The headlines at cryptogon.com are pretty hinky these days. When the Fed is going to buy T-Bills to keep their value up since them furineers ain’t too thrilled about the full faith and credit of the good ol’ US of A you know it’s screwy out there. And a good chunk of foreclosed homes aren’t even showing up in the statistics since the realtors can’t keep of with the numbers of belly up properties coming in the door. Layoffs at a rate not seen since the depression, poisoned food in the pipeline, banks stealing us blind etc. etc.
I got my last seed order in the other day, ho ho!
What’s funny is the lack of panic in regular affairs. If you have a job you go to work, out of milk stop at the store, fill up the tank when it’s low, drain your checking account to pay the bills and mortgage and throw the rest on a credit card. It’s work work work, spend spend spend… stand back – the consumers are at it as per usual. I’m going to the bank today and convert the income tax check into fed res notes and guess what? I won’t head off to walmart or sears to spend it just because it’s in my hot little hand. The wife wants a double washtub set on the cute little stand advertised in the Lehman’s catalog and I could use a corn sheller and a cast iron feed grinder, but our want list has mostly been acquired. Ammo and canning lids are just something I toss in the cart much like most folks throw a sack of chips in the basket. I’ll just stash the cash and keep an ear to the ground for “Amero” chatter in the blogsphere.
So I’m for the most part indifferent to the signs of this great winding down of the non negotiable american way of life that are right out there in plain view if you have your head out of your ass. A year or so ago I probably would have been in total doomer mode topping off gas tanks and buying more rice and raisins. Maybe it’s just winter depression. Indifferent doesn’t mean ignorant of or blind to – I don’t engage in the affairs of Plasticland enough to give a shit what happens to the model. Like I said, I got my seeds.
I’ll post doom thoughts here on this blog but I’m done talking about it to people I know. Just give them the “times are kinda hard” yeah yeah if they bring up the subject. It’s not very nice to call your friends corpses. My little sister didn’t dig up the yard last year ‘cuz they got a new puppy – now the dog is gone for one reason or another, her husband lost his job of 23 years’ duration with Liggett and Platt, and I wonder what reason they will find for not digging it up this year. I would call the reason “ASSHATS!!!” but why be mean? I don’t bother with the neighbors across the road anymore – ten to one they don’t plant the garden area I dug up for them planted in sweet corn and potatoes and gave them half the sharecrop. Hell, make it 100 to 1 – it ain’t gonna happen as long as that food stamp card holds out. And when that goes it all goes and they’ll be gone home to mama, too.
Here’s the funny bit – I don’t see a collapse at all. People are just going to bleat and take whatever shit comes down the pike, piss and moan about the conditions at Mommy’s house, crab about the line at the welfare office, pine for their lack of designer clothes, new video games and Dominoes pizza. Resent whatever job they get forced into taking or bitch about boredom if they feel offered employment is beneath them. I don’t have much regard for my fellow man eh? The mythical “going gets tough, tough get going” american can-do spirit got misplaced a generation or so ago. The tenth of one percent of people who still possess some degree of self determination don’t seem to have the guts to dump their present lifestyle and do anything other than hope for the best and reduce, reuse and recycle.
Dig up the yard or go somewhere there is a yard to dig up if you wanna eat something other than gov’t issued high fructose corn syrup Frankenfood. You may have it better today than us slobs toiling in the fields out here in the sticks, but my life is okay and getting better, which beats the pants off of Plasticland’s prospects.
Time to go milk a goat…
Heya Comrade, that ain’t no shit…. Blows my mind to see the sheeple lined up at the malls and restaraunts all weekend. Fiddlin’ while Rome burns… I reckon when TSHTF, they’ll ball up in a fetal position, rock back and forth, and mutter “It’ll be ok, it’ll be ok”…. Me, I’m fixin to get to a patch of dirt real soon, and I got my seed too. The crook bankers are fixin’ to get a little jingle mail from me….
Mayberry – I’d like to hear some more about the details of your upcoming jingle mail. Reason is I have a rental house that I’m getting less and less attached to and a first hand account of the psychology and financial calculations would be interesting. email thecomrade@comradesimba.com if you don’t want to post it here for all to see. Thanks.
Greetings comrade. I share your sentiments about general stupidity, but what are you going to do about the fact that you are only as secure as your neighbors? This is my prime dilemma. Wondering what is your thinking on that.
Half the neighborsa split during a ten day ice storm power outage. The ones that stayed had generators. I figure the number of folks around here will dwindle down to the hardy and helpful as personal collapse happens one by one.
You gotta remember that if things get nasty I can be unfuckingbelievably unpleasant if fucked with. I’ll give you however many days of time it takes to help you get firewood cut, give you surplus food if you’re in need, take the time to teach you anything I know but you go diggin’ my potatoes your ass is grass. My compassion for the suburban entitlement crowd has been beaten down to zero.
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m friendly. Full of humor. Just tellin’ you casually to dig up the fuckin yard if you wanna eat this next winter.
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That’s a telling observation about the neighbors splitting during the ice storm.
I don’t know if there’s much point to sub urban types digging up the backyard or front yard if things go as far south as some predict. You have one thing the sub urban types don’t have – water.
I don’t know about the rest of the country but, if municipal water supplies shut down, we ain’t growin’ jack. Maybe our pomegranates will survive but they won’t produce much without water. Our pomegranates stand a better chance than we do.
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Thanks, jim, for a great post topic! Stay tuned!
What if there’s no shelters for them to go to? You can’t be on your guard 24 hours a day.
Chuck, man, c’mon be real here… anybody who gets their electricity cut off will head for where the juice is still on. I can’t be any more specific than that. Mom’s house, FEMA camp, Nat Guard Armory or whatever TPTB decide to keep lit up. Hospitals and Wal-Mart are good guesses.
Nobody raised on white bread and cheezy poofs will “fan out” into the countryside looking for food – as long as the gov’t sends out relief trucks full of whatever crap is laying around in warehouses.Look at how long refugees have been living in UN camps in a bunch of countries. The US is populated by people who have never suffered anything worse than inconvenience. Would you go fanning out looking for food knowing damn good and well that the countryside is a land mine littered with armed property owners? The more lawless it is the more dangerous it is to leave the relief camp.
Remember this is a long drawn out process and relocation will have been effected. The only guns out there will be in the hands of criminals or homesteader doomers.
Of course the EMP scenario is always out there, in which case I shoot anything that moves.
When I said no shelters available, I meant a swift collapse. Even in a protracted collapse, which I also consider more likely, there will be periods of intense chaos, at some point they won’t have transport, or their city relatives will be asking if they can move to the country. Some people will refuse to leave their homes, such as the ones who’s only prep is to buy guns and ammo, the ones who have nothing to defend and will eventually come after your stuff.
OK, even take your unlikely scenario of a country populated only with armed farmers. How can you be so sure that so many will flock to the cities? It’s not going to be some kind of paradise there. Your city relatives, and your wife’s,or anyone who’s heard of you thru them, they will be begging to come stay with you to avoid the chaos in the cities. At some point people will be desperate to avoid the camps. They may even just show up at your door. All your armed farmer neighbors will have the same problem.
You just seem kind of cavalier. Shooting anything that moves means a family including the kids?
I could also imagine the people who survive the culling process in the cities will be some tough MFs and they will fan out sooner or later. They will be thinking: we’d better control those country people before they come and control us, or simple to secure more food.
I know scenarios are really difficult to discuss, but I don’t see the countryside vacating as easily as you think.
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“Hospitals and Wal-Mart are good guesses.”
There goes another wal-mart slip. I’m telling you man, the comrade is sliding.
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quote:
Greetings comrade. I share your sentiments about general stupidity, but what are you going to do about the fact that you are only as secure as your neighbors? This is my prime dilemma. Wondering what is your thinking on that.
endquote
Since my original post didn’t have anything to say about being secure from neighbors I have to believe you asked about what I think about a postulated “fact” that I’m only as secure as my neighbors. I said they’d leave for wherever the lights are still on.
In your fast crash scenario movement will be dangerous and restricted. All the dumb ass relatives and people who know me in town won’t be able to get here by car, and it’s way too far for town softies to trek to. Anybody who could make it would have proved their mettle and be a welcomed addition.
Cavalier? Anybody using a kid as a body shield on their way to my tater patch means two for the compost heap with one bullet. A 50% savings in ammo. That had to do with an EMP situation where all bets are off and you damn right shoot everything that moves. I’m 8 miles from the nearest small town – and I mean small – nobody walking around will be full of good intentions. I won’t be popping popcorn on the kitchen stove under those circumstances – I’ll be “positioned” heh heh. Unless there is fallout – then anybody walking around is dead or dying.
I put down the MZB drama awhile back – Concentric circles lose density as they expand, and I’m far enough away from population centers to not be too worried. No matter how bad ass you are 20 miles of armed country folk is a gauntlet few leather goons are going to survive. Mac Daddy and his Uzi and 9mm is no match for Farmer Brown on his own turf with a scoped 30.06, the Farmer’s Wife with the 12 guage pump, and Farmer Brown’s boy with his .22 plinking rifle sniping from all his secret hidey holes.
“such as the ones who’s only prep is to buy guns and ammo, the ones who have nothing to defend and will eventually come after your stuff.” Those individuals or small bands of marauders who drink up all the whiskey at one place and move out looking for more aren’t going to be hard to spot or deal with when spotted.
Hell why not stay awake at night chewing off the toenails worrying about packs of wild dogs? Your prime dilemma is trying to rationalize staying put in town/city under the umbrella of safety provided by the local police and kumbaiya community spirit. That’s just a guess on my part, based on the language you use. You didn’t watch a mass exodus for town when the lights went out. You don’t see that a garden bigger than some sweet corn and a few tomato is practically non existent around here. People go where the food and heat are – and their rural propane tank is empty and the root cellar caved in years ago. All electric trailers and pantries full of wal mart food. The country life is just a house out of town, a big yard and a long drive to work.The few of us that are out here for good have their shit together. Refugees and Rambos are a fucking mess.
Hi Comrade,
I very much enjoy reading yours and Ran’s posts. I’m sort of a doomer myself. My family tells me to “cheer up” and my wife actually gets angry when I start talking about this stuff. I’ve basically given up. What’s the point in surviving if everyone else is going to be dead anyway, or bitching about how hard it is to provide for themselves? We have a 3/4 acre yard, with a 15 acre field behind us that some asshole real estate agent owns. He pays someone else to rotate soybeans and corn in it every year for profit (like he needs more money). He also owns over half of the town here. I would kill for that land. My mom and dad have 40 acres with a well and pond that my dad used to farm as a hobby, but he’s retired now so he planted it all up in pine and oak trees. It’s paid off, but basically ruined for food crops now. He also sold off all of his farm equipment. I feel a bit screwed now.
We don’t have, or plan on having any kids, they will just be a burden when TSHTF.
Any thoughts on my situation? What would you do if you were me? I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that the human race is fucked.
I noticed your seed collection didn’t include St. John’s Wort. I’ve discovered that it is a fantastic natural anti-depressant. You really ought to try it.
Hi John – the wife grows St. John’s Wort in her witch patch, but it’s hard to be depressed out here in the Bliss Realm.
So dig up the yard. A 1/4 acre of garden beds will grow as much as you can eat. Harvest the grass clippings from the rest of it as mulch. Personally I’d go move in with Mom and Dad and turn their barn loft into sleeping quarters and build a rocket stove mass heater below. Some where by the pond is a 1/4 acre patch of open ground to garden.
I’m 46. Guess what – I’m probably gonna be dead from old age within 40 years if everything else goes well. I have no desire to waste it on putting Tab A into Slot B or answer phones or corporate execute or wage slave away in a “helping profession” or any other time clock “job”. If my time is worth 10 bucks an hour that’s only because somebody is making 15 off of it. Fuck that – nobody gets my life hours on their terms.