Big city dwellers...what's your plan?

Ludi

Paris now has a much larger population than it did during the pre-oil era.
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ORCA

Ludi

ORCA

thuja

Its a shame that most of The Peak Oil crowd talks up the rural life so much...because they are deluded.

It is nice to imagine a full spread of land that is self-sufficient without any need for help from folks ourtside their neighborhood...but that is a myth.

Ruralistas...will you need...

Pitchforks, hoes, tractor parts, piping, hoes, fencing, sewing needles, clothing, nails, screws, bricks, concrete, roads, etc etc etc etc?

The Peak Oil ruralista likes to imagine an idealized life where a few hardy folks band together in the countryside while the city folks starve and kill each other. They neglect to think about how all the stores will close up, the renters will move to the cities, those with a mortgage will quickly not be able to pay their bills and be foreclosed on, and they will still need all those pesky things that are manufactured...in the city.

They like to imagine truckers out of fuel not delivering food to the cities (neglecting to imagine that most rurtal folks need to goto the grocery store too) and then 200 million city folks starving in the streets within a couple weeks. Wow...

I live in Portland, have chickens, garden every square inch of my property and just need staples. I hunt, fish and chop my own wood. I will depend on...agro business...to continue providing me with those staples.

The ruralista...will rely on getting to jobs in more built up areas and manufactured goods made in cities to keep up their infrastructure on their land. The relationship is symbiotic.

Such silliness...

Ludi

dorlomin · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Aug 05, 2007 Posts: 1061

Planning for the future with so many variables is just about the hardest thing in the world. "The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley".... no matter what you do the risks are huge and the chances of success not as good as most think.

I do not have alot of capital stashed away and am not long out of university having just started the first really good paying job since then. I need to save a decent amount of money for a few years before I can get a deposit down on a property. The idea of paying for property in cash is just never going to happen. My objective is to have enough land to be able to subsidise my calorie intake not necessarily to completely get all the calories from the land. I just dont see me being able to afford enough land in a short space of time. My thinking at the moment is almost the reverse of what everyone else is saying about suburbs and moving into a relatively distant suburb. I have already cycled 20 miles to work for the past three years (until I started my new job in november) so I am thinking of moving against the trend of the getting as close to the city as possible. My hope is to steadily build up enough money to eventualy buy a small holding that can be manually farmed with a permaculture basis and produce a small surplus for trading.

However I honestly feel in about 4 or 5 years this is going to be a very very popular idea and that the farms near to the cities will be fiding it very popular to try to break themselves up into smaller holdings and sell themselves off. On the other hand I suspect once the government realises what is going on they will ban the break up of farms into smaller units in order to maximise productivity.

The point is that with a long term 'plan A' in focus and with only an even chance of bringing that off in the mean time, also to prepare for unemployment, finacial turmoil and social unrest. Minimizing my personal outgoings and living a spartan life are a part of this. Storing my wealth in a building society is not too clever in an inflationary world, but I am sort of struggling to see other alternatives. Also important is building up a stock of food. I think 3 months seems sufficient in the near term and a good trade off of space and calories. After a certain size it just gets too bulky for a rented room. This is not to survive some peak oil sudden armageddon, just to ensure that if there is long term strikes and other disturbances I am covered. The most cunning and laughable idea is to buy a few second hand cheap car batteries. If power becomes erratic I can store up energy when its on and have a wee bit of power if we start getting brownouts and rolling blackouts. I also need to look at solar cells in some form to ensure a modest amount of energy independence.

Nicholai

I'm going to Norway.

I'm leaving the Canadian suburbs to a 30$ an hour job, a country with an enormous surplus of 300$ billion and a marginally sustainable community. It isn't perfect but their homes do use 25% of the energy of the average British home. The population is small. Lots of fjords and fresh water. I'll have to rent a place but I'm thinking of posting an add in a local paper asking if any old farm couple needs a young fellow to help them out. We'll see how it goes, I hope for the best.

MrBean · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Sep 26, 2004 Posts: 1144

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ORCA

Various human cultures have been shoving each other around on the face of the planet since the beginning. That "imerialistic" practice won't end with the onset of hard economic times.

In planning for a bleak future we may not even be able to visualize, we planners have to take into consideration ALL likely risks to us and ours that includes the level of hazard each risk could present.

Like it or not, the risk of Islamic facsism is currently present throughout Europe. Some locations more than others. Referring to me as a "Bigot" does not change that fact.

I was once smitten by the Native American - that "Regal Savage" - until I began educating myself on actual historical events invloving the interactions on this continent between the aforementioned culture and the Spanish, French, English, and the "new" Americans. Its quite eye-opening to discover that the regal savage was every bit as imperialistic, conniving, blood-thirsty, and bigotted as any person of European decent. While this subject has no purpose in this thread, it was brought up as a diversion (a common practise when someone can't argue the origional comment) and I wanted to address it.

Now back to your origional scheduled programming!
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