These guys had come good ideas.
When the Shit Hits the Fan III – Starting to Rebuild
The current political situation notwithstanding, I reckon the odds of a major societal collapse to be pretty low. Things aren’t so hot right now, but the power is still on and the gas stations still have fuel. But still – we do have rolling blackouts in California. We have had riots in the streets over most of last summer. So, in the event the malodorous assimilated residue of the digestive process meets the oscillating air-movement device, it’s probably good to have some idea of what to do next. In fact, it’s probably good to have some idea what to do well ahead of time.
Even if it doesn’t actually happen, well, times are interesting, and in times like these, it’s sometimes entertaining to examine what life could be like after a major societal collapse. So, this series will give the thoughts of a simple old country boy from Allamakee County on how to get through any such really, really bad times.
Local Alliances
As with many things, any rebuilding is likely to begin with one’s neighbors. The rebuilding process would likely begin with something as routine as trading your neighbor a couple of bars of homemade soap for a couple of cups of salt.
At this level barter can work quite well. And, at the level, having some skill at something that can be done under trying circumstances can give you items to barter. Making soap is a great example. Soap is a great commodity, as cleanliness is next to healthiness, and maintaining hygiene of self and surroundings is important – and soap can make that possible.
A young healthy guy who is a good shot might choose to scour surrounding woods and fields for edible game or furbearers, to be bartered perhaps for more ammo with which to bring in more game. Or he may just trade his strong arms and back to help cut and split firewood in exchange for a hot meal.
Someone who knows how to weld, or how to machine metal would have no problem finding someone willing to trade for his skill. Ditto for a good carpenter or mechanic. Both sets of my grandparents raised families through the Depression, and both of my grandfathers always said that “a man who’s good with his hands will never go hungry.”
Acquiring some such skill in advance, assuming one hasn’t already done so, would seem a prudent move. Speaking for us here at the Casa de Animal, Mrs. Animal knows the finer points of making soap with a variety of ingredients (she once made a batch of soap from clarified bacon grease, just to see if it would work) and can make a sewing machine sit up and beg. I’m pretty handy with guns – I can clean them, sight them, load for them and am a pretty fair jackleg gunsmith. And, since our new house is heated largely with wood, it’s good that I can run a chainsaw and know one end of an axe from the other.
Basic skills, for a back-to-basics lifestyle; that’s the ticket. Skills have value, too, which brings us to…
Building Trust
They key to building trust is in maintaining relationships that are mutually advantageous. Specifically: Trade. And the neat thing (one of the few neat things, in fact) about a world recovering from a SHTF situation is the freedom that folks would have in re-establishing trade.
I’ve always disliked the term “capitalism.” In its proper form, there’s no “-ism” to capitalism, no underlying ideology; just free people, freely trading their own skills, assets, knowledge, and resources, with each other – a free and voluntary exchange of value for value, in which all parties realize a gain. Everybody wins. Aside from this free exchange, there are only two other ways in which assets can change hands: By force, which is theft, or by deceit, which is fraud. The free exchange, free trade, generally known as capitalism, is the only acceptable means.
People doing business together is the best way. And it’s the best way to build trust.
Sure, there will always be some fraudsters and crooks among us. But the best way to deal with them in such a situation is to ostracize the fraudsters and eliminate the thieves; the fraudsters would soon find being able to rely only on themselves uncomfortable, and the thieves would either depart for greener pastures or be… dealt with, by some other means.
Rebuilding a society doesn’t mean that there won’t be some harsh measures required.
Why is this important? Because you can’t have any kind of reliable alliances, local or otherwise, without a certain level of trust. Being trustworthy means being reliable – it means being honest – it means doing what you said you’d do. It means, if you screw something up, you make it good. Mutual advantage will go a long way towards keeping trade on the up and up, but for broader issues on a larger scale, a level of trust between people and communities will be required. Speaking of which…
It worked… for a while.
Broader Alliances
Local alliances will eventually, if all goes well, reach the size of what one might call a village, or maybe a small town. But as rebuilding continues, some sort of larger alliance may form, one that would require some sort of (I know, I know) government.
But it wouldn’t have to be government as we know it today. At least, we can hope not.
Picture three villages separated by perhaps thirty or forty miles. One village is along the coast and has a number of members dedicated to making salt by drying seawater in flat basins. A second is found on the high plains some way to the east, and several members have banded together to raise a herd based on the few beef cattle that have made it through earlier stages of the collapse. The third lies in the wooded hills to the north and has formed a local specialty of producing building timber and charcoal.
Salt, timber, charcoal, beef, all have their uses, and all are produced locally. The village producing salt may have no timber nearby, while the village with the herders lack a source of salt for preserving meat and hides. So, how to organize trade? Well, with delegates – a trade commission, chosen from among the people of the various villages. They could be volunteers, but if there are a surplus of volunteers, it may be necessary to choose from among them. By, well, you know, some sort of election.
The delegates wouldn’t have to have any authority; at least, not in the sense that they can tell anyone what to do. They would, ideally, have the authority to negotiate a trade deal with another village.
That could be the beginning. From a loose alliance of villages to something more like a county – or a state. One could hope that the level of government would remain no higher than trade negotiating authority, but as a society grows, there are a few larger issues that might negate that hope. Which leads to…
Distributed Interests
As a society begins to produce on a larger scale, as the overall wealth of a community grows, there are always those who would seek to take that wealth by force. To that end, some sort of common defense would likely be necessary. That could be done by forming some kind of government. But is that really necessary?
Government, of course, has only two legitimate functions: To protect the freedom and property of the citizenry. In short: To keep others from hurting you or taking your stuff. How else to accomplish those two things?
As the kind of trade alliances we described above come into being, there would be reason to think about protecting trade routes and whatever kind of trade caravans would be necessary. There would also be a need to set up regular routes and maintain those routes – you know, roads – which would facilitate such protection.
Still, this could of course be done outside of any government. A volunteer militia could serve for local defense, and the traders could hire guards and workers to maintain the roads, as they would be the ones with an interest in so doing. Whether this would scale up to a level larger than a regional alliance of a few small communities, that remains to be seen. This would require that the community factor the costs of these activities into their production. And pricing can easily be facilitated by one thing: Money.
Worth its weight in rabbits.
Mediums of Trade
Think for a moment about currency.
In any growing society that is proceeding with the development of a division of labor, some form of currency becomes necessary. Why? Currency is, at its heart, a tool we use to trade with one another. It’s a medium of exchange, and in a developed, modern economy doesn’t always carry an inherent value in and of itself; a fiat currency could be paper, electrons or cowry shells, as long as all parties agree to a certain value per unit.
But in a growing, rebuilding society one would think that a currency with some intrinsic value would be easier for everyone to agree on, as the currency itself would be subject to market forces.
The Old Man used to say, “something is worth whatever you can get someone to pay you for it.”
I’ve long suspected that in an immediate post-crisis world, one of the primary replacements for a traditional currency would be obvious: Ammo. Modern ammo requires an industrial base to produce, and if things are really bad, there wouldn’t be any new supply. The problem is that ammo, once expended, is gone, which would rapidly drive up the value. A freshly dead rabbit may be worth five .22 shells today, ten next week, fifty next month.
So, what has intrinsic value and isn’t expendable? Metals, of course.
It’s always been money.
In the early stages of a SHTF scenario, of course, gold and silver may be worth no more than lead among people concerned with feeding themselves. But as some level of production, trade, and prosperity return, it’s not unreasonable to think that precious metals would regain some of their former luster.
In the past, of course, other commodities have also served as currency, of sorts: Salt, for example, or spices, or useful metals like lead or aluminum.
Either way, it’s a currency – money. And money, that tool we use to trade with one another, value for value, is the wellspring of trade. Indeed, it’s the wellspring of civilization. The establishment of some standard currency would be a major hurdle on the way back.
It may be the major hurdle.
A New World?
Maybe. Maybe not. In the event of such a world-shaking event, I think it far more likely that local warlords (see the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) would seize control in too many areas for any kind of widespread alliance and, eventually, a new society to form. Such is, after all, the norm, for the vast majority of human history.
But that just may be my own personal misanthropic streak speaking.
All of this is, of course, conjecture. It may never happen, and I sure hope it doesn’t. But if it does… Well, remember that Boy Scout motto.
I may have my second class pin in a drawer somewhere. I should go look.
Animal!
Just put an offer on some land in Fairbanks. Maybe we’ll be neighbors (relatively). Market analysis says that land in the Chena Valley is set to go up in value 38% in the next 12 months. It would seem that we’re not the only ones planning an escape. Wouldn’t be moving up there for a while, but I feel like that’s on topic for this post.
Also Mammary Monday.
https://archive.li/oPDQz
Well, Q, give us a holler when you’re up there. By this summer we’ll be set up for grilling.
bottlecaps are the currency of the future – it is known.
Someone had to say it.
Not beanie babies?
Beanie babies worked for this guy
Assuming some sort of electrical generation is available, this is where the explosion of things like RaspPis and Arduinos would make a great impact I would think. Small weather stations can be built, localized networking between a small settlement and/or village can be established.
I always envisioned I’d be the “Brain” character in any future dystopia. Maybe because I have no other discernible practical skills.
Insert Zardoz grain slave pic here.
Gracias!
I’m shooting more for Marlon Brando in Island of Dr. Moreau.
I can lift heavy things but im not too smart. We should team up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di60NYGu03Y
lol
Good one again Animal! A lunchtime treat,
Thanks!
Agreed. I have to go into work on Mondays and this is my perfect mid-morning read and contemplation period.
The problem is that ammo, once expended, is gone, which would rapidly drive up the value. A freshly dead rabbit may be worth five .22 shells today, ten next week, fifty next month.
Which would mean that ammo would stop being used as a currency. Something that gets more valuable over time begins to look less like a medium of exchange and more like a store of value (the other function of currency). This is where the saying “bad money drives out good” – people (rationally) want to trade away depreciating assets and hoard appreciating assets. I recall reading that one of the things that made the Roman economy work was that taxes had to be paid in specie (I actually don’t know the extent that this happened). The theory was, this forced gold and silver into circulation and mitigated the tendency for it to disappear into people’s rainy day funds.
One of the things that has made gold and silver such durable bases of currency is that their supply tends to grow roughly as fast as the overall economy grows. Its self-regulating – as gold is found, the price goes down so less new mining is done until the economy/demand catches up and the price goes back up to support a good ROI on new mines. As the economy/demand grows, the price goes up and new mines become a good investment.
I’d think that salt and spices would be worth more during the rebuilding period then precious metals. Looking up the history of spices gets interesting (to me at least). As an example, grains of paradise were used for a long time as a cheap substitute for black peppercorns, as industrialization continued, grains of paradise are now more expensive then black peppercorns.
In the event of such a world-shaking event, I think it far more likely that local warlords (see the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) would seize control in too many areas for any kind of widespread alliance and, eventually, a new society to form.
Yep. I’d like stay far away from them. It probably won’t work out that way.
Initially/temporarily, sure. But history also shows a pattern of consolidation. Which is also something I wouldn’t want to live through.
our local institutions are probably still too strong and decentralized for true societal collapse.
Sudden instant collapse and thrust into a nightmare situation, sure; save war I would guess. Gradually deteriorating to a point where communities start to break off and go their own path? I see that happening more so over time.
True, but they’re working on it. The ‘trained Marxists’ at BLM are going after all of the bases of societal function, helped along by the camp followers and useful idiots in media & academia.
“These guys had come good ideas.” The audacity!
Look like a bunch of white supremacists to me. Which means none of their ideas could be good, right?
I reckon the odds of a major societal collapse to be pretty low
I tend to agree that we are looking at more of a gradual decline/stagnation, unless/until some current trends reverse. The event that I think could set off a major/historically rapid collapse would be hyperinflation/currency collapse. That would take down the world economy as well as our own, and would be incredibly disruptive to society and to current governments, many of which would not survive.
Yeah, I don’t think we are getting a total collapse like assumed in this article without some sort of war or other disruptive event. Inflation alone would suck, and an economic collapse could spiral out of control and leave many people dirt poor (possibly leading to reactions that lead to further collapse) but won’t be disrupting the major systems (power grids, internet, etc).
https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/status/1361358292052807680?s=21
The original tweet is downright frightening.
Jesus, that’s a good one.
So’s this:
https://twitter.com/NoWarNoRoads/status/1361006252655050756
I love the linked tweet, though.
Teach your children to never talk to reporters. AJAB.
True. I really should’ve learned reloading.
The number of people telling me this lately. I’m trying to decide whether to just keep loading up practice ammo for myself, or to take a break from shooting and go into the primer scalping business.
NYT retracts Sicknick story (sorta, close enough anyway):
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-york-times-retracts-sicknick-story
I will go back and read the article more carefully in a bit. But the one-off about the rabbits—that’s why God invented snares. Lots of ways to hunt that don’t involve wasting bullets.
My fur trapper cousin (by marriage) agrees with you.
Runs a 200-km-long trapline north of Grande Cache, Alberta, every winter. Has trouble keeping up with all of the critters he gets. Great furs! (I wish I’d had a lynx fur rug to seduce women on when I was younger — every woman who touches that fur seems to instantly melt into a puddle of barely-restrained lust; given what the fur actually feels like, can’t say I blame ’em.)
*starts working on atlatl*
That is like my favorite word.
Are you going to use that around lake Titicaca?
I live surrounded by rabbits. Sometimes I think I see them more often than squirrels. Naturally the rabbits are completely non-existent in the areas where hunting is allowed.
I have tons of squirrels. I look at them and wonder if they’re even worth the effort.
NO! At least not the red ones.
When your tummy is rumbling cause you haven’t had protein in a few days/weeks they are well worth the effort.
We have a lot of bunnies, quails, snakes that I would suspect become primary protein sources.
I’m still amazed there aren’t more coyote sightings around here, given all the rabbits.
OT: In news that will shock absolutely no one here, one of the 1/6 arrestees at the Capitol was Antifa. Tim Pool reports.
How do you arrest an idea?
With a public school teacher?
That deserve an applaud
Definitely.
Simple. Call the thought Police.
I have this hanging in my office.
Where can I get a print?
Here you go:
https://libertymaniacs.com/products/thought-police-poster
I used to get Tims videos on my FB feed every day. Havent gotten one in months. Too much truth telling, he must be banned or restricted. So nuts.
Apparently Parler is back up.
Thank God, we can get back to planning insurrections now.
*snorts powdered aluminum*
Can’t seem to load it. You sure?
Came up for me. They’re probably getting slammed with logins.
OT: remember that stuff about Joss Whedon and how he said some mean things about Charisma Carpenter?
Well it didn’t start and it didn’t end with her.
I don’t understand why she refuses to say more, unless there is pending legal action, or she is bound by a NDA.
So Shatner is that Trachtenberg’s press agent?
I’m curious what the hell Whedon had coming up that caused the backlash to come out now.
There have been rumors for many years that he’s a total creep. Weinstein-level perv? Unknown. It’s possible he could just be a very successful guy who treats people generally with little respect, or that some people hate him enough to make shit up. The people alluding to his bad behavior in general seem to have their shit together. It’ll be interesting to see if any real info comes out or if it fizzles.
Oh, I’ve heard the rumors for years as well. It’s just strange that there’s been a slew of hit articles on Whedon that have all come out in the past two weeks or so (including ones referencing WandaVision talking about his time on Age of Ultron). I’m sure there was some level of coordination, I’m just curious as to the reason.
Interesting point.
Also note: Nothing from former “Firefly” cast members.
Other than Summer Glau, the rest were too old or too black for him.
No. If he was creeping on these chicks, it’d be all over the news. He sounds like he’s just kind of a dick. Que sera. I’ve worked for lot’s of people who are kind of dicks.
Brutal.
https://twitter.com/AdamantAnarchy/status/1360928238617333772
Dayum.
The replies are the most interesting.
Some 9/11 Truthers in there.
Those guys will never die.
Wow, no kidding. Lots of red pills there.
I should probably not depend on my skills in rebuilding tube amps to get me through the aftermath….
What do I have? I can cook, but everyone can cook for survival. I have a good memory, some skill with medicine and first aid stitchery.
Most of my skills that make me marketable today involve electricity. I could teach geometry, trig, and calculus. I’d have to do some persuading to get a tribe to accept me as useful right away. We’d be needing to get to pottery making and art before I could pull away from the pack.
Gotta keep thinking.
I have a small library of information I have amassed on micro hydropower applications. Need to check around at some auctions for some suitable pumps that can be used as turbines. I have a stream on my property that should yield about 10 hp if I can pipe it efficiently to a pump.
Romans had some pretty damned fine engineering going on with plumbing (aqueducts, flushing “toilets”, etc) and steam (a lot of novelties but also mining aids).
We could learn from those guys.
Fun fact: only in recent years have modern engineers figured out that Roman cement is better than our cement due to their use of Mediterranean seawater instead of fresh!
I believe it is still the case that the largest dome ever constructed was the Roman-built Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
I do remember reading that a few years ago.
OOooooo concrete, I know that.
Has a lot to do with the pozzolans used for the mixtures in the area. They tended to use a lot of volcanic pumice IIRC.
The pozzolans balance out the chemical reaction so that there is not excess calcium hydroxides left over as will happen with typical Portland cement.
Pozzolans take longer to react but generally yield a harder and denser cement as they fill in the natural capillaries that are formed during cure.
Being able to do basic electronics, without a lot of online references, will probably be very valuable in any kind of austere environment. Someone has to be able to keep the shortwave and 2-meter rigs running and the solar battery chargers functional…
I should not depend on my skills designing tube amps to get me through the aftermath…
But I do know how to build explosives. My chemistry degrees were not a waste of time.
We could gang up! We’d be making shape charge jets in no time, blasting our way through rock formations, laying waste to our enemies.
I like the way you think, young lady.
My favorite line from The Martian. Something like, “Like all chemists, Xyzzy knew how to make explosives. In fact, much of his professional training was in how to not make explosives by accident.”
As a chemical engineer, part of my job is making sure we don’t make really big inadvertent explosions.
“Didn’t we used to have a factory where that crater is?”
-1 Beirut
I work with current and voltage levels sufficiently high to have the same goals/concerns.
When I don’t have the inclination or time for details but someone asks what I do, I say “I blow shit up for a living.”
I used to work at a power plant–three units, each of which put over 850MW net on the grid. We had a main 18kV bus from a generator to the step up transformer go to ground once. It vaporized well over 60 feet of copper bus bar and took a bunch of ancillary equipment in the area.
We also had an 13.8 kV auxiliary bus go boom once when the roof leaked in an inconvenient location. We were very lucky that no one was in the room at the time–it was like a bomb went off.
Yikes! The loudest I have heard was on the NEXRAD weather system there used to be a plunger interlock that would take everything from the modulator (about 3-4 kV) and dump it into a resistor array that was tied to ground if someone were to unfortunately open that inner door.
Small shelter, large amounts of energy suddenly into those resistors that couldn’t handle that amount coming at it at once made for a very very loud wake up call.
That design has since be reworked.
Was that intended as a safety relief to protect anyone from entering an energized piece of equipment?
Sort of. It was to bleed off the modulator when you killed HV because it had four 4-stacked RBDTs.
Since then, the design changed and moved away from those and is now some inverse diode stacks with a big capacitor and some optical switch triggers. I think. I’d have to look at the schematics.
Yeah, when copper turns rapidly from a solid to a plasma (gas with particles so “excited” that the electrons leave their orbits of a single nucleus and just float around the plasma cloud with other electrons) it expands to about 64,000 times its original volume. Pretty close to instantaneously.
Aluminum is only half that, but it’s plenty spectacular.
One of the people in the diffusion module wanted to clean out foreline residue with a “process” he “invented.” When I set up a small scale test, the residue burst into flame. It was one of the best days I’ve had here.
So it worked! Fire cleanses EVERYTHING!
*Ahem.* It was not a “fire,” it was a “thermal event.” Just wait until you get to experience a “rapid expansion event” at the silane bunker.
That’s akin to a “instantaneous discharge event” involving large capacitors/batteries.
We never had “explosions” in our coal pulverizers. They were “puffs.” Or “thermal excursions.”
Yeah, during the safety meeting before a match at the range we go over protocol for calling EMS in the case of an accidental discharge resulting in injury.
If you say “there’s been an accident,” you get an ambulance.
If you say “there’s been a shooting,” you get a SWAT team.
If you say “there’s been an accident,” you get an ambulance.
If you say “there’s been a shooting,” you get a SWAT team.
We have a reminder in monthly club newsletter that basically says the same thing.
I got nothing.
I write books and keep computers running. Neither are high priority skills in a survival situation.
Maybe I should actually take up bladesmithing as I’ve been toying with.
Do it! (IF you have the room to do it safely.)
I’d start with classes from someone who knows what they’re doing. After that I’ll know if I want to invest in setting up a workshop.
I still need to brush up on my sock- and glove-knitting skills and have my sister teach me how to spin. No sheep, but I do have two long-haired cats…
Close enough?
That’ll work. Got the (literal) spinster sister this book for Christmas as a joke. Sorta. (They have more cats than we do.)
I regret not picking up a copy that was at HPB, even though I don’t knit.
power generation and storage.
Steam, micro hydro, compressed air storage? Anything along those lines?
Tube amps… I stumbled across an old phonograph at an estate sale. Had to replace the tubes and a can capacitor which were all fried/decayed. Got it to play but intermittently. Gonna take it apart and clean the mechanical parts next.
https://imgur.com/a/DmU61R2
vid: https://imgur.com/gDuW7fE
In this criterion, I win. I can weld, machine, and repair any type of machine. All it’s gonna take is a total collapse of society, and I’m the most valued player.
Check this shit out. Talk about engine mods and some creative fabrication.
If it goes, somebody’s gonna race it. Then, everybody’s gonna go nuts trying to win! Badassed boats, thanks.
Those required courses in art history are really going to come in handy.
Thanks, Animal.
I still see massive decentralization and fragmentation as a more likely event than a back-to-hunter-gatherer dystopia, but who the fuck knows.
Still, this could of course be done outside of any government.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Most of the functions I see could easily be handled outside of government. One area I keep tripping on is formal dispute resolution. Our courts are a fucking joke, but could you not provide for mutually agreed upon arbitration methods in any contract?
Three words…
Rock… Paper… Scissors
Arbitration without force is pointless.
If the parties can come to an agreement, you don’t need it.
If the parties can’t, you need some mechanism to enforce any ruling. Otherwise it will just get ignored.
Reputation.
It only works on reasonably small scales. But technology is, somewhat, changing that. It is like Spooner’s idea to eliminate both bankruptcy and court enforcement of debt. If you give someone an unsecured loan and they default, tough shit. You just won’t loan to them again (and them skipping out on your loan goes on their credit report so others won’t loan either).
Now, a government would still be necessary for enforcement of secured loans, transfer of deeds and all that, but I am not an anarchist, so I don’t have to worry about it. I am sure someone would counter-argue some sort of blockchain with automatic contract enforcement mechanisms. In some sense, the block chain depends on arbitration, so there is your enforcement mechanism.
I guess I’ve always lived in too large a society, because reputation has never been an effective enforcer of behaviour. There’s always another sucker to be had.
It works reasonably (or some definition of reasonable) with credit reports and loans. If your credit score is 800 you get a different loan rate than if it is 600. That is reputation. Even if it is shittily determined.
Those are laughably easy to game and get around. I’ve never had to but I know enough people where the question is “how did they get another loan?”
Yes, it is. But if there was literally no recourse for the loaners, they might create a better system…or, the system works good enough even with some people scamming it.
How long before we start seeing Equifax related identity theft.
It was reported that 50% of Americans information was hacked at the time.
One challenge to rebuilding will be that so many Americans live in urban or even suburban settings. Building trusted networks more or less from the ground up in rural areas, as described in the post, is one thing. I’m not sure that model will work in densely populated areas. The problem of having to trust people outside a Dunbar Number circle rears its head in spades in densely populated areas. There is also the problem of, what do people who live in cities have to trade? Most of what city-dwellers do now exists because of our highly developed economy, which we are mostly assuming away for this discussion. There’s not enough natural resource extraction (salt, hunting, timber, etc.) or agriculture in cities to support any meaningful number of city-dwellers. Manufacturing requires the logistics of a developed economy.
I guess it depends on how big the setback is. Is it to pre-industrial levels? The economy of, say, the ’30s?
“dunbar number” I had to look it up. I prefer “monkey sphere”.
Dunbar number is the perfect size for an HOA.
*checks avatar*
No surprise.
The Cracked article actually where I first ran across the concept, although I had already kinda figured it out, based on the differences between working for small and large organizations.
There is a company, forget who right now, who sizes office buildings at Dunbar’s number of employees size.
That article was my first exposure to the concept as well.
I has stuck with me.
Yep.
Cities are enormous resource sinks. And most people don’t realize it.
The food riots attending the infrastructure collapse will take care of most of the city dwellers.
…
Only half joking here. When you concentrate your population in a small area, and the support services for that area stop working, things get very bleak very fast. The survivors will be the first ones to get out of the city, and who have someplace to go and some way to not be a refugee or a charity case. Once all the gas stations within a 50-mile radius are out of fuel, you can pretty well write off anyone left behind. Stay mobile!
See mine and Timeloose’s comment just below related to inner city cannibals.
I wouldn’t be joking at all about that. One of the reasons I never discussed what would happen in the major cities is that I think they’d be pretty much hosed. Once food trucks stop making deliveries, our major cities would destroy themselves within a matter of days.
For fun, watch James Burke’s “Connections”. Believe you can find all of them on the internet.
He pretty much covers the total collapse of modern civilization in the first couple of episodes.
Lucifer’s Hammer.
Just keep it in mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer
So you’re saying I should watch out for inner city cannibals and comets the consistency of an ice cream Sunday?
The former at least. And maybe I would actually use my degree in Nuke Engineering!
Note: You don’t want me doing that, I haven’t worked anything related to it in 27 years.
Bacon will be the best currency.
Doesn’t keep as long as bourbon.
Bacon is available canned for long shelf life.
https://cmmginc.com/product/tactical-bacon-9oz-can/
Bacon is forever. *pulls out highlander sword
That’s sad, I’d hate to see you a victim of human(?) trafficking?
I used to raise proto-bacon.
I can’t make bourbon, but I have made hard cider and vodka.
I’m also a pretty good long range shot (well, after the first flinch…)
Animal: I’m still thinking of what you say about trust. I suppose basic trust at least on an immediate transaction is required. But generally, trading groups need not have any affinity for one another (though it often follows).
One of my favorite Milton Friedman lines is the end of this quote:
Low trust is high friction.
There is also trust in the person you are dealing with, and trust in the “system” that the deal is made in. We all do business with people we don’t trust (or even know) because we do trust that our system for making and enforcing deals works well enough. There are a lot of different ways to do that which would be consistent with a “free market”. A trading group will of necessity have a system that makes individual trust less relevant. Depending on how far we fall, we may need to rebuild those systems as well.
Maybe we should, anyway.
And of course you can trust someone and still hate them.
You know, like BMW drivers.
/looks at Mini Cooper in garage
/kicks a rock
We all do business with people we don’t trust (or even know) because we do trust that our system for making and enforcing deals works well enough.
Correct. That’s why eBay works and why gunbroker works and why Amazon works. If you didn’t trust the marketplace to make you right in the case of fraud or bad faith, you wouldn’t do arms length transactions like that very often.
It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
This is very true, but sometime people take this fact further than it supports and think that trade will make people stop hating each other. It’s not personal, it’s just business cuts both ways.
Whoops.
https://twitter.com/Oilfield_Rando/status/1361272004784062467
Frozen wind turbines, nobody could have seen that coming.
The Bald Eagles saw it coming right before they flew through the blades on frappe setting.
Does Texas have interconnection to other distribution grids or is it truly independent?
Twitter isn’t loading for me (the cell towers are overloaded), but they’re talking about having an extended power outage tonight. No Bueno.
Wouldn’t now be the better time to have an extended outage?
It won’t make much difference, TBH. 6° right now, 0° tonight. At least we don’t need flashlights right now.
Shit. Good luck, Trashy.
^^ Good luck and stay warm.
Fill your oven with potatoes and bake them. Even if you don’t need them to keep the bed warm, leftover baked potatoes can be turned into all sorts of delicious dishes.
Yeah; my sister lives over in Rockwall County and said it was a balmy 7 degrees at lunch time. And that the hot water taps had frozen.
C’mon Tundra!
Our Potemkin Turbine in our downtown gets shut down every winter because it freezes up too. I mean who’d a thunk that a turbine in Minnesoda might run into some cold weather?
Potemkin Turbine.
Heh. I know exactly the one you mean. I’ve always suspected it is secretly a motor, not a generator.
Speaking of survival resources, has anyone seen the portable surveillance camera trailers in Lowe’s parking lots? They have a array of solar panels on top to power them. Same with highway signs.
Solar panels and the repair of said panels should be a good skill to have. The silicon in the panels may degrade in efficiency over a very long life span, but they are pretty resilient. The material making up the interconnections, the housings, and any protective are more likely to degrade first.
If I have to bug out of my house quick, due to a wildfire or similar (seems more likely in the short term than societal collapse), my folding solar panels and Jackery 1000 w battery with me, along with my custom first aid kit, survival food and water, medicine, and my cat carrier.
In a life or death situation, cat will be let go, but if it’s just a crispy house, she’s coming with me.
That is something we made sure was part of our emergency planning with our now teenagers. If it is a true emergency and we have to immediately evacuate, we leave and don’t close the door behind us and hope the dogs make their way out. I love them to pieces, but my kids are more important.
I put it up on the forums, but for any lurkers:
Just got an external rec approved for a lab tech job. Malta, NY. D Shift (6 pm – 6:30 am Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, every other Saturday).
We used to pay well, I have no idea if that’s still the case. Zero chance of moving off of nights unless someone on days quits. Low turnover — we’ve had one person leave in the last three years.
That made me look up Malta. If it were closer to Finger Lakes, I’d grab it, even with the huge pay cut. Sadly… it ain’t.
If you’re interested in the Gulf Coast, we may be having a QA manager position open up in the next couple of months…
It would take doubling my salary to get me to the Gulf Coast. Western NY is on my list of “favorite three places to move and I’d take a pay cut to do it.”
But… we have a friend with QA management experience whom I’d point to that. And he won’t embarrass you. Not professionally anyway. He’s also a very skilled brewer.
Might fit right in if he’s a brewer. Among our engineers and QA folks, quite a number of us are experienced home brewers.
HR would probably filter you out as being overqualified anyway. Last time we hired someone with an advanced degree for a tech slot, he turned out to be a quadruple murderer.
Like, before or after you hired him?
Before.
^this.
And considering the way he killed those people was directly related to his job duties here (he faked the results of lab tests) he really should have disclosed that.
Holy shit.
Yikes.
And living in TX has skewed my idea of what “close” is. I was living in Bryan, had family in Houston, friends in Austin, and a girlfriend in Dallas. A two hour drive is nothing. Ottawa is kind of a drive for me now, but Montreal is not.
Come to think of it, growing up where the nearest gas station was a 15 min drive and the nearest walmart was 30 min might have contributed to that attitude…
I worked in all those TX places while living in Temple.
Well kiddy diddler is a step up from quadruple murderer isn’t it?
And are you sure he killed 4 people? Maybe you misheard and he only killed one quadriplegic? Quad Killer is a bit ambiguous.
Or one schizophrenic?
One of his particularly nosy coworkers googled him
So only lurkers may apply? Not that I want to change jobs or move to NY.
Fuck snow. That is all.
Lol. All my relatives and Austinite friends are posting their snow pics.
Bayern is playing a soccer match right now in Munich. Snow is falling non-stop and the game is paused every 10 minutes to remove it from the lines on the pitch.
Oh I am sure they are. Places like Austin shut down with any snow and everyone stays home. Here we have to go in on a holiday and plow the shit. Snow belongs above 7000 ft and I am sticking to that theory.
Sigh. I wish it would warm up enough to snow again.
Are you an Informer?
I have always thought that the writers of Back to the Future 3 came up with a clever vocation for Doc Brown in the Wild West. An ice factory would be quite useful to the local economy and the equipment required would be available at that time period.
The ice machine wasn’t his vocation. He was a blacksmith/ferrier. Tanner was after Doc for the shoe that came off his horse.
That’s farrier.
I son’t need to spel guid
I drove past what was called then Oklahoma Farrier College on the way to my grandparent’s house, but I never stopped by and picked up a sweatshirt from the bookstore or anything.
I would expect there to be a farrier school near saratoga for the racehorses. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if there were not.
*searches*
Nope, the closest is Cornell.
Ah, for the polo team.
It’s part of their college of veterinary medicine.
I agree, but something didn’t seem right to me about his ice plant–all the effort and energy expended to get a few cubes of dirty ice…
Even with the materials available in the 1850s, Brown should have been able to use his knowledge of thermodynamics to build a refrigerator far superior to what was shown in the film, and much more advanced than the state of the art at the time–although, the story does fit fairly well with the actual history of commercial refrigeration becoming economical in the mid to late 1850s. But the contemporary technology was well above what is depicted in the film.
This is how you $cience…
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/virus-outbreak-people-fauci/2021/02/15/id/1010063/
I thought Jews were smart, stereotype fucking busted.
OFFS.
Huh? Was Obama not eligible because he won it last year or something?
“Previous recipients of the Dan David Prize include former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, novelist Margaret Atwood, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen.”
Yeah, as much as I enjoy Coen bros movies, this is a joke award for politics, not science.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS PREPARING CHOSEN ONE. ZARDOZ BELIEVES THIS TO BE BACKWARDS: A freshly dead rabbit may be worth five .22 shells today, ten next week, fifty next month. AS THE AMMUNITION (PRAISE BE TO IT) BECOMES MORE SCARCE, THE RABBIT MIGHT FETCH 50 TODAY, 10 NEXT WEEK AND 5 NEXT MONTH. ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
I would add, great ZARDOZ, that any one who finds himself needing ever increasing amounts of ammunition to collect dead rabbits must needs be not maintaining his marksmanship skills at appropriate levels.
Rabbits can easily be had with a stone and a decent throwing arm.
If you throw like I do, a Whammo Wrist Rocket will be fine.
Or you can buy traps and learn how to use them.
ps. The discerning survivalist will be dining on squirrels and trading those foul rabbits to the rubes who don’t know better.
Never had squirrel, but rabbit is freaking delicious.
If you’re ever in Quebec City, go here.
Squirrel ain’t bad. Love me a good Brunswick Stew.
I heard about that place…. after a trip to Quebec City.
Traps are a hell of a lot more efficient than hunting, if you know how to use them.
Can confirm.
+1 Havahart trap and a flamethrower?
Havarti trap? You can catch cheeses in the wild?
Obviously anyone who offers to pay in ammunition is sitting on a stockpile of ammo so large that they can afford to part with some of it. That person should sleep very lightly.
In the coming aftermath, it would really suck for me to be parted with my epilepsy medicine. I don’t want to get renamed Flopsy.
But you could claim it was the gods talking to you! Depending on how post-collapse we’re talking about here.
+1 Modern day Pythia
The shaman angle did occur to me. I have the type (left temporal lobe) that is associated unofficially with creative and interesting visions.
Even treated, the epileptogenic region in my brain operates as delta waves (the ones everyone has when dreaming) instead of the normal alpha waves everywhere else in my brain. Alpha waves are normal awake state for everyone.
The Keppra just prevents epileptiform spikes that enjoy recruiting the surrounding brain areas to join forces in synched up chaotic (in the scientific sense of the term) pattern instead of the randomness that should predominate.
I laughed, but I felt bad about it, a little bit.
/considers titty joke
/stops typing
Right there with you on my kookoo meds. Then again, I might be too busy to be depressed and/or anxious and/or “mood disorder NOS”.
Completely fucking OT: I had a freaky dream last night that the Left came out with some narrative that the current minimum wage is equivalent to what a medieval peasant used to get paid (using spurious economic logic and phony statistics, of course) and there were mass protests across the country with people chanting, “Dante wages, Dante wages, let’s go back to the Middle Ages” (in reference to Dante Aligheri). Fucking bizarre, but not too far off from reality.
Peasants weren’t paid, they paid for the privilege of working the land (even when they owned the land)
Completely fucking OT: I had a freaky dream last night
You sailed away to China in a little rowboat to find me?
Unless you were in the Inner Seventh Circle (blasphemers and sodomites), it didn’t happen.
I never thought the Comments to Glibertarians were real until it happened to me….
And speaking of sodomites, the unintentionally humorous Biblical epic “Sodom and Gomorra” is on early tomorrow morning if you have FXM.
I drove past what was called then Oklahoma Farrier College on the way to my grandparent’s house, but I never stopped by and picked up a sweatshirt from the bookstore or anything.
Speaking of useful, well paid jobs…
The horse owners I know frequently cry about the high cost of keeping shoes on their precious equines.
Good article.
I’m probably a pessimist, but I think this is correct. To riff on that old criticism of the constitution (it hasn’t prevented the government from becoming what it is), all the moral philosophy ever developed has failed to prevent governments from becoming what they have become. Your vision of a post-collapse society is essentially what pre-civilization society was, and it has developed into what it is now (inevitably, I contend, since civilization has collapsed and rebuilt along similar lines several times before). Amiable anarchy is unobtainable, or at least unsustainable, for the simple fact that nature itself rewards evil (the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must).
Fuck snow. That is all.
I just was outside. I decided to “test start” the truck, and have a look at the conditions. If it were an emergency, or the light was better, I would go to the grocery store. As it is…
It’s at least 40 degrees warmer than it was a couple of days ago when I was out there, and the truck lit right off. The drift across the parking area is *almost* hard enough to support ~200 pound me. I decided to see if I could gnaw a path to the truck with the snowblower, and said fuckit after about ten feet. The wind was blowing the snowblower plume right straight back into my face.
In Montana one winter we had a Chinook come through and then departed leaving temps in the negatives again. The wind driven snow was only about 2 feet high, but it was covered with a hearty layer of solid ice. The local who was paid to keep our roads clear got high centered by the snow and ice. His plow broke through the ice, his front wheels were in the air, and his rear wheels just made a sheet of ice under them. It took 5-6 of us and a hour or so to get him free. He retreated and said he would be back in a day or two.
He failed past my driveway, but I just said, “I guess I’ll just XC ski near the river and not bother driving today.
It is going to be curious if Cuomo is going to get the benefit of a Dem firewall or if he will be their sacrificial lamb. He has all but blamed every person in NY for killing grandma.
St Fauci by definition must be in the clear. President* Pudding Cup is the appointed savior. I don’t think Cuomo is up to taking on OMB by himself.
As this develops steam I see Cuomo like Abe Vigoda in “The Godfather”. “Is there anything you can do joe?” “I’m afraid not.”
Prison is a stretch that the Dems probably won’t make. Destroying Cuomo as a politico? That is realistic because you can always find another Dem to be the guv in NYS.
It’s really about time NY did something more progressive than have a white guy as governor
/Letisha James
What? The last few governors have been an Eye-talian, a black dude, a kraut, a pole, and an eye-talian. We haven’t had a white governor since 1982.
Wasn’t the blind one half-black?
Afro-Jamaican and African-American descent, so no.