Well, I have probably a year's supplies for 4 or so people, alternative energy, A deep well with a submerged hand pump (only need 60 feet on my place), and adequate defensive supplies, a lot of tools, etc. And I grew up on a farm and know how to do things.
We'll be stretched if we have to go and the whole family shows up, but we can handle it as a family. ;-) But I'm not a prepper. I'm an "always prepared."
Currently adding a 12x40 Amish shed. (all enclosed, with insulated floor,doors windows, etc, Metal roof, two lofts). We'll finish the interior ourselves. Electricity, hook into the pump and septic already at the old cabin (720 sf, 2 BR, full apt kitchen, gas fireplace with 500 gal LP tank, small bath with shower.)
We're digging a large root cellar. Adding a 1000 gal LP tank for the 10KW generator. Adding solar panels and deep marine batteries for storage. 80 acres of woods (and firewood). Considering an outdoor wood-fired furnace. Small greenhouse going up next spring. Need to work on the composting. Lots of game in the area, and fishing potential relatively nearby (and I know several illegal ways to catch fish.)
ALways room for one more if you don't mind living with crazies.
And we know how to build housing using the materials (lots of birch and some red oak and sugar maple, some jack pine). Quite a bit of 9-mil plastic. Handy forlots of things. Probably should get a couple of kegs of nails.
Mohammedan terrorists are probably the most common bogeyman of thirty-year-olds. No American under 25 has any memory of life before the (woefully misnamed) PATRIOT Act and probably no memory of Mohammedan attacks on US soil. Their bogeymen are more likely to be right-wing hate groups and climate change if they consume mainstream news, or the LBGTQIAA+ mafia and anti-Christian cultural attacks if they don't. Both sides largely distrust or fear the police and other armed government employees, from what I've seen.
I too read One Second After and it left a deep impression on me. I'm writing something similar based on the spent fuel ponds erupting after being abandoned. They need continuous maintenance otherwise poof.
It appears we always need a boogeyman to keep us in a perpetual state of fear. The herd can't be allowed to get too uppity or too comfortable. A stick and some dogs take care of that. But for humans with our developed imaginations we can add some tales of monsters. That keeps the children in line and when they grow up the monsters become economic collapse, world war 3, the next fake pandemic, incoming asteroid Apophis, the looming threat of AI and robotics, and even alien invasion if they can make it believable enough.
Then there's the neo-Malthusians who confidently predict we're going to go out with a whimper due to resource depletion or rather the inability to extract more fuel because demand drops and costs go through the roof. This one's a little more "real" imo compared to the other bombastic boogeymen of old that attempt to drive fear into the hearts of everyday citizens for one reason or another, usually control.
If we look at the energy and economic growth equation in depth as Gail Teverberg has done for decades on her Our Finite World blog it's hard not to agree (for now anyway) that we're in a bit of a pickle (she calls it a predicament) and the boogeymen that we see rising up and getting all the attention on the evening news are actually the side effects of this gradual then sudden decline of empire and at some point industrial civilization.
As an optimist/realist I cling onto my favorite get out clause futures that may or may not allow for the continuation of some (or maybe a few more) human-centered life experiments in this particular petri dish that we happen to be in.
In other words... I don't think we can accurately predict what happens next just by looking at the data trends as these soothsayers do. Anything is possible. Even a surprise reveal that takes us much further than we thought possible.
So I think we can absorb a few disasters here and there, even a collapse or two, but as long as knowledge doesn't disappear the self-organizing organism can shuffle the chairs around and reinvent itself. I mean, we live according to whatever tech we happen to be using at the time. It's a question of how well some people adapt to new situations and lifestyles.
We are fairly evenly distributed across the entire planet now and I get the sneaky suspicion that the goal of the imaginative types is not to simply provide an American middle class lifestyle to the rest of the population. It looks like these types want to push all available resources to their AGI project now that they have it in their sights and the investors see the potential. Of course, the more people can actually use such technologies the more money the investors make. Maybe the people will take these tools and turn them on their masters but it's not what I'm currently seeing. The majority have become enslaved by these tools and are not waking up in droves as I thought they would in the aftermath of Operation Covid.
But some have and that's a good enough sign for me to keep being optimistic. For now.
"It appears we always need a boogeyman to keep us in a perpetual state of fear. The herd can't be allowed to get too uppity or too comfortable. A stick and some dogs take care of that. But for humans with our developed imaginations we can add some tales of monsters."
Well, I suspect that, rationally, there are damned good reasons to feel rather more fear than we actually seem to do. That is, after all, the reason the tag line for this Substack is "Have you checked a downside lately?"
There were good reasons to fear a nuclear holocaust (and there still are, by the way - especially since the normalcy-addled are far to ready to act as if such a thing could not ever even possibly occur).
But we expend ourselves on silly things like the Plandemic, long term weather variations, and the Great White Bogeyman. The real things that gave entire generations night sweats seem to have been largely erased in our current times, and I'm not really sure why.
As you note, fear makes people easier to control, but nobody wonders how easy it is to control those who stupidly and ignorantly are absolutely certain that no matter what, nothing will change, and every single warning of danger should be treated as a Cassandrine fantasy.
And yes, linear projection is the one guaranteed failure when it comes to trying to guess the future.
I'm not totally a prepper, but I'm 'hardening' my cabin Up North, and I know the back routes to get there.
Jorg X, as you well know, having read me for years, any preparation is far better than no preparation.
Well, I have probably a year's supplies for 4 or so people, alternative energy, A deep well with a submerged hand pump (only need 60 feet on my place), and adequate defensive supplies, a lot of tools, etc. And I grew up on a farm and know how to do things.
We'll be stretched if we have to go and the whole family shows up, but we can handle it as a family. ;-) But I'm not a prepper. I'm an "always prepared."
So...you're in the upper tier of the top one percent of all Americans. Good for you!
Frankly, I'm envious.
Currently adding a 12x40 Amish shed. (all enclosed, with insulated floor,doors windows, etc, Metal roof, two lofts). We'll finish the interior ourselves. Electricity, hook into the pump and septic already at the old cabin (720 sf, 2 BR, full apt kitchen, gas fireplace with 500 gal LP tank, small bath with shower.)
We're digging a large root cellar. Adding a 1000 gal LP tank for the 10KW generator. Adding solar panels and deep marine batteries for storage. 80 acres of woods (and firewood). Considering an outdoor wood-fired furnace. Small greenhouse going up next spring. Need to work on the composting. Lots of game in the area, and fishing potential relatively nearby (and I know several illegal ways to catch fish.)
ALways room for one more if you don't mind living with crazies.
And we know how to build housing using the materials (lots of birch and some red oak and sugar maple, some jack pine). Quite a bit of 9-mil plastic. Handy forlots of things. Probably should get a couple of kegs of nails.
"Always room for one more if you don't mind living with crazies."
As long as the crazies don't mind living with ME...
Oh, we're all at least a half bubble off plumb. Little bothers us.
Mohammedan terrorists are probably the most common bogeyman of thirty-year-olds. No American under 25 has any memory of life before the (woefully misnamed) PATRIOT Act and probably no memory of Mohammedan attacks on US soil. Their bogeymen are more likely to be right-wing hate groups and climate change if they consume mainstream news, or the LBGTQIAA+ mafia and anti-Christian cultural attacks if they don't. Both sides largely distrust or fear the police and other armed government employees, from what I've seen.
Wonder where they picked that up from?
I too read One Second After and it left a deep impression on me. I'm writing something similar based on the spent fuel ponds erupting after being abandoned. They need continuous maintenance otherwise poof.
It appears we always need a boogeyman to keep us in a perpetual state of fear. The herd can't be allowed to get too uppity or too comfortable. A stick and some dogs take care of that. But for humans with our developed imaginations we can add some tales of monsters. That keeps the children in line and when they grow up the monsters become economic collapse, world war 3, the next fake pandemic, incoming asteroid Apophis, the looming threat of AI and robotics, and even alien invasion if they can make it believable enough.
Then there's the neo-Malthusians who confidently predict we're going to go out with a whimper due to resource depletion or rather the inability to extract more fuel because demand drops and costs go through the roof. This one's a little more "real" imo compared to the other bombastic boogeymen of old that attempt to drive fear into the hearts of everyday citizens for one reason or another, usually control.
If we look at the energy and economic growth equation in depth as Gail Teverberg has done for decades on her Our Finite World blog it's hard not to agree (for now anyway) that we're in a bit of a pickle (she calls it a predicament) and the boogeymen that we see rising up and getting all the attention on the evening news are actually the side effects of this gradual then sudden decline of empire and at some point industrial civilization.
As an optimist/realist I cling onto my favorite get out clause futures that may or may not allow for the continuation of some (or maybe a few more) human-centered life experiments in this particular petri dish that we happen to be in.
In other words... I don't think we can accurately predict what happens next just by looking at the data trends as these soothsayers do. Anything is possible. Even a surprise reveal that takes us much further than we thought possible.
So I think we can absorb a few disasters here and there, even a collapse or two, but as long as knowledge doesn't disappear the self-organizing organism can shuffle the chairs around and reinvent itself. I mean, we live according to whatever tech we happen to be using at the time. It's a question of how well some people adapt to new situations and lifestyles.
We are fairly evenly distributed across the entire planet now and I get the sneaky suspicion that the goal of the imaginative types is not to simply provide an American middle class lifestyle to the rest of the population. It looks like these types want to push all available resources to their AGI project now that they have it in their sights and the investors see the potential. Of course, the more people can actually use such technologies the more money the investors make. Maybe the people will take these tools and turn them on their masters but it's not what I'm currently seeing. The majority have become enslaved by these tools and are not waking up in droves as I thought they would in the aftermath of Operation Covid.
But some have and that's a good enough sign for me to keep being optimistic. For now.
"We are fairly evenly distributed across the entire planet now..."
Which brings to mind Bill Gibson's rather famous off-hand remark, "The future is already here. It's just not well distributed yet."
"It appears we always need a boogeyman to keep us in a perpetual state of fear. The herd can't be allowed to get too uppity or too comfortable. A stick and some dogs take care of that. But for humans with our developed imaginations we can add some tales of monsters."
Well, I suspect that, rationally, there are damned good reasons to feel rather more fear than we actually seem to do. That is, after all, the reason the tag line for this Substack is "Have you checked a downside lately?"
There were good reasons to fear a nuclear holocaust (and there still are, by the way - especially since the normalcy-addled are far to ready to act as if such a thing could not ever even possibly occur).
But we expend ourselves on silly things like the Plandemic, long term weather variations, and the Great White Bogeyman. The real things that gave entire generations night sweats seem to have been largely erased in our current times, and I'm not really sure why.
As you note, fear makes people easier to control, but nobody wonders how easy it is to control those who stupidly and ignorantly are absolutely certain that no matter what, nothing will change, and every single warning of danger should be treated as a Cassandrine fantasy.
And yes, linear projection is the one guaranteed failure when it comes to trying to guess the future.