when you're in a collapse

WHEN YOU’RE IN A COLLAPSE


Let’s just say, for the sake or argument, that I’m wrong. Let’s just say, acting on supreme ignorance in the face of facts, that Peak Oil never declines in our lifetime and we stay at Bumpy Plateau. In that case, I’d be wrong about collapse and the Druid Dude would be right about long decline. Hey, anything is possible. I’ve always thought a mortgage was a bad idea, but I was twenty years early in my paranoia. I’ve always hated cars, mainly because of the financial drain but also a lot of that is a fierce hatred against the whoring bastard insurance industry for jamming compulsory coverage down our throats. But by and large we still aren’t to the point where you can’t afford a car if you want one. So my timing really sucks on that one. I moved out to junk land only when a combination of economic collapse nationally met local sky high rents ( I knew I’d have to move eventually as rent went up 10% a year ) and then those two combined with the family planning on moving out of the area. In other words, I wasn’t a supreme strategic planner as much as I was just lucky. I’m usually right about the trend, but usually not for the reason I think, and never correct about the timing. I think the total collapse is just around the corner, but look at my track record before panicking.

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But here is my point. Even if I’m wrong, I could be right. As they say, when your neighbor loses a job it is a recession but when you lose your job it is a Depression. The same can be said of a collapse verses a decline. During a decline, you could very well end up dead or penniless and homeless. Let’s go back a short period in history. How about just the first half of the last century? You weren’t alive then, but it isn’t such oldie and moldy history that you might want to discard it. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar, and Russia turned into the Soviet Union, Russia was never in a collapse. In general, food still got into the cities and you didn’t have mass casualties. Not die-off levels anyway. Society was never in danger of collapsing. But if you got caught in between warring factions, you ended up dead. Even if you didn’t starve, you probably had malnutrition and health issues. Did you get enough fuel? In short, you were in a collapse, personally. Looking back, in a macro sense, life in general went on. But even without a collapse, a large segment of the society suffered. Look at Germany at the end of WWII. Civilians were dying left and right. Starvation was rampant ( between the end of the fighting and the relief shipments from the US, there was plenty of time for plenty of folks to starve ). History shows a change of leadership, a continuity of governance. But people still died. Calling this a long decline rather than a collapse was technically true looking at the vast forest. Looking at the trees individually tells a different story.
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Now, people die everyday. Just because you are one of them doesn’t mean civilization is collapsing. I’m talking here instead of mass death and destruction that is hidden in the bigger trend. How can you call Rome a slow decline when invading barbarians sacked the city ( killing all males and violated the females and selling the children into slavery ), food shortages caused malnutrition which exasperated the effects of widespread plague, and hyperinflation wiped out your savings? That was a civilization collapse to the people that went through it. Because it took a few hundred years before the city was a deserted overgrown meadow doesn’t mean people didn’t die as if it were a collapse. Die-offs are messy. I’d state that the majority did NOT slowly adjust over several generations. The majority died violent deaths. How else do you have such a severe population drop? Remember that civilization collapse is resource depletion. To get the population back into equilibrium with the diminished productivity of the land, most must die. And most do not die peacefully in their sleep.

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Assuming that we do stay at the Bumpy Plateau ( the term describing the maxed out production of oil with blips up and down but staying within a certain range ), civilization per se has not yet collapsed. But far below that general trend, a lot of messy reconfigurations are going on. Tribes are fighting, natural disaster victims are receiving no help, infrastructure is not being replaced, quality of life declines and the unnatural death rates increase. Just like we’ve been seeing for the last five years or so. Do you honest injun really think New Orleans fifth ward, the island of Haiti ( okay, half the island comprising the country ), or Japans industrial city are ever going to be rebuilt? Do you think it will be safe to fish the Gulf within our lifetime? Do you think crime is going to decrease in Detroit? Who thinks stability will return to the middle east? The place is falling apart and slapping a fresh coat of paint in the front room doesn’t change things. We are already looking in the rear view mirror of the start of the decline, and there is no guarantee that a general collapse won’t happen. And a greater than even probability that your own personal collapse can occur any time. Sure, all the survival writers called for evacuation of urban areas in the seventies. And they were wrong. What did they lose? Future book sales. If you are wrong and stay where you are, what do you lose? Your life. Wake up about what you are betting.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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