I found out about peak oil through a friend. He gave me a video and mentioned that, in comparison to global warming, "peak oil is 100 times worse than climate change." I thought to myself, "Something worse than rising sea levels, famine on a continental scale, drying inlands and flooding coastlines....what could be worse...this guy has gotta be yanking my chain..."
Then I watched the movie and started doing my own research. Peak Oil is something that only those who WANT TO LEARN will actually come to accept/debate. If you can tell someone just a tiny bit about peak oil and they become self-interested, then there's hope for that person. If they watch Crude Awakening, get sad and don't do a damn thing about it...they're just a sheeple.
PeakOil is You
Sheeple Thread (merged)
Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by Nicholai » Sun 03 Aug 2008, 17:44:43
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Nicholai - Tar Sands
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Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by ReverseEngineer » Sun 03 Aug 2008, 20:10:21
I live in a low population area, and have had reasonable success with educating some of the Sheeple. A coworker of mine has purchased her own Bow, and now is nearly as a good a shot as I am and will get her License this week for medium size game. She is a fabulous cook and I think can even make squirrel taste OK. I will hand over most of my kill to her for preparation. LOL.
However, this area is different from most, there is a tradition around here of Hunting and Fishing, and because many people do it and live pretty far out, most also have a fairly large stock of food, especially right after the season ends. Some friends recently visited here and they took home with them 200 pounds of fish. Those are visitors. Locals here take in 1000 pounds and more and smoke and freeze it for the rest of the year.
The problems involved with educating Sheeple in a high population area with low food production capability are enormous. The amount of food you will need to stock up to wait for everyone else around you to die off is substantial to say the least, and then you will have to hide the fact you actually have it. You know, unless you are holed up in a basement for 2 years, after a couple of months people are going to NOTICE you are not so skinny as everyone else around. LOL. Besides your relatives who will come knocking at your door, about everyone will be asking you for food, and for how long can you refuse the requests before they get just a bit nasty about it?
OK, so assume you have secured your basement in Suburbia and made it appear not to exist by removing the normal doors and only have access through a Secret Panel behind a Closet that leads to a ladder downstairs, your continued residence in the house goes unnoticed, people think it is abandoned. Besides the die off from lack of food, lets also suppose Bird Flu hits in force and 90% of your neighbors are now dead when you emerge from the basement in two years. Certainly anyone still standing will probably form up and work together, but just how plausible will it be to turn your Suburban Subdivision into a Food Producing Community? Well, I suppose the Deer will have returned to the area in some force, so you might have some decent hunting available. Farming those suburban yards for any decent yield will be hard though, especially if there are no horses around your neighborhood. I also hope besides your stockpile of food, you also have plenty of seed and fertilizer to get some growing going in those yards.
Forget the Cities, this is just a nightmare in the making, and I don't think there is ANY survival plan that works in a Metro area. Suburban Survival is possible on a temporary basis, maybe 5 years if you stocked up enough, but actually making such an area work long term I think cannot happen.
Working your way out to what I feel is the only real places you can survive are, the low population Mountainous regions and their Valleys, in these places you can probably survive but you won't have good long term success unless you bring together your community and educate the Sheeple there as much as you can. This has been my paradigm for the last year, and it goes OK, nobody has put me in the Loony Bin yet anyhow. LOL. I still get plenty of argument and plent of Denial from many people, but a few do listen. Those few are the Core right now, but when the SHTF, I do think many more will come aboard. As a community, we are positioned well. The resources are here locally, the population is low, the Geography protects us well, we are surrounded by very BIG mountains, the Great Wall that God Built. We have each other, and in this community at least, people do know how to hunt and fish, and the game and the fish are still out there to get in good numbers.
I cross my fingers and hope I am right, that the Sheeple here will pull together rather than go at each other's throats. If the latter scenario happens, we are all lost.
Reverse Engineer
However, this area is different from most, there is a tradition around here of Hunting and Fishing, and because many people do it and live pretty far out, most also have a fairly large stock of food, especially right after the season ends. Some friends recently visited here and they took home with them 200 pounds of fish. Those are visitors. Locals here take in 1000 pounds and more and smoke and freeze it for the rest of the year.
The problems involved with educating Sheeple in a high population area with low food production capability are enormous. The amount of food you will need to stock up to wait for everyone else around you to die off is substantial to say the least, and then you will have to hide the fact you actually have it. You know, unless you are holed up in a basement for 2 years, after a couple of months people are going to NOTICE you are not so skinny as everyone else around. LOL. Besides your relatives who will come knocking at your door, about everyone will be asking you for food, and for how long can you refuse the requests before they get just a bit nasty about it?
OK, so assume you have secured your basement in Suburbia and made it appear not to exist by removing the normal doors and only have access through a Secret Panel behind a Closet that leads to a ladder downstairs, your continued residence in the house goes unnoticed, people think it is abandoned. Besides the die off from lack of food, lets also suppose Bird Flu hits in force and 90% of your neighbors are now dead when you emerge from the basement in two years. Certainly anyone still standing will probably form up and work together, but just how plausible will it be to turn your Suburban Subdivision into a Food Producing Community? Well, I suppose the Deer will have returned to the area in some force, so you might have some decent hunting available. Farming those suburban yards for any decent yield will be hard though, especially if there are no horses around your neighborhood. I also hope besides your stockpile of food, you also have plenty of seed and fertilizer to get some growing going in those yards.
Forget the Cities, this is just a nightmare in the making, and I don't think there is ANY survival plan that works in a Metro area. Suburban Survival is possible on a temporary basis, maybe 5 years if you stocked up enough, but actually making such an area work long term I think cannot happen.
Working your way out to what I feel is the only real places you can survive are, the low population Mountainous regions and their Valleys, in these places you can probably survive but you won't have good long term success unless you bring together your community and educate the Sheeple there as much as you can. This has been my paradigm for the last year, and it goes OK, nobody has put me in the Loony Bin yet anyhow. LOL. I still get plenty of argument and plent of Denial from many people, but a few do listen. Those few are the Core right now, but when the SHTF, I do think many more will come aboard. As a community, we are positioned well. The resources are here locally, the population is low, the Geography protects us well, we are surrounded by very BIG mountains, the Great Wall that God Built. We have each other, and in this community at least, people do know how to hunt and fish, and the game and the fish are still out there to get in good numbers.
I cross my fingers and hope I am right, that the Sheeple here will pull together rather than go at each other's throats. If the latter scenario happens, we are all lost.
Reverse Engineer
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Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by mos6507 » Mon 04 Aug 2008, 00:16:12
Reverse Engineer, I see you are new here so you are working through the scenarios. We all do this. I just hope you aren't still internally conflicted about the rural/suburban/city debate. Eventually you are going to have to stop mulling things over and decide roughly where you want to ride things out. This isn't an intellectual exercise anymore. Events are starting to unfold. The cost of long distance moving, for instance, is getting more expensive. It will have cost me about $4,000 to move my car and my stuff from SoCal to Boston, plus the one-way plane ticket. If I had continued to stall until the following year, it might have been $6-8K. You're going to have to take full advantage of the remaining days of affordable energy to position yourself where you want to be. Eventually you will find yourself stuck in an energy "black hole" in which it won't be economically viable to move a long distance, at least not with all your stuff in tow.
- mos6507
Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by ReverseEngineer » Mon 04 Aug 2008, 00:41:01
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'R')everse Engineer, I see you are new here so you are working through the scenarios. We all do this. I just hope you aren't still internally conflicted about the rural/suburban/city debate. Eventually you are going to have to stop mulling things over and decide roughly where you want to ride things out. This isn't an intellectual exercise anymore.
You clearly haven't read many of my posts since I joined the board. I made my move over 2 years ago. I live so far out on the edge of civilization its not even visible on the Horizon. At this point, you pretty much can't even drive here anymore. Just because I only recently joined this board doesn't mean I am all of a sudden getting a clue. Man, people here really seem to think they are the only ones who could figure this stuff out.
I don't mull things over for myself so much as I am trying to contribute something to other people here who might not have worked thru the scenarios. Certainly others here do this also, however I seem to have a different spin than is common on the board, so I figure I might as well chip in my 2 cents.
To be clear, I live in a highly underpopulated region that has great hunting and fishing right outside my doorstep. It was the only solution I felt had a 50-50 shot at working.
Reverse Engineer
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Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by Nicholai » Mon 04 Aug 2008, 01:59:28
Reverse Engineer,
What do you think about Canada's situation? In my case, I live in the suburbs of Alberta. I'm looking at visiting an ecovillage in Quebec (about 90km south of Quebec City) and, if this ecovillage isn't to my liking, I'll be visiting various other ecovillages throughout Europe.
The ecovillage is called "L'ecovillage du Mont Radar". It should be the first link if you google it. The site is in French but you get a good idea of whats in store by looking at the pictures.
I can't say I have enough to build a place in the mountains of British Columbia, but if I did, I would. When I find a place I like (hopefully Mont Radar), I'll be getting 1 acre of land ($20,000) and building myself a Cob house (I've already been reading up on Cob construction and have several books on the topic). Just wondering what you think of the plan, sorrry to be off topic. I've saved up enough to pay for a large portion of the land AND a small Cob house.
The only problem I find is that even ecovillages are unaware of peak oil...when TSHTF, it's really hard to say if people will bind together or rush home to see relatives and abandon you. Just wondering what your ideas are for my situation...you seem to know your stuff :D
What do you think about Canada's situation? In my case, I live in the suburbs of Alberta. I'm looking at visiting an ecovillage in Quebec (about 90km south of Quebec City) and, if this ecovillage isn't to my liking, I'll be visiting various other ecovillages throughout Europe.
The ecovillage is called "L'ecovillage du Mont Radar". It should be the first link if you google it. The site is in French but you get a good idea of whats in store by looking at the pictures.
I can't say I have enough to build a place in the mountains of British Columbia, but if I did, I would. When I find a place I like (hopefully Mont Radar), I'll be getting 1 acre of land ($20,000) and building myself a Cob house (I've already been reading up on Cob construction and have several books on the topic). Just wondering what you think of the plan, sorrry to be off topic. I've saved up enough to pay for a large portion of the land AND a small Cob house.
The only problem I find is that even ecovillages are unaware of peak oil...when TSHTF, it's really hard to say if people will bind together or rush home to see relatives and abandon you. Just wondering what your ideas are for my situation...you seem to know your stuff :D
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Nicholai - Tar Sands
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Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by mos6507 » Mon 04 Aug 2008, 03:25:40
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'Y')ou clearly haven't read many of my posts since I joined the board.
I guess not. My apologies.
- mos6507
Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by skeptik » Mon 04 Aug 2008, 03:28:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('allenwrench', 'T')o educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...that is the question?
Well nobody is going to pay any attention to you anyway if you keep calling them sheeple, so the question is irrelevant.
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Re: To educate sheeple or not educate sheeple...
by ReverseEngineer » Mon 04 Aug 2008, 03:51:27
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nicholai', 'R')everse Engineer, What do you think about Canada's situation? In my case, I live in the suburbs of Alberta. I'm looking at visiting an ecovillage in Quebec (about 90km south of Quebec City) and, if this ecovillage isn't to my liking, I'll be visiting various other ecovillages throughout Europe.
When I came to my conclusions that society was in the deep doo-doo about 3 years ago, I started to look at all sorts of possibilities to position myself well for survival. I even toyed with trading in my house for a sailboat and taking up residence on a deserted island in the South Pacific. Nixed that one because I really didn't think such an existence would be all that great, and so I started to look at the North American continent, which has been my home since birth. Great place North America, oddly developed though because of its colonization period followed by the Industrial era.
Canada overall is a great location, it has a relatively low population for the land mass, and good resources overall. So count yourself lucky to live in Canada to begin with. However, it still does depend currently on the same type of industrialized agriculture the US does, and it still has central cities that won't fare well when TSHTF. What you want to look for in survivability in my estimation is how defensible an area is that you will move to. I examined the history of civilizations and from this I determined that it was necessary to be in a location surrounded by mountains to have any type of independence. Most of central Canada, like the central US is pretty flat. Its good agriculturally, its bad from a defense point of view.
British Columbia around Prince George would be one of the best areas I think. In the thick of the Mountains. Quebec has some areas that are good because of so many lakes and swamps, and working toward Newfoundland you definitely have some decent cover.
The toughest part about moving outward to a place where the population density is low is current economics. In other words, you can pick a nice place to go, but is there a Job there for you? Unless you have a big bankroll (and I do not), you can't simply place yourself down in the ideal location without some means of producing income in the current economy. I don't know what you do for a living, and this impacts on the decision of where to go.
One thing to be careful about is actually BUYING property. Unless you can do most of it on Credit, spending your money on property in a given area is a waste IMHO. If your budget is small, you rent in an area that you want to live, and wait for the property values to crash. Around here, houses are going vacant right and left, I rent my place. I figure that all property is not really the belonging of anyone once TSHTF, so why should I spend my money on land? Rather, I spent it on goods I think will help me survive. Plenty of vacant houses around, I can find some place to park myself when it goes south, and why should I take on a mortgage? I operate day to day, and I can pack myself up and move even further out in an instant if need be. I have a couple of small house size tents and I keep my truck filled with fuel to drive 200 miles further out into the wilderness if need be. Don't think that will be necessary though, the area is overbuilt for the population and there are plenty of vacant properties to take over. Mostly owned as Vacation Homes by rich folks who hardly ever get here now, and when the airlines go belly up they won't EVER be coming back.
I operate on the principle that the monetary system is already toast. Nobody REALLY owns anything. I only spend my money on stuff I need for survival. I can survive a good year or more in the woods with my stockpile of food and my tents and the wood surrounding me for fuel. I don't think that will be necessary though, and that is not what I will try to engineer. When the SHTF, I will get together with my friends, and they will finally LISTEN to me, and stop denying the truth.
Reverse Engineer
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