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Resources As I discuss on the "Community Prep – Getting Serious" page, compiling a list of needed items is a key to survival planning. My own list is available here for download (it's an Excel 98 file). Some of the freshest, most comprehensive thinking about our little situation is coming from Ran Prieur. He's always coming up with great new stuff on his home page, his "How to Survive the Crash and Save the Earth" is invaluable, and "The Slow Crash" makes a good case for an Apocalypse that is, well, less than apocalyptic. The Long Emergency, James H. Kunstler; Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. There was a good interview of Kunstler on salon.com, on April 14, 2005. The interview was reprinted in full at fromthewilderness.com. Kunstler's site offers the "Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle" and a wealth of other creative work. It has nothing — and everything — to do with Apocalypse; but what the hay, Mac Tonnies' Posthuman Blues (Hot memes daily! Now human-readable!) is, as John Shirley sez, "good shit." Community Preparedness The Post Carbon Institute describes itself as "an educational institution and think tank that explores in theory and practice what cultures, civilisation, governance & economies might look like without the use of (non-renewable) hydrocarbons as energy and chemical feedstocks." They have assisted the creation of economic localization "outposts" across the country and in Canada, England, and Australia (so far). They have also mounted a campaign to show their film The End of Suburbia as widely as possible. And they are distributing a new documentary, Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature, that features appearances by Matthew Simmons, Chris Skrebowski, and Michael Ruppert, not to mention George W. Bush. The citizens of Willits, Ca. have mounted a major effort, called the Willits Economic Localization project (WELL), to prepare for the consequences of Peak Oil or other disruptions. They've been working on this for less than a year, but they appear to have made considerable progress, and the city government itself has gotten strongly involved. Here's a news article outlining their work, and this is their own site."Global Economics: The Endgame," Stephen Roach, chief economist, Morgan Stanley; June 20, 2005. "There's good growth and bad growth," Roach says. "The former is well supported by internal income generation and saving. The latter is driven by asset bubbles and debt. The United States, in my opinion, has been on a bad-growth binge for nearly a decade, but especially over the past five years. In a US-centric global economy, that means the rest of the world has also become overly dependent on bad growth as the sustenance of a false prosperity." "Debtor Nation," Robert B. Reich, Nov. 24, 2004, TomPaine.com. Reich was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. This is a short, scathing summary of the current economic predicament of the US. Sir Julian Robertson, legendary manager of the $1B+ Tiger Hedge Fund, was interviewed by Ron Insana on May 24, 2005. He anticipates complete global economic, political, and infrastructure collapse. Global Warming, Climate Change, Thermohaline Stoppage Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Ocean and Climate Change Institute, "Abrupt Climate Change" page. Describes a number of research articles available for download. You might start with "Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?", a World Economic Forum white paper by Robert Gagosian, Woods Hole president and director. This paper describes the potential effects of thermohaline stoppage on global climate. "Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows," Jonathan Leake, science editor, The Times of London, May 8, 2005. Some of the first clear evidence of thermohaline stoppage. "Sea life in peril -- plankton vanishing," Glen Martin, San Francisco Chronicle, July 12, 2005. Global Disaster Watch does a good job (with daily updates) of tracking meteorological, astronomical, volcanic, and other natural disasters, which some people feel are increasing as we enter this crucial period of change. Natural Resources Peak Oil "On Oil Supply, Opinions Aren't Scarce," by Joseph Nocera; New York Times, Sept. 10, 2005. A balanced look at oil-peak pessimists and optimists. Nocera quotes Seth Kleinman of PFC Energy in Washington: "It's the geologists on one side and the economists on the other side." "The Saudi oil bombshell," by Michael T. Klare; Asia Times, June 29, 2005. Klare reviews Matthew Simmons' Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. Simmons makes a persuasive and exhaustive case that Saudi oil reserves are far smaller than claimed by the US Dept. of Energy (among others). "Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply," by Richard Heinberg; an address delivered June 23 to the FEASTA conference in Dublin, Ireland. Heinberg is also author of Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World and The Party's Over: Oil, War, and The Fate of Industrial Societies. His MuseLetter offers "a continuing critique of corporate-capitalist industrial civilization and a re-visioning of humanity's prospects for the next millennium." Beyond Oil, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes (prof. emeritus, Princeton Univ.); Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. Deffeyes worked at Shell Oil in the 1950s with "Mr. Peak Oil" himself, M. King Hubbert. His website includes a page titled "Current Events" ("Join us as we watch the crisis unfolding"). "Oil:
Caveat empty," by Alfred J. Cavallo, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists,
"Peak Oil Presentation to the U.S. Congress," by conservative Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, chairman of the Projection Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, March 14, 2005 "Synopsis," by Jay Hanson, dieoff.com. A comprehensive, somewhat technical summary of our energy woes, focusing on peak oil. Farming & Food "The growing cost of growing wheat," by Andy Porter, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Sept. 24, 2005. "Trojan' ducks could trigger global Asian flu pandemic, say scientists," by Mark Henderson, The Times of London. The darker side of Ducks (who are, after all, only doing what comes naturally). Gathered in a great circle about the North Pole, they have shared H5N1 liberally among themselves and will now descend their traditional flyways to share it with us. Self-Sufficiency Cooking Google search results for "solar ovens, solar cooking" Food Storage Google
search results for "food
storage, survival" Hunting & Trapping
Google search results for "survnet, survivalism" The Open Directory Project's survivalism page is another good jumping off point. Spiritual Possibilities "Survival" Google search results for "near death experience, NDE, IANDS" New Age Spirituality Jody Boyne's "ET Phone Home" presents a thoughtful and comprehensive overview of Aquarian Age spirituality. All of the Above John Ludi's Anomalinks is about as eclectic as it gets, a good jumping-off point to ... everywhere. |