Do you expect to survivel PO?

[Bruce]

 One more thing. Some post on this thread went back to the time honored argument of fast crash versus slow crash. Folks we are in a slow crash now. If you ever wanted to know what it looks like then look around. It's here now. We are heading down. We are not going to have a slow crash down to the bottom that is ridiculous IMO. This slow ride will hit high gear one day and then it's a fast ass ride to the bottom. So we are not going to have a slow crash or a fast crash we are going to have BOTH. The problem is you get used to this slow crash if you have a job and an income. You don't notice as much how many are out of work if your not. You get complacent and accustomed to it being the norm. Once you realize we have moved into high gear it's too late then. Happy landings..............................Bruce

[Broil]

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

I suppose many of us here are smelly, mean, and ugly ..... that might explain why we hang out on this forum on weekends when we should be either partying or going to jazz clubs.  Personally I'm not mean enough though, no drive.

I've been thinking about this post ..... if you haven't already, why not advertise that cabin to doomers only, offering a low rent instead of work for free rent.  Screen carefully - you wouldn't want bums like me to get in.  That way you'd have someone to yell at if things go wrong, or argue about how best to knap flint, or if you have a heart attack they could dump you into the back of the pickup, and drive grumbling angrily to the nearest hospital.

I know Madnsassy did that, don't know if she actually ended up with any takers - maybe Vagabones? Or perhaps I misunderstood.  At any rate you ought to have someone around if possible.  (So should I, but then I've always been a hermit type.)

[quietnite]

Ma Ingalls worked her ass off as well...just sayin'.

[comrade simba]

You betcha black hunter - my blog's tag line is "engaged in battle with the 21st century"

But hey, I understand Broil's view, too. We semi primitives can't just sit back and say hahaha you city people with all your contraptions suck while being able to exercise the option of popping into a wal mart for a nine buck shovel when a handle breaks. However, being realistic about doom does include the fact that if it all goes down so far as to needing to smelt ore the hunter gatherer crowd is going to sit back and say hahaha all of y'all suck!

The harder it gets to survive outside of a FEMA camp the more shit will be laying around for the handy to pick up and use. Any old 49 Ford laying dead in a field is a shovel head if you have a cold chisel and a hammer. Turning automobiles into plowshares - now that's a beautiful thought!

[The Black Knight]

comrade simba, I'll bet they'll be turning automoblies into shovels, they'll need 'em.... 

[IndianGirl]

I fear for my country...1 billion people 98% living hand to mouth below the poverty line...I hope th collapse is quick - like a nuclear war or something..a slow collapse will be hell in India. we have too many people and too few resources..

Personally - I know I will survive - am 28, rich and healthy...have been learning basic survival skills for some time - got a huge family ( again - rich) family's got land..The only problems will be retaining what we have - will be very hard as the beserk masses may just overwhelm us!

[the Black Hunter]

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.

Yes, that's originally how it worked, absolutely - and pretty much how it works here right now.  And we don't have to worry about steel anymore than we do plastic - it's everywhere, but when it wasn't people got by without that too.  You need skills and a basic forge.  We're talking the here and now.  We have the tools already, so all there'd be is repairs.  If you didn't have steel you could use wood, but as i said, that's moot now.

Anyway, this argument goes back and forth all the time "things were better then, things are better now."  It's subjective, and for guys like me who have taken a hearty draft of what things used to be like and live it, as well as having lived the industrial based life, the argument gets tedious fast because there's so much industrial apologist bullshit we've been indoctrinated with.  The only pertinent fact right now is that we are going down, that technology will not save us, that more industrialism will just kill everything faster, and that a simpler way of life involving locally obtainable and renewable and sustainable methods may well be the only option left to us, whether you like the life or think it's a shit sandwich - if you wish to live. 

As one scholar put it lately, to paraphrase, "If nothing else, we have learned in the past hundred years that Industrialism us utterly incompatible with life."  The industrial empire, which is now global, has pretty much run its course.  Only this time it ain't just Rome falling, it's the world.

[boiler_92]

I've had some new thoughts on this subject in the last couple of days.  My personality/brain chemistry is such that low grade depression seems to be lurking around the metaphorical corner from me pretty much continually.  I've learned how to keep it at bay for the most part but still, it's there.  

The last few days I have been feeling pretty down.  I've been reading Dark Ages America which hasn't been helping my mood, plus my wife has been going all basket-case, so I've been feeling overwhelmed by doom and life in general.  One of the hallmark symptoms of depression (at least for me) is what I'll call the inability to get going.  When I'm in that state everything's a struggle, and just getting started with what would ordinarily be a simple task like doing the dishes becomes a real battle.  

So it was occurring to me that after TSHTF at some point I'm bound to have a southward turn emotionally, and at that point no matter what preps I've made, I'm probably going to be in big trouble.  I'm not going to have the luxury of depression.

For my kids sake I'm trying to have a better attitude about this, but part of me thinks I'm just fooling myself when I do.  

[MEA]

I think that at some level we have to lie to ourselves a bit, and say, yes, what we are doing could make a difference, so it's worth doing it, otherwise we'd just stop in our tracks.

And if we  have children (as I do) we just have another reason to lie.

[residualheat]

So it was occurring to me that after TSHTF at some point I'm bound to have a southward turn emotionally, and at that point no matter what preps I've made, I'm probably going to be in big trouble.  I'm not going to have the luxury of depression.

For my kids sake I'm trying to have a better attitude about this, but part of me thinks I'm just fooling myself when I do.  

I know what you mean, boiler92, and I think a lot of people probably feel the same, but you might find you actually have more motivation if there is something real to work towards - ie staying alive. Saying that, I can imagine people just curling up in a corner and dying.

[Echo]

I prep so theres supplies for my kids and grandkids. I tell them what i'm doing and what i've learnt and hope they listen a bit but personally i cant see me making it.

[madison]

So we are not going to have a slow crash or a fast crash we are going to have BOTH.

Yep, Bruce, that's what I think too.  We are in the slow crash and it's picking up speed, we'll hit crisis points and it'll crash down a bit, stabilize, crisis, crash, stabilize....

I wonder where I'll be in my next life...?  I hope I remember this one then, that would be something!

[The Black Knight]

 Only this time it ain't just Rome falling, it's the world.

Yup, it's actually the "industrialized world" and it's lifestyle... I suppose, it'll take down (and has) many "innocents" along the way. Sure glad I've got my little umbrella when the sky does fall. Glad too, that I've not far to "fall" when the time comes...

[the Black Hunter]

I've had some new thoughts on this subject in the last couple of days.  My personality/brain chemistry is such that low grade depression seems to be lurking around the metaphorical corner from me pretty much continually.  I've learned how to keep it at bay for the most part but still, it's there.  

The last few days I have been feeling pretty down.  I've been reading Dark Ages America which hasn't been helping my mood, plus my wife has been going all basket-case, so I've been feeling overwhelmed by doom and life in general.  One of the hallmark symptoms of depression (at least for me) is what I'll call the inability to get going.  When I'm in that state everything's a struggle, and just getting started with what would ordinarily be a simple task like doing the dishes becomes a real battle.  

So it was occurring to me that after TSHTF at some point I'm bound to have a southward turn emotionally, and at that point no matter what preps I've made, I'm probably going to be in big trouble.  I'm not going to have the luxury of depression.

For my kids sake I'm trying to have a better attitude about this, but part of me thinks I'm just fooling myself when I do.  

Boiler - you've just described me.  Keeping the demon at bay.  Sometimes it's not even an issue, sometimes it takes a constant effort.  You ain't alone, bud!  Right down to the specific instance of feeling down right now, and worrying about what will go south at some inappropriate time in the future.  Of course, November and December are seriously crummy months for feeling the blues, too.

One of the fortunate things for me, is it's mostly the mindless tedium of our current culture that gets to me (and i'm sure to many of the depressed), the endless ennui we've created through meaningless industrial/techno employment, the grinding knowledge as well of being set up long before I was born to become little more than another host for a system of parasite-leaders.  But when things get real, when they get down to the wire - well, i can handle that, I wake up then.  I've done alright avoiding the mainstream boredom, as well, but it's come at the price of any semblance of security.

But yeah, right now things are damned grim.  One reason to hope for a fast crash.  It would be just like our sick gong-show culture to drag itself out for another fifty years, a final limp-wristed slap-down to everyone who's suffered its moron stranglehold all their lives.

Do yourself a favor and don't read Derrick Jensen.  That guy's pretty much got it figured out, and it pretty much felt like masochism reading "Endgame."  Precisely because you can't argue with what he says.

 

[forager]

I've had some new thoughts on this subject in the last couple of days.  My personality/brain chemistry is such that low grade depression seems to be lurking around the metaphorical corner from me pretty much continually.  I've learned how to keep it at bay for the most part but still, it's there.  

The last few days I have been feeling pretty down.  I've been reading Dark Ages America which hasn't been helping my mood, plus my wife has been going all basket-case, so I've been feeling overwhelmed by doom and life in general.  One of the hallmark symptoms of depression (at least for me) is what I'll call the inability to get going.  When I'm in that state everything's a struggle, and just getting started with what would ordinarily be a simple task like doing the dishes becomes a real battle.  

So it was occurring to me that after TSHTF at some point I'm bound to have a southward turn emotionally, and at that point no matter what preps I've made, I'm probably going to be in big trouble.  I'm not going to have the luxury of depression.

For my kids sake I'm trying to have a better attitude about this, but part of me thinks I'm just fooling myself when I do.  

I've had these same issues for better than three decades now. November and December usually kick things off to the downside for me. So far, I'm feeling great. I finally went to the drugstore and bought the Vitamin d3 supplements. I'm taking them with E, B complex, a good multivitamin, and some herbs and antioxidants. Things that would normally depress me seem to be bouncing off thick skin right now. I'm also doing the sinus wash thing regularly and drinking herbal teas. The walks and fresh air certainly help too. Give your body and mind the nourishment it needs.

I wonder if we civilised people have nutritional deficiencies as a result of not eating wild plants like our foraging ancestors. These plants are so much more nutritious and are often rich in medicinal and antioxidant properties. Resveratrol in grape leaves, tannins, rosmarinic acid (I get mine from foraged Stoneroot tea)..... No way corn fills these voids.

Check this site out for herbal remedies (there is a section for depression too). http://www.gardensablaze.com/HerbRemedies.htm

The pharmaceutical companies can't patent plants that heal. They study healing plants to see if they can isolate the chemical that they can patent and sell to consumers for huge profits. There is research out there, according to Petersen's Wild Medicinal Plants and Herbs Guide, that the plants are more beneficial as a whole. Can't patent the plant though.