[Sixstrings]

Anybody else do this? I noticed it with the oil spill, then the mideast crisis, and now the Japanese crisis. Things get worse and worse but then it gets to the point where I shut down on it.

That's where I'm at now, I can't even read the articles anymore.. half-watching TV news on it is most I can manage. Hard to explain, but it's like the more info that comes out and the faster it comes all at once I just can't process it anymore.

There's lots of info in these threads on this forum, but I don't even want to read that now. I don't even know what the latest is.. seems to be the same thing every day "another explosion," "reactor on fire," "new fire at nuclear plant."

EDIT: Example, here's the latest Drudge headline..

BAIL: LAST WORKERS ABANDON NUKE PLANT

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) -- Japan suspended operations to prevent a stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after a surge in radiation made it too dangerous for workers to remain at the facility.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.

The level of radiation at the plant surged to 1,000 millisieverts early Wednesday before coming down to 800-600 millisieverts. Still, that was far more than the average

"So the workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Edano said. "Because of the radiation risk, we are on standby."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Radiation-forces-work-to-stop-apf-3314845701.html?x=0&.v=91

Ok, well that sounds bad. If they've evacuated the workers then the darn thing will meltdown (or has it melted down, or still just melting, I dunno anymore).

Every day it's like this, one doom headline then articles explaining it away and how it's not as bad as it seems then it gets worse. What's lacking in this cacophony of conflicted information is one person who knows what they're talking about, understands it all, and can update us sheeple on what the real situation is as it develops.

[WildRose]

I'm the opposite, Sixstrings. Since Friday, especially with the heightening reactor crisis, I haven't been able to concentrate
on my work. Everything else seems more important.

[Loki]

Things do seem to be proceeding rather rapidly, don't they. Last year we had the worst oil spill in human history. Last month the Middle East goes bat s***, threatening to create another oil shock. Last week the third largest economy in the world gets a smack down from Mother Nature. And now we're watching the second (if we're lucky) biggest nuclear disaster in human history unfold.

And all in the midst of the Great Recession, worst world depression since the Great Depression. Not to mention accelerating climate change, and the whole reason we're all here, peak oil, which I think most of us agree has already happened.

Damn.

But like WildRose, I can't keep my eyes off the wreckage. I'm a rubbernecker, ears glued to NPR, and the web when I can. I feel rather isolated from all that here on the farm, with no TV and limited internet. If I wasn't an NPR junkie or didn't make an effort to access the Web, I'd be blissfully unaware of most of this stuff, aside from the ever rising gas prices.

Six, the best advice I have is to get your preps in order. S*** will continue to happen, only thing you can do is to feel prepared to weather the storm. I think my preps are as good as they've ever been right now, so the news doesn't affect me too much, though I really feel for the Japanese. My mother is Japanese and I've always felt an affinity for the country. I'm happy/concerned for the pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East, but I don't feel the personal connection I do with Japan.

[scas]

The more depressive you are, the worse you will react to doom, and the more depressive you will become. Being hyper alert all the time takes energy.

As John Maynard Keynes said...In the long run, we are all dead.

Try to enjoy life and make a small positive change because it looks like society has already dropped off a cliff and a few of us are trying to build parachutes as we fall....

[Crazy_Dad]

Every day it's like this, one doom headline then articles explaining it away and how it's not as bad as it seems then it gets worse. What's lacking in this cacophony of conflicted information is one person who knows what they're talking about, understands it all, and can update us sheeple on what the real situation is as it develops.

We will never be properly informed as a disaster unfolds. I always suspect it is an order of magnitude worse than the the authorities are letting on.
I remember Chernobyl, the same thing happened. I guess they try to avoid panic?

I don't have "Disaster Fatigue". I just get angrier at the hubris of our governments on all the major issues. Especially overpopulation.

[Roy]

I just get angrier at the hubris of our governments on all the major issues

+1

March Madness anybody?

[Pops]

Around here doom fantasies are the staple, we can gin up doom from thin air, we are poised with one finger on the Submit button and the other scrolling Google news just waiting for The Sign that Armageddon has arrived.

When actual news happens it's almost anticlimactic because the walls don't fall as predicted.

But I'm Like Loki, I said just a few days ago that I'm about as well set up, as resilient, as I can imagine possible for me, so the day to day is not as ominous or threatening and bad news from half-way around the world is just bad news – not another straw on my camel's back.

Still I'm addicted to the 24/7, I click on something every few minutes when I'm working (on the 'puter). I grew up with Walter Cronkite and the AP newswire, before Ted Turner and CNN and certainly before Google News. Even though I know more about what's going on now, I'm not sure how much of it I can actually use.

One thing is certain though, all that clicking sure burns up a lot of time.

[dorlomin]

I see no 'doom'. I just see news. The Japan stuff is bad but utterly pales to the 04 Bander Ache tsunami. The nuclear stuff is a wee bit dicey with the storage of the spent fuel on one of the reactors, thats was just dumb design. But the rest of the reactors appear to be still contianed and to be honest the worst case is Tokyo gets mildly irradiated. The ME stuff is pretty minor hijinks for the region. Saudi was a dud as I figured it would be and the general trend is towards a reduction in pressure in some ways, especially Egypt.
Bad days for someone else, just like every other day. The only difference is the journalists are giving this more exposure. Carefully read the behind the news and see what real suffering round the world is a permenant state.

[bratticus]

Anybody else do this? I noticed it with the oil spill, then the mideast crisis, and now the Japanese crisis. Things get worse and worse but then it gets to the point where I shut down on it.

That's where I'm at now, I can't even read the articles anymore..

My problem is that this site is too overloaded and slow.

I carry on here:
http://community.livejournal.com/peak_oil
http://community.livejournal.com/the_recession

[vision-master]

Yup 6, I've reached that point and only care about my little bubble now. If TSHTF, I'm toast ayhoo bc I rely on a government pension check and require expensive medical treatment to keep me from becoming a cripple.

[mos6507]

The reason the reactor situation is frustrating for doomers, and why I have mostly tuned out the news on it, is that it's a situation that really offers little in the way of mitigation.

The subtext of peak oil and global warming is that it offered a sort of heroic narrative in which at some level, global, national, local, or even individual, we could meet the challenges and blunt the impact in some measurable way.

A toxic cloud of nuclear material wafting your way doesn't offer you much besides "RUN FOR THE BUNKER!" I know I'm exaggerating. What we're more likely to experience is the continued low-level anxiety over increased radiation in our food supply as was the case during above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s. It's not that different from worrying about all the other toxins we already know are floating around the planet and in our food supply.

The doomer narrative is one of building a sanctuary and unfortunately we are living in only one very crowded planet and we're just not as buffered from macro-level events no matter where we try to hide out.

As long as doom remains in the future, you can cling to this fantasy that you've constructed some invisible bubble in which the rest of the world can go to hell in a handbasket without impacting you. Then reality sets in that you're far more vulnerable, and in unpredictable ways.

It doesn't mean you were a "bad doomer" who didn't cross your Ts and dot your Is. There's too much of a keep-up-with-the-joneses vibe with doomers, sizing up other people's preps. What it means is the whole prep meme is kind of an illusion because while you're waiting for whatever doom you think is gonna hit, there could be something unpredictable that "gets" you, kind of like Matt Simmons having the heart-attack in his hot-tub.

(BTW, I'd say Ruppert's probably regretting living in my old digs of Culver City now, and I'm glad I'm a continent-width's farther.)

[Sys1]

This civilisation is a plain nonsense sickness that must be cure. Actually, doom is business as usual. Everything has to fall apart then we'll eventually change our paradgim. We will soon have to evolve towards solidarity and respect of each other and forgot the time of wasting.
If we are unable to do that, then we'll have to deal with pestilence, death and extinction.
We have the luck to live interesting times. It's when you feel how fragile life is that you can enjoy it.
People are bored with this civilisation. Drugs, Internet, Stress, travelling to the opposite side of the planet in order to enjoy for 3 weeks beautifull landscapes free of modernity then getting back to the depressive urban life breathing its gray polluted air, keeping inside a building all day long under artificial light, typing useless things on a useless computer for useless business. Consuming more and more to compensate the emptyness of our heart, communicate with smartphones instead of people.
Doom is now.

[vision-master]

Change Is Now

[Loki]

There's too much of a keep-up-with-the-joneses vibe with doomers, sizing up other people's preps. What it means is the whole prep meme is kind of an illusion because while you're waiting for whatever doom you think is gonna hit, there could be something unpredictable that "gets" you, kind of like Matt Simmons having the heart-attack in his hot-tub.

You're basically making the argument that "preps," however we may define them, are useless as there will always be something unexpected around the corner. I just don't buy that argument---it's patently illogical. If we take it to its logical conclusion, we might as well not think about tomorrow, live completely in the moment with zero thought about the future, not go to work, not pay the rent, not pay the power bill, not go grocery shopping. Why bother when we could drop dead of a heart attack 30 seconds from now? It's just silly. Honestly Mos, your contrarianism doesn't make much sense sometimes.

Yes, we can never prep for all contingencies. I don't understand why those who believe in the Big Dieoff would even bother to prep, honestly, might as well live it up now, max out the credit cards and spend it all on strippers and blow. But I'm not a believer in this scenario, I think we'll see a slow economic decline and a simplification of the economy, no piles of bodies, just a slow, grinding long emergency. We CAN prepare ourselves for that, we can adapt to this changing situation.

I don't worry myself about nuclear disasters or the collapse of autocracies halfway around the world. I have zero control over such things. But I'll need to eat today, and I'll need to eat tomorrow, so I've focused much of my preps on food self-sufficiency. I'm also learning to live with less, as most of us will probably be forced to do soon enough.

You're setting up a survivalist bunker-dwelling strawman. There's more to preps than bugging out to a bunker full of MREs and waiting out the apocalypse.

[vision-master]

Is that like going with Gas.

[mos6507]

You're setting up a survivalist bunker-dwelling strawman. There's more to preps than bugging out to a bunker full of MREs and waiting out the apocalypse.

You're setting me up as a strawman as well. I never said preps were useless, but I've been reading this board for over half a decade and I can't count how many "hot buttered popcorn" threads I've read that imply that people are sitting pretty waiting to watch the world end from the comfort of their doomsteads.



A lot of people have a rude awakening that reality won't live up to their fantasy of schadenfreude.

[Sys1]

The more I have preps, the less I feel ready.
I for the moment can live in autonomy me and family for about a month of food and water plus many stuffs like weapons, solar pannels, water purification, crank radio, cash....
I know all of this have good chances to be useless. But at least, I will never think something like "I should have made some preps..."
I try to imagine how life could be, and how bad it will be. That's actually the most important.

[Loki]

The more I have preps, the less I feel ready.
I for the moment can live in autonomy me and family for about a month of food and water plus many stuffs like weapons, solar pannels, water purification, crank radio, cash....
I know all of this have good chances to be useless. But at least, I will never think something like "I should have made some preps..."
I try to imagine how life could be, and how bad it will be. That's actually the most important.

The psychological aspect of prepping is indeed important and often overlooked. By making a concerted effort to prepare for an uncertain future you enhance your psychological ability to deal with change. Big changes in one's life can be wrenching, all the more so if they come "out of the blue" without so much as a knock on the door.

Just thinking these things through is useful, even if you don't have any physical preps. The person who's honestly considered what long-term unemployment or a forced job change (e.g., from office drone to physical laborer) will mean to them will be much better prepared mentally for the changes ahead than the person who thinks that BAU will continue indefinitely. The latter person will be caught completely off-guard by economic decline, not to mention temporary disruptions caused by power outages and the like.

You're setting me up as a strawman as well. I never said preps were useless, but I've been reading this board for over half a decade and I can't count how many "hot buttered popcorn" threads I've read that imply that people are sitting pretty waiting to watch the world end from the comfort of their doomsteads.

You seemed to strongly imply that preps were useless ("prep meme is an illusion"), but I'll accept your clarification. I'm not saying that there aren't doomsteaders here (some of my favorite posters, actually), but I just wanted to make it clear that prepping does not necessarily mean developing a bunker mentality.

Prepping is as simple as having a stocked pantry, a garden (and the know-how associated with that), back up power (always useful when a tree falls on the powerlines as it did here a few days ago), etc. Basically what most folks did just a couple generations ago.

For me preparedness is primarily about developing a self-sufficiency mindset and skillset. And it's not an all or nothing proposition. 100% self-sufficiency is impossible, but even 10% is better than 0%.

[vtsnowedin]

All you have to do is read the stories coming out of Japan about the people crowded into powerless unheated shelters without enough drinking water to know that a few months of preps is a good idea. Having them well above the possible high water mark would be even a better one and preferably thirty miles up wind from any nuclear power plant.
There are different levels of doomerism. Some plan to make it through a three day blizzard without having to go out in the weather to a store. Some expect to be unemployed for four months and will need to get by on what they have in hand plus what they can pick up under the table. Then you have those that think the government will undergo a upheaval and there will be riots in the streets and you will be on your own for six months or so with lawless gangs a possibility and no cops on your side to call. Go one step further and you think the supply chain will break down permanently and you need enough food on hand to get you through the winter and the next summer until the crops YOU planted can be harvested and stored. This requires a store of seeds and tools(and land) to be realistic. And finally we have the uburdoomer that thinks the world will end and things will be permanently Mad Max and they will exist in their bunker while shooting an occasional foraging zombie from the gun turret. What these guys plan to do when they get to the last case of MREs I don't know. But my favorite is those that think the price of oil based fuel will double every two years or so and we will have to rapidly readjust to each new price increase as we learn to use less and less fuel to get by.
You can pick more then one option, often you work towards option four while your really only ready for options one and two. If you get overstressed watching the news you can tune out for a while and drop back a level or two. Chances are the world will still be there when you want to take it up again.