Collapse Chronicles

I am going to embark on a series highlighting collapse scenarios.  I call this collapse chronicles.  It will chronologize my vision of my collapse with different scenarios of degree and duration.  These will be my stories so deeply personal.  I plan on three but there should be many more because the diversity of decline is so great.  I say stories because at this point it is unclear how bad it will get.  This will reflect your collapse stories but it is not meant to be a comment on your situation. 

I am deeply local so what happens to me is only a reflection of what could happen to you.  My point is although I am a master at green prepping this does not mean I will succeed and you fail.  Collapse may be common but its effects are deeply local.  There is a science too so respect the science.  Situations and scenarios can vary widely so one size does not fit all. 

The degree and duration of shock is the keystone determination of survivability for a species.  For humans this goes deeper with the abstract species type of a human settlements and networks which are like an organism.  Corporations have quasi-individual status under the law.  The mechanization of transhumanism and delocalization give them a quality that is part life and part machine. 

City, rural, suburban, and wilderness will greatly influence how collapse proceeds.  The networking of strong or weak communities likewise are a variable.  The geography of collapse is a critical element.  Desert, mountain, swamp, lowlands all have a collapse character.  The temperature of a location is a critical element.  Mild conditions year around naturally offer advantages and bitter cold or extreme heat challenges because energy and food will no longer be a global commodity.   Water is a profoundly critical benchmark.  The world is now moving water around with large energy inputs that no longer will be available.  Population densities and consumption profiles rank high and generally will favor low densities with low consumption.

Some high population densities but low consumption profiles may fare better than low population high consumption.  This has a ratio where the combination of the two have a sweeter spot and the divergence an increasing risk.  Social capital is of great importance.  Populations that have cohesive populations with good behavior will naturally fare better.  Multicultural or homogenous will have a risk factor.  In those places where a healthy consumption allows multicultural stability there will be problems when affluence drops.  Homogenous populations will likely fare better generally but this can also allow bad group think and lack of diversity of action.  Luck is a huge variable.  Collapse is a gamble where some odds are known but overall most of the population is conned into believing they will win when the house is always favored.

Any population with a fragile and faulty narrative will be in danger when the truth destroys the lies.  Class structure and the genie coefficient is vital because the elite are where poor decisions tend to coalesce.  The reason for this is the corruption of wealth and power preservation when decline sets in.  In war we celebrate leaders who fight at the front leading by example.  Polarization of class will turn on each other because fairness is a cement.  If a population is taking on pain and suffering equally a force of community spirt is a power multiplier.  In places of great disparity, the rich will be at risk when the poor strip them of their thing and dignity. 

Energy is an issue especially where temperatures are more extreme.  Food is the traditional issue that is always a key benchmark.  If a region is a heavy food importer this is a serious issue.  Food shortages are the fuse the lights up other issues typically.

None of the above is new information but what is important with this common knowledge is these days the interconnectedness from transhumanism and delocalization changes this common historical perspective.  A global car culture with a digital web is far more dangerous than a Roman style collapse.  The fragility of the global human network is far more dangerous.  This global network is very stable and robust in the run up of growth but when growth stalls it breaks apart with dangerous cascading bifurcations. 

Global competitive cooperation that has allowed global action will turn dangerously competitive on the downside of the curve.  This is why cooperation further down is critical.  This is why localism is now vital.  The complexity with complicated parts of man’s mechanized civilization makes it a ticking bomb. 

The key ingredient is social cohesion with wisdom in my opinion.  Morale plays an oversize part and this is why I make the morale in REAL Green so high.  Acceptance leading to humility transforms to action.  Collapse will require huge amounts of action.  This morale is the pessimistic optimism of REAL Green that inspires heroism.  Heroism will be needed.  Crisis demands this. 

There are so many variables as to make a prediction of how you will fare in collapse difficult.  Yet, reviewing the variables of weakness and strength do have a common theme.  There are vital elements that can’t be lacking.  Food, water, and energy are critical.  Location and population densities less so if food, water, and shelter are good.  The social fabric is critical because of population with high morale will go the extra distance to adapt to decline. 

Decline needs to be embraced and where it is not there is a lie that will be shattered with bad consequences.  Luck is always a variable but luck is for the cavalier.  If you want to live that way fine but I would not want to live that way and have responsibility for love ones who are mostly innocent of reality.

I am speaking to leadership here but often latent leadership.  If you are not a leader move on.  My message is for those who will be leading by example and at the front facing death.  The innocent must be protected.  This is the most basic of human nature and must be respected.  You will not have the nation state to look too when SHTF. 

The psychological with action is called for but with honesty.  The psychology must be of acceptance.  Don’t fight reality with false narratives.  The results of decline must have an action of proper adaptation to mitigate succession if survival is the goal.  The embrace allows proactive planning.  Action is a must but proper action.  If the narrative of growth is maintained then the action will not be proper. 

This is the situation today with our growth-based civilization.  Although decline is recognized growth is the gold standard.  Decline is always considered temporary.  Collapse is taboo and doomers considered nutters.  This should illuminate how difficult the coming collapse will be.  A Ponzi scheme of growth with a narrative of lies will not end well.  This is especially true when it has been extended out decades beyond safe adaptation resulting in high populations and large consumption profiles.  The situation today is a paradigm shift of decline on all levels.  The only level with huge growth potential is meaning of getting closer to the truth of decline.    

I often talk about leaving cities because they will depopulate.  Yet, in some scenarios cities will be where effective defenses are put up to defend against some kinds of collapse.  This means careful evaluations before you cut and run from cities.  Best bet is to orbit a healthy city.  The rural areas could be left to their own devices.  In fact, cities may loot rural areas as needed for survival. 

Cities are the problem so don’t think you will be safe in them longer term even when they are walled against threats with good stocks of food, water, and shelter.  They are highly extractive with dangerous waste streams.  This will never offer safety longer term.  History as shown this to be true. 

This is why the Great Reset crowd are liars.  Their path is a path towards death through concentrated complex urbanization.  The great reset crowd as well as Chinese CCP of state capitalism are pushing a dehumanizing death cult.  Reject this by adapting to life.  The elites always bring civilizations down.  The life system will prevail because nature enjoys nature and only nature can overcome.  Humans will be greatly reduced soon so don’t worry about global extinction.

Your local is where you can make a difference.  This is down to the extreme of people and place but also the orbit you are in with other peoples.  My ideal is being located where food, water, and shelter are adequate.  Being engaged in a permaculture farm with important variables like food, water, and energy covered as much locally as possible. 

A green prepper is an ideal with backups that can be both technical and natural.  A fortified homestead is not enough longer term if the local you are in is poor.  A fortified homestead that orbits a fortified permaculture town is optimal.  The world is so delocalized today these vital combinations are rare.  Permaculture towns have been destroyed by delocalization.  The results are ruins that dot the landscape of towns that once flourished.  When I look at a map of the Ozarks, I see so many towns that are really no more but they still represent a reason for settlement in an earlier time of localism.

I have a permaculture farm with a fortified homestead.  I have been doing this for 10 years.  I have been an evolving doomer and prepper for 20 years.  My start was seeing decline in peak oil and ecological failures in the 80s in the university.  Although peak oil came and went as a collapse variable it is still alive and well in net energy decline.  Ecological decline is accelerating. 

In college I embraced globalism because I bought into sustainable development narrative.  I thought abrupt change of the planet from human forcing was far off and humans could responsibly mitigate this.  I became disillusioned with this by 2000.  Earth systems have been forced far too much even in my short time.  So much has been damaged just in these 30 years since my formal education. 

It is almost as if the destructive tendencies of globalism sped up decline by an order of magnitude.  Transhumanism of the car culture and delocalization allowed for a mechanization that gained speed and lost control.  The digitation of the world is the last gear.  Land use changes are so great as to be equivalent to geological changes.  Anyone who denies the science of decline is not science honest.

I am a master of green prepping in some ways because this is my life’s work.  I walk the walk.  I practice what I preach.  I have the time, money, and education to do it.  I am not an academic talking about it abstractly.  I do it.  What I lack is a permaculture town to orbit.  I have made efforts over the years to influence small towns into permaculture but the world is so delocalized my calls have fell on deaf ears. 

This lack of a permaculture community to orbit will be my undoing in some scenarios but in all scenarios my prepping has fortified me for an initial period.  I will not be in panic for the basics in the initial runup to crisis.  I am psychologically prepared which is the most important.  This means I have courage on which all other virtues rest. 

This does not mean I will not suffer.  It means I am preparing myself to suffer.  I won’t transcend fear but I will not fear fear which is a vicious psychological trap of circular behavior that most often leads to panic.  This is important because it allows me choice instead of panicked action.  I have taken this further with green prepping and spiritual permaculture that are an action response.  These are what sustain me in the prelude to collapse which is what we are in now.  I am living a life style high in value and this gives my green prepping efforts meaning.  The opportunity costs of what I do are an easy life on the beach or the warm southwest.  Instead I labor on a working farm in adversity.

What is green is more prepped but what is more prepped is less green.  There is a sweet spot.  Hording is not green and being too natural in a transhuman delocalized world is not prepped.  It is this sweet spot that allows good preparedness and good spirituality. 

My spirituality is eclectic.  I am a green mystic.  This means I have done the spiritual journey to mysticism and now go forth on the planet’s behalf.  My higher power is a reflection of humility in mysticism.  What this means is I respect science and spirituality.  I can only find a place between the two.  I am not pure faith nor pure deduction.  I show respect to both worlds.  I now go forth on behalf of the planet.  This is green shamanism.

The key aspect of green prepping for me has been an optimism of action.  This quality of being is what honest green gives me.  This means although for the last 10 years there has been no collapse crisis to engage in, I have been living a rewarding life of reverence to the planet through permaculture localism.  This is a key ingredient because the journey is life.  If you engage in prepping for the destination that is collapse then the wait in anticipation of that single end point, your life is a waste.  

You are not rewarded with a good life you are only rewarded if collapse comes.  What kind of life is this!  This is why much of the prepper crowd are nutters because they throw away life in coveting life.   There is no reward for collapse so don’t waste your life in anticipation.  Instead, live day by day in green prepping.  Nutter preppers live in the future for something instead of living life in the moment.  Honesty and humility give this appreciation of the moment.

The current social narrative is a carbon trap in path dependencies.  It is a global civilization tipping over into decline from the nonlinear approach of problem solving through carbon, knowledge accumulation, and the mechanization of tech that are now a predicament. 

For the individual this leads to the surreal of paradoxes and incongruous juxtapositions.  This means collapse is as much physical as mental.  Actually, the mental is the more important aspect.  The morale of an army is a force multiplier that offsets size and capability deficiencies.  It does not replace them completely so know your limitations. 

A sweet spot is required and this requires action that is often trial and error effort.  Expect to fail at green prepping because so little is known about it.  Problem solving is both psychology and action.  The sweet spot is a place where the combination yields the best results.  Sounds easy enough but it is the hardest of efforts because of the irrational of human nature.

This series will be about different scenarios of my collapse.  I live collapse daily.  I appreciate foods knowing they will be gone.  I appreciate having access to resources knowing a resource starved world is ahead.  I appreciate security knowing insecurity is ahead.  I appreciate knowledge at my fingertips so vast as to be unlimited for a mortal like me.  I can never know all there is to know at the tap of my fingers.  If you live collapse, you are embracing the flow of life instead.   

This is grace.  Grace is naturalism.  There was a time when growth was the planetary flow and different psychology and actions were needed.  There was a time when growth was more natural and much less destructive.  Decline is the new natural of the planet.  Ecosystem in destructive change where complexity is being broken down still offer niches of growth.  Find constructive growth to downsize in dignity.  Here is what you should seek out but to do this you must be mentally and physically prepared.  Now is the time to adapt because we are at the doorstep of collapse. 

I hope this mental exercise assists you.  I have made choices and investments over many years.  Many of these were trial and error because I had few teachers.  I have had many failures.  Many were being too radical with change.  Try to be gradual and evolve like nature does. 

It is my hope what I tell you allows you to skip over some of this trial-and-error period directly because the resource in shortest supply is time itself.  Certain actions that will fortify your local must immediately be implemented. 

My ideas tend to be orientated around the best defense is a good offense.  Yet, this is about a retreat in force so defense.  Defense is degrowth doom.  In WWII the Germans fought off the Russians with this strategy for much longer than a last stand would have.  They successfully won many battles even though they lost the war.  Their hope was a fantastic new weapon to tip the odds but that never materialized. 

This is telling for what you will be doing.  The war of decline can’t be won but it can be adapted to and mitigated.  It can be slowed down.  This is the best it gets.  It is about life boats and hospices.  The end is still death so accept failure completely.  Get out of the denial of death because if you do not embrace death you can’t embrace life.

The life boats are your physical efforts and the hospice the mental part with palliative care.  Triage and salvage leading to hybridization is required because you are in a faux growth-based world that will need to be adapted to with decline strategies that are reality based.  You have no choice but to use growth to degrowth. 

This is a very mental exercise with the key element being acceptance.  The acceptance of the wisdom of insecurity that there are no refuges.  You will live in insecurity to die another day.  You will practice a basic ancient wisdom of what knowledge to use and what to reject based upon survival.  Today there is no wisdom just more knowledge and comforts.

This bottleneck is both local and global.  This world that is now small because of globalism will become large again.  The global will wither on the vine and the local increase in importance.  While a quick collapse is possible, I suspect it will be more the scenario of many quick local collapses accumulating into general collapse down the road.  This mirrors the situation globally with ecosystems. 

This means work on getting out of quick collapse areas.  Science can help you here so embrace the reality science offers but this is more than science because acceptance is spiritual not scientific.  The general ecosystem of life for the whole planet is in overall decline but this is accompanied by multiple local ecosystem failures.  Use the planet’s life system as a guide.  This mirroring is the best guide for where the human ecosystem is going. 

This exercise I am relating to you is not for the faint of heart.  Some of you may be better adapted just to remain sheeples and believe the narrative that all will be well.  Brush me off as nutter and move on into comforts and security.  There is nothing wrong living in denial except if you are caring for people.  It is then you are practicing a grave error.  If your life is good with low responsibility maybe just enjoy what you have and not worry about the future.  The end result is the same anyway.  If you are already late in age with few years left maybe it is not worth the effort but I remind you the youth are the future. 

If you are old and awakened to what is going on offer the youth advice at a minimum.  It is their world soon.  I have kids I care about I want to invest in them.  If nothing else treat what I tell you as a story to enjoy with drama.  What I speak of will not be a great movement.  Most will reject my advice.  What I am preaching is for a few that will make an outsize difference.  The most rewarding actions are heroic.  Be a hero in your local.  A restoration and renewal will germinate in many places and if it doesn’t it was still a good fight to die a good death.