Fresh stuff from you
Your hopes, dreams, ideas, trepidations, kudos, and whatever are all welcome here!
I want to hear from you!
Your contribution feeds into the new culture from which the new future grows. Every little bit helps, turns into inspiration, sooner or later, someone!
I personally get a big boost I get when people write and tell me something of what’s happening. Wow, there are real live fascinating folks out there, day-by-day dreaming of a new and positive future happening locally where they are . . . My St. Patrick’s Day note from Lori in Arizona prompted me to make a space for readers to comment.
Thanks to all those who’ve written me personally and helped make my day!
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Hey there,
I’m totally on board with your ideas – I think you’re really right, we’re more likely to see a huge return to local communities, do-it-yourself skills, and small-scale agriculture.
I’m on that path for myself and my community – I write about it at http://patchworkradicals.weebly.com – all about my journey in Radical Homemaking.
Keep on it.
Hi Andrew,
My view comes from a spiritual perspective with input from spiritual sources, and it is the spiritual aspect of your site that has attracted me. Thank you for sharing your perspective with us.
I second the recommendation of Anastasia. See my blog at http://goldenagejourney.blogspot.com for many posts on her teachings (click “anastasia” under Labels).
The core transition timeline is from 2012 to 2030 according to several spiritual sources I follow. They say only 1 to 2 billion people will be left on Earth by 2030: those that succeed in becoming self-sufficient while maintaining love in their hearts throughout the transition.
Taking actions out of fear to protect yourself from others (i.e. buying guns, etc.) will only attract attack from others. However, feeling and acting with love for others, will only attract love from others. This truth exists within each one of us, and by spending time each day with the mind turned inward anyone can realize it for themselves.
Love,
Manoj
Hi Manoj
I share with you an appreciation for the spiritual journey. Personally I’m sceptical of talk of dimensional shifts and celestial events which seems to involve believing in things. I see grand stories as wonderful stories. I suspect we make up the stories, or co-create and live them.
You know this blog’s been inactive for a while and I’d thought I’d taken the link off the site . . . doing other blogging otherwhere. I had a look around goldenagejourney and wish you blessings in your yogic journey
All good things to you!
Andrew
Thanks for your terrific site, Andrew. I love your tone! It’s been an inspiration to me, helping motivate me to start my own blog called Farmlet http://www.farmlet.wordpress.com in which I describe our small farmlet life as two Boomers in our mid-50s. I hope you can check it out, and good luck with the rabbits!
I escaped from the rat race in the US 9 years ago. I have lived in Nicaragua for the last 7, currently on a 265 acre piece of land in a national reserve.
The good news is that needing to heat (or cool) your house is no longer an issue. I have a decent PV and wind power system. I have a small dome house and, well lots more. Trying to be low-impact and self-sufficient here is much easier than in the US.
The bad news is that I am the only Gringo here. If 10 other people/couples moved here from the First World we could have the needed level of community to make things work. Unfortunately, most people just don’t comprehend how easy, inexpensive and practical a move to the tropics can be to kick-start your new life.
I’d like to suggest a local food cooperative as a way to jump start a local food system. We organized the Oklahoma Food Coop in 2003 with about 60 members (15 of which were producers). Now we have more than 3400 members and 200 producers. We work via a website coupled with a volunteer delivery system. Here’s an article I wrote about our organizing campaign — http://www.oklahomafood.coop/organizing.php . Our software is open source and available free of charge to other groups, http://www.localfoodcoop.org . There are hmmm about 16 other local food coops that we have helped start.
Great website, Andrew! I tend to agree with Mark’s comment made in June: “Those who are seriously involved in relocalization have their hands full just tending their own gardens…the rest of the world will come around to the concept when they are ready…or not.” I too subscribe to Voltaire’s advice that we should “tend our own gardens,” and let others (hopefully) see our successes. Important too is the opportunity to socialize with like-minded people and share information on simpler, healthier, eco-friendlier ways to live. We need this support and continuing reassurance that we aren’t the only ones struggling to lead a healthier existence – both for ourselves and our environment. – Just one voice in the wilderness to others in the same boat
Mary, you’re putting your typing fingers on two aspects of the thing: do your own, and work with others. It comes down to relationship imo, with outselves and with those around us. These two things are mutually dependent, related and part of the same larger thing we have no name for. We pull our own part of the collective load and help the whole to move. Something like that.
I am afraid that I am to be one of the left behinds.
I have no money to by land. Even if I did, I don’t know how to garden. I can barely bend over enough to cut my toenails let alone do the work involved in maintaining a garden that would feed someone or ones through a Canadian winter. I don’t know how to repair my bicycle or other equipment. I am somewhat of a loner and a contrarian. I am physically weak, somewhat lazy, and psychologically unsound. I am spoiled and soft. I like my comforts and my pleasures. I come as a package deal with those that I love, my wife, my child, her husband, my grandchild and they all have packages.
Do I sound like somebody you want in your survival community? Even if I were, in a time of relative scarcity communities will have to cull the weakest link in order to have enough for the strong to make it.
So think of me when you are chowing down on your fresh veggies. Think of your mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, friends and acquaintances who did not prepare.
But wait. There is not to be a Mad Max, Cormic McCarthy scenario in our future. Although nobody is willing to address my question of what kind of scenario there might be maybe there is hope for me yet. Or not.
Brian
Brian, sorry I didn’t get to making a comment when this came round, but just aj appreciation. I like the honest and direct way you deal with difficult issues. Of such thorny matters are all of our relocalizations methinks. If it were all tied up in a bow we wouldn’t be all tied up in a knot. My point is simply that you can see / feel / know / more from your own edge than from hiding behind it in a place of imagined safety. So being on an edge is an advantage. It just feels more . . . so we’d like to numb out.
Andrew, is there a link from your web site to the blog site?
Yes, there is Mark, but it’s not emphasized much, or perhaps enough. It’s at at the bottom of the opening page for example. I’m thinking of posting directly to here . . . so much comes up on a daily basis. Will decide in a few days.
hey andrew,
just a note to let you know we watch your site regularly. it’s good to know that you, and others like you, are out there…thinking, mulling, planning and acting. you guys are the future…like it or not.
mark
Thanks Mark. Feel free to write and share what’s on your mind.
I think any effort in making the transition referred to will be in vain unless an appeal can be made to the individual souls of people in the mainstream. All the arguments in the world about a sustainable future will not spur the mainstream into localising, no matter how persuasive, nor should they. An attempt needs to be made to peoples souls to change their lifestyle and this can only be achieved through love not fear and, for example a greater understanidng of the benefits of growing a garden, not only in the material sense but in a spiritual and eternal sense as well.
A book which I found extremely beneficial was a book called ‘Anastasia’ by Vladimir Megre of Russia. It went straight to my heart and may be of interst to some of you.
Hunger and deprivation have a way of obviating the concerns you express here, Justin. Stomach first, soul second…that’s just a simple law of nature.
My own take is that people change through inspiration. So us growing into the change ourselves is a help to them as well as us. Of course finding like-minded souls can be part of that but others will come in their own time and their own way. Thanks for the tip about Anastasia.
As I re-read it, my previous comment seems harsh in a way that I had not intended. What I really meant to suggest was, simply, that the evolving situation seems to be one in which local self-sufficiency will cease to be optional. This is to say that ‘appeals’ to mainstream hearts and souls is perhaps best left to evangelical preachers and politicians. Those who are seriously involved in relocalization have their hands full just tending their own gardens…the rest of the world will come around to the concept when they are ready…or not.
For me, personally, discovering a small, informal group of people who were purposely and consciously scaling back and living locally (and, incidentally, more contentedly) was the motivator. I had to see it to believe it…and I suspect most people are like me in that sense. There’s lots of great inspirational reading out there, but what’s lacking are concrete examples of practical implementation of the principles involved. So maybe this is where we can be most effective…building working, replicable models of successful local economy. But that’s just my opinion.
ATTENTION U.S. Subscribers. I realize this site is not intended for political activism, but I would like to make the U.S. subscribers aware of something very important that is near and dear to our cause of self-reliance and preparedness. A bill has passed the House,but not yet the Senate, HR 875, that will destroy the small farmer, farmers markets, CSAs, and even the right of individuals to sell excess produce. Please, I urge you to write your Congressmen in the House and the Senate.
You can get the summary and see the full bill at:
http://nourishedkitchen.com/fight-hr-875-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009/
You can write your Congressmen by going to:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
Here’s my letter if you want to copy it. I took excepts from Nourished Kitchen and included my own thoughts and passions:
HR 875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009.
I am emphatically opposed to HR 875. If made law, this would NOT bring greater accountability to our imperiled food system. Indeed, with salmonella-infected peanuts and spinach laced with e-coli, who isn’t crying out for improvements in food safety?
HR 875 fails miserably in promoting food safety. Rather, than promoting true accountability and proper farming techniques that minimize the risk of introducing pathogens into the food supply, it simply will create greater barriers for our already struggling small farms and farmers markets.
HR 875 is such a massive bill, with such massive requirements and restrictions that, in effect, only huge agribusinesses would be able to effectively meet all its requirements. The small family farm would be history and, along with it, farmstands, farmers markets, most food cooperatives and CSAs.
I’m fully aware that Rosa Delauro of CT who introduced HR 875 in February is married to Stanley Greenberg. Stanley Greenberg is a political consultant whose clients have included Monsanto–Monsanto, the same corporation, who blessed us with RBGH and genetically engineered seeds. I seriously doubt the trust Ms. Delauro or her husband to make these kinds of decisions for the American people?
As a proud American, I am claiming my right along with all American citizens to preserve the right of self-determination in our food use and sources. I ASK YOU, DO NOT MAKE FOOD ILLEGAL. This is without doubt anathema to our independence, freedom and the basic rights of man. Americans are paying attention.
You might support Jenny at Nourished Kitchen and let her know that you contacted your Congressmen in opposition to this bill.
When thinking about preparing for greater self-sufficiency and the need for belonging to a trusted community, I amazed by magnitude of the challenges even at my own personal level. My partner and I live in southern Connecticut, I used to commute 102 mi a day round trip for work (car) and life in the suburbs on 1/2 ac – great house by the way. I really got into organic gardening, through the seasons except winter. Did some soap making and canning too. Always nagging my mind was how could I really be self-sufficient stretched out like I was and a hefty mortgage. Housing here isn’t cheap. Of course, once the housing and the stock market went bust, I really felt vulnerable – even though I have kept my job. But, what would happen to us if I end up loosing it and can’t find another, or one that pays so well.
My partner has slowly started to recognize what is going one (wrong) at the macro and micro level. After much discussion, we decided to sell the house. Not the best market I know, but we came out okay. Now I live 10 miles to work and are renting a home for less than our mortgage. This does several things in restructuring our lives: shrank our carbon footprint, freed up capital, pretty much unloaded all of our debt, and has left us freer to make other life changes without destroying our net worth. At least I don’t have to worry about loosing the house, ruining our finances or getting stuck upside down as we unwind and contract. I don’t know if I’ll start a garden this year at this rental house, but I’ll miss it if I don’t.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not bragging – I know things have been rough for people all over.
But, know that we’ve moved to a new city, I’d like to start efforts to network into a tighter community. I think how fragile it all could be as people get buffeted about by loss of jobs, homes, and having to move around. I think times will progressively get more turbulent. For those who are already established in rural and small towns, there may be more stability, but I’m very concerned about the vulnerability of cities and the debt ridden suburbs that go with them.
I really appreciate the rational and well-centered nature of this site. I’ve been aware of the building crises of peak-oil, climate change, funny money, debt and overshoot we are facing for some time. In looking for solutions for the future, I’ve been very frustrated by the hysteria and conspiracy that is distracting and does more harm than good. This site provides some much needed leadership and is truely encouraging.
During Y2K, I bought guns, stocked up on water and food, medical supplies, survival kits and emergency contingencies. I live very far from family, only have a partner, and my network of friends thought collapse was ridiculous. Y2K came and went but my loss of confidence in our current existence as unsustainable has maintained and grown with our changing times. However, with only two folks in the household, the food spoiled and was too costly to keep rotated, and the medical supplies and emergency kits got lost and disorganized and buffed about. Moving on from there I’ve focused on trying to find ways of starting a homestead, but how do you hold a homestead with a household of two if sickness or others come to take your holdings.
In our isolated and hyper-individualized made up world, I realize that security does come with being in a community of others working together in common cause. How to do this? Intentional communities seem to be the key, but I haven’t found one that seems to meet our needs. I set up a web-site to start one, but interested parties were too far flung or lacked the resources to make it happen. I still think a rural location is best as our highly complex and entitled society continues to unwind, but this site provides very good ideas and tools for starting local where I’m at.
Tom,
I hear you! My wife and I made the move to a small rural community about 15 years ago for all the reasons you outline above, and suffered the derision as well. But our strategy was this: find a place where we would be surrounded by others living near the bottom of the food chain…no matter their political, moral, religious, etc alignment. We simply figured that in order to effectively make the break that we’d have to be around others who were living at a standard to which we aspired…and burn the bridges behind us.
Well, like i said, it’s been 15 years and finally we’re beginning to feel settled in and secure. It takes time. It takes neighbors. And neither come looking for you…you’ve gotta go find ‘em. Ours turned out to be in southwestern argentina (we’re from california), but i’m sure there are others closer to home for you. Going it alone seems like a long, lonely row to hoe…more than we could have managed and we have 2 kids for company!
btw, we, too, considered intentional communities but found them too, welllll, ‘intentional’. So we just bought a small piece of land (10 acres originally) and literally dug in.
Does anyone have a guesstimate about the time line and scenario description of the post oil world?
It seems to me that the scenario portrayed is one of, those with self sufficient local communities will survive while the rest of the world starves and in northern climates freeze.
Again I ask, what will be the role of guns and defense in that world. And…how will those who are in those survival communities cope psychologically watching those around them, and those around the world, including friends and family members starve to death and freeze?
Can you suggest where else I could ask this rather large question?
Brian
Brian, Since discovering this issue I’ve bought a lot of books and scanned the internet. Internet blogs are great for reaching out to others concerned about the growing risks to societies and civilization, but I’ve found many times found misdirections. If you really want to try and understand the scope of everything with possible time lines and scenarios, I’ve collected a lot of serious books over the past few years. As a suggestion, to online bookstores like amazon, etc and search for peak oil. You’ll pull up many books and authors writing on peak oil survival (including economic), climate change, etc. I’ve found that the picture is very complex and there is an enormous amount of momentum to our current paradigm that will not go quietly into the night. I believe there is reasonable time, Mad Max isn’t tomorrow. That said, I believe that people who are aware and are concerned should work toward preparing for a different way of life. Part of the recipe may in fact mean finding ways to exploit the existing paradigm while not forgetting what your goals are in developing a new way of life. For all it’s faults and short comings, once the current paradigm is gone, life will never be the same – at least not for several or many generations. Fossil fuel is a one-time gift to humanity. Nothing we’ve explored as alternatives to fossil fuel will power, feed, cloth, transport, manufacture, heal, enrich our lifestyles for the modern world as we remotely know it. Our culture of hyper-individuality lives because we’ve expertly exploited fossil fuels, we have to begin retooling ourselves to recreate, depend, and rely upon community; I’m so glad I found this site as a resource.
Hi Tom
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I am not one for reading non-fiction. I probably have a bad case of ADD, but I never bothered to check it out. I find that most non-fiction that is 300 pages can be completely stated in 3 pages without loosing a lot. Because most environmental and peak oil folks are well educated and well read. They tend to like to show each other how smart they are and use lots of over inflated words and jargon. This leaves me and I imagine a whole lot of others out of the loop. When you include the people who are also too busy that ends up being a huge number of people. I also sense a distaste for dissent among the ranks of those that are involved in this movement.
I for one am confused with what I perceive as the mixed messages that the “doomer” community is saying. (There’s gotta be a better word of it than doomer.) On the one hand they are talking about shortages and the need to have gardens and solar this and that to survive. On the other hand they say not to worry about hungry and cold people with guns trying to take your food and warmth. No one on this site, or other sites that I have visited has helped me to understand this. Nor have they been able to help me understand how those that have prepare for survival in the post oil world will cope with the psychological effects of witnessing those around them who have not prepared suffer and maybe die. Either the collapse will happen and you will need local communities, gardens, and energy independence or you won’t. If it will not happen in my lifetime, my children and certainly my grandchild will have to deal with it.
This may be too big a topic to deal with in a web posting. There are so many questions to ask, so many complication to sort.
Brian
Hi Brian,
I know what you mean, I’ve picked up a few books that were too complicated, but I’ve found some that were great for laymen. You may already be aware of this book, The Long Emergency, by James Kuntsler. Here does a fair enough job of breaking down the future. He has his own take on things, but don’t we all. Another good one is Relocalize Know. you can find his one on amazon too. It has a lot of great tips and ideas. If one is interested in actually relocating to another pace, he breaks down the US into population density and make regional recommendations that would make good relocation or refuge locations. As always, everything costs and nothings for free. One of his points is that moving to an isolated location in the middle of no where is probably not the best decision as you want have anyone to help you. We can’t truely survive living alone or as a single family.
Nothing makes us more fearful than insecurity, so I understand your need to find answers for your family. I’m sure if you keep looking you’ll find the answers that are right for you. Bottom line there’s not single or magic answer. I recall the fall of the Roman Empire, it too has a lot of momentum that took a while to unwind. As the principles for its existence fell more and more away, the speed of decline went faster and faster until no matter how hard the stakeholders tried to keep it going they were eventually overwhelmed until people just accepted their fate and went with the realities of their new world. In the process the civilization they knew died and with it alot of people. Humanity restructured itself, think survival of the fittest and natural selection, the natural selection of location and resources. This time won’t be any different. I’m a Buddhist and we’re taught that when the merit for something ends, change comes. This applies to nations as it does to individuals. Sometimes those changes are undesirable, but it’s a completion of karma. I don’t really mean to go down a religious rant and I want. My point is as much as we try to protect ourselves (and we need to try), it’s something we can’t really control. There aren’t any guarantees. I agree with the premise of this web-site that we need to find others we can trust an cooperate with. Of course, I don’t have his all figured out either, I’m still looking too.
Best regards, Tom
I guess the thing about relocalization is not so much why we do it but that we do it. The idea that we grow community, grow gardens and grow local reliance for the sanity of it and the joy and satisfaction inherent is it’s own reward.
Thanks Tom. I appreciate that you’re out there searching and working on it. Congratulations on the move closer to work, and getting rid of the house / millstone. Good luck with starting some local community, even if you end up somewhere else. You clearly have much to share.
Andrew
Brian, I appreciate the interchange with you. If you are in the U.S., have a great Memorial Day weekend. If you are Canadian, I hope you and yours enjoyed Victoria Day. Keep going.
Howdy Tom & Brian,
I really commend you guys on getting started into self- reliance preparedness. It is a long, hard row to hoe, but is fun as well as challenging if you have good folks working together. Our BSOSC group has taken a long time to get to the point of progress we now enjoy, yet we are all so very far from being completely self-reliant. Please feel free to check out our blog/forum for any helpful info you might find at http://www.bsoscblog.com.
If you don’t find the info you need, please inquire and we will do all we can to provide any helpful info. I won’t gloss it over, you will have a really tough time in getting the so very many self-reliance steps accomplished. That being said, starting now and not wasting a day will yield probable life-saving rewards. Immediately start networking with local like-minded folks to get the nucleus for a local organization development like our BSOSC. You will be surprised at how many kindred folks are around you. Most of those are now feeling a real sense of urgency, but too, are unsure of what to do next.
We are fortunate to already be in a rural area very well adapted toward self-sustainability in adequate natural resources and protected location. Even with all that, we have had our challenges in motivating enough people to fill the 100 + committees in our 7 task forces in BSOSC. Many folks around the country have asked us to help them. We tell them to follow our organization guide to get their 7 task force leaders in place, have them contact our task force leaders for tips and info to get basic training and preparedness underway. Then, we would seriously consider their request to travel to their locale to help them with further developments. So far, none of those inquiring have been able to re-contact us saying they are ready for direct help. Are they really trying hard to get their local group going? Are they just talking more than walking? Who knows?
It is a heck of a lot of work and dedicated effort to succeed in developing a local prep group and each member getting their prep projects completed. As said above, we are not all there yet, but have made great strides and progress, greatly aided by the mental uplift of teaching and sharing skills as a group. This effort has generated an unbelievable wealth of new, lifetime friends. You do your part and the universe will wonderfully bring you together with like-minded folks.
Just don’t delay, start today in doing at least a little bit, studying, planning, organizing, doing and keeping a daily journal so you can look back upon it to see all you have accomplished when discouragement tries to stop you from daily effort dedicated to your prep goals. We wish each of you great success in your prep efforts.
Happy Preparedness Trails,
Jim
Jim, thanks for the advise of your experience and your generous offer to share your group’s knowledge in the future. I’ve spent some time on your website. I’m impressed with the extent of your organization. I also read some group member introductions. Looks like you have a collection of mighty fine people. I am definitely struck by their many experience and the skills they have gained just through living life and how it ties back into the efforts they are making for self-reliance and for the group. Thanks for you and your group for putting yourselves out their for the benefit of others. I’d like to think that we’ll be in touch again. Be well, Tom.
Brian,
I don’t know if “not a moment to waste” is a timeline exactly, but it summarizes what I feel to be an intensification of things. I suspect that there’ll never be a better time in that there will generally be increasing distraction and challenge in the future. I hear your concerns about just what to do, and how to handle the contradictions – like gardening on a fine day on the one hand, and fighting with weapons to defend that land on the other. I don’t have the answers but appreciate that the answer is worked out on the ground (in both cases) with other people around on our team. I’m most impressed with what Jim and his crew have done (www.bsoscblog.com and below)have done, a great example of many people working together.
If there’s one thing that helps in the here and now, it’s connecting to some other folks and starting the conversation; that starts the possibilities in motion. Relocalization is like a story; getting some folks together creates the energy and the characters that gets the local story off and running.
Your questions and explorations are part of my story and appreciated.
Andrew
Thank you Mr. McDonald for the Dr. Peter Gray interview. The issues he raises are interesting and important but less severe than the in some other aspects of medicine.
I retired from work as an emergency physician in Fresno, CA about 6 months ago and I keep wondering how medicine will adjust to deindustrialization and low-tech. A person presenting with a bellyache suggestive of appendicitis gets a CT scan before a surgeon will even hear about the patient. A century and a half ago, they would have their appendix taken out on a kitchen table in their own home by the country doc with someone recruited on the spot to drip chloroform on a mask. Treatment for certain heart attacks is now emergency cardiac catheterization with placement of stents in the narrowed coronary arteries; I have met physicians who were close to retirement in this state who remembered a time when the treatment for heart attacks was morphine and nitroglycerin (and perhaps a consultation with the chaplain).
Perhaps antique textbooks may be used for their original purpose again someday. They do have a wealth of information on how to work with low-tech methods, knowledge that has now been forgotten for generations. When I come to New York over 3 decades ago, they still had the sterilizers for he glass syringes in the wards and in the emergency department, and the nurses shill knew how to sharpen the needles and replace the trocars; they even had a few glass syringes around, but they hadn’t been used for a couple of years. Today’s nurses have not even worked with nurses who had seen them. Such items may make a comeback sooner or later.
There is a marked aversion to entertaining any thoughts about adapting medical practice to low-tech ways; it is almost heresy for which one might be burned at the stake. But those who do not prepare for the transition will have it forced upon them.
I’m sure those antique textbooks exist; it would be practical to seek them out now I imagine; I have a friend who’s done that for much traditional old knowledge, but not medicine as far as I know.
Happy preparedness trails!
Robin, I’m really interested in your perspectives. I’ve been thinking, wondering, how lower-tech medicine might evolve as necessity requires it in “the long emergency.” I think it’s an appropriate topic for our “Peak Moment TV conversations.”
What other differences might you imagine? If you want to continue this as a side conversation, you can email me at janaia-at-peakmoment.tv.
Certain perspectives will need adjusting as a first step.
Just as the Peak Resources / Climate Change crowd generally acknowledges the possibility of a population correction based on the lack of essentials including nutrition and protection from environmental adversities, the lack of widespread availability of high-tech medicine will also take its toll. (There may be people who can place cash on the barrelhead and get what is not generally available, at least in the earlier stages of Scarcity Industrialism). Re-recognition that departure is as intrinsic a part of life as arrival is the basis for such change in perspective.
Again we have to see what aspects of technology are likely to survive The Long Descent. In the Age of Scarcity Industrialism, the squeeze will become progressively more severe. Non-essential (or what is perceived as non-essential) complexity will be shed first: perhaps smartphones will be replaced by simple phones. Those technologies that are perceived as essential, in spite of being very high-tech and very resource intensive, will be sustained longer. This might include electronic chipmakers. At some point the chipmaking may become unsustainable. Consider what that might do to the electronics in a modern office. The impact will be even more severe on a modern hospital. Those aspects of medical care that are high-tech but based on technologies of narrower applicability, such as fibre-optics, may succumb sooner.
Pre-transistor circuits based on vacuum tubes are still possible at a relatively low-tech level as needed in the manufacture of those vacuum tubes. This would be adequate for simple radios. But such circuits will be many orders of magnitude away from the performance we take for granted in modern electronics.
With Radical Relocalization, concepts such as ObamaCare will have to be radically reworked if not abandoned altogether. No bureaucracy headquartered in some faraway place will be able to manage (or impose upon) a plethora of autonomous entities. But that might be a consideration for the time when Dimitry Orlov’s and the ArchDruid’s forecasts for multiple smaller entities replacing the uSA (lower case “u” as in the Declaration of Independence) come to pass.
hi andrew- i linked to your site from kunstler of course, as i did to lynn’s site last time- anyway, this is a great site & is presented in a clear speaking, straightforward, non-argumentative manner.
i’m not a bad carpenter or cook right now- working on my farming & propagandizing skills currently..
maybe before the internet dries up, we should work on some smoke signals
to connect our microcosms. or will the telegraph survive? kudos all the same. -al
ham radio would be neat.
cheers Al!
New in these figurative parts, and have a question….some people think it is wise to get out of paper money and into gold. If there is no oil, and no food, of what use is a wad of gold? Any thoughts on this subject?
Hi Patrice I think that reducing costs comes first – getting as self-sufficient as you can, in energy and ability to produce food. Reducing your living costs will pay dividends for years and years. Get the solar water heater, retrofit your home, think if you can put in some solar or geothermal. Gold and silver (silver can be in smaller denominations more easily and might be better for that reason) are probably good hedges, along with some cash but if you have to choose between buying precious metals and self-sufficient lifestyle as a hedge against dramatically increased energy prices, go self-sufficient.
This is my own plan fwiw, but it’s not the final answer . . . we’ve each got to make this decision on our own.
Happy preparedess trails! Andrew
Hi Andrew, thanks for you comments. Retrofitting my house for solar is not possible right now, but it is over 100 yrs old and people lived here before there was electricity so I figure we can do it too, although not without major amounts of whining! We have an ample water supply, are expanding the gardens like crazy, have chickens, and on the to-do list is building a rocket stove. Oh yeah, we can heat with our woodstove. Best of all, we live right in the village in a wonderful, tight-knit community with a can-do attitude; the kind of place where neighbors know each other and pitch into help as a matter of course. If that isn’t enough to get us through then departure from the planet would be preferable.
Hi Andrew,
Carolyn Baker forwarded the link to your essay “Out of Our Ego Houses and into Collective Intelligence.” It really evoked a lot of reflection for me, so I wrote a post in my journal at http://www.peakmoment.tv/journal/?p=146.
I’m fortunate to have experienced “groupness”. I describe some of these experiences, and common elements. I hope it can further the exploration of individual-within-groupness that underscore new ways to live, much needed as the old paradigm collapses
If you haven’t heard of Peak Moment TV, I welcome your taking a look at our shows about Locally Reliant Living for Challenging Times. http://www.peakmoment.tv. You can email me directly at janaia-at-peakmoment.tv.
Keep up your good work!
Janaia
With regard to useful trades to learn: it’s occurred to me that one thing we’re going to have a demand for here in the Northeast/Great Lakes/Midwest region is big sheets of glass for various passive solar applications and one thing that’s going to be plentiful wherever there are cities is abandoned glass-and-steel office towers. So one skill with a lot of potential would be de-installing, transporting and installing big sheets of glass, especially from very high places. The mountaineering arts, rope work, etc., might come in useful. Since you’re not going to move those babies with bicycles, the handling of draft animals might also apply. However, the major point with the glass installation is that it’s a skill that can be used to make a livng now. The mountaineering and the mule driving will have to remain hobbies until the fossil fuels are really gone.
Joan, that is a very neat point. Thanks!
As described in The ArchDruid Report and in Star’s Reach, scavenging may well become an important profession in a certain phase of The Long Descent. The use of glass for passive solar heating may also be useful as long as the materials have not been completely been depleted. Thereafter a return to the glassmaking skills may be the option.
Even Cadmium telluride solar panels, which have claims to an ERoEI of around 40 may not be scalable and will have a finite life, while electricity storage remains the weak link in the chain of such renewables.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your initiative. Has anyone come across reliable links for information on food forest plants suitable for southern Ontario?
Regards,
Greg
Hoping for some thinking beyond the individual garden important & crucial as they are.
USA Rail Map Atlas Volumes are from spv.co.uk and help people in various locales to see dormant US Branchline Rail corridor, necessary as trucking is hit by motor fuel rationing and ever higher costs. Also if you have good old big library nearby, see “Official Guide of the Railroads of the United States” for rail lines and maps. See index in back for your town, and note railways serving, then see contents in front of book for rail cos. nearby. “GUIDE” from 1920-30′s will have best coverage.
ELECTRIC WATER (New Society Press 2007) by Christopher C. Swan belongs on everyone’s shelf interested in local power generation, water supply and mobility. A compendium. Swan is an industrial designer, hep on renewables, and has a website: “Suntrain Transportation Corporation”, renewable power for trains…
See peakoil.net articles 374 and 1037. Also other page postings for tahoevalleylines and aspoarticle1037 on JHK site. Railway is “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform”, meaning stand alone apolitical in-house ability to keep ‘em rolling. Rolling before rubber tires came along and centuries ahead.
National RR branchline rehab will call on reformed US Army/Guard Railroad Operating and Maintenance Battalions for getting crucial agricultural rail corridors up as trucking falters, to assure victuals distribution. Better think about keeping the masses fed, if you don’t want the private digs over run…
Hi Andrew,
Just stumbled across your website yesterday (I think I followed a link from a reply you posted on Kunstler). Anyway, RadicalRelocalization is a great site…the right tone and very readable, I think.
My wife and I (we’re both from the States) have been developing a community teaching center for self-sufficient living here in southwestern Argentina since 1995 and are only now to the point where things seem to be fully functioning (well, maybe 85%). This is to say that making the shift is a slow process under the best of circumstances. This time lag thing shouldn’t be taken lightly. It would be wonderful if the entire world spent the next 10 – 20 years transitioning to a sustainable economic model, but practically speaking, it probably won’t happen. Change will likely be abrupt and chaotic. So my 2 cents worth to anyone reading the posts here is: get started! And if anyone is out looking for ideas, feel free to visit our website (www.laconfluencia.com) or visit us in person the next time you’re in Patagonia.
Mark
Hi Mark Altogether lovely what you’re doing. Loved your site and encourage others to check it out. I can well believe it took you years to get as far as you have. Your encouragement to others to “get started” . . . well it can’t be said often enough. I’ve felt that things start to happen soon as I do. Not all of it easy either, but by starting we’re acknowledging to ourselves and the world that change is coming, and we begin to see the next steps. All good things on your journey Mark. I’m unlikely to de-localize to the extent that I could visit, unless I walked
, but it’s great to know you guys are down there doing it!
Andrew
my teacher, masonobu fukuoka, showed that by human understanding of nature’s activity, by imitating the african dung beetle, it is possible to grow rice without transplanting, that the natural strength of non-transplanted rice does not require pesticides, that using a leguminous cover crop (usually clover) eliminates both weeding and soil preparation , that using its own power to grow in unprepared soil strenghthens the rice plant and increases its resistance to pests and diseases,, and that returning the rice straw to the field, as well as the green manure working of the leguminous cover crop eliminates the need for fertilizer…and that this produces both a surplus in terms of quantity harvested and in the free time available for the farmer, ..and that this method works in the case of both other grains and of vegetables… free time, of course, equals culture… and works to end class division, and division of labor.. the model was a small farm, according to climate, of up to an acre, supporting 4-6 persons, with some animals and fowl. i believe there are some very large rice farms in ca. which have been successfully using his principles.. this also requires fertile soil to work well, and i remember how hard he worked burying wood , planting (leguminous) acacia trees and growing leguminous green manure on the less fertile parts of his land…(the morishima acacia reaches maturity in three years) the key was coating the grain/vegetable and cover- crop seeds with clay, and cast seeding them,–no planting in straight rows– the clay melted in the rain, and, voila.. (i forget if it was an acre or a hectare)
Peter, I very much enjoyed reading Fukuoka some years, and again a year or so ago. I even tried some limited planting in the wild, here in Canada. I don’t know how well his ideas transplant to different climates and conditions and nor could a web search last year turn up much on this. His books, while inspiring practically and philosophically, didn’t appear to me to give this kind of detail.
I’d love to know how they could be more widely implemented.
What does the relocalization folks plan to do about defense?
“Because the best protection isn’t owning 30 guns; it’s having 30 people who care about you. Since those 30 have other people who care about them, you actually have 300 people who are looking out for each other, including you. The second best protection isn’t a big stash of stuff others want to steal; it’s sharing what you have and owning little of value.”
- Charles Hugh Smith
Three hundred or even three thousand friends won’t be able to help you if a gang of armed desperadoes want to take what you got. And if you got food and others are hungry you best not be naive.
If the motive for relocalization is to create an alternative lifestyle within our existing social norms there is little need for concern. If the motive is to survive in a world vastly changed by collapse or just general scarcity, one of the skills that will be necessary is the use and procurement of semi and automatic weapons.
Thanks Brian for flushing this out of the corner. I’d written “The New Security,” the piece you’re quoting from a few years ago as part of a proposed book for young men thinking about their future.
It’s incomplete. The reality is that thinking through the difficult conversation about protecting what we have in the event of a societal breakdown needs to be part of the conversation. It’s not in my own comfort zone, but I’m putting it on the table . . . or rather you have. I know this will come up in a conversation I’m having this week with David Shackleton and possibly in one I’ll be having Tuesday with a principal from Montana group who’ve done a lot of organizing; I’ll raise it with him. The interviews will be up on “Relocalization Radio” later this week.
The survivalists have a piece of the whole, one that’s in most of our shadow, but to sequester their part (like we do prisoners for example) is one-sided. Here as everywhere, there are two parts. Most of us are comfortable with just one but the part we don’t see can be the one that gets us.
The guy who wrote “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment” way back said that evil is the thing in your part you can’t see . . . so you stumble over it.
Thanks for bringing this up!
Spiritual, yes, but strictly small-s in my book. I wonder how many would be put off by an emphasis on spiritual, which your blog seems to do. To me it sounds like clinging to wishful thinking.
You mention evolution. Wasn’t the dynamic phase of human evolution finished long ago when people adapted time and again to the ice ages? Just saying. We won’t be returning to a growth model, more things for more people forever.
Also the William Catton idea that overshoot was reached in my parents’ youth in the late l930s has great appeal to me.
Seems so true.
So relocalization is a matter of necessity. Be resilient, adapt!
Susan, that “be resilient, adapt” could be evolution’s battle cry! I We must adapt now. I call the depth of the required response “spiritual” because if it doesn’t call on the deepest part of us it won’t be enough imo.
I live in an old neighborhood in a small town (80,000) located in Fort Smtih, Arkansas. My question is how best to kick off an exposure to this type of “movement” in an area that has little opportunity for collective growing. The real estate around here was done in the 40′s with no thought about future re-localization thinking. In the meantime I have replaced all the grass in my own backyard and look forward to a wonderful harvest of many fresh vegetables. I absoluely “subscribe” to this thinking and hope many others do as well. Thank you for your effort!
Gary, I don’t know of any places that did think of the future well . . . some farmers who stayed close to the land perhaps. So you can do it now, and maybe find a few other “urban farmers” that can help you cook something up. Good luck!
I keep telling people to STOP gardening and START farming.
I am concerned about HOW to farm 12 months a year. but when it comes to preparations, EARLY is good and LATE is bad.
You got that right, Paul.
Maybe you can push back that ole winter with greenhouses – and even truck tire gardens extend the season on both ends quite a bit.
Kudos to you Andrew for helping people get started up the trail toward self-reliance preparedness! Our group, BSOSC (Bitterroot Survival Outfitting Systems Co-op) here in the beautiful Bitterroot Mountains valley of Montana is going gang busters.
Personally, I’ve been in this mind-set over 3 decades. We have made our 3rd attempt over 2 decades in getting a self- reliance preparedness group going. Now, the third time must be the charm. Over the last year, we have made incredible progress in neighborly camaraderie. We have had many folks from around the nation ask for guidance. We can’t go everywhere to help folks, so we a couple of months ago, we decided to put up a blog/forum to post helpful info and our organization guide. We systematically cover all areas of the preparedness survival hierarchy.
If you care to check out our blog/forum, please feel free to visit, leave comment or even join. You can find our site
at http://www.bsoscblog.com.
Thanks a bunch for your valiant efforts.
Happy Preparedness Trails,
Jim
HI Jim Awesome stuff you guys are doing. You ‘re finding your own way.
Neat isn’t it, the way you make new friends with this work, much more fun than dragging our butts around, mad cause they’re not doing it right. I’m going to contact you so we can explore an interview.
Happy Easter! Andrew
Hey Andrew,
No problem, be glad to talk with you and a Happy Easter to you, too!…Jim
I lost my job a year ago April 1st (the irony of the date is not lost on me). That event has kicked my booty into high gear, thinking and learning about the bigger changes that my job loss was part of. This next year I am dedicating to being part of the growing relocalization movement in my town. It feels like it is happening all around me, I think someone has to name what is going on, right out loud. I bet more people are listening that we might think!
Way to go, Karen!
Re: betting more people are listening . . . I think the change is partly a change in our collective psyche and everyone has a piece of it. And that voices out loud are heard at some level.
Hi Karen, I wish you well and hope that you are finding yourself well. I’m wondering about the relocalization activities in your town. What does that look like were you are at? What are people doing, how are they cooperating together?
A fundamentally important ingredient in all this transitioning is getting the correct information. Blogs and sites have valuable information, but everyone should be aware of fakes and frauds that lurk. A re-localized world implies increased reliance on local knowledge base. Trust takes time to build. You may not have access to a reliable and accurate local knowledge base now. Do you know where to look for one locally?
Be a part of that knowledge base. Oral histories are what all history is based on. An oral tradition requires building and maintenance of the “Oral Library”. Learn a couple things real good and then start to learn the art of teaching by trying to impart your knowledge to another. Then another. Otherwise we will pass on a much poorer world than we inherited.
Thanks Robbo. Be part of that local knowledge base indeed! We’re the books in the local Oral Library. Learning and teaching is what we’ll do. Another thought: we have much more knowledge inside us, more gifts and strengths than our current culture asks of us, or sees. If we’re the books in the Oral Library, we’re not taken out so often.
A relocalized world will be encouraging people’s strengths and gifts for the good of us all. We shall need them very much.
Well, I am a baby, a beginner in this thinking but I believe in the concepts. Some good broad-stroke ideas on how to actualize the thinking. Thanks for putting up the site.
Hi Janet
Thanks for kicking things off. May it turn into good dirt for you
The thing is that we’re all beginners in this. If we knew how to live locally, we’d be doing it. But we live in a society that’s been divorced from some fundamentals for a long time and all of us are new at relocalizing. We’re learning how to do it together! We shall learn, we shall learn and the sooner we go toward it, the better our chances for the future. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Thanks for the thanks.
Andrew