Throwback Thursday - 21 Days Until Collapse

In September 2008, I participated in a thought exercise that ultimately led to the writing of Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs: the Thrivalist's Guide to Life Without Oil.

The challenge, launched by G4s (Backyard) Homestead, was to imagine that we knew in 21 days something catastrophic was going to happen that would change the world as we knew it.  It was the imminent TEOTWAWKI.  

What's funny is that, today, here in our world, 13 years later, the end of the world as we know it has happened.  We had a pandemic.  Our economy is in shambles.  We are experiencing massive shortages of everything from dog food to automobiles.  Everyone is (finally) admitting that Climate Change is a reality we are going to have to learn to live with as the weather gets weirder and more severe.

What's disturbing is that I haven't really seen any significant changes in people's behaviors.  

Or maybe I have.

I met a woman at work the other day who has moved here from away to set up an off-grid homestead.  she had a LOT of questions.  I haven't met anyone, in person or online, in a very long time who was a "back-to-the-lander."  I almost gave her a copy of my book to check out.  If she comes back, I will. 

But most people seem to be just hanging on to what they have, with no thought to what they will do as that life they knew pre-2020 doesn't return.  Like twigs in a flood - being tossed by the turbulent water with no control and no idea where they will end up. 

The temperature (finally) dropped below freezing last night.  It was our first frost of the year.  It's November.  That's unusual.

In response to the warmer weather we've had, I planted peas in late September.  They never flowered (to become peas), but the stalks are lovely.  We can eat the leaves, and if not us, I can feed them to my rabbits.  It's something.

Today's post is from back in 2008, when I was participating in the exercise inspired  by G4s.

Enjoy!  

And let me know what you're doing in response to what's happening in the world. 

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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Collapse: T-Minus Eighteen Days ... and Counting

I have it on good authority that collapse is imminent. We have eighteen days.

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Yesterday, I read the book Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift from the Dear America Series. For the past two or three years (since I first heard about Peak Oil), I've been obsessed with 1930's literature and stories about the Great Depression. I finally read Ironweed by William Kennedy. The book is lauded as one of the 100 Top 20th Century Books written in English. I was expecting The Grapes of Wrath, but unlike the Joads, most of Francis Phelan's hardships were directly related to his choices and actions. In short, had he done things differently, it's more likely than not that he wouldn't have been forced to live in a shanty-town or visit the soup kitchens. It was because he spent the bulk of his money on alcohol and because when he drank he was violent.

In the 1930's era story, Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, one of the main characters similarly experiences financial ruin that is directly attributable to his choices. He seems to want to be a sympathetic character, as does Francis Phelan in Ironweed, and maybe I missed something, but I was unable to feel any empathy for either character. In Dreiser's book, the guy became enamored of Carrie, left his wife and stole from the company where he worked so that he could run away with her. And then, when he found he needed to get a job, he wouldn't accept something that was beneath him until it was too late to be anything but a scab. He made a lot of very bad, very selfish choices. In short, I felt he got what he deserved.

I guess the point is that we're not twigs caught up in a stream, at least most of us aren't, and barring environmental catastrophe (which is what happened in the "dust bowl" areas of Oklahoma, Kansas and the Texas panhandle), most of us, while we may experience some financial hiccups in the coming days, will have chances to adjust our lives as the market fluctuates up and down.

At the moment, there is still time. At the moment.

We have choices. We have opportunities. And if we heed these early "warnings" and use this time to make some changes in our lives, instead of trying to hang onto the sinking ship that is our "modern life", the coming storm will be little more than an inconvenience.

In all of the Great Depression literature the common denominator is always food security. A person can tolerate a lot of hardship with a full belly ... or at least the guarantee of a regular meal once a day.

Food will be the most important part of our preparations, and personally, I feel ill-prepared in this area.

I harvested most of my garden yesterday. I still have some carrots in the ground and a few tomato plants I'll let go until a killing frost. The broccoli plants that never gave a full head have some "off-shoots" on them (which is all they ever did this season). One has flowered, and I'm thinking I will let it go to seed and try my hand at seed-saving.

For most things, it's too late for me to save the seeds, but there's no guarantee that I will find seeds in the spring, or that if they are available, I will be able to pay for them. So while I was out yesterday, I stopped at the hardware store. They still had a few packets, though not much selection. I picked up about $4 worth (at 4 pkts/$1). If one isn't looking for "specific" seeds, now is a good time to stock up, as seeds can keep for years, if stored properly, and $0.25 per packet is a little better than the $1 to $2 per pack in the spring.

I'll be planting the lettuce and spinach in the cold frame the beginning of October, and see how long they go. I've already planted peas, broccoli, spinach and beets for the fall, and the peas and beets are REALLY loving the weather.

My potato harvest was disappointing. I remember my grandma's potato bin. It was 96 cubic feet and was full after the last summer harvest. They ate potatoes every day, usually fried. If we only have the potatoes I harvested for the entire winter ... well, hopefully, Deus Ex Machina will get a deer ... and we still have $20 to spend at the CSA. Maybe I'll use it all for potatoes ... and carrots.

Deus Ex Machina is picking apples with the two little ones today, and I guess I'll be saucing into the night to get all of those apples preserved.

Whether one believes in imminent collapse or not, winter IS coming, and for those of us in the northeast and other colder climates, it means if food supplies become disrupted, for_any_reason, if we don't have a supply on hand, we'll have it pretty tough.

If we do nothing else to prepare, it would be to our advantage to have something to eat stored up somewhere.

I hear those packets of Taco Bell salsa can make a tasty soup.