[gg3]

Newhunter-gatherer:

Yes, designer haircuts and video games. And the BBC Internet Service seems to equate the future of British industry with videogame publishing, which to my mind is worse than pathetic. But here in California I still see brand new JCB excavators on construction sites and Johnston road sweepers on the motorways, so there is still a basis to believe that Englishmen and women can do heavy industry to world-class standards.

Americans too have become weak and decadent and dissipated. As we had in the Roaring 1920s. But then came the 1930s Depression and we found our will to survive. And then came WW2 and we found our will to fight.

Remember, we -you and I and all of us- are all the products of countless millions of years of evolutionary success by every single one of our ancestors. The traits we need are innate and will re-emerge as they become necessary.

Neither you nor I can afford a donkey or a farm on our own. But each of us with our friends, pulling together what we do have, can scrape together enough to get started with land and the materials to build what we need. Go read the topics on intentional community in the "preparing for the future" section of this site.

One thing you can do right now, is start learning the trade skills that will make for sustenance in a tough future. Farming, construction, defense, water supply & waste disposal, all of those and more. Knowledge is wealth; knowlege is the power to create.

Your family can afford to think you're mad; as can mine; but when the going gets rough we will have places for them if they need refuge from the storm.

[thuja]

Interesting article here about conditions in Iraq and a shift towards using older technologies, pack animals and grazing sheep in the streets of Baghdad.

Back to the Stone Age

The future is coming and it looks a lot like the past...

[OilIsMastery]

Thank you Saddam Hussein.

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilIsMastery', 'T')hank you Saddam Hussein.

[IanC]

OilisMaster(bator)y: Cognitive Dissonance. It's what's for dinner.

-Ian

[dbruning]

Yep, must be all the bad guys fault.

Of course "bad guys" is a relative term in perspective.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilIsMastery', 'T')hank you Saddam Hussein.

[americandream]

Wat ya smokin Mastery me ol oily son...can I have sum?

[jbeckton]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', ' ')the whole "mission accomplished" is turning into one of the biggest Military defeats in history.

[IslandCrow]

Add to list of possible Post-PO jobs:

Midwife
Ferry man
shepherd
donkey-cart driver

[Bas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', ' ')the whole "mission accomplished" is turning into one of the biggest Military defeats in history.

[Homesteader]

I believe it was Shakespeare who wrote "the whole worlds a stage."

[OilIsMastery]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Abraha ... 8CVN-72%29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')braham Lincoln and the carrier battle group and airwing helped deliver the opening salvos and air strikes in Operation Iraqi Freedom. During her deployment, some 16,500 sorties were flown and 1.6 million pounds of ordnance used. Sea Control Squadron 35, the "Bluewolves", was instrumental in delivering over 1 million pounds of fuel to these strike aircraft, one of the largest aerial refueling undertakings by a carrier aviation squadron in history. The carrier returned home in May 2003, in the process receiving a visit from President George W. Bush before officially ending Lincoln's deployment by docking at San Diego.

[burtonridr]

Wow that was an interesting article, talk about a look into the crystal ball of a future worst case scenerio.

[gg3]

a) Saddam is dead (didn't you watch the video of him swinging from the rope?)

b) He never had WMDs (nothing like "fixing the intel around the policy" eh?)

c) THERE NEVER WAS A F---ING "AL QAEDA IN IRAQ" UNTIL WE MADE IT HAPPEN

d) Hey Mastery, when are you going to sign up for the regular Army in a combat arms MOS? Y'know, there's a recruitment shortage right now. If you're so hot in support of this particular war, what are you doing here when you should be in a combat zone?

e) And just in case this gets into the topic of Iran, 80% of the foreign fighters in Iraq are SAUDIS. Shall we go ahead and bomb Saudi? Back to the stone age?

----

Yeah, this is the future alright.

Here's the word on Iraq, endorsed by people who are in the position to know and who aren't drinking the proverbial koolade: Population overshoot of the resource base, exacerbated by kicking the resource base down a few notches.

This is what it looks like when a region is overpopulated already, and then some disaster knocks down their already overstressed resources. And New Orleans is what it looks like on this side of the globe.

Just the tip of the iceberg.

[jbeckton]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'b')) He never had WMDs (nothing like "fixing the intel around the policy" eh?)

[OilIsMastery]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'a')) Saddam is dead (didn't you watch the video of him swinging from the rope?)

[Twilight]

Nowhere near Stone Age! So long as humans remember how and why to sterilise water and wounds, we will never regress past the late 19th century!

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coyote', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilIsMastery', 'T')hank you Saddam Hussein.

[Pops]

So I am not sure what the point is here vis a vie a peak oil discussion, aside from some US Red/Blue politicking of course and perhaps the futility of empire.

Wars – even those modern ones where someone else’s kid is deployed over and over, have consequences on the populace of the invaded –on the country a tenth the size of the Liberator/Invader, things are pretty bad indeed.

So what is your point thuja?