L'inverno viene

Winter is coming. My Grandpa used to say this all the time when harvest was on. Anyone who has worked a harvest on a truck farm knows that it is up early and to bed late. Well folks, you might want to think about that.

TEOTWAWKI is a difficult concept to put your arms around. But what we are doing now is placing our bets on how the play will end. Even the folks who are ignoring everything are making their bet, they are betting that everything will return to a nice carmel-coated America of the past, with full shelves and money to burn.

If you are reading this, the chances are you take a different slant on the issue. I have grown to respect Dragon and Mayberry's opinion on things, though I take a different slant on the world. Dragon, Selous Scout, and Mayberry seem to be more mistrustful of human nature than I am. Truth of the matter is, this trust in human nature may very well be the death of me, but I am not sure that I can reconcile the ruthlessness that is needed should they be right with my beliefs in Christian ethics.

What I think has to happen is for the current financial and commercial systems to flat out break. I also think that this is what we are currently experiencing. The financial system is under serious attack, and the underlying commercial system is weakened. I feel that these two stages of collapse will be behind us within a year. The financial system is not a huge loss, the thieving bastards will get what they deserve, and to a certain extent, we will all find out that we have been, to a greater or lesser degree, part of the thieving bastard category.

The collapse commercial system will be a little harder. Matter of fact, it will be a lot harder. Getting the basics will become a priority. Getting the fluff will be impossible and a fond memory. Folks will have to start working as groups here. This is where you will create your circle of help and start hammering it into shape. It will be a lot of little things, sharing extra vegetables, working together canning, having stone soup parties, walking the neighborhood watch.

But this collapse will allow us to clean out the poison of banks, corporations and their slaves. I have read in the past that while a lot of slaves in the old South fought bitterly for their freedom and won it, there were as many slaves that supported their masters. This concept is beyond me, but it did exist. Similar divides were noted during our own revolutionary war. The Tories outnumbered the Patriots for a great deal of the war. It took a while to put a spine into a lot of people.

How we will break the commercial and corporate interests that are trying to enslave us is to bankrupt them. They are creatures of lucre, not honor. But the cleansing will not be fun, and it will be painful. Be careful, keep your wits about you, and keep your options open. Winter is coming.

Energy

The your ability to get through the cold times will depend on your access to energy.

Food energy, heating energy, cooking energy, transportation energy. All of these will be required. Now what you have to do in come up with alternatives and options for the types of energy you will need.

Food energy will be the diciest. Gardens are fixed and depending on your ability, probably insufficient. Food storage is good, but you have to have energy to execute this as well, as refrigeration, freezing, and canning all require significant energy inputs. Salting is not so intensive, and sun drying is good, but these are real skills that you had better start practicing. You will be able to buy food, but prices will be high and supplies will be fitful.

Cooking energy is also needed. Propane and coleman fuel offer good bang for the buck and are storable, but how secure is the supply. Natural gas and electricity might be available but intermittent, you might have to create a series of backups, where you use electricity and natural gas if it is available, then drop back to coleman fuel and propane as a first backup and then a rocket stove as a final backstop.

Heating will be a little less critical. If you are out of the rain and wind and you are dry, sweaters and coats can keep you happy. Spend your time trying to figure out how to heat as much as possible with solar and passive means. Keep your options open here, propane and catalytic heaters are great, and even those little electrical heaters are efficient as hell for heating the room you are in. The main trick here is to get over the idea of heating your whole house. Heat the room you are in and keep the rest of the house cold. Blankets don't require any external power source.

Transportation power is critical. I doubt that I will have to bug out, but I would be a stone cold fool not to have something in place in case I have to. Keep your tank full. Fill it every two days or when it drops below 7/8ths. Keep a rack for your bikes, if you are going to bug out, you will need transportation where you wind up. Don't plan on having friendly smiling people offering to fill you tank at the Shell station.

In other words, keep your options open. If you can ride it out where you are, do it. Have a plan if you can't, and keep your energy needs in mind.

Adapt

I think that the degree of frugality and adaptability that you practice during the next while will be an excellent barometer for how well you will do during the collapse. It won't be certain, but it will show you where you are when it comes to accepting change.

Let me tell you where this came from. On Mondays, I work in the food bank in a church downtown. I prep the packages that the ladies give away. What I have been amazed at is the quality of the food we give away, yesterday there were seven or eight crates of fresh vegetables, freezers of organic chickens and meat, bags and bags of day old bagels, pies, and baked goods. The food we were giving away probably looked better than my refrigerator.

The more traditional bums were the best. They came in for their food, were polite, and seemed generally grateful for the food. Of course some of them were crazier than loons, but they were very polite and grateful loons.

The first thing that surprised me is how some of the folks came in with the attitude of "I can't eat that" when they were presented with a fresh mango instead of the more traditional apple. One of the folks even looked askance at a frozen chicken, asking if we had any fresh meat.

The 30-40 year old women seemed to be the worst. They had the idea that food allergies were the silent killers, making their families and children sick. No wheat bread was wanted, don't you have spelt? We prefer organic vegetables and fruit please. If this was a single incidence, I would not have noted it, but it happened frequently enough that when I asked the folks who have worked there forever, they told me that it was a pretty recent phenomenon.

So here is the moral of the story. I think that it is time for everyone to go back to the menu that served my family for generations. It was a two item menu, take it or leave it. We had better get handy with dealing what is put in front of us, no specials, no whining, and taking it with gratitude. We don't always get what we want, deal with what you have. No prep is perfect, try to get enough and don't sweat it.

Downloading and Printing Book would be a great idea

Where There is no Doctor.

Odds and Ends

What I figure preps will do is to add to the reduced supplies that I will soon be seeing in a tighter future. There was a great article the other day discussing the types of doomers, and I realized that I really wasn't one of them. You see, I really think that all of this caterwauling and whining about the end of the world is just an odd fantasy.

The world is going to be a lot different soon. People will be the same as they ever were. Some of them will go bad and try to make a lifestyle of taking from others, but good folks will get together, hire a ruthless bastard to put down the outlaws, and then we will move on with our much smaller lifestyles and dreams. You see, I am not concerned because I realize that the last thirty years or so have been nothing but a bacchanalian excess. Like all similar excesses, it was never meant to last. The excess that I had so much fun doing was not real-life, and it was definitely not a right.

So, now we go back to being adults. We live within our means, which means living a with a lot less. The clothes in your closet are going to have to last you for quite a while folks, I would be getting some mothballs and a trunk to store them in. Don't worry if they are too small, my guess is that you are going to be losing some weight, you will be able to back into a new wardrobe.

That car you have in the front, I would consider making it the last car that you own. With the amount of driving you will be doing, it will be easy. 3,000 miles a year should do you fine. Bus travel, bikes and walking will be your transport for the most part. Your garden will be a dream, you are going to learn a lot about that hobby.

Your career is going to change. You are going to have to work. If you are in banks, or finance, or making planes or any other of the "new technology" jobs that have bloomed, you will be trying to find a job that will actually do something.

So my feeling is that if you are planning for the end of the world, you will probably be disappointed. If the world does go apocalyptic on us, your plans and preps will most likely be useless anyway.

International Standards

One of the things that, due to peak oil and the subsequent loss of cheap shipping, I feel will wither away in the future is the idea of international standards. These are insideous things, put in place by big business to make sure that everything and everyone is cut from same mold and is an obedient little servant of the corporations (or as they like to be referred to, the Lords of the Universe).

I worked in ISO-9000 and 13485 shops. The rules were stifling and moronic. They were mostly put in place by the Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) types. These are the folks that the management dredge out from underneath some rock in distant suburbia. They are usually ass-kissing yes-men, married to the concept of "the right way", when in fact, the vast majority of them have never worked in the manufacturing that they so like to control. They create the paperwork that the regulators and inspectors so love to inspect.

These folks, and their counterparts, the inspectors, are the Hitler Youth of the globalization movement. Everything according to rules. Make no variance from industry standard. Cover your ass at all times and make sure you kiss the ass of the man above you so that you can keep your phony job.

If we are going to find our way out of the morass we are in, we are going to have to use our own brains and our own common sense. We will fail sometimes, but we will eventually strike upon the right way of doing things.

A first, clumsy attempt

We have to start thinking about the future in a more positive manner. I am not proposing a polyanna-ish, public school self-esteem positive, but a realistic, self-examined self-image that the monumental screw ups of the past quarter century were just a first, clumsy, and tragically wrong attempt at a better world.

We are not that far away from Jim Crow laws, phlogiston chemistry, and eugenics. I really think that we are at a stage equivalent to a teenager that realizes that his actions do have consequences. We have come a long way, we have a lot farther to go.

So, we should criticize ourselves, but keep an open mind at how far we have come, there are miles to go before we sleep, and a whole bunch of hard times ahead, but we are doing better than we have in the past. Let's just make sure that we do better in the future.

Those poor saps....

Obama and/or McCain

Why anyone would want to be in charge during the the upcoming train wreck is beyond me. The only thing that I can see is monstrous egos, so certain of their intellect and rightness that they feel that they will be able to "lead" us to better times.

In a way, the presidency itself is a crappy position. Unless you have a compliant Congress, you have to go hat in hand begging for money. Can anyone remember a presidential budget proposal that wasn't stamped "DOA" on arrival on the hill? Then you have those old fuddy-duddies of the Supreme Court looking over your shoulder with those prune-faced disapproving looks on their mugs. Crap, a President can't even suspend Habeas Corpus without the press coming unglued.

The worst part is that, even though you have the keys to the car in terms of the military, you can't really go out and kick-ass the way you would really like. Troops gotta get paid, and that means the damn congress gets involved all over again. Then the other side has the absolute temerity to fight back!!!!

So, John and Barak, you have all this hanging over your head, then the day after you get inaugurated, everyone on the planet will be riding your ass, wondering why you haven't fixed it all yet. Now, the clincher, the economy. Since every jackass who held the position you so covet has always claimed that the economy's growth was due to their wonderfulness, that means that the Lumpen will be expecting you to keep all the crap on the shelf at Wal-Mart and at everyday low prices.

Well, Barry and John. You are well and truly fucked. You don't have the power to do anything that makes sense. You have inherited a train wreck of an economy, an unwinnable war of civilizations, a surly and uncooperative people, a bloated and overweening nanny-state, a huge federal deficit, and a debased currency that Carinus would have found appalling.

So, why is it you want the job?

An absolute must read

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/07/lessons-from-amateur-radio.html

Ron Paul's Message on the Coming Chaos

I have, for the past 35 years, expressed my grave concern for the future of America. The course we have taken over the past century has threatened our liberties, security and prosperity. In spite of these long-held concerns, I have days—growing more frequent all the time—when I’m convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur. These fast-approaching events will not go unnoticed. They will affect all of us. They will not be limited to just some areas of our country. The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed.

Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world—unless we quickly change our ways.

America, with her traditions of free markets and property rights, led the way toward great wealth and progress throughout the world as well as at home. Since we have lost our confidence in the principles of liberty, self reliance, hard work and frugality, and instead took on empire building, financed through inflation and debt, all this has changed. This is indeed frightening and an historic event.

The problem we face is not new in history. Authoritarianism has been around a long time. For centuries, inflation and debt have been used by tyrants to hold power, promote aggression, and provide “bread and circuses” for the people. The notion that a country can afford “guns and butter” with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and a massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.

Today things are different from even ancient times or the 1970s. There is something to the argument that we are now a global economy. The world has more people and is more integrated due to modern technology, communications, and travel. If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age—a globalism we could accept.

Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure. It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.

I’m fearful that my concerns have been legitimate and may even be worse than I first thought. They are now at our doorstep. Time is short for making a course correction before this grand experiment in liberty goes into deep hibernation.

There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it’s been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers.

Being an unchallenged sole superpower was never accepted by us with a sense of humility and respect. Our arrogance and aggressiveness have been used to promote a world empire backed by the most powerful army of history. This type of globalist intervention creates problems for all citizens of the world and fails to contribute to the well-being of the world’s populations. Just think how our personal liberties have been trashed here at home in the last decade.

The financial crisis, still in its early stages, is apparent to everyone: gasoline prices over $4 a gallon; skyrocketing education and medical-care costs; the collapse of the housing bubble; the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble; stockmarkets plunging; unemployment rising;, massive underemployment; excessive government debt; and unmanageable personal debt. Little doubt exists as to whether we’ll get stagflation. The question that will soon be asked is: When will the stagflation become an inflationary depression?

There are various reasons that the world economy has been globalized and the problems we face are worldwide. We cannot understand what we’re facing without understanding fiat money and the long-developing dollar bubble.

There were several stages. From the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to 1933, the Central Bank established itself as the official dollar manager. By 1933, Americans could no longer own gold, thus removing restraint on the Federal Reserve to inflate for war and welfare.

By 1945, further restraints were removed by creating the Bretton-Woods Monetary System making the dollar the reserve currency of the world. This system lasted up until 1971. During the period between 1945 and 1971, some restraints on the Fed remained in place. Foreigners, but not Americans, could convert dollars to gold at $35 an ounce. Due to the excessive dollars being created, that system came to an end in 1971.

It’s the post Bretton-Woods system that was responsible for globalizing inflation and markets and for generating a gigantic worldwide dollar bubble. That bubble is now bursting, and we’re seeing what it’s like to suffer the consequences of the many previous economic errors.

Ironically in these past 35 years, we have benefited from this very flawed system. Because the world accepted dollars as if they were gold, we only had to counterfeit more dollars, spend them overseas (indirectly encouraging our jobs to go overseas as well) and enjoy unearned prosperity. Those who took our dollars and gave us goods and services were only too anxious to loan those dollars back to us. This allowed us to export our inflation and delay the consequences we now are starting to see.

But it was never destined to last, and now we have to pay the piper. Our huge foreign debt must be paid or liquidated. Our entitlements are coming due just as the world has become more reluctant to hold dollars. The consequence of that decision is price inflation in this country—and that’s what we are witnessing today. Already price inflation overseas is even higher than here at home as a consequence of foreign central bank’s willingness to monetize our debt.

Printing dollars over long periods of time may not immediately push prices up–yet in time it always does. Now we’re seeing catch-up for past inflating of the monetary supply. As bad as it is today with $4 a gallon gasoline, this is just the beginning. It’s a gross distraction to hound away at “drill, drill, drill” as a solution to the dollar crisis and high gasoline prices. Its okay to let the market increase supplies and drill, but that issue is a gross distraction from the sins of deficits and Federal Reserve monetary shenanigans.

This bubble is different and bigger for another reason. The central banks of the world secretly collude to centrally plan the world economy. I’m convinced that agreements among central banks to “monetize” U.S. debt these past 15 years have existed, although secretly and out of the reach of any oversight of anyone—especially the U.S. Congress that doesn’t care, or just flat doesn’t understand. As this “gift” to us comes to an end, our problems worsen. The central banks and the various governments are very powerful, but eventually the markets overwhelm when the people who get stuck holding the bag (of bad dollars) catch on and spend the dollars into the economy with emotional zeal, thus igniting inflationary fever.

This time—since there are so many dollars and so many countries involved—the Fed has been able to “paper” over every approaching crisis for the past 15 years, especially with Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, which has allowed the bubble to become history’s greatest.

The mistakes made with excessive credit at artificially low rates are huge, and the market is demanding a correction. This involves excessive debt, misdirected investments, over-investments, and all the other problems caused by the government when spending the money they should never have had. Foreign militarism, welfare handouts and $80 trillion entitlement promises are all coming to an end. We don’t have the money or the wealth-creating capacity to catch up and care for all the needs that now exist because we rejected the market economy, sound money, self reliance and the principles of liberty.

Since the correction of all this misallocation of resources is necessary and must come, one can look for some good that may come as this “Big Even” unfolds.

There are two choices that people can make. The one choice that is unavailable to us is to limp along with the status quo and prop up the system with more debt, inflation and lies. That won’t happen.

One of the two choices, and the one chosen so often by government in the past is that of rejecting the principles of liberty and resorting to even bigger and more authoritarian government. Some argue that giving dictatorial powers to the President, just as we have allowed him to run the American empire, is what we should do. That’s the great danger, and in this post-911 atmosphere, too many Americans are seeking safety over freedom. We have already lost too many of our personal liberties already. Real fear of economic collapse could prompt central planners to act to such a degree that the New Deal of the 30’s might look like Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

The more the government is allowed to do in taking over and running the economy, the deeper the depression gets and the longer it lasts. That was the story of the 30ss and the early 40s, and the same mistakes are likely to be made again if we do not wake up.

But the good news is that it need not be so bad if we do the right thing. I saw “Something Big” happening in the past 18 months on the campaign trail. I was encouraged that we are capable of waking up and doing the right thing. I have literally met thousands of high school and college kids who are quite willing to accept the challenge and responsibility of a free society and reject the cradle-to-grave welfare that is promised them by so many do-good politicians.

If more hear the message of liberty, more will join in this effort. The failure of our foreign policy, welfare system, and monetary policies and virtually all government solutions are so readily apparent, it doesn’t take that much convincing. But the positive message of how freedom works and why it’s possible is what is urgently needed.

One of the best parts of accepting self reliance in a free society is that true personal satisfaction with one’s own life can be achieved. This doesn’t happen when the government assumes the role of guardian, parent or provider, because it eliminates a sense of pride. But the real problem is the government can’t provide the safety and economic security that it claims. The so-called good that government claims it can deliver is always achieved at the expense of someone else’s freedom. It’s a failed system and the young people know it.

Restoring a free society doesn’t eliminate the need to get our house in order and to pay for the extravagant spending. But the pain would not be long-lasting if we did the right things, and best of all the empire would have to end for financial reasons. Our wars would stop, the attack on civil liberties would cease, and prosperity would return. The choices are clear: it shouldn’t be difficult, but the big event now unfolding gives us a great opportunity to reverse the tide and resume the truly great American Revolution started in 1776. Opportunity knocks in spite of the urgency and the dangers we face.

Let’s make “Something Big is Happening” be the discovery that freedom works and is popular and the big economic and political event we’re witnessing is a blessing in disguise.

States Responsibilities

Now that the government free stuff is coming to an end, what I think will happen is that folks in this country will start ignoring the federal government and start to make their own arrangements. From my point of view, the Federal government has never been able to get by without bribing the population. Now that there is a real financial crisis, the government will not be able to keep passing out the bribes to the masses, and now the masses will start ignoring them.

Sure, the federal government will try to assert it's power, but the truth of the matter is that they will not be able to do it. No combination of military and police power has the manpower or the discipline to carry it serious suppression of domestic disobedience should the population decide to ignore the government's wishes. Some folks think that "Blackwater" or "the Black Helicopters carrying UN troops" will do it for the government. Get real, Blackwater doesn't have the resources to hold a single medium-sized city. As for the black helicopters, hell, can anyone show me a UN mission that worked?

So, without the federal government being able to either bribe or threaten us effectively, what next? I see tax revolt to the Fed as one of the first steps. This will be a good thing, it will force the government to first start cutting off the bribes, then will force the government to start defaulting on its bonds. Remember, begin with the bankers and the foreigners first on the defaults.

Once that train has left the station, then it will be time for the State governments or perhaps regional entities to start coming to the fore. Local governments will also have to step up their work ethic and clean up their act. This is going to be hard on some folks, these levels of government have become a group of nanny-state crybabies, screaming for the Fed to help them at every step, now they are going to have to break their suction with the giant federal tit and start doing something themselves. Oh, they will thrash around for a bit, but they will get the hang of it.

The key is remembering that the centralization of the continental state is dependent on the flow of cheap energy and cheap money. Now that the end is near for cheap oil, the continental state simply doesn't have the tools to survive. It will wither.

We won't sink into chaos. There will be hard times, there will probably be some wars. Hell, if the countries of Europe (BTW, I see the EU collapsing too) can live through the all the wars they have lived through and still remain intact, so can we. All we will be losing is an overweening Federal government. Hell, it might even be an improvement.

Buying plastic

I had a compost bin...purchased in my salad days of high wage employment. What a dumbass I was. Let's get something straight, plastic is a strange material, it really isn't that good at all the applications that it is used for.

So now you can figure out what kind of bin I had. So now it is going downstairs to get some mesh screen that I have and to the cull pile at home depot to pull out some cut chunks of 2x4. I figure that this will be a job for two boys who are bored on their summer vacation with me offering sage wisdom and generally unwanted advice.

Anyway, back to the point. Take a look through your house, and take an inventory of the crap you have. Pay special attention to the cheap crap that you have amassed. It is all usually injection molded plastic crap. You know that the crap is going to break at the most inconvenient time.

So, my recommendation today is to start purging it. Most of it you don't need, it is just crap you bought when you had more money than sense. If you can do without it, just throw it away, or use it until it dies and replace it with something well made, or sell it to some gullible fool at your next yard sale. If it is actually something that you need, replace it with a well made unit using metal, or glass, or ceramic.

The days of cheap are over. Manufactured items may very well start becoming more and more difficult to afford as the economy finds its natural state. Plastic is oil, we used it for everything so that prices could be lowered at the Wal-Mart, but even that is ending now. You will not be able to run and replace cheap with cheap, you had better have something that will last.

One of the things that we have to change is our attitudes. When we purchase something, it should be for a purpose and it should be well made. Too much of our massive pile of stuff is impulse buys and crap. You guys have it in your house, it is all over my house. We need to have less and have stuff that is a once in a lifetime purchase that our children argue over when we are dead.

This is one of the best things the Dead ever did, I would recommend listening to the whole thing, more than any song I know, it defines today's world.

How we will get through

The big issue that we have to deal with is; how do we build a real economy?

Down here in the trenches, everyone knows that the "service economy" is a crock. The truth of globalization is that we made rich people richer. We were lulled into thinking that we were above a decent days work for a decent days pay. As a country, we started to feel that we were to good to do actual work, that our job was an endless excel spreadsheet doing analysis of trends. Hell, the real problem with illegal immigration is that every American seems to feel that honest work is above his station.

Hell, what pisses me off is when I hear some idiot talking about the "lazy Mexicans". Face it folks, most of these guys can work most Americans into the ground. They don't ask for the sun, moon, and stars for wages, and they don't need their asses kissed every ten minutes as part of a self-esteem plan.

Get used to it guys. We will have to go back to work. Not this sanitized, white collar crap, but get down to it work making things and selling real services. Now I am less than pleased with this idea myself, but it is for real. As a fat old man, it looks like I get to experience the joy of working myself back into shape. It will be good for me.