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Congratulations on your lifestyle and I hate to tell you this but you'll also be lost if TSHTF because those crazy eyed liberals will come pouring out of the cities and it will take more guns than you have to hold them off if they decide that they want and need what you have. If worst comes to worst, most folks would be better off in communities--communes if you're a liberal.
maybe and maybe not. remember in a SHTF situation, for the 1st 6 months or so, there would be very little goverment if any and no police protection for all you liberals.
I know alot of democrats that own firearms, but only know of 1 liberal that owns a shotgun, who keeps it locked up and shells seperate from the gun.
I am not planning on living alone if SHTF, it looks like that is what you thought. communes are more Libertarian than democrat. having 2 aunts that belonged to a commune in colorado.
my defense is not being able to hold off alot of people, it is in being quiet and out of mind. if you cant see it, it isnt there.
I'm assuming you mean plastics. My dad remembers when plastics were rolled out and called the next big thing. They're saying that about buckyball constructed cellulose based products that are shelled with other materials to shield them from water. Yes, you read that right: paper.
Also, many grocery bags and other stuff made from plastics are now being made from extracts from corn and other stuff.
I fail to think of a product that can't be completely removed from the pumped out of the ground oil cycle. The oil is extracted from alternative sources is all.
It isn't just plastics, it's EVERYTHING. Either directly or indirectly, we need oil to make stuff, and get stuff to people. Thank you for the info on plastics. Good to know. My concern is more than that, and maybe I'm not saying it right. Plastic bags I'm not so concerned about. Heart valves, prescription meds, building materials, ENOUGH FOOD, sanitation, medical and dental care, etc., well, those things I am concerned about. I don't care if suburbia doesn't survive, but I hope we have liveable urban areas.
It is great to see folks talking about both sides of this issue. On the PO sites, it seems a person has to be all for PO, and a doomsday scenario.
maybe and maybe not. remember in a SHTF situation, for the 1st 6 months or so, there would be very little goverment if any and no police protection for all you liberals.
I know alot of democrats that own firearms, but only know of 1 liberal that owns a shotgun, who keeps it locked up and shells seperate from the gun.
I am not planning on living alone if SHTF, it looks like that is what you thought. communes are more Libertarian than democrat. having 2 aunts that belonged to a commune in colorado.
my defense is not being able to hold off alot of people, it is in being quiet and out of mind. if you cant see it, it isnt there.
LOL, I'm dating an ultra-liberal gun owning man who lives out in the sticks. The first time I slept over and stepped out on my side of the bed, I stepped on a handgun. I know, I know, contradiction in terms but there you have it. Sure, you can hide for maybe 10 years or more or less or who knows?
I'd also like to remind you that there won't be police protection for conservatives either. I know quite a few who live around here and they're just as dependent on the system as me and maybe more so, b/c I practice environmental whacko habits and many of those are old fashioned ways like hanging my clothes out on the line or cooking from scratch. Some of my conservative friends can't even cook an egg.
People don't seem to understand this, but political ideologies don't necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with self-sufficiency. The modern back-to-the-land movement was a spin-off created by hippies, afterall.
People don't seem to understand this, but political ideologies don't necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with self-sufficiency. The modern back-to-the-land movement was a spin-off created by hippies, afterall.
Yeah, it was the hippies who published The Mother Earth News. January 1970 was the first issue.
It isn't just plastics, it's EVERYTHING. Either directly or indirectly, we need oil to make stuff, and get stuff to people. Thank you for the info on plastics. Good to know. My concern is more than that, and maybe I'm not saying it right. Plastic bags I'm not so concerned about. Heart valves, prescription meds, building materials, ENOUGH FOOD, sanitation, medical and dental care, etc., well, those things I am concerned about. I don't care if suburbia doesn't survive, but I hope we have liveable urban areas.
It is great to see folks talking about both sides of this issue. On the PO sites, it seems a person has to be all for PO, and a doomsday scenario.
Ah, yeah I agree it won't be a walk in the park in the coming 20 years. There WILL be issues and there WILL be pressures on our daily lives. In all reality there will be enough food. Look at all the fatties walking around. Personally, if the cost of food went up say 3 fold I'd welcome it as national diet. But anyway ...
But I also maintain that technological advances will be rendering at least some of the petroleum derived stuff we make medical, material, and other stuff out of obsolete. Billions of $ is being spent currently to research methods to do so. I remember GM buying a patent from a guy who developed a process to make oil and petroleum products from switchgrass. Yep, the same weeds that grow in the middle of the highway, in rubble, sides of hills, basically anywhere.
I think my point is, when there's a will, there's a way. And there's definitely a will to keep our quality of life going, and there's definitely hundreds of thousands of really smart scientists and engineers and the venture capital to make sure that happens.
RE: most preparedness websites and the opinions on them, I think of preparedness as a sort of slippery slope. Some folks latch on to some fear they have or something happens to them and they default to the most conservative answer when it comes to preparedness for the scenario(s) they have in mind. Some do it because it's a lifestyle choice. Others because they've got nothing better to do.
I see it a little differently. I find many man-made SHTF scenarios highly implausible, and I'd rather build skills first. I'm basically starting from zero (well, not quite, remembered how to tie slip knots and other knots from my boy scout days, and remembered how to make friction fire, and just learned how to make some rope). My first objective is basic preparedness, like if one of the three most likely scenarios for local disaster happened near me (volcano, earthquake, tsunami) then how would I bug out/in? Focus on the immediate essentials. Then build on them. My goal is to be able to survive two months either bugged in or out, but it will take time. By that time if it looks like a SHTF will happen, well then I'd have a basic foundation to build on it further, and I'd prepare accordingly. Humans are adaptable, and last I checked about an hour ago going to the toilet, I was still one. Either that or this matrix program is really something!
I'm also not a doom and gloomer. I see a lot of the skills I'm learning fun as well. Like rope. Shoot, we STILL use thousands year old ways of making useful stuff all the time. And in many ways it's being more responsible for the environment. Like I'm not throwing away bags anymore. I just made myself a nice rope sling over some plastic milk jugs I recycled, filled with water, and use it to do strength training. Beats spending $50 / month at a gym, where I have to wait for some ditz to get off the weights machine, or $600 for some set.
Peak oil concerns flow rates just as much as it does extractable reserves. Even if you have 100 trillion barrels of oil, why does that matter if you can only pump 90 million barrels worldwide. Then you have issues with declining EROEI on much of the newly-discovered oil. When you frack the h3ll out of the oil and drill it horizontally under oceans that cost is being past onto the consumers from the oil/drilling companies.
IMHO, peak oil is here and will continue to create pressure economically for many years to come.
What concerns me most is not running out of oil, but an unsustainable EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). If oil is selling for $100 a barrel, and it costs $110 to find, process, refine, and deliver that oil, that's a negative EROEI. And yes, I am very worried about this. There is only so much oil in the world, and basing an entire civilization on a finite resource is very short-sighted!
From the link below: "In essence, the energy costs of extracting new energy sources from the ground begin increasing until it no longer makes economic sense to continue drilling."
What concerns me most is not running out of oil, but an unsustainable EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). If oil is selling for $100 a barrel, and it costs $110 to find, process, refine, and deliver that oil, that's a negative EROEI. And yes, I am very worried about this. There is only so much oil in the world, and basing an entire civilization on a finite resource is very short-sighted!
From the link below: "In essence, the energy costs of extracting new energy sources from the ground begin increasing until it no longer makes economic sense to continue drilling."
right, which is what I meant when I said we'll never run out of oil--it will just get to a point where it no longer makes sense to pump it but when we get to that point we'll have seen a lot of violence over the lack of it while the rich and greedy kill each other to have what's left.
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January 1970 was the first issue.
