post prepping 1 of 4

POST PREPPING

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What happens after prepping?  I don’t assume “the apocalypse”, because for a lot of us, the economy will give out before the ass of civilization does.  We can look at South America for an example, but just keep in mind that they are only a loose example.  They are so different culturally that you can’t draw too close a correlation.  I don’t use Africa because they are different in terms of resources.  Do you ever wonder why there is such a different colonial dynamic between the two?

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Central and western South America were of course colonized by the Spanish, who, in a really good example of how not to run an empire, took all their loot and wasted them on wars ( remind you of anyone else you know? ) and left the western hemisphere with little more than peasant worked agricultural areas.  They have remained this way until the present day, for all intents and purposes.  Africa has never been a great source of food surplus, sufficient to pay its own way.  The cost of colony is much higher and usually the most profitable trade is in mineral wealth ( which includes petroleum for our discussion, even though that is really only presently viable as the EROI of the worlds oil declines.  The food and minerals are both higher cost due to disease, distance and local opposition ).

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Agriculture isn’t even all that great of a deal in Central and South America.  The several empires there were in effect  mining fertility to achieve sufficient growth, infamously the Mayans using the historically aberration heavy rainfall and for the Inca’s the anchovy harvest used as fertilizer and protein source.  Much less is known about the Amazon rain forest area, thought to be biochar agriculture, but then as now logging that area is problematic.  Really, it is with good reason that the old Spanish areas weren’t good for much more than silver mining. 

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Africa is a much better producer of food and minerals ( and so much larger than represented on most maps, so there is more there than meets the one dimensional eye ).  It can get overpopulated and stay that way.  In many ways they are at an advantage long term low energy.  The eastern US which is the only sustainable area ( albeit at a much lower population density ) of the country without carbon fuel or colonial inputs could fit in any number of insignificant African countries ( the same with the non-desert Chinese land area ).  As far as the constant warfare characterizing the continent for the last seventy or so years, they differ not at all from many European eras. 

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So, while Africa suffers from a lack of a centralized power monopolizing force and enforcing a peace there, and from them being the poster child of Malthusianism, in many ways of sustainability post petroleum the continent as a whole has advantages.  They are less constrained in resources than South America.  If it wasn’t for cocaine and soy beans, the South American continent would be in far worse shape as it is, WITH carbon fuel inputs.  Coffee is currently a boon but once affluent Yuppies are forced to kick the luxury consumption perhaps not. 

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The reason I’m assuming we emulate South America rather than Africa is because we have essentially mined our fertile areas, just as the Mayans did.  Just as in say, Syria or Greece, once the area is farmed out they never recover.  We COULD recover, as the eastern US did one time previously after the 90% die-off of the agricultural Indian empires, but the population density now will see that the soil does not recover.  We also had the technology and extra energy to far outstrip the soil than the Indians ever did. 

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In that pre-civilization collapse, post-economic collapse time frame, we won’t see quick enough die-off to save the resources, but we will see enough demand on them that we strip the place of the wire in the walls.  Look, the oil is running out.  Fracking oil is licking the bottom of the bowl.  As the oil runs out we will start seeing a lack of oil based services.  Which includes long distance crops ( overseas oil and fertilizer to the Midwest, irrigation for water, train and semi to haul after oil dependent harvest, to processing facilities to turn corn into food like products, to distribution centers to energy dependent freezers and stovetops ). 

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We aren’t eating corn derivatives one day and nothing the next.  More than likely supply disruptions and exploding inflation triage the supply.  Less gets through, not just nothing arriving.  Everyone starts gardening, hunting and raising livestock.  And it isn’t organic and sustainable.  It is more than likely fast and desperate and wasteful, as it is hard to husband and plan ahead when the brats you popped for increased welfare suddenly need to be fed off your own land.  It is easy enough salvaging homes for material, clearing land for more fields, plus planting less bountiful areas with corpses to refurbish the soil. 

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But that is a luxury for after the civilization collapse.  It cannot happen while the authorities still control the area.  There is going to be a time of high population and high resource extraction.  Like South America.  Africa, being a different dynamic, being more naturally abundant in fertile land despite a much longer use ( in theory, if the first western hemisphere settlement dates are in fact correct-which looks less and less likely as time goes on ), has been able to weather the cash crops and mining and civilization collapses far better than South America.  So we look to the peasants of our own hemisphere for a better example of pre apocalypse collapse. 

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Not just from an economic viewpoint but of that of resources.  Another mistake preppers make, not distinguishing the two.  Resources create the economy, not the other way around ( “but, ‘Murica!  Ingenuity!  Hydrogen and batteries are their own fuel source!” ).  Continued tomorrow.

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