Having just spent an awful lot of money on traveling by automobile, and paying from 2.549 to 2.899 for a gallon on 87 octane gasoline over the range of 8 states and 3 weeks. I hope I am done traveling for a while, but alas I have to go another 3,000 miles before the end of June. Over the same route as earlier this month.
But I have downsized my life a lot more than most people do in a year. I filtered out from a 3 bedroom house, and 2 stoarge sheds to a 6' X 6' X 12' trailer. The bulk of the weight being books, totally over 1,000. Over half of these non-fiction, and most of them practical and useful for any time period. Reference with a great lot of survivable information in them.
How many people have their houses chock full of junk they no longer need, have not seen in years, filed in the "i'll fix that up sometime" group, Its a keepsake "we just can't get rid of it, you wore that in highschool last year!"?
We can be as bad as packrats, worst, we can throw away prefectly good items and go buy newer ones to replace them.
Anyway my parents are in their early to mid 70's and I am just back to bumming around, might as well spend some "quaility Time" with my parents, not having any kids to do that with.
I like to say that most of that stuff is kept for the "museum at the end of your life" that folks will come and pay $5 per head to view. At least that's about as rational as any other reason I can think of to keep all this junk.
This is not so much a comment as a question. In yesterday's thread, AlanFromBigEasy posted a short comment about hydroelectric power. As a TVA retiree and Valley denizen, I am very interested in this topic. TVA pretty much developed all available hydro sites in its area and still needed 11 fossil and 3 nuclear sites to meet current demand. In a good year hydro provides about 20% of demand. TVA recently went through a modernization of the existing hydro facilities and was able to increase their capacity quite a bit. The hydro operation is pretty efficient and provides nice renewable source of power as base load for our grid. I worked in the Fossil area, so know more about coal than I do the hydro operation. My question is this: TVA lakes initially built for flood control with electricity as a nice bonus, have lost about a third of their holding capacity due to sedimentation. What does this portend for the future of power generation (not to mention flood control)?
Granny,
Where are you from I grew up in kingsport?
Hydro is dependent on flow and the height of the column of water. Flow rate is pretty consistent in the valley, but larger capacity allows water to be saved for drought. I remember as a kid every time it rained hard Patrick Henry, Watauga, and Holston would flood their spillways. If demand is that much higher I would imagine now they produce more hydroelectric in anticipation of the wet season. So sedimentation should not affect the production much unless it is right up against the dam. I would imagine they dredge an area near the penstock.
Here's another question to go along with the hydro thread. Why is it that the rivers around me have many dams but none of them produce electricity? If you're going through the trouble and expense of putting up a dam, why not stick a turbine or two in it and get some electricity out of it? In other words, if it can be economical to build dams for the purpose of electricity generation, than why not do it when you have to build dams for flood control and other purposes? The dam itself would probably by 90% of the cost anyway. Are hydro dams incompatible with river barge shipping or other purposes?
Federal dams are noted for missing power generation opportunities. If not economic when built (say 1950s) the issue is rarely revisited. A waste.
Also many dams could have increased generation (both more generaTORS & more efficient generation) with modernization. As noted by TNGranny, TVA reworked their dams and power generation and got more power from them. Bureau of Reclamation BADLY needs to do this as well.
Where I live in Oregon there are many flood-control lakes. I have heard, but not confirmed, that at least some of these dams were designed so that turbines could be added. The subject has recently come up again and I hope gains some traction. The big problem with this is that the lakes are dropped in the winter (flood control season) so the power generation would be highly seasonal
I have lived most of my life near Chattanooga, though I was born in Knoxville and have on occasion lived there and in several other places in E. TN. TVA has a problem in upper E TN with new people who have bought lakefront property, do not like the early drawdown that happens on the upper lakes and formed protest groups. So TVA now trys to avoid this even though they need the generation during the hottest driest part of the summer....
Flood control, not so good. 1/3 loss is not that significant (lots of extra capacity normally built in, old engineers were conservative). But wait another 50 years, when they are over 1/2 full, and flood control will suffer.
Loss of storage capacity means that a "Storage Hydroelectric" power plant becomes a "Run-of-the-River" power plant. Power plants take water when they can get it rather than when it is scheduled. Not a problem now, but later it could be.
More turbines to capture the peak flows and quite possibly reworked intakes as sediment fills up the reservior.
But water will still fall and energy can be captured from this fall.
Hydropower won't suffer unless the water level drops below the turbine intakes. Like a lot of the other things we do these days:
global climate change won't worry us until we have a couple years of dustbowl crop failures;
most people won't worry about peak oil until shortages are commonplace;
New Orleans' levees will hold until they won't;
and silt will not affect power production until the lake is almost completely full.
Offhand I'd say hydroelectric is a more reliable source of renewable energy than most.
As for flood control, the USACE has prevented floods by lowering lakes in anticipation of a rainy season, and letting the level rise when it rains, thereby keeping the water level constant downstream. Silt accumulation just means the lake won't have as much range to work with, and can't hold as much flood water.
Reworked intakes can get around even a completely silted up reservior.
Water is going to fall along teh course of the river, with xx meters fall around teh dam. That is emergy and it can be extracted.
North Korea, Albania and now Zaire have been able to keep hydro working even as TSHTF. Not every turbine, and not at peak efficiency, but still operating. Hydroelectric powwer plants are remarkably robust.
Okay, here's a pop quiz for the oil-savvy readers of TOD...
Let's say you owned a refinery with a capacity of about 15 million tons per year. If I recall correctly, a ton is about 7.33 barrels, right? So, in barrels, capacity would be 15 * 7.3 = 110 million barrels per year.
Okay, you've got refining capacity -- but no upstream capacity (i.e., no wells). So, four guys show up at your doorstep, offering to buy a 53% stake. #1 and #2 are from the property next door (i.e., your neighbors), they have lots and lots of wells with lots and lots of oil (or at least you think they have plenty of oil), and they offer you roughly $500-600 million. #3 is from another state, speaks with a funny accent, but has plenty of oil and offers $1.2-1.3 billion, and seems willing to offer even more, given his general demeanor. #4 is another neighbor, has not even a drop of oil to offer, but offers $1.492 billion.
Whose offer do you accept?
Well, to cut to the chase...
Lithuania's Mazheikiu Nafta ( http://www.nafta.lt ) has decided on #4. The contenders were:
#1: TNK/BP
#2: Lukoil/ConocoPhillips
#3: KazMunaiGaz (Kazachstan's state oil company)
#4: PKN Orlen (a Polish refining/marketing company)
The sad remnant of Yukos struck a deal with PKN Orlen on Thursday, after legal maneuvers in a U.S. court. The Russian Federation's legal representative had no objection.
However, a Transneft vice-president was quoted as saying, "We don't even know who PKN Orlen is. We've never met them or dealt with them before." Ouch. So, the flow of crude to the refinery is now in question. The Lithuanian government had bandied the n-word (nationalization), but has agreed with the PKN Orlen deal.
This may be another data point in the exports-are-drying-up series. Dave, westexas, and Khebab, take note...
Nothing to wary about except maybe some lost taxes for Lithuanian budget and lost jobs for ordinary Lithuanians in the coming months. I feel before the end of the next year Mazheikiu Nafta will be mine.
My answer? Go with the bloke who talks like Ozzie Guillen. OK, so I'm a Chicagoan who liked the fact that the White Sox won the World Series. And Ozzie Guillen is a Venezuelian. It's a sure thing that Venezuela has oil. I guess if I was looking to get a new accent, a Venezuelian accent would be cool to get - especially if you intend to run Spanish.
Long term financial considerations are one of the big unknowns for myself and my family. I'm not in the position of buying heaps of precious metal. Most of my monetary wealth is tied up in retirement savings. I'm still stuck with the mindset of maxing out my contribution because I know that is the only retirement I'm liable to get. I'm well versed in the peak oil mantra. I started reading Dieoff.org in the late 90's.
Deep down I know that those retirement funds are probably hosed sometime down the road. The dollar is going to tank, and so will any investments one can make. There's a paucity of fund choices I can make with the retirement account.
In terms of lifestyle, I've made some tough, but good choices. I now live on five acres of old family farm land and built a passive solar log home that works pretty well for keeping comfortable without central heating or air conditioning. At least we won't freeze or fry. The orchard is growing well. I'm gardening. etc.
The lack of adequate supplies of liquid fuels, in and of itself, is not that big of a deal to me. The effect of the liquid fuels deficiency on the economy is what I fear. Adaptations to transportation will take place when prices and/or supply start to bite. People will car pool, bike, hike, public transport themselves to work, move, whatever. I just don't believe the American economy (hence the world economy) can survive a long term contraction.
So this is the perpetual $64,000 question: What to do to stay solvent for the long term and into retirement? I'm a chemist, I make a good living, low debt ratio, 38 years old, with wife and 1 child. Any thoughts? Does anybody else have that creepy feeling that the neocons are gearing up for an organized implosion to save their a**es?
Everybody's situation is different, but there may be some general trends those of us in the know may be leaning towards.
It sounds like you are heading in the right direction. The conventional investments in 401k plan could be a bad deal. I don't think there is a great solution to this. I have cut back on my contributions, but I already have a big chunk in there. Your land and home may be the best investment you ever make.
The pie will be shrinking and there will be more people wanting a piece of the pie.
I was in much the same situation around 35. Although I started as a research chemist, I ended up doing mostly process development and ended up as a chemical plant manager. Unlike you, I said the hell with the chemical industry, for a variety of reasons that aren't germane, and my wife and I moved to the boondocks.
There really isn't any one answer to your question because it depends upon your and your wife's interests. Plus, it depends upon your location and how badly you anticipate the economy to regress/collapse.
If there is production ag or a lot of organic growers around you could consider setting up a home lab to do soil or hay testing. If you are into producing crops, you could do everything from a U-pick/CSA operation (which could be either row crops or permanent crops like blueberries) to rasing mushrooms (there is a big market for specialty ones like mitakies [sp]). We were a small-scale organic farm for a few years but we could never make more then day wages.
You could also consider doing thngs like farm surveys for various agencies. My wife did this for the California Ag Statistics Service for over 20 years. She liked it because it wasn't full time but provided additional income.
In my case, I designed and built houses for a number of years until my body said stop. Maybe you could consider log cabins. Then I became a groundskeeper at the school district here plus I got landscape contractor and pesticide apllicator's licenses.
There are any number of books out there that will give you many, many ideas. Here's a far out one - build wood gas generators. And, one even further out; build home-sized steam-powered electric generators. I have a friend who is big on steam (he has his own steam engine and about 1/2 mile of track on his property). He thinks it wold be easy to build 5kW steam units.
My point to the above post which I never made clear, is that it is necessary to decide how the future is going to play out (a plan that needs revision as information changes is better then no plan at all), develop a wide variety of skills, be flexible and, finally, don't count on anyone to pull your buns out of the fire.
I'm just about 30 years older than you and the major trend I've seen over all these years is that the personal and job security that was once taken for granted no longer exists. One of my goals when moving to the boondocks was to assure that I could maintain my lifestyle with minimal demands upon society at large.
I decided to go into the energy business about 5 years ago and I am 36 now.
Peak oil have given me a lot to think about, I have tried some of my thought here on the oil drum to get some feedback. Now am I close to boiling down my thoughts into a biomass business that combines certain nearly developed tehcnical solutions with a financing model into a kind of franchise idea that ought to be ideal for the Swedish market. The idea is essentially to invest my technicla skills and skills in talking with people regarding physical matters and to get other people to provide capital, the investors get most of the jobs and most of the probably low but probably quite secure and peak oil resistant profit.
If everyting goes well I only have to expand a tenthousandfold to build nucler powerplants. A pity I aim for low and secure rather then high and stock market attractive. :-)
Btw, If anyone have heard about any promising systems for separating woodchip from chipped bark or chipped rotten wood I am quite intrested in it.
My WAG: you're in the top 1%, both in terms of preparedness and financial stability. Sounds like you've done just about everything you reasonably can to prepare.
Absolutely not my area ,but I have had to focus on since learning about PO 1yr. ago.
The US dollar is in trouble.A stages descent, or a collapse seems inevitable.
I don't see putting any $ in someone else's contrrol than necessary.
1.things we need become money in societal breakdowns.
2.once you leave a company you can rollover an IRA to an account you can control. I am doing this, withdrawing maximums-taking the 10% penalty-but not hitting certain tax increase maximums; then buying the things needed (just ordered sheet tin though I won't need a roof anytime soon-if would resale if necessary) Within the IRA I am investing in mining stocks PM,thru Canadian exchanges.
3.with your account you can get CD's, or leave in cash;i.e. make last minute attempts to stay safe financially,for the miraide of problems we may have.
There are conditions where deflation rules and money would be king, but if it so it is probably one of thew worst case senarios, so who knows if our contributions who be honored.
You have done several of the most important things ; your house sounds especially wise Good luck!
Greetings from a fellow Yahoo Dieoffer & AlasBabylon Crow!
Your Question: Does anybody else have that creepy feeling that the neocons are gearing up for an organized implosion to save their a**es?
Recall my postings on the Captain Avranas Strategy.
Remember, he told the Press that he was among the first to abandon the cruiseship Oceania because he thought that he could best direct the passengers' rescue from the safety of land. Mind-boggling!
Anyhow, a proven elite tactic to best enhance their future survival. The world's topdogs will be no different WTSHTF. It only makes sense for them to gradually pull the many societal bilge plugs at the right moment to optimize their chances. It is in our Genes. Otherwise, we would have already had long-running proactive worldwide leadership in voluntary pop. control education and Powerdown. Recall all the countless postings showing infinite growth, elite wealth consolidation, militarism, corruption, etc.
I don't believe anybody is smart enough to figure this thing out. This mess that humans are in is bigger and more complex than anything mere mortals can comprehend. Doesn't mean they won't try, and that's what scares the bejesus out of me.
My genes are telling me to do anything I can to protect my family. Man the hatches. Bar the gates. Beg, borrow, or steal to fill up the larders. Halt, who goes there! My genes don't care about your genes. Yes, I'm a Dawkinsinian (didn't read it persay, but got enough to get the point, still on my reading list).
You are probably correct in your assumption that one person cannot figure this whole thing out, but I believe Jay Hanson, Reg Morrision, and a few select others have come the closest in sketching a general outline of Thermo-Gene decline, but an accurate day-by-day, blow-by-blow predictive timeline is an impossibility, of course.
That is why I google African news regularly: I think all the African bad news offers a possible timeframe glimpse into how we will react at some future time. The unfortunate Africans are already dealing with severe energy shortages, GW desertification and climate shifts, rampant corruption, Overshoot, wars...and on and on.
Generally, TOD is short-timeframe American & global macro- energy focused: nothing wrong with that, but pulling back every now and then to try and refocus on the global micro-view with news snippets of tribal-sized adjustments can be very illuminating. Consider this link and then extrapolate to your personal tribe x# of years into our future:
-----------
Life has changed for the Maasai cattle herders in Tanzania, changed in ways they've never seen. Even the weather seems to be different, with droughts more intense than ever.
Now, those erratic weather patterns have triggered a food crisis affecting millions of people across East Africa. The crisis has gnawed its way into Ololosokwan, a Maasai village near Tanzania's northern border, where people are selling their prized, but emaciated animals for a fraction of their former value and using the slim earnings to buy sacks of corn to feed their families for a few days more.
The drought has killed about 4,000 of the villagers' cattle, completely wiping out the small herds of some families.
"The way we are going is so dangerous," said Kirando Lukeine, who sold three of his animals recently but managed to earn only enough to buy one week's worth of food. A year ago, one cow would have brought 15 sacks of corn. Today, that same cow will buy only one sack.
"Look at our faces," Lukeine added. "We are old, not young, and we don't remember a drought like this."
---------------
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
"Does anybody else have that creepy feeling that the neocons are gearing up for an organized implosion to save their a**es?"
I often wonder about deliberate demand destruction. But who would pull the trigger? The "elites" benefit from the current arrangement: could they really bear to bring it down? Could they come up with a plan that offered them good odds of success in the postimplosion world?
The first sign that someone has figured out how to do it will be that it happens. Will that be distinguishable from an unplanned collapse?
If as Hanson says "the elites" "deploy a bioweapon" -- who are "the elites"? The neocons?
It's not really a matter of who actually "pulls the trigger", however that comes about. The big question, at least in the US, is "Who will we blame?". It's the most important topic out there. High gas prices, blame the oil companies. Blame the immigrants for terrorism. Dems blame the neocons for everything. And vice-versa. So when something really hits the fan most will just rant about the most likely suspect, which these days seems to be the Ay-rabs. Perhaps eventually we'll come to realize who is really to blame. But by then the true criminals be in Barbados sipping martinis watching the food riots on Fox.
Historically, from ancient times to around 1980, you could live on 1 ounce of silver a day. (After 1980 the price of silver started to be manipulated down) Assuming silver reverts to it's mean value, (around $50 per ounce) this will be true again. So - if you expect to live another 30 years, you should put away 10,000 ounces of silver. A year ago, you could buy that for around $70,000.00. Now it will take $120,000.00 - but still cheap compared to it's value in all of history.
If there's any land that you're not using for garden/ orchard, how about planting some trees? AFter the peak, timber will be in short supply both for building and for heating.
The case of retirement is more like the 64 gigabuck question. In 1992 I bought my first PC. It had Windows 3.11 with DOS 6.0 underneath. That version had available QBASIC 4.5 and one night I made a math model of a 401K. Result? It was not good.
It turns out that unless you have a good job at age 18 AND the employer pitches in a buck to a buck, you run a massive risk of outliving that retirement money. That means that you must plan on some method of suicide. That can be the good ol' Inert Gas Method... or you can go out with a bang like a suicide bomber. If you happen to be an airline pilot, you already have the car bomb to use - the plane you drive. Airliners are very effective truck bombs.
Retirement is like Failure. It is not an option. You WILL work until you die. A 401(K) is NOT a retirement plan. It is a glorified severance package at best. Do the math. You will find out yourself that I'm right. And I admit that sucks.
I'm in the process of watching the excellent History Channel series: Vietnam, A Television History (which is less dumbed down than it sounds) and the VC/NVA had old folks fighting, and yes, becoming heroes, up into their 80s. Lots in their 50s/60s.
Eventually, my body or my mind will not be able to maintain the work ethic that I currently enjoy (or don't sometimes;-). Yes, I've done the math. Being a 'millionaire' at 65 will not be worth a million due to inflation. I also happen to believe that the great peak oil induced depression will make all those savings useless. As many of the posters have replied and observed, I'm investing in the homefront and skills.
We all die eventually, it's the ride getting there that is so much fun. When I retire from my career, I would like to think that I've built up enough capital to keep on enjoying life without the fuss of 'working for the man'.
good post - but a million dollars with inflation is fine - just invest in things that go up with inflation. and own alot of 1-3 month treasuries, that keep resetting at higher rates
and insulate your monthly expenses with things that are free or cheap, like growing 10-30% of your own food and canning - inflation means you wont have to buy this 10-30% somewhere, so cereris paribus, its deflationary for yourself
But a depression is a deflationary time, and if your million is in cash or gold, you'll do fine. If you had $1,000,000 in 1936, you would be rich indeed.
But I have downsized my life a lot more than most people do in a year. I filtered out from a 3 bedroom house, and 2 stoarge sheds to a 6' X 6' X 12' trailer. The bulk of the weight being books, totally over 1,000. Over half of these non-fiction, and most of them practical and useful for any time period. Reference with a great lot of survivable information in them.
How many people have their houses chock full of junk they no longer need, have not seen in years, filed in the "i'll fix that up sometime" group, Its a keepsake "we just can't get rid of it, you wore that in highschool last year!"?
We can be as bad as packrats, worst, we can throw away prefectly good items and go buy newer ones to replace them.
Anyway my parents are in their early to mid 70's and I am just back to bumming around, might as well spend some "quaility Time" with my parents, not having any kids to do that with.
Where are you from I grew up in kingsport?
Hydro is dependent on flow and the height of the column of water. Flow rate is pretty consistent in the valley, but larger capacity allows water to be saved for drought. I remember as a kid every time it rained hard Patrick Henry, Watauga, and Holston would flood their spillways. If demand is that much higher I would imagine now they produce more hydroelectric in anticipation of the wet season. So sedimentation should not affect the production much unless it is right up against the dam. I would imagine they dredge an area near the penstock.
Matt
Also many dams could have increased generation (both more generaTORS & more efficient generation) with modernization. As noted by TNGranny, TVA reworked their dams and power generation and got more power from them. Bureau of Reclamation BADLY needs to do this as well.
What river are you on ? Any specific dams ?
thanks for your insight. I live near the Ohio River. Don't know the name of many dams except one is called Willow Island.
Loss of storage capacity means that a "Storage Hydroelectric" power plant becomes a "Run-of-the-River" power plant. Power plants take water when they can get it rather than when it is scheduled. Not a problem now, but later it could be.
More turbines to capture the peak flows and quite possibly reworked intakes as sediment fills up the reservior.
But water will still fall and energy can be captured from this fall.
- global climate change won't worry us until we have a couple years of dustbowl crop failures;
- most people won't worry about peak oil until shortages are commonplace;
- New Orleans' levees will hold until they won't;
- and silt will not affect power production until the lake is almost completely full.
Offhand I'd say hydroelectric is a more reliable source of renewable energy than most.As for flood control, the USACE has prevented floods by lowering lakes in anticipation of a rainy season, and letting the level rise when it rains, thereby keeping the water level constant downstream. Silt accumulation just means the lake won't have as much range to work with, and can't hold as much flood water.
Water is going to fall along teh course of the river, with xx meters fall around teh dam. That is emergy and it can be extracted.
North Korea, Albania and now Zaire have been able to keep hydro working even as TSHTF. Not every turbine, and not at peak efficiency, but still operating. Hydroelectric powwer plants are remarkably robust.
Let's say you owned a refinery with a capacity of about 15 million tons per year. If I recall correctly, a ton is about 7.33 barrels, right? So, in barrels, capacity would be 15 * 7.3 = 110 million barrels per year.
Okay, you've got refining capacity -- but no upstream capacity (i.e., no wells). So, four guys show up at your doorstep, offering to buy a 53% stake. #1 and #2 are from the property next door (i.e., your neighbors), they have lots and lots of wells with lots and lots of oil (or at least you think they have plenty of oil), and they offer you roughly $500-600 million. #3 is from another state, speaks with a funny accent, but has plenty of oil and offers $1.2-1.3 billion, and seems willing to offer even more, given his general demeanor. #4 is another neighbor, has not even a drop of oil to offer, but offers $1.492 billion.
Whose offer do you accept?
Well, to cut to the chase...
Lithuania's Mazheikiu Nafta ( http://www.nafta.lt ) has decided on #4. The contenders were:
#1: TNK/BP
#2: Lukoil/ConocoPhillips
#3: KazMunaiGaz (Kazachstan's state oil company)
#4: PKN Orlen (a Polish refining/marketing company)
The sad remnant of Yukos struck a deal with PKN Orlen on Thursday, after legal maneuvers in a U.S. court. The Russian Federation's legal representative had no objection.
However, a Transneft vice-president was quoted as saying, "We don't even know who PKN Orlen is. We've never met them or dealt with them before." Ouch. So, the flow of crude to the refinery is now in question. The Lithuanian government had bandied the n-word (nationalization), but has agreed with the PKN Orlen deal.
This may be another data point in the exports-are-drying-up series. Dave, westexas, and Khebab, take note...
Deep down I know that those retirement funds are probably hosed sometime down the road. The dollar is going to tank, and so will any investments one can make. There's a paucity of fund choices I can make with the retirement account.
In terms of lifestyle, I've made some tough, but good choices. I now live on five acres of old family farm land and built a passive solar log home that works pretty well for keeping comfortable without central heating or air conditioning. At least we won't freeze or fry. The orchard is growing well. I'm gardening. etc.
The lack of adequate supplies of liquid fuels, in and of itself, is not that big of a deal to me. The effect of the liquid fuels deficiency on the economy is what I fear. Adaptations to transportation will take place when prices and/or supply start to bite. People will car pool, bike, hike, public transport themselves to work, move, whatever. I just don't believe the American economy (hence the world economy) can survive a long term contraction.
So this is the perpetual $64,000 question: What to do to stay solvent for the long term and into retirement? I'm a chemist, I make a good living, low debt ratio, 38 years old, with wife and 1 child. Any thoughts? Does anybody else have that creepy feeling that the neocons are gearing up for an organized implosion to save their a**es?
Everybody's situation is different, but there may be some general trends those of us in the know may be leaning towards.
The pie will be shrinking and there will be more people wanting a piece of the pie.
There really isn't any one answer to your question because it depends upon your and your wife's interests. Plus, it depends upon your location and how badly you anticipate the economy to regress/collapse.
If there is production ag or a lot of organic growers around you could consider setting up a home lab to do soil or hay testing. If you are into producing crops, you could do everything from a U-pick/CSA operation (which could be either row crops or permanent crops like blueberries) to rasing mushrooms (there is a big market for specialty ones like mitakies [sp]). We were a small-scale organic farm for a few years but we could never make more then day wages.
You could also consider doing thngs like farm surveys for various agencies. My wife did this for the California Ag Statistics Service for over 20 years. She liked it because it wasn't full time but provided additional income.
In my case, I designed and built houses for a number of years until my body said stop. Maybe you could consider log cabins. Then I became a groundskeeper at the school district here plus I got landscape contractor and pesticide apllicator's licenses.
There are any number of books out there that will give you many, many ideas. Here's a far out one - build wood gas generators. And, one even further out; build home-sized steam-powered electric generators. I have a friend who is big on steam (he has his own steam engine and about 1/2 mile of track on his property). He thinks it wold be easy to build 5kW steam units.
I'm just about 30 years older than you and the major trend I've seen over all these years is that the personal and job security that was once taken for granted no longer exists. One of my goals when moving to the boondocks was to assure that I could maintain my lifestyle with minimal demands upon society at large.
Peak oil have given me a lot to think about, I have tried some of my thought here on the oil drum to get some feedback. Now am I close to boiling down my thoughts into a biomass business that combines certain nearly developed tehcnical solutions with a financing model into a kind of franchise idea that ought to be ideal for the Swedish market. The idea is essentially to invest my technicla skills and skills in talking with people regarding physical matters and to get other people to provide capital, the investors get most of the jobs and most of the probably low but probably quite secure and peak oil resistant profit.
If everyting goes well I only have to expand a tenthousandfold to build nucler powerplants. A pity I aim for low and secure rather then high and stock market attractive. :-)
Btw, If anyone have heard about any promising systems for separating woodchip from chipped bark or chipped rotten wood I am quite intrested in it.
http://216.48.37.142/pubs/10636
There were like 12 other studies if you google "bark chip seperation"
The US dollar is in trouble.A stages descent, or a collapse seems inevitable.
I don't see putting any $ in someone else's contrrol than necessary.
1.things we need become money in societal breakdowns.
2.once you leave a company you can rollover an IRA to an account you can control. I am doing this, withdrawing maximums-taking the 10% penalty-but not hitting certain tax increase maximums; then buying the things needed (just ordered sheet tin though I won't need a roof anytime soon-if would resale if necessary) Within the IRA I am investing in mining stocks PM,thru Canadian exchanges.
3.with your account you can get CD's, or leave in cash;i.e. make last minute attempts to stay safe financially,for the miraide of problems we may have.
There are conditions where deflation rules and money would be king, but if it so it is probably one of thew worst case senarios, so who knows if our contributions who be honored.
You have done several of the most important things ; your house sounds especially wise Good luck!
Greetings from a fellow Yahoo Dieoffer & AlasBabylon Crow!
Your Question: Does anybody else have that creepy feeling that the neocons are gearing up for an organized implosion to save their a**es?
Recall my postings on the Captain Avranas Strategy.
Remember, he told the Press that he was among the first to abandon the cruiseship Oceania because he thought that he could best direct the passengers' rescue from the safety of land. Mind-boggling!
Anyhow, a proven elite tactic to best enhance their future survival. The world's topdogs will be no different WTSHTF. It only makes sense for them to gradually pull the many societal bilge plugs at the right moment to optimize their chances. It is in our Genes. Otherwise, we would have already had long-running proactive worldwide leadership in voluntary pop. control education and Powerdown. Recall all the countless postings showing infinite growth, elite wealth consolidation, militarism, corruption, etc.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
My genes are telling me to do anything I can to protect my family. Man the hatches. Bar the gates. Beg, borrow, or steal to fill up the larders. Halt, who goes there! My genes don't care about your genes. Yes, I'm a Dawkinsinian (didn't read it persay, but got enough to get the point, still on my reading list).
You are probably correct in your assumption that one person cannot figure this whole thing out, but I believe Jay Hanson, Reg Morrision, and a few select others have come the closest in sketching a general outline of Thermo-Gene decline, but an accurate day-by-day, blow-by-blow predictive timeline is an impossibility, of course.
That is why I google African news regularly: I think all the African bad news offers a possible timeframe glimpse into how we will react at some future time. The unfortunate Africans are already dealing with severe energy shortages, GW desertification and climate shifts, rampant corruption, Overshoot, wars...and on and on.
Generally, TOD is short-timeframe American & global macro- energy focused: nothing wrong with that, but pulling back every now and then to try and refocus on the global micro-view with news snippets of tribal-sized adjustments can be very illuminating. Consider this link and then extrapolate to your personal tribe x# of years into our future:
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/SODA-6Q64CB?OpenDocument
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Life has changed for the Maasai cattle herders in Tanzania, changed in ways they've never seen. Even the weather seems to be different, with droughts more intense than ever.
Now, those erratic weather patterns have triggered a food crisis affecting millions of people across East Africa. The crisis has gnawed its way into Ololosokwan, a Maasai village near Tanzania's northern border, where people are selling their prized, but emaciated animals for a fraction of their former value and using the slim earnings to buy sacks of corn to feed their families for a few days more.
The drought has killed about 4,000 of the villagers' cattle, completely wiping out the small herds of some families.
"The way we are going is so dangerous," said Kirando Lukeine, who sold three of his animals recently but managed to earn only enough to buy one week's worth of food. A year ago, one cow would have brought 15 sacks of corn. Today, that same cow will buy only one sack.
"Look at our faces," Lukeine added. "We are old, not young, and we don't remember a drought like this."
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Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I often wonder about deliberate demand destruction. But who would pull the trigger? The "elites" benefit from the current arrangement: could they really bear to bring it down? Could they come up with a plan that offered them good odds of success in the postimplosion world?
The first sign that someone has figured out how to do it will be that it happens. Will that be distinguishable from an unplanned collapse?
If as Hanson says "the elites" "deploy a bioweapon" -- who are "the elites"? The neocons?
It turns out that unless you have a good job at age 18 AND the employer pitches in a buck to a buck, you run a massive risk of outliving that retirement money. That means that you must plan on some method of suicide. That can be the good ol' Inert Gas Method... or you can go out with a bang like a suicide bomber. If you happen to be an airline pilot, you already have the car bomb to use - the plane you drive. Airliners are very effective truck bombs.
Retirement is like Failure. It is not an option. You WILL work until you die. A 401(K) is NOT a retirement plan. It is a glorified severance package at best. Do the math. You will find out yourself that I'm right. And I admit that sucks.
I'm in the process of watching the excellent History Channel series: Vietnam, A Television History (which is less dumbed down than it sounds) and the VC/NVA had old folks fighting, and yes, becoming heroes, up into their 80s. Lots in their 50s/60s.
Go out with a bang.
We all die eventually, it's the ride getting there that is so much fun. When I retire from my career, I would like to think that I've built up enough capital to keep on enjoying life without the fuss of 'working for the man'.
and insulate your monthly expenses with things that are free or cheap, like growing 10-30% of your own food and canning - inflation means you wont have to buy this 10-30% somewhere, so cereris paribus, its deflationary for yourself
Antoinetta III
http://streams.cei.org/