[OT]do you have an apocalypse survival plan?

[Angstrom]

when a political and financial system gets so into trouble it fails, like the USSR in the early 1990's. Their system crashed and the people had to rely on their own ingenuity to get by. So have you thought about this at all, or are you trying to ignore it?

I notice a lot of establishment insiders making very worried noises recently. It's not kooks, outsiders and weirdos saying this it's the insiders and governors.

Well the fact is, we're all going to go off a cliff. That's what's happening. This is a much more profound problem than people think,

EG: watch Rep. Paul Kanjorski (The Capital Markets Subcommittee Chair) from around 2:05
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMu1mFao3w

by two o'clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed... It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it."

In fact the entire financial and governmental system has nearly ended a number of times recently. When this stuff has happened before the 'little people' get caught in the collapsing machinery.

So, I'm curious, do you have a plan for what to do with yourself if the shit hits the fan?

BTW: just in case you never consider these things here's a couple of educational links :
An essay on how our system works and why its broken now, in a way that is not easy to fix.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/end-money

a "Long Now" talk drawing parallels and lessons from when the Soviet Union collapsed.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/s ... tices.html
(that's quite huge)

[hoffman2k]

What would Mel Gibson do?

[Angstrom]

What would Mel Gibson do?

get drunk and shout at Jewish people?

OK, that's one plan ruled out!

[mr.adl]

My strategy for just about ANYTHING:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixy5FBLnh7o

[forge]

when I saw this was you posting the thread a had a wee chuckle and clicked to see what silly tin foil hat wearing nut pot you were drawing our attention to, and to see Angstrom, the arch-cynic concerned about these matters does make me feel a little uneasy

How long have we got? I'm coming to the UK in April, am I going to get stuck there?

[hoffman2k]

As batshit crazy as he is, he'll always be Mad Max.

If the world crashes and all forms of communications vanish, be sure to drop by Belgium. We got everything from medieval cities to trenches to the odd battlefield.

- The Kevlar Knight

[Angstrom]

when I saw this was you posting the thread a had a wee chuckle and clicked to see what silly tin foil hat wearing nut pot you were drawing our attention to, and to see Angstrom, the arch-cynic concerned about these matters does make me feel a little uneasy

How long have we got? I'm coming to the UK in April, am I going to get stuck there?

Our system is remarkably resilient, as are people in general. So usually I just laugh this stuff off. I've just been a bit surprised at the number of hard-line, free market , right wing , libertarian capitalist types who have recently been shouting "fire!" . I mean, it's meant to be their system, and cynical outsiders are meant to cry fire and the governors are meant to pour cold water on the doubters. So it's all pretty strange right now.

I still think the odds are very very long on any kind of social collapse, but that doesn't mean I don't plan against it.
The Orlov talk at Long Now is pretty interesting anyway - as it is drawn from relatively recent real life first hand accounts of systemic collapse when the Communist system proved untenable.
Bear in mind that this also proves that large-scale systems can collapse, they aren't immutable. The version of capitalism we have now is very different to all those that went before.

Anyway ...
When I used to fly small planes I was taught to always keep an eye open for an emergency landing site, not that there was a huge chance we would ever need it, but for that one in ten thousand chance of an engine failure or collision - a little fore-planning would be invaluable.

[forge]

I haven't read those links yeat, but I'm really sceptical about all the panic and fear mongering

I don't know very much about economics, but I just can't see how the US could collapse completely and never recover

Britain went through 2 world wars that nearly completely bankrupted it and still remains one of the wealthiest countries - in fact look at Germany and Japan from 1945 to now

there are always ups and downs, people get on with their lives

so is this when I go and read the articles then come back here with one of these:

[Emissary]

I suppose i should say something seeing as i was posting about all this stuff 6 months ago. I tried to post up news articles and links warning of what was round the corner, but all i was met with was hate and piss taking when all i was doing was trying to help

Needless to say i have helped my self and made my house energy efficient and with its own power source. Huge collections of water buts to collect rain water and a large selection of vegetables and my own cute little hens and cockerels. Through this investment i am now pretty much insulated from many of the coming problems.

If your calm and approach the future with a good head, its not in the least bit scary. I have even gone so far as to write a large document that I expect to present to my local community here in north wales for when the shit really does go through the fan and end up on all our faces but all chopped up and sloppy.

Everyone on this forum should have a months supply of food quietly stocked away somewhere in their house. But i have learnt over time you can only help those that help themselves.

[Angstrom]

read the Chris Martenson one if you need an explanation of how our financial system is meant to function, and why it is limping along.

Most people have an aversion to these sort of 'financial' things, labeling them 'boring' . In fact it's a bit like discovering that you have been playing Monopoly your whole life without actually knowing the rules of the game.

EG:

... if all money is loaned into existence with interest, how does the interest on those loans get paid? Where does the money for that come from?

If you guessed "from additional loans," you are a winner! Said another way: For interest to be paid, the money supply must expand. Which means that next year there's going to be more money in circulation, requiring a larger set of loans to pay off a larger set of interest charges, and so on, etc., etc., etc. With every passing year, the money supply must expand by an amount at least equal to the interest charges due on all the past money that was borrowed (into existence), or else severe stress will show up within our banking system. In other words, our monetary system is a textbook example of a compounding, or exponential, function.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

~ Dr. Albert Bartlett

[forge]

in actual fact, I think if the planet is going to have any chance of being habitable for us and a large portion of the other life forms in the future then I think we really need a total collapse in order to reset the system into a much more sustainable one

we'll get through it

[LoopStationZebra]

Required Reading for the Apocalypse....

[mikemc]

I haven't read those links yeat, but I'm really sceptical about all the panic and fear mongering

I don't know very much about economics, but I just can't see how the US could collapse completely and never recover

To me, a total collapse means everybody loses their job and there is no money to buy or make manufactured goods or fuel. If there is no fuel, then the food production that relies on advanced farming machinery cannot occur. There may still coal, but if there is not diesel to run trains to move it to power plants, there is no electricity. No electricity, no modern hospitals, no modern entertainment, no modern anything, really.

So the government would need to forestall this, and has petroleum reserves that it would need to release for moving key commodities through the rail systems. So there would be a 'recovery', but there would be a huge transformation, many things would become essentially 'nationalized', just to keep the core infrastructure operating. Environmental concerns would take a backseat. Economic regions (North America) would become isolated, due to the expense and difficulty of trans-oceanic commerce without a viable financial system.

To me, this all underscores the importance of energy independence based on non-petroleum, non-imported sources. It is the key to the future.

[forge]

many things would become essentially 'nationalized', just to keep the core infrastructure operating.

I think that would be a good thing, then you might actually get some health care etc......

...Environmental concerns would take a backseat. .......
To me, this all underscores the importance of energy independence based on non-petroleum, non-imported sources. It is the key to the future.

Maybe we have come further along as individuals than people realise

how many people now have the know how to develop locally useful, and environmentally sustainable technologies compared to say the great depression? this kind of collapse would force people on to their resources

A really good book to read is Bill Bryson's 'made in america'

he goes over a lot of the history of the US and how it started to build itself up and get so wealthy in the 19th century

a lot of that invention and pioneering was done with very primitive resources at hand (by our modern standards) and a fraction of the knowledge people have now, and a lot of the inventors of very basic products we take for granted lived in poverty their whole lives and someone else stole their idea and got rich off it - the point being, you don't need 21st century infrastructure to be resourceful, and just our basic school education has placed us much further along than people in the 19th century ever had

in fact I'd say deprived for long enough and properly motivated a fair chunk of us here could probably figure out a way of generating some electricity just based on what we learned in high school, and then a lot of us would probably even know someone with an advanced science degree who could do something much more clever

any locally developed knowledge would eventually spread

in fact I'm sure even steam power could be put to far better use by 21st century minds

I think what's happened over the last 50 years is people have become completely dependent on the 'system' - maybe we're ready to grow up and go it alone

[freqn]

hunting and to keep making music