What an economic collapse looks like

NEOPO · **Posted:** Mon Aug 21, 2006 12:59 am

damn good post/story.....

horsestoaster · **Joined:** Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:00 am **Posts:** 109

I never thought of body armor before.What an excellent idea.Thanks for posting it!

MacG · **Joined:** Sat Jun 04, 2005 12:00 am **Posts:** 1169

gg3 wrote:

And while we're on the subject of defense prep in a collapse scenario:

Don't forget good intelligence.

Intel = information that helps prevent risks from turning into threats.

For most people & situations, most of the time, what you're going to have basically boils down to informal HUMINT (human intel). Good sources of info include your local markets and any places where people congregate.

You & all the people in your group should understand and practice the following: Asking specific questions to get specific information. Remembering key points from conversation long enough to be able to write them down. Using notes to reconstruct the rest of a conversation. Separating out your direct observations from any interpretation you may have made. These are key points in terms of "collection," i.e. obtaining information.

Next comes analysis: sorting & sifting through data, assigning probabilities, determining potential consequences, prioritizing items for response, and keeping track of obscure bits of information that may turn out to be useful later. A database searchable by person, subject, and date, is useful. Useful skill: keeping a calm head and not getting paranoid once you start to see patterns in the data. The human brain is optimized for pattern recognition; but this also means it will start seeing patterns where there are none, depending on your mood. Learning how to stay calm & detached is important here.

Next comes output or feedback: Based on your analysis, determine what information you need to inject into the local social and trade networks to reduce threats and risks. Ideal case is to make a potential threat believe there is "nothing there" worth going after, which is not the same as making it sound as if you're armed to the teeth. Invisibility is good. You want outsiders to feel bored and un-interested when they think of your community, your town, etc.

Very often the best output from an intel system is to show you where to strategically strengthen trade relations and other types of social relations. Wherever you see a gap in the coverage, an absence of strong bonds, is a place that needs reinforcing. Strong bonds throughout a larger community are ultimately your best defense: no criminal gang is going to try coming to rob people in a town that is sufficiently connected and united (or rather, someone will try it just once, and after that, word will get out to avoid the place).

Also strong bonds will minimize the likelihood of becoming a victim of crimes of fraud: again, a potential perpetrator won't even try it. (One thing I've noticed in a lot of survivalist writings, is that they tend to miss the issue of crimes of fraud because these are less overtly physical threats.)

Think of it this way: the output of intel is diplomacy. And of course it's the successful diplomacy that minimizes the probability of risks turning into threats. So you can't just sit on a pile of good data, you have to use it actively.

---

Other forms of intel: SIGINT and IMINT are possible for groups that have sufficient technical capabilities. I've written about these topics elsewhere on this board. If you want to go for any type of technical intel collection activity, it's especially important to learn to keep a level head, because you'll be dealing with realtime data flow.

Realistically most groups will not have the resources to do technical collection & analysis, so I'll leave that topic here for now. But again, the output from all of this, ultimately, is diplomacy, and that is a skill set that is always worth learning and practicing, regardless of the size or composition of your group.

Gold! Pure gold! Highly relevant commentary!

Ayoob · **Joined:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 1312

If you want to know what an economic collapse looks like you could always just come to my apartment here in the slums of Los Angeles and look out the window. I wish I was exaggerating.

There are dozens of people sleeping in the park about 200 yards from my window. I have been the victim of several property crimes, none of which were enough to bankrupt me but were annoying as FUCK nevertheless. I get stared down in the street on a daily basis and see people wandering around in filth that I never thought humanly possible.

Example 1 -- Somebody threw their sectional couch out into the street in front of my building. It sat there for a couple days, and then somebody moved in on it and started living there.

Example 2 -- I saw a guy walk out of a store with his piece of chicken and his rice with his plastic fork positioned somewhat precariously on top of the styrofoam clamshell the held his meal. The fork slid off the top and landed in a pile of bird shit on the sidewalk. Rather than turn around and head back into the store and get another two cent plastic fork he just dug right in and ate nonetheless.

Example 3 -- I recently took a picture of a roach coach or taco wagon or whatever you want to call it deployed in an alley in a shitty part of downtown LA that had at least a dozen overflowing dumpsters within 100 feet, and about five of them within 20 feet. Garbage blowing around in the wind everywhere up to your ankles, several dead cats stuck to the asphalt, and a small but stanky pile of human shit about 20 feet from the truck.

Example 4 -- Uncountable drunken homeless bums wandering around red-eyed, with clothes that are black with grime, leaned into doorways, black plastic bags full of whatever used as pillows just lying on the sidewalk, blue tarp tent cities and mentally ill people yelling at nothing wandering around the corners and just you wouldn't believe the numbers of these people. I see literally hundreds or thousands of these people driving around in a 12-hour shift. You wouldn't believe it until you saw it with your own eyes. I have started to take pictures of the funniest ones.

I have finally committed to moving right now. I'm outta here, it is absolute ridiculousness in all directions, and I am not going to voluntarily stay here. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up here in the first place.

I was taking a guy home from the dialysis center to his home in Compton one day. Compton, the subject of songs written by such artists as Eazy-E and Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre. Anyway. I'm taking him home and he tells me that he's in dialysis because his friends did some kind of bad drug deal and the guys that came out on the short end of the deal knew he was friends with the ripoff artists so they rolled up on his house and shot him a couple times. They got his kidneys and his spine, so he's paralyzed from the waist down and goes to dialysis three times a week for the rest of his life. His buddies, the ripoff artists, found everybody associated with shooting him and killed all of them over the course of a couple months. So this guy says, where do you live, to me. I told him. He said to me, Wow, that's a pretty rough neighborhood. That guy... looked at me and is like You live in a bad neighborhood.

So I'm history. My name is on a new lease in a very nice part of town... hell, it looks like Mayberry. Super-high quality of life, safety and security abounds in all directions, nice jackbooted thug police (All right!), no homeless people or violent crime at all.

And what's the difference in rent? About $165 a month to move from hell to heaven.

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah. Economic collapse, what should you do.

I say move. If you cannot move... prepare to drop bombs. Make sure your location is worth defending.

ohanian · **Joined:** Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 1176

Ayoob wrote:

If you want to know what an economic collapse looks like you could always just come to my apartment here in the slums of Los Angeles and look out the window. I wish I was exaggerating.

There are dozens of people sleeping in the park about 200 yards from my window. I have been the victim of several property crimes, none of which were enough to bankrupt me but were annoying as FUCK nevertheless. I get stared down in the street on a daily basis and see people wandering around in filth that I never thought humanly possible.

Please show us some pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Ayoob · **Joined:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 1312

ohanian wrote:

Ayoob wrote:

If you want to know what an economic collapse looks like you could always just come to my apartment here in the slums of Los Angeles and look out the window. I wish I was exaggerating.

There are dozens of people sleeping in the park about 200 yards from my window. I have been the victim of several property crimes, none of which were enough to bankrupt me but were annoying as FUCK nevertheless. I get stared down in the street on a daily basis and see people wandering around in filth that I never thought humanly possible.

Please show us some pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Tell me how. The pics are in a Sprint phone. I tried to upload them into an online photo album but I can't seem to figure out how to access it.

Wait, I got something. Just a minute.

How bout them apples. That was a guy standing in the parking lot where I fill up my ambulance. He saw me pulling in and pulled the 99c sticker up off his tallboy and tried to stick it to his forehead at me, like some kind of aggressive gesture.

He ended up just sticking the sticker to his thumb and just poked himself in the forehead a couple times and then looked at his thumb and sucked the sticker off it and spit it out, and it landed on his copious belly. Then he pointed his forefinger at me, cocked his thumb back and said boom and popped his wrist back as though he was shooting at me.

I couldn't stop laughing and took his picture a couple times.

Let me know if you want more. I got a million of em. It's hard to go a day and not get a good one. Captain America though... he's tough to beat. That was a gem.

max_power29 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 22, 2006 2:07 am

Ayoob wrote:

If you want to know what an economic collapse looks like you could always just come to my apartment here in the slums of Los Angeles and look out the window. I wish I was exaggerating.

Good point. and please lots more photos and stories.

strider3700 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:25 am

lots more photos please

TorrKing · **Posted:** Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:33 am

Excellent writing there! Although, luckily Scandinavia is very different when it comes to the water situation (except Denmark) there was a lot of useful info there.

I must say, while reading I got a little concerned as I have quite a lot of silver coins (87,5% silver). Should I get them melted down to 100% into a stamped bar?

Also, I plan to (try) to leave civilisation behind me as best as I can. Staying and eating off the forest most of the time. Moving about and avoiding people whenever I can. I am not fond of low politics and gunfights.

I have seriously considered getting a dog. As you mentioned, they serve as excellent warning aid. Also, if the dog is diciplined, maybe one could manage to turn an ambush against themselves.

Torjus Gaaren

Ayoob · **Joined:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 1312

max_power29 wrote:

Ayoob wrote:

If you want to know what an economic collapse looks like you could always just come to my apartment here in the slums of Los Angeles and look out the window. I wish I was exaggerating.

Good point. and please lots more photos and stories.

Yeah, the pics and stories are funny, aren't they. You want to see a picture of the gun I carry every single time I walk out my door? How does living in an area infested by illegal immigrants and poverty and crime sound to you?

Yeah, it's a barrel of laughs.

I've deleted a dozen paragraphs trying to explain the hood to you. But I can't. It is not something that can be explained. You have to see it for yourself, to marinate in its essence for the hood to become real to you.

The only thing you need to know about the hood is if you see it moving into your neighborhood that you must immediately destroy it.

seahorse2 · **Joined:** Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 2062

Ayoob,

Your post sounds like that story Seahorse I mailed you. I think you copied and posted the first three pages of the book

smallpoxgirl · **Joined:** Mon Nov 08, 2004 1:00 am **Posts:** 7742

I've seen this link before. I have to say that I think this chap is rather hystrionic WRT Argentina. I have a friend that is an organic farm inspector and spends a lot of time in Argentina. He was there for probably four months last year. He's so excited about what's happening there (communal agriculture, workers collectives taking over factories, etc) that he keeps threatening to move there.

Makes me wonder whether "collapse" isn't a phenomenon experienced solely by the upper class.

Ayoob · **Joined:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 1312

Shannymara wrote:

I lived in the hood for awhile in New Haven. Crackheads and hookers used to knock on my apartment door and try to sell me TVs in the middle of the night and stuff. Constant noise, violence, fear and grinding poverty in an urban setting, especially when it's right next to the wealthy elite, bring out the worst in people. How sad and disgusting.

Yes.

I bought an urn and a white Stetson cowboy hat at 2AM outside of a Del Taco one night for $8. Possibly from the same people that were trying to sell you a TV.

It cannot be explained, can it. I can't tell the story. It sounds funny and romantic until you live in it.

Did I ever tell you the one about one of my neighbors leaving his door unlocked and having the rest of the people that lived IN THE SAME BUILDING WITH HIM descend on his open apartment, shaking it down and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down? My neighbors actually came and knocked on my door and were like Do you want anything? We're fleecing so-and-so, he's going to be out of town for at least a couple weeks and his door is open.

Hey, did I tell you the one about clicking the safety off on my sidearm every single time I get close to my neighborhood? That's a funny one too. Or how I actually draw it and keep it concealed in my hand while I walk up to my door. That one's pretty funny, too.

I am very angry now. How did this happen to my country. Why are our politicians openly supporting colonists from another nation camping out in my back yard. Why is it that when I call the police about my stolen car they say to me, and this is a real quote... "What do you want me to do about it?"

Well let me tell you something. I have some ideas about what to do about it. I am absolutely boiling over with rage today. I am a trigger. Touch me.

I am waving a black flag over my head right now to all readers of this site. There is a very large problem heading in to your neighborhoods, to your schools and to your very own front doors, seeping in through the cracks in your foundation and making its way into your dreams and poisoning them into nightmares.

I was in the middle of responding to a very friendly PM this morning when I came on this thread and for some reason I just can't let go of telling you all that economic collapse is not funny. It is not "relocalization" or anything else pleasant. It fucking SUCKS ASS and it is very important to know that. It is not planting gardens or making new bicycle friends or any of that liberal horseshit.

I must have deleted ten pages of bile so far this morning. It is inexpressible how shitty it is to be knocked down to Level One in Maslow's Hierarcy of Needs because you live in hell. I am moving this week to a nice safe area with lots of people like me that like law and order and don't have bars on their windows or guns in their pockets, and that don't turn their blinds so you can't tell that there's a TV in their apartments.

Remember that there are TEN MILLION PEOPLE in the city I live in. As conditions continue to deteriorate, they are going to leave here and come move in next door to you. This is what economic collapse means. My life today is your life tomorrow.

Do you think that guy with the American flag cape likes it that he has been reduced to that status? Do you think this is what his mother had in mind when she rocked him in his cradle? This is not in anyone's plan, it is simply what happens when our plans go a little astray.

You end up in the hood by accident, and suddenly you realize. Wait, what is this? What is this ? What is that? Gee, something seems different. And lo and behold, one day you wake up and put your keys, wallet, and gun in your pocket and then say to yourself Wait a minute. What the fuck did I just do? Did I just put a gun in my pocket? Is it really that dangerous out there? And then you check the crime statistics on the web and compare to known safe neighborhoods and look out your window and read the graffiti with new eyes and you say to yourself Oh my god, what happened? How did I end up here? And your awareness spreads from your apartment to your building to your block to your street to your zip code and you rise up from your location and view it from the top down. Your gaze sweeps over the slums and you see the nice neighborhood on the horizon waaaaay over there and you can see it from here but you are not within its boundaries.

And you find yourself doing pushups and eating your bacon and eggs. And cleaning your rifle and knowing that if anyone fucks with babycakes that it's up to you and the cops are not going to help you. Oh, but if you do anything they're going to be looking for you.

That is economic collapse.

Keep cheering it on, idiots.

"Yeah, there will be some economic dislocation and population reduction, but then we'll all be at peace with Gaia and cuddle up with each other and be happy fuzzy little bunnies and play tag in the woods and we'll all be so much happier now that we're completely devastatingly poor!" What the fuck IS that? I can't make heads or tails out of 99.9% of the garbage posted to this site anymore.

smallpoxgirl · **Joined:** Mon Nov 08, 2004 1:00 am **Posts:** 7742

Ayoob wrote:

And lo and behold, one day you wake up and put your keys, wallet, and gun in your pocket and then say to yourself Wait a minute. What the fuck did I just do? Did I just put a gun in my pocket? Is it really that dangerous out there?

Ohhh wah wah. If all you're carrying is a pocket pistol things must not be that bad. I carry a gun most every day now.

Seriously....what you thought you were going to live forever in retail shopping bliss? Get real. "The good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." Death doesn't scare me. Disorder doesn't scare me. The endlessly expanding urban blight of America scares me. I'd much rather fight for my survival than to spend the rest of my life trying to escape urbanization. As for you living in Southern California, I mean, I feel for you, but how is that my fault? God gave you legs for a reason. Move!

Ayoob · **Joined:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:00 am **Posts:** 1312

smallpoxgirl wrote:

Ayoob wrote:

And lo and behold, one day you wake up and put your keys, wallet, and gun in your pocket and then say to yourself Wait a minute. What the fuck did I just do? Did I just put a gun in my pocket? Is it really that dangerous out there?

Ohhh wah wah. If all you're carrying is a pocket pistol things must not be that bad. I carry a gun most every day now.

Yeah, I know. I need a ride on the waaaaaaahmbulance.

What an economic collapse looks like

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