[davep]

After lurking on this site prior to signing up, I sold my house in the UK at the top of the market in early 2006 before eventually buying my 10 acre doomstead. I doubled my money on the sale (having had an initial 105% mortgage). I'm now debt-free with a viable homestead thanks to the insight available on this forum.

All my friends thought I was mad...

[TheDude]

I need to edit my usual snarkiness.

Like they say in the movies, you gotta be s*****ing me. Planty said in his post he's been here 4 years. Is is that long dark season up in his frozen wasteland and his solar powered calculator isn't working?

Had lots of fun in the old days taking the piss out of people, especially Savinar.

We were real "clubby" there for a couple of years when lots of people thought this was just a free online role playing game.
That changed at what? $130-$140/bbl?

Wait a minute, all that talk about reservoir porosity was tricking people into thinking this was some text-based version of World of Warcraft? Must have missed laughing at that misapprehension.

My #1 poster here would be rockdoc; always surprised he's still hanging on. Dante popped in about a year ago but vanished again.

Raphagolem, wow. And just this morning I happened to be browsing for info about swastikas in Portland OR brickwork...far out, man...cosmic...namaste...

[Carlhole]

I wanna see BiGG make a comeback.

BiGG's Anti-Doomer Energy News!

He got banned for something. Can't remember what.

Anyone remember why?

[Ibon]

I went to the first peak oil congress in the US in Yellow Springs Ohio in the fall of 2004 http://www.communitysolution.org/04conf.html I met folks there who mentioned this website and joined December of that year.
It was the year I sold my business and in 2005 we home schooled our 2 daughters travelling through Asia. The truth of peak oil from that conference and this site had a profound impact in the direction our lives took afterward that eventually ended us up here in Panama.

It was Montequest who suggested me as a moderator sometime in 2006.

It seems for a lot of folks that window between 2005-2008 was a watershed moment for their lives where the truth of peak oil acted somewhat like a catalyst.

Today our lives are so deeply involved with running this place in Panama that I am less connected to spending times on this and other forums discussing the big picture. I guess because the local picture became very rich. Growing coffee, raising cattle, organic gardening. building cabins, setting and marking trails, receiving guests and volunteers, spending time in the woods getting to know the local backwoods folks and employees. Building, growing stuff, fixing things.

The over analysis of the big macro picture untempered by developing real organic local community can become kind of a closed loop. In other words you need the counterpoint of a well developed real organic community to compliment what you glean from these forums otherwise with time it goes nowhere.

[patience]

Loki,

I still check in now and then, but mostly left after many of the other old ones had gone. There were some serious problems back then, along with a troll invasion it seemed to me, so I lost interest. Not in the subject, nor in some of the really great posters here, but in the lack of useful content in so many posts for a year or so.

I have only been here a bit over 3 years, and it was filled with learning some really precious insights into many things. I particularly miss hearing from a couple of the really powerful economics posters here, since they helped a lot to guide me when I really needed it.

There have been too many great folks here to mention names without leaving out important ones due to my poor memory. But I'll mention one. Many kudos to Pops, who has been a powerful force here for a very long time! Thanks much.

Ibon,

Great point there. Our family life has been dedicated to developing that community participation for many years now, and recently to getting our place and our DD's place as near totally off-grid and out of the systems as possible. That effort puts a very different light on PO, and increases the pressure to make it all happen faster for us.

I'd love to know what happened to shortonoil?

[vision-master]

The doomers are waiting for something taht ain't gonna happen. lsol

[Pops]

Thanks Patience!


@ Dude, I do think prior to the '08 spike lots of people who hung out here took the whole topic less than seriously. They had fun talking about guns and zombies, eating bugs and gathering acorns, and making a fortune on ETFs but that changed quite a bit after the bust. There has been a big change in the personality of the site since then.

One of the changes has been the relative silence of the Planning forum. I think most of the talk there had been fantasy and few people had any intention of changing their lifestyle in any meaningful way. Which is why there were/are always more post-appocolyptic dystopia (utopia?) themed topics than the more mundane but probably more likely low-energy/low-income/grinding-poverty mitigation type. Thuja is right about the rural fantasy but it also seems there isn't much replacing it.

When the oil price went north (and the economy went south) I think it scared the begeebus out of 'em. We thought there would be this huge surge in traffic but just the opposite happened, even including the staff - go figure.


Speaking of the staff, the other thing I would say is everyone needs to know there has always been a tug-o-war between free speech and conformity (for want of a better word) here at this site. I don't know what goes on elsewhere but we try really hard to keep the debate open while at the same time keeping the disrespect quotient as low as practicable. We aren't perfect and we wax and wane in our zeal as well as our biases but we try to do the right thing.

But by the same token,
We do get folks here from time to time with absolutely no intention of discussing or debating depletion or adding anything of value beyond their own imagined biting wit. Their mind is made up and their whole program is to simply lob little turds of derision.

Nowadays there are boards and comment forms by their thousands where a person can go that allow no dissin' of Brother Hubbert as well as probably hundreds and thousands who would blow a gasket ROTFLTheirAO at the mere mention of peak oil... and they need page-views too.


(edit, how 'hole and Off have survived this long I really can't explain)

[diemos]

I think most of the talk there had been fantasy and few people had any intention of changing their lifestyle in any meaningful way.

Once you have the realization that energy is going to decline and our energy rich lifestyle is going to be taken away you're left with the problem of, "Ok, now what?".

You can either party on until they pry the hydrocarbons out of your cold dead fingers or you can be the first on your block to voluntarily embrace the poverty.

Which leads to my own motto, "Enjoy the good times while they're here. The bad times will be here soon enough, whether you enjoy the good times or not."

[davep]

One of the changes has been the relative silence of the Planning forum. I think most of the talk there had been fantasy and few people had any intention of changing their lifestyle in any meaningful way. Which is why there were/are always more post-appocolyptic dystopia (utopia?) themed topics than the more mundane but probably more likely low-energy/low-income/grinding-poverty mitigation type. Thuja is right about the rural fantasy but it also seems there isn't much replacing it.

I think those who have decided to get on with planning can get better information elsewhere. This may give the impression that it has been abandoned. For me, this is merely a reflection of the focus of this site, which isn't preparation.

For instance, I've been on Keith Addison's Journey to Forever biofuel list for at least a decade. And I've recently been in touch with Steve Spence for great expedient off-grid information. But this is not really what this site is all about.

[Ibon]

One of the changes has been the relative silence of the Planning forum. I think most of the talk there had been fantasy and few people had any intention of changing their lifestyle in any meaningful way. Which is why there were/are always more post-appocolyptic dystopia (utopia?) themed topics than the more mundane but probably more likely low-energy/low-income/grinding-poverty mitigation type. Thuja is right about the rural fantasy but it also seems there isn't much replacing it.

I think those who have decided to get on with planning can get better information elsewhere. This may give the impression that it has been abandoned. For me, this is merely a reflection of the focus of this site, which isn't preparation.

I have to elaborate on your point Davep. Those that have decided to get on with planning are confronted with intense hard work and a level of creativity where the venue of discussing peak oil on internet forums drops to a healthy level of a few visits a week and a few posts a month, sometimes more, sometimes less.

[patience]

Ibon said: "Those that have decided to get on with planning are confronted with intense hard work and a level of creativity where the venue of discussing peak oil on internet forums drops to a healthy level of a few visits a week and a few posts a month, sometimes more, sometimes less."

I thought I saw here that some members got really busy doing stuff, and others not so much, indicating that they didn't really plan to change their lives all that much. My take on PO has always been very much like Pops, continually asking first "what comes next" and then "what do I change to prepare for that"? I still have the same questions, although some points are clearer now.

My PO epiphany came in 1974, with the Arab Oil Embargo. I worked GM in Kokomo, Indiana, an auto industry town. Unemployment hit about 1/4 of the workforce in that county for about a year. That was a wake up call. No gradual buildup of tensions like we have seen over the past 10 years, but within a couple of months it came down.

Gas doubled in price, supply was short, lines formed at gas stations where fights broke out, odd/even number (you could only buy gas on alternate days, depending on the last digit of your license plate number) gas rationing was implemented, and car plants laid off tens of thousands of people. Retail stores closed, shopping malls went broke for lack of tenants, and people moved out of town if they could to seek work elsewhere. Petty and not-so-petty theft increased. Real estate prices in rural areas dropped by 30%, or did not sell at all. That all happened in 60 days.

Then, almost as quickly, it went back to ALMOST normal. People got used to higher gas prices and forgot about it. I think I saw a similiar psychology operate on this site during and after the oil price spike in '08. Having seen this kind of problem before, I got very serious indeed about dealing with it as best I could. I felt like I was seeing a rerun of a bad old movie. But it seemed to me like there were a lot of armchair commando's here at the time. Yes, some very serious heads remained here, but they were outnumbered for a while. Hopefully, some of the old spirit has returned and most of the trolls have left now.