Starting a commune

sciencegirl · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 17, 2006 Posts: 296

From the things I have been seeing things are going to get pretty bad. Sad

Why buy land or a farm when some idiot with a shotgun or an army of the starving raid your lands like locusts. If things get really bad the government would probably seize your crops. Mad

If you want to plan ahead I say buy food now, oatmeal, wheat and honey never go bad, and also hormel food products have an indefinate shelf life (prem, stagg chilli etc) or military MRE's (some last for 30 yrs)don't forget to have a source of water and a water purification kit, and bury it in small amounts all over your yard. Never keep it all in your house. Razz

This is one idea but I have a better one.

I think starting a commune or a new colony is a better idea. I live in Canada and here we have no more homesteading or squatters rights, even though we have massive amounts of unused land. North West territories, yukon, any of the northern sectors of any canadian province is very isolated too, like northern saskatchewan. It would be cool to have about 30 to 50 people to build a giant commune, so we can live their for the next 30 to 40 years. Dosen't matter if were not supposed to be there, in any case who would ever find us. Even if someone did stumble accross it, how would they ever get 50 armed people to leave. It would be to much hassle they would probably just allow it to exist as a new village if it were located on crown land. Canada doesn't have much of a military in the first place.

With 30 to 50 people we could afford solar and wind power on a small scale for electricity, use wood for heat, and have greenhouses, small seasonal farms, fishing and hunting for food and the extra money we have from not buying land can go towards extra food and supplies. The best thing is that the government would not know where we are, so when others are having their crops liberated by the government we would have a better quality of life. When peak oil is on the decline either the population will slowly decrease or it will decrease quickly via nuclear, biological warfare. We all know that nuclear attacks causes EMP waves that destroy electronics that will send the world back to the pre industrial age in a matter of minutes. Biological warfare will destroy cities and towns that people travel to (if no-one knows where we are, biological warfare has little chance of hurting us).

So my quetion is, does anyone want to disappear off the maps, and have a good quality of life before sht hits the fan, who wants to start a new colony ? (Never mind the fact that this is illegal, after all what the government doesn't know won't hurt it.) In all honesty we likely have less than 6 years left before things get really bad.
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Windmills · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 10:28 am Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

If you look around, you can find many links to an assortment of intentional communities. Do a search on this site and you'll find a bit of information, too. Instead of starting one from scratch, you might first want to have a look around and see if any of them suit you. They come in all varieties, with a myriad of different sets of rules and philosophies. When I looked through them, it almost seemed like an exercise in online match-making.

I think getting a group of like-minded people together is the best idea. However, the more people you have, the harder it may be to maintain cohesion in the overall direction, goals, and governance of the community. Different people are also at different stages of action and readiness with regard to Peak Oil.

You might want to advertise on an intentional community listing.

Good luck with this.

Shannymara · Master Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 5141 Location: Oklahoma

Communities Directory (Amazon)

2005 version - note that the feds probably have a copy of this book, too...
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pstarr · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

I have been following communes a long time and have even started a cohousing community in Northern California. I believe that intentional communities are the right way to live and mitigate many of the problems we all have--alienation, isolation, insecurity (spiritual and physical), redudancy and waste of private owneship (shared tools and shared luxaries), child and old-age isolation.

It is very difficult to get people together and actually do this though. That is because now everyone has to commute out from their home to a job and that means they need to be within driving distance. Large pieces of rural land within driving distance from jobs is expensive or virtually impossible to find and develop. All the groovey Permaculture thing that you want to do are very time consuming--full jobs in their own right. A "real" business job leaves you no time to do the fun stuff.

I believe the solution is to get together with a group and invest now in a piece of land that has water, south solar slopes, is near mass-transit (or main hiway, navigatable waterway etc.) and is near or in an agriculture community. This ownership will be a burden however and you need discretionary income to keep it until you move and build the community. Good luck Smile

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bobaloo · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 468

Since you're Canadia check out the logging town for sale in BC. It's on the coast about 100 miles north of Powell River. Only accessible by sea, it's got 50-100 buildings and homes, its own power plant, school, etc. Vacated by the logging company, it's up for sale. It's not too expensive either, in the $2 million range or so. If 50 folks split the cost that's only $40K each.

If one really wanted a survival retreat all set up and ready to go that would be hard to beat, you'd just need to set up some coastal defenses, smuggle in some M2's or something.

Sorry, don't have a precise link, but saw it on a BC real estate site, I'm sure any agent in the Powell River area could find it for you.

As has been noted, it's hard to find two people ready to pack up and sell their stuff to head into the unknown, getting 40 or 50 at this time is pretty much impossible, that's just the reality. Been involved in this kind of thing since the 60's, seen lots of groups come and go, mainly go.

The hard part is coming up with a viable economic model for the new community, one that brings in enough income to keep you going after you're there. The communes that have survived have figured out how to make a buck, unfortunate but essential to modern life. Some do it by crafts, some by tourism, one I frequent operartes a hot springs retreat and does very well. You need some kind of business to support yourselves.

The other key ingredient is usually a benefactor, someone with deep pockets to put out the initial investment with a reasonable expectation of payback, try to befriend a neurosurgeon or a lotter winner, someone with more money than sense (I've known a number of neurosurgeons, trust me).

marko · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:26 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

Sciencegirl, I see that this is your first post. Welcome.

When I first learned about peak oil, I began thinking along similar lines to you. But then I thought more deeply. As others say, it is hard to find a dozen people with a vision of community that is similar enough to actually make one work, let alone the 40-50 that I think would be the minimum for a largely self-sufficient community.

Also, you seem to think that you could find a place where the Canadian government couldn't find you. I am really sorry to point this out, but have you heard of satellites and satellite photos? They have very good resolution these days. It is possible to spot individual cars, and maybe individual people from space. I'm sure it is the job of someone in the Canadian government or military to periodically check out satellite photos of the more remote northern parts of the country. Also, military jets flying from southern Canada to Arctic bases are going to spot something unusual while flying over. The government will know where you are. If you aren't on good terms with them, they can blockade and starve you. Being on good terms means occupying land legally and coming up with the money for property taxes, educating the children according to provincial standards, etc. I am afraid that there is no escape from the powers that be.

Also, I don't think that people realize how very hard and grueling agricultural labor is, particularly if you are not using fossil-fuel-powered equipment. This is a very hard life. Not many people are going to want to stick it out, particularly in the Canadian north. Also, in the Canadian north, you are going to need to invest A LOT of money in buying the materials for greenhouses and transporting those materials to your remote site, even if you get the land for cheap. And greenhouses are necessary for food production due to very short growing seasons, unless you want to try to make a living as hunter gatherers chasing caribou across the frozen tundra (if there are any caribou left and if the tundra is still frozen and not impassable muck).

For these and other reasons, I have given up on the idea of an isolated rural community. A strong social and economic support network is going to be a life-saving necessity in the hard times to come, I think. The trick, I suspect, is to pick a place that could pull together as a larger community and survive the hard times. It should be a place with a critical mass of population, like probably more than 2,000, but not too big to live off of the land within a day or two by foot or rowboat (maybe less than 100,000 people) and not too close to any large urban areas that will be full of desperate people (i.e. forget Toronto-Hamilton-Kitchener or Vancouver). You should choose a place where you could fit in today and feel at home, because you are going to need to be accepted by your neighbors when times get tough and you need to trade favors and even work. Try to learn a useful trade like bike repair or gardening. Maybe find a group of people who want to move to your chosen small town or city with you.

But heading off into the wilderness with lots of guns sounds to me like the setup for a tragic ending.

Ludi · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:32 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

As someone who tried to start an intentional community, which never got beyond the "hey, let's start an intentional community" phase, I can say, it is MUCH harder than it sounds.

I strongly recommend Diana Leafe Christian's book "Creating a Life Together" I would not attempt a community without studying that book. Actually, you're likely to just give up on the idea after reading it, to be honest....not sayingyou should give up, just saying, it is very very difficult to make it work.
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sciencegirl · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 17, 2006 Posts: 296

For those of you who have experience with communes why do they not work. If you live on crown land, their is no propery tax, living in the forest means no utility charges. If you already have people with a little bit of money, then solar panels could give you light and radio, and maybe power a small tv, vcr ot cd player. Heat you could get from burning wood, the only real thing then is food and water.

My alternate plan is moving to saskatchewan, you can actaully buy a cheap house for $10,000 to $30,000, and then I would bury food all over the yard in sealed rubbermaid containers.

Also I can't buy a dead town for 2 million, because

1. I could only get my $40,000 share from a bank loan (and I got bad credit)

2. Peak oil will happen around 2009 -2010 and when things start getting super expensive I won't be able to pay the bank back, let alone their would be no work in a dead town.

3. The government would still know where I am, and if I have stored food they would simply attack and take it in an emergancy situation.

4. Why buy a town when I could get people to just migrate to a village and take it over

My goals for this year are buying silver and gold coins so I can sell them in a year or two. When oil is depleted people will turn to solar as one of the alternatives, so collecting scrap copper is also not a bad idea.

I am working on a small budget. I think saving some money and living on crown land might work if we get enough knowledge and cooperation. Instead of buying land you buy food that can be stored. That should give the colony at least 5 years of food, and more if we can make small farms and hunt successfully. Any advice would be useful. Also if anyone has knowledge of northern canada please let me know what it is like to live that far north. I am in Edmonton.

Pops · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:55 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

Firstly Sciencegirl welcome, you’ll find several folks here thinking along somewhat the same lines – doing along those lines actually.

As an aside posting solicitations to commit illegal acts is against the forum rules but I’m sure you were just ruminating ;>)

Anyway the thought I had was regarding the makeup of such a community. I know nothing about communes but I do recall that many factory towns operated in the way back. Most certainly were not a good thing – “I owe my soul to the company store”, Henry Ford built one in his vision of what utopia would be, even farm labor camps had their own little stores. What they did have though was a purpose and a product.

Let’s say I’m a wooden clog maker, and I started a clog making commune, I’d need a bunch of forest, some fallers and buckers and sawyers, some carvers and finishers, some packers and shippers. I’d need some cooks and gardeners, maybe some shepherds and maids.

So now we have a cash income, and we have some specialists in various niches that we found by running ads in the Saw Buck Times for a sawyer that wants to live on a commune and the cash income allows us to have the flexibility of not being completely reliant on our own devices.

The problem of getting enough people together to be cohesive might be that folks go at it from the wrong direction. IOW, I need some communites with some money and hopefully we can find a cook - as opposed to looking for a cook that wants to live in a commune.

But the closest I ever got to a commune was sleeping at the foot of the bed so what do I know!
Laughing

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Ludi · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:58 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

Mainly they fail because people do not communicate clearly enough and do not plan carefully enough.

Please get a copy of the book I recommend. It details exactly why ICs fail, and how to avoid those pitfalls, and discusses how ICs who have survived and thrived have done so. Seriously, before you spend any more time wondering about this or any kind of planning, get that book.
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sciencegirl · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 17, 2006 Posts: 296

[[As an aside posting solicitations to commit illegal acts is against the forum rules but I’m sure you were just ruminating ;>) ]]

Yes ruminating, lets just call it that.

I would not be too scared of satallite, if you ever seen google earth you would know that rural parts are fuzzy, in otherwards nobody really wastes their time taking highly focused pictures of tree's

As for military planes and forest rangers, we we could just make it look like we are camping.

If I don't start this till peak oil hits, everyone will be cutting back, it means less military planes, less roads, since people are going to be starving and killing each other over food I don't think government in 5 years time would give a shite over a small amount of people in the woods. They would have bigger fish to fry.

At this point this commune thing is only an idea, brainstorming.

linlithgowoil · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:31 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

i wouldn't want to be a member of any commune that would have me as a member. Smile

Ludi · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:34 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

I wouldn't pick myself as a commune member either - "No loonies!"

Calm down, science girl, people in North America will not be killing each other for food in five years. Smile

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LadyRuby · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:47 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune

What a lot of trouble to try to start one all your own. Why not try to join one already in existence? Here's a directory:

http://directory.ic.org/

rwwff · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject: Re: Starting a commune