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2012? Hooey. And then again 2012 may or may not arrive. We will know when the time comes. Cycles of mass starvation are nothing new. We just live with a different mind set now. There are somethings technology just can't prevent and what happens will happen.
Clinton would have loved to ban guns and he in fact did ban some of the more popular guns. Obama definately wanted to ban various guns. If the people respond correctly it can be stopped though.
I think a lot of the people who bought stuff after the election weren't well stocked up to begin with so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I know a lot of people with a bunch of nice guns but only 2 or 3 boxes of ammo for each.
Oh yeah, 2012...does that mean I won't even get to use all my stuff? Nuts!
Nah in 2012 you will get to use your guns on the dinosaurs pouring through the rip in space-time.
Let's face it, the best conspiracies and panic have at least some partial truth. It's not shocking that people fanned those flames a bit to sell stuff at much higher prices and pocketing a tidy profit.
2012? Hooey. And then again 2012 may or may not arrive. We will know when the time comes. Cycles of mass starvation are nothing new. We just live with a different mind set now. There are somethings technology just can't prevent and what happens will happen.
Agreed, they are complex dynamic situations. In fact, many of the food problems in the world are as much or more a function of distribution.
The issue is that many of the people making the predictions pretty much don't make their bread and butter doing complicated real world analysis for a living. They instead build a model where everything is constant except one variable (more people) and gee what do you know, their model shows mass starvation.
An example of how *bad* these simplistic models can be would be like watching a guy hit a home run on opening day and then predicting a total of 162 homers on the year for him. Or projecting HIV deaths in the US back in 1980 and not accounting for unequal risk of infection among the populance, growing awareness and prevention and new treatments. (ie. treating every person in the US as an equal exposure unit)
A more realistic scenario would have a number of asian nations chasing dwindling global fish stocks and having some naval clashes over territorial disputes. (A lot of islands near Japan\Russia for example.)
I think the necessity for people to grow their own food, and can, will continue to grow with time because the world cannot seem to control its population.
But what I see as a problem in most parts of the world, including the US, is that dense living will also continue to grow, which means that multi-family dwellers will not have that capabiltiy. I've thought about this a lot. The lots for condos are getting skimpier and skimpier in size, often with NOTHING at all to hold a pot of flowers, let along a vegetable bed!
Community gardens? Maybe. But during critical times who would guard them? The one in the town I work in has already been robbed.
I can also see the art of sewing coming back in due time, but so few people know how to sew anymore that most people would have to figure it out on their own.
I have my house on the market and the frugal thing to do if I stay around here is buy a condo cash. I just can't imagine living in such close quarters and not being able to grow some vegetables. I think that living in the future will become more dense -- look at China and all of that smog. Personally, I just want my own space with a yard to have a garden. I think I'll rent and see how home prices go and just buy some gold and silver with my equity.
Just yesterday for some reason it came to my mind that sewing will come back. I used to make all of my clothes in high school, made my wedding dress, curtains, costumes for my kids, etc... But it was funny -- I just starting wondering how much a pattern costs these days and that people will start making their clothes again.
I don't think having a surplus of something precludes a future shortage. There was a surplus of potatoes in Ireland just before the potato famine killed so many people..
While it is true that there was a very good and large crop of potatoes in Ireland prior to the famine, the famine occured because the potatoes were blighted. They were diseased and after harvest turned to black, rotten mush.
Even so, there would not have been a Famine had the people of Ireland not been as dependent on one crop, i.e. the potato. The English who occupied Ireland at the time as the ruling class had plenty of food - food that they refused to share.
Starvation is what killed a quarter of Ireland's population and led another quarter to emigrate.
While it is true that there was a very good and large crop of potatoes in Ireland prior to the famine, the famine occured because the potatoes were blighted. They were diseased and after harvest turned to black, rotten mush.
Even so, there would not have been a Famine had the people of Ireland not been as dependent on one crop, i.e. the potato. The English who occupied Ireland at the time as the ruling class had plenty of food - food that they refused to share.
Starvation is what killed a quarter of Ireland's population and led another quarter to emigrate.
That's what I'm getting at. Be it natural, political, social, whatever, having an abundance today doesn't mean we will have an abundance indefinitely. The other day, a friend said something to the effect (on matters of preparation), “What do you mean, there is food in the grocery store, right?†Sure there’s food in the grocery store, but it’s too bad that the vast majority of the people these days assume the grocery store is something akin to a money tree or golden goose. Yeah, it’s great… but have you ever thought about what happens if it runs dry for one of about five hundred reasons it could?
I think people in general (in the western world) became too relaxed and too spoiled. They never experinced hunger or food shortages, never had to stay in line for hours to buy a bare necessaty item, never had to plan ahead and prepare (for a winter for example).
Everything is always a short drive away at the supermarket and, yes, it does seem as if supermarket has a bottomless supply of food in their back storeroom because the shelf are ALWAYS fully stocked.
Most don't bother to think how much work and planning goes into making the supermarlket look so abundant.
So these same people who cannot imagine any store being short or out of anything, will have a total meltdown when SHTF.
I don't want to be around when this happens.
Most don't bother to think how much work and planning goes into making the supermarlket look so abundant.
So these same people who cannot imagine any store being short or out of anything, will have a total meltdown when SHTF.
I don't want to be around when this happens.
or maybe you've gotten too paranoid? Outside of a massive climate shift, I don't think America is going to be having a food shortage anytime soon, a good chunk of the world already has a food crisis. With our relatively low population density, and abundant farmland, I don't see my grandkids starving. They very well could be up a river in other respects, but starving, probably not.
The typical attitude on pretty much everything bad is... "oh, no, it could never happen to me. That's for other folks." I think that's human nature. It seems for a good portion of the population, paranoid is having a large container of oatmeal in your cupboard rather than a small one. Why would you waste that extra space when you can get oatmeal any time you want? It will always be there. Everything will always be there for you.
When you really examine the system or 'big machine' we trust EVERYTHING to, it becomes very obvious that it's somewhat of a Rube Goldberg machine. Sorry, I just can't put 100% faith in it. If I'm wrong, no harm done--so I spent extra time thinking about survival and learning a possibly useful skill rather that watching the latest pathetic version of whatever is on TV these days or wasting money seeing the latest rehashed flick. But, if I did trust that system 100% and I were wrong... well, I'd be like the rest of the millions of people throughout history who thought it could never happen to them.
Last edited by ChrisC; 04-28-2010 at 08:37 PM..
Reason: speeling misteak
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