Preparing for the worst

I worry that this is beginning to sound like a survivalist manual from the 1980s and 1990s. Nothing personal here, but there's nothing conservative about preparing for the end times.

This is beyond absurd.

This is a great post. And, no, to respond to one of the commenters, it's not survivalist or apocalyptic to prepare for contingencies.

My grandparents survived the Great Depression in part because they were people who knew how to work with their hands. And they had their faith. By contrast, so many of us are so-called "knowledge workers" -- dealing in abstractions and verbal and/or quantitative symbols all day long -- that we would be totally useless should there be a total collapse of the economic system.

Rod says: "Bookmark Sharon's blog." OK, I'll get to it.

Has there ever been a famine with wide-spread starvation in an orderly democratic nation? My guess is that if enough people were going hungry we'd get the nation buying food and distributing it to those without. If farmers couldn't pay for the essentials to plant the crop, again, I'm sure Uncle Sam would step up and get them the stuff. Not saying it's ideal, or something I'd like to have happen - in fact it would be totally rotten. But I really have a hard time envisioning the US reduced so far that people just sit down and starve if they don't have a garden with vegetables.

The Irish potato famine was an example of how those with no political voice were left to starve - Most estimates say 25% of the population starved and another 25% emigrated over a 10 year period. But that was the end result of hundreds of years of systematic oppression - forcing people off their lands, denying them civil, social and political rights. In the absence of such oppression, no one would have starved to death there.

That said - I think these ideas about civic involvement and being ready to sacrifice for the common good are great ideas, and are things that should be encouraged even in the best of times. What's the worst that could happen - everyone gets involved in making their communities better, and it turns out the economy doesn't collapse. Sounds good to me.

And probably the most important thing people can do to prepare for the worst is to pray the rosary everyday. The Blessed Mother has been running around for hundreds of years appearing to people and practically begging us to get going with this, and I say now is high time to start. She says it will help souls and avert disasters, and I say she should know.

Yes, I'm kind of joking with this, but not really. What could it hurt? The rosary is a wonderful prayer and I heartily recommend it. You can say it while you are planting your cucumbers and squash, and I am sure they will appreciate it too. Here's a link to a scriptural rosary that protestants might like (well, not all protestants, but maybe some!): Bookmark this one!

http://www.scripturalrosary.org/BeginningPrayers.html

I'm not worried. You know the old saying:

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.
Give a man a gun, and he'll have people fishing for him for a lifetime.

Now I just need to find me some nice community to terrorize that is simultaneously a) rural, and b) largely gun-free. Dang! That pesky American culture again. My plan for profitable brigandage, foiled. Guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board...

Has there ever been a famine with wide-spread starvation in an orderly democratic nation?

I don't think democracy plays into it--maybe the questions should be asked "Has there ever been a famine with wide-spread starvation in an orderly developed nation?"

In that case, you have to introduce world war as a factor to get that to 'yes.' Google "hongerwinter": the occupied Netherlands of the winter of '44-'45 was "orderly" (putting aside the occasional pinprick of a rather ineffective resistance), but people starved--and suffered the memory of it for years afterwards--it is speculated that living through it as a child was the source of Audrey Hepburn's clinical depression.

The German homefront in the "Turnip Winter" of 1916-17 was a pretty "orderly" place as well (compared to the revolutionary situation of less than two years later) but I don't know enough to say if that was a true famine.

leaving aside the Armageddon question, there's fabulous web communities to help with all of this, and the result is strengthened community: timebanks.org, goloco.org, freeloaders.org, and of course craigslist and freecycle.org. Frugality and sharing are good.

Like other readers, I like Rod's perspective a lot, most of the time. But this craving for the Last Great Day is getting old.
Posted by: Joe Magarac | October 7, 2008 8:47 AM

Although I'm still going to stock up on rice, beans, and chewable vitamins, I offer you the following for your reading pleasure:

http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=293&cat=1

Waiting for the Barbarians The Canon

What are we waiting for, gathered here in the agora?

The barbarians are supposed to show up today.


Why is there such indolence in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting around, making no laws?

Because the barbarians are supposed to show up today.
Why should the senators trouble themselves with laws?
When the barbarians arrive, they’ll do the legislating.


Why has our emperor risen so early this morning,
and why is he now enthroned at the city’s great gate,
sitting there in state and wearing his crown?

Because the barbarians are supposed to show up today.
And the emperor is waiting there to receive
their leader. He’s even had a parchment scroll
prepared as a tribute: it’s loaded with
all sorts of titles and high honors.


Why have our two consuls and praetors turned up
today, resplendent in their red brocaded togas;
why are they wearing bracelets encrusted with amethysts,
and rings studded with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they sporting those priceless canes,
the ones of finely-worked gold and silver?

Because the barbarians are supposed to show up today;
And such things really dazzle the barbarians.


Why don’t our illustrious speakers come out to speak
as they always do, to speak what’s on their minds?

Because the barbarians are supposed to show up today,
and they really can’t stand lofty oration and demagogy.


Why is everyone so suddenly ill at ease
and confused (just look how solemn their faces are)?
Why are the streets and the squares all at once empty,
as everyone heads for home, lost in their thoughts?

Because it’s night now, and the barbarians haven’t shown up.
And there are others, just back from the borderlands,
who claim that the barbarians no longer exist.


What in the world will we do without barbarians?
Those people would have been a solution, of sorts.

Translated by Stratis Haviaras

(C.P. Cavafy, The Canon. Translated from the Greek by Stratis Haviaras, Hermes Publishing, 2004)

I abstain from the apocalyptic tangents in this topic, except to point out that our infrastructure has a very long way to fall before things like widespread famine happen.

I don't have a personal link to the Great Depression. My parents were trying to survive the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the players who filled the vacuum (not just the Third Reich, but I'll spare all the history lesson). My mother's family were well-to-do (I don't think "middle class" works in that milieu) Jews as the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy was collapsing. My father was following the centuries-long traditions of his folk by embarking on a military career just as a civil war was blooming. I doubt most people in their neck of the world paid much attention to dust bowls.

At the risk of being awarded the Broom of Sweeping Generalizations, I see one major difference between the 1930s and now. It is based on reading and listening to those who do have the personal links I lack.

1930: I have earned and must continue to earn what I need to live.

21st century: I am entitled to what I can grab, it is mine whether I have actually paid for it or not, and my government must protect me from its loss.

Analysis and reasoned speculation are all fine and good, and there are some voices around to whom we should be listening closely. But, in the end, it is that psychological shift that defines our times when compared to the past, and it sets the scope and focus of the lessons we should learn from our mistakes.

I call it the cult of entitlement. It is the nature of cults that they hang on tenaciously, and rarely die a quiet death.

The reason why our current situation is different from other social or economic collapses is pretty simple. Ours is the first in human history that relies somewhere around 1% of the population to feed all the rest of us. When you've got 25% on the land (like during the world wars, or 75% (pre-industry), a disruption in one area can be absorbed by the rest. The risk is spread much more thinly. Also, as has been noted, the line between farmers and non-farmers was much less distinct than it is now, so any disruption in the food supply could be partialy absorbed by a general self-sufficiency.

Clearly, this isn't the case now. Our 1% of farmers all depend on the same few things to be able to produce food for the rest of us, namely, fertilizer, lots of credit and cheap oil. A disruption with any of these inputs puts the squeeze on the whole picture, and as food production follows a yearly cycle, a severe disruption at any point in the year can shut down that whole years production. Unfortunately it takes much less than a year to starve.

Rob: Obesity is *not* a sign of "enough food." It's often a sign of malnourishment - in particular, too many refined carbs (sugars, white flour), not enough protein and micronutrients.

I am with sigaliris: it makes no sense to wait for immanent collapse before retreating to a rural homestead. If you want to do it, do it! Don't use a stock market blip (yes, it's a blip compared to 1987, not even close to 1929) as an excuse. Because as sig says, if you're waiting, you don't really want to do it.

One fundamental problem is that too few Americans are engaged in really useful work, making things *of value* (as opposed to services and entertainment.) Homesteading is one way to return to adding value to American work, but it is not the only way.

I too am nervous about the almost-gleeful tone of "There's going to be a collapse!" writing. Some of it may be fueled by Kunstler's book, which is IMO mostly naive. We are all about two weeks away from medieval feudalism - those with the guns and the organization to use them effectively *in groups* would basically make the rest of us their feudal slaves. You can kiss your homestead goodbye, because a group of thugs/warlords will just come along and take it, as well as (probably) your women and kids too.

Rod,
Thanks for your attention to this. I have the deepest respect for you when you are in the realm of these ideas. I think you're hitting the tone just right-this is serious and we need to be prepared, but we can be hopeful. I also think that the "preparations" suggested here-thinking about the centralized food chain and getting ourselves out of it, supporting local communities economically, getting involved in community service that can support people outside of the government-are good things to do even if the situation is not as dire as Astyk believes (though I think she's on to something....).

I am beginning to think that the great cultural divide of our times is not between conservatives vs.liberals, but between those who are capable of seeing themselves as part of a community, with rights and responsibilities, with gratitude and indebtedness and labor and talent to contribute, and with an understanding that our only hope lies in our willingness to invest in our collective success, and those who are not capable of thinking like this.

I'd like to think that community-minded liberals and conservatives can get past our other differences and realize that on the single most important issue of our time, we agree.

Really looking forward to hearing you on Speaking of Faith.

On the morning of 9/11, I walked back to my Brooklyn apartment literally in shock, not able to comprehend what I had just seen. I wasn't aware how paralyzed by shock I was until later. We have grown so complacent in our society, so dependent on the state, on wealth and on technology to insulate us from reality, that we are going to be in a state of collective shock if these things are taken away from us abruptly. It is better to start thinking prudently, not in a panicky way, about the skills individuals, families and communities will need to get through hard times -- better to do that than to console oneself with the happy thought that it could never happen here, and to denounce anyone who says otherwise as a fool.

The fundamental problem with this line of thinking is that there is a profound difference between coming into knowledge and coming into wisdom.

The Religious Right, along with the Environmental Left, and many conservative Christians in general LOVE end-times type scenarios because it's the ultimate revenge fantasy, but one permitted by their value structures.

For the religious, it's "See, I was right, and now God is angry and you'll all suffer and eventually fry in Hell while I and my friends will be saved." It's the one ill-will you're allowed to wish on your enemies...that God will get them in the end.

The deep ecology left tends to think along similar lines, but without theistic theology. "See, I was right, and now Nature is angry and you'll all suffer and die, while I and my friends will survive and build a new, more ecologically balanced society."

Whenever I hear this stuff from Rod, I remember his tales of being bullied and feeling powerless when young, as well as his enormous reaction to the child molestation issue in the Catholic church, and reflect how powerlessness so often turns to a covert spite, particularly in the desert monotheisms.

I find it psychologically fascinating why any mention here that very hard times could be upon us soon, and that we should make preparations for them, gets shouted down with bogus claims that I'm embracing a "Left Behind" vision (I'm not), or by writing as if I'm thrilled that we might be headed for these times.

Wait a second. Your initial post here did not say "hard times might be coming and we should prepare for the possibility." You said that you wanted to discuss "what to do with the time we now have before it all starts to fall apart." (emphasis mine)

You are a writer, someone who uses words for a living, and you don't understand how phrases like "before it all starts to fall apart" could be construed as apocalyptic? I find that psychologically fascinating.

I didn't see any response - what's up with that?

I didn't see it (there's not enough time in the day for me to read all the threads), but I can tell you that it would be impossible for me to support my family on freelance writing. Really impossible. I'm in the business, and I know that freelancing is a good way to starve, and to starve fast.

You are a writer, someone who uses words for a living, and you don't understand how phrases like "before it all starts to fall apart" could be construed as apocalyptic?

Well, what do you mean by "apocalyptic"? I don't anticipate the Second Coming, nor do I anticipate that we'll return to a Hobbesian state of nature. I do anticipate that we could easily by this year be into a state in which most of the support systems we've all come to rely on are not there, or are under immense strain. That's what I mean by falling apart. Civlization is more fragile than we know. I have a neighbor who is under serious financial strain, such that she can't even pay her gas bill. We helped her out with that last winter ... but what happens if her neighbors who had the resources to help her out no longer do? I spoke to another neighbor the other day, a woman who works for a company that's announced it's about to do massive layoffs, and who told me she has $400 in her checking account. Period. The end. What happens to her if she's jobless, and the bank comes to take her house?

You see?

Rod, I'm not "denouncing you as a loon." I would hope you know me better than that. ; ) And I've followed with great interest the saga of your venture into chicken farming.

What I think about the apocalypse in general is twofold: first, it is very unlikely that this is it. We may well have a recession, even a serious one, but I don't think conditions are right for a depression, nor do I think that even a world-wide depression would lead to total collapse of civilization. Second, if total collapse of our institutions and economic infrastructure did occur, learning to grow your own vegetables would be whistling in the dark. It might be a nice thing to know, in case you happened to survive, but it's more likely you'd be either dead or enslaved. Total cultural collapse in a nation of 300 million people largely crowded into urban areas where life is not sustainable without full faith and credit in complex organizational structures? Fuggedaboudit. There's no way to predict survivability for an individual in a chaotic situation like that.

Thus, people (like Rod) who continue to bet on the survival of our society may well be making the wiser choice, even as they ruminate on the survivalist option. Another question, though: is there nothing noble about the choice to continue to work at upholding the society we have, rather than fleeing in fear of its demise? What about all the people who get up every day and go to work in offices, issuing driver's licenses and passports, registering children for school, and making their dental appointments for them? Not to mention those who, like Mr. Sig for instance, get up every day and do their best to make sure people who need health care can get it in the most affordable and efficient way possible. Bureaucrats and people who work for public institutions get a bad rap, even while we tremble in fear that said institutions will perish. But those very people--along with the auto mechanics, plumbers, and those who keep the trains running--are busy patching the dikes for us every day. We're darn lucky they haven't all moved to Chase County, Kansas, to homestead with chipped-flint adzes and hoes!

I'm all in favor of gardening and community involvement. But rather than putting off such things till catastrophe makes them mandatory, why not do it now, where we are? If we could use a tenth of the energy we spend obsessing over futures that don't arrive to work together for a better here and now, wouldn't we achieve many of the goals we dream about?

I didn't see it (there's not enough time in the day for me to read all the threads), but I can tell you that it would be impossible for me to support my family on freelance writing. Really impossible. I'm in the business, and I know that freelancing is a good way to starve, and to starve fast.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | October 7, 2008 12:15 PM

Well...I had my response up about an hour after you asked for my response.

I understand that its your blog and all and that you've got a busy schedule, but seeing as how you had specifically asked how I made the move, I'd have thought that you would have read it.

I'll reproduce the exchange here. It was originally in "Making a Benedict Option leap of faith" Hope you see it this time:

[Me] I started the process five years ago. I'm at stage 4 now and enjoying live in a small town ever so much more than life in the big city.

[Rod] Tell us more about your life, then. It's hard to "just do it" when you have kids depending on you, and when you have a certain set of skills that require you to be in a city to work to support that family. To say nothing of church. I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I'd really like to know more about how you did it.

Posted by: Rod Dreher | September 25, 2008 11:12 AM

[My response}

Yes, it is harder to do it when you have kids and when you are tied to a particular faith practice. For better or worse, I don't have to take either or those factors into consideration.

Regarding your skill set, you are a published writer - you can write anywhere.

But here is my number one secret of how I've managed to do this:

My wife and I live on an income of around $45,000 / year, but spend less than that.

We don't buy stuff we don't need. Instead of going on vacations, we buy things that improve our quality of life, such as fencing materials or tools.

We pay for services only when absolutely needed. During this last storm, a bunch of shingles blew off my wife's bookstore. I got up on the roof and replaced them myself.

The last time we paid for home repairs was when the local fix-it guy installed our hot water heater. Cost all of $75 for his work and materials - not including the heater itself, which was around $200 for a 30 gallon tank. We didn't put that tank on our credit card - we saved enough out of my weekly paycheck until we could pay cash, and took cold showers in the meantime. Fortunately, this was during the summer months.

Another critical component is affordable housing. When we first moved out here, we lived in my wife's bookstore, which we bought for cash from the proceeds of selling our house in Houston.

For a couple of years, we wondered if we were going to find any affordable place to live in town besides that building. Finally, someone needed to sell some family property in a hurry. The house would charitably be described as run-down, but it is within walking distance of my wife's bookstore. We paid $20,000.

Our mortgage payments are $250/month which gives us the flexibility to pay down the balance by a big chunk whenever we get spare cash, which isn't all that often. We got a fifteen year, fixed rate mortgage, but it will be paid off in much less than fifteen years.

In a way, that property fell into our laps, but if it hadn't, then by now we would have bought an acre of two of raw land and a very used single - wide trailer for a total price of $20,000 or less.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that your standard of housing would likely be much lower than what you are used to. This is not a bad thing. A small house has smaller utility bills. The house we bought is on the order of 800 square feet. it has no central air/heat. We use two window units for cooling and a free-standing Dearborn gas heater for heating. During the summer, the gas bill is minimal, but the electric is higher. In the winter, the gas bill is higher, but the electric is higher. During the worst extremes of winter or summer, the combined total of gas and electric bills is not more than $150.

My background is engineering and computers. At my job, I keep the computers running and do quality control on flanges and industrial castings, but that certainly wasn't anything I specialized in before - my specialty is being able to do 'technical stuff' at a reasonable wage and not being afraid of doing blue-collar work.

And there is an advantage to having a blue-collar component to my work, I've learned to operate forklifts - another marketable skill around here, but more practically, I have a good reason/excuse to wear the company-provided 'shop floor' uniform, which saves money on my laundry and clothing costs.

So there you go Rod, the way I do it is to live frugally - especially in regard to housing, avoid credit cards, and be willing to do whatever work is available.

I work a comfortable 40 hour week. My wife's book sales are almost entirely done over the internet. If we had to increase our income for some emergency purchase, she and I could find additional part-time jobs for the duration.

Any other questions? I'm happy to share.

Posted by: John E. - Agn. Stoic | September 25, 2008 12:39 PM

John E, I assume there are no children in this situation?

Having children in the life you describe would complicate things considerably.

John E, I assume there are no children in this situation?
Having children in the life you describe would complicate things considerably.
Posted by: Leo | October 7, 2008 1:51 PM

You are correct on the first point, my wife and I have no children.

As for the second point, I'll have to take your word for it, but there are families who have lived in my adopted small town for generations, so I have to assume that it is possible to raise children here.

They have a school here, Little League, Boy Scouts, all that sort of thing.

I can see not wanting to raise kids 'in poverty', but I don't see any kids starving or running around naked, so their basic needs are being met somehow.

The thing I'm not sure is grasped is that is unremitting physical toil in subsistence farming (which also has to provide clothing and fuel). You work and work and work and work. You have to be superb physical condition, and there's no allowance for vacation or getting sick. And, folks, if you live anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, especially in Louisiana and Texas, it's hot, sweaty, sticky, dirty, buggy work. Rod's Sunday afternoon exercise chronicled a couple of days ago is how it would go 12 hours a day, every day. So in addition to all the other concerns listed above, physical fitness is a must. I know. I grew up on a subsistence farm.

You are correct on the first point, my wife and I have no children.

As for the second point, I'll have to take your word for it, but there are families who have lived in my adopted small town for generations, so I have to assume that it is possible to raise children here.

Of course. It's just that I'm doubting that families with five children are living in the back of a bookstore and taking showers in cold water while we save up for a new water heater. Not voluntarily, anyway. Seven people in 800 square feet of house would be rather...crowded. Also, children, including their books, clothing, food and sundries, are quite expensive, even if you hold down firmly on spending.

Then again, that cute, relatively cheap baby becomes a teenager sooner than we all would like. Several of those around the house can be a real liability. I speak from experience here.

I'm also wondering about medical expenses. I'm assuming that you and your wife are relatively young and healthy. The more people you fold into a given situation, the higher the chances are that one or more of them will have or develop an expensive health problem. Perhaps your forklift-owning employer supplies health insurance?

If your point is that two young, healthy, resourceful adults with good educations and some capital, who have no children and who are not adverse to some minor privations, can live very cheaply in some places, then I think we'd all agree. How much this helps those of us who are trying to raise families, not to mention people who may grow old or get sick, might be another question.

I did not go for the rural option myself, so maybe I don't have a lot to contribute. I did live a very er, shall we say frugal, not to mention penurious, lifestyle when my kids were little, though. My attention was caught by the comment about 7 people in an 800-square-foot house. Okay, we didn't do that. We did have 5 people in such a house, though. Me and Mr. Sig and three kids. It was crowded, but it was fun. If we'd finished the attic, we could have put a couple more people in there. A house doesn't get really crowded until there are teenagers! But if you start with an 800-sq.ft. house, by the time the kids get big, you might be able to add on.

We had previously lived, for a time, with our first baby plus three single women and two men in the top floor of an old house in the student area. One bathroom with a rusty shower stall, no tub. One bedroom for us, where we kept the baby in the closet because there was not room elsewhere. A room for the women and one for the men, divided by some plywood, and a room with the kitchen appliances at one end of it, which did double duty as living area/dining room. I cooked dinner for all each night, then we moved the table out from the wall and put it back again when we were through eating. The pots and pans lived in boxes under the table because there wasn't room for them anywhere else. Now THAT was crowded.

Children are amazingly cheap until they hit school age and need proper clothes and schoolbooks and such. Up till about kindergarten, you can get all their clothes at a used clothing place. After that, kids tend to wear out the knees of their jeans, etc. so there's not as much good stuff to be bought used. Try to live in a town with lots of rich people--they have the best old clothes! Ditto for books and toys--buy at library sales and garage sales.

Medical care for children IS expensive. If you're lucky and yours are healthy and never have accidents, that's great, but I wouldn't count on it. Frankly, I think I was very irresponsible in living the way I did, but hey . . . I thought I was doing it all for Jesus. I don't want to live that way now, but it is a learning experience, and if you're convinced it's God's will--or if you just want to try it--it certainly can be done.