Survival

[geekster]

If there is an actual shortage of food, people will kill you for what you have. I don't mean to be rude but, the logistics are against you.

Yup. Starving people will be looking for healthy people. If you are starving anyway, what do you have to lose by using deadly force to get their food? What is the government going to do, kill you?

You need to be in a place that is hard to get to and more than two tanks of fuel away from the nearest metro.

NOTE:

I would recommend a more southerly climate than a more northerly:

Washington:
“Conditions this year have been difficult for our growers across Washington, from Clark County to Okanogan,â€

[Token]

Token, your list looks good but, your profile says that you live in Los Angeles. I'm currently in Van Nuys. I have 2 drums of fuel to bug out. The L.A. area has something like 12 million people. Your garden will be great to cut down on your food bills. If there is an actual shortage of food, people will kill you for what you have. I don't mean to be rude but, the logistics are against you.

No, not for LA. There is no water here. Plus I already garden the full extent of my yard and though it would help in a non-apocalyptic situation like a nasty flu the water remains a problem

I'd like to figure out options before I'm hungry.

@Trishntek, thanks on the references. I've read mother earth news for a while but found their articles have lost their usefulness They seem more interested in selling tractors and doing farm equipment reviews as well as the whole green environmentalism frenzy.

I will check out that book though.

[geekster]

Token, if you have a major library nearby that might have some really old Mother Earth News from the 1970's and 1980's, there are some awesome articles in there ... before they got all buzzwordy and stuff.

They might be available on microfilm at the major branches.

[Trishntek]

Token, your list looks good but, your profile says that you live in Los Angeles. I'm currently in Van Nuys. I have 2 drums of fuel to bug out. The L.A. area has something like 12 million people. Your garden will be great to cut down on your food bills. If there is an actual shortage of food, people will kill you for what you have. I don't mean to be rude but, the logistics are against you.

No, not for LA. There is no water here. Plus I already garden the full extent of my yard and though it would help in a non-apocalyptic situation like a nasty flu the water remains a problem

I'd like to figure out options before I'm hungry.

@Trishntek, thanks on the references. I've read mother earth news for a while but found their articles have lost their usefulness They seem more interested in selling tractors and doing farm equipment reviews as well as the whole green environmentalism frenzy.

I will check out that book though.

Yeah, in fact I ordered another copy of that encyclopedia for myself today! Kinda forgot about it after loaning it out long ago. It is the one book I would want to be with while stranded on a desert island. It not only has recipes and garden planning, cultivation and care, but it also has how to raise livestock, husbandry, slaughtering and butchering. Canning, freezing and drying foods are thoroughly taught. And Carla Emery has this wonderful conversation with you in a general recipe kind of presentation. Very entertaining stories and anecdotal illustrations.

[ygmir]

for me, one of the biggest concerns is disinfecting, and antibiotics.........

a simple cut can kill you.

I keep 7% horse iodine, for water purification and wound cleansing......it burns like hell, but, nothin lives through that stuff.......
I'd like to know how to make, even crude, penicillin.
Sulfa drugs are not so tough.

[Token]

Found some interesting data for Indiana.



Historical corn yields



Deviations from trend.

Too bad they don't split out the contributing factors for the increase. In my case there will be no pesticides, nitrate fertilizers and the like. Only benefit from hybridization and breeding.

Here is the article link.

http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/new ... d2003.html

[can't sit still]

Here's an article that talks about the price of food relative to the price of oil. Very interesting. http://www.activistpost.com/2010/07/foo ... treet.html

[can't sit still]

Here's a good paper on unemployment;
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/caree ... /19556146/

[can't sit still]

It seems that more and more people are starting to worry;
"The hedge fund manager said he doesn't even trust gold. "It's worthless if the social fabric tears," he said. "We're going to have to do something different, before we get down to where it's really bad."
http://www.observer.com/2010/wall-street/new-doom

[ygmir]

I just got 4 250 gal "totes" on pallets, for oil processing with my centrifuge.......
and, my solar array will run it.

[Trishntek]

I just got 4 250 gal "totes" on pallets, for oil processing with my centrifuge.......
and, my solar array will run it.

If it is anything like your cross-framed clothesline, there is no doubt of your success.

[ygmir]

haha, that was a rope bridge, for Dougly's barbarian camp last year. We built it here for testing first..

but, thanks.

[can't sit still]

I guess this is the right place for this notice. IT jobs look to take another hit;
http://www.informationweek.com/news/sof ... =226500202

[can't sit still]

Here's some dietary advice;
"We have come across homeless Poles in north London barbecuing rats. We have to explain to them that unlike the rats back home, in London they would be full of poison."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/aug/1 ... h-sleepers

[can't sit still]

Well, GM was bailed out. The unions demanded it. Now, they have to slim down and streamline their operation. The quickest way to slim down is to.........Outsource;
"DesRosiers says Mexico’s share of North American auto production will rise to 19 percent over the next decade from an average 12 percent in 2000 to 2009. Over the same period, the U.S. will lose 7 percentage points to 65 percent of the market and Canada’s share will hold at 16 percent, he said."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-0 ... a-day.html
Not sure that this was what the unions had in mind

[geekster]

SO GM wants to sell or close a plant; a stamping plant in Indianapolis. So the union wants to reduce their salary.

The new contract would, among other concessions, cut wages from an average of $29 an hour to $15.50.

The rank and file ran the union bosses out of the meeting. Ironic since the union now owns a good bit of GM.

First rule if wage cutting ... never offer someone less than they will make on unemployment as a wage cut. Threats to close the plant will simply be seen as a chance to make more money from unemployment than remaining at work.

[youtube][/youtube] Not a good video. Maybe it is dawning on the union what its like to actually run a company.

[can't sit still]

The Mexicans are happy with $ 26 a day. Everybody needs to wake up and smell the bacon. We're drifting towards a global-mean wage,,,,, and boy is it MEAN.

[can't sit still]

This article is somewhat of a bummer;
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/08/dar ... se-of.html
Paul Craig Roberts has a pretty good track record;
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/07/yea ... olved.html
Also a bit of a bummer;
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/07/foo ... treet.html
It's difficult to be objective about this whole mess. One bad sign is that the economists and the politicians have had a couple of years to come up with workable solutions. The best that they have come up with was a temporary transfusion to a veritable corpse. The parasite class can't understand why the masses are refusing to take even bigger loads of debt to keep an unworkable situation going a bit longer.

The political class know deep, down in their black hearts that GOV is the major problem. They shuffle one way and then another. Pity that they won't all shuffle off and die. Unfortunately, parasites don't do that.
http://www.cracked.com/article_17199_7- ... lanet.html

[geekster]

The fundamental problem is that they don't know how to stop trying to buy votes by giving away the people's money. The sea change comes when the people start saying "stop giving our money away ... it isn't yours to give!".

Wait till the new tax hikes. The worst one is the removal of the temporary moratorium on AMT for people earning under $250,000. It comes back in January. If you make more than $100K, you tax deductions will go away.

I still say the wheels will really start falling off the cart in mid October. That's when factory orders will plummet because lead times on things would push delivery into 2011 and people want stuff this year under the current tax regulations. It is going to be a very cold January.

[can't sit still]

This long file takes a lot of truths and some speculation and paints a picture. It's an interesting read. It's about celestial dynamics and the sun-earth flux and plasma flows. It helps if you have some science background. It helps if you've read "The Electric Universe" and it helps if you've read Velicovsky.
The essence of a synopsis would be; expect continuous energy / lightning exchanges from Sol to Terra. They speculate that CMEs would conduct Birkeland currents.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archi ... lowers.pdf

It HAS happened before so don't dismiss it out of hand.
Dan

[Oldguy]

Lesson from 5 years ago: Never campout at a superdome during a hurricane.
Nuff' said.

[can't sit still]

More on unemployment. I've been screaming all along that our biggest problem is EFFICIENCY.
This from the Daily Reckoning;
"Since 1983, manufacturing output in the US has more than doubled. (This, in inflation-adjusted dollars, by the way, makes the feat all the more impressive.) But it did so with about 26% fewer workers."
How very efficient,,, 26 % fewer workers.

" Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder estimates that 22% to 29% of all current U.S. jobs will be offshorable within two decades"
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... to-recover
When you consider that 5 % of jobs have been lost in this Depression II, an additional 22--29 % sounds pretty scary.
Efficiency here and efficiency overseas. The jobs will go to the most efficient producer / market.
We borrowed 80 % of the savings worldwide to keep everybody working. We've fallen into the debt-trap where we borrow new money to pay off the old money. The difference added on by interest is going to swallow up the whole shebang.

There is NO possibility of providing jobs for all the productive people in the world. We're just too damn efficient. There aren't enough resources either.
It's true that there are far more segments to the economy besides manufacturing. All of them are becoming more efficient,,, with the exception of GOV, of course.
GOV has pretty thoroughly proved that it can't create productive jobs. GOV is also quite broke.
"At this point, 25 state unemployment insurance funds have gone broke and the Department of Labor estimates that 15 more state unemployment funds will likely go broke within two years"
Hmmm, 25 + 15 = 40. 40 of 50 state unemployment funds broke. That's the always rosy projection by GOV.
"Sen Bennet said the situation has been dire for over a decade saying, “We have created no net new jobs in the United States since 1998â€

[can't sit still]

This is all so sad. The poverty rate for children is twice as high as for adults. Statistics show that the poverty rate would be about double or triple if it was figured on a personal level rather than on a household level. This is because so many people have moved in with someone else,,, usually family.
Some other statistics;
#1 The Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in 51 years of record-keeping.

#2 In the year 2000, 11.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty. In 2008, 13.2 percent of Americans were living in poverty. In 2009, 14.3 percent of Americans were living in poverty. Needless to say the trend is moving in the wrong direction.

#3 In 2009 alone, approximately 4 million more Americans joined the ranks of the poor.

#4 According to the Associated Press, experts believe that 2009 saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.

#5 The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

#6 Today the United States has approximately 4 million fewer wage earners than it did in 2007.

#7 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.

#8 U.S. banks repossessed 25 percent more homes in August 2010 than they did in August 2009.

#9 One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.

#10 There are now 50.7 million Americans who do not have health insurance. One trip to the emergency room would be all it would take to bankrupt a significant percentage of them.

#11 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, the U.S. government health care program designed principally to help the poor.

#12 There are now over 41 million Americans on food stamps.

If you graphed these statistics, you would see steep growth.
Here are 20 more statistics that are very bad;
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... -americans

ALL of the signs are bad. Some are frightening.
#14 One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
Americans experienced a $1.5 trillion loss in combined household net worth in the second quarter of 2010.

According to Federal Reserve data released on Friday, federal government debt expanded at a 24.4% annual rate during the second quarter, up from a 20.5% increase in the first quarter.
This should be clear enough. The quarter on quarter debt increase is shocking.
$ 1.5 trillion of private worth lost in the same quarter. Public debt is going way up,,, at least in part for anti-poverty programs.

Things are getting seriously bad. After the election, there will be a bunch of new republicans. IF they prefer to force total gridlock to make obama look bad,,,, instead of working for possible solutions, things will get worse.

[can't sit still]

This article has a list of links on preparation;
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/chri ... cast/44887
The bankers have gotten together and written Basel III. It's a new set of rules on capital requirements. The rules will be adopted starting in 2015 and then 2017. This is a clear admission that banks DON'T have any capital and don't have future prospects of raising capital. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article22895.html

GOV is sucking up all available credit to roll over debt. There is nothing left for the private sector. Don't hold your breath waiting for jobs to come back.

[can't sit still]

Obummer's science czar wants to see the U.S. deindustrialized. I can hardly wait. Well, it's happening at a very fast pace;
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... -your-mind
There is NO viable plan to provide jobs. There are plenty of plans to dismantle the whole thing;
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/09/dra ... ading.html
Marx was a bonehead. The current crop of boneheads come up with ideas that sound OK. These boneheads, like Marx, completely ignore human nature.
Look at the Indian nations that have the dole but,,, no jobs. Meth, alcohol, and from what I'm told, rampant incest.
If these "super-greens" would just come out and admit that they endorse a huge population reduction, THEN, they could enumerate their solutions. A few of them do; http://www.vhemt.org/

The U.N wants to move everyone into the cities to preserve the environment. Many of the greens envision all of us working on little plots of ground. If you've seen the movie "Brazil", you can picture all of us living in cities.
Working a small plot of land isn't a viable solution for large populations. Currently, we farm on a large scale so that we can substitute carbon calories for human calories. Small scale farming without a tractor burns up so many human calories that it isn't very productive. Horse farming is somewhat better.

I'm guessing that the policy will be to; cram everyone into the cities and camps,,, make them thoroughly psychotic and miserable,,, let dire poverty force them to forgo reproduction,,, let crime reduce their numbers. That is the direction that policy is aimed at.

[can't sit still]

This is an interesting article talking about the death of currencies.
http://financialsense.com/contributors/ ... -the-night

[can't sit still]

I'm sure that most have heard of the predictions of Malthus, regarding food production and population. Here's an interesting update;
http://www.aheadoftheherd.com/Newslette ... ubbard.htm

[can't sit still]

Well, I'm back to unemployment. It looks like the preferred action by bankrupt states is bankruptcy. This will have a lot of fallout.
"“If states get no further federal assistance, the steps they will have to take to eliminate deficits will likely take a full percentage point of GDP. That in turn, could cost the economy, 900,000 jobs next year.â€

[unjonharley]

[quote="can't sit still"]Well, I'm back to unemployment. It looks like the preferred action by bankrupt states is bankruptcy. This will have a lot of fallout.
"“If states get no further federal assistance, the steps they will have to take to eliminate deficits will likely take a full percentage point of GDP. That in turn, could cost the economy, 900,000 jobs next year.â€

[gyre]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11470261

Wind farms, especially big ones, generate turbulence that can significantly alter air temperatures near the ground, say researchers