How long are you preparing for PO?

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 787

How many month years are you preparing for PO?
How long are you sitting there waiting for the doom to come?
How often did you think we will doom tomorrow or next month?
And how did your expectancy of what will come change meanwhile?

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1503

alokin,
I'm always early with forecasting. I started changing how I do things in 1974, and by 1978, had given up the garden on our 1/2 acre lot in the suburbs, and moved to a 45 acre farm with work horses, livestock, forest and grain fields. Major problems caused us to sell the farm by 1989, but we are still doing our best on 1 acre in a farming area.

I expected my job at General Motors to be gone in 1980, and changed to a job at a smaller company. GM did have layoffs back then, but the downfall I expected then is happening now.

But being early has been a good thing for us, by giving us a lot of time to learn and change our life. Our kids also learned, and are planning a sustainable life.

As time passed, our family learned a more accurate view of what the future holds, revised continuously over the years, and our prediction of when problems start has become more accurate.

In 1989, my wife and I attended a panel discussion about global warming in Louisville, Kentucky. The panel included then Senator Al Gore, James Hansen of NASA, and Barry Commoner, a noted environmentalist, among 5 or 6 others. At that time, Gore was advocating to study the problem, while the others lambasted him for not wanting to make changes in policy then. In fairness to Gore, no one in government in the US would have taken him seriously then, and he WAS thinking about it.

Since then, I have watched James Hansen fight an uphill battle to bring attention to global warming, and realized how resistant govt could be to change. They would deny it to the last, in favor of big companies interests. That meant that our future would be the worst possible, because there would be no govt help for it. Meanwhile, The Mother Earth News magazine was covering the "energy crisis" as it was termed then, which followed the same path of govt inaction.

Seeing these things unfold gave our family a sense of resolve to meet our own needs as best we could, because it was clear that no other help would come. Now, I'm getting old and less able to do the hard work of self reliance, yet better informed, and we have another generation to carry on. Now, with a greatly improved sense of timing, what I see ahead this year and next is alarming, indeed.
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Pops

Not nearly as long as Patience. After 9/11/01 I started looking around and decided things were not going to stay the same. I've never been an overnight Armageddon type so I am fairly surprised not at how slow things are moving but how fast.

That is probably the reason I don't do a whole lot of sitting here waiting.
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JJ · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 07, 2007 Posts: 333

Lately its all I think about. Sometime around the time I joined this group, I started reading everything I could on the subject. We started making what little preps we could with regards to food, ammo, silver etc. We turned our front and back yards into gardens (I like to garden anyway). I mentioned the subject on several other forums and have been more or less politely asked to take my tin-foil hat chicken-little Al Gore embracing BS elsewhere. (It's been six months and you're still spouting the same s%it and nothing has happened. Get a life.)

Actually I have a life I'm very happy with, but now it seems so much more tenuous.

My co-worker at the grocery store I work at came to me day before yesterday (to my knowlege there are only five P.O. aware people working there) and said "people are telling me your a prophet. Smile

The things you keep talking about are starting to happen." I told him to tell them to search the internet and come here, the informations out there...I feel slightly vindicated but its a hollow victory. I was thinking about putting a PeakOil bumper sticker on my car (yes I still have a car). It might spike someones curiousity, but then again it might get my car burned.

We went back to the Philippines last summer for my wifes parents' 50th wedding anniversary; by this time I was thinking about PO all the time and seeing all the people in LA and Hong Kong and Cebu and basically everywhere we went just left me feeling helpless.

davep · Expert Joined: Jun 21, 2006 Posts: 1243 Location: Europe

About three years for me. I finally got my farmhouse and 10 acres last July, after spectacularly imploding at work (and packing it all in) due to worrying about PO. Now I've got the land and the sky hasn't fallen on my head I can get on with earning a living again, while I still can.
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All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become. - Buddha

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1394

During the winter of 2000 we had a bad ice storm here. The power was out for almost 3 weeks. We were renting and the only thing that saved our hides was the fact that we had a propane cookstove - the oven door open and running non-stop is what heated our home (blankets blocked off hallways and unnecessary rooms). We really had nothing in the way of stored food, etc. at the time. Though I have always bought in bulk in the past, at that time both I and Carlin were in "starting over" mode, having just started dating the November before.

That experience reminded me I needed to have emergency supplies on hand for power outages - candles, lamps, food, etc...

September 11, 2001 (which was less than a month before Carlin and I got married) really got me thinking things were chaning.

Shortly after that, I read The Fourth Turning (which scared the hell out of me) and began reading a lot about voluntary simplicity. It reminded me a lot about my roots and the way I had grown up but had gotten far away from.

I learned about peak oil in late 2003, early 2004, shortly before joining this site. We began minor preps then - I learned to can food, we put in a garden, got some chickens, etc. But it was still as much about simple living then as it was about planning for peak oil.

I'd say my serious move and preparations began in earnest in March 2004. That's when we moved back home. Before we even moved here, I had the plan of the place written out on paper. I had purchased John Seymour's The Self-Sufficient Life, and several other books on self-reliance. In those days, I subscribed to Backwoods Home and Countryside magazines.

My planning and doing has gone in fits and starts since then. Sometimes more passive, sometimes more ramped up - but always with the future in mind. These days I'm prepping more seriously, as I think all of us are.

Like Pops, I'm more than a little concerned that things are moving faster than I'd hoped.
Kathy

SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 882

It's hard to put my finger on when I started having a feeling that I should be preparing because I was raised to expect hard times in the future. My dad was born Oct 31, 1929 two days after black monday so was raised during the depression era. He saw some extremely hard times during his upbringing and so always taught me that hard times could always be around the corner.

I was always fascinated with pioneer living and so with that came the desire to seek out a similar life for myself, which turned out to be what people call homsteading. Of course this is not to be confused with homesteading like the real pioneers did, but to seek out a life of voluntary simplicity, and where you tried to be as independent as possible. I've been called a control freak because of it but that doesn't shake my desires. I've never been materialistic, I don't own any jewelry except for my wedding band and I just don't care about bling in any sense of the word. What is important to me is to keep my family safe and fed so I pour every waking moment into planning, preparing or earning an income to support that philosophy.

So I guess I've been preparing since the early 1990s when I moved back to the farm to aid in helping my elders get through their lives and to start down this homsteading road. Over that time I've accomplished much but never enough.

What comes with preparing for independence is the unshakable realization that no matter what you do, it will never be enough because of the destruction of our agrarian pastoral society as a whole. Like people here say, " It doesn't matter if I have a huge garden if my neighbours don't". That is SO true. People are media-drunk and high on consumerism and they will prove to be hard addictions to overcome.

I never thought my lifestyle would become necessary for survival until around 2004 when I started to see the wheels coming off society and after discovering that there was a name placed on something that I always known to be true. Peak Oil. I knew it was going to run out someday but not in my lifetime. It wasn't until I got here to peakoil.com that I started what would prove to be the most important education of my life. Now that I feel I have the big picture, I'm working feverishly toward trying to be that independent homesteader but I realize that in as much as I'd hoped for it, it may never come in time because the wheels are almost off society now and there will be no way we can get them back on.

The news is getting bad fast these days and it scares me but I'm at a place psychologically that gives me comfort in knowing that I am land rich and in an area that is fairly stable and moderate in climate. I honestly couldn't feel more fortunate in that sense.

If you are a homesteader, you never stop preparing because the work could never possibly be done. In my opinion.

WisJim

We were commuting to jobs in a city in 1973 at the time of the first "gas crisis" and started thinking about the future then. We bought land in the country, built an off-grid house, and moved to it in 1977. We had gardened some before that, but not at our own place, so we put in a large garden, planted fruit bushes and trees, and lived there 12 years, finally moving to an existing farm house 100 miles away because of job opportunities. The gardens are larger now, more fruit trees and plants, and we still have the wind generator and PVs, with more added as we wanted more power.

Both my wife and I were raised in families where jobs were rarely hired out, and we did things for ourselves as the natural way to do stuff, instead of calling the builder or plumber when we needed to remodel, add-on, or do repairs. I remember back in junior high days, when people were building bomb shelters and wondering when the Russians were going to attack, thinking about what supplies we needed to have on hand in the house in case everything went to h*ll in a hand basket.

joeltrout

I believe the world will not start seeing serious effects of peak oil for at least 10+ years. If you think about it we will not know if we truly hit peak oil until 10+ years after the actual peak anyhow.

I saw this article on The Oil Drum that suggests Jan 2008 is a new production high beating May 2005.

It will also take some time for things to really start happening. If production peaks and prices continue to go up then people will be forced to conserve and developing countries will be slowed. There will be many phases of little to no growth. There will not be phases of mass dieoffs. The only thing that could cause mass die offs immediately are food shortages.

People wont be driving SUVs and the stock markets are not going to hit new highs but that doesn't mean we will step into Armaggedon overnight.

joeltrout
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DomusAlbion

I've been preparing my entire life, if not for Peak Oil, then the eventual disaster that I felt was coming. But as to Peak Oil, I've been seriously planning since 2003. My wife and I are into our third year on our farm and we don't think we'll really be ready until 2010. Even with that I'm hoping that the greater effects of PO will not hit until 2015 or later. Lately, however, I have not felt as confident that we will have that much time.
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"Modern Agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food."
-- Albert Bartlett

"It will be a dark time. But for those who survive, I suspect it will be rather exciting."
-- James Lovelock

Roy

Going on 4 years now.

I read "Population Bomb" when I was in middle school. Ever since then I knew something had to give and likely during my lifetime.

But the real prepping began in 2004 when I became intimately acquainted with the concept of peak oil. It made sense then and it still makes sense now. In fact, the evidence that something isn't right is much more pervasive now than in 2004.

After I gave up trying to tell people I cared about, I started making changes. Paid off most of my debt, sold my house in unsustainable suburbia, converted useless crap to useful, lasting things, and moved to a rural area. I bought my current home and land in 2006 and began immediately with turning grass into garden space. That project continues apace.

Preparing for an uncertain future (probably somewhere between JoelTrout's and Roccman's versions.. but who really knows?) is no easy task, and as Springcreek said above, the work is never done. I had hoped for 5 years to get my place and myself up to what I consider a minimum level of skills, knowledge, and physical preparedness.

At this point the prospects for more business as usual until 2011 seem fairly dim IMO.

.

RonMN

Alokin Wrote:
How long are you sitting there waiting for the doom to come?

Not for 1 second...I consider my prep's an insurance policy. I keep aware of different situations, I buy a little extra food every time I go shopping & stock it. Same with ammo.

I've paid house & car insurance for over 15 years & never filed a claim...I don't consider that to be a waste. So if I end up throwing away some food, I still consider it was a good insurance policy & will continue to buy "THAT" type of insurance.
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

Ludi

I sit around a lot, but usually not "waiting for doom." Mainly goofing off or resting.
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mommy22 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 22, 2005 Posts: 268

I'd have to say that specifically for PO, since 2004. We had just moved back from France, and a friend casually mentioned the term. I said..."What are you talking about?!" From that point on, it has never left my mind, and I cansider it's implications in every decision I make.
Before that, however, I did things to cushion my own understanding...I have always done things like hang my laundry to dry, walk myself and my kids so they don't feel as though they have to be driven everywhere, look for deals to stock my pantry with, small garden, etc...
Since my hit of reality, the garden and amount of food I grow is much bigger, we put in a wood insert and invested in a lot of wood, been agressively paying down the mortgage (hope to have it paid off in 2 years), gotten out of other debt, learned to can, purchased things like lots of candles and globes for them, and are currently looking into solar panels or other solar options for our house. Would like to a lot more self sufficient than we are, but my husband only goes along with so much...he recognizes the doomer in me.

emersonbiggins

Not for 26 more minutes.
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George Carlin