c'mon guys do we need to go there? I'm stressed out enough already!

 

Get prepared!!

 

Get prepared!!

I'm "prepared" in that I have enough firepower to protect my family and our belongings from anything less than an angry mob attack, and enough water & dry food to last a few weeks. But outside of that I'm screwed! No amount of shotguns and canned ravioli can really "prepare" you for that.

I'm in the process of getting a home loan and I intend to move someplace rural and hidden. Might have a slightly better chance out there, but I know that still isn't good enough.

I believe that the only way you could survive an economic collapse on the magnitude that brings about total anarchy (societal collapse), is to be knowledgeable enough and ready to go full-on nomad at any time. Forget storing up food, hording guns, digging cisterns, growing crops, defending you fortress. If someone wants what you have (and they will), and there's no law (and there wouldn't be), they're going to get it - up to and including people, like your daughters, if you're unfortunate enough to have any at the time. Best to not have anything that anybody wants, and know how to live that way. If you can walk into the woods with nothing but your underwear and walk back out a month later, you're good. Otherwise, God be with you...

And now my head has been successfully un-holed from the ground and I must find a way to get it back in there. Thanks a lot!

 

I have yet to ever follow how so many people seem to be convinced that if society has a major problem everyone is going to automatically turn into mass hordes of raiding looters of those who have little raiding from those who have resources.

Throughout history we have had countless examples of governments and societies falling apart suddenly and so far no one ever showed people automatically resorting to mass looting or worse on a grand scale to the point of total ruin.

What they do show is that when the currently established societal structure collapses people quicky band together and start forming a new one and very little looting and outright running amok ever goes on. At worse a few radical idiots try it and quickly get knocked down by the majority and thats about it.

On the grand scale of things when one established societal standard experiences a hard collapse it's typically because it was already failing to the point the majority of the people in it were already on their way to reforming the rules in a new way for the betterment of the majority which as soon as it's clear the old way is done the new way starts being put in place.

But thats what I got out of world history classes.

 

Throughout history we have had countless examples of governments and societies falling apart suddenly and so far no one ever showed people automatically resorting to mass looting or worse on a grand scale to the point of total ruin.

I hope you are right.
I also hope I die of natural causes before North America has its next major revision. I have 40 acres, but I'm way too old to farm it!

 

I have yet to ever follow how so many people seem to be convinced that if society has a major problem everyone is going to automatically turn into mass hordes of raiding looters of those who have little raiding from those who have resources.

I think most people believe a sizable fraction of people will because of current events in this country.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-Gray-protestors-clash-violently-funeral.html

 

History has shown that when societies collapse it's mostly the ones who were fighting over their control or rule over it that have the major problems with being looted and worse but then they are usually the ones who are responsible for running the society into the ground to the point the common people revolt and overthrow them to begin with.

The majority of the average people just keep on going as they always had with minor inconvenience while they set up the new rules of commerce and conduct while they try and rebuild the system with better people for the leadership positions.

 

Yes, society restructures, but there is chaos in the short term, and if you don't survive the short term, the long term doesn't matter.

 

Yes and the primary and immediate chaos tends to always be centered around the heavy urban population centers. (Where apparently all the idiots live.)

Us rural folk tend to be far less affected and much faster at joining forces to maintain our necessary societal structure which is why when things go bad in some other part of the world you don't see groups of farmers and small town rural folk making the news for going off the deep end running amok looting and burning everything in site.

A very good example would be like when we get severe extended winter storms around here.

The people in the city tend to get all panicky when major power outages and road closings happen and their streets are blocked with snow and they can't get out for more than a day or two.

Us rural folk however don't. Those of us with extra food, generators, heaters or what ever else are out helping our neighbors who need it. Plus when the state and local highway departments are tied up doing in town clean up first we don't sit around whining. Many of us like my self will be out going above and beyond with our own equipment plowing and clearing roads and private driveways for those around us who don't have those resources.

I have been a part of that experience an number of times in my life.
From our perspective its amusing when there is a major infrastructure shutdown and those of us out in the middle of nowhere are on top of things to the point it's barely even and inconvenience.
Many times I have seen where main roads and highways are not even open and primary power is still out and us rural nobodies have already cleared all of the primary side roads, driveways and whatever else that was needed to help our neighbors long before the local road and utility crews ever left town.

 

I haven't studied societal collapses of the past so I can't speak with authority on any particular event; all I know is the present, and I know that there a few key things about the present which are very different from the past in a very bad way. A few key things that otherwise would have promoted quick recovery we have done away with.

We have disconnected ourselves from the life-giving earth. It would be a challenge to walk any street in any major metropolitan area and find a single person who has a clue how to sustain themselves without an endless procession of truck bringing in food from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Major cities used to get their food from small farms just outside the city limits. Those farms have been paved over and replaced with suburbs. The small farms gave way to megafarms which are maintained almost autonomously by huge machines and the .1% of people who know how they work. People keep reproducing but land doesn't. It's hard now to find and afford suitable land if you had a notion to grow your own food. It used to be common for suburbanites to know about gardening and general handiness. Now we have turned ourselves into pure consumers who know only how wax cars, serve pre-cooked chicken, or shuffle papers. Nobody saves money, or food, or owns anything useful for survival except weapons. In the past people saved up and bought and owned things but we as a society are perpetually running on empty, stopping at every gas station along the way to put 25c in the tank, on credit to be repayed with APR. We are all desperate and ravenous to begin with, and when our tanks run dry and that next gas station has no food for our kids and we have no clue how to grow any, nor any room to plant if we did, its dog eat dog time.

 

You are right. My grandparents grew their own food. My mother rode a horse to school. I am the first generation divorced from the farm, and now, I'm too old to plow it with a mule. There are at least two generations after me that were raised with grocery store food and automobiles. This disconnect from the land and the incredible population numbers say that tens of millions will die if the huge farming corporations fail, or even if the gasoline supply fails. Most of us are at the mercy of the "improvements" that made cities possible.

Some people still live on farms. They have a fair chance. A million Wall Street bankers can't learn how to feed themselves fast enough to survive a sudden collapse.

 

. I have 40 acres, but I'm way too old to farm it!

you are certainly a rarity!
Most Americans don't own ANY land, and those who do, my WAG is that 90% don't own more than the 1/4 acre residential lot their house sits on.

Check this out.

CIA Factbook says the area of the U.S. is 2.26396048 × 10^9 acres, which means the theoretical maximum number of individuals who could own 40 acres of U.S. territory is ~56.6 million or 18.6% of the July 2008 estimate of US population. Subract Flunkie's 30% estimate of federal land ownership, and that leaves ~39.6 million or 13.0%.

That's including the barren wastelands of west texas and everything.

I wish I could find 40ac around here that i could afford. Going price is aroud minimum $20k/acre unless you want to move 60mi outside houston in which it goes down to "only" $5k-10k.

 

You guy's except tcmtech are so funny. He like me have always lived by the Hank Jr. song -

 

I grew up in the country and that's where I'm trying to get back to. I know to raise animals and i halfass know how to farm. Living in the country and feeding yourself off the land does feel good. I feels more independent and it makes some poeple (like Hank jr., and you) feel invincible. But the truth is, in the kind of calamity we have set ourselves up for, living in the country would be only a little better than living downtown in the nearest metropolis. At least you would have a chance. As long as nobody messed with you. But those millions of hungry people aren't just going to quietly roll over and die cleanly within the confines of their highrise condos. They're going to go out looking for the people who they know are most likely to have food; the people who grow it themselves: YOU. Are you "prepared" for that? I'm guessing living 50mi outside the big city affords you maybe a couple weeks more life expectancy than the hordes. Unless you live in a place hundreds of miles from anywhere, country life won't be much to fall back on. That's why i say the only plan with a reasonable chance of success is to go Bear Grylls style and literally living OFF the land, not ON it. Knowing what roots and bugs to eat while others forage for canned goods and plunder rural gardens and hog pens. Not walking around with a shotgun that anyone else would want to take away from you; carrying nothing more than a pointy stick and being able to live indefinitely like that.

 

That's why i say the only plan with a reasonable chance of success is to go Bear Grylls style and literally living OFF the land, not ON it. Knowing what roots and bugs to eat while others forage for canned goods and plunder rural gardens and hog pens. Not walking around with a shotgun that anyone else would want to take away from you; carrying nothing more than a pointy stick and being able to live indefinitely like that.

I might be picking off trespassers from the barn roof, but it's better than picking them off from my house in the middle of 3 million people.

 

You guy's except tcmtech are so funny. He like me have always lived by the Hank Jr. song -

Yep pretty much but I don't listen to country.

As someone who grew up in the low populated rural environment I can say with reasonable certainty that the raiding hoards from the big cities won't get very far. When you have a 2 - 4 day walk just to get out of town and that much more to get to any other town and every other city person is trying to kill you plus everything that was raidable has already been picked clean I have serious doubts that all that many are going to make it to rural ND looking for food or trouble.

I have come to see my wife as a prime example of what real city raised people are capable of in a rural environment and I can assure you that if she is any indication of what most large city raised people are capable of they will starve to death or take their own life before they would ever walk 10 miles on foot.

What I am saying it that with far too many city raised people once they reach point where public transportation ends very few will go much further on foot being most will have no clue as to which farms have what for food resources they could possibly acquire.

The thing is wondering around randomly between farms that are miles apart while totally clueless and starving only to be continually meeting people who actually know how to guard their property and take care of themselves will get old real fast.

Do any of you really want to try raiding places that have people that can drop bullets at your feet from so far out you're not even sure which farmstead the shots came from all while exhausted from walking, starving and only armed with what you could carry and hold onto that far away from your home environment?

As the person on the farmstead who has food, water, supplies, vehicles and heavy equipment plus high powered guns and cases of ammo I actually know how to use along with the majority of my neighbors banded together with me for a common good all at my discretion some wondering clueless 3/4 staved city goons with kitchen knives on foot are not really much of a threat.

 

As the person on the farmstead who has food, water, supplies, vehicles and heavy equipment plus high powered guns and cases of ammo I actually know how to use along with the majority of my neighbors banded together with me for a common good all at my discretion some wondering clueless 3/4 staved city goons with kitchen knives on foot are not really much of a threat.

Good point there. One of the other high points of rural living; neighbors that would sooner help you than shoot you. I've been a city dweller for too long; forgot about that. A few of my dad's neighbors (where I grew up, in the sticks) have keys to his house. He has keys to a couple of their cars. If anybody needs to borrow his tractor and can't get a hold of him, they know the keys are in the ignition and nobody needs to tell them to bring it back with more diesel than it had in it.

 

When my parents were kids, almost 1/3rd of the U.S. population lived on farms. For my kids, it's 1-2%. And the remaining farmers are mostly white and >>50yrs old.

It makes you wonder how things will look in just 20 years. Will we have forgotten how to farm?

 

When my parents were kids, almost 1/3rd of the U.S. population lived on farms. For my kids, it's 1-2%. And the remaining farmers are mostly white and >>50yrs old.

It makes you wonder how things will look in just 20 years. Will we have forgotten how to farm?

Too late. It already happened.

 

Well, yes and no. Productivity per acre is higher than ever, but I think a lot of that is more productive varieties combined with scientific farming practices, as opposed to farming skill.

A lot of farming is working crazy hard, and the willingness to do that has definitely faded in the last generation or two.