Nice post and good to see you back. Chuckle, we’re thinking along the same lines. Just last night I wrote an e- suggesting that Mr. Kunstler’s plans could be modified slightly to be useful for considerably more people, and I had two proposals:

First, the only ones who have the leisure and the income to follow JK are Grandma and Grandpa, so they should be starting small family farms if they are interested and healthy. It takes quite a while to accumulate food, seeds, tools, machinery, knowledge, and livestock, and it is quite expensive.

Resident “managers” and/or workers are required; it can’t be done on weekends. Livestock has to be fed and dairy animals milked, and it doesn’t matter if the basic chores can be done in 30-45 minutes, they still have to be done every day.

The average person simply cannot pack up, move to the country, and expect to find land and housing, far less a job, ready at hand, or to support himself immediately at agriculture. It takes time, effort, and, again, money, to build for the future. However, I can think of no better way to protect our children (mine tend to think this is “just another bump in the road!”) than to prepare a refuge in the best wilderness we can find.

I particularly like your second point, which is similar to two thoughts I have suggested to others. The first was that Craig’s List (a secondary market to analyze for trends) has quite a few nice older motor homes and RVs for sale for between fifty and a hundred dollars a running foot, at least here in Texas. It seems to me a VERY sensible precaution for those who cannot leave until things get bad to put money into a 30′ motorhome. That becomes the escape vehicle, housing, cooking and bathing facilities, and storage which can be filled with necessities ahead of time. No tent cities or tiny motels!

If it were a matter of staying out of the way of mobs and locusts for a few weeks, even a small town RV park would work, or pull well off any sort of main road. YOUR suggestion of finding a place ahead of time is very, very valuable. My similar one is to work out the fastest route to very minor roads NOW before you have to try to beat your way out of a city in turmoil. No matter where Charles and I go we take note of small lanes that wind off into woods, just in case we aren’t home when the balloon goes up. Amy was right: the burning of Atlanta in GWTW wasn’t real, and was nothng compared to trying to get out of Houston or New Orleans when hurricanes are making landfall.

Such a vehicle would also provide housing, however meager, while setting up a small farm.

I love the idea of like-minded people getting together to plan for the future, which is part of what we have done. Two other couples will join us, if necessary, when the time comes.

Why NOT, if you can, talk this over with six or eight of your friends and family and see if you can form a combine? Everybody pitches in an equal share of living expenses for the leader because he or she will be buying basic supplies and livestock, starting the garden, patching fences, whatever needs doing–and having a fabulous time, judging from our experiences!

Twenty years ago that would have been a bizarre idea, but with luck we may have a year or even eighteen months before the food shortages and reactions get bad, and a LOT can be done in that time. Maybe we only have six months, as was discussed in San Antonio on local talk radio yesterday, before there is serious civil disturbance, but even to have a set rendezvous and ANY sort of organization and start on preparing to feed and defend yourselves would be a great blessing. I gave this a great deal of thought back in ought-seven, and concluded that the ideal colony would be between eight and twelve people. There have to be enough to handle manpower requirements (building, livestock innoculation twice a year, maybe, guard duty), but if you get too large the logistics of feeding everyone become untenable. It is obvious that we need friends of character with different skills, and preferably with few encumbrances such as small children, spoiled teens, or nagging wives. There cannot be jealousy, bickering, or backbiting.

Iif you (you in particular, Stephen, and “you” “the rest of you”) want to write to me I’ll be glad to tell any of you privately about what I have learned trying to become as completely self-suficient as we can and to help you with sources and lists. Gary has my permission to give out my e-mail address. I have an on-going battle with keeping my messages below 1000, at which point AOL closes my box, so don’t send me any jokes or any articles readily available on Town Hall, please.

My biggest problem other than trying to find a retired Vet or doctor to join us eventually? Figuring out where things are! When you start accumulating and expanding seriously, things don’t get put up neatly and inventoried properly, in OR out. Another fantastic buy is to spend about three thousand on a Maritime Shipping Container, 45′ long, 8′ wide, 9 1/2′ high, sturdy, weatherproof, and lockable. You could live in one if you were desperate. (Ugh.)

Eventually one “colonist” will be in charge of inventory and advising the cook that we’ve been having sirloin too frequently, or that it is time to have spaghetti more frequently, and that laundry detergent is being used at too rapid a pace and MUST be measured. We have an agreement, by the way, that “The Colonel’s Snickers Bites are the Colonel’s Snicker Bites,” which means that each of us have special treats we love that others merely like. All are responsible for stocking Cheetos, Cheezits, smoked oysters, Godiva chocolate, wine, whatever they think of as a “must have” or delicacy. (We have cases of asparagus!) Right after “If you don’t work you don’t eat” comes “Don’t pig someone else’s treats.”

The person who picked up the adorable Banty chicks today hadn’t gotten the word that we were out of chick starter, so we fed ‘em some bread crumbs to start, and tried cornmeal and masa harina before digging out the morter and pestle (three here somewhere…) to grind grain over the weekend. They ate everything, but the masa is the big winner.

Coordination: I remembered that the new heating element was coming in yesterday, and mentioned it…but not to the right person, so dinner until Monday is going to involve stovetops and barbecue grills. The silly thing was less than three years old! Burned out anyway.

I have wondered why Gary thinks he can’t leave Baltimore. Hey, we can research and write anywhere! You could conference over ‘phone or TV if you had to.

Get out if you can find any way to do it. It may well save your life, and it will certainly be good for your sanity. Life doesn’t get any better than having a squatty, shaggy black cow come up, stretch out her neck hopefully for a pat and a hunk of range cube, wrapping her vast black tongue around it delicately,,,and watching little bucklings racing around giddily playing tag…seeing your herbs thrive and knowing that they are far, far more flavorful than the “fresh” ones you can buy in the store, and they don’t cost a dollar an inch to pick, either…even the “frustration” of “I’ve got to make some cheese tonight because all the milk jugs are full!” The fun of the fire in YOUR fireplace burning wood cut from YOUR trees…

You need as good a tractor as you can afford, used, but you aren’t going to be on it very long days working in vast fields; besides being good for agriculture it is your source of brute strength. If you’re all camping out in motor homes and have woods, some day you’ll want to build a log cabin for a meeting hall… You aren’t going to spend hours week after week hoeing weeds. The aim isn’t to make more than just enough profit, eventually, to keep the IRS from calling your place a “hobby.” It is to know that there is beef for a year on the hoof without slaughtering a mother, all the chicken and eggs you and your friends need to stay healthy and well fed, ample milk, butter, and cheese, and your investments are appreciating right there in front of your watchful eyes. One friend has large herds and sometimes plants several acres of tomatoes, and he hasn’t made a profit in a dozen years. Unless you want to consider the tax aspect! With the new rates going into effect, the deductions alone could fund a hefty part of the operation.

I filled the incubator tonight with most of the 50 eggs I gathered. Three weeks from now chicks will hatch. I found a very old product called KEP-EG which insists it can keep 40 dozen eggs fresh for a minimum of a year (the record is over three, they say), without refrigeration for about thirty dollars. The stuff dates from “the” Depression! I don’t suppose they would still hatch, but what a treasure that would be if you didn’t find a place to keep chickens. If you coated a dozen a week with the powder and put them in a cool dark place in the motorhome, that would be a lot of nutrition and good breakfasts stored safely against time of need. In about six months, pull out the first dozen, and if you’re pleased, do another dozen for stock rotation. If it doesn’t work, well, maybe they would be useful at a politcal rally or something! (Joking. We don’t throw eggs at people. Have you ever thrown one at a tree, though? Surprisingly stress-relieving!)

Life is about always having an edge. The things add up, 24% here, 39% there, even a lousy 17% somewhere else. If I HAD to try to start a place on weekends only, I would, and then I’d try the Pygmy goats. They are incredibly cute, and good for both milking and meat, and you could haul them around in your SUV if you had to. Even if you don’t start raising a garden this year, the essential part is to stake out your refuge, as Stephen suggests, and start accumulating what you will need. Someone pointed out scathingly that Hippy-Yuppies had been trying the five acres to independence routine for decades and failing miserably. Yes, indeed, they have.

The difference is that you aren’t choosing a new career, you’re taking out insurance that will provide you with great pleasure and wonderful food for as long as life is anything approaching normal, and will be your best chance at survival at least reasonably “long” term. Let me ponder that…if we face The Great Depression, The Sequel, I think we’ll all have a better shot at eating decently for as long as it takes than the townies.

If it comes to anarchy, massive simultaneous terrorist attacks, or foreign invasion…I stopped to talk this over with my warrior and military history expert, and was pleased that his estimates are more sanguine than mine. Charles thought a minute, and replied “If you survive the first thirty seconds…” A very good point! If someone explodes a suitcase nuke in your city, you’ve got problems. We grinned and said simultaneously, “That gives you time to see how to survive the next five minutes!” For purposes of this exercise I deleted the issue of a Great Depression, and we considered how many will die quickly from riots, fires, enemy action, gangs, and so forth. A bunch.

His conclusion was that if you can make it through the first two weeks you’ve got the character, the skills, and/or the preparations to get through the rest, very bad luck always being possible. In that time you will have worked out a place of relative safety, regrouped with surviving family and friends, scrounged provisions, and have some idea, probably, of what you are facing. He has taught tactics at, shall we say, a “major” military college, and he is almost certainly correct, which is very cheering, isn’t it? No, you don’t get a double your jeopardy back guarantee, just the best counsel I can come up with.

MY estimate was on the order of four months, and choose any four you wish. If you have made it through riots, roving gangs, and harsh winter weather, spring will bring edible plants (uh…dandelions? Go find out! Then tell me. My knowledge is of the “willow bark can be used as a substitute for Bayer aspirin” variety, and it’s easier to pick up several big jugs of aspirin…if you manage to get out of town with it.) and the possibility of planting a crop. By then things will clarify and simplify.

What can you build? What can you barter? Is it safe to go poke around in ruins to look for building materials and possibly even food that survived fires? What is the biggest threat you face THEN?

We can only list possible problems; we can’t begin to sort out myriad combinations or which will come first. It takes a long time to starve to death, even if you aren’t fat, but you’ll die of thirst in days.

Eventually there will be problems in at least the cities caused by lack of garbage disposal, and there may be outbreaks of cholera from tainted water…typhoid fever…tetanus…bubonic plague, real or a gift from friends abroad. Grief, no, I don’t suppose my shots have been up to date since the late Sixties. Do as I say, not always as I do?

Old barns may well yield DDT or 90% pyrethrins instead of the 10% available today…stock up on 100% DEET (almost impossible to find; most brands are 25% at most these days; I cleaned out the last Gander Mountain had, on sale, months ago) because mosquitoes still carry diseases, although I’m not sure about West Nile. Fleas and lice preventive measures, rat traps and poisons…

Put money into research, knowing some of it will be wasted. I couldn’t get night vision scopes Wednesday to deal with the wild hog invasion because Gander Mountain was out. I cannot recommend the eighty buck red LED “spotlights” they have. I wouldn’t try to find my way to the bathroom in the dark with one. The guys are discussing “lighted radicals” (reticles?) on scopes and trying to make the red lights work. The conclusion is that we need what I wanted in the first place, of course. You don’t want to go hunting very dark gray hogs on dark nights with nothing but human vision, and you sure don’t want them to find you first. It has been a long time since most Americans had to worry about things that go bump in the night that had more than two feet, but if you have to get out of Dodge fast you just may come across some large carnivore, like the 12′ bear shot in recently that contained two hikers.

Military troops have night-vision gear and heat sensors, but most of us don’t, so much for pleasing the founding fathers. I hadn’t considered that more than briefly in the last year and a half because the technology is pretty costly, but I’ve rethought my position. Yes, twelve hundred dollars for a pair of scopes could buy a lot of things that I’d rather have most days, but your friends, family, and men will be irreplaceable.

Hope at least one of you learned something useful, and I always have fun since I love to write.

My apologies if you thought I was talking about race, although I think it clear that I was referring to those who have come to rely on the government for “entitlements.”

The “welfare plantation,” as I put it, and in the sense that you interpreted it, has far more whites on the rolls than it does “people of color.” “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” no matter what color the body it is in happens to be. If you wish to draw conclusions on which segments Welfare hurts the most do some research into comparative percentages of various ethnicities on the dole and in prison, but you will stray from the point.

The point is that this isn’t about race, just as wasn’t last time. It is about big government vs. small, tariffs, taxes, unions, the Nanny State vs. being responsible for our own behavior, the Constitution vs. celebrity rule, and all the variations between those who want to impose their ideas on others and cheerful little old ladies like me who help others personally and solve our own problems rather than turning to government. It is about how to protect ourselves from the fumbled-fingered bureaucrats who are tinkering with a vastly complex system without any idea of what they are doing.

It is even about whether we have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” or whether assorted government entities are “entitled” to order every aspect of our daily lives, confiscate the “wealth” we produce as they choose, and demand that we refrain from any speech which might conceivably offend anyone.

You are quite correct: “Gone With the Wind” was slightly less real than the fantasy of the Kennedy family, or the notion that Hollywood denizens are qualified to give advice on economics or scientific issues, or the proposition that Mr. Obama is a great speaker. He reads teleprompters and text messages on Blackberries very well for his age, although the messages are seldom high in content or logic.

Consider again what I SAID, which was that those on welfare are not going to want to lose what they have been told they are ENTITLED to, any more than agribusiness is going to deal well with being stripped of THEIR “entitlements,” farm subsidies. Government handouts at any level are subsumed under “welfare,” whether we’re talking about food stamps or keeping the price of butter artificially high, or “Buy American!” provisions in recent legislation.

Am I ever going to get a subsidy if a goat kid is stillborn or my pastures are destroyed by drought or wild hogs? No, of course not. Subsidies and entitlements are for big voting blocks and those who can afford lobbyists. When only five to sixty per cent. of a batch of eggs hatches do I demand a big study to determine what environmental concerns caused my loss? No, because farmers have always known that many things can go wrong. That’s why the old proverb is “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!” Poultrymen know that a great many of them aren’t going to, even if we take every precaution and candle the eggs first, turn them over twice a day, and keep the temperature at 99.5 and the humidity high. Would that Bernanke, Paulson, and proponents of the president’s “budget,” growth projections, and ideas of “stimulus” knew the same.

He may very well be correct. Consider that farmers who use the Monsanto super seeds (the crops from which provide no seeds or infertile seeds) have to buy the seed using credit. If it is not available, they have no means of planting a crop since they will be hoisted by the Monsanto attempt to have a repeating income by cornering the seed market. Those farmers who have heirloom seeds will be able to plant and perhaps keep their farm alive as long as they can afford fuel for the tractor, and to pump the irrigating water.

I wish I had the money to buy a farm out in the mountains and set up a sanctuary for my friends so they can bolt for it should the disgruntled Obama followers start venting their wrath at not getting any more handouts. But a lesser step is to scope out a small town of about 2000 people and visit and make a few friends and scope out a space for a trailer home. The above article and the other on the Collapse of Big Cities have inclined me to this course of action now rather than next year. I would rather move next year, so, has anyone heard of any financing problems being experienced by farmers?

As to Governor Palin. I venture a guess that she was made to look like a country bumpkin because she had not been a denizen of the DC crocodile pit. She is learning the hard way how they play the game. My hope is she has learned the tactics her enemies might use, and can now devise effective counters to them. She should now be learning the real history of the USA, the countries of the world, the real way that funding works, what capital really is, what wealth is and how to explain to the brainwashed how life will be good if they go out and earn their daily crust. Sarah could carry 2012 if she does her homework now and surrounds herself with Patriots who know the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by heart and actually apply both to their lives and ensure she knows it too despite provocation.

Thank you Mr Kunstler for a thought provoking and action prodding work!

Good point, but my observations of bipeds call this conclusion into question. Governments grow because people absolutely love the false security of slavery.

Can we leave race out of this? I highly doubt that slaves love slavery even if they are unsure of what to do with freedom. Gone With the Wind was never real…