Well, life does indeed go on amidst the chaos and confusion. Most survival writers think that Peak Oil
only means you might have to cut back on the amount of driving you do. They must also seem to think that the financial meltdown
will simply mean a few more decades of belt tightening before it all gets better ( we found oil before! We recovered before! ). Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that we pay these writers to be a little more perceptive about the future than your average run of the mill politician, Harvard trained economist or multinational CEO. Surviving a slow multigenerational collapse doesn’t have a whole lot to do with survivalism
. You could get decent enough advice studying up on frugal living. Even those that point to the elephant in the room seem to think you have plenty of time to prepare for the next Dark Ages
. Today I am going to look at a few examples of wishful thinking based on the collapse slowing.*
For the last few days/weeks ( it all blurs together ) the graph from the military showing oil supply shortages has been making the rounds. The general consensus seems to be that since the military is in the business of protecting us and perceiving the next threat correctly, they must be rational and logical about all this. Have these people ever been in the military? The military is one of the worst examples of bureaucratic inefficiency and political correctness
run amok. These people can’t actually pour piss out of a boot. Not even if they were to print the instructions at the top of the footwear in illustrated form. The average grunt is motivated, patriotic, brave and hard working ( perhaps not extremely bright, but who is at 18? ). The morons in charge of him are complete and incurable college educated idiots. Everyone looks at the chart and says, ooh, ahh! We are in trouble! The reason you are in trouble is not because you think we will slowly decrease in oil supply for twenty years, at a mere 4% a year or so. No, you are in trouble if you actually believe this fantasy presented to you in disguised form. This is obviously a plant to confuse the issue. Admit to the problem only after it is obvious, but then make it seem like it is a lot less of a problem than has been assumed. We won’t see a slow decline in output. We will see a decline that races faster and faster ahead. It is a waterfall, not a gentle ramp.*
The Goldman Saks circus is in town! Hooray! Get your kids and lets pay for admission to watch theclown show
. Greece pays the firm to massage its numbers to appease the EU which demands some form of fiscal responsibility. They actually looked like they had a somewhat balanced budget. Close enough for government work, anyway. Then, surprise, surprise, Greece gets screwed by the money masters and the whole ball of wax starts melting down. So a few suits from GS get hauled in front of some panel or other. The same kind of panel where “Chappaquiddick
” Kennedy would be chastising a swimming pool manufacturer for putting out a product that endangered children, or be giving a lecture on the advisability on enacting drunk driving laws. Our attention is momentarily distracted by the Catholic Church and its Merry Molesting Priests Group which is of course sick and wrong ( although the church still feels neither the need for marriage in the clergy nor birth control as large segments of its members kill each other over shrinking resources ) but doesn’t even begin to hold a candle to the damage politicians, lawyers and bankers do. So, while we are treated to the spectacle of a fake witch hunt, other countries are drained of their vital fluids to keep our empire running slightly longer. Every other country we control or finance will be sacrificed to sustain the US just a few more days or months. Do you wonder what will happen once all the other countries are gone? The collapse has slowed here only at the expense of others.*
National Pravda
Radio, such a soulless and communist run organization that I feel absolutely no remorse is in using it for free ( they plead financial hardship and the need for private help, but Lucifer’s 
Minions in the public sector will keep them around for the fine job they are doing at propaganda- a prostitute on crack turning tricks for ten bucks has far more scruples than the whores at public radio/TV ), was commenting on the rate of Nevada’s economic plunge. Since it is now, for the last three months, in only single digit declines rather than the last fifteen months of double digit declines, we must obviously truly be in an economic expansion and recovery. This gives the local, county and state governments an excuse to deny that more cuts are necessary. Of course, next fiscal year will be just like the last few, full of shock that the last cosmetic cuts weren’t enough and a shrill exclamation that any more civil servant cuts will lead to anarchy in the streets ( because obviously cutting teachers will mean no one is capable of opening a book and learning anything for themselves ). I read about Mayberry’s higher rate property tax that went along with official reduction of its value, so I imagine Nevada is far from unique. Well, actually my first thought was that no wife I’ve ever had was worth three grand a year, let alone all the mortgage on top of that. Bless him for all he puts up with. The point here is that it is becoming increasing difficult to put a happy face on the increasing evidence of a collapse
, and the ill concieved illustration of recovery in the slow down of collapse by the thought police is so pathetic it should be amusing you greatly. Take every friggin thing people with a stake in business as usual say and twist it around 180 to get the meaning of what really is going on. Then it gets pretty easy to make sense of it all. End Article.*
A loyal minion was a bit pissed I gave a link on the new company which sold self watering plans which you could get elsewhere for free. I should explain to everyone else also. Remember a week or two ago I linked you to a first aid kit company? I don't know if it is a good deal or not. I don't know if you even need their product. I'm just helping small or new companies out by spreading the word if they ask. Not paid ads, just a friendly "pass it on" ( if they give me a sample if the link helped, I see no harm in that ). You'll have to decide if it is something you want. If you wish to post in the comments your thoughts on the product, I'll post them as usual. Obviously, if any company thinks I'll censor negative comments on them when I don't those same types on my own writing might be in for a shock. I'm not totally frugal equipment only. Look at some of the books I review. Totally unnecessary to survival. But ones I enjoyed. Look at these new companies products in that same way. Ultimately it is your call if they are worthy or not. I’m not currently in the market for a self watering planter, so obviously I’ve done no research on the matter. Same with first aid kits ( a minion sent me a cool first aid kit with instructions in German. Don’t ask me why but I think that is the coolest thing ). You help me out in other areas I’m weak at such as construction or mechanics or whatever. You can do the same here. Also, just because something is free on the web doesn’t mean you don’t get value with a paid product. The obvious is a paper book compared to an e-book, but a lot of times you can’t even find the free stuff so the paid product provides the needed data. Or, the book is a collection of free stuff from all over, so the organization/all-in-one aspect is valuable. I see value in a $10 book, you see value in $10 worth of meat for a BBQ. We wouldn’t buy the others valuable item with the same feeling of getting our monies worth, right? OK, enough of this, I hope I made my point. If you care.
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, when the last tree was used. Obviously, a society that gets their protein from fish would be pretty silly to get rid of the last canoe material. The question becomes, why would a society willingly use the last of their life sustaining energy? I believe we rambled on for a bit about entrenched interests and overpopulation. This article will somewhat parallel the last, but I do have a new idea I would like to try on you. The myth of substitution as applied to that island civilization. There was a long thread of a discussion on another forum, I believe The Oil Drum, on the last tree being cut down at Easter Island. While I didn’t read it completely, and while my memory is never exact, I think the general gist of it was to an actual argument over whether the last tree was even cut down or whether the large trees were all gone but smaller species were left, all in accordance with the Easter Island chapter in 
’s book “
”. I love that book, I’ve read it twice, but it can’t be considered the last authority on what it covers. There is simply too much speculation over incomplete evidence. It seemed the argument on the thread had degenerated into whether the book was correct or not rather than over the logic of certain speculations. My idea here could be totally wrong, but it does address the problem with larger trees disappearing.
. Are they just butt ignorant and avoid planning for the future, unwilling to cut into their profit margins? I find this a little hard to believe. The smart and ruthless ones rise to the top, so how can they just ignore such an obvious problem? I can see the current crop of puppetmasters ignoring infertile soil and other agricultural issues since we live so far divorced from nature, but that certainly didn’t apply to a society living in a closed environment and based on 
. And yet all civilizations fall from overpopulation and resource depletion. So what was the thinking behind the use of the last tree? Are we asking the wrong questions? What if the last large tree was cut for rolling statues because there was no pressing need for fishing? If the existing fishing fleet was adequate for bringing in a small amount of the required protein, would it then make sense to keep playing the religious appeasement/power politics game that electing the statues represented? 
and putting their excess energy into putting up statues. Which might seem odd, until you look at our millions of square acres of asphalt in freeways and parking lots we will leave behind. If you aren’t knowledgeable about cars, how much sense did all those roads make? A Roman road makes sense, those could still be used for animals and wagons, but current roads will be tore up in no time from that kind of use. They are well made, at least in context to our throw away society, but only for inflated rubber. Even if the asphalt holds up better than I am imagining, what about those strange squares at the end of all these roads? In several hundred years of the next 
where all knowledge is lost as electronic media and acid paper fall apart, imaging what the ideas for our roads will turn to.
, or animal protein was just for the elite and thus the existing fishing fleet was more than large enough to use through the current generation. The question of wood shortages never can up. It wasn’t a problem. The small trees and shrubs were good enough for cooking so the large trees could be used for statues. Perhaps there were enough large trees left for slower but continued building until catastrophe struck. Lets say that the population had grown through surplus, all was well, then a drought and/or tsunami hit ( I don’t know if that was discredited through others research, I’m just using that as an example ). Hell, it could have been an earlier 
that a wild bird brought to the island which killed a huge chicken population which had made fishing boats unnecessary. It wasn’t that the people used up the last of one vital resource, it was that they had a good enough substitute until disaster struck.
falling quicker than expected, we don’t have the resources we need for the new challenge and our overpopulation helps us die-off quicker. The islanders had plenty of protein and food without fishing, until that source was endangered and they couldn’t go back to fishing as the large trees were gone. We are totally dependent on oil. Endanger that ( a nuke in Saudi Arabia would pretty much be game over globally still leaving plenty of oil in the ground ), and we don’t have the old, used up resources to fall back on. We might be able to turn to organics, we know how, but the population is too far removed from those fields and not only are they starving from lack of transportation, they also are freezing in the winters. You can’t go back to animal manure fertilized fields surrounding population centers if the fields are asphalt and the animals are thousands of miles away in feed lots. Not quick enough to avoid 
after a disaster.
would have told you if it wasn’t busy getting avian flu ( which seems to have originated not from a horny little chinaman molesting his backyard birds but from the factory farms Tyson or whoever set up in Asia because it is cheaper to pay the interest on the loan for construction than actually pay fair market value for decentralized family farm products ) or sitting on a street corner confused as to whether or not he should cross the road because let’s face it, not even he knows why he should do so. Okay, towards the end of the article I’ll tie in economics and politics to collapse, but for now you will be lulled into thinking I’m just commenting on current events. Namely, the new law in 
that gives the police the right to ask people to prove they are legal residents. Let me assure you quickly before you click on over to 
!”. Okay, Bob. I‘ll take door number two, How To Be Anally Assaulted Without Lubricant. Let’s strip away all the masks this bill hides behind to find out its real purpose. It isn’t because the people voted for it. Even if elections and referendums weren’t actually subject to huge electronic manipulated fraud, which I’ll contend to my dieing day that they are because I refuse to believe that after all the dead people voting in Chicago elections ( and in Florida in 2000 ) we wouldn’t abuse the move to computer voting, I still find it hard to believe that a state with thirty percent Latino ( and that’s just counting the legal ones ) would pass this kind of bill. So it was obviously most likely just rammed through and made to look legal. Do you really think Bush or Obammy were really voted in? Or for that matter, Clinton the second time. Even if people are complete and utter morons, which they probably are and it should worry you since they share the freeway with you, I can’t see them voting such clueless idiots into office. Even if people are that stupid, in comparison to the candidates they are Albert Einstein and N. Telsa rolled into one. I would call Obammy a Bush Junior, half-breed, foreign born brain dead idiot but that might get me put on an 
. Your vote doesn’t matter anymore, people! We are not a Republic anymore and your wealthier superiors have no interest in hearing your opinions or desires. 
. I.e., it is unlikely that the police have the time or manpower to stop tanned people and ID them. Yes, they can and will if they so desire, but in times of budget cuts it is hard to imagine this will be the intent or outcome of this law. As a matter of fact, a lot of pasty white people will also be harassed by this law, so that racial profiling charges will not be forthcoming. A lot of media idiots have gotten worked up that this law allows people to be ID’ed even if they haven’t already committed a crime. The police are masters of creating a court legal excuse called probable cause. This doesn’t change their actual behavior, it just makes what was common practice easier and legal. It is face paint on the clown that is our current legal system. The same system that was screwed up way before this law. You get all worked up about showing your papers to the 
, but I would be more worried about older violations of your rights such as corporate theft of your land under eminent domain or getting renditioned to Syria for torture.
services. Probably not, but they might have to call the police, so the smart illegals don’t show up to the hospitals at all. No more schools, or Food Stamps ( if I’m not mistaken the state or county does the legwork on applications even if the feds pay ). The state might even be able to deport you rather than putting you in a state or county correctional facility which will save big bucks. Obviously, I don’t have near enough the information needed for a more certain breakdown on these details, but the general outline is clear. A legal reason to be able to cut back on the amount of public services. It is cheaper to round up and deport than to sustain a group in first world comfort. In an imploding system, the pie shrinks and fewer people get any piece at all.
is a matter of calories. In both cases they are being manipulated and refuse to think for themselves. In the first case they are told to relax and consume and in the second to storm the 
. Everyone wants to sit down and do nothing, but once the overabundance of calories slows to a trickle they will be motivated to actually get up and protest. Not that they will do it on their own, but they will do it once they are tricked into it. 95% of Americans ( I would say 99%, but I don’t want to be accused of being negative ) are fat lazy slobs. Not that body weight is necessarily a bad thing that automatically earns my scorn. You need some fat to survive the 
. And I understand that commuting for two hours and sitting in a cubical for nine leaves little time for exercise. Nor does it tend to motivate much. No, my problem is when people allow their brains to follow their overflowing waistline. When you refuse to exercise your brain, when you buy the easiest solution peddled to you that others profit off of, you join the manipulated mob. You become a pod person. Part of the 
. I don’t normally care much for 
( I grew out of Star Wars awhile back-
is more to my liking ), but the Borg is a great description of our masses. I’m sure it has always been like this, leading one to wonder if the bad attitude of the elites might not at least have a kernel of truth to it, but at no time in history has a citizenry been so pampered. Which means they will be far more easily led in a mob when the slightest difficulties emerge.
( an ongoing process for the last 150 years, so don’t think it is going to reverse itself ), the bulk vote for more restrictions as long as an extra large helping of welfare is included. Not that voting actually does anything, but the point is they think it does. I’m poor and proud of it. Just a taste of middle class cured me from its dream as the price was too high. But I am not envious of the rich. I hate them because most got it through institutional theft. I don’t hate them because I’m jealous but because they are some thieving twats. I won’t get off on too much of a tangent there, you know how easy I can whip myself into a lather. The point is that these idiots might think they have the world by the gonads, but their very wealth makes them vulnerable ( I’m not talking about the super-wealthy who survive through the ages but the worker bees who are allowed to attain the illusion of wealth to control them. These saps think their crap doesn’t stink, but their superiority complex is built on thin promise of paper wealth. It can easily disappear, it will vanish with the shrinking oil supplies ). 
you should fear the hard core inner city gangs, the escaped prisoners, the real biker gangs ( as opposed to the soft gooey white collar 
riders that buy a veneer of toughness, hiding their balding, sagging, beer gut wearing, Viagra taking bloated carcasses behind a thin layer of leather and an unmuffled motor ) and the “entitled” welfare classes ( that white bread M.F.er owes me my welfare check, bitch ). But those numbers will pale next to the huge numbers of “respectable” members of society that are losing their welfare work jobs. I’m not pointing my finger at anyone, I work for the government once removed, but I also don’t make more than minimum wage and receive no pension and health benefits. I can fade away easily. Those people counting on the government for their soft and easy living, the civil servants, the pensioners, those dependent on government granted monopolies such as medical personnel or contractors, they are a huge block of pissed off people that are seeing their promises broken. I blame them, a little, but I certainly see their point of view. Yes, even the Social Security folks. 
comes to mind ), is there any hope standing against them? My answer is the same as if the 
from California stormed into town. If you can escape to a secondary safe house, grand. If not you are going to have to be a hardass and break the mob at their weakest link. Children and women. I’ll bet not very many of us could do that, myself included. But how else are you going to disperse the mob? Going after the weapons holders just establishes a war between soldiers ( as it were ). As the dependents egg them on. Going after the dependents first will of course enrage and motivate, but it will also force them to disengage faster. If the armed men form search parties to confiscate your supplies, you will have to abandon your property and sneak in and take their dependents hostage. Yes, this is a crappy way to do things. But they are stealing your stores and thus dooming you to death quickly. Look at it this way. The government does this all the time. If you fail to tow the party line, the government takes your kids and gives them away to foster parents. They pretend to care about juniors welfare but in reality they sacrifice the child’s welfare as a lesson to all others not to mess with the powers that be. The British put children and women into concentration camps to die while fighting the 
( the Americans and British also perfected firebombing, but they were much more humane than the 
). And don’t even get me started on the Iraqi embargo or collateral damage in our hot war killing kids. You sniping or kidnapping the innocents is a weapon that is hideous, but it might be your only option to survive. Just because upright citizens all get together to vote to steal your food or to storm your area and act as locusts doesn’t mean they are any better than common thieves or looters. You might have to kill a lot of them and spill a lot of innocent blood. Remember, in times of scarcity, it is your tribe against theirs. All members of that tribe.
