Do you expect to survivel PO?

[Broil]

Huh ..... you'd think that if it were that enjoyable, more people would be doing it.

[comrade simba]

No, they get out here and soon realize that it's the same damn thing everyday. People are fucking lazy. Don't wanna get out from underneath the covers and light a fire in the morning  or milk a goat after dark.  Or weed. Day after day. Why bust your ass in the garden when you can get food stamps?

I'm just sorta sick of people today - the lastest doomers we had out here entered the archives under less than honorable conditions.

[rbrgs]

it's all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  Well, got the t-shirt anyway.  I built a cabin so I could get some help on the farm.  All I wanted was 8 hours a week, or 10 hours from a couple (5 each).  Care and feeding of tenants ended up taking longer than just doing stuff myself. 

[Broil]

Now rbrgs actually has a doomstead that could work if fossil fuels ran out, since it's largely based on permaculture (nuts and fruits) that won't need plowing etc, but mainly some maintenance and preservation of the harvest.  Also he's in an area where no fuel is needed for heating.

I don't believe many others here who don't have extensively permacultured farms would have all that much of a chance, not without without a terrible struggle that would soon wear out their bodies.

[rbrgs]

So why am I still all by myself?  Other than being smelly, mean and ugly.....

[Broil]

All by yourself in the sense of no one else around there permaculturing, or all by yourself in the sense that friends and family have bailed?

[rbrgs]

Both

My ex is long gone, my daughter moved to the mainland, and my son has his own farm in Hilo. 

[JohnLudi]

If it is a sudden collapse scenario and even strict martial law does not work and I am stuck in Chicago I won't last too long...a week or so 'til the gangs from the less pleasant parts of the city (who are really well-armed here) break into the place and kill us.  I may be able to nail a couple of them before they get me, but they travel in packs and my neighbors are all soft suburban types that thought owning a condo in the city was a good idea (we have a couple low-grade condo flippers stuck here now).

If we are able to get to the doomstead with all the preps, we could last a year or more.  My foraging skills couple easily supplement the stored food and I am pretty sure we could make it through at least one winter up there...but that may be all.  Lyme Disease, infected cuts, some random redneck armed to the teeth, etc., would probably get us at some point. 

Part of the whole prepping/survival thing for me has been less about physical survival (which is not all that interesting to me, in and of itself) than having the ability to choose the place and manner in which I make my exit (I'd rather it be in the woods, full of things that scurry and chirp).  Not being either dependent upon, or at the mercy of, any 3rd party (such as a government, local warlord, etc) is the way I try to frame my life...I intend to frame my death that way too.

[comrade simba]

rbrgs - I gave up trying to have any explanation as to why real homesteaders are so rare other than people can't live without Cheeze-Its and cable tv. Seems to me everybodies idea of country living is doing the same shit you would do if you lived in town but with fewer neighbors around.

It is truly beyond me that somebody prefers store bought white bread to fresh baked whole wheat made with real ingredients. Are Spaghetti-O's actually a "food"?

[pamela]

I thought about something the other day,
you know, my grandparents, and I suspect a lot of yours too, survived WWI, the 1918 pandemic, the Great Depression, the dust bowl, and WWII.
that's a lot for one generation to have to go through.
I think that we'll make it ok. It seems like it's going to be a rough ride, but we'll make it.
And none of that, "our grandparents were part of a generation of better people" stuff. They were just like us.
 

[the Black Hunter]

I have a neighbor out here in the new worlds' Mongolia who remembers when he was young, with three generations living on the homestead in the middle of literally nothing - not even a single tree to be seen anywhere - they'd hitch up the horse and wagon for the supply trip to town, sixty miles away.  One day there, one day in town, one day back.

One day i was feeling especially played-out, and i'm just tying up the heavy horses and he shows up on his thoroughbred as he sometimes does, and I said, "John, I don't know how they did it in your grandparent's day - i'm played out now, it's only halfway through the afternoon, and think of how much harder they had it!"  And you know what his answer was?  He was a guy who's been there, remember, lived it, and his answer definitely surprised me:

"Bullshit!"  he exclaimed (and he's usually very soft spoken.)  "You work harder than any of the people I knew worked when I was a kid.  In fact most people I know do today, and to top it off, there's about a thousand times more stress!  Things were way easier in many ways back then."

I'll tell you why more people don't homestead today.  Yes - because it's very hard.  And the reason it's very hard now, harder than before, is this: it's damn tough to have a foot in two totally different worlds, one that demands so much of your energy, yet would work beautifully if the other one - the one of machines - didn't demand so much damned money.  We live in an industrial society that demands an industrial wage, more than less.  That's why it's so hard to homestead today.  It is not our culture, and our culture is utterly unconducive to it, which is actually no coincidence - our culture has worked very hard to make self-sufficiency all but impossible.  How do you enslave the self-sufficient?  Cut the damned industrialism out of the equation and the sky-high expenses that go with it, and homesteading would be far more rewarding.  Make the folks have to buy a car (or a tractor) and you've got 'em, they're yours.  Slaves. 

At any rate, i'm with you Comrade Simba.  Hard as it may be, it still beats the mediocre, lukewarm, largely meaningless zombie-shuffle that most people accept for a life.

 

[The Black Knight]

You bet, Black Hunter! Gee, what will people do without industrial wages to afford a garden at Super Wal-Mart?  Guess, they won't have to worry very long about having to work so hard anymore!

pamela, the generation that lived through WWI, dust bowl, Depression, WWII, etc. lived on the building of the "up side" of the slope where betters days could still be found ahead... I'm not sure if we can call this "progress" but none the less, growth... We had not reached the "limits to growth".  IF we're starting our way on the "down side" of the slope and have reached our limits to growth then I'd dare say the dynamics might be quite different... These will be days of permenate decline...

Just a thought. Not saying that there won't be good days or even good years to be had, but they are sure to follow with deeper declines instead of inclines, as many of our grandparents experienced.

[Broil]

so you guys don't need factory-made tools, you can mine iron ore, make steel, and smith it into tools, plows, whatever?  And you raise draft animals to plow, and grow the feed for them?

I read the Little House on the Prairie series a few years ago, they're only very lightly fictionalized stories of Wilder's pioneer parents.  The amount of labor Pa Ingalls did in an average day was astonishing ...... it blows my mind to think of someone who could chop enough trees for a log cabin with fireplace in a few days, among other feats.  But he and the family wouldn't have survived with such civilized things as credit to buy a farm and equipment, civilization was already quite advanced and industrialized by then.

We might possibly barter for, or steal, land if the world went totally tits-up, but equipment?  Draft animals?  Unless you have a mostly permaculture farm up and running and can defend it, you wouldn't be likely to last much more than a year or two before starving.  And those trees take years to start producing fruit or nuts.

[Bruce]

This has been a very interesting thread. The question is do I really expect to survive PO? I think the real question is do you hope to survive PO or economic collapse? I have prepped extensively and feel I could live two years just on stored foods alone. However, I could be killed the first night the SHTF and so could any of you. I am prepared to protect my preps and my house but to what extent? How can you protect from a flaming bomb to your roof? You run out with the hose and your fired upon from many different angles. If I fight hard and sling lead towards every white of the eye I see, sooner or later they are going to out number me or get a better shot then I did. When it comes to fighting armed groups your behind from the beginning. I'd really like to stay here as I have abundant water and some land for a garden. I have more stuff in preps than I could ever haul off. The thought of having to leave my home although very likely is not a pleasent one. I have preps for that possibility as well but hope to never need them as they will never equal what I have here.
   So, will I make it? Don't know neither does anyone else. I'm 55 and even though I'm in good health for my age I know that more and more restrictions that are age related are to come. Future health problems really scare me because I know that treatment either won't be available or not for me anyway. To languish away from one day to the next enduring pain and suffering till it's the end is not something I want to experience. Yet, I am no chicken by any stretch of the imagination. I have dealt with the scum of society thousands of times and have been in more fire fights than most anyone I know of.  My wits and skills have saved my butt many times yet so has luck.
  I guess my chances are about 40%. Yet, I still prep and read because you never know. I might not make it in the long run but look how many I may help to survive before my time comes..................................Bruce

[Broil]

Thumbs up to Bruce's post for realism and attitude ....... many of us might not survive all that long, maybe less than a year if there are medical problems or if the zombies get us, but still we can pass on knowledge and skills to people who just recently realized that the world is going to be very different.