multiple disasters

MULTIPLE DISASTERS
Most survival books list several likely disasters, an a la carte menu to pick from. I’m even guilty of this in my book, The Frugal Survivalist. The problem with this approach is that now the odds are that we won’t see just one of these but most of them. All in the same time period. The last big focus was on Y2K. Now you can take your pick. Peak Oil. Global warming. Economic Depression. American dictatorship. Population die-off. We are likely seeing all of them now unrolling in slow motion. And it is hard to argue that they are not happening.
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Peak Oil is a bell curve. Production goes up, then levels out, then falls. We are at the plateau right now. Production is flat, even as demand grows. And in terms of personal availability, each human on the planet has had to make due with less for some period of time. Americans in general are oblivious to this as we have bribed, stolen or bought as much as we have desired for some time. Even as we are heaving our bloated carcasses into the biggest and shiniest SUV that Detroit can sell us ( paid for with a second home mortgage ), Third World nations are using less energy since they are now effectively priced out of the market.
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Corn to ethanol sees basic food costs skyrocketing in places like Mexico, but even in the US we see basic cereal crops double in price in just a few months due to the misappropriation of farm land. Not just from ethanol production, but also due to weather patterns leaving their historic norm. No one here is starving yet, but add in an economic downturn and we will be in the same boat as Mexican peasants. Basic food costs soaring as we are less able to pay. Once things get bad enough, from oil supplies shrinking, from our economy tanking, from war disrupting resource shipping, we could begin to see our own food supplies jeopardized. There is no divine law that says the US can’t see food shortages. Historically we have had plenty of energy, first wood, then coal and now oil, all helping us to live in a land of plenty. When the last of the energy starts to dry up, so will our surpluses.
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Anymore, it is not a question of what will cause our next economic Depression, but when it will happen. Energy surplus kept us well off economically. Once those surpluses dip so does our economy. We are importing cheap labor at a furious pace to help pay our retiring Boomers, and to put downward pressure on wages to save the large corporations. This places more pressure on our ability to feed our population once energy supplies start falling.
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No one should have too many illusions about our state of government. The Constitution is no longer followed, it is mere lip service. Laws have been on the books for decades allowing the President to declare martial law for any reason and rule without impediment. Just as Germans legally elected Hitler, our system of government will allow a legal dictator to take over as needed/wanted. And when it is no longer hidden or whitewashed, most of the population will happily go along with whatever seems to promise a continuation of the good life. They already are. The only thing different is that the Bill Of Rights is still posted next to the picture of our Great Leader. Sugared poison.
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War is inevitable. A survival trait build into the human DNA. When two groups are in danger, one steals from the other so that half of the humans survive. Wishful thinking, imploring that we “give peace a chance”, peace marches and science fiction happy stories are all worthless. In an affluent society you get women’s rights, the end of slavery, a lopsided but functional sharing of wealth. When the chips are down we revert to our true nature of stealing what we need to survive. In the process the victim loses everything, is killed in a gruesome fashion and the victorious group begins infighting for a disproportionate share just like a pack of wolves. You can’t change human nature. Iraq is a side show. When others with true military might need the same oil we just stole, then we will see some real war.
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We are already seeing the oil supply start to diminish ( a leveling off now, but since we are used to always increasing supplies it almost amounts to the same thing ). We are already fighting energy wars. Our food supply is already in danger. The weather is already changing ( remember the article on garden zones moving north? ). We are already overpopulated. Our economy is only held up with printing press money. Our leaders are already practicing torture and mass surveillance and have passed a national ID law. We will see a Perfect Storm of disasters sometime in the not so distant future. Each will feed off of the other, making things worse. Katrina will become a fond memory of how good things were when we could depopulate a city with minimal casualties. Enjoy.
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