Thursday, August 11, 2011

Clear-eyed thinking



I read Dmitry every time he post something.  Have been doing so for a while now, since he started writing for Mike Ruppert.  He has gone big time now, and I wish him the best.

I also read Russell on a when he writes.  Good stuff too, gotta thank him for this when I get around to it.

But when you click on the two links above, you will note a couple of articles dedicated to the concept of using sailing craft as a bug-out modality.  Hmmm...part of me likes the idea.  But in a sense, I just want to pause for a moment to talk about the way that we do things in in blogoland.

Folks who sit down like this an punch out stuff for folks to read are not stating facts for the most part.  They are formulating theories and positing potential survival strategies and/or modalities.  I really think that their theories are quite interesting, but they are just that, theories.

Theories need to be tested against the new world which we are entering.  The experiment has not been fully defined yet, and the parameters of the test are murky at best.  So, read this kind of stuff (to include the current author of course) with a great deal of skepticism and not as a template, but as a possible means to be incorporated into a future life.

The act of sitting down and writing tends to make one believe that a sudden fit of infallibility has taken the author.  All one has to do is look at the mess that one makes on their life to realize that this erstwhile infallibility may well be a very low probability event.

Mayberry, Dmitry, and others have extolled the virtues of the boat.  I kinda think that this might be a silly idea as a strategy during lean and turbulent times.  There may be some merit to it, but the more that I think about it, the more boats seem kind of silly

3 comments:

russell1200 said...

You have already thanked me.

I critized Orlov on that post, but he did not publish it.

As you note, theory is good, but facts are better.

Open waters can be a very dangerous place to be in times of lawlessness (Orlov's scenario).

In both the Greek Dark Ages, and the Post-Roman Dark Ages, settlements pulled back from the shoreline and made themselves inaccessible from the sea. The sea was a place that brought threats, not trade.

For all the reasons that Orlov likes the idea of getting around on his sailing boat, violent dangerous types will as well. So unless you think you are going to have more firepower than anybody else out there you are very exposed out on the water. You can use speed to get away, but that is tricky with a sailing (only) vessel. In some waters, oared vessels were used for piracy. No wind, and they are going to catch you.

Note, there are many scenerios where a sailing boat might work fine: just not Orlovs.

Orlov and Ferfal are the two writers I know of who actually write first hand about collapses that they witnessed. Ferfal is more interesting to me because he lived through it as an adult in place. Orlov is from the United States and was visiting the Soviet Union.

Their experiences are very useful, but both of them (as well as many people who worry about these types of things) tend to fixate on one scenerio, and not the multiplicity of possible scenerios. People get wrapped up in very expensive solutions (aka a sail boat), rather than trying to stick to the basics, and keep some money on hand. There are many scenarios that have actually occured. In only a few of them was cash (legal tender) on hand not useful at least at the start of the problems.

Gather ye marbles said...

Having looked at the piece by Russell2000 that you mentioned/linked, I'll note that Russell does not espouse "the concept of using sailing craft as a bug-out modality." To the contrary, he reviews a novel that depicts the use of sailing craft in a nuclear holocaust setting, and he observes: "The book is not perfect. It deals with the needs of an ocean bound boat in dangerous times. It may cure some people (Orlov) of the notion that it is some sort of perfect bug out vehicle."

russell1200 said...

I have another nautical, of sorts, post tommorow at 11:00am.

Since you are posting more often, I am adding you to my blog roll. The only reason you were not there before was because you were not posting very much for a while.