Just read the Rolling Stone article on Peak Oil. Consider me concerned.

Very concerned.

Part of me wants it not to be true, but most of me believes it is.

Part of me is burned out on thinking in terms of surviving from all the preparation we did for Y2K (don't ask, husband became convinced it would be bad, in turn convinced me, and we didn't have to buy toilet paper until early 2001).

But most of me knows I probably must start thinking in very practical terms again.

A very small part of me is a temper-tantrum throwing child, screaming "but but but!" I live in the 21st century, I am a child of the 20th century. I am solidly middle class, possibly even upper middle class (haven't checked lately where that cutoff is, I just know I can afford shit). The last generation in my family who were agricultural workers were my great-grandparents and like that line in "The Jerk" goes, "I just want the STUFF!"

But fortunately, as I said, that's a small part of me. Most of me says "well hell, let's get to it then."

I think humans are amazingly resilient and hardy creatures. I don't think we'll be wiped out by this. But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume some very hard times lie ahead.

So. Where do I start?

and improving it. We are right on the river, and have 30% of our ( house-occupied ) power solar. It's a start. We are only there 3-4 times a year, but it makes me feel sooo good being there.

I am also an excellant organic farmer - OK - small gardens thus far, but I've got the scoop. Our petro-chemical fertilizers are running on empty.

ho ho.

You are , IIRC, downwind of the Yellows=tone volcano, long overdue to destroy most of the US.

better move. LOL

I guess I better get back into gardening. I'm not a very good gardener and we don't have the means to buy any country property, but we do have a decent sized back yard that's all yard, so I can put in some raised beds. Think I'll do that this spring, so as to get better at gardening.

The article said things will be amazingly local once we are in the "long emergency," no more 12,000 mile shipping routes like what Wal-Mart has.

I used to do this when I lived in Houston and didn't have the space I do now. It's great and you can grow more than the average family can consume in a very reduced space.

I learned how to do it and even did it at our old house and then promptly forgot after 2000.

Guess I need to dig that back out.

This is the same man who wrote the book I read. I've not really looked at the site in depth yet, but it looks pretty good at a glance. :)

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

I'd forgotten about that book. :)

The available affordable fuels in, say- 2030 simply don't have the energy density to permit the sort of long range individual transportation that people take for granted today.

Barring some miracle on the order (and likelyhood) of cold fusion, local and regional intergration will be to the 21st century what globalization was to the 20th. If you have (or plan to have) kids, then you'd be wise to plan ahead for this inevitability.

Simply moving to the country and living a yeoman's life isn't what I'm talking about, btw- but making rational plans to move to progressive comunities in regions where there is, for example- likely to be ample fresh water, relatively abundant agriculture and public transportation 20-30 years from now makes a lot of sense.

perimeter security cameras linked to a pc with mass recognition software, lots of guns, and of course... German Shepherds.

(Well... ok, they don't HAVE to be Shepherds.)

I plan on screening those who come looking for help very carefully.
It seems likely that people will develop communes all over the country.

Indeed, if we are to survive as a country, we will have to resort to communism/socialism.

How Ironic that it will be the capitalists and the materialists that drive us to that point. (Driven to communism by SUVs... he he.)

And the original reasons we bought the guns we have now was Y2K. I'm so embarrassed to admit that now, makes us sound like kooks. But we figured, why not err on the side of caution?

We do have a really ferocious dog.

that's my problem. I was concerned about y2k and now I'm afraid I'll fall for anything. I've read about it, investigated, and, honestly, there's a part of me that feels Peak Oil is here - we're on the downslide. But, there's the part of myself that reminds me I was wrong about y2k despite the evidence for concern.

As much as I can totally see Peak Oil being a HUGE problem (to make an understatement), there's a part of me I just cannot convince of this.

The Y2K 'bug' was just that; a 'bug'.

I most certainly WOULD have been a bigger problem had people not become aware of it at all.

But it would have been a temporary setback - only a few years to correct even if we were taken completely by surprise.

We also were quite certain of an exact deadline - that gave people the impetus to 'Do' something about it.

Peak Oil and Reserve currency issues are COMPLETELY different.

This is inexorable.

Either we are going to take a very big hit and revert to a feudal/communist system, or we'll find ourselves in a depression.

It will be very interesting to see how suddenly very focused the world will become on procuring new energies. Heck, we might even forget about religious/philosophical bickering for a while... at least until we start to become decadent again.

in this (when I read your post). You're right, we will have to focus a hell of a lot of time and energy on finding new sources of energy and/or adjusting to a new life.

Great point!

very low tech, but has a very high in gun-to-resident ratio. I used to be wary of that, but then, perhaps it's not sooo bad.

"German Shepherds"

that's classic.

Seriously, I envy you.

it almost feels good. i've been reading and writing since the 2000 election, and it all seems so useless now. Things may make a little more sense but its all in my head, and i still don't know what the friggin truth is about so much. 9/11 still really annoys me, the election theft seems so antiseptic now ..hardly even criminal. i always used to wonder how hitler did it...not any more.

It's six years since I did all that preparation and I'm STILL burned out on it. We had two water storage tanks, I learned how to make soap and candles, we had enough food stored to last us about three years (we converted a spare bedroom into a storage area), I knew how to grow sprouts, I was gardening (square foot gardening) and learned how to can, etc.

I'm not even listing everything, either. God it burned me out.

Which is why I'm so hesitant to even THINK about preparation for anything again. Sigh.....

"Annoys" you????

because i can't get a clear picture of what actually went down. While the PNAC plan, and Zbigniew Brzezinski's 'Grand Chessboard', and Chalmers Johnson's 'The Sorrows of Empire', and Michael Ruppert's 'Crossing the Rubicon' have all helped to enlighten me, in my heart and in my head there is only confusion, and yes it annoys me.

Or at least as much as possible. They (whoever they may be) can't take paid for property away from you - and the first thing that will collapse will the the credit system. As creditor get worried, they will collect. Unpaid credit card debt, unpaid for vehicles, unpaid mortgages. As money becomes more worthless, they will need to collect more and more, and when they can't get the money, they will take the property.

It will be a drawn-out process, so there's no need to panic. There's plenty of time to get on the right track. But the economic situation will be much different in ten years. Having no debt will be a decided asset. Having rural property could be equally good, if it can be owned free and clear.

We've been getting rid of all of our debt. We do still have a mortgage but everything else is looking real good to be gone in about two years or less.

Let 'em try to take our house. ;-)

and of course the big worry is the mortgage
we have divested of everything but that to date

Coal is far less versatile than oil and gas, extant in less abundant supplies than many people assume and fraught with huge ecological drawbacks -- as a contributor to greenhouse "global warming" gases and many health and toxicity issues ranging from widespread mercury poisoning to acid rain. You can make synthetic oil from coal, but the only time this was tried on a large scale was by the Nazis under wartime conditions, using impressive amounts of slave labor.

SLAVE LABOR!!!!! FEMA CAMPS HERE WE COME!!!!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7203633

but it is not a reason for panic either. Basically, we are already at peak oil and have been for several years. Oil production will now gradually decline from its peak over the next few decades. In ten years, it will still be 90% of today's level. There will be some tough economic times as Americans in particular are weaned off their addiction to SUVs and suburban sprawl. Eventually, good alternative fuels for transportation will become available. Plug-in hybrids probably (think a Toyota Prius but with more batteries, so you can plug it in overnight, and then drive it for 20-50 miles on just battery power). Urban renewal of city cores and light rail will be built in more cities.

No need for survivalist bunkers and seven-year food supplies.

you don't need much
a few acres will do
BUT, consider that you'll need property that:
(a) is suitable for driling a well (and drill one at once)
(b) is suitable for fencing (you'll need a fence)

and

talk to your family
you may want to make sure
that there is room for all of them

I'm just dipping into this topic.

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth. ....

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

It's kind of like the old riddle which asks if a lily pad doubles in size each day for one million days, and on the millionth day becomes half the size of the lake, how long will it take before it covers the lake completely?

Besides the oil deal-ly.

Welcome to DU. Glad to have another Phoenix DUer on board. :hi:

picking out some very salient points.

Start buying seeds.

Then buy jars and learn how to preserve. Get friendly with farm animals.

Sounds crazy? I predict times that will rival the great depression. The bigger you get, the harder you fall.

Also, a survivalist tip, start practicing hard labor so you're not in a state of shock when it is required to exist. <g> I don't have to, been working manual labor for ever and as much as I hate it, I think I'm going to be grateful for the experience real soon.

Can't live without that.:-)