Ice, Sun Spots, and the World Bank

You've got to love a story that states: "Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction." Right up my paranoid alley. Please read the full article and note the middle third which discusses grid failure and consequences thereof.

[The second paragraph includes this alarming thought: "The World Bank declares America a developing nation." Are you kidding me? If something of this consequence happens, I don't think the World Bank is going to be declaring much of anything. Besides, how will the declaration get distributed, Town Crier? That's like saying after Hurricane Katrina the NOLA sidewalks were a real mess.]

The purpose of sharing such a dire prediction is to again illustrate how perilous is our modern way of living. We are overly dependent on frail things. If a routine Midwest ice storm can knock out power to a quarter million electric customers (that's houses, not people), imagine what a real disaster could do. Forget the civil unrest arising from Barry O's zealous attempt to declare martial law on our thermostats, what if a massive volcano, a continent-rocking earthquake, or blasted sun spot smacked us square on the chin. The declarations of the World Bank would be the absolute least of our problems.

Some people call this event SHTF (Shallots Hit The Fan) (a reference to an apocalyptic salad-making disaster). Personally, I think it should mean when the Suburbs Hit The Fan. Well, whatever it means, you get the point. When anything hits a fan, it gets radically "re-ordered". Such will be the result when the modern-world-HTF. That's when Plan A fails to work. The idea of storing up water and rations in your urban/suburban home is painfully laughable. How much food can you put away to survive the utter implosion of "the grid" - water, electricity, gas, petroleum, medicine, fire/safety, yada, yada, yada? Let's say you're a devout Mormom and you've got your food store topped off - a year's larder well provisioned. When the first anniversary of SHTF rolls around, then what? There is still is no grid because the ability to rebuild the grid is bound up within the grid. Think about it! What resources - raw and energy - will you access to reconstruct a first-world energy network? (And who is going to build blown transformers when they're hustling to feed their family??)

Food? You've eaten through your rice and beans (cooked with rainwater over a fire in the back yard). How much salt do you have stored? How much sugar? How much baking soda or cooking oil? Maybe you've managed to get a garden going in the yard (cultivated with a neighbor's shovel, sown with bartered seeds, and fertilized with (now valuable) dog poo), but more than a few city dwellers (the fortunate ones in the suburbs near a park or creek) have fried a raccoon in it's own fat before the year is out. Yes, I think SHTF is going to be a relatively far reaching problem that is not resolved by a trip to WalMart.

That's when Plan B comes in handy. This is my gift to you.

Our Saviour Jesus also cautioned about what to do in event of TEOTWAWKI (because of SHTF): "Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city." (Luke 21:21) (Editor's note: Jesus was strictly speaking of the end times and or His return and or the sacking of Jerusalem. In any case, I think the point is that you don't want to be in a grid-dependent city when the shallots get close to the blades.)

This is when you grab your B.O.B., G.O.O.D., and implement the Plan B for which you have carefully prepared.

TEOTWAWKI - A Kaleidoscope of Chaos

As stated in the previous post, there is no way of *knowing* if, when, or what kind of calamity will befall us and permanently alter our way of living. That uncertainty quotient is the adder's bite, it's paralyzing most people - keeping them from doing something for fear it might not be the right thing or be adequate.

Here's my take (and a fair sum of everything said so far): If something happens, anything significant, it will force people into a lifestyle that will look very similar to the Middle Ages or at least the beginnings of the Industrial Ages. I'm not talking about converting my car to burning my own poop or 90% tax rates - though neither are desirable, I imagine we could find a way to accommodate ourselves to it (and that is Obama's hope with regard to tax rates). And I'm not talking about slowly running out of oil, Coca-Cola, or other commodities upon which our current lifestyle desperately depends. I'm talking about an ice-nine event that radically and almost spontaneously alters our upward trajectory of standard-of-living.

Not being able to anticipate The Calamity (or apocalypse as I sometimes call it for dramatic effect - with apologies to John The Revelator), I have the burden to prepare "blind" (with apologies to Blind Willie Johnson who wrote and performed "John The Revelator") for a wide spectrum of calamities. I'm grateful for all the paranoids over at Survival & Self-Reliance who have assayed our risks and come up with a with some just-before-you-go-to-sleep reading under the heading TEOTWAWKI (The End of The World As We Know It) (with no apologies to R.E.M. who claim to feel peachy with not having their own Plan B).

Okay, I've got some light reading to do. Come back soon and I'll get all Black Swan on you and tell you how it ends.