2 Peak Oil Paths and Preparations

I have always been a doomie. When I was a teenager I thought Soviet nuclear missiles were going to rain down on America. The clock was at five until midnight. When I was eighteen I bought the first issue of ‘Survive’ magazine. I believed I could survive the war, but never took any steps to prepare. Hell, I thought I could survive in the woods with a knife and a gun. After the threat of nuclear war went away with the collapse of the Soviet Union I felt there was no need to keep up with the little survival preparations I had done. Now I have found a new reason to be a doomie, peak oil.

I don’t remember where I was when I first learned of Peak Oil. Until I read about resource depletion on the Internet in October of 2005 I thought it was just something whining liberal environmentalist pansies cried about. I was part of the conservative ignorant public.

It didn’t take me long to become knowledgeable on the subject of Peak Oil. I read all I could on the Internet. In 1958 M. King Hubbert a Standard Oil geologist showed how oil extraction in the U.S. would start to decline in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s. The U.S. hit its peak in 1970. We now import 70% of the oil we use and that number increases every year. Geologists and scientists have applied Hubbert’s theory to world’s oil supply. Some think the peak happened in 2005 some think it won’t happen until 2010. After some research I believed the facts of peak oil. I am a doomie at heart.

In the 1970’s the Club of Rome did a study and wrote a report called Limits to Growth about resource depletion and what the effect of a large population using up our resources would be on our world. The theory they set out ends with a Malthusian collapse. The Malthusian collapse is sudden shrink in human population back to a time before the industrial revolution. The population would contract from six and a half billion to two billion. Four out of every six people will die and two would live. I do not want to be one of the four. I do not want my family to be one of the four. I am scared.

Some people believe that the world’s scientists will invent a technological solution. They think ethanol or hydrogen will replace oil. After all of the study I’ve done I know there will be no remedy. There is no form of energy that can replace what oil does. What about ethanol? Just 10 percent ethanol mixed with gas (E10) deceases gas mileage. Ethanol does not have the same energy per volume as oil. To increase corn production raises the price of corn. We eat corn. The cow that makes our hamburger eats corn and the pig sliced into our bacon eats corn. There is not enough land in the U.S. to grow the corn to replace all the oil we use every day. Hydrogen is not a substitute. It is like a battery. It takes more energy to manufacture a battery than it has available. We have built our society on cheap oil. Scientists cannot fix the problem.

I was also never felt hopeless. Some people find out about Peak Oil and think there is nothing they can do so why do anything. Peak Oil really motivated the doomie in me to get back on the survival preparation track. The more I read the more I realized I needed to plan and build up skills and supplies.

I received a promotion and increase in pay and was able to begin planning and laying the groundwork by reducing my debt. I started to get in shape and pulled out my chin up bar. I already had an extensive library of survival books from indirect planning to survive nuclear war. I began to add a few more. I read web sites and researched on the Internet daily.

I have never been a political activist or radical. Some people think that they can hold off the coming of the peak by increasing the use of mass transit or the price of gas with taxes. I have read ‘If we used less it will last longer’. They want people to walk or bike to work. The suburbs were not built for walking or biking to work. An economic proposition called Jevons’ Paradox states that as technology finds ways to use less energy (think CF light bulbs) that the consumption of that energy will increase. The peak is still upon us. Being a protester is a waste of time when I could be preparing. Most political activists think a hard societal failure is coming. This is the only point I agree on with them.

I may have been stuck for a while in a loop of continuous planning. I have a huge amount of research. Web pages I copied to my laptop. Pictures of plants, animals and items I want for the farm. I still add them if I find a good one. I put my plans on Power Point presentations until I read some blogs about how limited they really are. What you are reading used to be a Power Point presentation. I failed to act on my plans. I thought because I didn’t have a lot of money I couldn’t do anything to prepare. You don’t need a lot of money to start to prepare. Buying an extra bag of rice and putting it aside is preparing. Going to Wal-Mart and buying a small box of bullets is preparing. Doing something is so easy and after a while the little stuff adds up.

When I received a promotion and increase in pay I was able to use the money to begin large-scale preparations. When you start to actively prepare you get off the Internet, you put down the books and you begin to take action. You should never really stop reading. The first action most people take is to begin to buy stuff. They buy extra food. They buy gardening tools. They buy ammunition. They put their money where their mouth is. Depending on where they chose to live and what they start to buy decides which one of the three routes they choose to take: survivalist, militant, or farmer.

The doomie in me has always considered myself a survivalist, even though I had few skills to survive in the woods. In my surviving the nuclear war fantasies I had my gun and a knife and thought my hunting skills would get me through. The more I read about the hordes of hungry people searching the country side for food I realized the loner and his family in the woods or mountains would not last long. A community of people is where safety lies. I don’t think most survivalists will live through the peak oil chaos. When I did more reading I found my way to the militant preparedness path.

Militants believe in a hard Malthusian crash. They want a hard crash. They have dreams of a hard crash. They plan on being part of the crash when it happens by killing anyone who threatens them. They want to defend themselves without fear of reprisal from civil authorities and judicial punishment. Militant’s goals down the jungle path are owning guns, learning gun-handling skills, gun repair, stockpiling ammunition, reloading ammunition, setting up patrol routes, squirreling away food and water and building a fortified homestead. They look forward to being a mercenary, scrounger or by stealing from neighbors.

As I said above I am a hard crash proponent. I believe to stay alive I have to be able to defend me and mine from the hungry hordes. I only had a couple of guns so I started to go to the pawnshops, gun shows and sporting goods stores. I have twenty years of Air Force training with the M-16. I am extremely confident firing and breaking down the AR-15. I took pistol lessons at the local indoor pistol range and went from familiar to confident with my pistol handling and shooting. I also own and shoot the AK-47, SKS and L1A1. At first I bought small amounts of ammunition from Wal-Mart, but as I started shooting more to gain proficiency I started buying in bulk at gun shows. Over time I have also built up our supply of food and water. I have four 55 gallons drums of water and buckets of beans and rice and canned goods. I have not created sizeable food production. My home while not highly secure is made of brick has security doors and bars on the windows. When I was in my twenties I took a mercenary class in the backwoods of Mississippi. Tradable items and skills I possess are that I can hunt and I became certified to trap at the state trappers association convention. I am going to learn to prepare pelts for sale and use. I don’t want to survive in the post-peak world as a mercenary, scrounger or by stealing from my neighbors. Unlike most militants I am interested in attaining a level of self-sustainability like the farmers.

Peak Oil aware farmers come in two groups urban and rural. They have the same goal to grow food so they won’t starve when peak oil shuts down large-scale farming and food distribution.

Rural farmers can be soft, middle or hard collapse advocates. They have land and a home. They have a large kitchen garden. Some of them grow a grain crop or have an orchard. They practice animal husbandry of some type with chickens, cows, goats, sheep or rabbits. Farming experience expands their knowledge base nearing the master gardener level. They join trade networks in their community and come to have a booth at the local farmers market or a truck stand. By proximity to the cornucopia of jobs that help build farm life self-sufficiency they also achieve working levels of several non-farming skills. The rural farmer has a small gun or two for pests and maybe a hunting rifle for deer.

I am still in the process of selling my urban home so I can move and purchase land in the country. I have a detailed farm plan. I plan to achieve a basic level of self-sustainability. I have purchased a garden’s worth of non-hybrid non-genetically mutated vegetable and herb seeds. I still have my job and plan to use my company to transfer from the Tucson desert to a more garden friendly place like Texas. I think to support my family I would have to continue to work off the farm. I am scared I could loose my job during the economic upheaval that is occurring. I think having a working farm even if it is a “Hobby” farm will see us through shaky economic times. We would not starve. I wish I could get to a farm and start gardening and raising animals for food. The rural farmer’s city cousin the urban farmer has almost accomplished the same thing.

Urban farmers hope for a slow crash. They ride mass transit, bicycle or walk to work like the activists trying to slow the coming of the peak. They plant gardens and fruit trees. They shop at farmers markets. They believe there will be no food riots. They don’t believe the unprepared and hungry will go door to door. Some may be prepared for the peak oil turmoil, but see no other way to prepare stuck in their city bound jobs. Some believe moving to the country is out of the question. Gardening experience expands their knowledge base nearing the master gardener level. They go from buying to selling produce at farmers markets. They form or join trade networks in their neighborhood. People come to them for advice. To keep their urban world intact when the power goes out they build rainwater catchment systems, cisterns, Photovoltaic arrays, wind turbine generators and wood burning stoves for cooking and heat into their homes. They add extra insulation to their homes to cut the need for cooling and heating.

While I have lived the city my entire life, Urban Gardener is not something I plan to do. My grandmother had a huge garden and chickens in Memphis. I know it is possible. When the chaos comes the cities will be deathtraps. Like the urban farmers I want my fortified homestead to have rainwater catchment systems, cisterns, Photovoltaic arrays, wind turbine generators and wood burning stoves for cooking and heating. I also want thick walls with extra insulation to cut the need for cooling and heating.

In the future as the reality of Peak Oil shakes the trees of our civilization a lot of people who didn’t do anything will die off. Depending how much and when the shaking happens some of the militants and farmers won’t make it. I hope I have time to prepare so my children in the future can be gardeners and farmers with guns. They will have to raise their own food because cheap oil won’t be there to run the tractors and trucks to harvest and transport it to them. I think the goal should be between a militant and a farmer. I hope I am on the right track to get them there.

Where are you in peak oil survival preparation?

A world without cheap oil is smaller more localized life.