A loyal minion e-mailed me with a great idea which became this article. At times I do tend to forget that a lot of people have not been reading my drivel for almost four years ( or even several years prior to this blog with my e-mail newsletter ). And, shockingly, they refuse to slog through all my back issues. This allows me to keep talking about the same old crap while pretending to only have the best interests of my readers in mind. Suckers. Remember, if you have a valid question, don’t hesitate to ask me. You might get a reply, or I might use it for an article. I might also ignore it, but that might just mean that I have no answer or I can’t stretch it out into a full length piece. For instance, one minion asked me about wheat stored out in a shed. Was the freezing weather going to be detrimental? For me, I don’t care about storing it outside under a tarp. For others, I can’t say for sure if it is bad, nutrition wise. Would the sprout ( Sprout
) test mean something, or does the kernel still retain enough nutrients for human health but just not enough to replant? I have no answers and I don’t have the time for research, so there is a subject I won’t write about. It was a good question, but not one I can address. Anyway, I might have answered a question previously but the current crop of readers needs an update. Or, I might have new information. There are no bad questions, and I appreciate article ideas. I can come up with brilliant articles about a quarter of the time. About half is just treading water, filling up those thousand words for the day. The other quarter are thanks to minion questions. *
Why should I worry about a house payment, as there will be no one to collect after the collapse? I think I’ve been giving the impression of a complete overnight collapse being feasible and imminent. As in, asteroid hitting the planet, Yellowstone blowing ( Super Volcano: The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Yellowstone National Park
), a large nuclear exchange or a massive solar flare scorching us kind of sudden collapse. Most survival “experts”, and here I include Peak Oil writers, Gaia huggers, anyone that thinks our current high living oil dependent First World lifestyle is going to end badly, want you to believe that the collapse is many generations long. As long as the three hundred year Roman or Mayan collapse. They remind me of wife #4 who, bless her pea picking heart, thinking I’m full of crap since Y2K ( The Real History of the End of the World: Apocalyptic Predictions from Revelation and Nostradamus to Y2K and 2012
) never happened. So, since a superpower nuclear exchange never happened, it never will. Since the American collapse has not killed us in 38 years ( I count from the first oil shock and de-link of gold, but your count might differ slightly ), we are all safe and snug. As they say, history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. You can’t be too literal with history. It is a guide, not a blueprint. Just because we’ve gotten lucky before doesn’t mean we will stay that way. History teaches that all empires fail, and that all agricultural areas eventually are depleted of nutrients. Our empire is already there, but it is waiting for a strong enough contender to knock it off its pedestal. And the majority of our farmland has been a barren poisoned soil for awhile. It is just kept alive by petroleum. History isn’t wrong, we’re just on borrowed time. *
When I talk about a quick collapse, I don’t mean literally overnight. I mean far less than the generations that others talk about. The waterfall analogy is what I use. Slowly downward on a very slight decline, until the Black Swan ( The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"
) event plunges us over the lip. But the plunge can take months. Your crops can fail and you still have a little bit of time with the food already in the system. We don’t know when the plunge will happen, or how. It could have already started, and be of several years duration. No one knows. And, yes, we could still have an overnight collapse event like the nuclear war ( The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War
). It is just that the likelihood is low. Never impossible, but perhaps improbable. Improbable enough that you don’t bet your home on it. You have to bet on that collapse being several months to several years long. You insure your life by being ready for the sudden collapse, but finances are best bet on a quick collapse. Sudden is immediate, quick is a much more compressed time frame than the traditional experts allow for. We have been in an economic collapse for two years or so. Five years ago the global oil production numbers evened out, with no new growth. The growth was unconventional fuels ( tar sands, ethanol ) taking over. Three years ago the oil imported into this country started to decline. Two years ago the economic depression started. There is no growth except the financial shenanigans of derivatives and inflation. Even if there is enough oil to keep the lights on or keep the heat on in the winter, there isn’t enough to keep our economy growing. And if it isn’t growing the interest payments on all our levels of debt can’t be paid. For some time, the federal government and federal reserve bank has been buying its own debt since China no longer is. How long do you think that can last?*
Things promise to get so much uglier in the very near future. I don’t know how the banks will screw us next, but I know it is going to happen. The central bank is our Mafia ( Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires
) and the federal government is the enforcer of their will. You can bet that the current reluctance of the banks to kick you out for non-payment will not last. The banks are desperate for money, and that is just from a limited derivatives meltdown years ago. They don’t want to claim the house as a liability rather than an asset. How can this change? Most likely through the government. I don’t know details, but I can guess. How about if you are underwater in your mortgage, and Uncle Obammy allows you a hardship emergency loan. It buys the house, or rather guarantees the note just as it was doing through the VA program. No one can qualify to buy the home, so it is rented out. He rent goes to the bank as the government guarantees the bank won’t be stuck with the liability. Or, large numbers of houses are condemned both because no one can live in them for upkeep ( crackheads [ Crackhead (v. 1)
] are a fire danger! Or some other nonsense ) and because the local cops can’t patrol that area due to budget cuts. The houses are destroyed to cut the number of homes being a drag on the market due to an over-inventory. Or, suburbia is destroyed to herd us into concentrated urban area. The excuse might be dwindling fuel supplies that lead to food that must be used to ship by rail rather than truck. In reality, you are in a non-barbed wire concentration camp, held by Food Stamps and unemployment.*
My point here is that things will last long enough for a mortgage to be a millstone, and you can’t predict how things will come apart so you need flexibility. A mortgage is not flexible, nor is any debt. I can’t make up your mind, nor can I give you legal advice since there are fifty versions of bankruptcy out there. All I can do is point out the fallacy of business as usual since we never went through Oil Down ( Oil Rig Down - Lulu.com
) before. We went through a mild period of switching from domestic dependence to foreign dependence, but look how traumatic that was. END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail. Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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) but grew tired of its fuel cost. It makes a very good pot of coffee ( thick as and with the taste of mud, scalding hot ), but unless you live in a forest and have mostly free wood and keep the stove going I wouldn’t advise using it. The French press ( 
) is either expensive or prone to failure, plus if made of glass is begging to break and hurt you ( I believe we had a minion that was assaulted by his press ). The newest, best way to cheaply make off grid coffee is the stainless steel thermos ( 
). Place your desired amount of grounds in the thermos, add boiling water, cover and wait ten to fifteen minutes. Reheat ( it comes to a boil quickly ) if you like it very hot. I then throw on another dose of water in the pan to prepare the next mug, assembly line fashion. My thermos holds two mugs of coffee and sometimes I’ll make them the night before. The next morning you don’t have to wait the fifteen, just toss in the pan to heat it up. You can experiment, but I can’t tell the difference if I leave in the thermos more than ten or fifteen minutes. Overnight doesn’t seem to make it any stronger. You might even like it after just five minutes. You’ll need a grounds basket with filter ( I got mine from trash picking from a discarded percolator ). Place on top of your cup and pour in from the thermos since the water is pre-measured. I use the re-useable coffee filter ( 
), but while fast it does allow some fine grounds through. If you are a true frugal survivalist you will have one or two thermoses already so this is essentially a free coffee maker.
) knows that I’ve done some pretty dumbass things. I am no smarter than the average bear. Odds are that I fall well below genius IQ level. I am no smarter than you are. The only difference is that I devote an insane amount of time researching and thinking about the Apocalypse. That is my only edge. Okay, I’m sure I have a few other qualities that help. Not more common sense ( 
), but perhaps the ability to cut to the bone of the core issues. I don’t know, since it is kind of hard to be objective about yourself. So I can’t really blame people if they think, why should I listen to this idiot? He’s preaching to us about not doing things he’s already done. You could use the “smoking parent warning his children about cigarettes” analogy. Do as I say, not as I do. Yes, it helps that I’m now living what I’m preaching. Before it was theory and now it is example. But I’m not really here to preach by example. I don’t think living in the desert in a trailer is the greatest idea ( the collapse takes long enough to get lethal and I’ll be living in a better grade of underground cellar [ 
] than what I have now which is only for emergencies ). I wish instead for you to listen to the reasons why the collapse is imminent. It is a lot of analytical tripe. A lot of pie in the sky wild ass guessing. But if you believe it correct it should give you a reason to light a fire under your ass preparing. 
) was living in rural Idaho fifteen years go. Amongst our minion masses there is Idaho Homesteader as well as a few others I can’t recall right now. They have been isolating themselves against systematic failure for a very long time. I might have had basic supplies for just as long, but I was living in the city. I owned no land, had no precious metals ( 
). I lived amongst millions. As early as ‘85 I could have been making payments on Ozark land. I allowed myself to get into my current financial situation by being a total dumbass with wife #2. Yes, there was treachery on her part, but I allowed myself to make poor decisions all the same. It took me awhile to get out of debt, to invest rather than just pay bills. 
) on my shoulder. Now, the other side of the coin as far as living in an abstract equation is that, as I said, I devote an idiotic amount of time to thinking about the collapse. I think about these things riding my bike, driving at work, stocking shelves. Hell, this idea was hatched last night as I sat on the commode. Putting a lot of computational power behind a question is worthless if the basic premise is faulty, granted. But if we agree on the basics guiding the collapse, I’m telling you we don’t have much time left. In my opinion. I’m not trying to hedge my bets here. If I’m wrong I’ll admit to being wrong. I’d love to be wrong. But, please, don’t be a dumbass like myself and take forever insulating yourself from the collapse.
). Dies The Fire ( 
). And of course One Second After ( 
). My definition of a good post-apoc novel is great detail, written well enough to be reread repeatedly, and a lot of ideas and ponderables. Patriots is too Yuppie orientated and a bit stiff in its writing style. I’m not claiming I could do better, I’m comparing his to other published books of the genre. Go-Go Girls Of The Apocalypse ( 
) was a fun read and got me to buy the authors contemporary crime novels he was so good, but it is not a reread. I enjoyed The Unit, but while heads above a lot of drek out there and full of “makes you really think” it wasn’t top ten. World Made By Hand ( 
) was well written and worth the money, but a Birkenstock tree hugging east coast blue blood asshat fairy tale all the same. I know I’m forgetting a lot, but I’ll wrap it up anyway. Lucifer’s and Dies The Fire, definitely are buy and reread books. 
], but you have to wonder about its anti-capitalism message ). Simplify doesn’t necessarily mean lack of possessions. I used to have a self imposed rule that whatever didn’t fit into two duffle bags when I moved ( and I used to move a lot ) was given away. This was a retarded rule as I kept re-buying the books I gave away. And if I had all the wheat I’ve tossed overboard to move I would at least double my current ton plus. Most likely triple it. Not that I didn’t try to keep it. When I lived back in California me and my dad took turns helping each other move. I got the far worse end of the deal as step mom has a semi load worth of crap. High end crap, but still crap. Heavy oak crap. Five freezers in the garage, etc. Anyway, he told he me wasn’t moving the same two dozen buckets of wheat one more time. They got moved around quite a bit. But, alas, eventually they were given away on an austerity move. I think more important than the number of possessions is how self sustaining they are. And, in intangibles, if the item is from debt or has a monthly cost. 
) is painless. Hooking up to panels and batteries require cleaning and almost daily inspection. But the point is to forego the necessity of earning the money to pay for the regular electricity, which includes car payments and higher rent for a nearby job and work clothes, etc. If you can slowly eliminate monthly bills, you are simplifying. But you also can’t just replicate the middleclass lifestyle. You need to downgrade to the simplest way to remedy problems. Which is why I prefer the bike commute ( 
). I have the motor vehicle, enjoy what it does, but don’t rely on it to survive. The bicycle simplifies transportation. I clear the land of scrub brush, not with a tractor or chainsaw, but with a manual saw and pruners ( the small blade, long handle pruner was the wife’s idea- and works much better than a saw. Plus, it was on end of season clearance ). It is simple and a breakage is cheap and easy to remedy. Water hauled in buckets is far easier than financing a well and all the equipment that needs ( what frozen pipes? ). We all need tools and tools must be maintained. But butt simple tools ( manual sweeper and annual rug beating instead of an electric vacuum powered by a generator ) vastly simplify your life.
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) and so I’m graciously limiting myself on the subject. I could easily become just another Peak Oil site but as I have said before, I easily amuse but quickly grow bored. I don’t like being a one track ( or is it tract? ) record. Not that you are grateful. I start screaming about the sky falling over grain availability and you get tired of hearing about that. Yet as soon as I go back to Peak Oil you grow weary over that. You don’t have to worry about my staying on economics as I myself got a bit tired of that subject. And now I can’t blather on and on over the beauty and wonderfulness and goshdarn perfectness of the bestest battle rifle ever, the Lee-Enfield ( 
) because now it is too damn expensive. Now it is only for the rich or fanatics. Remember this moment, a sad day that should live in infamy. The Enfield went from being available to the masses to only being affordable to collectors. Soon, we will step back in time to the Clinton era militia movement as we all arm ourselves with commie crap. But enough of guns, damn you all. 
) and ethanol. The main reason to believe that the end of cheap and affordable energy will happen is that the seer that forecast it was already proven correct. H. King gave us the bell curve of oil production in the mid-1950’s and told us that the US would reach its peak of production in 1970. And it did. His math gives global peak between 2000 and 2005. You can already look in the rear view mirror and see global production entered the flat plateau of production in 2005. Peak Oil has already happened. It is already here. I wrote a booklet about it in 2006 ( nothing original on my part- based on others research ) and nothing has happened since to invalidate that. No, the taps didn’t dry up. What has happened is that the supply has stopped growing. Our whole economy, based on exponential growth in all aspects, can only work when the energy supply grows. That is now over. It is the CHEAP and ABUNDANT part of our oil supply that is what we should focus on, not the total supply. The experts were wrong in the 50’s and they are wrong again. Telling you half the supply still remains doesn’t help our contracting economy, nor tell you the undesirability of what is left. Case closed, we are indeed all going to die. Let the games begin ( wait a few years, if you think Obammy is bad ).
), write down all I murmur for the sake of prosperity, and take everything I say as gospel. But, noooo! You have to actually think for yourself and ask pertinent questions. Damn you. The whole question on who is really poor and who is just crying po. I call myself poor, melting under a flood of my own tears every time my paycheck shows half evaporate from deductions. Yeh, well, my ex-wife sheds plenty of tears herself over her deplorable conditions of “only” making $30 a year, five grand tax free from me, a Social Security ( 
) payment from the husband she killed off of at least several hundred bucks a month and a house payment of only a few hundred. My parents, with two full time jobs, two SS checks and another state pension, are buried by their living conditions. A mortgage is their only debt, but at age 65-71, their supplemental medical insurance is astronomical. As in, more than I bring home from work and writing, just on that one expense. Hell, I don’t feel poor compared to them. And those minions living on the river working part time, they feel poor compared to me as I spend ridiculous amounts of money on books. And Third World peasants living on top of a mound of garbage would kill that guy for half of what he makes. It isn’t what you make that makes you poor. It isn’t even your income in relation to living expenses, to a certain point. I think what makes you feel poor is lack of options to better yourself. Making a hundred grand a year and no where to go from a mortgage and wife in the SUV, you feel poor. On the gerbil wheel with no exit. 
)? No. I had zero wiggle room in my paycheck. I was working full time with five hours of overtime every single week. If my writing didn’t bring in some money I was in trouble. All to pay rent, to live on the grid. Junk land living ( or, if conditions work for you, squatting ) gave you freedom. You couldn’t offer me your paycheck if it came with your mortgage. But, hey, you have central heat and cable TV. Congratulations on your comfortable cage.
) last night. You know, I was really looking forward to watching “The Road” ( 
) and was VERY disappointed. With “Eli” I wasn’t sure it would be any good so I kept putting off watching it. This despite the fact that I love Oldman and Washington ( I didn’t realize Beals was in it- loved Flashdance [ 
]. I saw it originally in theatres with an Eddie Murphy movie- remember double features? ). But Eli was a darn good movie. A damn fine movie. Was it a good post-apocalypse movie? Weeeelll, I think I have to say no. Too many holes in it. But I doubt it was intended as such. It was clearly a religious fable. The whole Moses wandering the desert before delivering the word of God thing. I’m not sure if it was meant as a modern retelling but that is my guess. As I said, a very good movie, but not what you would expect for post-collapse. 
) outfit for $40 billion? They said they were worth at least sixty. My goodness, how little of the stuff is actually left if the valuation is that high? Or is it just stock still being insanely overvalued? You go! Plunge Protection Team. Don’t let the financial market decline, what else is holding up all those derivatives ( 
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) now? Okay, the US is actually the better aid donator right now, so my guess is that others see the failure of Pakistan as a blow against our middle eastern occupation. If Saudi Arabia is afraid of us ( in their position, I sure as heck would be- as afraid as I am of Hillary nuking the prez and those under him so she can take over and do things right the second time around ) and China wants us out of their hemispheres ( I’m sure they would trade us a Chavez for an Iraq ), what better way than allow a nuclear weapon enabled Moslem state to fail? And, unless the Russians loaned them their Tesla earthquake/weather modifier machine, they didn’t have to do a thing to help its collapse along. Isn’t power politics fun?
)( if I might be so bold as to follow up on my own set-up ), how about those state finances? As I said before, when the feds subsidized loan interest payments rather than giving grants outright to the states, we are now in a period of state colonization. Things have gotten so bad financially for the Federal Reserve that they have to start eating the feed corn of the individual states. Again with NPR, West Virginia was reported as having a yearly surplus. One of ten states. How did they do it? By not paying into the state retiree fund. Oh, hey, that sure is fiscally sound. The flip side of green shoots- put off pain until next year when the thrice delayed rebound takes place. And how about Illinois taking some of their loan to pay current interest payments a few months ago? This is pure financial fun and games out of the Third World playbook. Our states are turning into Third World entities, or, as I put it with cleverness and no small amount of cuteness, Third World States. Now, it has become a cliché to say we are all turning into a Third World country. America. But what if it was more selective than that? On a state by state basis. Exploit the weak ones, the overpopulated ones first. 
) Bank is exploiting selective areas in this country. Loot the pension fund. Check. Indenture the populace by lifetime amounts of debt, concentrated in urban areas so they can’t grow their own food. Check. Only apply band-aid solutions to natural disasters. Check. Allow the excess population to die off. Check ( in this case, death by food lacking nutrients ). This has always been the case, states working for the benefit of the masters. But now that energy surplus is gone it becomes obvious. There is no more attempt at putting a nice face on things. America is different, and we do things differently here. Health care will be to freely distribute toxic “cures”. Overeating is caused by desperately sucking in calories without nutrients. It is death by too much food with too little sustenance rather than death by no food. Instead of death by lack of money, you get lots and lots of money- it just won’t buy anything. You are in a Third World state, and you toil for the home country. You may not be shackled to a loom, thin with hunger and dying of smallpox. Instead, you are fat and sick, with a pair of golden handcuffs chaining you to a mortgage and SUV payment, dying of cancer. Now, you can expect a continuation of higher taxes ( those monkey anus molesters in the state government here want to tax my Amazon book purchases! Sold from another state, transported over federal roads. If I bought them over a telephone line, that was subsidized through a federal tax. What has the state done to participate in this sale? ) with much lower services. Your life will be endangered through water contamination, unpoliced roads, unpoliced neighborhoods, contaminated foods, etc. Taxes are going up to support the bankers, not to keep services running. And you can absolutely kiss your non-fed pension goodbye ( fed workers and SS recipients get all their money- paid in hyper-inflated Greenbacks ).