. Most of the population is dependant on some kind of welfare, either direct or non direct. All that is possible because of cheap energy.

[benzoil]

I think Uncovering Truths definitely proves the point that the rural experience will be very different depending on your point of view. UT has given this some thought and will do fine no matter what domicile he lives in. Others haven't given it a thought and will be hosed no matter how good their location.

If there is a slow slide, it will affect things differently than a fast crash. A slow slide will just accelerate the current depopulation of the countryside as the jobs evaporate even faster. A fast crash will trap lots of people in place who won't be able to deal with it. That would be bad. A slow slide will (hopefully) allow the population to move/migrate with only a modicum of chaos. (I'll let others judge how much chaos is enough!)

Most homes out here, and I'm guessing Wisconsin is no different, will be worse than useless without propane for heating. You might as well scavenge them for materials the first winter without it.

Land here is interesting. SW Michigan was widely settled in the middle 1800's. Heavily farmed and logged, much of the old farm land has returned to scrub forest. It's good land, but it'd take years to clear it for agriculture.

[FrankRichards]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '[')

1. The double-wide/mobile/older home: these are the most screwed. These options were chosen because there was no other option.

[ALBY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', 'S')orry but 3200 sq. ft is modest?



-G

[ALBY]

double

[alecifel]

The house has little to do with the sustainability, or survivability, of the people inside. Those things depend much more on the people inside. Making a hasty generalization about the occupants by the view from the road is an estimation at best, and pretty crude for that purpose. I bought a single-wide trailer and moved it on to my property last year, because rammed earth takes a LONG time to put up. But over that year, I've had a hot Oklahoma summer with no air conditioning, and a winter with just a woodstove. It doesn't hold heat well but holds enough to be liveable. The aluminum skin reflects it great in the summer time. You can heat all the hot water you need on the metal roof, any time of year. I have a few CF bulbs to light it and I run a TV and computer, but my electric bill is almost nil. I could do without them. It was $500, cash, no debt. I invest the money I would otherwise spend on developing my land. When the wreckage of the so-called economy finally takes out my city job, I'll just stay home and tend my animals and field.

"Education" is over rated. Colleges exist to teach skill sets within particular paradigms. When those paradigms are upset, the education is meaningless. I found I was easily able to compete without a degree in a field where all of my peers have one. Without spending $60k on four years of drinking, I'm getting a pretty good return on my investment! And a lot of CNA's and fuel service attendants have been to college (granted, that's the outcome of a Liberal Arts degree). A lot of McMansion dwellers have degrees but can't assemble an endtable. So, once again, I don't see education being a good indicator of future performance as well.

Peak Oil isn't going to starve a single person in North America. It will be doomsday in Africa, doomsday in southeast Asia and a major disaster for China, India, and Russia. But in the OECD it will be a psychological nightmare, a slap in the face of an arrogant brat. Who do I worry about? Jerks in clean pickup trucks with chrome bull bars, who get enraged because they're stuck in traffic behind someone who dares to obey the speed limit, wears their ball cap backwards and has more guns than brain cells. Suburban America is going to be a shooting gallery. Folks in the rural areas will be fine, all the dope dealers and meth cooks will be forced back to town long before the SHTF.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', '
')Why not just look at what life was like before the hydrocarbon age?

[LoneSnark]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')iving in an apartment means dealing with whatever utility infrastructure the landlord feels like using.

[Revi]

We live in a town in a rural area that is still losing population. A friend told me that apartment buildings are beginning to be abandoned by landlords because they couldn't pay the oil bill. We handed out CFL light bulbs last month in Waterville and a lot of the apartments were unoccupied. It looks like even apartments are too expensilve for the average person now. Maybe it's too expensive for people of modest means to live here now.

What I wonder is where do they go?

[benzoil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'W')hat I wonder is where do they go?

[kuidaskassikaeb]

This is a strange thread. I think I agree with Uncovering truths more than
the Cur. I have lived in small town long enough to know that you can’t
find your way around without a map, and plenty of the people living in the
nice houses around here are really strapped. Remember, this is a small
town, and we know everybody’s business. There is no way you could figure
out who is doing well by house size. Also, anybody who is preparing for
peak oil is living pretty small, and they’re probably the ones you want to
meet.

That said I think you the Cur’s old diabetic farmer is the typical resident.
The place just seems old. We have fire calls where the youngest person is
55, and weirdly enough most of the people moving in seem to be retired
looking for cheap housing. Those trailers are mostly full of disabled people
or city people who use them during hunting season. Mostly they seem to
be empty.

[benzoil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kuidaskassikaeb', 'T')he place just seems old. We have fire calls where the youngest person is
55...

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ALBY', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', 'S')orry but 3200 sq. ft is modest?



-G

[benzoil]

Dumb Question: How long does a manufactured home last? I've heard remarks around here that they're ready for the bulldozer after about 40 years. Is that true? I have to assume that the exteriors require the same maintenance intervals as regular homes (siding and roof every 20 years), but do they "wear out" or is it just that many people don't maintain them?

I've wondered, too, about the longevity of some new construction. Somehow press/chip board trusses don't strike me as "built for the long haul."

In other words, is there a reason to avoid a particular building style when planning for a resource constrained future?

[Kingcoal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', '
')Why not just look at what life was like before the hydrocarbon age?