[JohnLudi]

one of my blogs from my MySpace page ( http://myspace.com/johnludi ) as it relates to a post-peak scenario. Thought some of you might get a giggle or two out of it. It was one of the more recent things I wrote to spread the word just prior to my most recent case of "save the world" burnout.

It is unedited except for the * used in lieu of swearing...cause I swear a fair amount, being kind of a heathen pig and all...

-------------------------
The Pessimist's Pen: 03/18/07
Welcome to the 2nd installment of what I've decided to call "The Pessimist's Pen", my (hopefully) weekly attempt at sharing news and information with the tiny fraction of people who might actually pull their heads out of the sand long enough to look up and see that, by golly, the sky IS falling.

Before I throw out all the links for the week (and my pompous little
preambles to them) I challenge you to a little thought experiment. It may
prove illuminating and possibly help get you in a frame of mind that may
lend itself to you taking steps to prepare for potential hard times ahead
(and my soundtrack to writing this is the wonderful album by Sufjan
Stevens, Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lake State...which is gently
prodding my eardrums over the headphones I'm wearing right now. Gotta
love the irony...)

Take a walk in this lovely waning wintertime, take a walk along the
street where you live. Take it for a few blocks, and while you do,
imagine this one of many possible future scenarios:

Let's say it's the year 2011. The peaking of oil supply is several
years past, along with natural gas. Systemic supply disruptions
have caused the economy to grind to a standstill. Your job is long
gone, as are most. You have shelter, but no heat as you could no
longer afford to pay it after your unemployment benefits sputtered
to an unexpected and premature halt a couple months ago. No one
came to kick you out of your home thankfully...the mortgage
company went under too. All of them did.

The electrical grid is only providing sporadic energy anymore,
mostly to the central cities and primarily for whatever is left of the
local governmental agencies still attempting to provide essential
services. Any grocery store within walking distance (the only form of
transportation still left to you in the suburb where you bought your
price-inflated house during the Housing Bubble that helped kill the fake
American economy when it burst in 2007) ran out of goods weeks ago after
the trucks stopped supplying them once diesel sky- rocketed to $6.50 a
gallon. All the edibles found their way off the shelves in a 4-5 day orgy
of panic buying and, shortly thereafter, looting. Your own cupboard is
bare...you just ate your last package of stale chicken ramen 3 days ago.
You're friggin' hungry!

(Say...did you know that your local grocery store has all of 3 or 4
days worth of goods on the shelves? During the fuel disruptions in
Britain and the aftermath of Katrina on these shores, a lot of
people came to find that little fact out in a pretty stark way. Kinda
makes you want to store a little bit of food, doesn't it? Just think of
it as auto or life insurance for your stomach. Couldn't hurt. It would
have really helped the people in New Orleans.)

So you are walking down your street looking for something to
eat...and water. Where do you go? The store? Nope. It's closed,
probably forever. Your neighbour? He/she is pretty much in the
same boat you're in...they are no help at all. The local charitable food
shelf? All that's left is the shelves.

"This sucks", you think to yourself. Maybe you should go dumpster
diving. Bad idea and a total waste of time...dumpsters need input
in order for there to be output. No tasty snacks there...

So this leaves you with the natural world.

So here's the thought experiment: as you walk down the street with
the dawning realization that everything that you used to eat came
from hundreds or thousands of miles away from some huge factory
farm (since out of business, and unlike the during the great
depression when you could snag some apples off of a tree to
survive, the family farm down the road is a ghost of two
generations ago...in it's place is a Wal-Mart) or importer (also out of
business) and was dependent on a huge fleet of trucks that are no longer
on the road, try to figure out how you would survive on just nature and
your own wits.

Can you?

The most important thing you need to find is water. Potable
drinkable water. You can live without food for weeks, but only for 2- 3
days without water. So where do you get it? Let's say there is no snow
cover that you can melt for a wee little drinky. Do you have a body of
water near you? Do you have the slightest idea how to purify the water
you may or may not find? (Hint: using a only a Brita filter on anything
you get from a lake, swamp, or puddle will probably kill you...or make you
wish it had).

So you probably are not having a whole lot of luck finding water
that you can drink that won't poison you or give you a case of
intestinal parasites...OK, let's try food!

What plants or animals are you passing by on your walk that are
edible? Let's say you have the same amount of training in
wilderness survival that the average...um...software engineer has.
That is to say, NONE! What do you eat? Your neighbours
shrubs? The bark of an Elm tree? What about that fat juicy
squirrel that just darted past you with a VERY nervous look in his
eye? Can you catch him? Ever try to chase a squirrel?

You might be able to nab one of those geese that stumble
everywhere in those huge goose militias wandering across half the
country (if they are not vacationing during the winter in some nice
warmer climate)...unless all the other geese attack you...which
they will. Ever get pecked by a pissed off goose? It hurts. The
visual image may cause a smile...but that won't be your response
as a dozen of them chase you down the street with blood
vengeance gleaming in their beady little eyes. And raccoons?
Forget it. They're like badgers, but cute. Unless you're armed, you
really don't want to tangle with a raccoon...especially if the hospitals
are all closed and you don't have a stash of antibiotics on hand.

So no luck with food either, I'm afraid. Your environment is nothing but
concrete and lawns...for miles and miles and miles. You can't eat or
drink concrete and lawns.

Now, just for giggles, let's add another factor into this cozy little
scene:

Other people.

Lots of other people.

Lots of other people doing the same thing you are doing. Hungry,
angry, bordering-on-feral people with a lingering entitlement
mentality that tells them that they somehow have a RIGHT to not
only basic food, clothing, and shelter...but to have an SUV fully
loaded with Miller Lite and Doritos and Cheeze-Wiz to engulf while
drooling vapidly in front of a widescreen TV larger than the average
Japanese 4-cylinder car.

They are your competition. Have fun!!!

(By the way...here's a quick lesson about what nature thinks you
are entitled to:

NOTHING.

Zip, nada, diddly.

Nature does not owe you a free lunch or a cookie or an all-
expense paid trip to Disneyland. In fact, nature does not owe you
s**t. You can deal with this fact or not...nature does not care what you
think. What it does care about is being tormented by the side effects of
"progress" by legions of unthinking monkeys for years on end. It cares
about that a lot. It just reacts kinda slow...but it does react...just
wait and see...)

Soooooo...is Ludi trying to scare you?

Yes.

I hope you get scared. Really freaking scared! I hope you
shudder and quake to the point where you actually THINK about
what could happen if this civilization experiences what EVERY
CIVILIZATION IN THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES HAS
EXPERIENCED when it runs out of the sources of energy (the
lynchpins) that drive it's very existence: collapse.

Why?

Because I care about you...at least a very select few of you. The
thinking ones of you. The sensitive and artistic ones of you. The
dreamers and creators...the ones who try to make the world a
better place. The inventors and visionaries and researchers. The
GIVERS. The fraction of a percent of the people on this planet
whose living on it produces some sort of net positive contribution
on some REAL level, not just a transitory and illusory economic
one based upon buying crap you don't need with money you don't
have.

Now as far as I'm concerned, the stupid, thoughtless, materialistic
and mindlessly egotistical ones (the TAKERS)...well...they can all
die. It'd be a good thing. It'd make the world a better place. And a
lot quieter. Less boom-cars, I suspect.

(Ever notice how noisy and obtrusive most people are these days?
That's cause they're stupid. And getting stupider...and more
acquisitive...and more selfish and narsicisstic. May they perish
and be reincarnated as something that has a larval stage.)

So f**k 'em. F**k the "normals". Tell them nothing. Pretend to be one
of them. Smile in their faces and nod in agreement while they blather on
about the pensions and 401Ks that YOU know will not be there when they
retire...if they live long enough to retire.

And while you're doing that...

Stash away as much food and water (and REAL water
purifiers...Katadyns are good) and medicine and basic goods as
you can...and don't tell anyone! And liberal though I am, I'll also say
this: you may want to think about buying a gun and learning how to use it.
NeoCon a**holes should not be the only ones who get to defend
themselves...

And if you want to go even further, find other people who think as
you do and band together with them. Start an intentional
community or join one that already exists. Individuals are weak,
groups are strong. Groups of individuals who can learn to work
together for the good of the whole and not self-destruct as a result of
good old fashioned human selfishness are the strongest. (Though I think
that it may be far better at the initial stages of a collapse for one to
be covert, small-scale, and VERY mobile.) And most importantly: develop
some actual skills! Learn to grow, gather, hunt, and repair. Learn to do
all the things people used to do before the era of cheap oil turned
everyone into a bunch of over-consuming whiners who only know how to do
one thing with their hands: endlessly push the pleasure button.

So learn to live with less and learn to work with nature.

Because if things go in the direction that I (and tens of thousands
of other people less gifted with the attributes of TOTAL DENIAL
and WILLFUL IGNORANCE then the average bipedal slab of
walking meat that calls itself a person) think things are going to go,
it's going to be a bumpy little ride...and we are just at the very
beginning stages of it.

We are at the very beginning of The Great Unravelling.

Part of it is probably going to be a waiting game for the GIVERS.

Can you wait in the shadows unnoticed while those TAKERS are
out there taking from each other? Can you slink about in the
background and wait it all out? If you're a GIVER, then I hope you
can. If you're one of the majority, the TAKERS, then you probably
have no idea what I'm going on about...and you probably stopped
reading this well before this sentence even began.

So play it however you want to...but this MAY be our future. I
suspect it strongly, but I do not know. However, it IS the logical
conclusion of a global economic system that has reached an
exponential growth phase crucial to it's very survival at a time
when that inevitable phase is bumping up against the carrying
capacity of a planet that has given far too much, far too quickly.

Myself, I hope for the best and plan for the worst. It seems prudent and
logical to do so.

Mind you, I could be wrong about all this, but I did predict several major
calamities over the past couple decades:

The collapse of the Japanese economy.

The crisis in Rwanda.

The current House Bubble bursting.

The quagmires in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Race riots in a major American city (LA).

The Texas real estate crash (the old one).

The S & L debacle.

And a bunch of other things that anyone looking at the news could
have told you were going to happen. It doesn't take a seer to
make predictions like these...just someone who can read the
writing on the wall.

And that's about all I have to say about it for now...

[NEOPO]

Thanks for sharing but your eyes arent even the half way open if you think things are not going exactly according to neocon plan in Iraq/Afghanistan.

Come this far and you will see everything else in a different light.
Its only resource war my friend and its plain as the fingers on your hand.

Like the housing bubble, that which kept this economy floating for the last 5-6 years, this was no mistake, it was a must and now that crutch is breaking and the rich will get richer as the middle class shrink while the ranks of the poor swell to epic proportions.

These are not chance happenings no more then 911 or the reichstag fire or pearl harbor or or or.....

I only posted because you seem to really care and you understand that you could be wrong which is a rare trait these days
Me too, I could be wrong...
Good luck and good night.

[I_Like_Plants]

Good blog, good start.

But that's true, the middle class has been squeezed for the last couple of decades but with the real estate collapse the real squeeze still start - and revolutions tend to happen when the erstwhile middle class find themselves in the soup lines.

[perdition79]

Damn good blog. Aside from all that giver and taker, caring about the artists stuff, I was practically pumping my fist in the air in approval while reading it.

The ideas expressed in that blog are the exact reasons I have an impressive stockpile of food, enough filtration supplies to last for years, and enough ammo to make it through the violent, chaotic orgy soon to come.

[perdition79]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Raphael', 'L')isten to Perdition the spokesman, the poster boy of all that lay over the horizon.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnLudi', 'Y')ou might be able to nab one of those geese that stumble
everywhere in those huge goose militias wandering across half the
country (if they are not vacationing during the winter in some nice
warmer climate)...unless all the other geese attack you...which
they will. Ever get pecked by a pissed off goose? It hurts. The
visual image may cause a smile...but that won't be your response
as a dozen of them chase you down the street with blood
vengeance gleaming in their beady little eyes.

[JohnLudi]

Thanks for the comments, all.

I wrote that bit for the marginally informed...a semi-futile attempt at a shock piece. It did get a couple people thinking when I posted it on MySpace, so I suppose it was worth the effort.

My own research on the subject goes back a lot longer than those I had preceived as my potential audience.

As far as the divide between the survivalist and spiritualist notions of how to deal with the civilizational transition ahead of us:

My own view of reality is metaphysically based. I have come to see physical reality as an emergent property of a greater field of (for lack of a better term) consiousness, thus I am not particularly concerned about my own physical survival. I prep for the sheer abstract exercise of it all...the thinking and contingency planning...the strategy of "what if"...and out of a sense of self-sufficiency. The pride in knowing that I am prepared for many of life's curves.

I grew up in poverty...when that happens you generally tend to either embrace rugged individualism (an attitude fast vanishing from the cultural landscape) or become a helpless burden on society. Fortunately I evolved towards the former.

I am unmarried and childless and will probably stay that way, when TSHTF I will probably eshew the whole guns and mayhem routine (even though I'd probably be pretty good at it) and give my food away to my friends who chose to spawn and don't want to watch their children starve. I have no fear of death and am actually looking forward to it...my 25 years of research into death and afterlife issues has eliminated that fear. But that is my own personal journey...if other people want to fend off all of the mindless consumers who will doubtlessly be behaving in brutally random ways, more power to 'em. Knock off a few zombies for me! Tell 'em Johnny sent ya!

[Newsseeker]

Won't new urbanism make a comeback as The End of Suburbia shows and we all be living within walking distance of work? Personally, I don't see the grid going sporadic circa 2011 maybe 2018 or so but not too early.

[perdition79]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newsseeker', 'W')on't new urbanism make a comeback as The End of Suburbia shows and we all be living within walking distance of work? Personally, I don't see the grid going sporadic circa 2011 maybe 2018 or so but not too early.

[PrairieMule]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newsseeker', 'W')on't new urbanism make a comeback as The End of Suburbia shows and we all be living within walking distance of work? Personally, I don't see the grid going sporadic circa 2011 maybe 2018 or so but not too early.

[Twilight]

Have you seen what new urbanism looks like without the work?

[strider3700]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'T')hanks for sharing but your eyes arent even the half way open if you think things are not going exactly according to neocon plan in Iraq/Afghanistan.

[Madpaddy]

I have a question.

Is the grocery store in the blog stocking the latest Brittany Spears album or the latest copy of "Hello".

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('strider3700', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'T')hanks for sharing but your eyes arent even the half way open if you think things are not going exactly according to neocon plan in Iraq/Afghanistan.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnLudi', 'T')hanks for the comments, all.

I wrote that bit for the marginally informed...a semi-futile attempt at a shock piece. It did get a couple people thinking when I posted it on MySpace, so I suppose it was worth the effort.

My own research on the subject goes back a lot longer than those I had preceived as my potential audience.

As far as the divide between the survivalist and spiritualist notions of how to deal with the civilizational transition ahead of us:

My own view of reality is metaphysically based. I have come to see physical reality as an emergent property of a greater field of (for lack of a better term) consiousness, thus I am not particularly concerned about my own physical survival. I prep for the sheer abstract exercise of it all...the thinking and contingency planning...the strategy of "what if"...and out of a sense of self-sufficiency. The pride in knowing that I am prepared for many of life's curves.

I grew up in poverty...when that happens you generally tend to either embrace rugged individualism (an attitude fast vanishing from the cultural landscape) or become a helpless burden on society. Fortunately I evolved towards the former.

I am unmarried and childless and will probably stay that way, when TSHTF I will probably eshew the whole guns and mayhem routine (even though I'd probably be pretty good at it) and give my food away to my friends who chose to spawn and don't want to watch their children starve. I have no fear of death and am actually looking forward to it...my 25 years of research into death and afterlife issues has eliminated that fear. But that is my own personal journey...if other people want to fend off all of the mindless consumers who will doubtlessly be behaving in brutally random ways, more power to 'em. Knock off a few zombies for me! Tell 'em Johnny sent ya!

[perdition79]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Raphael', 'S')o folks, who would you follow into the valley of death that awaits all of us eventually?
Just another wanker called Perdition, or a Gandhi?
Not that I am suggesting at all that I am the Gandhi you seek.

[JohnLudi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', 'I') have a question.

Is the grocery store in the blog stocking the latest Brittany Spears album or the latest copy of "Hello".