[Cid_Yama]

After Armageddon

In this documentary, the initiating cause is a highly viral, fast moving pandemic, but the progression, regardless of the trigger, is the same.

[Hawkcreek]

Didn't like it. The main characters were shown as total idiots, and left me with no feeling of empathy. They deserved extinction.
But many people think they will never need emergency supplies, never need to defend themselves, or never need real insurance for unforeseen circumstances, I suppose. They are idiots too, in my book.
Just another armageddon flick, stating the obvious.

[Tanada]

Thanx for he link, put it in my Que to watch as soon as I can dedicate an hour and a half.

[jedrider]

STUCK in Traffic! You DON'T have to wait for Armageddon for that to happen.

I think it will be slow and starvation and lack of fuel will be the problems.

If the transition is even slower, then it will be poverty WITHOUT food stamps and LAWLESSNESS.

Cops will SHOOT first and ask questions later. WAIT, they already do that!

[GHung]

I saw this when it first aired. Sometimes I go back to watch these things just to light a fire under my preps; already living most of those.

Anyway, today's prep experiment is a project I had planned for our root cellar. Even though it's buried in the ground behind our kitchen storeroom (3 sides) this summer saw the temps in the cellar rise to 70 degrees; sort of warm for storing dry and canned goods long-term. A while back someone gave me one of those small air conditioners (heat pump really; looks like R2D2), so I installed it in the root cellar and vented it out of the existing vents. Our batteries were fully charged about 2 PM and I can run it for a few more hours off of surplus PV output. Should do nicely for bringing the temp and humidity down in there.

We also store our extra meds in there including extra antibiotics and first aid stuff. I always keep plenty of the topical antibiotics and livestock antibiotics ("dose as for swine"), and replace as they get dated. Goes to the end of the show when the guy gets an infection. Cheap insurance. One little tube of Neosporin would have likely prevented that guy's demise; generally long shelf life if kept in a cool/dry/dark place. Every go-bag should have a small first-aid kit including antibiotics and spare prescription meds.

[Cid_Yama]

After 22

Here is another one. It's like someone interviewing/documenting people from the movie The Road. Pretty grim.

[Cid_Yama]

Yes Hawkcreek, I thought these people shouldn't have survived the first few days. (After Armageddon) But they were trying to portray the average city dweller and the types of decisions they would make and did a good job of it. But to have a documentary, they had to survive long enough to show everything they wanted to show. So they were just extremely lucky, if stupid. And it did allow the survival experts the opportunity to tell you what you should be doing in those situations.

[Cid_Yama]

In both, the key event was the power going off and not coming back on again. It was what they all dated the collapse from. Followed by no water coming out of the faucets.

Also, it seems suicide was the preferred method of adaptation.

[KaiserJeep]

What is wrong with both of those videos is the assumption of fast crash. Fast crash is just a non-starter as an idea. There are the elites, the paid political toadies of the elites, and the energy industry itself, all kicking the can for as many times as they can, until the can disintegrates or their legs quit working. Then there are large industrial consumers of energy like big agriculture, the automobile industry, and the transport industry, all kicking as well. Just about everybody everywhere, all kicking. Because what else could they possibly do?

I still need to make this point over and over: the oil peak is a long, drawn out emergency, not an event. Conventional petroleum (and I understand that is a very vague term) peaked around 2008, for practical purposes. Which for Americans, was a good 40 years after the effects of limited energy resources started to effect our economy - simply because oil consumption was slowing the rate of increase before the peak.

Now we are past the peak, and for at least another century, oil will be in tighter and tighter supply, then it will be gone. I remember $0.189/gallon gasoline in the MidWest in 1969. They were having a "gas war" at a time when gasoline was regularly $0.229/gallon. Granted, the dollars were worth more then - but the point is, "The Long Emergency" began in the 1960's, less all the short term political BS, wars in the ME, and the greed of the energy czars such as the Koch brothers.

The world collapses around us, ever so slowly, and the collapse began not quite 50 years ago. So don't hold your breath, forget models of the economics of the oil peak, and think things through. YOU don't actually need a doomstead, and your kids might (about a 50% probability), and your grandkids almost certainly will face grim choices.

It is a Darwinian opportunity. You can act in ways that preserve your genes, or not. But the nature of The Long Emergency is decades of quietly increasing desperation. Your descendants will need the skills and the knowledge and the resources that are in plentiful demand today, and won't be available at any price then.

[SumYunGai]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'W')hat is wrong with both of those videos is the assumption of fast crash.

[drwater]

Nice to see Kevin Reeve in the film.

At the end of the day, you only need food, water, and some way to keep warm and dry. There is so much extra junk in our lives that we could do without if we had to as long as the essentials were still there. Staying put in a big city would not be smart unless you had certain access to those essentials.

[Hawkcreek]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'W')hat is wrong with both of those videos is the assumption of fast crash. Fast crash is just a non-starter as an idea.

[KaiserJeep]

You haven't made any cohesive or convincing argument for a fast crash. Both supposed "documentaries" amount to people making dire predictions about the future. Armageddon itself originated in the Christian Bible around 1800 years ago. If you want to understand the rationale of the slow crash, then read Kunstler's The Long Emergency, which can be found online in pdf.

The ultimate fast crash proponent was Michael Ruppert. Although I now believe he was a borderline nut job and to some degree mentally ill, I give him credit for drawing attention to the oil peak with his film Collapse. Then Ruppert lived for a little more than a decade after confidently predicting the impending end of the world several times. When he was repeatedly proved wrong, he then took his own life.

The best argument for slow crash versus fast crash is the one I made above. To anyone familiar with current events, slow crash began in the late 1960's and will continue for some decades. Note that the signs are all around you today. However, the nature of the oil peak is that half of the oil remains to be consumed, at higher and higher prices. The first half took about 150 years or so to consume. The second half will take less because of our overshoot population and the increased demand for energy. The other factor is that as EROEI lessens, the hundreds of thousands of oil sources will get abandoned one by one. But exactly how much less than 150 years is hard to predict.

It will indeed be a gut-wrenching, distressful time when we run out of cheap energy. It will kill most of the people on Earth. It will be recorded in bit-perfect digital media files, and will be an abject example of the consequences of unchecked primate behaviors - and a lesson available forever after.

As for the idea that 100 million Americans - a third of us - will die in a pandemic, that is the stuff of disaster movies and zombie tales. There has never been a pandemic in a country with modern medicine, pandemics occur in 3rd world countries. The average American spends today about 5.7% of their income on food, rather more on transportation. So when energy grows expensive, you will probably eat less (a good thing) and pay more (an inconvenience). But the difference between intensive mechanized agriculture we use today and whatever shadow of that is possible after cheap oil ends, is unlikely to be as high as 10X. Even if it increases to 10 X 5.7% or 57% of your income, the choice is still whether you want to buy food or starve. (I don't claim to know what you will do, but I'll choose to eat still.)

I watched less than an hour of both videos, before I lost patience. These are not documentaries, they are rank speculation by devotees of doom. There is no evidence of anything to be found in either video. There exists nobody on Earth who knows what will happen tomorrow. The only thing you can be sure of is that tomorrow will greatly resemble today. The inertia of 7+ Billion humans all working to preserve BAU dwarfs the no-doubt-sincere-opinions of however many "fast crash" doomies exist at PO.com.

[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he only thing you can be sure of is that tomorrow will greatly resemble today.

[Tanada]

KaiserJeep, FYI around 170 AD the Roman Empire was swept by a plague in two waves, probably Smallpox, that killed 1 in 4 of the population. As a result of this 'Antonine' plague the western Roman Empire went into steep decline and within 150 years was suffering repeated waves of invasions from Germanic tribes.

Don't underestimate the effects of a depopulating event on a culture.

In the late middle ages the Black Death swept through Europe two to three times and lost around a third of the population. This completely destroyed the existing culture and opened the door to the Renaissance period when the Catholic Church lost its moral authority over the crown heads of Europe.

Don't underestimate the effects of a depopulating event on a culture.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, I did not say that the world had never experienced pandemics. I said that no country with modern medicine has ever experienced a pandemic. The Spanish flu pandemic is as close as we came, and that was before antibiotics, microscopes capable of resolving viruses, IV fluid systems, and the manufacturing of antiviral agents.

Even today, pandemics such as Ebola start in the African jungle, and are resolved when modern medicine arrives on the scene.

I believe that you have swallowed the fast crash scenario. If civilization crashed and modern medicine ends, yes pandemics would be a concern. But there is just no way - short of nuclear warfare - that the momentum of modern civilization can go away overnight. But a nuclear war, or a mega-volcano, or a 1-mile diameter asteroid strike on the planet, are all scenarios that make peak hydrocarbons small in comparison. The only way anybody survives such disasters is to have the 20-20 foresight to be a long ways away from such conniptions when they happen. Let me know about that when you have it figured out - maybe some of the Greek philosophers would help you there.

Nor do I believe that two smallpox pandemics ended the Roman Empire, although I have heard the theory before. Hubris did in the Romans.

[ennui2]

I'm with KJ on this one.

I know Monte used to push the pandemic idea and it's been popularized via zombie movies or the planet of the apes reboot, however, we're better able to cure and/or contain these things than at any time in human history.

This narrative is attractive as it sets the stage for a die-off event that could happen at any time and isn't contingent on oil supply or AGW. In other words, it's porn for doomers.

[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')orld Health Organization Director Dr. Margaret Chan said today in her opening remarks. "The emergence of bacterial resistance is outpacing the world’s capacity for antibiotic discovery. ... With few replacement products in the pipeline, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era in which common infections, especially those caused by gram-negative bacteria, will once again kill."

"We’re hanging on to a cliff with our fingers and our fingers are falling off one by one," Dr. Frank Esper, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital who was not involved with the study, told ABC News today. "For some germs, there is nothing, and it’s not uncommon for us to find ourselves in a situation where we’re looking at a germ that’s extremely resistant [to current antibiotics]."

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'T')anada, I did not say that the world had never experienced pandemics. I said that no country with modern medicine has ever experienced a pandemic. The Spanish flu pandemic is as close as we came, and that was before antibiotics, microscopes capable of resolving viruses, IV fluid systems, and the manufacturing of antiviral agents.

Even today, pandemics such as Ebola start in the African jungle, and are resolved when modern medicine arrives on the scene.

I believe that you have swallowed the fast crash scenario. If civilization crashed and modern medicine ends, yes pandemics would be a concern. But there is just no way - short of nuclear warfare - that the momentum of modern civilization can go away overnight. But a nuclear war, or a mega-volcano, or a 1-mile diameter asteroid strike on the planet, are all scenarios that make peak hydrocarbons small in comparison. The only way anybody survives such disasters is to have the 20-20 foresight to be a long ways away from such conniptions when they happen. Let me know about that when you have it figured out - maybe some of the Greek philosophers would help you there.

Nor do I believe that two smallpox pandemics ended the Roman Empire, although I have heard the theory before. Hubris did in the Romans.

[ennui2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '
')With the high mortality rates, it's only a matter of time.