New Member Greetings From South Carolina.

Hello. I have just woken up to the threats America faces as a nation, and those the human race faces as our planet warms. I worry I have woken up too late. After reading the works of Jared Diamond, I began to investigate for myself the 12 collapse factors in play in the US right now. 8 Classic collapse causes, as well as 4 new ones. Climate change is only one of the 12 causes! And if we don't solve all of them, if we only solve 11, the twelfth factor will likely precipitate a societal collapse. It was this research that led to my understanding of the fact that we are basically screwed. Our way of life is doomed, and our "leaders" are going to keep doing business as usual until they burn every last drop and put all that carbon back into the air. At that point, if we have even survived the resource wars that are coming, the world will be on it's last few sunsets witnessed by life on Earth.
This realization has fundamentally changed the way I look at everything. All my priorities have changed. We are going to have to answer some very hard questions from our grand children about why we killed the Earth's biosphere for the sake of oil and a few rich people. How will we answer them? The US, China, and Russia are all jockeying for position to claim rights for the vast, newly available fossil fuel deposits that had been hidden under permanent ice sheets and are now becoming accessible due to melting which they claim to think "needs more study". We are being conned on a planetary scale! And it will kill every last human being on Earth. But until that happens, I intend to keep myself and my family alive to bare witness. I am here to keep from going mad with this knowledge, that everyone is afraid to look at, even when they know me. Like family. I am here for support, and to support others. There is good in humanity, as well as evil. The coming trials will show what we are made of.

 

Welcome to this forum.

 

Good morning Barak 129,

Welcome to the forum.

Without intruding on your privacy, what general area of South Carolina are you from ? I'm in coastal Virginia ... and BUSY because of public sector poor preparations for this hurricane emergency.

It's never too late to wake up.

You've got "knowledge support" here at MSF.COM. Looking forward to you assisting us as member of the crew. We need all the views of forum members and why they hold these various views.

Meanwhile, got to go out and strengthen the barricades to keep Hurricane Dorian out of the area.

Prep, prep, prep !

...... and factor in SAFETY !

 

Thanks for the reply! I'm thrilled at the quick replies from forum members! I'm out near Augusta, far enough inland to avoid the storm surge problems, thankfully! But the Bahamas reported between 15 and 23 foot storm surge in some areas! So expect a very high tide! My aunt is in FL, but on the Gulf coast. Still, Dorian is huge! Anyway, yes, don't rely on the Government coming to save the day. They will never be prepared for these events because as an institution they can't acknowledge their existence, so the events will outpace their disaster plans. Even if they want to help, they won't be able to cope. It's up to us. Good luck with your preps!

 

Thanks Sourdough. I'm glad to be here!

 

Welcome from the Gunshine state.

 

Good morning Barok 129,

Journeys start with the first step and the hurricane has us already jogging and it hasn't even arrived here yet.

Ref: "the storm surge problems";

Yes, the storm surge. No, the storm surge problems".

The mandatory and the elective evacuations will send some of the coastal dwellers on to the roads to Augusta. Think of a percentage of these evacuees as vectors of contagious germs. Rest assured many of the evacuees are not in the best of health and many did not get a FREE flu shot.

You know the rest.

 

Welcome to the forum from Pennsylvania. I used to live over in West Columbia and used to travel to Augusta every few months for work as our corporate HQ was there.

 

Welcome to the forum! I look forward to your posts!

 

Thanks Sonofliberty!

 

Agreed Pragmatist. This coming week is but the first rehearsal of a play that will have many acts. There may be as many as a billion climate refugees by the end of the century. Many millions right here in our own backyard. And think of the economic consequences for the country of the loss of all the major coastal cities, just when we need every penny to try and relocate all those displaced Americans. And since under international law, anyone whose property is below water no longer owns that property, many millions of these climate refugees will be stateless, with no property, no rights, no visas, and no hope. Living in vast tent-cities where the aforementioned diseases will spread in the misery. And yes, then the rest gets bleaker.

 

Thanks Alaskajohn. You are on the front lines! It is I who looks forward to your posts!

 

Thanks CountryGuy! I spent some time in Lancaster County years ago, where my girl had family in a little township. Learned a lot of outdoor skills from those folks! Used to get caught in a blizzard in the Catskills every time we drove down from Massachusetts. Some of our most successful dates were spent snowed in in some hotel along the route.

 

I yes, I miss those kind of snow days in some little not tell hotel in some small town ...Had a few of those myself on some trips thru western NY and Northern PA.

 

Welcome Barak,
I in N.Fl.

 

Greetings Meerkat! How's the weather down there?

 

Thanks Keith. Appreciate the welcome. I have been known to rattle on. As to the presence of deniers, I am not surprised. However I will not engage with them. The time for that nonsense is long past. Nor am I interested in politics. A collapse is apolitical. And besides, the elites all know what's coming down the road, regardless of party. They are interested now only in extracting as much wealth and resources from the commoners as possible, and to do that they need business-as-usual for as long as possible. Thus, the Dog & Pony Show continues on the TV and Internet. "If you're about to get hit by a car, it doesn't matter if it's red or blue".

 

Welcome from Missouri. You have taken the most important step; the first one. It is never to late to start. Good to have you with us.

 

Thanks Morgan101! Glad to find a group of like-minded people who don't change the subject when it becomes unpleasant.

 

I think you will find that people here can respectfully disagree. Things get a little snarkey once in a while, but overall the dialogue is a good exchange of ideas. Sometimes we just agree to disagree. IMHO the Moderators do a great job. Nothing gets out of hand. Welcome aboard. Looking forward to your posts.

 

Welcome! While it is good that you are preparing, you are by no means late. Anytime is a good time to prepare. While I don't think you will have to worry about warming, the Hurricane is something to take seriously. I lived in coastal Georgia and drove into and back out of hurricane zones many times bringing relief and documenting the damage. Believing in climate change is fine. Expecting the other people in the world to change their lifestyles due to your beliefs is not.

Two scenes = 360 degree panoramic.
Click for full sized images
Gulfport Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina

 

LO, is that last one the Grand? I was stationed there at the Seabee base and they were just building the hotel and the Grand when I got out in 95. I saw some photos of the area after Katrina and I couldn't make heads or tails of anything as all of the landmarks I remembered were gone.

 

I am not wasting any time with the likes of climate deniers. Do not engage with me again about that nonsense.

 

Well guess we won't be chatting either... go sip your kool-aid.

Here like a day and probably already alienated 2/3 of the people here... that might be a record for anyone short of a troll

 

I have to be honest I could not tell you which casinos were which. Most had their signage gone. Here is a panoramic of one of the floating casinos sitting up on the highway. They had to blow it up a couple weeks after I left the area as it was too big to move.

 

Well at least you got the "nonsense" part correct but I am not a climate denier at all. I fully accept that we have climate. I do not believe all that other crap you spewed. Sorry. The OP does bring me to wonder about so many things though. I would guess that in order to prepare for climate change one would either need to stock up on lots of SPF1000 sunscreen or extra longjohns depending on which way you think it is changing am I correct? Are you in on the Ocassio 12 year end of the world thing? If we get down to our last sunset then wouldn't it get colder rather than hotter? Isn't everything on this planet carbon based? How can we put more carbon out than there already is in the world? So many questions.

 

Welcome Fellow South Carolinian!

 

Welcome to here. Your intro post touched me. You worried that you have woken up too late, and that we are basically screwed, and we are all doomed, and that you’re here to keep from going mad with that knowledge...

I’d like to encourage you to consider a few things that might help you achieve balance and a measure of peace in preparing for even worst-case scenarios.

Jared Diamond, the geographer, and author of the books that you read, estimated the chances are about 49 percent that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050. By that same estimation, this also means if nothing is done about it at all, then there is a 51% chance that the world will NOT collapse.

And besides that, there is just no telling what will happen in the next decade or two that will change the parameters and the entire outcome of his predictions. For example, to put things into perspective: not that long ago, no one would have ever thought it would be possible for something like powerful computer chips, cellphones, and the internet to exist. Yet here we are.

Since the dawn of mankind, civilizations have risen and fallen. Billions of people have died. Incredible climatic upheavals changed the face of the earth... Yet here we are.

It is more likely that a huge reset will come upon our current society from causes other than what Mr. Diamond focused on. Things such as pandemics, EMP, political/economical power shifts, and so on. Yellowstone could very well cause a radical change upon the earth. The list is endless.

While we may be powerless to change the winds of calamity that may (or may not!) befall us, we do have power over ourselves. How can we prepare to face the stuff of nightmares? We do not need to imagine in excruciating detail all the things that could happen in the world. If we did, we would be overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. Worse yet, we could allow our imaginations to defeat us before any real test comes.

That is NOT a description of a healthy survivor personality.

What would help build our courage is doing all that we intelligently and reasonably can to prepare for the most likely disasters first. You already know what they are: fire, natural disasters, personal economic hardships caused by unexpected job loss, and medical emergencies. Meanwhile concentrate on building knowledge and skills which costs practically nothing but can be priceless when it comes to survival skills such as purifying water, evading/repelling criminal elements, dealing with pandemics, etc.

And I strongly suggest you try to break away from addictive doomer porn until you regain traction and balance.

Most importantly, don’t neglect to do all you can to build and maintain good spiritual and mental health. Never lose your joie de vivre (joy of life), no matter what befalls you. If you have children, this approach will also teach vital coping skills that will serve them well for a lifetime.




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Thanks NomadWill!

 

Thanks GrizzlyetteAdams. I appreciate your post and Insights, and I agree with some of what you say. However, Jared Diamond is not only a geographer, but an anthropologist and historian, as well as a Pulitzer Prize winning author in General Non-Fiction. He is a scientist, and I immensely enjoyed his books, delivering real science without the politics and nonsense covered in the press. That being said, I don't agree with some of his conclusions in Collapse. Mainly that he ends the book on words of hope. So did Stephen Hawking on his last book: "Brief Answers to Big Questions". But if you read between the lines, Hawking had lost his hope with the election of Donald Trump. Diamond's book was written in 2004. His conclusions are now out of date, as I am sure he would agree. Our carbon emissions have actually increased. We have now reached some 430 PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere. This will continue to melt the ice and change the climate for centuries, heating the earth by an estimated 3.2 degrees C by 2100. This guarantees the collapse of civilization. It is a fact. A mathematical certainty and it's going to cost us everything. Capitalism is certainly gone. Democracy too, most likely. We will be left with human misery on a scale never before seen in our entire species' existence. And if we underestimated the effects (which we almost certainly did), this could be the last century on Earth for humans and animals alike. Fully half of the animals in our planet have been killed since 1970. 90% of whales and sharks, which are crucial to the marine ecosystem, which supplies half the oxygen for the planet! Coupled with rising ocean acidity and temperature will render the oceans lifeless in the next 15 years. I have extensively researched everything I could think of, and climate change disaster is present in every single physical and natural science that has looked. The evidence is overwhelming. Our lives will change irrevocably, and our children will face the decision of whether or not to bare children of their own. The frogs have almost entirely gone extinct, as have 90 other species of amphibians. 400 species of amphibians, including toads and salamanders, are about to go extinct. I saw one frog this summer. Just one. Bats are almost all extinct too. Bananas will disappear soon, do to blight. Wheat and other crops have shown a marked decrease in the amount of protein they contain, and many can't flourish in the higher temps coming to the growing areas all over the world. 17 countries are water stressed, and that will get much worse. Meanwhile, the three biggest polluters, all nuclear armed, are going to fight eventually for the newly available oil deposits under melting permafrost and ice-sheets. They will fight. They will use nukes. One will win. And then, the winner will burn the rest of the fossil fuels. Completing the destruction of the biosphere. Although at this point, there won't be more than a billion people world-wide. Forgive me for making my own conclusions based on this overwhelming evidence, but I don't consider the warnings of the scientists in their field notes and books to be porn. It is the way to make judgments based on research experts have done in their respective fields of study. It's simple. We are putting the carbon back into the air that it took Earth millions of years to remove, and we're doing it in a single generation. The last time CO2 concentrations were this high, the oceans were 50 feet higher and acidic and lifeless. In 30 years, were going to have to move the populations of New York, Boston, Washigton DC, Norfolk, Virginia, Daytona, Miami, Venice, Mumbai, Tokyo, Shanghai, London, and Paris, just to name a few. I am not trying to be depressing. These are the facts. Pretending they're not won't do anybody any good. If we are to survive as a species, we are going to have to completely reshape our society, abandoning fossil fuels, cars, air travel, and capitalism, and alter energy usage, food production, and distribution of wealth and power. You quoted Jared's figures of 49% chance of collapse, Would you put your children on an aircraft for a flight that had only a 51% chance of making it to their destination? Of course you wouldn't. But that's exactly what our governments have done, and what I find here in this forum. A forum that allows climate deniers to join it and spread their lies and disinformation, further muddying up the waters of action. We had 30 years to act, and we are in a worse position then we were then! The IPCC said last year we had 12 years to avert total climate catastrophe. That means the end of all life on Earth. And with the election of Donald Trump and all the damage he has done to, well, everything, it is virtually impossible to meet this deadline, especially when you consider it is the worst case scenario. So at the very least, we are looking at the climate disaster I have outlined. However, the timing is tricky, because we really don't have a clue about all the hidden feedback loops we haven't discovered yet. My gut is telling me, and the data supports, that we consistently underestimate timing. If you look back at the graphs since, say, 1970, you will see that in almost every case, the worst-case was what transpired in real life. So, I am not optimistic that our governments will suddenly have a change of heart and embrace the end of growth-based economics. They will continue with business as usual. Ergo, we're fucked. We squandered the time we had to avert disaster. Now we have to adapt, or perish. I predict that this is the last century of our species. Because when even survivalists are afraid to look at the evidence all around them, there's no hope for toppling the elites that drove the problem to this point. We are all guilty.

 

Hurrah for Donald Trump , I am looking forward to five more years of prosperity .

 

Good afternoon Barok,

The graphs, since 1970, might NOT show that the Vietnam War was not nuclear, that the Arab - Israeli War of '72 was not nuclear,...

"End of growth economics" generates the dangerous warfare using the most massive lethal means.

President Trump has created the lowest black unemployment statistics since coal produced steam replaced sail cloth.

"Capitalism" is undefined. "Democracy is undefined".

So far, human misery has been lessened.

The US pollutes more than Russia, India, China ? Please name the three biggest polluters.

Does the "overwhelming evidence" incorporate the 1963 Ortho-Novum Pill Pack ?

The Miami folks don't have to relocate ?!

Barok, you're a good writer but need to work on your knowledge-base.

 

Barok is there a reason you chose to post George Soros ANTIFA symbol ?

 

When looking out of the window into life's Big Picture, I don't want to stare so long at the flyspecks on the glass that I fail to see the scenery beyond it.

That is one of the secrets of relieving anxiety and worry about things that you cannot change.

Preparing to survive can be stress-relieving (you are actually taking steps to mitigate life's curveballs), or it can be stress-inducing (if you focus too long at all the possible causes of SHTF).

I don't need to spend my time and energy focusing on microbiology to understand that a pandemic can sweep the globe. It's enough for me to be able to recognize signs that it is coming my way, and how to survive it.

Climate change? Political and economic upheavals? War? EMP? Maybe, or maybe not. In many ways, mankind is seriously crapping in its own nest, and I am doing my personal part to not contribute to the mess. I cannot change the outcome of the world, but I can refuse to allow these things to take over too much real estate in my mind. Or else I would dilute my focus on the things that make living worthwhile.

My long and short-term disaster preparedness skills, knowledge, and preps cover a multifaceted spectrum of events, including pandemics, unemployment, EMP, cancer (yes, even that), climate changes, home invasions, societal breakdown, and even situations that could separate me from everything that I depended upon to hold me up physically and mentally. None of these things may happen, or all of them...at once!

Mentally, I am as ready as I can reasonably be. Physically, I focus on living a preparedness lifestyle. Spiritually, I am fortified daily.

But if I am too focused on those flyspecks on the glass, I could lose my balance, peace of mind, spiritual health, and joie de vivre.



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It is the symbol of Anonymous. I chose it because of what it meant in the movie V. But I think you knew that. I can see I am wasting my time here.

 

You wouldn't be wasting your time if you focused on the general purpose of the forum and not get sidetracked by sidebar political posts.

Your loss, I think.


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Scared of the hurricane and lives 4 to 5 hours from the coast. (Near Augusta Georgia) Seems unhinged by a doctrine that is unproven. A frantic liberal. Read a couple of books that scared him and now thinks he knows all of the answers so does not need to look at any other possibilities. I think he would do himself some good to continue reading and maybe look for some other possible scenarios. There are a lot. It might help him feel a bit better about the world and his family's chances of survival as well as all mankind. According to him there is no chance for survival and preparing is a worthless proposition. It is all over already. How do your kids feel when you tell them they will be dead so there is no reason to go on? No reason to marry or reproduce? Jeez. How depressing.

 

Good morning Last Outlaw,

The clue that told everything: since 1970, 90% of the whales and sharks killed.

How does anyone know this ?!

I live near a university oceanographic institute and attend some of the free public lectures given by the PhD scientists. Although we're located on the Chesapeake Bay, the scientists tell and show video of their shark research trips at locations such as the Seychelles, the Maldives, Palau,... Many places not studied. LOL !

 

Well I keep up with what is going on around the world on a pretty regular basis I think and I am pretty sure I would have heard if 90% of the whales and sharks in the world were gone. Especially when I lived in coastal areas from Hawaii to Oregon and Savannah Georgia since 1968 until 2008.
I'm gonna go throw a couple of tires onto my burn pile now. See ya'll later!

 

Greetings, Barok, to this forum! My name is Duncan; I recently relocated to rural Idaho from a large city in Arizona for exactly some of the same reasons you talk about. I have been involved in self-sufficiency and preparedness for hard times since I was in college (56 years now), but only logged on here this past January. I've found that no matter how "expert" you are, there are folks who know things you don't; similarly, even a complete beginner has insights that can be valuable to others. Speak what you know, listen when you don't. There are a lot of different people here with different views, different beliefs, different levels of expertise on just about every subject imaginable, and even different people who they like to vote for. Certainly we can learn something from every poster here; the actual value of such a curriculum is actually up to you.

One suggestion from an old hand in the preparedness movement is this: Don't over-react! People have been preaching about the imminent demise of the Earth and all its inhabitants since before I was born, and none of the more sanguine predictions and prophecies has come to pass -- yet. Take some time to prioritize your actions. Get the low-hanging fruit, such as a temporary power outage or a water main breakage -- something that can be ameliorated inexpensively (hint: make sure you have a manual can-opener!), then start working on the most serious issue that you can ameliorate within your cost and time considerations. Don't waste your time on natural disasters like a comet strike or the Yellowstone caldera eruption; go for things that that have a realistic chance of happening.

Another thing you might want to look at: preparedness fora, like any other kinds, are filled with people of very strong opinions. You can kill a lot of innocent electrons and waste hours of your time arguing politics, firearms, anthropogenic climate change, the color of Jesus' beard, and a lot of other things that are irrelevant to your preps. If you believe in climate change, don't waste your time (or his) arguing in favor of your belief; you probably aren't going to change anyone's mind. If you believe climate change is a very real possibility, make your plans accordingly; if you don't, ignore it. You can learn things by listening to people discus the merits of different kinds of firearms, but the 2nd Amendment discussions don't solve anything one way or another. Ditto for voting for this guy or that guy. Have fun!