Do you expect to survivel PO?

[The Black Knight]

Do I expect to survive PO? Well... let me see here, the concept or actuality? For me, just knowing about PO for near 40 years has made my life pretty uneasy to say the least... What's worse the endurance of knowing about it for that long or not knowing and just getting greased?

[forager]

Do I expect to survive PO? Well... let me see here, the concept or actuality? For me, just knowing about PO for near 40 years has made my life pretty uneasy to say the least... What's worse the endurance of knowing about it for that long or not knowing and just getting greased?

Good question. I see it as an opportunity for some spiritual tuning up that may have been overlooked had everything looked good in the material world. Makes one appreciate love and beauty more. Less likely to be horrified on the death bed as the man with the most toys and regrets over a life half lived?

[quietnite]

Hey, Black Knight, haven't seen you around. Good to see your post.

[forager]

Hey, Black Knight, haven't seen you around. Good to see your post.

I second that BK.

Have the gales of November kicked up at Whitefish Point yet? May the snow only be ankle deep most of the winter for you.

[Hope@ZeroKelvin]

Yup, I don't intend to just survive, I intend to PROSPER.

My plan is to be the local Warlord around these here parts and bend all the locals to my will.  As I will need many minions to work my fields, dontcha' know.

You just can't let a good crisis go to waste.  I can finally fulfill all my megalomaniacal fantasies!

Stop being a bunch of pansies REACTING to the collapse.  Cowboy up and take advantage of the situation.  Only the most ruthless and organized will survive.

Face it.  There is NO FEMA helicoptor or nice Red Cross lady coming to help you.  You are going to have to jump on board with the nearest badass or you will be long pork.  Sorry, that's just how every societal collapse in recorded human history has happened.  How do you think this will be different?

So stop being lazy and start reading.  Here is a GREAT website someone on this forum directed me to.

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/

And take some notes, you will need them.

Ah yes, the JP Morgan et al approach... may the circle stay unbroken!

I would say "Goldman Sachs" approach, but whatever.   

You totally misunderstand me.  If you think that after a fast or moderately fast crash people are going to sit around and sing kumbayah and debate about how to create some kind of egalitarian/just society while roasting wienies over the campfire, puullleezzze.

It is going to be total chaos, total anarchy, a complete FUBAR.  It is going to take a total bastard/bitch, a Warlord, a Complete Badass to keep some things together enough to save the most number of lives.  It is the old lifeboat conundrum:  If the lifeboat is sinking, who do you toss off to save the rest?  How do you decide?  How do you live with yourself afterwards?

If you are going to armchair doom this whole thing, good luck with that.  My intent is to research and think about all possible scenarios and prepare for them as much as I can.

Looking for some more cajones on ebay to augement the pyschological ones I have, care to join me?

[Broil]

Oh, Hunter is living what he preaches, if we are to believe him.  Has a nice doomstead and is capable of going Amish, minus the religion.

Do I expect to survive PO? Well... let me see here, the concept or actuality? For me, just knowing about PO for near 40 years has made my life pretty uneasy to say the least... What's worse the endurance of knowing about it for that long or not knowing and just getting greased?

I don't understand when people say shit hitting fans makes them feel uneasy.  I love thinking about it and planning for it, even though my plans have gone awry and I'd be lucky to survive a month (because of med problems, and preps ditched along the way).  I guess only people who are incredibly well-prepped with a large, productive organic farm up and running like rbrgs are going to have much of a chance ..... or on the other hand people who are experienced at primitive survival in a national forest, having lasted through a winter.

But still, it seems like it could be a fun sort of end-of-life game, if you have the right attitude.  It's like coming down with a terminal illness ..... happens all the time ..... mourn a little, do the Kubler Ross thing, and accept.  The game is to appreciate and enjoy and learn as much as possible, right up until the point where you have to drop the body and squeeze through the bardo to another life.

[the Black Hunter]

I am attempting to live what I preach, true.  My doomstead is, however inadequate without the community around me.  We could all "go Amish" - we just don't really want to.  Which is why I don't - why none of us in fact - have viable community...

As for surviving peak oil, someone should clarify that the question is really "do you expect to survive collapse?"  Peak oil, while certainly deadly unto itself, is only one facet of the collapse we now face.  A major one, yes - but if we discovered another Saudi tomorrow, we would still be facing collapse.

[The Black Knight]

Do I expect to survive PO? Well... let me see here, the concept or actuality? For me, just knowing about PO for near 40 years has made my life pretty uneasy to say the least... What's worse the endurance of knowing about it for that long or not knowing and just getting greased?

Good question. I see it as an opportunity for some spiritual tuning up that may have been overlooked had everything looked good in the material world. Makes one appreciate love and beauty more. Less likely to be horrified on the death bed as the man with the most toys and regrets over a life half lived?

You bet forager, it works both ways, if people are living down the rabbit hole waiting for the end, they might just miss the life that could have been on the outside, resulting in a life half lived... As for my own spirituality, it's best to get busy living for today while preparing for tomorrow, for whatever that might bring...

"As for surviving peak oil, someone should clarify that the question is really "do you expect to survive collapse?"  Peak oil, while certainly deadly unto itself, is only one facet of the collapse we now face.  A major one, yes - but if we discovered another Saudi tomorrow, we would still be facing collapse."

Excellent point Black Hunter...

"Back at the old school house, the instructors took very little stock on just how collapse would happen but what that collapse might look like and the consequences of it." 

http://yooperstrails.blogspot.com/2008/01/royal-flush-in-spades-part-ii-adding-it.html

I suppose, it will be nature's elements from one's own environment, that will get most by "the end of the day."

Oh thanks for the welcome! (I figured I'd better get out of the peak oil news tread before I got the boot, sticking up for Jeromie...)

[Harcken]

Surviving peak oil is easy. Post peak oil is the hard part. 

[MEA]

BY all mean, for PO read the cluterfuck that is coming. I've just gotten used to uisng PO as sloppy shorthand.

[Squalor]

I'm 17, and some people seem to think being young is an advantage, but I don't give myself much of a chance. I'm a mentally and physically weak person, and even if I were to fix that (which I intend to try to do), I can see myself being one of the people who just has a mental breakdown and jumps off the nearest cliff as soon as it gets too difficult (I've actually given more contemplation to that than is probably healthy). I was not made for the collapse of civilisation; I like learning for the sake of learning and being left alone by the world. Not the best qualities to have

And even if I did somehow get through, was self-sufficient in food and water and had a working community (unlikely given that, though there is a lot of open land around where I live, the fact is I still live bang in the middle of suburbia in a city with 4 million people sprawled out over an incredible distance), climate change will ravish Australia and make it an unliveable hell hole soon enough, which would leave me the choice of slowly watching everything that survived fall apart (or get destroyed in an enormous bushfire) or get on a rickety boat headed for New Zealand (well there are Sri Lankans who risk their lives to go across the Indian Ocean to get here and the Tasman is a much smaller distance...)

[Broil]

I don't believe there will be a total collapse of civilization, Squalor.  Certainly not soon.  Australians seem to cooperate better than the US .... look at how little trouble you had with the first wave of swine flu, which was probably because Australians worked together and became serious about hygiene.

There are countries even now that have been quite wealthy in spite of not having much of any arable land or other resources, such as Switzerland and Scandinavia and Japan.  Some nations will adapt and have a decent enough standard of living, it won't be a miserable subsistence farming kind of life for everyone everywhere.

[comrade simba]

You god damn right I'm going to survive the powerdown/collapse/great contraction whatever -  Doom is fun and games on an internet chat board but I've been out here beating the dirt into shape, growing, canning, drying, collecting and generally sacrificing cheeze doodles and white bread for cowpeas and potatoes just for the practice. We have plenty of money to burn all the propane we want but I ripped out the central heat unit and bought a pioneer maid cookstove  just to get used to shit. We consider it a failure and laziness if less than 90% of every meal came from something besides what we have grown or raised.

We moved out to bumfuck to get as much distance as possible from Plasticland and all its future corpses. Ammo'd up in case some stupid townie gets the idea that what's mine could be his. And I got all the attitude necessary to deal with that kind of delusion.

I'll throw three feet of garden dirt on the kitchen floor and hang out in the cellar underneath in case of fallout. Got my thyroid pills in the backpack. I'll eat grubs and skunk and roots and berries for weeks if I gotta dodge a marauding horde unril I whittle their numbers down. I can live without a hot shower and cable tv, booze, dope kool aid, snackie cakes and spaghetti O's.

Remember kiddies - it's all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack. Doomer-lite ain't gonna cut it.

[Broil]

"Doomer-lite ain't gonna cut it."

Yeah, there were a lot of people back in the 60s and 70s who bought little farms and became self-sufficient by means of enormous amounts of labor and deprivation of a variety of pleasures.  Then they got old and arthritic, and noticed that civilization hadn't collapsed yet, and saw that their friends out in the real world were having a lot of fun.

There aren't too many subsistence farms left dating back to that period.  The communes came and went.

[comrade simba]

Seems to me that the real world/ rat race ain't all that much fun anymore. Call me strange, but our egg yolks are yellow orange, the spinach is deep green, the tomatoes and grapes have flavor and we're all home to eat together.

Goats mow the grass, I'm not punching a clock, my kid has clean air and water and his own personal forest to run around in. I'll take a few scars over carple tunnel syndrome and high blood pressure anyday. This is a real life out here, not some auto-drone existence feeding a shareholder.