Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[C-Mag]

The Citadel looks like some sort of prepper Ponzi scheme.
I wonder how many people ordered guns but never received them.

I describe 95% of American prepping as a bad mix of old school survivalism and modern compulsive shopping.

[TheReal_ND]

They will literally sell you things to make it seem like the real world isn't so bad. In point of fact, gun addicts are absolutely no better than pill heads. There will never be an opportunity to show off your commando skills against everyone that believes Russia hacked the election. You will never be prepared for a sudden collapse because it will never happen. You are lining the pockets of someone else. Learn to do something more constructive than consuming products.

[Speaker to Animals]

They will literally sell you things to make it seem like the real world isn't so bad. In point of fact, gun addicts are absolutely no better than pill heads. There will never be an opportunity to show off your commando skills against everyone that believes Russia hacked the election. You will never be prepared for a sudden collapse because it will never happen. You are lining the pockets of someone else. Learn to do something more constructive than consuming products.

I think you confuse two different things.

1) Civilizations rise and fall, and we obviously are heading into a collapse. There is no knowing for certain how long that could take. It could take another century yet, or it might happen fast. We just cannot predict when. That it is happening is self-evident as far as I am concerned.

2) What you seem to want to attack is this widespread ressentiment we see across the right. Much of the real right adopted what Nietzsche called the slave morality (the actual term, not what some have tried to describe it as in this forum) in which they turn themselves into righteous victims of the left, and wait for their salvation in the form of a collapse where the inverted morals will again revert and they will be justified in their sufferings as the shitlibs all eat one another in some biblical orgy of degeneracy, while the preppers themselves are able to re-establish some utopian civilization based on a past that never existed.


Item number one is rational and you should plan for it even if you think the probability is near zero (see Black Swan).

Item number two is weak slavishness, and is the root of the prepper fantasies. Avoid it other than just to joke about liberals and to provoke them on the Internet.


What I do see a lot of, and I am not pointing fingers at you here, is the fake right (conservatives, neocons, libertarians) refusing to acknowledge their role in the collapse of the neoliberal world order and, instead, deliberately conflating discussions about the end of that order with batshit prepperism. It is a deliberate strategy to avoid acknowledging reality, almost as pathetic as the ressentiment of the prepper movement. This new order certainly cannot last long. They are every bit as delusional as the preppers who think collapse is going to happen any day now and usher in their age of freedom.

My opinion is that both delusions arise from people fixating on what they want to happen rather than what they realistically expect will happen.

[Hastur]

I have been talking about Dimitry Orlov before. I still think he is wrong about the peak oil stuff but that is not that important. There is a lot to learn from his experiences from the Soviet collapse.

Dimitry Orlov has been writing about the similarities between the peak oil caused collapse of the USSR and the US’ unfolding crisis. Orlov left Russia at the age of 12 to live in the US with his family. During the late 80s and early 90s he experienced the Soviet collapse first hand over several long trips to his home country. One of Orlov’s main goal is to educate people on what happens when economy crashes and money become worthless to supply people’s needs.

In The Five Stages of Collapse Orlov points out that about 3 years prior to its collapse, the Soviet Union went through a peak in its oil production and started to experience an energy crisis. Strickingly, experts argue global oil production achieved its peak in 2005, 3 years before the 2008 US economic crisis. Similarities, according to Orlov, do not stop at that. Both the US and USSR are plutocracies clinging to their power, resisting unavoidable change and ignoring its social responsibilities to its people.

The living arrangements in these two super powers however were quite different. In the USSR food and medicine distribution, housing and other community services, such as transport, were all provided by public services and were not, therefore, part of economic trades with the market’s logic. In addition, there was a culture of cooperation in the USSR.

The US, on the other hand, relies almost solely on the market economy to provide its citizens’ needs. There is, therefore, a huge reliance on finance and commerce to provide for people’s needs. There is also a great dependence on oil to move people and goods around. In addition, basic services such as housing, heating, health care etc. are all part of the market economy. For these reasons, Orlov argues that while the Soviet Union went to a ‘soft’ crisis, the US is going to a ‘hard’ crisis.

Based on both anthropological research and his experiences in the declining USSR Orlov devised the 5 Stages of Collapse. The knowledge of these stages, according to him, will help us prepare for the unavoidable global collapse; driven by the industrial era’s natural resource depletion. Orlov 5 Stages of Collapse also serve to explain how humans have a tendency to form complex societies with collapse inbuilt in them. The 5 stages of collapse might or might not happen in an orderly fashion. In fact, some might overlap and happen simultaneously while others might take place independently.

The First Stage is the Financial Collapse. This happens when faith in ‘business as usual’ is lost. That is, when risk cannot be estimated or controlled and people no longer believe that the future will be a linear progression of past and current financial practices.

The Second Stage is the Commercial Collapse. This stage reflects people losing faith that the market will always provide for their needs. In this stage people realise that money can no longer buy what they need to survive.

The Third Stage is the Political Collapse. At this stage people lose faith that ‘the government will take care of you’. This happens when elected representatives begin to be replaced with political appointees by the country’s creditors. At this point government loses all its legitimacy.

The Forth Stage is the Social Collapse. At this state faith that ‘your people will take care of you’ is lost. Charity and informal barter and gift based economy begin to fail and people deal with each other without the regulation of government financial institutions and the market.

The Fifth Stage is the Cultural Collapse. At this point ‘faith the goodness of humanity is lost’. This is when families can no longer hold the last stands helping and supporting their own and ‘human culture’ collapses. From this point onwards our behaviour is no longer recognised as human.

Orlov warns us that a healthy economic system has to be based on personal trade relationships and personal trust. It is about having valuable assets supporting a common trading scheme within small groups of people who know each other. Orlov advise us to imagine a world in which institutions (public and private) can no longer be relied upon and provide for our needs and, from that point on, ask ourselves what do we have to do to provide for our own needs where we live with the support of our families and neighbours.

[Ph64]

They will literally sell you things to make it seem like the real world isn't so bad. In point of fact, gun addicts are absolutely no better than pill heads. There will never be an opportunity to show off your commando skills against everyone that believes Russia hacked the election. You will never be prepared for a sudden collapse because it will never happen. You are lining the pockets of someone else. Learn to do something more constructive than consuming products.

I think you confuse two different things.

1) Civilizations rise and fall, and we obviously are heading into a collapse. There is no knowing for certain how long that could take. It could take another century yet, or it might happen fast. We just cannot predict when. That it is happening is self-evident as far as I am concerned.

2) What you seem to want to attack is this widespread ressentiment we see across the right. Much of the real right adopted what Nietzsche called the slave morality (the actual term, not what some have tried to describe it as in this forum) in which they turn themselves into righteous victims of the left, and wait for their salvation in the form of a collapse where the inverted morals will again revert and they will be justified in their sufferings as the shitlibs all eat one another in some biblical orgy of degeneracy, while the preppers themselves are able to re-establish some utopian civilization based on a past that never existed.


Item number one is rational and you should plan for it even if you think the probability is near zero (see Black Swan).

Item number two is weak slavishness, and is the root of the prepper fantasies. Avoid it other than just to joke about liberals and to provoke them on the Internet.


What I do see a lot of, and I am not pointing fingers at you here, is the fake right (conservatives, neocons, libertarians) refusing to acknowledge their role in the collapse of the neoliberal world order and, instead, deliberately conflating discussions about the end of that order with batshit prepperism. It is a deliberate strategy to avoid acknowledging reality, almost as pathetic as the ressentiment of the prepper movement. This new order certainly cannot last long. They are every bit as delusional as the preppers who think collapse is going to happen any day now and usher in their age of freedom.

My opinion is that both delusions arise from people fixating on what they want to happen rather than what they realistically expect will happen.

I look at it simply, if you're not growing something edible - start now. Even if it's just in pots, or a 10x10 garden area, try to grow peas and carrots and whatever you like. If something does happen you'll at least have some knowledge about plants.

The time to learn how to do things is now - not when you're life depends on it. And yeah, with luck maybe your life won't depend on it, but learn something anyways. When I bought my house I knew butkis about plumbing, now I've sweated/soldered pipes (keep a section of 1/2" and 3/4" pipe in the garage, along with unions, T's, elbows, a couple valves, etc), replumbed my bathroom & kitchen sink, etc. I can change a car tire, do brake pads, calipers, new lines, done wheel bearings... Even though I wouldn't be comfortable doing an engine rebuild or transmission work.

To me it's just about adaptability. Some people, I can usually tell pretty quick when I meet them, would just mentally fall apart entirely if their "cushy little world" around them fell apart. Others could go from a nice house to living in a makeshift tent from a tarp and do just fine.

And of course I've found it's best to just not to talk about it with most people. I remember many years ago advising a few friends/co-workers to at least keep a couple $hundred in cash somewhere at home, and have a small pantry of canned goods (soups, beans, etc) "just in case". Hurricane Sandy blew through years later, roads were blocked for days, no power - I was fine, could heat canned stuff on the grill or wood stove, had purposely filled containers with water headed into it for the dry foods, when I could get out of my neighborhood I had cash to buy things at places that still couldn't process credt/debit cards... can you guess how many of those people I advised to "keep a little cash and some canned/dry foods around" actually did?

Yup. Zero.

Shit, I still use cash mostly unless it's online. I see people at the gas station/convenience store swiping a card to buy a pack of gum or a bottle of water. I can't imagine how they would react if their cards suddenly didn't work, much less in a collapse/disaster/war.

[C-Mag]

I have been talking about Dimitry Orlov before. I still think he is wrong about the peak oil stuff but that is not that important. There is a lot to learn from his experiences from the Soviet collapse.

That's good stuff Hastur. I'll be looking into it closer in the future.
Globalists have been increasingly taking over food production and distribution, stovepiping the industry. To me that makes you more vulnerable to catastrophic problems.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Ordered the book. Honestly, we’ve already gone through the 5 stages since 2007, to some degree. We are currently in a ‘soft crisis’, headed downward. I’d imagine that we will cycle through a ‘hard’ version of the 5 stages as we go.

[C-Mag]

Real Preppers follow Banshee Moon to see how it's done

[Ex-California]

Real Preppers follow Banshee Moon to see how it's done

I love America

[Fife]

She showed me how to pitch a tent back in '88.