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279 comments on DrumBeat: February 7, 2008

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Todd on February 7, 2008 - 12:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"...but it seems so hard to translate thought into action" which is why many of us are not counting on some governement entity to save the day. Although it might futile, the three other families on my rural road have taken indivdual action and have discussed what we have to do as a group when TSHTF. It's far, far from perfect. However, it is "something" and far better than waiting.

Todd

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Moe_Gamble on February 7, 2008 - 12:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The same thing is happening among my neighbors.

Dmitri Orlov describes something similar during the breakdown of the Soviet Union--solutions springing from the bottom, rather than imposed from the top.

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gTrout on February 7, 2008 - 1:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Look at this cool site the State of Minnesota put together to help people plan for disasters. It lists disaster by type and helps you put together survival kits.

http://www.codeready.org/getinformed.cfm

I saw Matt Simmons speak before the MN Legislature. One point that he made was that we don't really know the minimum operating level of our fuel system. In a panic situation it could go dry very quickly. That has prompted me to start a long term food storage plan.

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Durandal on February 7, 2008 - 2:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Dried foods in combination with a water purification system are ideal in many ways. TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein,) if stored correctly, has a shelf life of dozens of years, and in my opinion, isn't all that bad. I keep a large supply of it on hand and use in my day to day cooking. If you use this stuff in Hamburger Helper or similar, you don't notice as much that you're not using real ground beef but a vegetable protein.
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com)

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NeverLNG on February 7, 2008 - 2:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

According to Tainter, the top will be cut off from the bottom due to collapse of the complex interactions of empire. Solutions arising from the bottom historically are pretty brutal -- that would appear to be the case in the Former Soviet Union -- though the only thing I know about that is what I read. The 13th - 15th centuries in Europe seem to have been characterized by the kind of banditry we associate with failure of central governments.

The population of North America supposedly lived in a peaceful Eden, undisturbed for millennia, until the Europeans arrived. Seems unlikely. Is something like that actually possible?

I forsee interesting challenges ahead.

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davebygolly on February 7, 2008 - 2:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

There needs to be both. Survival efforts in the FSU were just that, and many didn't. You have better models in Cuba and Venezuela. Whatever complaints you might have about these gov'ts, they have both have tried hard to prevent the worst. The complaints against Cuba are that it hasn't succeeded in providing much more that a minimum material existence. But its accomplishments in health and education are considerable.

A hostile gov't will defeat the efforts of even the most skillful survivalists -- if nothing else, they'll tax and repossess your little tract in the woods. But getting together with neighbors is certainly a very good idea no matter what.

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