[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'I')t's never a good thread when the Z word, as VMarcHart puts it (cheers!) pops up at the first post. One of the bad things of discussing these matters is that, when you try to argue a differen position, you're on of the Z's. --snip-- So, no RUN AWAY. There's nowhere to run away to. You don't run away from problems, you face them and try to understand what you can make out of them, out of what you have. Opportunities and threats lie along the way, but that's just the way our world is built. We'll make it - somewhere, somehow.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'S')o, no RUN AWAY. There's nowhere to run away to. You don't run away from problems, you face them and try to understand what you can make out of them, out of what you have. Opportunities and threats lie along the way, but that's just the way our world is built. We'll make it - somewhere, somehow.

[CarlosFerreira]

My 2 points, if I haven't quite made myself clear:

1. Don't RUN AWAY. Weather the problems. Just because it's not going well, we can't reset, reload and go on from where we last saved the game. It's a fact. We'll make, you bet on it.

2. The "Zombie"/"Nazi" combo is the best way to wreck a perfectly good thread.

RE, I respect you, really. Even when bumped, you always respond with care and education. You even seem to enjoy it when people lose it on you. But the whole "apocalypse-monger" doesn't stick. It's bad, alright. But we've always managed to turn problems and threats into opportunities. There will be hardship; But we'll still be around in a long time unless some crazy lunatic drops The Bomb.

[ReverseEngineer]

Text dleted.

[Tdogg]

First post after watching this site for the last couple years! Agree we will still be around, but not life as we have known it. Believe ReverseEngineer accurate re: tipping point!

After a 30 plus year career in Orlando area real estate have lost everything in the current downturn, including our home which we must vacate by the end of the month. As I look around I see many closed restaurants, retail, and service business and alot of vacancies in commercial centers/shopping centers. Foreclosure crisis far from over. Banks and Financials continue to tumble.

Weekend employment ads in the Orlando Sentinel down from 12-14 pages 2 years ago to 4 today. Global economy appears fragile. Food prices dramatically increasing around the world. Natural disasters worldwide seem to be occuring on more regular basis. Political tensions rising globally.

Am preparing to "hunker down". Have had an excellent vegetable garden for the last year, where we will be moving. Quite an economic step down, but sustainable. Have been spending some time finding economical (frugal) recipes on the internet. I expect retail spending to collapse this Christmas shopping. season! So unless something else major happens in the meantime, that could be the point the economy totally collapses. Prepare for the worst...hope for the best.

[CarlosFerreira]

Your points are both understood, and I respect your position. I believe we must not back down. I don't like the alternative, and I want to stand and fight.

Large population centres are commercial, spiritual and economic "gravity". They pull resources towards them, because they produce assets with more value; That means that a less-value item (food) is paid for with money from a more value asset (specialized labour, financial interest, whatever). Stick around. Will there be shortages? It's possible. We had a trucker strike here in Portugal and there were a few shortages. I suppose it could be better. But life in small population centres, that have less with which acquire food (because they produce less wealth) will be worse; The shortages will hit harder there.

There will always be will to maximize investment. To do that with staples like food, you sell your product in a highly populated area, where there's more demand. If and when we have shortages, they will hit small towns first - the one that, even today, don't have strawberries in January.

Fire away

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', '.')Fire away

[mrobert]

@ReverseEngineer: I absolutely agree with you and I share that oppinion with people all the time.

Big cities are like a computer. You can upgrade bits and pieces to make it better, but at some point you are stuck by the limitations imposed by it's core components.

Have you noticed that all this "plague" happens in the big cities?
I live in a city which from what I know, has around 1.000.000 inhabitants. It's going out of control. Everyone left my home town (60 miles from here), and moved here. Everybody is doing this. The city is suffocated! 2 months ago I was coming home, and the sewers filled up with water in the middle of the city and my car got hit by a major wave coming out from the sewer on the street (just like when you hit oil) and left me knee-deep in water and my car busted. Luckily I was able to have the car moved to my mechanic friend and fixed in 1 hour. All this caused by nothing more then a nice summer rain. They are building condos as tight as possible. The streets are narrow. The entire city is turned into one-way streets which are changed weekly. One night I found myself driving on a one-way street with 3 lanes coming towards me. They changed signs that night.

There are neighbourhoods which are a real challenge to drive through as there are cars parked in every bush and on every square centimeter.

Where will this go? To hell, if you ask me...

10-20.000 people communities are viable. I was in Germany recently in something I thought it was a village. Turned out it had 20.000 inhabitants. It sure looked like a village. Peaceful an quiet. Almost no traffic.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'T')his on an economic level is why I cannot support the idea of big cities, and why I also see them as doomed in the post Peak Oil environment.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'T')his on an economic level is why I cannot support the idea of big cities, and why I also see them as doomed in the post Peak Oil environment.

[katkinkate]

Isn't it all just an artifact of the record high population? Wars and conflict are usually over resources (land, energy, food, water) one group has and the the other wants and as populations grow and 'bump elbows', the conflicts increase. In history it was limited to certain areas flaring up one at a time, but now most countries are feeling squished and pressured by global growth all at the same time.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('katkinkate', 'I')sn't it all just an artifact of the record high population? Wars and conflict are usually over resources (land, energy, food, water) one group has and the the other wants and as populations grow and 'bump elbows', the conflicts increase. In history it was limited to certain areas flaring up one at a time, but now most countries are feeling squished and pressured by global growth all at the same time.

[DefiledEngine]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')In the end, only those who care about community and who work to help each other can survive.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '
')Only those who conserve and live within their means will survive.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DefiledEngine', '
')Societies that limit themselves and live within their means always loose to the ones that overshoot and overconsume. They are simply not sustainable.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'A')nd when those hungry masses who didn't conserve and live within their means come banging on your door, demanding that you share, what will you do?

[Cloud9]

This is more than one dead canary. A thousand birds die in Arkansas. http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/sto ... 95&catid=2

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'H')as anyone noticed here the simultaneous upwelling of political disruptions from Bolivia to Venezuela, from Georgia to Pakistan, from our own streets at the RNC? The board is becoming overun with a new thread about some HUGE crisis somewhere else in the world every day. They are popping up like Buboes on a Plague Victim.

Meanwhile, in the world of finance the buboes are popping up just as fast, if not faster. First it was just Bear Stearns; now every day a newer and bigger financial Giant is crumbling, from Fannie & Freddie to Lehman and WaMu in one weekend, with AIG and Merrill Lynch not far behind.

In the natural world, buboes like Ike & Gustav come hurtling out of the Atlantic into the GOM to infect the entire oil infrastructure, and at the same time the entirety of the Polar Ice Cap disintegrates in the course of the summer, releasing who knows how much methane into the atmosphere from clathrates.

Sense a pattern here? You need a sledgehammer over your head to get how connected all these things are? We reached a Tipping Point in 2008, and the WHOLE house of cards is coming tumbling down, from political structures to economic structures to the underpinning of the environment. The society and its underpinnings are falling apart at the core.

I have been accused on the board of being the "Most Doomerish" member. That is quite an honor considering the Doom that has been forecast here for years by members like MonteQuest, with whom I do not agree on many things, but he certainly was prescient in his analysis of the problems.

At this point however, you don't need to be a Nostradamus to see what is right in front of your face, to feel what is whacking you over the head with a sledgehammer. Every facet of society is spinning out of control, at a pace beyond belief these days. Yet still, people here on the board deny forecasts of Doom, Dodging Bullets all the time. "Thank God, Gustav was a Non-Event". HEY! This is not one Bullet here! Its a HAILSTORM of bullets, and sorry you cannot dodge them all, you are going to get hit by one of them.

We are experiencing the Plague on a Grand Scale, I knew it when I saw all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at my front door one day on the Internet. Famine, Plague, War & Death on a Worldwide level, not in just one place; not just one civilization falling while another rises. They ALL are falling, SIMULTANEOUSLY.

What do you DO when the Plague comes to your neighborhood? First you must RUN AWAY. RUN AWAY FAST. Then you must protect yourself from Plague Infected people, we call them Zombies here. Then you must burn all structures and all things which might be infected with the Plague. The Plague here in this case being Greed, Capitalism, the Market, Religion and all the rest of the concepts which have brought us into the mess we are in today.

I am not one of those here who thinks all human life on earth will be extinguished, not even by the melting of the Polar Icecap. So in this sense I am NOT the Most Doomerish member of the board. I do not right now think we necessarily are witnessing a Mass Extinction event. If we are, there is nothing can be done about it. If we are not, then in order to survive the Plague, first you must escape its path, then you must eradicate the infection of greed and selfishness. Make it your goal to escape first, and then Save as Many as You Can. That is the only way we can come out of this as a People. NObody comes out Alive? NO! Somebody gets left standing, and it will be those who work together as a community to do so.

[vox_mundi]

A Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Federal officials on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal.

... In October 2014, all federal funding was halted on efforts to make three viruses more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

But the new regulations apply to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic. For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus transmissible through the air, said Dr. Collins.

[onlooker]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to- ... d7711b873c


CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak