[FoolYap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'H')ow many years do we have before the end of the world as we know it? How long do you think YOU have?

[ohanian]

Da shite would hit the fan at
21 Dec 2012 because it is the
start of the Age of Aquarium

[Jack]

So much depends on what is meant by "the end of the world as you know it". People are stealing iron manhole covers. Numerous airlines have gone bankrupt. The stock market is in a bear market and staid old investment houses are making statements that would have been classified as doomer porn as recently as a year ago.

I suspect we will all acknowledge that we are in a depression by the middle of 2009, one year hence.

By the middle of 2010, we will all wear a pistol to go to the grocery store. It will be accepted practice.

By 2012, four years from now, we will have a few wealthy people, trembling behind their gates, masses of angry poor struggling to survive, and slums where not even the troops go. Sorta like Brazil - but here in the U.S. Neither electricity nor potable water will be dependably available - anywhere.

By 2015....welcome to Hell.

[Werdna]

most post's on this thread seem to point to 2012 as the real 'big' year for it to go t*ts up.

i live in Greenwich, London and we are hosting the olympic games that year for which i am being heavily taxed to pay for all the building programmes!
how ironic is that!
damn that London mayor for bidding for the games!

[countrysidegirl]

I totally think we are on the brink of depression. Depending on how many more "natural" disasters happen will depend on how soon the SHTF. We no longer have any buffer capacity to rebound from any problems. As gas and everything else gets higher, people are either using more credit or letting go of the luxeries. Sad thing is that no one is paying of debts or stocking up. As unemployment rises and businesses go belly up, more people are going to find themselves on the streets. I only hope there is 6 months to a year before things get really bad.

[Olaf]

I sure don't feel like we have much longer before things begin to crumble. Year or two now.

I'm so not ready.

Olaf

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomWarrior', 'S')ept 2008 - Global economic crash
2010 - Resource wars / die-off
2012 - You don't want to know

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'T')he disintegration spawned by Peak Everything, Global Warming, environmental damage, overshoot, government waste and tomfoolery, and economic mismanagement ?

[Heineken]

Excellent comments here. You guys and gals are so smart.

Interesting how many older members have been attracted to this thread. Getting into your 40s and 50s and 60s certainly puts the writing on the wall, doesn't it? You realize that there are two doom clocks running simultaneously, the one we write about on this website and your own personal internal one; the two clocks aren't necessarily synchronized.

Many young people assume they will live forever no matter what; that is the natural thing for them. More power to the young immortals.

When I look back four years and see in sharp perspective the spectacular decline that has happened in that period, estimates of four more years until the dramatic carnage begins seem reasonable. I guess I'm with the "four more years" camp.

There are so many triggers waiting to be pulled---famine, Gulf hurricanes, war with Iran, simultaneous dirty bombs in the capitals of capital, and so forth. And so few threads of hope. This goes to the second of my two signatures. Those are the words of my brother, mostly. His business was wiped out in 9/11 and he declared bankruptcy. He's now a public schoolteacher in Boston, has a Harvard Ph.D. He's no dummy and no stranger to how doom can visit you personally and suddenly, from any of a million angles. I could get up in the middle of the night to pee, as I always do, and the urine is tinged red and that means I probably have bladder cancer; no health insurance.

How I wish some of us could get together and form our own real community, not just a virtual one. The Internet is the best invention ever for bringing together like minds, but that's about as far as it goes. We can talk and commiserate together but we can't act together.

[mcgowanjm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomWarrior', 'S')ept 2008 - Global economic crash
2010 - Resource wars / die-off
2012 - You don't want to know

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'T')he disintegration spawned by Peak Everything, Global Warming, environmental damage, overshoot, government waste and tomfoolery, and economic mismanagement ?

[allenwrench]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'T')he disintegration spawned by Peak Everything, Global Warming, environmental damage, overshoot, government waste and tomfoolery, and economic mismanagement is proceeding much faster than I anticipated when I became a member of this website. The cornucopians (remember them?) have lost the argument, ALREADY. Almost everyone is starting to feel the pain. I have never seen developments this bad at any point in my 52 years. Even the mainstream network news is becoming a nightly horror show. I am personally afraid, despite being better prepared and better off than the average yokel.

The pain could become severe, or even fatal. Picture riding your bike to your local grocery store and the shelves are bare, and they stay bare. Or a drought razes your county (and your carefully provisioned house). Or you lose your job and find that not only you can't find a new one, nobody else can either. Or you need emergency medical care but it just isn't there for you, or isn't there in time (i.e., basically, they let you die). Etc., etc.

How many years do we have before the end of the world as we know it? How long do you think YOU have?

[allenwrench]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Olaf', 'I') sure don't feel like we have much longer before things begin to crumble. Year or two now.

I'm so not ready.

Olaf

[Ainan]

Oh i think we have plenty of time before TSHTF, a good 5-10 years at least. Of course if you factor in the 'credit crunch' issue, it could be next year. :8O:

Many people here on PO.com are getting on a bit and I think they want the 'collapse'. They have lived good lives and (quite rightly) want to see this horrible system we live in destroyed. It clouds their judgement.

Of course you could quite reasonibly argue the fact I'm in my early 20s with no physical preperations yet clouds my judgement.

[Heineken]

Well, many past civilizations had superior skills in all the areas you list and more, Wrench. They were foragers and gardeners and weavers and leatherworkers, etc., par excellence. They weren't dependent at all on fossil fuels or modern gizmos. But they still perished. Starved or died of disease or conked one another on the head in the turmoil. If their "preps" failed, how can we expect ours, which are crude and limited by comparison, to succeed? Even canned and bottled and freeze-dried foods have limited safe shelf lives, and how much of that stuff can you really stock? I'd say you can buy yourself two to four years, assuming you don't get raided by your neighbors, which is very likely when they see you aren't all gaunt and your hair isn't falling out.

[allenwrench]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')ell, many past civilizations had superior skills in all the areas you list and more, Wrench. They were foragers and gardeners and weavers and leatherworkers, etc., par excellence. They weren't dependent at all on fossil fuels or modern gizmos. But they still perished. Starved or died of disease or conked one another on the head in the turmoil. If their "preps" failed, how can we expect ours, which are crude and limited by comparison, to succeed? Even canned and bottled and freeze-dried foods have limited safe shelf lives, and how much of that stuff can you really stock? I'd say you can buy yourself two to four years, assuming you don't get raided by your neighbors, which is very likely when they see you aren't all gaunt and your hair isn't falling out.

[AnIowan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('allenwrench', '
')
My survival mentor says to prepare for the unthinkable one must first think the unthinkable. But all this has to be done within reason.

[BigTex]

All three U.S. automakers appear to be on the brink of collapse.

That's pretty shocking.

I think people are beginning to realize that the stock market doesn't mean anything if people are too spooked to buy stocks. This includes oil stocks.

When any sort of slide starts, you ask yourself about what kind of anchors are in place. What will arrest the fall? In the past, cheap oil has ALWAYS been there to propel us out of any economic problems. This time it will be different. There won't be cheap oil now or in the future, no matter how much demand destruction takes place.

Different societies and different individuals within those societies are going to have different amounts of time when looking at the broad "How long do we have?" question.

One of the best guides is to simply watch what the rich do. Watch closely and listen closely when they speak. Part of what this class does very well is reap enormous profits during times of upheaval.

Right now, there is too much money chasing too few goods wordwide. Investing in the goods that are going to be most likely to hold their value no matter what is a smart thing to do.

In times like these, the weaknesses and risks in the stock market are most apparent. Even if I own a small piece of a very good company, the stock price is STILL just a function of supply and demand. No demand for the stock and the price of the stock collapses. When this happens, I realize that although I own a small piece of the company, it's not as if I can go to the company's headquarters and claim some of its assets in exchange for my stock. That's the problem.

There will undoubtedly be foreign investors who come in and buy bargain priced stocks (energy primarily, I would think), but when this may occur is anyone's guess.

If I had a billion dollars in a sovereign wealth fund to come in and buy a bunch of U.S. company stock, in an environment like this I would have no reason to do it until I was completely certain that the market had totally bottomed out. When I did finally come in and start buying, the market wouldn't be crowded because everyone else will have lost all of their money.

The stock market scenario we are seeing right now illustrates why it's so important to keep a good supply of cash on hand. Even if the dollar is going down in value, so long as your debt is denominated in dollars, it's important to have some of those dollars to service that debt. If you have no debt, it's nice to have some of those dollars to buy equities at fire sale prices.

I think that the Olympics will probably give everyone a break from the doom and the U.S. presidential election will probably give things a little bounce.

One of my canary in the coal mine events is the cancellation of professional sporting events. I don't see this happening yet, so I think we may have a while to go yet.

[Byron100]

Excellent thread.

If I had to put a date on it, it's 2012. But I've always said that 2012 was the official TSHTF year, long before peakoil(dot)com came into existence.

But I somehow don't think we'll all be carrying pistols to the grocery store in 2010. Seriously, if it was that bad, there wouldn't be a grocery store to wear your gun to...hehe.

The thing is, we haven't even seen the 70's yet...the 14% unemployment rate, the 12% inflation rate, the 16% interest rate...anybody remember what it was like? Those too, were hard times, a lot more so than what we're experiencing so far in the year 2008.

That being said, however, I do think 2009 will be a very bleak year, with the "downturn" rapidly deepening into a full-blown depression. Then by the year 2010, I think demand will have fallen below current production levels, leading to a brief reprieve in 2011 by way of a massive reversal of energy prices (think of the commodities bubble popping at this time). But 2012 and later, I think that's we'll truly see the SHTF, massive dislocation of population, intensifying wars, and Big Brother Government pretty much running the show. I'll be 45 then, still less than half the current age of my grandfather (94). But the way I see it, if it's my time to punch out then, so be it. I've still gotten to live in the most awesome period of human history ever. But if I do make it past the worse of the Great Calamity, or however people will end up calling it, I do foresee myself living a very simple, frugal life, but yet more fulfilling than what I'm experiencing now. Maybe because I won't be stressing about the coming doom like I am now...LOL.

Yes, the waiting is really the hard part. To me, anyways.

[johhnytrash]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'D')a shite would hit the fan at
21 Dec 2012 because it is the
start of the Age of Aquarium

[vetusfirma]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'E')xcellent comments here. You guys and gals are so smart.

Interesting how many older members have been attracted to this thread. Getting into your 40s and 50s and 60s certainly puts the writing on the wall, doesn't it? You realize that there are two doom clocks running simultaneously, the one we write about on this website and your own personal internal one; the two clocks aren't necessarily synchronized.

Many young people assume they will live forever no matter what; that is the natural thing for them. More power to the young immortals.

When I look back four years and see in sharp perspective the spectacular decline that has happened in that period, estimates of four more years until the dramatic carnage begins seem reasonable. I guess I'm with the "four more years" camp.

There are so many triggers waiting to be pulled---famine, Gulf hurricanes, war with Iran, simultaneous dirty bombs in the capitals of capital, and so forth. And so few threads of hope. This goes to the second of my two signatures. Those are the words of my brother, mostly. His business was wiped out in 9/11 and he declared bankruptcy. He's now a public schoolteacher in Boston, has a Harvard Ph.D. He's no dummy and no stranger to how doom can visit you personally and suddenly, from any of a million angles. I could get up in the middle of the night to pee, as I always do, and the urine is tinged red and that means I probably have bladder cancer; no health insurance.

How I wish some of us could get together and form our own real community, not just a virtual one. The Internet is the best invention ever for bringing together like minds, but that's about as far as it goes. We can talk and commiserate together but we can't act together.

[Muckingfess]

Well Guys & Gals, none of us knows when TSHTF and I really don't care. My Dad used to say"None of us have a contract with the Man upstairs". Whatever you believe in, you can believe that none of us can control our final destiny.

I have lived 64 years so far. I have seen the advent of jet aircraft, a man on the moon, the assassinations of a President, his brother, rock stars, and great leaders. I've seen the age of Aquarius, the age of the computer, the advance of medical science, the decline of morality, 9/11, the steady erosion of the Bill of Rights, the crumbling of the justice system in the US, the flooding of a great city, and the flooding of illegal immigrants to the US. I've seen the first man in space, the first woman justice of the supreme court, the first woman and black American to have a real chance at becoming the POTUS, and possibly the last free election in the US.

I've lived in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, BC, and Nevada. I've seen the wonders and beauty of nature and the damage it can do. I've been to 49 of the 50 United States and traveled in Europe, Canada and Mexico. The only place I haven't been that I want to go is Alaska.

I live alone and have prepared for emergencies. Unfortunately I live in a city. There will be no survival. I will protect my stashes and my property. If I fail, so be it. I just can't help but to think that it's been a great ride.