[Man_of_the_house]

I recently saw the news reports of people hoarding rice and driving costs up. In the back of my mind I thought "Hmmm, maybe they know something I don't". Finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and it really scared the you know what out of me.

So I Googled and found PO. Now what? I'm a 40 year old schmuck in the suburbs of Austin, Texas with two young kids and a wife who thinks I'm paranoid. If I was a loner I wouldn't worry but I'm scared to death of what could happen to my family. Were do you start? Do I pack up and move to remote Colorado or Montana. Take survival courses and learn how to grow my own food? Its a little overwhelming. My fear is that it gets so bad mass chaos breaks out and even all the well intentioned preparedness won't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Any support or advice would be welcomed.

[Ferretlover]

Welcome, Man_of_the_house!
First: TEOTWAWKI is not going to happen tonight, tomorrow or even next week, so take a breath-you have time.
I would suggest you read a lot here, ask questions as you need clarification or guidance where to look next in the forums.
Looking for a certain topic? Use the Search feature (hint: enter term you for which you are looking, and click the search topic titles).
The Planning for the future forum has loads and loads of good info.
That overwhelming fear you feel will lessen as you gather more info (but, alas, it will occasionally reoccur). Just try to take on one subject at a time. You can do it!

[BigTex]

Welcome to the site.

I suggest you spend some time reading the forum archives and familiarizing yourself with some of the peak oil-related issues.

Don't use up too much energy being freaked out. Just absorb the material, let it sink in and take common sense steps based upon your new knowledge.

It's probably not as bad as it seems to you right now.

But it's probably worse than it seemed to you a week ago.

Good luck.

[Rabbit]

Very few people have the skills to live by themselves without help, tool, and materials from other people. We must as a people find a way to live more simply with a lot less energy use.

In the short term, pay off all your loans. Learn to live and be happy with less. Research who did well and not so well in the great depression around 1929-1932. Those are the conditions we will soon face.

[Armageddon]

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

[HEADER_RACK]

Leave the wife and sell the kids and HEAD FOR THE HILLS !!!!

Just kidding
Do lots of reading in the Planning for the Future forum. Take an assessment of your assets and liabilities in being prepared. Find out what being prepared means to you.Get rid of the liabilites improve the assests.
Your coming in late in the game but there is still time.

[Pops]

Pay no attention to the people with tricky avatars.

Go Here
v
v
v

[Man_of_the_house]

Thanks to all- I can at least sleep tonight.

[bodigami]

I don't have a wife or children and it's an advantage.

But, if your family is with you then you can turn your disadvantage into an advantage. Talk about this with your wife as if you're just starting to find out about Peak Oil, maybe she will understand. Then (un)teach your children about material entitlements.

I suggest to not panic and prepare mentaly before making preparations, to make them with a clear mind. I meditate to acchieve this and it has helped me greatly. Just focus on your breadth and let your mind relax and focus on positive energies.

There's a 5 step thread of preparations, I think it's in the Planning for the Future Forum. For now I've:

1) prepare mentally, meditate, relax, clear your mind
2) spread the awareness through your social network
3) prepare physically, be withing your healthy range of body mass/weight and logisticaly (plant some food, prepare your house for efficiency)
4) dematerialize, consume less, drive less than 5 kilometers on avarage, and so on...

[Cashmere]

You can sleep?

Then it hasn't fully hit you yet.

[Hermes]

Hey Man of the house:

Don't go moving! Central Texas is going to be excellent for riding out this storm. Or ... at least one of the better places, in my opinion.

Austin also has a group that gets together once a month or so called "Crude Awakening". You'll find their profile on meetup.com? .org?

First steps I recommend:
1: Get clear enough with yourself that you're ready to take profound action. It will take a fundamental life shift to prepare correctly for this. Be sure that enough of your doubts about the validity of PO have been answered so that when everyone else around you says you're crazy you'll still know inside that you're right.

2: Talk about it with the ones you will need to be bringing along. There's a good chance your wife will "get it" once you present her with enough info at a pace and medium which she can absorb. Your kids: depends on their age. The biggest issue will probably be that they won't want to leave their friends.

3: Don't waste too much energy on trying to enlighten your friends and extended family about PO. I know it probably sounds extraordinarily callous or worse ... but just search this forum for peoples' stories about trying to educate others. Very few people get PO. Despite all you will say to them. You have other important things to do in the coming months. Just try it with a few people. Try telling them everything you have learned about PO, and see what happens. I suggest leaving these people to their fate, and recognizing that you've done what you could for them.

Obviously this is in contrast to what I said about your wife. In my opinion it IS important that your life partner be with you in this. I think it is worth spending special time/energy/care on convincing her about PO.

4: Get out of the city. It's a death trap.

5: Focus on getting into an existing intentional community. At this late stage of the game time is precious (hell, it was precious 8 years ago!). Going through the process of finding land, closing on it, building up basic infrastructure, etc... that's all years of time that could be better spent focussed on taking care of your basic needs. A community has already done all that work for you. An IC also affords security, strength and comraderie.

6: Dabble in lots of little projects to get familiar with them. Set up a rain barrel to collect water off your roof. Plant a small garden in your yard. Get a firearm and get familiar with it. Get a little solar panel kit to run your TV set (or whatever). Each of these things you can do in the suburbs to get familiar with the stuff you'll need to be doing MUCH more of once you get out. None of them are going to be more than a drop in the bucket, but at least once you get out onto a large piece of land you'll have a sense what you're doing. You'll be able to take what you've learned and scale it up.

7: Take a Permaculture class. I have problems with Permaculture, but it's the best solution I've found yet for dealing with the likely effects of PO. In the Austin area the teachers Dick and Selwyn are AWESOME. After taking that class you'll be amped up and ready to rock. Unfortunately the teachers themselves don't really get PO, but the subject matter is excellent. Permaculture could be seen as a way to "ease into" the stuff most survivors will be doing in the future to make it.

8: Don't spend too much time on this website! For that matter don't read too many books or take too many classes to the DETRIMENT of taking ACTION. Try to balance out the theoretical with the practical. The learning with the application. I've met too many PO-aware people who're "thinking about what to do" and "learning skills" and not enough who're actually DOING anything.

9: Hook up with like-minded people. You'll feel less crazy, and can get valuable ideas and support from them.

[Micki]

Stay practical.
If you can't involve your family out of being considered a luny, do constant small adjustments. i.e. educate them in very small dozes, no preaching. Take up meaning ful hobbies. i.e. take up shooting and stuff like that. When PO is too taboo, use other excuses. Like start growing more vegies etc yourself and use high food prices or health concerns with sprayed genetically modified food etc. Surely she can buy in on some of that stuff.
Decide what you think you need to do economically. i.e. pay off credit cards, investments etc and work hard towards those goals.

Finally, don't get too bogged down on the net. This shit is really adictive and keeps you away from practice and some of the stuff you read can be very depressing if you haven't prepared yourself mentally.

Edited: Great post Hermes. Had you been a couple of minutes faster I could have saved myself from posting as we came in pretty close.

[SILENTTODD]

I agree. Eastern Texas is a good place. My job with AT&T may move me there. We might be neighbors. California unfortunately is not the place to be after the SHTF. My girl friend is from there, she’d like it too!

[kjmclark]

Hey, I'm forty, with two young kids too! But my wife doesn't think I'm paranoid, she's just concerned about the time commitment and safety of some of my preparations. So I'm going to work on the wife angle.

First, I recommend against hiding things from her that she hasn't authorized. You need to do some convincing first. Then ask for blanket OKs for classes of items. Start with food and water. With two young kids, she's sure to see the wisdom of storing basic quantities of food and water. Check out the FEMA website for basic preparedness. It shouldn't be too hard to convince her that it makes sense to have the basics like FEMA points out everyone should have. Get her to agree to those basics first.

All the while, keep pointing out how the main stream media explanations for high gas prices make no sense, but approaching (or being at) peak oil explains everything. Point out that the oil crisis of the 70s makes a lot more sense when you realize that US oil production peaked in 70-71. Point out the recent WSJ articles and various articles and editorials from the British newspapers talking about peak oil. If you're more left of center, point out Paul Krugman's commentaries in the NY Times talking about peak oil.

You have to build her up to the Hirsch report. Once you've made it to the Hirsch report, point out that Hirsh recently said that people he listens to think we could get $12-$15 gas. I think most Americans can understand that all Hell breaks loose in this country if we ever get to $12 per gallon gas.

In the mean time, make sure you do your share of the housework. My wife's biggest fear in all of this, besides the safety of the kids, is that she's in for menial drudgery for the rest of her life if things go south. It helps her a lot to know that her husband is willing to work hard to make it easier for her.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Man_of_the_house', 'I') recently saw the news reports of people hoarding rice and driving costs up. In the back of my mind I thought "Hmmm, maybe they know something I don't". Finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and it really scared the you know what out of me.

So I Googled and found PO. Now what? I'm a 40 year old schmuck in the suburbs of Austin, Texas with two young kids and a wife who thinks I'm paranoid. If I was a loner I wouldn't worry but I'm scared to death of what could happen to my family. Were do you start? Do I pack up and move to remote Colorado or Montana. Take survival courses and learn how to grow my own food? Its a little overwhelming. My fear is that it gets so bad mass chaos breaks out and even all the well intentioned preparedness won't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Any support or advice would be welcomed.

[mmasters]

Things wont fall apart overnight. You have time. Things will get a little worse in the next few months and most likely better before the election (then worse again after it). For some of us peak oil is only the beginning of the rabbit hole for others it is the end of the rabbit hole. It's worth it to do some homework, question things and keep an open mind. If you need to talk to people about what's on your mind here is the place to do it. People generally in the outside world don't want to hear this stuff, it will affect and possibly do damage to your relationships as most all of us have encountered so heads up.

[Ferretlover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mmasters', ' ')It's worth it to do some homework, question things and keep an open mind. If you need to talk to people about what's on your mind here is the place to do it.