I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Hello everyone, I'm very new to all this, so please bear with me. I will greatly appreciate any answers you can give to my questions.
I was first exposed to Peak Oil during one of my classes this semester, and the more I researched it, the more convinced I was that it's all going to happen sometime soon. I won't graduate college for another two years, and I am planning on getting a master's degree after that, so I won't have a job until four years from now. After my master's, however, I will be making a decent amount of money. I go to a very nice college, and I am planning on becoming a medical physicist.
To begin with, how long do you think America has until the economy completely crashes? I have heard estimates between 10-20 years. I know my job will not be secure for the future, so I am planning on making as much money as I can, saving it all, and preparing for the crash. If we can last 15 years longer, I could probably save up 200 grand or more.
I have come up with two tentative plans:
First, buy a few acres of land somewhere remote and hidden, build a small concrete house with a large basement for storing food, and farm the land. I'm going to go ahead and buy a lot of wheat seed right now, just in case, since it keeps indefinitely as long as it is sealed right. Some problems, though- would it really be possible to sustain a farm without pesticides, equipment, etc? What about global warming? I live in the South, so should I plan on moving farther North if the climate gets worse? Another point- my religious views don't coincide with the majority of people in the South. Will this be a problem, too?
Second, I have thought of buying a sailboat and sailing to a deserted island if things get bad enough. I live close to a large river which eventually runs into the Atlantic Ocean. I figure I'll search Google Earth, find a few possibilities (farther north or south, where climate change won't hurt as much).
A few problems, though. Water for the voyage would be hard to get. I have thought a little about solar desalination. Does anyone know anything about it? I have thought about ways to rig up a small solar desalination contraption on the top of the boat. I.e. a strong glass container with a light-absorbing bottom to heat up the saltwater, which turns into steam and goes through the desalination chamber, etc. Or are there any already manufactured solar desalination equipment that I could use? Should I just try to carry enough water along with me?
Would it be practical to assume that I could catch enough fish during this voyage to eat? I would, of course, stock the sailboat with as much food initially as I could, and also some hardware tools, nails, etc. for making a home on the new island, and other things that I would need (probably a lot of seed, too).
Also, I would probably be attempting this plan with one other person, my girlfriend, who will probably be my wife very soon. I have talked with her about it, and she agrees that peak oil is real and that things could get bad very soon. I do not plan on having any kids right now for obvious reasons, so that would not be a factor.
I apologize for the many questions and long OP, but I would appreciate any help that anyone could give me.
Welcome YouWish. While at first it sounds appealing I think I would try just about anywhere but an island. Small Islands would be vulnerable to weather, piracy and the limitations of isolation. Your sailing boat would also have those issues. Keep in mind that there are droves of people who already live at sea and are aware of the various islands and "good spots" and most of them are wealthy and armed. In difficult circumstances I could easily see them turning on a relative newcomer to their lifestyle. A sailboat might be useful if you were to use it to (for instance) keep a mobile lifestyle up and down isolated coastal areas (Like Newfoundland, Western BC, etc) but you might be surprised how many others are doing exactly that. Additionally you will find that even fairly backward countries which you might think would offer good hiding places (Belize, Venezuela for example) keep a close watch on boats entering their waters and the taxes/penalties for doing so can be steep. Between the various countries legal pirates and the actual pirates you might find yourselves cleaned out and chucked overboard. There are many rural areas to look to for retreat in North America and ultimately its better to deal with difficult issues (shelter, food, water) in the environment we are made for (not at sea).
Others may disagree.
I think your initial plan to get some acreage might be better. But look to make the move and get even more land - choose a climate you like, a cultural area you fit in with, and try to make yourself a useful part of a sustainable community of like minded individuals
After that you will be overrun by cannibal hordes anyways...
Best of luck!
-G _________________ I Have and will continue to vote against ANY politician who supports the various bailouts. Curse you for selling out our future for status quo now!
I remember when I was a mushy-headed college kid. I thought I was going to live forever.
Quote:
. . . so I won't have a job until four years from now.
At the earliest, you mean.
I had a job through all of my college.
Quote:
After my master's, however, I will be making a decent amount of money. I go to a very nice college, and I am planning on becoming a medical physicist.
After your masters, you have no idea whether you'll have a job or be making any money.
Quote:
To begin with, how long do you think America has until the economy completely crashes? I have heard estimates between 10-20 years.
I am on a plane. The young pup next to me and I are looking out through the window. Both engines are on fire. The attitude of the plane is down. He asks me, "I hear the plane might be crashing, you know, down the road."
The crash is now. Now. It's crashing now. You hear? Now. But picture a train wreck in slow motion. Those of us at PO saw the train coming a few years ago. We noticed the rate of speed of the train, the power of the brakes, the friction potential of the wheels on the tracks. Oh yes, and the distance to the stone side of the mountain.
We computed that a wreck was unavoidable.
The locomotive has just impacted the mountain.
Be patient (but not too patient) - the rest of the train, we've computed, will be here soon.
Quote:
I know my job will not be secure for the future, so I am planning on making as much money as I can, saving it all, and preparing for the crash. If we can last 15 years longer, I could probably save up 200 grand or more.
This site is awesome. Only here could we get this.
While I laud your desire to plan long term, you are counting your eggs before you have even found out where you can buy chickens.
Quote:
First, buy a few acres of land somewhere remote and hidden, build a small concrete house with a large basement for storing food, and farm the land. I'm going to go ahead and buy a lot of wheat seed right now, just in case, since it keeps indefinitely as long as it is sealed right. Some problems, though- would it really be possible to sustain a farm without pesticides, equipment, etc?
Absolutely not. Before pesticides, we all just sat around eating the bugs.
Quote:
What about global warming? I live in the South, so should I plan on moving farther North if the climate gets worse? Another point- my religious views don't coincide with the majority of people in the South. Will this be a problem, too?
At this point, I'm thinking this post is a lark.
Quote:
Second, I have thought of buying a sailboat and sailing to a deserted island if things get bad enough. I live close to a large river which eventually runs into the Atlantic Ocean. I figure I'll search Google Earth, find a few possibilities (farther north or south, where climate change won't hurt as much).
Sorry. Gilligan and the professor already thought of that, so you'll have to either share the island with them or cancel that plan.
Quote:
I apologize for the many questions and long OP, but I would appreciate any help that anyone could give me.
Here's my advice - breath into a paper bag for about a minute.
Next, take about 100 hours to read this site.
Next, come back and ask more pointed questions.
You're far to scattered right now to be planning your trip to the deserted island with your 200,000 and your Master's degree in something or other.
Welcome YouWish. While at first it sounds appealing I think I would try just about anywhere but an island. Small Islands would be vulnerable to weather, piracy and the limitations of isolation. Your sailing boat would also have those issues. Keep in mind that there are droves of people who already live at sea and are aware of the various islands and "good spots" and most of them are wealthy and armed. In difficult circumstances I could easily see them turning on a relative newcomer to their lifestyle. A sailboat might be useful if you were to use it to (for instance) keep a mobile lifestyle up and down isolated coastal areas (Like Newfoundland, Western BC, etc) but you might be surprised how many others are doing exactly that. Additionally you will find that even fairly backward countries which you might think would offer good hiding places (Belize, Venezuela for example) keep a close watch on boats entering their waters and the taxes/penalties for doing so can be steep. Between the various countries legal pirates and the actual pirates you might find yourselves cleaned out and chucked overboard. There are many rural areas to look to for retreat in North America and ultimately its better to deal with difficult issues (shelter, food, water) in the environment we are made for (not at sea).
Others may disagree.
Very good advice and I think that effectively kills my idea. I suppose I did not think that through well enough, thanks.
gnm wrote:
I think your initial plan to get some acreage might be better. But look to make the move and get even more land - choose a climate you like, a cultural area you fit in with, and try to make yourself a useful part of a sustainable community of like minded individuals
After that you will be overrun by cannibal hordes anyways...
Best of luck!
-G
Once again, thanks, and I am going to try to do that as best I can.
I remember when I was a mushy-headed college kid. I thought I was going to live forever. After your masters, you have no idea whether you'll have a job or be making any money. I am on a plane. The young pup next to me and I are looking out through the window. Both engines are on fire. The attitude of the plane is down. He asks me, "I hear the plane might be crashing, you know, down the road." The crash is now. Now. It's crashing now. You hear? Now. But picture a train wreck in slow motion. Those of us at PO saw the train coming a few years ago. We noticed the rate of speed of the train, the power of the brakes, the friction potential of the wheels on the tracks. Oh yes, and the distance to the stone side of the mountain. We computed that a wreck was unavoidable. The locomotive has just impacted the mountain. Be patient (but not too patient) - the rest of the train, we've computed, will be here soon.This site is awesome. Only here could we get this. While I laud your desire to plan long term, you are counting your eggs before you have even found out where you can buy chickens. At this point, I'm thinking this post is a lark. Sorry. Gilligan and the professor already thought of that, so you'll have to either share the island with them or cancel that plan. Here's my advice - breath into a paper bag for about a minute. Next, take about 100 hours to read this site. Next, come back and ask more pointed questions. You're far to scattered right now to be planning your trip to the deserted island with your 200,000 and your Master's degree in something or other.
I understand that I'm a young, naive college student. You don't have to tell me that; I admitted as much in my first post. Maybe your old age has made you bitter, but such a condescending attitude isn't helping you or me.
my view is the trick is to head where the hoards of fair weather sailors fear to tread. Most folks with a 30 -45 will try to stay in relatively benign conditions unless they have lots of open water experience. They don't like bad weather, their ability to navigate complex shoals and channels is limited. They also want the tropical island experience.
So avoid this...head to Western Canada. I've sailed most of the inside (between Vancouver Island and the mainland) and there are a phenomenal amount of places you can harbour, sleep on the hook etc. If you know something about wilderness cookery the west coast is rife with edible plants and regardless of the crap you read in the press you can still catch salmon, find oysters and other seafood.
Yes it isn't a place where you can hang out in your shorts all day, but if you're prepared for the cooler and wetter weather the whole coast provides way more survival opportunity than most places. Damn why am I telling you this?
BTW I would worry less about the providing water and power issues and worry more about getting your sailing skills to the master level, which you will need to deal with all the nasty stuff.
I am, like you, a college student. Unlike you, I understand that rising cost's of living, decreasing employment oppurtunities due to the difficulty of large business in my field of choice despite it's increasing relevenace (environmental science and managment) are going to make it very hard for myself and most other graduates from my discipline and other's. More importantly, I lack (and have lacked since age 12), the rose-tinted "gotta have everything now" glasses that the majority of rose-tinted Gen x-ers and y's seem to have, mostly thanks to their consumeristic upbringing. I also have a lot of sailing experience on small and large vessels with corresponding crew sizes.......
So, here's some advice: Forget sailing on anything to anywhere post-peak unless it's as paid crew for any surviving shipping company. Vessels, whether they be sailing or powered, and of any construction type, are high maintenance, and most require modern tools, epoxies and materials, which will dramatically reduce the feasibility of your plan, particularly for a couple (keep in mind that you would have to sail in watches, while one of you sleeps, one of you will be sailing the vessel, navigating and cooking for anywhere from 8 to 12 hours per shift). Do some research on cruising and acknowledge the difficulty, hard work and cost that is involved. You have to be the right type. If you can't both get along in the same small cramped space for weeks on end, then you have a problem.
Instead, perhaps take the advice from prior posters and work on getting your own piece of land in a rural area of choice. And take a good look at many of the threads in the "Planning for the future" forum, among others.
Get out of, and stay out of debt if you can. Do not be tempted by that new plasma tv, SUV or sportscar. Learn to live within your means, and try to somewhat reduce your reliance on fossil fuels as much as is possible. Depending on the type of person, this can be much harder or easier than it may sound.
Perhaps look at getting another degree in general medical practice or something of that ilk, become a G.P and study methods of healing and practice that preferably do not require or that do not heavily rely on modern pharmaceuticals. People with the aforementioned skillset will be highly regarded post-peak when the zombie hordes are screaming for medical treatment.
And as soon as possible, wake-up and smell the peak-oil coffee. If your knowledge of peak oil, climate-change, OVER POPULATION and the human race in general is limited to a single viewing of "A Crude Awakening", then you have a hell of a lot of reading to fit in along with your studies.
That's my 0.2 cents, good luck.
Mike _________________ "That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top, well I say, <censored by peakoil.com> floats"
Youwish, I think that most of us here believe that your schedule isn't speedy enough to be fit in with the apocalypse timetable. We also think that your plans have a touch of romantic fantasy.
Do you understand ocean navigation? Sextant, chronometer, right ascension, declination, hour angles, charts, star catalog, planetary ephemeris, DIP, parallax, dead reckoning, gulf stream, etc.? Some schools probably offer a bachelor's degree in ocean navigation. Of course, if you know celestial mechanics already, you can probably figure out ocean navigation, except for the currents. But do you?
I once dreamed that I could build a big house all by myself. Then came time to dig for the foundation, and I realized that I'd underestimated the work involved by four or five orders of magnitude, and overestimated my strength and architectural cleverness by about the same ratios, leaving me about a factor of a billion less than the kind of superman I'd need to be.
Your idea to work in the medical field is good. But you probably ought not to specialize. Be a general practitioner, and learn a lot of medicinal herb lore. Then you'll have your pick of post die-off communities to live in, if you can reach them timewise.
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 12:07 am Post subject: Re: Sailing Away
YouWish wrote:
To begin with, how long do you think America has until the economy completely crashes? I have heard estimates between 10-20 years.
I remember last summer, grabbing a copy of the WSJ at lunch and reading about a Bear Stearns hedge fund that was halting investor redemptions (fancy name for withdrawals). There were other signs and signals, lots of mortgage brokers going butts up. That story though stands out in my mind as the first domino to fall in the collapse of the global economy.
That was less than a year ago. Since then the dominos have been tumbling. Bear Stearns no longer exists. Many other banks are just getting by on funny money pumped in from the fed. I won't even bother to list all the other dominos. One of the phrases I kept coming across in the WSJ money section was "I can't believe this happened so fast." The pace of economic doom chronicled on the internet and in newsprint has reached a point where I've given up trying to keep up with it.
Now the "long emergency" seems to have ratcheted up a notch with the arrival of sustained 100+ dollar oil and the arrival of food related rioting and violence. As well as off the hook food inflation and shortages of certain grains. The airline and automotive industries appear to be in a terminal death spiral.
This is all a long winded way of saying that the economy as we know it will not exist in 10 years, let alone 5 years. Sure, there will be some form of economy, but it won't be this one. It's sometimes hard to sense, hard to sniff out, but things are unraveling at a brisk pace right now. We are I feel in a fast collapse, in the sense that this is not something that will unfold over decades, but years.
So IMO, I say make your plans, but be ready to change them at a moments notice.
Here is the best piece of advice I can offer, Lao Tzu and Charles Darwin basically saying the same thing:
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are
born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is
stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and
yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The
soft and supple will prevail.
~Lao-tzu
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to
change.
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 2:11 am Post subject: Re: Sailing Away
YouWish wrote:
I was first exposed to Peak Oil during one of my classes this semester,
OK, the suspense is killing me,what university would offer a class in "run for the hills we're all gonna die!"? What course did you learn of PO in?
YouWish wrote:
I go to a very nice college,
From this I deduce you either worked your ass off or were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.I'm going to go with the later,but I could be wrong.What are your folks doing to prepare for PO?
YouWish wrote:
and I am planning on becoming a medical physicist.
I wanted to study(nuclear) physics (and/or engineering) but life doesn't always turn out the way you want(thanks to a few bad decisions and a psychotic ex-wife).Be that as it may,I still study as much as I can in my free time(what little there is) the disciplines of physics and chemistry.Who knows,maybe I'll still get a chance to make it to college before TSHTF (not likely.)
Having stewed over the problem for a long time,I don't believe running away offers any advantage over staying put.You may find yourself ten times as screwed on your boat in the middle of the ocean (or wherever) than you will be with a community that needs you.
I would assume,at this point,you have a solid understanding of physiology,energy,and mathematics.That being the case,you will be a great asset to a community in need of both medicine and instruction on how to best utilize the natural sources of energy around them.
YouWish wrote:
To begin with, how long do you think America has until the economy completely crashes?
That's a tough one!
I've heard so many doom and gloom scenarios over the years that didn't pan out that I am now very reluctant to make any predictions.That said,most(all????) of the worlds major fields seem to be in decline,and our (the US) economy is now based essentially on "I"LL pay you back". It sure doesn't look good.
I know it's cliche as hell,but,"hope for the best,prepare for the worst". _________________ "Switzerland is small and neutral.We need to be more like Germany,ambitious and misunderstood!" Futurama
"As for the dieoff of 5E+09 people - not a problem, so long as I'm not one of them." Jack
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 3:18 am Post subject: Re: Sailing Away
The economy does not have to completely crash to screw up people's lives. Ask anyone living in tent cities on the outskirts of any metropolitan area who had a 4 bedroom house last year. This removes your timetable, for completing graduation/getting a job/saving up $200k, impractical. Add to this the time needed to learn permaculture or sailing and implement a lifestyle based on either paradigm and the outlook for your plans becomes a problem for which there may be no technical solution.
You know the crash is coming, yet you are choosing to follow a Business As Usual plan by finishing school, and getting a job. The next few years, perhaps less, will change the face of the world in ways we can not yet fully predict. Perhaps you should plan on being a conscripted field combat medic in a desert setting, or an agricultural worker in a National Emergency Declaration. _________________ If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."
-George Orwell, 1984
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