Prepping

I have been a doomer and prepper for 23 years now.  I look back on where I came from and where I am now and see I was right about many things and wrong about some very important details.  I once thought it was all about energy and its degrading as the affordable life blood of civilization.  This turns out to be only partially true.

Energy degradation is central to the gradual decline of civilization.  This is all too apparent today with the last best attempt at business as usual being renewables and EVs.  They won’t power what we have now.  What we have now can only degrowth around the margins.  What this means is we are rapidly approaching a break point where systematic degradation becomes the bifurcation.  Energy is forcing this systematic breakdown but it is the very top 1% in society that are now the real driver of some kind of collapse.

There is not enough to go around is clear so the way the top gets around this is naked wealth transfer by disregarding the rule of law, corrupting free and fair markets, and disposing of honest politics.  We are now at the imperial point where money and power prevail over proper policy.   Proper policy to negotiate what the degradation of affordable energy to run our civilization is gradually leading to.

I say gradual but in relation to human time frame this gradual is really a rapid process.   Humans slow boil because we are locked in the daily toil of survival.  Few have the luxury of the study of decline and fewer still find interest in this study.  The corruption of the leadership and the resulting internecine warfare with a group playing the deadly serious game of elite musical chairs will take us all down.  A large bulk of the population has already been kicked out of the game.  It is now the elites turn.  They have a long way to fall.

I have focused my efforts in the last few years on energy with renewables for lights and cooling, biomass for heating and animal fodder, animals and garden for food, and wildlife for food.  I have my water situation good.  Most of all I have my attitudes correct about what is ahead.  Even with all my efforts and solid attitude, facing a civilizational breakdown is daunting.  The reality is my effort only will buy me a breather space to formulate a plan.  There is no way to know for sure how this thing is going to blow.  I hope it is gradual and with manageable intensity.

Yet, I am still engaged in the fossil fuel culture that has no long-term future.  The best I can do is become very efficient with these efforts.  I have some on-farm fuel stocks of diesel, gas, and propane.  I invested in renewables to keep the lights on, run my heating and cooling, and keep my food cold.  For the money renewables do very little but if properly organized what they can do is huge.  I spent much more than most people can afford.  This is more than money too.  I have spent time learning which most people don’t have either.

I have done many other prep efforts that I do not have time to discuss but these are important too but the basics are energy related.  Food, water, and shelter like they always have been.  Try to find a way to localize your life because energy can go a long way if you are focused locally.  Its about community too and that will soon localize once the internet becomes unreliable and there is not enough gas to commute.

Your mental resources are the other critical half to energy.  Accepting fate but at the same time enjoying life is very important.  All work and no play will make it hard to keep up with the rigors of maintain a prepped life.  There will come a point where it is all work with no play but we are not there yet.  I have been able to do this effort for 24 years by enjoying this lifestyle.  I enjoy the academics of it.  You must be specialized in something but also a jack of all trades too.  It is this combination that keeps this effort interesting.  It is discouraging too because of the required efforts and discipline with little reward.

My advice is to treat what is ahead like the aging process.  I am turning 60 and my body and mind are degrading.  What I like about my age now is all those cumulative experiences that contribute to what I call base wisdom.  Much of the best parts of my wisdom are my many failures.  What failure didn’t ruin me made me stronger.  Civilization is at this point of age-related breakdown but it is trapped in path dependencies and a need for high quality energy of its youth.  These are rapidly depleting and its way of doing things unsustainable.  What is worse is the basics of civic society that allows us to face crisis is degrading faster than net energy decline.

REAL Green focuses on the individual but this does not mean you can take your eye off the global.  There is no hiding from the global but there are places to go and grow within macro decline.  If this decline phase is manageable then life will be reasonably rewarding even heroic for some.  if you have made efforts to decline too then it will be much easier to mitigate the discomforts ahead.  This is a key aspect of REAL Green.  This is not rocket science it is just paradoxical in the sense that the global is unable to do this so you will live in the surreal in between two worlds.  If you are in the surreal then you are over the target!