I would like to note the example of Cuba. This country experienced an ~80% drop in oil supplies, yet still managed to hold society together. The fact that they did not collapse gives me hope that America can peacefully deal with peak oil without everyone turning into mutant zombie bikers. I believe that most folks have the capacity to learn and adapt, especially when hungry.

As for me, I intend to:

Get the most stable job possible (fed).
Get a house close to that job, rail lines and water resources.
Start growing crops, and raising animals if possible, not to become 'self sufficent' but as a learning experience. People will need folks to teach them how to produce food. I will embrace my nieghbors, not hide from them. Without a strong community, I doubt any of us can survive very long.

I doubt that we'll be lucky enough to have a gradual powerdown. The reason is complexity. A technologically advanced culture depends on many different power-intensive activities (e.g. fertilizer production, JIT delivery systems, sea transport, etc.).

If any one of these systems breaks, we can fix it, or work around it. If many of them break at once, as they might due to a sudden oil shortage (e.g. Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and Iran decide tomorrow to keep all their oil for domestic use), then we would probably never recover to previous levels.

Little fertilizer for crops. Minimal transportation of food, medicines, or anything else. No fuel for anything but trucks and emergency vehicles. Maybe not them. No spare parts for water purification plants, sewage treatment, electrical grids, and so on.

The oil would be there, in the ground. We just might not be able to get enough out, and refined, to matter. We would have natural gas, but not necessarily the means to adapt our vehicles to it in a timeframe of less than a couple of decades. We would have coal for our power plants, but no means to transport it to the power plants until the vehicles were adapted.

Everything interacts with everything. We would adapt. A great many of us would survive, but it would take a while and not be too pleasant in the meantime.

Here is my favorite graph showing world primary energy use per capita...



Combine that with with a flatlined oil reserve/production ratio for the last 30 years and I'm with pup, we're already there. We've been fooling ourselves thinking all the cool cheap stuff made and financed by little Chinese girls meant things were getting better. I see the last 2-5 years replaying over and over.

But anyway, someone said all anyone is doing here is running off to the country expecting Armageddon, I don't have an exact number but of the 28,000 members here there probably aren't 2 dozen who have moved anywhere, let alone to the country, even in part as a response to PO.

I can also tell you as one of the first posters here and the instigator of this particular forum, I have started and bumped any number of threads about mitigating PO in the cities and the 'burbs. But you know what? They sink and Heading For The Hills stays on top - there isn't much to do about that.

And like someone else said up there, no one is actually doing anything - well I've railed about that too but the fact is doing something big is scary and takes commitment and many people who read here have ties to people who think the whole PO thing is bunk. I don't really have any advice for them either except to keep doing what they can.


So anyway, Welcome! Tell us more about what you are doing – I'll try to get pstarr to behave a little nicer.

Such a collapse or discontinuity is, by its nature, not really predictable in time or severity.

The way I approach it is to ask, as I undertake anything of significance, "If I do XYZ, and nothing interesting happens in the next 5 years, am I destroying value." If the answer is "yes", then in general, I pass. Then I ask myself, "if there is a crippling discontinuity next month, does XYZ compromise my ability to survive and respond.".

So, I can setup a pantry, such that I have x-odd months of food available, only so long as I am willing to work my way through that food, and not let a large portion of it sit on the shelf till it spoils.

I can buy a house, but only so long as its small enough to be able to finance it with a 15 year note; and holds a substantial amount of positive equity.

I can NOT quit my job and switch to farming, the falloff in income would eventually overwhelm me if nothing interesting happened. (Do have the land available).

I can NOT buy a house the size that most of my peers buy, as the debt obligation would crush my available resources in the event of a discontinuity.

I can sit on x-odd pounds of physical silver or ounces of physical gold.

I can NOT put obligated funds in play in the electronic market. (gamblin money not withstanding...)



Error in first assumptions. That there are only two eventualities to prepare for. It does make it easier to discuss, but I think it leads to some very wrong conclusions. There are dozens of eventualities; and you can' t prepare for them all. You can put yourself in a position to adapt to changing conditions as they manifest themselves.

nb... I love the "long tail" phrase. I think "long emergency" is not very accurate, no emergency in play at all, nothing frantic. Instead, an image of a 60 yr old with arthritis, slowly waddling his way through 4ft deep mud, for miles.

+1 and an honourable mention in the "member's quotes" thread.

Some of us are "doing," without necessarily talking about it much. I think there are many paths to preparation, and not all of them involve becoming a farmer or moving to the country. I've done and continue to do a tremendous amount, but probably not much of it would make sense to other peak oil preppers.
As you noted, you have to go on your sense of how things are going to unfold - make a best guess and then commit and run with it, while keeping yourself open to changing realities. Most of what I've done, other than the survivalism studies, has depended on a slower decline, and that bet has paid off nicely so far.

In terms of gardening specifically (to pick one subject): I would say for the Long Slow Sh*t Slide (Pop's term, I believe), you might choose to focus on vitamins over calories, contrary to popular fast-crash wisdom. The reason for that is that in a longer decline, there will probably still be bread lines (and thus calories) available; but vitamin-rich produce will be expensive as hell. My guess.

Another: figure out what people will need in a slow decline, that perhaps will not be available (or more likely will still be available but will become prohibitively expensive) and then prepare to provide that product or service to others. For instance, instead of growing a garden for food production for yourself, consider growing a garden for preserving and generating heirloom seed stock, and plan on providing the seeds as a product to your community during hard times. Or more generally: rather than stockpiling and hoarding a particular product, learn how to make it, and plan on providing that service. I don't think trade will end in a long tail slide, and in energy-poor times, I think small operators will once again be able to compete with the big companies, which need unending growth like a shark needs to swim. Again, my guess.

I think you're asking the right questions.

How do you prepare?

Quietly.

You purchase and buy 1 years supply of food for each person in the household. You pick it up and take it home in the truck with a tarp over it. You park in the garage and close the door. You find attic space, closet space, any space where it won't stand out, where it will just look like another cardboard box.

You buy solar panels and batteries, but you set them up in a fenced backyard. You make sure they're all portable and can be taken inside, and hidden.

You buy water filters and replacement filter elements and put them in the garage in boxes. You buy hand grinders and hand operated water pumps, and put them in cupboards under the kitchen counters. You buy seeds and stick them in 3 or 4 shoeboxes. You buy two or three hav-a-hart cage traps and tell the neighbors you're having problems with raccoons.

You stash cash, in 3 or 4 places. You get $1000 of gold another $1000 in silver and put them far back on a shelf in a little white box where it won't get noticed.

You buy medicines, overseas. You save old prescriptions. You find out what herbs do what and keep them in supply. You buy first aid kits and equipment. You find out what dental fillings are likely to fail and get them replaced NOW. You get any medical treatment and diagnosis you can NOW. You get inoculations. Pneumonia, TB, diphtheria, typhoid. You lie at the clinic and say you're going into the jungles of Brazil or Vietnam. They shoot you up. You're a little safer.

You buy sundries. A thousand yards of aluminum foil. Thousands of plastic bags of all sizes. Gallons of soap and bleach. Toothpaste, soap. All in large quantities.

You buy a cabin or mobile home, by a lake or river or some other consistent, not man-made water supply. You make sure it has fish, a healthy ecology and some, but not too many people nearby. You get to know those people. You learn to fish there, catch and eat turtles. You bake a rattlesnake and find out that it really does taste like chicken. You buy books on local edible wild plants and mushrooms. You learn that cat-tails taste like cucumbers and that sulpher-shelf mushrooms are superb.

You tell nobody about this. Not even your circle of friends who think everything is OK because you can't save them all. You can save yourself, and your family. That's all.

If anyone asks, you're preparing for the hurricane, or tornadoes, or the earthquakes or something, anything else but powerdown and the economic and political collapse that will inevitable precede it.

You don't attract attention. You don't make the news. You survive.

An interest in a point of view outside the scope of peaker Neanderthals?

Don't start here sos.

Ian, your post sings to me! If anyone asks, it's for "hurricane preparedness."

The house is being built 100 yards into the lot, well into the woods. From the road it's on, it looks like an unremarkable dirt trail leading to woods where people hunt. You wouldn't be able to tell that there's a house back there. And if one does approach the house, you can't see the solar panels - you're approaching from the north, while the panels are on the south side.

My main quandry is what to tell the neighbors when they come to visit and they see the solar panels and the rows of raised vegetable garden. I don't want to be isolated from them, but there is risk of them telling others what we have.

Those non-linear events would be "tipping points".
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112886911 Here's part:

Make preparedness, thinking outside the box, one's hobby. Some will choice to be reclusive, hiding their preps, some will build community. I have an opinion but have no proof its better than others. If tshtf those prepared will have knowldge and experience, vital at any time in history. If it plods along, the skills will keep you going with less dispare and better health. If nothing happens, its just a fun hobby.

So, you went from one box to the other, eh?

Aye aye Cap'n.

It's possible to put some quantitative limits on the "long tail" model of peak oil. After large oil fields peak, production declines at rates of ca. 5-7% per year. Assuming new discoveries can replace 1-2% per year of the declining global production still leaves about 4-5% declines per annum.

Do the math. In only 10-20 years after the peak oil production is going to be down by over half. That will be catastrophic to global economies.

Is 10-20 years a "long tail"?