Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

מנא ,מנא, תקל, ופרסין

The financiers that have feasted on the carcass of our country need to be brought to justice.

Folks, the money is gone. It could be argued that it was never there in the first place. I fail to see any connection between the productivity of this country and the shenanigans of Wall Street. They slice and dice things, add their 10% fees, and do absolutely nothing useful. Then they bring out the bull throated cry of the thief "free markets and capitalism is the best system in the history of the planet".

What they really did is sliced and diced the heritage of future generations to sell us crap we didn't need.

The writing is in the wall, we have been weighed and found wanting.

You cannot trust a bank

My family is pretty recent immigrants, I am second generation. My great-grandparents and grandparents came over from Italy and worked in the coal mines until they got their stake saved up. My grandfathers worked the coal mines, my grandmothers took in boarders and did laundry.

They bought their farm in 1932 for $7,000 cash. None of that money ever saw the inside of a bank. The money was earned and saved in a big coffee can underneath the oven under floorboards in the kitchen. All of my family hated bankers with a grand passion. I still do. If you look at it, the only reason that I grew up on a farm rather than in a mining town is because my Grandparents had this clear vision of what banks are. The chances of a bank taking their money and collapsing with it were pretty high at that point in time.

We are sliding into the first stage of Orlov's collapse continuum. Let us get the reason out there in the open my friends, it is because the greedy fucking assholes in the banks tried to set it up so that they would own everyone and everything through the magic of credit and low monthly payments.

What I love is the way that the media (who, by the way, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the greedy fucking shits) have tried to break it out as bank and non-bank, Wall Street, Investment banking, brokerage, etcetera, ad nauseum. But in the end, the fucking assholes are the same greedy shitheads that drove the country to the brink in 1929.

Anyway, back to my family. My Nona would never go to a bank because they were "stesso come la mafia" (same as the mafia). This idea came back in spades in the 1990's and 2000's. The banks paid off their other employees, the Congress of the United States, to pass a law that made bankruptcy a thing of the past, and hired the federal government to make sure that the lumpenproletariat never missed a payment. Then they decided that there wasn't enough margin just screwing American lumpen, they decided to gut the country's production sector and move it to third world countries where they could repeat the process for the poor sorry bastards there.

In the end though, the fin of this sorry and sad cycle is the collapse of the financial sector. But you know what, maybe, just maybe, that is not a bad thing. Maybe now we can push to get the banking sector driven to its knees. They have nothing in common with you and I, and our pain is their gain. I say now we should take them down now that they are weakened by their own greed. I think that we should re-regulate them in a serious way. If any bank, US or foreign, owns a US bond, it should be defaulted on. Plain and simple. Fuck 'em. The collapse will be painful, but so will watching them line their pockets with what remains of our savings. Let's get real folks, they have it and have no intention of giving it back.

Like it or not, the world banking system is a huge parasite with a great public relations machine. Lets kill it.

Just a short post today

Working on a longer piece presently.....

Move along, nothing to see here

Gust Front

Just spent some time reading a post from Mayberry where he legitimately talks about his sense of foreboding.  I think that where we are in the process of breakdown is similar to the meteorological term "gust front".  It is that point in time where there is a lot of gusty winds whipping about in front of a main storm.  When I was growing up in Utah, we always knew a storm was gonna hit soon when the wind started going all different ways and we could "smell the salt".

I understand completely where he is coming from.  The little man whom he speaks of in his post has been talking with me for quite a long time now.  Sometimes he makes a lot of sense, but he doesn't live in the same world of kids, family, and community that I live in.  He says to me "run for it now, get thee to the hills".  Hell, if I were solo, I would probably listen to him.  But, I think that a better example would be my Grandpa.  When he "smelled the salt", he would just patiently start buttoning up the work that he was doing, getting ready to get the equipment out of the rain.  That is what I am doing with my preps, getting the equipment out of the rain so that I will be able to use it later.

I guess that I am different from a lot of the folks on this ring of blogs.  I am not planning to go anywhere except in the extreme case that I am forced (against my will and probably at gunpoint) to go refugee.   I am a product of my world.  I actually feel a sense of responsibility for what will be happening here.  So I will stay here and work to ameliorate the problems.  Hell folks, there is a working society in Sadr City.  It is dangerous, but it is a society.  We can at least do that well.   

Interregnums are tricky things, but I honestly feel that a new society will spring out of the wreckage.  It isn't going to be easy, it will probably be dangerous, and it will take more work that we can imagine, but it is a job worth doing.  I would have my sons and grandsons  believe that I tried to fix things, even if I fail.

These crooked bastards

I was reading Der Spiegel and this caught my eye.

Under its bylaws, the IMF is charged with the supervision of the international monetary system. Roughly two-thirds of IMF members -- but never the United States -- have already endured this painful procedure.

For seven years, US President George W. Bush refused to allow the IMF to conduct its assessment. Even now, he has only given the IMF board his consent under one important condition. The review can begin in Bush's last year in office, but it may not be completed until he has left the White House. This is bad news for the Fed chairman.

So, Georgie the Puke wants to well clear when a disinterested party shows what a greedy, corrupt administration he has run...can't say as a blame him. Move over James Buchanan, there is now a new all time worst American President.

Big bite yesterday in the markets, pity the fool that holds a 401K

Man, the Dow down 350, oil at >$140.

The financial crack up is in process it seems, a lot of this really has no bearing on daily life (I was out of the market completely a year ago). But a lot of folks have bought the line of bilge that their 401K was going to bring them home to the promised land of Starbucks and golf courses. I think that they are now getting a look at what the boyz on Wall street had planned for them all along.

The 401K was the biggest boondoggle ever conceived. Wall street used your money to pump up prices on everything, pay themselves absolutely obscene salaries and bonuses, and then got out. You will note now that the folks who have put the most into this crackpot scheme (The boomers) are now lining up for their payout.....what's that you say Wall street?.....The money is gone?.....

I don't know that it was conceived in malice, but our financial system seems to have figured out how to use a poorly thought out plan (the 401K) to best set up the lumpen in order to strip them of the bulk of their money.

From James Kunstler's Blog

I found this a very interesting idea.

1. Beware the Electric Grid this Winter

Jim,
I just did the math. The Northeast Electric grid is going to collapse next winter.

A gallon of home heating oil is 130,500 btu's and oil burners are 80% efficient. At $4.50 a gallon 1000 btu's of oil heat costs $0.043.

A kilowatt hour of electricity is 3413 btu's and electric heaters are almost 100% efficient. At $0.15 per kilowatt hour (what we pay in NH) 1000 btu's of electric heat costs $0.044.

The public will soon figure out that plugging in electric space heaters and leaving the electric stove on 24/7 will be a cheaper way to heat the house next winter than to run the oil burner. Besides the electric utility companies are prohibited from shutting off your electricity during winter.

Sixty percent of the homes in New England heat with oil. There is no way the electric grid can handle the increased demand.

Might want to figure out some alternate heating/lighting strategies

Man, I would just love to hear some good news

The fact that I write for this blog shows that I think that the world is heading the wrong direction. I prep to get through the mess to the other side where we start rebuilding.

But the truth of the matter, I am really getting sick of this "death by a thousand cuts" routine that we are being treated to. I wish that either the world would pull its shit together or fall apart.

I hope for the "pull its shit together scenario" as using the preps we have in the manner we plan will be a lot less than fun. But, thus far, it doesn't seem that the world gives a shit about my opinion. So I guess that it will be "carry on" for a bit yet.

Progression

Consider the analysis of Dmitry Orlov on the serial layers of collapse possible to a country. Dmitry has excellent insights into the issues we are addressing in our culture. I don't always agree with him, but I have yet to be able to dismiss his views outright.

1. Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.
2. Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
3. Political collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.
4. Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost, as local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.
5. Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.

Now, a lot of the time, folks seem to make the assumption of a "slippery slope", that if we start slipping, we will just keep going, without the ability to stop, all the way to cultural collapse. I feel that this fear is a best misplaced, and at worst, counterproductive.

I do not dismiss this possibility out of hand, but I do assign it a low probability. I feel a much more likely scenario would be stopping at one of the first four waypoints (If you wish me to wax specific I give the chances at 40%, 35%, 15%, 8% 2%).

As we proceed down this ladder, your preps are going to become increasingly valuable and difficult to defend. Be aware of this slope and keep a realistic assessment of where you are. I would think that your preps will be the most useful in stage 1 or stage 2, the risks to them are low and their value to you is high...life is good.

They will have higher value in stage 3, but this will come at an increased cost in potential danger. In stage 4, the danger and the value will be about equal. At this point here, you had better have a small cohesive group formed that is able to watch each others back.

If we in fact do proceed all the way to total stage 5 collapse, I would suggest that your preps target value may make them a net liability. At this point, a decision must be made to go the refugee route (always dangerous) or actually become one of the looters. In the case of stage 5 societal breakdown, the choices will be stark.

Above all, remember that you are in a continuous process of risk evaluation, the risk to you and your will rise and fall, keep your wits about you. Pay attention.

In Memoriam: George Carlin

His harshest, and unfortunately, most accurate routine


"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians,"

"Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"

We just took more than out fair share

I read the papers and I see “Peak This” and “Peak That”. I am really starting to to think that the work “Peak” is the politically correct rephrasing of what my my mother used to say to me. “You greedy little shit, you ate it all, now what will your sisters eat?”

There are people who say there is no peak oil. I find them to be almost tragic. Usually it is folks like my two brother in laws, mindless “Republican” morons who have found an intellectual home in a NeoCon vision of government repressing the people while handing the keys to Fort Knox to big business. They are trying to shovel as much into their greedy little maws as they can. They just can’t imagine for a minute that the party will stop.

But it appears that the number of folks on the planet, coupled with the rampant greed, is going to lend itself to quite a show. Consider this article:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article4193017.ece

This just adds another layer of complexity onto a world that is rapidly spinning out of control. Peak oil is here. Peak natural gas is close behind and that will have huge impacts on agriculture due to the fact that natural gas is the main feedstock for commercial fertilizers. All of the other critical materials are running short.

In other words, you had better work on your garden and your preps. Keep your wits about you and know the lay of the land. The current system is running out of it’s critical inputs, and when one of these inputs goes critical, the consequences will be a world that is a lot different than what we are currently used to.

Pay attention, risk is high.

PS: This is unrelated, but I just read this article and think that you all ought to take a look at it. Remember above all, your fellow man is as much a part of you as anything else around you...remember to be kind to folks if you can. Give to that local food bank, buy a bum a drink, tip your bartender.

Beer

Learn to brew beer.

Lets face it, there are going to be times where a drink will be needed. If you are a teetotaler, that is cool, but continue reading.

One of the things that will be needed is relaxation, if you brew beer, you can provide that. To yourself and to others. Handing a cold (or even cool) beer to a friend after a hard day work is an act of kindness, even if you don’t drink. It is also an excellent trade good. A six pack of beer for a couple dozen eggs or some meat is a great deal for both sides of the bargain.

The actual process and equipment isn’t that difficult either. Of course there will be brew nazis that will tell you that only the most intricate and expensive equipment is appropriate. Fuck em. The Babylonians brewed beer 5000 years ago, it can’t be all that hard. If you are spending more than $50.00 on equipment, you are probably going overboard. A good beer is easy. You aren’t doing this to show off to your buddies how cool you are...it is a part and parcel of getting by.

This week I am going to buy some basic supplies for a year of brewing. I am going to vacuum seal the crushed barley malt with oxygen scavengers, buy some bulk hops and parse them out, and have some yeast in the freezer. I am also starting to think about what it is going to take to maintain the ingredients. I have some hop plants out back, they didn’t grow this year, but that is not that abnormal, hopefully I can get some yields next year. Malting barley isn’t that hard, I just have to find some barley, and propagating yeast isn’t too much of a chore. I’ll update you as this gets going.

Start looking at the peripherals of your life. Most of us have sufficient preps to get by, but if we are going to thrive, we have to start adding a few non-basics to take the edge off the monotony.

For you other urban types......excellent

Urban Defense

The recent spate of conversations on the use of force have got me thinking. Now, I am the unusual because I have no intention of bugging out except in the extreme last instance, and then only reluctantly. I live in a small city. It isn’t a major metropolitan area. So I have to concern myself with self defense in an urban area.

Small cities are, almost by definition cooperatives, I think that in this kind of setting, guns are not going to be your first line of defense. They will be fine and necessary for the final defensive line inside the property, but they will draw unwanted attention to you in foraging/shopping/trying to find work activities.

I usually carry a knife, an old Gerber that I have had since army days (don’t ask...it was a looonnng time ago) it stays in a little pocket in my briefcase where I can get at it easily without opening the briefcase. I also use a “walking stick”. It is a six foot hickory staff (quarterstaff) that I got from Purpleheart Armory a couple of years ago. A while ago a young gentleman started wondering aloud concerning the contents of my wallet, a crack to the kneecap with the quarterstaff left him crying on the ground. A good standoff weapon, and if you practice with it occasionally, quite effective.

By just carrying close-in defensive weapons, I really think that I pay a lot more attention to my surroundings. Most of any self-defense is staying away from the danger. The trouble with guns is that they make you feel like a badass. We have all been brought up watching John Wayne and Dirty Harry movies, you know, the ones where Clint and Big John gun down the bad guys and bring righteous balance to the planet. But the truth of the matter is, from my point of view, this feeling of being a badass and ten-feet-tall, will interfere with your ability to observe the world around you in an objective manner.

Maybe the John Wayne movie that we should all watch is “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. In this one, Jimmy Stewart distracts the bad guy and John Wayne gets real, he shoots the bad guy from an ambush setup across the street.

Now that is how you use guns.

Recreation

Man doesn’t live by bread alone.

After the unravelling, we will most likely have quite a bit of time on our hands. If we do work, the chances are it will be fitful and intermittent at best, because until the factories are rebuilt and the real work is brought back, we will likely have to downshift our lives considerably and share jobs. You can only garden so much, and foraging won’t take up all your time.

I won’t tell you to shoot your TV, but a good argument can be made for this idea. You don’t want to be shut off from the news, some shit might be coming your way that will be in your best interests to know about. Maybe radio would be a better way to receive this information. Radio has music and news, and usually no one sits and rots in front of the radio. TV on the other hand will be doing everything that it can to anesthetize the sheeple. If it is on, some of that lethargy might rub off onto you. Be careful.

Movies will be available, in the depression it was a big deal. But be aware of alternate means of viewing these divertissement. I would never in a million years dream of advising someone to violate copyright law (heaven forfend), I have been told that there are means to watch movies without paying the excessive costs of going to the movie theatre. Some research on your part and a friendly relationship with your local computer hacker may well be in order.

Start reading again. Books are great. I am thinking about setting up a prep of books as well as everything else. There are these little used bookstores everywhere that take in your old books and give you credit. Keep a bunch (I am thinking 20 or so) unread books on hand and as you read them, turn them back in for new unreads. keep ahead of the game. Since these stores are not the Barnes and Noble type bigbox stores, they will probably muddle through after the deluge. Speaking of which, go to www.baen.com and check out their free library. I would download the books 1632 and 1633 (FREE!!) by Eric Flint. The premise is a bunch of folks from 20th century America get dumped into 17th century Europe and how do they get along. It is entertaining and food for thought

Start downloading and storing media from the internet where possible. Project Gutenburg has just about every important book ever written. Go and download these, if you are not working or job sharing, you can read them on your computer at no cost. I also have been told that perhaps music is available on the internet.....Hmmm, Imagine that. You might want to get an older used computer and keep it around for a spare....these things don’t last forever, but don’t spend a lot of money.

Stock up on cards, these are great time killers.

Board games are fun.

The possibilities are endless.

Back from moralizing

One of the things that I think you have to do is start looking at your use of disposables.

I was doing a quick clean up this morning and grabbed a spray bottle of windex and a handful of paper towels and started wiping the counters down. That is what started this particular tirade. Geez Louise, there is a means of doing this that is just as cost effective and won’t be an ongoing cost in consumables.

So...on the phone with Mom, and the response I got was less than flattering to my intelligence and general work ethic. Seems she has been considering me a wasteful spendthrift for quite some time now, and that it is about time that I started thinking about my profligate ways.

Windows get watched with newspaper and vinegar, floors and such got cleaned with Pine-sol or ammonia, if you were cleaning the food prep area you used plain old clorox water. Brooms and mops you could clean and wash were preferred. Old clothes that could not be repaired any further became the cleaning rags.

One of the most important things that you can do in hard times is to maintain cleanliness. We have a tendency to go the easy-sleazy way and use the fancy, expensive aids, but in the cold times, we will have to revert to the practical and cheap. Make sure that your preps include the basics:

1. Clorox (a couple of big bottles)


2. Pine Sol (Costco sells the industrial size)


3. Ammonia (good luck finding this is a decent size...I am still looking)


4. A couple gallons of vinegar


5. start storing up the “elbow grease”

Mayberry and Dragon

Both the “Keep it Simple Survival” and “Circle of the Oroborous” had excellent posts yesterday. In a real sense they are speaking to what we need to do as decent folk before and after the coming collapse.

Mayberry spoke of needing a group of people in order to survive. Dragon spoke of helping an old lady with her food.

When you stand back, both of these address the same issue: Our duties and responsibilities to our fellow man.

Sometimes when we prep, we tend to lose sight of the society we live in. We are so certain that there will be hordes of folks scrambling after our preps that we will have to hold them off with our guns. But the truth of the matter is, I think that a lot of us would have trouble shooting a starving man or a man who is trying to get food for his family. My guess is that a lot of us would share and try to save the folks we are currently planning to put a cap in.

I am giving money at the local food bank in the church around the corner, I will also start donating part of my preps. As soon as the garden comes in, I will try to bring some to the produce in for them to give away.

This country has given a lot to me. I am not talking about Washington DC, but the country itself, the people on the street, rich and poor, good and bad.

I think that I would spend a great deal of time screaming in hell if I turned my back. I will prep, but ultimately I will prep in order to help rebuild a broken society, not to be the last man standing in a Mad Max world.

Testing out a new system

Since I seem to be addicted to writing lately (I really think it keeps my head on straight), I want to be able to keep doing it if I have to pull the plug on my in-house DSL link. So I need to have an off-line composer/manager for this blog.

There are bunches of free high-speed internet links out there, it might serve to make a map in your local area.

Information

I think that one of the most important things you can prep is the information needed to get things after the fall. Let's face it folks, Safeway just isn't going to cut it here.

Create a map of resources in your area. I live in a smallish city, and there are a buttload of resources here that might be able to help you in the process. Feral fruit trees or fruit trees owned by little old ladies are bountiful. Swap the little old lady some canned fruit for the right to pick the fruit and you are on to something.

Also, go talk to the folks at your local Mormon ward and make friends. These folks have been prepping as a culture for well over a century, they can provide valuable information and if you treat them like humans (which they are). Granted, they will try to convert you, but hell, every other religion tries too, who is to say they shouldn't have a chance.

Find the local itty-bitty ethnic markets.....Asian, Indian, Mexican, etc. Make purchases here and be friendly. Most of these markets run on a shoestring and have distribution systems separate from the big box stores. If they know you and have seen you before, you might be able to get some supplies from them.

I think that the biggest tendency in preppers is to get everything into a big pile, sit on top of it, and wait for the shit to end. Let's face it folks, as soon as things settle down a little, you had better be out there foraging for stuff. It will make your preps last longer and the act of foraging/shopping/intelligence gathering will keep you ahead of the game.

At the feet of a master

I am not at all certain he would have been a good President. But there was never anyone better at framing this issue than good old Ross.

Please, please take a look at this.

Hooverville

The new tent cities that are beginning to crop up are especially interesting to me. You don't hear of these too much in the US media, but the foreign media are reporting on them.

This media disconnect is especially telling, I am nearly certain that the mainstream US media (MSM) is deliberately suppressing the severity of the current situation. This is probably on orders from the corporate oligarchy that is currently running the country and who also own the MSM. We won't see anything on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or any of the large corporate whorehouses. But I am intrigued that some of the smaller newspapers are beginning to report on the issue.

As the liar loan recipients are forced out of their properties, these modern Hoovervilles will grow, at first, they will probably be suppressed, but when folks start losing their homes in the coming economic downturn they will head to these areas and join in. I think that these places will turn very ugly, very quickly. I wonder just how the Guv'mint will deal with it.

Stay clear of these folks. If you gotta cut and run, keep away from these. If you go here, you will be painting a big bright target on your back.

Headspace

Probably the most important part of prepping is the development of a good attitude. Now a lot of you are going to shake your head and mutter softly "he has finally lost it", but hear me out.

Preppers have a tendency of being "Old Testament", where the Lord smites the wicked and brings harsh justice to the transgressors. Don't get me wrong, I myself find a great deal of pleasure in this aspect of the issue. Nothing would please me more than seeing a whole buttload of CEO's and hedge fund managers strung up on regularly spaced trees. I think that seeing a bunch of morons lose their SUV's and being kicked out of the house where they lied for the loan would be enormously satisfying.

But if we are going to move past the unraveling, we are going to have to develop a more "New Testament" attitude. We are going to need to figure out how to set up a system where we care for the poor and the crippled and the old. We have to start living by the idea of "sufficient unto the day", and realizing that one can't buy heaven.

The cult of the material must be rejected. Keeping score by the amount of stuff a person owns instead of the content of that persons character must be abandoned.

Maybe it is time to start thinking about becoming adult society.

Pity Iowa, Pity Us

The heartland is under water, and the truth of the matter is, we should start thinking seriously about the possible implications. I am not certain what the precise percentage of US farmland is underwater, but I am certain that the rains and the ensuing flooding have taken a healthy bite out of the corn and bean production in the best farmland in the country.

This is not good. We have been eating into our food reserves for a couple of years now and foolishly converting food into fuel supplements for our SUV’s and high horsepower status symbols. The government corn and wheat reserves are effectively at zero and the private stocks are equally low. If the farmers in the midwest don’t perform a miracle and get a good harvest we may very well be a a position where shortfalls of grains and other food stocks will occur in the US.

We are already performing an economic balancing act. I was hoping that through blind luck we could have pulled out of the tailspin and I could continue living my fat, dumb, and happy life. A bad harvest may drive the economy into a nose dive that will take years to recover from. A really bad harvest could be a true disaster. I have no desire to deal with a Mad Max reality.

Put out your prayers to the farmers of Iowa. They will need God’s help to do their job. Should God decide to withhold that aid, hang on for what could prove to be one hell of a ride.

The Parable of Lot's Wife

Spending some time here in Utah at a family reunion. It is wonderful to see all the cousins and second cousins and gazzillionth cousins. Having a family that is half Mormon and half Catholic tends to lead to large family reunions.

Everyone there was talking about the economy and how things are changing. But the bulk of them are of the belief that, because this is America, and nothing bad ever happens to America, they can keep leading their lifestyle. The Hummers and the pickup trucks and the suburbans lent further credence to the belief that things won't change that much.

But the older folks, especially the Mormons, were counseling battening down the hatches and getting prepared for the storm. Some of the younger kin were listening, but for the most part, few wanted to accept the possibility that things could go wrong, maybe even seriously wrong. Because the mortgage payments were due on the McMansion and the Hummer, things can't go wrong.

I think that we are going to have to accept some causalities in this process. There are some folks that aren't going to make it through to the other side. In a way, we are looking at a situation similar to Lot and his family leaving Sodom and Gomorrah. You have to turn away. In a way, prepping is a big part of the turning away. But it isn't the stuff that you buy for your basement. It is the ability to define what are the critical paths for your survival and holding to those. A great deal of the turning away will be rejecting the subtle evil of the unnecessary.

So be careful to keep your eyes on the prize. Hold fast to the essential and reject the spurious. Because, when push comes to shove, trying to hold onto the whimsical and shallow desires of the manufactured, mass-market culture may very well be your ticket to being a pillar of salt.

Driving is hell

Finally got here after 14 hours in the car. Driving 55 has financial advantages, but you are in the car a lot longer. My old man knees spent yesterday telling me about my foolishness driving that long a distance.

Anyway, the thing that I was thinking about yesterday is the "open carry" idea. At first, I thought to myself that this was a great idea. After mature reflection, I am not so sure.

When you carry a weapon, it is saying loud and proud that you have no problem using it. I have no problem with that idea on its face, and the second amendment guarantees that right. But as a tactical decision, it may not be in your best interests. I feel that open carry in an urban environment would be especially dicey. Unless you constantly maneuvered keep ample space to react, the visible weapon would only serve as a too obvious reminder that you are an important target.

In an urban environment concealed is the way to go. If current levels of law enforcement and crime hold, I doubt if a gun is currently necessary (though I am an advocate of knives and my heavy duty walking stick). If things get worse, I am considering the idea of a non-permitted concealment, because I see no need to draw the man's attention to myself as part and parcel of the permitting process.

Long distance vacations

Driving down to Utah to see Mom and go to a family reunion. With Gas at $4.29 a gallon, I made the decision to drive 55 vs my usual 70. Last year when I made the drive (at 70) I got 18mpg, this year I am getting 27mpg. So over a 1600 mile round trip, I saved 28 gallons, and at $4.29 a gallon we are talking about nearly two tanks and around $130.00 over the trip. I always knew I was using more gas than I should in the past, but again....The money was good and I wasn't thinking

We are going back to the seventies, where the guvmint dropped the speed limit to 55 for just this reason. I thought then that it was one of the few good ideas that the government ever had, so of course they took it back...You can't have the government doing the right thing and making sense now, can you.

Another Idea Plagarized from Someone Else (Thanks Yves and Rodrik)

I was over at Naked Capitalism and was doing my daily dab at reading what is going on the world. This article struck my eye and got me to thinking.

I spent a couple of years of my life shutting down a couple of factories here in the US and setting up factories in Thailand and China to replace them. I still feel like an asshole for having done this, but the money was good and I wasn't thinking (Which by the way, I feel would serve as an excellent logo/trademark/motto for America during the last 15 years, I think that I will register it with the patent and trademark office).

Anyway, the deal is this, China is a moral and environmental cesspit. It is ruled by the same sort of greedy, self-absorbed, non-communal communists that ruled the Soviet Union before it imploded (Perhaps they can immigrate here and go directly to work for the Democratic party). Comrade Deng waited in the wings until Chairman Mao had the good grace to die, then waited a decent interval before carving up China and offering it as slave labor to the multinationals of the west. The management and officers of the multinationals jumped at the opportunity to fuck their workers, strip their factories, and line their own pockets with the glossy rewards of "global wage arbitrage" (Which, as Neal Stephenson so aptly puts it, is the state where all wages throughout the world are smoothed to the level of a moderately well-off Bangladeshi bricklayer).

Well, now the wages in China are rising nicely. The workers there are employed and coming in off the farms at an astounding pace to work in these shiny new sweatshops. The made-in-china salad shooters (Thanks J. Kunstler) are proudly lined up in Wal-Mart for folks to buy with their tax rebates. But the truth of the matter is...the wheels are starting to come off this system.

The slick boys of Wall street and their brothers in arms in the sleazy little mortgage companies in the country have sucked the marrow dry. Now we have a bunch of credit slaves working in jobs that pay less and less every year. But the credit slaves can't seem to stop buying, and the banks egg them on with more and more credit. But the end is in sight. Everyone is now starting to realize that things are tapped out. Gas is a fortune and food is following suit and the credit cards are comining back "declined".

The party is starting

Check this out

If you are a TEOTWAWKI fan.....this is real good stuff for the other side

Please read this....

This guys has been right a lot lately. I think that if what he is reporting is true, it might be some interesting times ahead. The greedheads have been dicking around with food prices a lot lately, this might be the government(s) putting a leash on the bastards.

I found this at www.kitco.com

The CFTC is looking at changing commodity rules to force big funds to disgorge multi thousand contracts positions.

The CFTC stated the commodity markets are not geared to have big funds sitting on long term positions of thousands of commodity contracts for long periods for foods and so on.

We could be looking at a forced liquidation – similar to the silver liquidation that happened in the big metal run up and silver corner by the Hunt brothers. That episode resulted in huge losses for the Hunts – who were forced out at huge losses after they tried to corner the silver market.

The entire world is up in arms about the energy and food shortages. It does not matter that the shortages are the real culprits. The fact is, pretty much all the nations are getting ready to force speculators out of these markets. The speculators are buying thousands of contracts in futures markets, even years ahead in grains, and sitting on them.

The fact is that, in a world food crisis, this is going to force poor people to pay – tribute – to big investors to eat. The world governments are not going to allow that to happen if they can stop it.

Already, India and others, and the US CFTC are looking at ways to force speculators to disgorge their tens of thousands of contracts in critical commodities.

I would bet that the fund universe is going to lose this battle. Many nations are getting behind this effort… here is an article talking about the disgorge effort:

“by Peter Shinn

The government could step in if commodity prices keep shooting higher. And some see some sort of government intervention in the marketplace as a virtual certainty. But for the leader of one agricultural group, that kind of discussion brings to mind the ag trade policy missteps of the late 1970s.

Imagine $200 a barrel oil, $9 a bushel corn and $20 a bushel soybeans. Then consider the prospect of less available wheat than now thought as the cattle industry begins feeding much more of that commodity. That's the near future as envisioned by two separate commodity analysts and brokers, especially in light of Tuesday’s USDA Crop Production report and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, which lowered this year’s U.S. corn production by 360 million bushels to 11.7 billion and projected increased global demand for soybean meal and vegetable oil.

And if that future does come to pass, both of the analysts foresee U.S. government intervention as likely. Doug McClellan is President of Plains Commodities in Omaha. He told Brownfield he’s heard talk of a complete elimination of government support for corn-based ethanol and a potential effort to drive excessive speculation from ag commodity futures markets.

"One way to do it is let's just go in and cut the ethanol program completely," McClellan said. "Let's go in and take the hedge funds and the index funds and say, 'No, you can't have 5,000 or 10,000 contracts per account or whatever it is. We're going to cut that speculative power back. You can only trade 2,500 contracts and force a liquidation to get that speculation back in line,'" he added. "Those are some of the scenarios going around."…”

But, in light of this very painful commodity boom, the USD happens to be rallying at the moment. Of course, one reason is that the US Fed (Bernanke) is talking about fighting inflation. In fact, much of the world is talking that. That also is happening at the right time to combat this commodity investment ‘boom’ that is probably going to be curtailed by world regulators.

The USD rallied heavily this week on the perception that the Fed is really going to try and do something about inflation in the US. All the markets needed was an excuse to rally the USD because there is already so much pressure in the EU zone to stem the Euro’s rise. Gold took quite a hit this week as a result. I would not be surprised that the world commodity investment mania is behind the USD rallying because a higher USD is a way to combat that.

We had alerted subscribers Sunday that the USD might strengthen Tuesday, and gold correct. That happened. Oil has been resisting correction somewhat, however.

The Prudent Squirrel newsletter is our financial and gold commentary. Subscribers get 44 newsletters a year on Sundays, and also mid week email alerts as needed. We alerted our subscribers Sunday that gold could correct Tuesday. The USD has strengthened significantly since. The alerts include quick notification of important financial news developments by email. Subscribers tell us that the alerts alone are worth subscribing for.

Stop by and have a look.

Christopher Laird
Editor-in-Chief
www.PrudentSquirrel.com

A Consensual Hallucination

I really wish that I could remember where I first heard that phrase. It seems to describe so much of the way that life is structured here in the good ol' USA.

Currently, the best application for the phrase is in the financial sector. Now, before you all get off on your high horses, remember that I am a Republican. But I am a flavor of Republican that is as far out of power as you can get (You know, the kind that doesn't like foreign entanglements and likes to pay the bills on time). The financial sector is reeling currently, and that is a symptom of the underlying problems that infect the entire country.

Anyway, Joseph Stiglitz wrote a fantastic article yesterday for the Gulf Times. He says the world is changing (duh), but he says it in such a way that I feel smarter for reading it. What it got me thinking about is just how thoroughly and completely the new school of the Republican Party (Read here George W. Bush and Tom Delay and their ilk) have fucked us over. We all got suckered into thinking that a secular religion of free markets and low taxes would deliver us to the promised land. We believed the snake-oil salesmen of the Laffer Curve and the New American Century, we got caught up in their hallucination.

But what really got handed to us was the keys to forty years in the desert. The new school Republicans made sure that their rich friends got richer and the rest of us got what we so richly deserved for believing their shpiel (screwed). Starting with Reagan, continuing through Bush I and Clinton, and then going into hyperdrive with the Junior Shithead Bush (JSB), the rich have sold off our manufacturing to low-wage countries. They have also sold us the idea that we could make money selling bizarre financial services and hamburgers to each other.

Well, that really has got to end. We are going to be looking at more than a generation to rebuild ourselves into a useful country instead of a group of useless prom queens. We will have to rebuild our factories with new technology that uses less energy. We are going to have to reduce our excessive consumption. We will have to walk more and drive less. We will have to start acting like adults rather than spoiled children.

We will be looking at making a change here. How we act as a society and as individuals will define our true place in history. We have ringside seats to history here in the next ten years. This nation will change. I am waiting breathlessly to see how it goes.

Keeping a low profile

One of the nice things about the blogs for preppers is finally having a chance to talk with someone about it. You see, I grew up in Utah (Since I have a beer in my hand, it is safe to assume I am not a Mormon), and in Utah, you can talk freely about your preps, because the Mormons that constitute around 60-65% have prepping as part of their lifestyle.

But out here in Gentile country (In Utah this reads Non-Mormon), prepping is a thing of the fringe, and my old joke that was funny while I was in Utah is no longer funny.

"Why do I need food storage, I have a gun and I know where my nearest Mormon lives."

Now I am a prepper, and as I stand here thinking about the future, I am thinking that I am not going to go out of my way to tell folks about my stash. In Utah, it was part and parcel of everyday life, most people were prepped and there were no worries in talking about it.

Here and now, no one is prepped, the just in time deliveries to the grocery stores leave not too much for the lumpenproletariat when TSHTF and now the stuff in my basement becomes valuable and interesting to the hungry folk. So it is best that no one knows about it and it stays that way. I would recommend that all of you do the same.

Sealing Stuff

I have two means of sealing stuff for storage.

A pre-TEOTWAWKI Sealer from Cabelas and a

post-TEOTWAWKI sealer from Pioneering Concepts.

Now, as much as anything these two gizmo's show just how conflicted I am about the SHTF. I for one, am praying that all of my preps will lie useless in the basement, to be thrown away in disgust in ten or so years with me muttering "what a waste of money". I just tend to think that I am going to have to use them.

The Cabela's sealer is a dream. I have a buttload of bags and it really simplifies the ability to stash stuff away on the mornings when I do my preps. It is quick and easy to use, but it takes up a lot of space, burns power, and uses specialized bags. Great while you can use it, shiny, sheen, and great to show off, but useless in a pinch.

The Pump-n-Seal is small, manually powered, and takes some time. It only has one moving part and requires one consumable part that is very cheap. You seal things in bottles so there are no specialized bags.

So in a way, this post is to remind you to look at your preps and your life. It is all right to have some wretched excess in your life, but recognize it for what it is and have a practical backup in place for the (rapidly increasing) chance you are going to need it.

Cues for you shopping experience

Now, some of you are out far enough away from the city that this doesn't apply to you. So take it or leave it, I'll try to be as non-pedantic as possible.

Until the collapse we are probably going to have to deal with the corporate store that brings in the "just in time" vittles. That being said, now is the time to start minimizing the amount you use these facilities and choosing the one that best has the chance of getting you what you need while we are waiting and hoping that the worst doesn't happen.

First, when you go to the store, take a look at the parking lot. If there are a bunch of expensive cars and well dressed people, that is probably not the store for you. If you are still eating high off the hog, you probably ought to reconsider your lifestyle. High off the hog is what is coming to an end. We could live that way as long as we didn't save anything, borrow more than we can afford, and try to keep up with the Joneses. If you are prepping and still spending huge on your day to day supplies, I don't think you will be able to react when the SHTF.

Now, back to the store, who is in it? Well-dressed white folks are a bad sign. The greater likelihood is that they are still "livin' the dream", and as such, they are easy marks for high prices and a lot of useless shit to impress the neighbors. These stores prey on the gullible and foolish, it isn't for you.

Around here, if you get through the parking lot OK, and there is a minority of dumbass whiteboys in the front of the store, start looking for the Russians and the Mexicans. These are harbingers of good things. They keep to the basics, cook at home for families, and the women can usually squeeze a nickel 'til it shits a dime.

So, you have found your store and it has none of the negative indicators (Expensive cars and well-dressed whiteys) and some of the positive indicators (Russians or Mexicans) you have your store.

To fully exploit this store, you will need to do a little discrete stalking. Pick out a women (again, Russian or Mexican) with three or four well-behaved kids. Make a point of the well-behaved data point, if they have kids running around like maniacs, they are not going to teach you anything. Anyway, follow this woman around, note what she buys and try to figure out how here family eats. The ability to isolate the cheapest high-quality carbohydrates and proteins is an acquired skill. This will allow you think about how to go about feeding families as low as possible. Granted, you will be looking at some funny food at first, but you can spice it up your own way and make it into something positive.

Canning beef

In the town I live in, there is a "Cash and Carry" store that caters to restaurants but will sell to anyone that comes in with cash. Well, they have the best deals on meat that I have seen. So yesterday was spent canning fifteen pounds of beef that I bought for $2.02 a pound. The stuff was beautiful, not an ounce of fat on it and boneless. It was called "special cuts" or something of the sort and it looked like flank steak ends.

So, dredged out the canner and the fry pan and started the process. I have a big non-stick pan (Yes I know, I know, but I love the easy clean up) and I started frying up in 2 pound batches. Each batch got two teaspoons of kosher salt, a teaspoon of pepper, a tablespoon of dried onion, and a teaspoon of dried garlic.

Browned each batch and then pooled them in my 3 gallon pot to let the juices run off. After I finished, I took the juices and added about 4 cups of water and 5 bouillon cubes and brought it to a boil.

While that was boiling up, I packed the meat into seven wide mouth quart jars, each with a bay leaf in it. I also reserved about 2.5 pounds of the browned meat for tomorrow's dinner. So each of the bottles got around 1-3/4 pounds of meat. I then topped off the jars with the juice/bouillon mix (leaving 1 inch of head space), put the tops on, screwed the lids on tight and stuck them in the cooker.



Cooked for 90 minutes at between 10-12 lbs (I have to have the gauge tested at the local extension soon, but it seems OK for now, I won't break into these until it's tested though) and Voila.....Stew concentrate to add to fresh veggies from the garden.

Now, the reason that I am writing all this boring stuff down, is to talk about how life might not be all that bad after TEOTWAWKI. You will just have to do stuff like this quite often. You will have to "make hay while the sun shines" whenever you can. Drying and canning will happen when the harvest comes in. When you get some meat you will prepare it for storage. You will eat from your garden and hopefully get some eggs from your chickens (my town lets you have three). Brew your own beer and watch the world instead of TV.

Life will be substantially different, but that does not mean bad. Work on what you need to live, not just survive

This should make the greedy bastards froth at the mouth

I just read this on Mike Shedlock's blog, (Mish's Economic Trend Anlysis) and was astounded that the folks over in the Middle East just started talking about this publicly.

Saudi Arabia's Shura council (parliament) will hold a series of meetings over the next two weeks to discuss a controversial proposal by a key member to curb oil production to save reserves for better prices, Saudi media reported. The council will listen to a report by deputy chairman of the Shura water and public utilities committee, Salim bin Rashid Al Marri, who will argue for cutting crude supplies to maintain the Kingdom's underground reserves.

"Marri will seek to persuade council members that the oil production must be linked to the country's actual development needs not the needs of foreign consumers," Alriyadh newspaper said in a report from the capital Riyadh. "He will tell the Council that keeping sufficient oil quantities underground is a good investment for the future as oil prices will then be higher…he will argue that this will be better than producing more oil and generating financial surpluses on the grounds these surpluses are causing inflation."

"The price of oil under ground is actually higher than its current market price because it will become a unique commodity by time and demand will continue to rise because of a steady growth in the world's population," Marri told Alriyadh.

"The level of oil production in Saudi Arabia must be linked to the country's actual development and financial needs not to market prices and the need of foreign consumer. It is not wise to sap this resource just to satisfy the demand of foreign markets.

The original article can be found here.

Folks, one of the most difficult things to remember is that the shit over in the middle east just isn't our oil. It belongs to the people there, not to us. The greedy bastards in the oil companies pumped all of our oil out a long time ago. Until the 1970's we held the same position that Saudi Arabia currently holds, we were the largest exporter and the swing producer. Standard Oil and the greedy fucking capitalist swine that ran the oil companies sucked all of our oil to build their mansions. Now they have their mansions, the ownership of the majority of the US government, and their mercenary guards (read here "Blackwater") and the people of the US have bupkis.

Oil is going to get scarier and scarier over time. The folks who are sitting on top of it are beginning to realize that they are in the catbird seat, and they are going to do what anyone would do in that instance, squeeze it for everything it is worth. It is only common sense that you ration a valuable resource. That is just common sense.

Oil is going away. There is less and less of it every year, and the need to control it will become greater and greater. We have built a military specifically around the idea of protecting the oil supply. Do you think for a minute we won't use it?

This is truly sad

In loving memory
Lance Corporal ***** *********
1982-2004
Died In Fallujah Iraq

I have seen these before, but for some reason, seeing one yesterday really affected me badly, I was almost in tears.

But the reason really isn't the tragedy of a young man's death, I was an infantryman myself, and there are risks to that business that you take on when you sign on. I was lucky enough not to have had to pay the butcher's bill myself, but there are holes in my life where someone paid the bill for me.

The reason that I was truly saddened is that this was posted as a bumper sticker on an SUV. That in itself is too laden with irony to be bearable, but the real issue was that it was starting to get seriously faded and the SUV had a for-sale sign on it.

Fighting a war is usually avoidable, and this one was probably more avoidable than most. But the tragedy will always be the losses that will fade from our memory over time. Losses that didn't have to be made for purposes that were based on flawed logic and to profit the few at the expense of the many.

Now this I like

Foreclosure Nation: Squatters or Pioneers?

I love the way that the country has been an incredible collection of dumb-asses for the past 8 years. The banks and mortgage companies and homebuilders have taken off and built way too many big, shitty homes and people will be leaving them in droves as they start defaulting on their mortgages.

A portion of the blame has to be placed at the folks who took out the loans, but for my money, the bulk of the blame has to be heaped on the banks and Wall street. The greedy bastards did everything to line their pockets. I say up against the wall with the whole lot.

These folks here are doing the sensible thing. They need a home and living on the street while a goddamn bank squats on an empty property is just plain silly. This has my wholehearted approval.

Good job.

What do we do when....

Think about the conversation that we have been having here, me doing most of the babbling, you guys being kind enough to check in and read what I am thinking that day. The act is mediated by some pretty amazing pieces of technology.

• The computer you are sitting in front of is a high tech marvel.
• The phone/DSL/cable line that you access the information through is pretty amazing in and of itself, sitting on top of a network of supercomputers.
• The Google infrastructure where all of this resides and is mediated for us.

So, if TSHTF, just how much use will these pretty gee-gaws be to us. The computer itself will remain in place, but as a old man user from prior to the internet, the technology itself is boring without the internet to deliver the world to you. Without your spiffy connection to the rest of the world, the beast with the keyboard is fairly boring.

So, what do we do here? We are all looking for ways to survive a serious change. What other options are available to us when the local connection, last mile of service goes down?

Less of us

In the end, that is what it is going to be. We are dancing around the hard truth right now, the 600 pound gorilla that Paul Ehrlich has been pointing at for the past 40 years. Granted, the guy was premature, and he had a tendency to come off as a serious nut-job, but he is right, there are just too many fucking humans on the planet. If we are going to be happy and healthy and have good lives, the number has to go down and nature has a whole bunch of ways of doing this for us.

The real hard part to digest is that birth rates in first world economies haven't fallen fast enough to thin the herd and the third world is starting to get a life span acceptable to, lets say 1900 USA. So they need to slow down on the number of chilluns coming down the chute instead of popping them out on an assembly line basis as is being done currently. But the religieuse see this kind of talk as anathema and scream and yell like no Mānana . Speaking about the need for, ahem, family planning is a screaming crazy issue in the US

Now, I realize that many of you will be saying now "damnit, not another of these screwball Malthusians". You know, you are probably right, you might as well sign off here. Because this is one of those issues that I call a dancing faster problem. If any of you have kids, you probably have seen the game where there is a pad on the floor in front of a computer, the computer shows steps and you dance according to the pattern on the screen. As you progress, the tempo goes faster and faster until finally, even Gregory Hines would fall exhausted by the way.

The theories of Malthus and Ehrlich are just like that game. Where these doomsayers (Yes, that is what they are) made their mistake is not understanding that the human race is unique in its ability to distort entropy by the use of massive inputs of energy. By playing the "Burn energy to make up the difference" game, we have been dodging bullets for the last fifty years. But I think that now the bullets are going to start hitting home, and when famine starts, the world kind of goes nuts in a collective manner. That is where we are sitting and might very well be the next act of the play.

Hell, who knows when the down-leg will start. We might even be looking at another 50 years. Ho hum. But it is out there, and unless someone gets really damn busy and figures out how to repeal the second law of thermodynamics, it ain't going to go away either.

Having this many of us around, we are screwing shit up. We are sucking out the oil and eating all the fish. We are pissing in every available stream and overbuilding everywhere. At the end of the day it is getting awkward for us in the west to come to grips with the earth raping needed to keep up our "lifestyle", and if the rest of the world goes down the path we in the west have taken, the party will begin very shortly thank you.

A nifty new dingus

When you read this, you will note that there is a spiffy little map that shows where you guys are in the world. Ain't that swell.

But I am saying this out loud here, remember that this is an off the shelf product that any bonehead can access on the web. What this shows is that the web itself follows you, that is it's nature and that is how the whole thing works.

You e-mails can be copied at any of the servers that route it into your mailbox. Folks can peek into your instant messages at any number of steps. And yes, the guv'mint can watch you.

For me it doesn't really matter much. My boring and pathetic life is beneath notice for just about everyone. I don't propose violent overthrow of anything, and the worst that can be said is that I have a morbid fascination for train wrecks, especially of the political and economic flavors.

But, that being said, keep in the back of your mind the idea that the web is transparent. If there is something that you do wish to keep other peoples noses out of, read up on cryptography and packet anonymizers.

For the greater bulk of you out there, there will never be a use for this thought. But on the off-chance that there may be something truly private....think before you put it out there on the net.

Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Man, This brought me to tears

I don't know how these folks manage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/fashion/01rich.html?ei=5087&em=&en=d3fe3d03622d334b&ex=1212552000&pagewanted=all

I am going to put out a coffee can at the local Safeway so we can collect some money to help.

Making due

One of the day to day issues that folks are going to have to deal with is diet. Let's face facts folks, our love affair with meat is probably going to come to a tear-filled end soon. I am really going to be sad when it gets priced out of the range appropriate to a pound or so a day.

Breakfast is bacon or sausage, eggs. Lunch is a sandwich with a big old bunch of meat and cheese. Dinner is roast beef or pork or chicken. God, I can go on for hours about my favorite meat dishes.

Raising meat is expensive. It takes a buttload of perfectly good resources to grow up a steer to slaughter weight. It takes huge amounts of fossil fuels to grow the corn that we use to feed them, Transporting and frozen storage burn through energy like nobody's business. Maintaining stock in a store is difficult. We just ate that much meat because the whole damn country was that rich.

I hold no truck with the animal rights types. If a critter is prey-eat it. They have no fucking rights and if some puke tries to tell me otherwise I usually start fantasizing about cannibalism. My issue here is that the energy inputs required to maintain our current level of meat production and that our current levels consumption is not sustainable.

This will lead to a lot of other issues that folks don't usually think about. Leather goods will start becoming a lot more expensive. If you are an adult, buy some high quality shoes/boots that can be resoled. The cost of fertilizer in a lot of farms will go up, as the shit from the feedlots starts to decrease.

In real terms we will probably be more healthy. We (I) really do each too much meat. We need more greens and raw foods in our diet. We need to eat lower on the food chain. We will be better for this.

But I for one will always long for a good, well-marbled ribeye.

The Peace of Westphalia is going to get reversed

The big issues that will be facing us in the future boil down pretty much to what entity will serve as the central focus of our public/political life. I think that the large nation state will not be able to hold itself together without the massive inputs of energy allowed by oil and coal.

In order to tie itself together, the large nation state needs to expend energy to tie the units together economically. The larger the state, the greater the energy usage required. The US, China, and Russia are the main examples of this level of physical size, though you probably could make an argument that Brazil, Indonesia, and Australia may be there too. And let us not forget the EU, they are effectively trying to make a patchwork giant state.

So, when the decline in availability of oil starts to gain serious traction, these states will begin to show strain. The distance from the capital will begin to matter as the state has less and less to offer the outlying districts. Large non-capital cities will begin to assert themselves and regional associations will begin to step to the fore.

I think that you will begin seeing something like the good old "Sagebrush Rebellion" but this time they will be taking steroids. Demands for return of taxes will begin and taxes at the state level will go up. The overall large-scale state will begin to deteriorate and without a large, oil-fueled military to put down the rebellion, the states will start to go their own way. So we will be looking at a repeat of Gaul and Brittannia, Dacia and Illyria.

So don't think that this will just happen here. Russia is a hodgepodge of regions with no great love of Moscow. The Uighurs, Tibetians, and the Coastal Cities aren't that fond of Beijing.

The devolution will probably end up looking like Old Europe. States that are sized appropriate to the energy and population base.