[Location] Urban vs. Rural

Barbara · Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2004 5:33 am Post subject: People WON'T fly from the cities!

I've found this on ROE2 mailing list. It sounds very logical to me. These are numbers about a county in Texas, but they fit any city in the industrialized world, I think.
Please, read the numbers and tell me what you think!
---------------
Per 2000 Census (the first reliable and complete
> numbers I came across):
>
> Total Population: 3.4 million
> Under 5 years old: 8.3%
> Under 18: 29%
> Over 65: 7.4%
> Disabled: 573,000
>
> Per Men's Fitness, 2002:
>
> Percentage of American population engaging in no
> physical activity: 27%
>
> Percentage of American population not engaging in
> regular physical activity: 28.2%
>
> Okay, here's the math. Note that I did the "inactive"
> deduction against the entire non-disabled population
> regardless of age, since I did not know the
> demographics used in the 27% and 28.2% figures. This
> probably results in a higher population of able-bodied
> migrators than would occur in real life:
>
> 3.4 million
> <573,000 disabled>
> --------------------
> 2,827,000
> <1,560,504 inactive/insufficiently active>
> -----------------------------
> 1,266,496
> <566,124 too old/too young>
> -----------------------------
> 700,372 remaining
>
> Okay, that's approximately 21% of an modern American
> urban population that could conceivably migrate if
> they had to bug out today.
>
> Now let's remove a few other folks from the pack. I'm
> giving no numbers on these because they are unknowable
> without a clear understanding of how a peak oil crash
> will unfold:
>
> 1) Anyone who dies of disease, violence or starvation
> before things get so bad people start fleeing. The
> slower the crash, the more of these there will be.
>
> 2) Anyone who get drafted for resource wars.
>
> 3) Anyone too spoiled by soft living to become a
> refugee. There will be many physically fit people who
> are not mentally fit. They will succumb to depression
> and hopelessness.
>
> 4) Anyone whose fitness is predicated on availability
> of modern medical technology, ie: those with managed
> chronic illnesses such as asthma or diabetes. Those
> with extremely poor hearing or vision. Lose or break
> your glasses and you could be out of luck in a
> survival scenario.
>
> 5) Anyone who has a close friend or family member in
> one of the "unable to migrate" categories and is
> unwilling to abandon them to their fate. Are you
> willing to leave your mother behind? How about your
> sick toddler?
>
> 6) Anyone who doesn't have the means to carry
> necessary supplies with them or to re-stock their
> supply via hunting and gathering skills. How many
> urbanites know how to live off the land?
>
> 7) Anyone who cannot defend whatever supplies they
> have.
>
> Cool

Anyone who succumbs to disease, injury, violence
> and general mishap (poor weather, broken carts, food
> poisoning, etc) along the way.
_________________
**no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.

TylerJC · Guest

What if they follow the empty highways to the suburbs and the farms? Even if you engage in little physical activity, you can still walk, right? Many would die on the way, but a mass exodus from the cities is possible. The faster and harder the crash, the more likely a mass exodus would be. The poor and hungry would start an open revolt if they saw a breakdown in the social order. That might prompt a sizable group of people to leave. Now they might not turn into an angry, hungry, dangerous mob but they will leave to go live with their family/friends in the safe suburbs. Now with cities in chaos and suburbs overflowing with refugees...it doesn't look pretty.

cyotha · Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2004 6:50 pm Post subject:

I don't agree with the statement that people used to "soft living" will succumb to hopelessness. The will to live is incredibly strong in all of us. No one who hasn't been faced with death can understand how strong. Read some of the accounts of concentration camp and Gulag survivors.

Even couch potatos can walk MUCH farther than they think they can. We took a friend who had never been hiking and hadn't done any significant exercise in months hiking on Mt. Ranier. She was also tiny (about 5'2" and 100 pounds). In one day she hiked 13.5 miles with a 1000' elevation gain (2300' on the way out the next day, another 13.5 miles) carrying a backpack that weighed at least 20 pounds. It was rough, she was very sore afterwards, but she could do it.

The problem I have with the "people will flee to the country" scenario is, what are they going to do when they get there? Raid farms? I envision a mob of ragged homeless people murdering a dairy farmer and his family so they could kill and eat all his cows. Then what? That dairy farm is not stocked with the seeds and equipment for subsistence farming, even if they had the skill and knowledge to do it.

Not only that, these supposed refugees from the city will not be able to walk onto "unoccupied land" and squat there. I grew up in a rural area. Those people own guns, they know how to use them, and they don't take kindly to trespassers. I know what would happen if a mob of refugees wandered up the highway to my hometown looking for farmland to raid. Locals who own horses would pass around word of their coming. An informal militia would assemble, armed with hunting rifles, and set up checkpoints on the major roads.

I may think most of the folks I grew up with are ignorant hicks, but I have a lot of confidence in both their sense of community and their old-fashioned frontier mentality. If society collapses, they will do ok.

gg3 · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 12:59 am Post subject:

Cyotha's on-target there, no pun intended. And this is why you find a lot of discussion here about defensive preparations: people planning to go rural, figuring out how to assemble a viable defense infrastructure in the event there are mobs of looters heading for the country.

Realistically, I think the probability of a mob hitting any given farm is low; many times here, I've said that the wave-front of looter mobs will thin out the further you get from their point of origin (think of the inverse square law for propagation of waves in general). However, the same low probabilities can be applied to conventional burglars in normal times (e.g. probability of your house being hit), and yet it's still prudent to have an alarm system.

JackBob · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:46 am Post subject:

NevadaGhosts · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 20, 2004 Posts: 752

Barbara,

I think you are right. Many people are not physically or mentally prepared to survive a crash. Talking about it is one thing. Doing it is a whole nother story. People will drop like flies of they can't go down to their local grocery store to buy food off the shelves. Technology and modern living has created a society of weak people.

Pops · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 6:45 am Post subject:

It doesn’t make sense to me that mobs of starving people would set out on foot into the countryside – to do what? Eat hay?

Most urbanites and suburbanites for that matter don’t know how to grow squash, let alone how to forage food along the interstate or even right off the farm. Most farming areas are relatively specialized anyway, not bucolic homesteads growing everything imaginable for a balanced diet. The certainty that there will be some food in town balanced against the uncertainty of what one might find as a refugee will keep most folks where they are.

The only reason I can see for people voluntarily becoming refugees is a complete breakdown in law and order in the cities; and in that case, they probably wouldn’t get far before becoming victims of the lawlessness.

The whole mass exodus scenario, it seems to me, presumes a fast collapse in oil supplies which doesn’t appear likely, during the great depression folks did leave town, but they went to find work, not to go on a looting spree.
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Chicagoan · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 19, 2004 Posts: 315

Cities will shrink in population, but will not dissapear entirely. When farming returns to a more labor-intensive endevor, jobs will open in agricultural areas. The only jobs remaining in the city will probably involve the manufacture of commodities farmers use but are unable to make themselves.

Barbara · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 5:29 pm Post subject:

I agree with Pops.
And as long as there's some law and Police around, the farmers will RUN to the city (with bicycle, believe me: they did it during WWII), to sell their food or exchange it with products they need.
_________________
**no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.

Dustin · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 1:08 pm Post subject:

i think barbara has one thing wrong with her assumption.

Its called the frog in water recipe for disaster. Put a frog in hot water, it jumps out in a second. Put it in cold water, and heat it slowly, the frog sits there and dies.

If the poo hit the fan all of a sudden, people would race out of the cities, mass riots would ensue, even if they were not phisically fit. You underestimate the will to survive. However, if energy rose slowly and starved people to death over the coarse of several years, less people would run out the cities because over time people would feel the misery they were end, but would accept it as life and keep on living until they died of starvation.

Imagine it was 1998 when oil was 10$ a barrel and it suddenly jumped to 50$, people would have riots, marches on washington, and a sudden cry for fuel efficent cars. However, that rise of 400% was spead over a 6 year period, and sure enough, people accepted the fuel prices and we are still not motivated for fuel efficency. Oil could rise to 100$ a barrel, and given a sufficent amount of time, such as 8 or 9 years, people would still not run to the hills. (i assume a period of time short enough so we do not have to think about inflation).

gg3 · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:54 pm Post subject:

Jackbob, re LOCs: You're right, of course. I had deliberately oversimplified the picture to get the concept across. Once a person understands the basic concept, they should be able to figure out some of the implications.

Dutsin, yes, frog in hot water.

Pops, people in general don't know how to do anything with their hands any more. It used to be that there were major industrial plants in most cities. In the Bay Area we had Fageol Motors (truck chassis), Gar Wood (truck bodies), Wooldridge (earthmoving equipment), shipyards that actually built ships, and dozens of smaller factories including at least one specialized steels plant, as well as hoardes of machine shops, tool & die works, foundries, etc., to serve the factories. No longer. At least we still have oil refineries in Richmond, but NIMBYs grouse about those (and about the cost of fuel for their SUVs, go figure).

In fact, most of the big sturdy manufacturing plant buildings have been converted into overpriced condominiums (apartments you can buy rather than rent) which are called "lofts." So we turned our agricultural land into suburban sprawl, and our urban industry into more of the same, consumer lifestyle supremacy at the expense of life's basics. All of which will come back to haunt us in a big way. Where, for example, will the city dwellers actually manufacture the goods that the farmers will need...?

Here's an interesting example. How many people here know the difference between a foundry, a machine shop, and a tool & die works? How many people know the difference between cement and concrete? How many know what properties steel is valued for as a manufacturing material compared to iron? (Not just "strength," what kinds of strength?)

lotrfan55345 · Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:47 pm Post subject:

How can people live like this? I hate to think what would happen to those people post-peak.I think these people have to flee to survive...

(sorry for the big pictures)

MonteQuest · Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 5:41 pm Post subject:

Good, provocative post, Barbara. Ever watch how many trucks enter a city on any given day? Hundreds, if not thousands, carrying all that fresh produce, meat, milk, bread butter and eggs. If they stopped rolling, I read somewhere it would only take six hours for the shelves to be bare. If people started hoarding, it would be first come, first gets. Not much else to eat in a city with bare shelves except dogs & cats and....other people.

I liked the frog recipe. It's all about how fast, how soon.
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cyotha · Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2004 5:01 pm Post subject:

I take back my statement that folks used to "soft living" will find a way to survive when TSHTF.

Watched "Amish in the City" the other night (yeah, I know, but trash TV is fun sometimes. It's a reality show about Amish kids living in LA with city kids so they can decide if they want to remain Amish). The whole group went to Amish country in Ohio for the episode. The two city guys could not handle mucking out a sheep stall. Too smelly. The smells were a source of constant complaint for all of them, actually. One guy had no idea that electric fencing is used to contain livestock. I thought this was common knowledge, but I guess not among folks from LA. Then the vegan city girl threw up when she saw a whole roasted pig.

Maybe I was misled by the fact that Seattle has a high content of outdoorsy types. Clearly urban America is full of people who have no idea what life is like outside of the artificial world they inhabit. I don't blame them for being ignorant. They are like lions raised in a zoo from birth; they would starve to death in the wild. Food comes from the supermarket in shrink-wrapped, sanitary packages.

When I mused about this I started to buy the hard-crash scenario a little bit more. I think we may really have to hit a wall before most Americans would or could abandon their current lifestyle and try to live sustainably.

I guess all the sales reps, fashion stylists, and club promoters will make a good pool of serfs for the farmers post-peak.

Licho · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:07 am Post subject:

Yes, there will be no reason to leave cities.. especially in densely populated Europe..
Even if farmers have to use horses or steam trains to transport products - no problem..
Basic food storages are already in cities (there are granaries), farms start at the outskirts of towns and cities (Europe) and it's not really neccesary to transport huge ammounts of food.
Changes will be gradual, and there will be time to adapt..
For example, my coutnry had same population even in 19 century, with no pesticides/fertilizers, no oil and only steam railroand.. They were able to sustain similar sized city population at that time, it will be piece of cake after peak oil with limited alternative fuel for transportation, advanced railroads, advanced storage (it was not possible to store food for so long in 19 century) and communications.