Will We Survive If the SHTF??? (farmers, wheat, houses, water)

[eyewrist]

I watched this thinking it was something else by it's title. If the SHTF we can survive it , even bring us closer together and back to natural ways of doing things in our lives. This happened in Cuba but I never heard of this unity of the people for survival by our media...it's always negative in regard to Cuba.

PS It's lengthy but informative



KILLING HUNGRY NEIGHBORS in a SHTF. How much ammo will you need in the COLLAPSE? - YouTube.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by eyewrist

I watched this thinking it was something else by it's title. If the SHTF we can survive it , even bring us closer together and back to natural ways of doing things in our lives. This happened in Cuba but I never heard of this unity of the people for survival by our media...it's always negative in regard to Cuba.

"Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" is a pretty good documentary.


There are many different possible scenarios that would each caused a SHTF event. A new virus perhaps. An EMP from a solar flare, or as part of an enemy invasion. Our government could collapse, or hyper-inflation could hit us.

So long as you are off-grid, farming and producing a surplus of food/fuel, you should be fine for many scenarios

[bolillo_loco]

Let's look at the differences I can think of.

When did this happen to Cuba? Was it immediately following Castro's takeover? I sort of think it was, so that would put it circa late 50s - early 60s when Cubans had to adapt to a new way of life. I do realize that the video is from 2006, but this transition began decades earlier.

Nobody in Cuba is very far from the ocean, so they can supplement their diet with seafood. Many Cubans were already small scale off the grid fishermen when this happened. Their farming wasn't industrialized when this took place, so they weren't as heavily impacted as modern day America would be. They didn't have huge vast systems of infrastructure supporting urban sprawl, so that made bicycles a viable means of transportation. An early 1960s Cuba wasn't dependent upon the government, oil, cheap energy to sustain urban sprawl, so their transition back to a more primitive lifestyle would be phenomenally easier because nothing like America currently has existed in Cuba. Also, what if any foreign aid took place from communist countries, and did America truly end it's surreptitious aid to Cuba to keep the cold war going?

One key difference between America and Cuba would be demographics. A Cuban is a Cuban regardless of whether he's white, black, or bronze. He speaks Spanish as his primary language and uses the same vernacular, is probably Catholic, and shares the same culture. True there are racial problems, but nowhere near the tension in Cuba exists like it does in America. Our media purports that we all get along in the land of rainbows where diversity is working and segregation has ended. What is see is a lot of racial, gender, and religious tension. We have no "diversity" and we're highly segregated.

Just take a look at blacks. What 200 years of slavery and the Jim Crow era couldn't do, the war on drugs, Civil Rights, divorce laws, Affirmative Action, feminist movement, war on poverty, and the like did in two generations, which was to almost completely break up the black family. This has happened to whites and to a degree Hispanics as well, but my point being, America is a vastly segregated country based on race and economic status as well as few having a real nuclear family for support. Every town and city I'm familiar with has either become black, white, or Hispanic whereas in the 60s and early 70s, these towns were integrated. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a woman say, "I don't need a man." State programs have caused the divorce rate to skyrocket, and many people don't even consider marriage anymore. Women are propped up by the nanny state instead of marrying a man, staying with him, and raising a nuclear family. Women need men as much as men need women and children need a family of husband, wife, aunts, uncles, grandparents, as well as siblings and cousins, but the nanny state has created an artificial environment that caters to women, breaks up families, and segregates all of us according to race and economic status. Sure one can find some "diverse" communities, but I would venture a guess that even those are separated by economic status.

Just look at how farming has changed since 1975! We're a heavily industrialized mono crop farming nation that's dependent upon GMO crops whose seeds are sterile, petrochemicals, and oil to work the farms. I wonder how many farmers could grow heirloom seeds on their lands today? I suppose it's possible, but all I see are farmers who spray chemicals and grow corn, wheat, or soybeans. A few that have cattle do grow some feed for their livestock, but they're rather rare. Not one farmer has an orchard and there are no longer farms dedicated to fruit in my area. When looking at old photos and areal surveys from the 30s, 40s, 50, 60s, & 70s of my state, it's easy to see that all the orchards were torn out to make way for mono cropped petrochemical fields or urban sprawl. This would take decades to turn around. The urban sprawl has largely ended a lot of farming. In my state of Pennsylvania, we lost at least half of our farm land since 1950, while increasing the population by 30%. Other areas are even worse than this. Many people have moved to where there is no arable land. Southern California, eastern Washington and Oregon states are heavily dependent upon energy for irrigation of land that normally wouldn't be arable. Without cheap energy, could New York City survive? Where would those people go if they had to flee to where the land can sustain them? We're talking about a good percentage of the nation that's living on land that would never sustain them, and the crops that are grown there that feed the nation would no longer be tenable without cheap energy.

I do not see Americans pulling together if we were suddenly cut off from cheap energy for an array of reasons. More than half of our country does not support itself, and I feel that less than 1% is self sufficient. Furthermore, we have a huge government with people dependent upon it for S.S., S.S.D.I., food stamps, welfare, defense jobs for civilians, largest military in the world, teachers, federal, state and local law enforcement, as well as huge roles of city and state governments, we've more than 2,000,000 people incarcerated and an unknown number in county and city jails. At least 75% of our population would have to figure out how to do something different and become self sufficient.

Just the few things I've touched on that makes up modern America leads me to think that we'll fall into a civil war that was worse than anything that went on between India and Pakistan. This civil war in our nation would make a bad day in the former country of Yugoslavia circa 1992 look like a petting zoo. There is a lot of tension in America based on race, gender, and social class. It's not just one sided either. There's a growing faction of people who hate the government and all who work for it.

Take away the full weight of the government to control this, and people scrambling to figure out how to become self sufficient and the obvious looting will pale in comparison to the war that will most likely erupt between the different factions based on men fed up with living in a gynocracy, women who're sick of living in a misogynistic society, blacks sick of whites, whites sick of blacks, Hispanics sick of everybody, rich against poor, poor against rich, religion/non believer, religious faction vs faction, state vs state... I don't care what the media tells me, I go out in the world and what I see is a lot of race/economic segregation and racial, sexual, religious, and economic tension between factions that's stirred by the federal, state, and local governments.

Those were my opinions and not necessarily the truth. I'd strongly suggest that you do your own research.

Thanks for reading,
bolillo

[countryboy73]

A thousand reps for that, bolillo_loco!

[Colorado Rambler]

@ bolillo_loco: I can't rep you again so soon, but kudos to you for a thoughtful post, even though I don't agree with all the points you made. I would like to address one or two of the things you mentioned because they bring up issues very important for everyone to understand:

Just look at how farming has changed since 1975! We're a heavily industrialized mono crop farming nation that's dependent upon GMO crops whose seeds are sterile, petrochemicals, and oil to work the farms. I wonder how many farmers could grow heirloom seeds on their lands today? I suppose it's possible, but all I see are farmers who spray chemicals and grow corn, wheat, or soybeans. A few that have cattle do grow some feed for their livestock, but they're rather rare. Not one farmer has an orchard and there are no longer farms dedicated to fruit in my area. When looking at old photos and areal surveys from the 30s, 40s, 50, 60s, & 70s of my state, it's easy to see that all the orchards were torn out to make way for mono cropped petrochemical fields or urban sprawl. This would take decades to turn around. The urban sprawl has largely ended a lot of farming. In my state of Pennsylvania, we lost at least half of our farm land since 1950, while increasing the population by 30%. Other areas are even worse than this. Many people have moved to where there is no arable land. Southern California, eastern Washington and Oregon states are heavily dependent upon energy for irrigation of land that normally wouldn't be arable. Without cheap energy, could New York City survive? Where would those people go if they had to flee to where the land can sustain them? We're talking about a good percentage of the nation that's living on land that would never sustain them, and the crops that are grown there that feed the nation would no longer be tenable without cheap energy.

Anyone who wishes to become self sufficient must be able to grow food for themselves and their family. It is my belief that the coming of Peak Oil combined with continued climate change will completely overturn the modern agricultural practices that we now take for granted if we even think of them at all. As an aside, let me note that while some feel that Peak Oil is still far in the future if it ever occurs at all, the truth is that the earth is finite, just as our planet's natural resources - including oil - are finite. Technology may (or may not) put off the day of reckoning, but technology is not magic and it cannot over ride the laws of physics or any other scientific laws. We may begin to feel the impact of Peak Oil in the next 5 years or in the next 50 years, but we will feel it and the sooner we start preparing for that eventuality the better off we'll be. The same goes for climate change. I live in a region that has become the epicenter of the continued drought and warming in the American West. The average temperatures here are steadily rising. We are already on average 2 degrees warmer than normal in the Colorado mountains and while the temperatures may briefly go down, the over all trend is always up.

I live in southwest Colorado in a rural part of the state heavily dependent on the cultivation of vast fields of alfalfa, hay, and pinto beans. The family who owns the farm I live on were among the first white people to settle this area. Their agricultural holdings combined with the primacy of their water and irrigation rights plus the availability of inexpensive fertilizer derived from petroleum has made them very prosperous indeed up until the current generation. Unfortunately, hard times have arrived and things only are becoming worse with the passing of each year. About 50 miles north of here it's mostly pinto bean country. At one time those fields were green and vigorous as far as the eye could see. Irrigation water from the Dolores River, dammed to create McPhee Reservoir, ensured excellent crop yields, and the humble pinto bean was the source of economic security and prosperity for farm and ranch families all the way to the Utah line and beyond. But this is changing and it's been changing for a while now. Now the land under cultivation is about half what it once was. Some farm houses stand empty and a few have been completely abandoned. Drought stalks the land and it has been declared an agricultural disaster area.

Further south where I am the drought has been a double edged sword for alfalfa growers. The price of hay hit $800.00/ton late last summer - unheard of. Stockmen can't afford to feed their cattle at such prices and have culled their herds then culled them again. The huge hay barn next door to be has had to be padlocked - unheard of. But if the road is not protected by a locked metal gate, people will drive their trucks up in the middle of the night and make way with hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of hay. The reason I get to live here is that the house and the lands that go with it were bought by a local ranch family for the water shares that go with the property. Those water rights make the fields that surround me lush and green and highly profitable except that last summer the Dolores River was running at record low stream flows. McPhee Reservoir was actually in danger of drying up. Irrigation water even to those who held first rights was scheduled to be cut off completely in the middle of last August. Had that happened, yields would have been cut in half if not more. We were saved (temporarily) by the sudden onset of late monsoon rains - part of the same weather system that caused the 1000 year flood in Boulder and Rocky Mountain National Park. Their disaster was our godsend and alfalfa farmers were able to get in three cuttings last season. But the reprieve is only temporary. Next summer or the one after, the drought will settle in as hard as ever and the alfalfa fields will meet the same fate as the pinto bean fields. The land will no longer be able to support even the current small population of this region, and things will soon become very interesting out here.

The cities of Denver and Phoenix demand the primary right to the water from the rivers that originate in the Colorado mountains, among them the Rio Grande River and the Colorado River as well as the smaller life-giving Dolores River and the San Juan River which flows into New Mexico. Will desperate Colorado farmers and ranchers tamely watch their crops die as the rivers flow past on their way to fill swimming pools in Phoenix? Somehow, I doubt it. The US will see the growing problem of water scarcity and changing climate erupt first in its Western Mountain States where the ranchers of Wyoming and Colorado face off against the urban dwellers of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Denver. Times will be hard everywhere, but worst of all in the cities where the arid lands of the West and their fragile resources were never meant to sustain such dense centers of population - places filled with urban dwellers who wouldn't know a sagebrush from a tumble weed. I'm placing my bet on the farmers and ranchers.



Abandoned ranch house in pinto country

[eyewrist]

Originally Posted by countryboy73

A thousand reps for that, bolillo_loco!

I also had to rep B_ loco for his wonderful statement but I disagree on a portion. Almost 28 to 30 states are adjacent to some form of large body of water and most of those, not all, are racially intergated and have fairly educated people living in them. If anyone in these United States don't realize that race has been used to keep the people divided must have their head stuck in a dark, tight place with very little oxygen getting there. But during such an event, it will not be about the color of your skin but what you are willing to do for the WHOLE. This will also hold true with religion and sexual orientation. I believe these states and those living within them will be the first ones that attain this unity during such an event. Take for example Japan after the tsunami hit. The average person in Japan has at least a technical training or two year degree. There was no looting or fighting but cooperation amongst the people. Will it (unity) be quick? I have not a clue.

Yes, you will have those who are on "survival mode" to deal with but eventually they will have to confrom to survive. Yes, the very poor and the rich will be difficult to deal with because BOTH feel they are entitled due to their economic status. But they too will realize that their status will have not meaning during the SHTF event. But by far those who are on drugs whether it be street or pharmacuetical drug addicted, along with the ungrateful, lazy youth of today will be the biggest problems of all. I say this because anyone on drugs will disrupt the group by stealing, lying and manipulating unknowing members of the group causing strife within. Or it may be parents/individuals in denial of the addiction trying to bring that person/themselves into the fold of the group will destroy the unity within the group If you eliminate this group then unity and change is possible

[ChrisC]

Originally Posted by eyewrist

But during such an event, it will not be about the color of your skin but what you are willing to do for the WHOLE.

I'm going to have to disagree with this. Let me start by saying race means nothing to me personally. The degree of melanin content in the skin doesn't dictate my choices one way or the other. And it may not to you either. And it may not to a lot of people. But I'm afraid it does to a large enough percentage of humans to make it a factor--and more so during times of stress than in normal times. You're fooling yourself if you can take a "macro" look at the entire world and not conclude that the majority of people living on this planet have negative feelings concerning those with different pigmentation levels in their skin. And that does not only apply to "white" people.

You'll also note that the more homogeneous a population (of a country, state, culture, etc), the more generally peaceful and content it is. It's very often a difference in race, culture, ethnicity, language, etc, that causes major clashes. It has always been that way. To think that, in our modern "Utopia," things are now difference is overlooking the events all around you all around the world.

Originally Posted by eyewrist

This will also hold true with religion and sexual orientation.

The above statement applies here as well. Again, religion or a rejection of such has been a major flash point throughout history. And that applies to atheists as well. Their "un-religion" will drive them to do just as much damage to their fellow man as any religion has done through the years.

And again... I must disagree with you about sexual orientation and/or sexual self-identity not being a factor in a "bad time." This has never been the case in the everyday sub-cultures through the years in the good times or the bad. You needn't go much further than internet forums, comments to news stories, and discussion groups to find the popular vibes concerning race, religion, and sexual orientation/identity.

And once again... once again... I don't really care what anyone's sexual orientation is or whether they identify as male or female in their personal behavior, temperament, actions, dress, etc. Of course, I may not agree with it or it may even disgust me. But that's me. Others are free to do as they will and it doesn't make a tinker's damn worth of anything how I feel about it. I believe in liberty for all.

BUT, having said that, in our mandated culture today where folks are expected and forced (in some cases) to behave a certain way or feel a certain way about people with different "orientations" (sexually) or different "identities" (speaking of gender here), I think lots of people would be very surprised at how quickly things would revert to the way they have always been concerning such matters. It would become a case, as it has through most of history, of how well you hide your deviancy from the norm (and this applies not only to sexual/gender matters, but lots of other things as well).

I guarantee you that if I were in a community that was under the stress of survival, scraping by just to find food and water for another day, and had many of their ranks dead of starvation, disease, fighting, etc, that if I presented myself to the group with a dress, heels, makeup, and a pretty wig ( we're talking hypothetical here folks; don't get any ideas)... well, I'd either be dead, near dead, or in a whole lot of pain within a few days. Survival situation brings out the survival instinct in folks... and, at least I believe, lowers their tolerance for deviation from the norm. It goes back to that homogeneity comment from above. Now... if the entire community was composed of cross-dressers or wandering gender identities, things would be different. But when you are talking a minority that is, most often, misunderstood and frowned upon to begin with, there is no way that there will be this "pulling together" effect under stress that you suggest. Not unless the only people left are true libertarians in the classical/true sense of the word. And that ain't going to happen.

Originally Posted by eyewrist

I believe these states and those living within them will be the first ones that attain this unity during such an event. Take for example Japan after the tsunami hit. The average person in Japan has at least a technical training or two year degree.

And Japan has one of the most homogeneous populations on earth. See above.

Also, take a look at the "happiness index" for countries of the world. Most all of the top picks are among the most homogeneous nations in the world--for instance, many of the Scandinavian nations.

Originally Posted by eyewrist

Yes, you will have those who are on "survival mode" to deal with but eventually they will have to confrom to survive.

Absolutely. But you imply conformity here, yet you suggest that diversity will be embraced above. You can't have it both ways.



(editor's note: this post is not meant to inflame. It's simply my take on the matter. I may be right or I may be wrong, as is the case for all of us. Please, no flaming me. If you disagree with me, so state. But I am not the topic, so don't discuss me or what a dirty baxxxxd [or little bixxh, as the case may be!] that I am. It's not relevant)

[countryboy73]

Love to rep you for the above post, Chris, but they won't let me. You're gonna have to stop being right so often...

You gotta love the diversity/collective crowd. Our world is made up of individuals, and those individuals at a basic primal level like things and people like themselves, and at some level, view all else as a potential threat to their chosen way of life. We are more than animals, but much like them in how we assess the world around us. You don't see deer hanging out with cougars, or sheep cuddling with wolves, and you won't see blacks and whites, Christians and Moslems, etc. cooperating on a large scale in this society, either, absent the political-correctness apparatus. Whether that is a good or bad thing I do not know, I just know it won't be happening, and we will have to muddle through without the appearance of a kumbaya diversity utopia that has been artificially created over the past several decades. America may at one time have been a melting pot, but methinks the sauce has been overcooked, and the ingredients have begun to separate. I'm afraid the flavor might not be what the cooks set out to create if the "pot" boils over. We may just have a mess to clean up. There is a lot of precedent for that idea. Rwanda(tribal), Bosnia(religious/cultural), and let's not discount the entire middle east. Nah, absent the power structures that demand that we accept diversity and collective thinking, individualism will run rampant. We haven't advanced THAT far. Sorry...

[eyewrist]

I guess you two may be right. I was reared in Chicago area and dealing with those of different races , religion and ethnicity has never been an issue. I am not saying division will not happen, it will. People will gravitate to those they most similar and familiar to...that's a given. But I can't see a group of people excluding another when they need them. For example, a group of whites who has a need for a doctor or farmer who may be Black or Hispanic or a family who is Muslim that has skills of adapting in a survival situation.. or two gays guys who has stored a surplus of food or have medical supplies. And to know these people have these skills, talents or supplies, one would have to associated with them.

But the most sinister individual will be the unknown drug addicts amongst the group, no matter what his/her race, religion or sexual orientation may be. Drug use is abundant folks.... with stay at home moms, teenagers , nurses and doctors and street people. That nurse or soft spoken mom in your group will be tapping into the medical supply of pain killers just to get high, a teenager addicted to meth will sale the food supply right from under your nose with a cute smile on their face. They will lie and blame someone else with a quickness resulting in division within. With that said, I personally would take anyone, not matter what color, religion or otherwise over ANY drug addicted person.

[countryboy73]

eyewrist, being raised in Chicago does indeed give you a different frame of reference than someone raised on a farm in Missouri, like me. That said, your points about the ability of one group to accept others of a different group being helped greatly by the perceived need for something the other group can provide, are spot on. I would be more than fine with taking a person of nearly any racial or religious persuasion into my group if they could be trusted, and as long as they had something to offer. Of course, a white person of Christian persuasion like myself would also have to have something to add if they were to be taken aboard. Where the whole tolerance and diversity thing comes to an end is when you apply it to our society at large. And nowhere will the breakdown of the ideal be more evident than is such previous hotbeds of diversity as Chicago. Reference Sarajevo for what a city looks like when the benevolent factor of government suppression is removed and human nature takes its course. Of course, there are inspiring stories of tolerance and goodness that always come out of such situations, but they are heavily outweighed by the tragedies resulting from interaction among the more primally motivated members of the equation.

Your point about the drug addicts among us is well made, and correct, and these folks are not all the gaunt and listless zombies created by heroin or meth. Some of the most dangerous are our neighbors on mood-altering medications prescribed by doctors. I would advise everyone reading this to have strategies in place for safely evaluating and dealing with people they will have to interact with, to ensure that these people are not addicted to one drug or another. In addition, diabetics, people on anti-rejection drugs, and others must be evaluated, as taking in someone only to have them go down and require full time care, then die, will be detrimental to those in contact with that person, and the group in general. In the opening days(and beyond) of an major crisis, there will be some very hard decisions to be made, and those who choose wrongly, or cannot make the decision, will be less likely to survive. I pray it never comes, but with the crew we have running things(not a political statement, I am referring to the entire government), we are in real trouble, and must be ready to take care of our own, probably sooner rather than later.