Friday, March 24, 2017

safe place part 3


SAFE PLACE 3
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note: I'm going to start publishing seven days a week.  Alas, Sunday will NOT be an original article but a reprint.  I have diabolical reasons for this, explained later.  Tune in Sunday.
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As evidenced by ANY large city largely sucking ass to survive ( sunny burgs in California imploded economically and don’t look as bad as Detroit because of perpetual sunshine and newer buildings, but the tax income and crime are comparable nonetheless ), you do NOT want to be in a high population urban area now, let alone as the collapse gets worse.  Big cities are dysfunctional as they are Oil Age one-off experiments ( big cities of yore were in the low hundreds of thousands, not in the tens of millions ).  Since the Petroleum Economy derailed near fifty years ago and we have been the lucky generation given front row tickets to the show, large urban areas have, even as they’ve grown uncontrollably as big corporations consolidated everything squeezing all the jobs into centralized locations, just gotten to be worse and worse places to live.  And the problem with failed cities such as Detroit and most areas of New Orleans is that both police and gangs fight for governance with civilians paying protection money to both.  Infrastructure continues to collapse in the meanwhile, giving doubt that your public and private taxes are for anything other than straight up bribery.

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The issue with a city is that they are so dependent on transportation.  In a rural area, individuals can low tech transportation, feeding a donkey from a backyard pasture.  In a city, you are at the mercy of official transportation networks which it should obviously go without saying are corrupt and inefficient.  What should be an improved service due to consolidation and centralization instead is hindered by bureaucracy and corruption.  They ruin their advantage from personal gain and the taxpayers then receive both poor service and in a lot of cases, no service.  If you live in a city, you live within the trap of transportation.  It isn’t that the rural dweller can grow all that much more food-usually the kitchen garden is the extent of food production ( salad, potatoes and eggs.  Calorie foods in grains are usually still lacking.  Until population falls a LOT, there are too many people around for everyone to have their own farm.  Those poster boys of surplus, the German immigrants to Pennsylvania, settled an area cleared of indigs ), but more the fact informal small governance is practical and much more efficient out there.

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As far as a small town that has already been through its own collapse?  Good crap, take your pick.  The majority of smaller towns took a dump decades ago, victims of national centralization in all industries ( or, complete exportation of an industry ).  Try finding a non-city that has any economic base to speak of.  If they do, it is tenuous at best, and far from very rewarding outside a few “lucky” lottery winners given minimum wage jobs which are forever in danger of being automated or exported ( who says America doesn’t make things anymore?  We make more unemployment all the time, shipping jobs overseas ).  In fact, most built up areas outside of Washington D.C.’s orbit of approval are on federal welfare payments, the sole income provider ( with the beneficiaries being not the recipients but the medical industry and the fake food service industry ).  Take Florida for instance.  One of the states with a decent economy.  What drives it besides Disney, cocaine and Cuban expat money?  Social Security.  Without it, the economy outside Orlando would rival New Mexico.

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California used to live off of the defense industry.  Rural Nevada used to be dependent on free public land grazing ( the West might make a big show of wanting their land back from the Feds, but a lot of the industries there did/are benefiting from low lease rates of public land ).  Whole areas in the Appalachians and similar are living off of medical disability welfare payments-the only recourse for poor hillbillies dying from the toxic leavings from coal mining.  Midwest farms are profit centers for banks alone and survive from farm subsidies.  And etcetera.  This is of course a huge vulnerability but it also forms a sort of set in stone social dynamic that will last until the feds perish.  Then, if the area has little enough population, the new ruling class which is already established and known will have less issues settling into power.  When you know everyone, you have a pulse on the politics and culture of the place.  There are no faceless unknowns to surprise you upon joining the race to rule once federal monies dry up and leave your community to both starve and freeze.

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When federal money is your economy, only the feds folding is a danger.  The great thing about this dependency is that you are in the one area the feds can’t control due to its remoteness and they ALMOST ( I capitalize as warning against complacency ) have to continue subsidizing you to forestall rebellion.  Hey, it’s just printing press money, right?  And there are THOUSANDS of these areas.  As long as it is cheaper to pay welfare than it is to occupy and pacify, your checks will keep clearing.  Granted, the petro-dollar demise is the wild card in all of this, as is the EROI decline.  Without energy to grow and transport, all the money in the world is useless.  And inflation of the hyper variety is of course a consideration.   So, while living in a rural area already has drug problems and property crime issues, low population, partial food growing potential and an industry far more reliable than a private corporation racing to move over to China all make it the preferred already collapsed area to reside.

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Which brings us to whether you should settle in the best collapsed area or stay in a relatively prosperous area you are in now.  Should you hunker down and ride it out?  For purposes of discussion we assume you are the average suburbanite communing from a bedroom community to a job some distance away.  This is the default arrangement for most preppers.  But does it make sense compared to immigrating to a collapsed area?  That comparison tomorrow, the final in the series. 

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10 comments:

  1. I just cant pry myself away.
    I live in a suburb on the edge of a small city of 100,000. Have a good (by todays standards) job and only have to drive 3.5 miles to work. Unless my job goes away I'm riding it out until retirement.(I'm 56)

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    1. I think at this age it really doesn't matter a whole lot either way. If the implosion of the medical industry doesn't kill you at a relatively young age you'll be lucky. The new 80 is 70 and the new 70 is 62. 62 being the average age of death when Social Security was implemented. Or maybe 63. Right in that area.

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  2. Yes, I also am "sitting tight" in lost vegas. I am tied to the job and house but also have an eye on an escape valve. I will use my income and sourcing (shopping, material resources) to build up a measure of self sufficiency if I should have to take the show on the road. Not the best plan but better than about a million other mouth breathers.

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    1. Yep, at least a plan. Another BTN. When I was trapped in Carson I had one of those. Well, several. I felt just as unsafe there as I would have in Vegas. I of course am required by law to hate Vegas, but really it is no worse than a lot of other places, and better than quite a few ( most being on either coast ).

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  3. Portland Oregon (and the Willamette Valley) will be fine after 90% of the people "leave". It was a "port" city on the Pacific ocean up the Columbia/Willamette rivers before oil. It will be a tough place to be during a collapse, but not as tough as Seattle! Seattle is pinched between Lake Washington and Puget Sound, as well as the Cascade Range to the East, so leaving the battle zone means watercraft or aircraft if your timing is too late to drive out in a car or by rail.

    The Great Haired One has a few really-great ideas that he often expands to microscopic detail, but my favorite is the one that having a place to go that is BTN is more important than waiting until a TrophyWifeApproved remote palace/castle/bunker can be obtained. Once this BTN low-cost place is obtained, then the other details found on this blog come into play, depending on your circumstances. Of course, we should live there RFN, but this may be impossible/undesirable for many whiny reasons. Well-concealed long-term very-cheap calories might be cached on the BTN site in buckets with hand tools to process them into edible food. Whole wheat kernals is the recommended kind for price/longevity/density/versatility. This probably means burial. Serious people should have a reasonable plan to be able to walk to the BTN site and survive with backpack contents if modern transport fails. Or, move there rfs.

    Am I understanding correctly?

    pdxr13

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    1. Yes, correct. Obviously one can't expect everyone to follow slavishly and there are variables, but there you go. I like the Often Expands To Microscopic Detail part. That means I'm doing my job of being different than all the others.

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  4. One of the few advantages of small towns is that a citizen can more easily find an individual who has required expertise on repair or construction of said item. "I know a guy who knows a guy who's cousin knows all about that".

    I'm on blood thinners because of an artificial heart valve, so when those run out, I stroke out and die where I am. Kind of freeing actually, I only need to prep until that happens and that shouldn't really take long if thinners are completely gone. Good time to implement a 90 day guarantee, I'll probably be dead in half the time, lol.

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    1. So, you could just eat MRE's the whole time, or freeze dried. Plus, you won't care much about dying so that is liberating. So you must read me for my rapier wit alone :)

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    2. Yeah, pretty much. When people tell me I should be eating that because it is unhealthy, I reply I take Coumadin, which is rat poison. RAT POISON ! And I'm sukpposed to be worried about some frigging calories or unhealthy dose ? LOL!

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    3. Amazing what we ingest, poisons that profit corporations. Then more poisons when we get sick. But old timey doctors were hacks because they bled patients. I think chemo is worse.

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