Monday, July 31, 2017

roman meal


ROMAN MEAL

Don’t you just hate how you always have the perfect verbal retort after the fact?  Some douche gets in a great one liner and you sputter and stammer and go away in a huff.  Then as you are falling asleep that night, or showering the next morning, the perfect response suddenly pops into your head and you feel like a complete idiot for lack of timely delivery.  Well, that’s how I feel right about now.  All these years listening to Optimistic Ollie’s go on and on about the Stair Step Collapse and all I can do is get pissed off and try to say ANYTHING except “yeh, well this time is different” because if you say that you sound like the idiot who bought a half million dollar house in San Francisco, which you got cheap because it is on the San Andreas Fault, for no down negative interest rate balloon payment mortgage.  Which included as a bonus a three hour round trip commute to your job.  Which was just downsized.  I’ve always hated the Stair Step Collapse theory.  Not because it isn’t possible-I understand that my extra paranoia, cynicism and hate isn’t ALWAYS a positive trait.  Anything can happen.  I hate it because it is a big steaming pile of complacency.

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I’ve read a lot on the collapses of the Roman and Mayan civilizations.  Enough to know there are as many opinions and theories so as to confuse everyone.  It is like a democratic and republican debate on Gore Warming.  It seems like the best sources of information are when you AREN’T reading about the collapse per se.  Any book genre will flog the dead horse of its own expert, so for instance a military historian will ONLY focus on the sad financial straights of the Legions and the barbarian invasions.  Economists only focus on inflation.  Organic permaculture broccoli huggers focus on soil denuded famines and solar cycle advocates only drought.  Reading on other subjects which only mention the collapse in passing seem to deliver less biased hints.  Of course, no one should be all that confused.  Every civilization in the history of ever has crashed and burned from overpopulation and resource depletion.  That is NOT rocket science 101.  Common damn sense is what it should be but too many folks are too specialized and flailing about for fame and recognition and they allow themselves to attribute overly complex theories and solutions to any and all problems. 

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So aren’t you the lucky one, because here at the Bison Global Empire Publishing, LLC, fame and fortune are the last things that will ever happen.  In fact, there are better odds of a mermaid popping out of my toilet and wanting my babies than there is, ever, of any kind of recognition or worshipfulness.  That’s okay, don’t beat yourself up for not buying my books or telling your friends about me.  I’m okay.  I’m used to it.  But as a bonus to your selfishness and inattentiveness, what you get here is the very opposite of complexity.  I like simple.  My whole life’s work is simplifying complexity.  That quest is what makes my nipples hard and my sphincter tingle.  If fame and fortune came knocking I’d tell them to hump off.  I’m aware I need to be dead before my greatness is acknowledged.  I’m not saying that is fair, just that it is inevitable.  Only after the collapse will you slap yourself on the forehead and proclaim, wow, I could have had a bucket of grain and Jim was right and my AR is jammed and I feel like a douche.  I’m hoping with my last breath I can toast you all with a last shot of whiskey and tell you I told you so.

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Okay, let’s get back to the perfect retort I finally thought of.  Ready? “If Romans lived life as usual in a stair step collapse, and the depopulation of the capital was so complete sheep were grazing in the ruins of the Coliseum but happened so gradually no one noticed, how were they fed that whole time?”.  Got that?  Rome was dependent on imported grain.  The ocean dockworks created with concrete, an engineering marvel as they were cast on site with some of the worlds best cement, enabled the capital to be overpopulated.  Records exist relating the needed quantity of grain arriving daily.  So, once the hyperinflation and military contraction and the collapse of the overseas garrisons was underway, how exactly did the grain get to the capital?  Buuuuzzzz!  Wrong answer.  It didn’t!  Oh, that isn’t a problem, you proclaim, they just moved out to the countryside.  Buuuuzzzzz! Wrong answer!  The grain had to be imported because the farms both couldn’t create enough for the overpopulated cities, but also production was decreasing from fertility loss.  Overproduction of crops over time, the go-to answer always for increasing population. 

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Now, riddle me this, batass, why were there so many plague outbreaks at the time?  DINGDINGDING!  Correct answer!  Malnutrition.  Yes, less food because imports didn’t go 100% one day and zero the next.  It was a gradual decrease, even if it was in the form of a waterfall or Seneca collapse.  Less calories don’t usually kill off the population from famine but from other factors “fed” by malnutrition.  Before the ships stopped bringing grain, just not ever enough, they also brought plague preying on a weakened population.  Now, what was that about business as usual?  Easy adaptation to a slow collapse?  How do people eat when the centralized food importation system crashes with the economy and alongside the end of its protecting military?  They don’t.  That is the simple friggin answer.  How is a stair step collapse possible when the food stops being delivered, while at the same time people drop like flies from disease?  Remember, a new disease, loosed upon a sick populace, typically can initially wipe out 90% of the population.  It quickly drops in fatality as the stronger or further immune increase as a percentage of the population, but the first wave of casualties is brutal.

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The government has collapsed.  As has the military which relied on a central state for funding.  Like all failing empires, the military had been so reduced in size it was at the end largely ineffectual, even if it could have been independently supported by the surviving elite of the day.  No more food was being imported as the economy has collapsed.  No surrounding farmland is productive due to soil exhaustion and few plots were even worked due to taxes.  As the population died off from plague.  And you think this picture represents a stair step collapse?  Buuuuzzzz!  Wrong answer, bitches!  This is a waterfall collapse.  Decentralization is not a pretty process, as the centralized organization collapses and the population was fed by that organization.  Empires collapse from resource contraction.  The soil is already exploited once central power collapses.  Only a very small percentage of the population can survive on the denuded topsoil.  How do you do the math that only a very small percentage die off every decade after that?

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Let’s do the calculations.  The petrodollar is abandoned by all but Mexico and Canada.  The US instantly bankrupts as oil imports stop and we are suddenly faced with 30% less oil.  As the economy fails, truckers can’t get fuel and companies can’t get paid as the credit and redemption system fails.  Food imports into New York City ( or, fill in the blank for the metropolis of your choice ) are cut drastically.  The National Guard can’t escort or replace enough trucks as most units are still overseas and there aren’t enough troops.  Now, after a couple of months of this, less food, plus garbage piling up and sewer main leaks not being fixed, disease breaks out.  This is what you call a stair step collapse?  The first winter and more population is rotting away than moving about.  At the same time, PG&E can’t get enough coal shipped to it as the banking payment system which had used the Internet fails alongside it.  Lack of electrical power generation leads to the system being overloaded when the power does come on at random times ( remember, the system is past replacement date and suffers from decades of maintenance avoidance ) and before you know it, the Los Angeles basin isn’t getting water pumped over the mountains to it, nor are gasoline pumps working.  The mass exodus must be on foot.  Well, guess what surrounds L.A.?  Desert, and lots of it.  How do most of the fleeing population survive?  That is a stair step collapse?

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Empires are food importers.  First the conquered territories provide the extra food and population explodes.  Later, you conquer more land and use your new wealth to buy even more food.  Your military safeguards the food shipments.  Then, your nearby farms fail as they were overworked trying to feed even more people and the inflated currency buys less food imports and the military can’t get more land or protect enough shipments.  That is how empires rise and fall.  There might be exceptions, such as the Egyptian empire rising and falling over and over with the level of the Nile, but they are exceptions.  Most Agricultural Age empires follow the same pattern.  We are also, just that oil is substituting for food right now.  The soil is gone, and as soon as the oil is gone so are food imports and domestic food and food transportation.  That is why the US cannot last as a viable entity.  The only part of the country able to feed itself is so overpopulated it won’t feed itself and without petroleum inputs the Midwest can’t feed everyone else.  Without oil, they are NOT our breadbasket as the soil is dead and the well irrigation some places need along with it.  Greece fell along with grain imports, as did Rome as will we with the inevitable oil import cessation.  That is why it is so important to believe that Fracking will save us all.

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Stair step collapse, bite my ass.

END ( article related link http://amzn.to/2eIyrwb )
 
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20 comments:

  1. Hey , I promote you every chance that I get.
    Though I'll admit I must do better on donations...

    Actually I pray to the Gods for that waterfall !
    Can't foresee any chance of longer term survivability otherwise if it comes stair step fashion.

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    1. Hey, if you get me more minions and THEY donate, your job is done. You know, that might be an article. If we don't get a waterfall, how does the violent fight for resources effect you? Thanks, now I got THAT turd stuck in my head-another huge picture event. Big picture wasn't enough! :) I think I touched on this before, such as when the fedgov protects the oil fields and rail and lets everyone else die, but I think I should go from focusing on macro to micro.

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    2. The stair step approach doesn't concern me too much.
      So far as the golden hoards are a factor. Not nearly the amount of fear that I have for government entities.
      If it is a slow collapse , the powers that be will have authority to go house to house. Confiscating preps , munitions etc. Giving even more credence to getting far off grid before this happens.
      Perhaps caches buried are the only way around that eventuality.
      Something like the POD to hide in for appearances. Then supplies stashed with hiking range , spread out in a week radius. Each with no more han a single months provisions ? Then if the Feds or locals stumble upon one of them, they don't get more than the single months stuff.
      One needs have a believable stash at the POD kept available for satisfying whomever is stealing from you. We'll call this the sacrificial goods.

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    3. Caches and sacrificial food and guns should probably be standard anyway.

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  2. Don't forget the cities will burn. Could be people trying to keep warm by burning their chip board furniture. Everyday there are fires in cities that could destroy them if they were not caught in time. Shut the water systems down and take fuel away from the fire trucks. Thing would get out of hand pretty quickly.

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    1. Any rural area even remotly prone to bush/brush/forest fires will burn the first dry summer. Bush fires dont go out, unless there is like months of wet weather, even then they have been known to flare up latter. They need to be put out. If no one is putting out fires they will smolder away on still days or wet days and flare up on hot windy days. Take my word on it as a experianced bush fire fighter, every thing WILL burn.
      Aussie

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    2. Burn, baby! Too bad it will be our backyards rather than just the economy.

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    3. Fires are actually one of my biggest fears. Even now in current 'good' times, building to keep fire from endangering your supplies and shelter is important, but figuring out how to do so while building as quick and easy as possible is a real challenge.

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    4. I believe the 50 foot rule is too close, so I try for a minimum of 100. And I still worry, even with metal trailers.

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    5. The only stratagy for bushfires in a PSHTF world that I can see would be any good is to lite up and burn the surounding country side early in the season on days when its not to windy. The only problem with this is that neighbours might not understand what your doing and shoot you as being a arsonist.
      Aussie

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    6. The neighbors with their meth labs might start the fires first. In my case, the brush is the wood supply. Problematic.

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    7. Yes extreamly problematic, but a gental controled burn want be nearly as destructive as a uncontroled wild fire that will probably sweep through if nothing is done. Bush fires arnt as dangerous as people make out, the real danger is in haveing all your resources burnt.
      Aussie

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  3. Slow collapse is one of the worst case senerios by my way of thinking, only slightly above nuklear holocaust. Slow Collapse equal gulages, government death squods, people disapearing in the night as the rest of use get worked to death to try to prop up a failing system for the greater good. Slow collapse might be a multi generational advent.

    I would rather deal with mad max biker gangs or fundermentalist jihadist any day rather than government secete police.
    regards Aussie

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    1. Dude, I think we already have death squads and disappearances, and being worked to death both by failing health, bogus health, malnutricion and tec. It is less in our face, but only less prevailent since the gov is so incompetent anymore. And lazy.

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    2. Yes agreed, but it hasnt gotten to north Korean or soviet Russian levels yet. Could get a whole heap worse, like a factor of 10 times worse.
      Aussie

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    3. I would prefer a little nuclear war to the slowest possible collapse you posit (and I agree is the likely result if slow enough).

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    4. As Fuki proved, a little radiation is good for us! :)

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  4. you have been quoted by remus at woodpile report!!! you are famous now for more than just your flowing locks!!

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    1. I know you wanted to add my wit and charm a d ability to turn a phrase, but the other minions were watching and so you had to be careful. It's okay, I knew what you meant. We're all good, dawg.

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  5. Don't forget about EarthFirst! and the similar Maoist terrorists who would have no problem making it a jihad mission to take down and keep down the high voltage transmission lines that move Bonneville Power to SoCal, maybe even killing a few service workers so that repairs require infantry support (making the whole thing much more expensive, like Iraq). Repeat with NatGas and water, and SoCal will have the correct population pretty soon (~50,000 souls).

    Maintenance is really important! Repairs even more so. MXS workers who are not under military orders will not go to a hostile fire zone to make repairs. Bad things follow broken systems.

    pdxr13

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