You Can’t Take It With You
One of Rush Limbaugh’s latest shows begins with this taunt.
If you’re in the DC area, are you happy you don’t have an electric car? Yeah, with the power outages, are you happy you don’t have an electric car? Because two million, five million, three schmillion, whatever. Aren’t you glad you don’t have an electric car? By the way, how are those windmills working out for you? How are the windmills and solar panels working out? Are they running your air-conditioning for you? As you sit there and sweat away, how are things doing in the nation’s capital? All those windmills are really working out, huh? Solar panels, yeah, man, that’s the future. There you are, sitting there, sweating, stinking like a stuck pig for three days, and it’s gonna be this way for another week. It’s a good thing you don’t have an electric car or you couldn’t get around, you couldn’t escape. Isn’t it amazing.
It brought back memories of a barbecue I attended a couple of months with a political figure in Australia. He maintained that current policies failed to take into account the fact that while Oz had a lot of coal resources, it was still dependent on imported oil for moving-around fuel. An international disturbance, he said, would be distinctly unpleasant for those accustomed to sipping white wine along the beautiful beaches of the Australian East coast. With regard to the cars, I have little doubt that the machine shops and panel beaters would do a land-office trade producing conversions that my father told me about in World War 2. The coal-fired car. In Japanese occupied Philippines they were fueled, not by coal, but by dried coconut husks. It was slow, hell on the engine (you have to carbon-blast the cyclinder bores frequently) and it probably doesn’t meet EPA emissions standards.
Gassify the coal and then feed it to the engine
But it worked, kind of and sort of, so you can see where Limbaugh might have a point. Modern man is tremendously dependent on the infrastructure to keep him going. Where once the majority of people lived on the farm, and were independent in the short run from civilizational disruptions, modern man lives entirely on the grid. He buys food from the Store, gets his power from the Electric Plug and his protection from the Station House. What happens if the Store, Electric Plug, Wi-Fi point and Station House ain’t there no more? Even for a couple of weeks?
Keith Veronese, writing an entertainment column asks: who would want to survive the collapse of civilization? “Would you want to survive, and emerge into the post-apocalyptic wasteland? Would the positives of playing a role in a new society outweigh the loss of creature comforts? Or would you rather just go out with the majority of the human race? ”
What self respecting liberal would want to live in a world where maybe only Rush Limbaugh is playing on the radio? Well in that event, they can console themselves by acknowledging that Limbaugh got some things right. In his own way Rush was talking about something Belmont Club readers are familiar with: The Design Margin.
The Design Margin is rooted in the notion that life is uncertain; that since things have often collapsed in the past and may collapse again we actually need to have more reserves than we think. Asteroid strikes, wars and natural calamities happen — and with far more frequency than the space alien invasions that Paul Krugman suggests we prepare against.
Bad times are frequent events.
The idea that the office on the corner will always be able to dispense Government Cheese does not reflect the normal historical experience. Rather it reflects that peculiar period of stability and prosperity which followed the end of the Second World War: the Pax Americana, which the Left hates. Our civilizational attitudes have been formed on the basis of the exception, not the rule.
But though they may hate the Pax Americana, the Greens probably can’t live without it. Can’t live without the Ipods, the connectivity, the store-bought food, the cafe-bought lattes — all the ugly things made by private industry. And by paring down the redundancies in the system as wasteful and unsightly; by reducing the energy reserves of the system in favor of such fairy schemes as windmills and carbon trading the Greens have made the system far less robust than it could have been. Because they are never going to need the Design Margin. Ever. Until they do.
Veronese writes, “I wouldn’t last long in a Mad Max-style world — the most complex thing I can do to my car is replace its refrigerant. I’d probably die in the first couple of months — or once my glasses broke, whichever came first.”
But I think Veronese is wrong. He might survive; survive by doing things which are unthinkable to him now. But if he made it through he would have a new respect for the Design Margin.
Years ago I had a Jewish friend whose father had survived the war in Europe and emigrated to America. When my friend reached late adolescence, his father, who had become a prosperous doctor in America, beckoned his son with a furtive gesture. He led the young man to a closet. And in it were a packed suitcase, a stout pair of shoes, an overcoat and a hat. “I want you to know,” he told his son, “that if you need to run, it’s all here ready to go.” He looked at his father and thought to himself that the experience of the war had created an indelible paranoia. The old man could not get it into his mind that the Nazis were gone and that he was safe from it for all time in the Midwest.
Perhaps the old Jew knew something we have forgotten. That we are not safe because of some natural condition. We were safe for only so long as the Pax Americana endured. Remove that, undermine that, dismantle that — remove the Plug, the Store and the Station House — and all the bets were off.
Belmont Commenters How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99 The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99 Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99 No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99 Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Umm. I hate windmills as much as the next person. But isnt the problem that the transmission grid is down? Gas fired Turbines, Nuclear heated Steam turbines, doesnt matter what it is, still need transmission lines to get the power to the breaker outside your house.
The other side of Green hubris is their belief that the future is predictable, that without those solar panels and wind mills that Mother Earth must absolutely get hotter. News flash from Watts Up With That, the Sun Has Changed its Character:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/02/the-sun-has-changed-its-character/
The city of Alexandria — across the Potomac from DC — had a coal-fired plant that was shut down a short while ago as part of the not-so-secret EPA plan to make coal-fired electrical plants extinct. There went Alexandria’s design margin. I have electricity, but my neighbors a stone’s throw away do not.
As for electric cars: it is ludicrous that these plug-in monstrosities are being pushed into production. An electric car will make sense when fuel cells efficient enough to provide enough internally-generated electricity to the car (no external plug) are developed, and can deliver a performance and range equal to at least a basic combustion engine auto. Hybrids work because they have an alternate propulsive source.
“stinking like a stuck pig”
All consideration of the content of his taunt aside, methinks he has screwed up that simile a bit.
“You can’t take it with you.”
Grandpa did.
The largest difference I see between old money and new money is how they treat the servants. The Old Money may have been founded by cut throats and bigots who started as traveling salesmen or mechanics of deckhands but compared to the New Money acquired by educated marketers internet engineers and lawyers the old guys were gentlemen. The new crowd aren’t just Socialists. They are arrogant rude Socialists.
There are a lot of videos on YouTube about people making woodgas generators, something of a lost art since WWII.
I live in the Peoples Republic of Austin TX surrounded by social liberals and pointy headed professorial types grown from the hold-over hippies of the 60′s and 70′s. All it would take is 2 weeks without electricity, a/c and running water to turn them all into conservatives or more likely raving anarchists ready to take by force from their neighbors whatever they needed. Their ideology is rooted in comfort, when the comfort is gone-the ideology is uprooted.
News from China suggests that the Beast in man is not far from the surface. Passengers beat two hijackers to death after the group, who were ethnic Uighurs, attempted to storm an airplane cockpit armed with a dismantled aluminum crutch.
They did not get far. The passengers who were in a restless mood after having been fed only a bowl each of instant noodles by the airline saw six men make the attempt.
WJ Gunther of New Jersey saw the Chinese passengers and crew swarm all over the hijackers and pummel them mercilessly after which some sang “Praise to God” as the surviving attackers were hauled out by the security forces at the airport.
What secrets lurk in the hearts of men when civilization breaks down or when you’ve had one bowl of ramen too many? The Shadow Knows.
I was at a Cub Scout camp last week, camping along the Virginia – West Virginia border. I got home from camp just in time for the lights to go out, and spent almost 3 days with power out all over my town. From this I’ve decided that when the grid goes the next time, I’d rather be in the hills than in the town.
The Cub Scout camp was Olympic themed, having events based around Homer’s Odyssey, and I had ample time in the woods to reflect on that great work. Its major theme is a surprising one to moderns, it’s one that goes almost unnoticed. But once you’re turned onto it you see it on every page, in every one of Odysseus’ encounters. This theme is the abuse of the guest-host relationship, the abuse of goodwill. This is the greatest sin for Homer, it marks the beginning of the Illiad (the Rape of Helen) and the end of the Odyssey (the Death of the Suitors) and every step of the way for Odysseus’ travels.
There I was, surrounded by a group of very ‘nice’ people. These were Northern Virginia yuppies and professionals with their boys, and this was Cub Scout mission striving to reflect all the wholesome values transmitted by that laudable moral institution, the Boy Scouts of America. On the whole, the edifice fell apart repeatedly. I saw and heard adult leaders at all times during the night, keeping would-be sleepers awake through their revelry – even walking through camps while hollering across to other camps. Lord help us when scant resources came into play, as happened everyday when we showed up at the mess hall to submit to camp cook’s ritual attempt at poisoning us. The mad dash to secure provisions at times left whole packs deprived of meals as more aggressive packs swept in to maximize their partakings. At the cell phone charging station in the admin lodge, people were unplugging phones of others not around in order to free up the outlets for their own use. At every point it was required, and this was required a lot, the concept of standing in line and waiting turn went straight out the window. It was dog-eat-dog.
Odysseus may well have slain them all, and these were the ‘nice’ folks. In less technical, less specialized societies, a premium is placed upon goodwill and guest-host relations. Our insular nature is a luxury and a privilege, I thought as I imagined what would happen if the lights did not come back on. How would I get 250 miles south to my family homestead, but by fighting every step of the way? With no safe harbor, no good hosts, no trustworthy fellow travelers?
I fear the truth is that a fragile, thin veneer of civility, too easily shattered, encases the modern man who, in his core, is lawless and governed by seeking advantage. The necessary lessons so foremost in minds of Homer’s audience have long ago gone unlearned.
Anybody:
Excuse the O/T but what military invented the goose step? And why is it so favored by dictatorships?
You see it in N Korea, Iran, previously in Iraq, maybe Venezuela for all I know. I think even Argentina.
What’s the deal with the goosestep? All those aching knees!!
And: ”At the cell phone charging station in the admin lodge, … ” At a Scout camp?!! Tell me you’re kidding.
John #1:
The wonderful thing about windmills and solar arrays is that they need a collection network as well as a distribution network. So you get twice the oportunity for a windstorm to shut you down. And then the “generators” themselves; windmills and solar cells, are highly vulnerable to weather as well – unlike power plants. So you have 3 times the opportunities to end up sleeping in a house with an inside temperature in the high 80′s and humidity to match – which I have done, more than once.
I have two friends who run their houses off solar arrays. One is in Florida and if the commercial power goes out he will be fine. Until it gets dark – energy storage is a major problem and he has none at all – and at night is when you need it the most. He paid $50K for that system.
The other friend has a cabin way back in the mountains of Vermont. He uses solar cells because there is no other alternative up there. He has battery storage, a back-up propane generator and a back-up back-up gasoline powered generator. And most importantly, he is not stupid enough to try to live up there in the winter and comes down to his home in Florida just after the first snow hits.
I have a back-up generator. It will run a fridge and/or microwave and/or TV. Unfortunately, it will not run the air cond. I do have a fireplace, and where I live it is one of the few places where you could get by with that during the winter if you had to – but winter is not when the power problems occur.
I plan to build a concrete block hamshack onto the house with a separate air cond that the generator can run. They’ll be just enough room to sleep in there, and I’ll have HF and VHF comm as well. And, oh, yeah, enough guns and ammo to equip a platoon. I’ll be able to listen to Rush with no problem.
There are two kinds of people, those that add to the Design Margin and those that use it up without a thought. Of course, a study would no doubt reveal that all people who add to Design Margin are racist exploiters of the environment who bitterly cling to their guns and bibles.
Cowboy – I think that is right. My observations from the recent days when my oldest son was in Scouting. The obsession with self and self-achievement over what Scouting was like in my youth, which was the emphasis on the Patrol method, where the Scouts had to work together as a team to get things done.
The notion of courtesy, sharing and teamwork is fading fast. It may also have something to do with the change from a manufacturing economy (where we all worked together in factories – which is where I started working in 1977), and the service economy.
My last boss wanted to put knock down all the walls and put us in cubicles. I am not sure if that was a good idea or bad idea – it smacked of antlike communism to me, because that was his experience…… in China. 8)
W @ 8: “Passengers beat two hijackers to death ..”
Fascinating link, Wretchard. Who would have guessed that, out of 80 passengers on an internal Chinese flight far off the beaten track, 20 would be Americans? And who would have guessed that 6 terrorists, seeing those American tourists on board the plane, would have gone ahead with their plan anyway? The US engenders no fear anymore. The ‘Reset/Overcharge’ has been totally successful.
If that group of 20 passengers had been Israelis rather than Americans, I suspect the Uighurs would have decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
When Katrina took our roof,& solar panels, we replaced the roof,not the solar panels.Solar panels for us were an expensive mistake.& this in Sunny Florida..
As to the theme of uncertain life, life can turn on a dime.A smooth ride becomes a train wreck.Some learn this early, some not at all, to their regret.
Gordon : Have you heard of “wikipedia”
According to Mark Scheffler of Slate, the goosestep is the Prussian equivalent of the custom of those ancient tyrants, who in order to impress the onlooker, would periodically order members of their bodyguard to jump to their deaths. It was because the goosestep was so uncomfortable, so unnatural that the Prussians chose to demonstrate it on parades.
Some 1950s movie, whose title I can’t remember involved Vikings arriving at this brutal kingom where the potentate had this ghastly slide which consisted of a 50 foot sword blade set on its edge. He told one of his bodyguard to climb to the top and slide down, resulting of course in the man’s bisection. Then he asked Kirk Douglas or someone if his men were loyal enough to do the same.
In the grand Hollywood tradition, the Kirk Douglas character said, “I will not order my men to do it. Rather I myself will go to show that I would rather die than betray my men,” a speech which duly impressed the barbarous potentate, who decided it would be better if they all had a drink.
So the one answer is that the goosestep is intentionally pointless the better to demonstrate mindless obedience.
15. beautox—
Oooops!! Caught me with my brain down.
The survivors of the aftermath of the grand calamity will simply evole back into the rugged individuals who populated the United States during the 1800′s to 1914′s build markets for goods and make goods for the market the old fashion way, sweat, steam and wood.
This would kill off the liberals right quick and quite a few conservative also. But quicker ‘n shit the communities would be back and speeding tickets and all the rest of life’s bothers. leaders would evolve back into the assholes we all remembered.
–
The Grid? Doesn’t the wind turbine have to be intact for the power to be supplied to the grid?
After this land hurricane what condition are the windmills and solar panels farms? If the power plant goes down there is no grid until power can be restored. Which means repairing or replacing the power source.
How complicated is it to rebuild a wind mill/solar panel farm compared to repairing or replacing a coal fired electric plant?
Wretchard:
I think the Viking movie is “The Long Ships” and the natives call the torture/execution sword slide “The Mare of Steel”.
Growing up, my father used to recite the line “You shall ride the mare of steel” at odd intervals, at least as I remember it.
The IMDB link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057259/
I live in the DC metro. Wild storm here on Friday night. Never seen anything like it. The wind blew harder than it has in any hurricane that has passed through here before. The wind was seeded with dirt from dry ground. The mix of dirt in the wind was so heavy it would sand blast you if you were outside. That is –the wind hit first and then the rain. There was some rain. But it was the wind that blew everyone indoors. And blew down the trees.
I spent much of Saturday driving around looking for a starbucks that was open. I hit 5 before finding one in Tysons. Trouble was Tysons was the only shopping center open for miles around that was open. Everyone was baking in their house. So Tyson’s was crowded as Christmas. The line to get into Starbucks ran out into the hallway. I gave up on looking for an internet connection and decided Tysons was no refuge from the heat. Sleeping was pretty straight forward Saturday night. When it got dark i went to bed.
Starbucks reopened on Sunday. many more established reopened on Monday. So far my neighborhood is dark.
The solution to the problem is to get a generator. Hmm.
The grid –and its vulnerability–is becoming increasingly a problem. I was at a congressional hearing downtown two weeks ago where the discussion was about getting portable nuclear reactors for military bases. The point was to get them off the increasingly vulnerable grid. It will be two years before contracts are signed. If you compared distribute energy to internet– We’re probably about in early 80′s. That is the military’s first experiments with arpanet were in the early 70′s in response to the problem of vulnerability of their computers. 20 years out from now things will look very different in terms of energy production. The first generation portable nuclear reactors will be based on uranium but later generations will be based on thorium.
(As well as the USA–there’s lots of thorium in Oz.the Aussies are talking it up as much as everyone else.)
the difference between blackouts in the downtown areas like those in NYC in past decades and the suburbs recently — is that in downtown areas there’s lots of looting. In the suburbs, there is no looting and often neighborhoods ban together to aid one another.
Funny thing: When I lived in Oklahoma, in which high winds are common and tornadoes a more reliable form of entertainment than the crummy local TV stations, power failures never seemed to occur. I cannot recall a single one.
In CA they used to happen on occasion, despite the fact that really rough weather was quite rare. In VA they happened some. In SC we were once without power for a week after Hurricane Hugo. In FL they are very common; at one time we used to say, “We have no electricity so it must be Saturday morning.”
It’s almost like the people with the worst weather for power lines are prepared for it….
Wretchard says at #16: So the one answer is that the goosestep is intentionally pointless the better to demonstrate mindless obedience.
It seems to me that Mel Brooks’ juxtaposition of the goosestep with the Rockette-style high kick in the “Springtime for Hitler” sequence from The Producers (1968) is comic gold for precisely this reason. The female dancers in the following clip perform the high kick at about 1:57, followed by the entire dance corps performing the goosestep at 2:20– while they sing, “Springtime for Hitler and Germany, Goosestep’s a new step today . . . ”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K08akOt2kuo
Gordon @ 10: Yes, they had a charging station in the admin lodge (and WiFi), where adult leaders could charge their mobile devices. The old Virginia Slims ads do apply to Scouting, “You’ve come a long way, baby!” There are even scouting apps for the smartphones.
—-
David @ 12: I too come from the older era of scouting, which I regard with far more esteem than the new. I hope I’m not romanticizing it, but the transmission of values seemed more concrete and successful ‘back in the old days.’
—-
While in college in Austin, TX, I became enamored of a beautiful old Victorian house that I simply had to live in. With effort I succeeded, only to find that it truly was an old Victorian house, i.e., no air conditioning. The first summer was quite a bear, getting used to no A/C. Sleeping at night was the real trick. But I figured if the folks in days of old could hack it so could I, and I did. It took several months of acclimation. I’m sure you’d have run from my scent by July/August, but the body did adapt. Of course, that was a college-aged body. I imagine it would adapt again, maybe take longer.
Funny thing was I had a girl from Boston who lived with me for the project, and she recoiled at my sun tea. “You Southerners are SOOO stupid! First, you boil the tea to brew it. Then you put ice in it to cool it down! Then, you put sugar in it to sweeten it up. Then, you put lemon in it sour it up!” Well by the end of June I had her swilling sun tea like a natural born champ!
We can adapt a lot more than we’ll allow at first.
Charles #20:
“Sleeping was pretty straight forward Saturday night. When it got dark I went to bed.”
Yes, I recall the simplicity of life enforced by no electric power after Hugo in 1989. Sun goes down and you sit for a bit, eat a cold sandwich while lit by candles and kerosene lamps, take a cold shower and then to bed. Got up with the sunrise. “Green acres is the place to be…”
Good news was that it was in late September so the weather was perfect except for a few widely scattered major hurricanes. Sunny. High around 80, low around 60. No need for either heat or air cond. Peaceful, except for the sound of the chain saws in the daytime (note: less than 1 week after the storm the number of people killed in chainsaw accidents equaled the number killed in the storm.)
If you want to wipe out a populace don’t drop fragmentation bombs; parachute drop fully fueled chainsaws.
Perhaps the information at this linked article sheds some light on the sort of mentality we are dealing with. The article from Alex Jones’ website <iPrison Planet is titled "Whistleblower: TSA Deliberately Hiring Psychopathic Criminals
Here’s an excerpt:
Moderates and Liberals have sneered at and dismissed anyone who trots out any sort of comparison between our current dilemmas and those of Pre-WWII Europe, most especially NAZI Germany. But I have mentioned in several posts here at Belmont that one trick that a certain comic-moustachioed leader pulled to accomplish his aims in the 1930′s was to use violent criminals as provocateurs, deliberately tasking them to assault Jews savagely, even rape and murder, IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW. These criminals, many selected from prison populations and released with assurances that they would not be prosecuted, were recruited to intimidate not just the Jews who were their immediate targets, but to cow the entire population. Very few people interfered, although there are documentary photos, some made by the NAZIs themselves.
Like Stalin’s atrocities and massive campaigns against his subjects, the news was MEANT to be widely disseminated, so the populace everywhere knew what to expect if they didn’t stay in line and follow orders.
In a video of his broadcast, Alex Jones speaks with a caller identifying himself as a TSA screener, claiming that the TSA is deliberately recruiting screeners with criminal backgrounds and aggressive personalities. In addition, he indicates that the TSA in the airports have expanded their screening activities to the parking areas, and are stopping people OUTSIDE TERMINALS who have come simply to meet arriving passengers.
I remind readers that the TSA has authority to REQUIRE anyone they stop to submit to their searches of their belongings and persons; anyone who resists or refuses HAS BEEN ARRESTED AND FINED UP TO $5,000.00.
If this article is true, it means the {} has resurrected some of the tactics used in the 1930′s by a certain former Gefreiter of the Deutsches Heer.
So far, it’s merely the degree of violence that differentiates the present from the past.
Read Forstchen’s One Second After – it is definitely coming – our own time machine back to the 19th century – the good news is it will cull all the morons, dependents, psychos and inner city dwellers IOW, all the democrats – actually some days I think about it and sort of look forward to it. It is really amazing how fine and intricate the dependency web is for all of us. Imagine what an inner city, already without grocery stores, would be like when fast food was unavailable. It will not be pretty.
One of the reasons power lines go down is not the wind itself but the wind blowing stuff into the power lines. Also you had transformers tripping that could have been prevented if they had more abundant above ground power lines for redundancy.
Money that should have gone into keeping trees away from power lines. Putting power lines under ground or even getting started on hardening the power grid against EMP bursts has gone to “green” rip offs and scams.
We are importing oil even when we have plenty because we don’t have enough pipelines to get it to the refineries in the quantities needed. Guess why that is.
RWE
It was the widespread high winds, which are not a symptom of tornadoes. The high + 80 mph winds for 20-30 minutes (sustained) knocked down a lot of trees, which knocked down powerlines. Tornados are more dangerous (I saw the aftermath of the F5 that leveled Xenia,Ohio in 1974) but the wide spread sustained winds last Friday night knocked down enough random lines, power poles and trees to create breaks in the system.
As someone who lives and breathes electrical power (I am a Facilities Engineer for a large multi-national internet provider/hosting/IT solutions company) I have to laugh. The data center I work at is fully prepared to ride out the loss of BOTH our utility feeds for 10 days (running all the HVAC, computer and building systems) with the onsite fuel to power our back-up generators (which could supply all the power needs of 22,000 homes) without any fuel truck deliveries. After that we will be dead in the water like everyone else. We in the Facilities team fully expect that in a real emergency that our data center will be taken over by FEMA or whatever govenmental agency decides that it would be a nifty command center to run recovery operations from. The idea that we can run our modern society’s power needs from windmills and solar panels is laughable. It is the fact that the power grid’s Design Margin is so razor thin is what keeps us Engineers up at night pondering the what-ifs. Just another one of those issues gift-wrapped for Mittoast, who has neither insight nor the inclination to exploit. Woe is us.
Tarnsman:
I’m an IT fellow by trade, and I’ve started to think that hosting sites will be among the first enterprises to get small, private nuclear reactors, should they become available. “We can generate our own power onsite for X years” would be a great selling point for potential rack rental customers, and given some of the cost numbers I’ve heard talked about for building and operating one of those facilities, I could imagine a pebble-bed reactor being within their price range. For us, temperatures are running in the 90s for the forseeable future and we have one hour of UPS power, give or take, in our on-site datacenter. I see hosting in our immediate future.
And in my neck of the woods (Dane county, Wisconsin), we recently got approval to build a new transmission line to (I think) link up the Twin Cities and Chicago area grids. The process to get it approved was long and punishing, and I can’t imagine what it would take to get a power plant of any kind approved in this area.
I don’t think that any sane and/or intelligent people, even those who like windmills and solar power, see it providing anything more than a few percent in normal times. It’s done more as a technology exercise in the (probably vain) hope for enough improvement to allow it to provide a few more percent, or the same percents at a lower cost, something closer to gas and oil but still higher. It is *worth* a bit more as renewable, inexhaustible, and domestic.
Hey, if only windmills in a windstorm could suck it up! But instead, they SHUT THEM DOWN during storms. Something wrong with that picture.
toadold @ 28:
I remember very well living in the DC metro area during the Hurricane Isabelle and the aftermath. We did not have power for a week after that one, and also for several days no way existed to drive out of our neighborhood. Fallen trees took out our power lines and our roads. There was much outrage over the perceived slow response of the utility company and the transportation department.
Afterwards the power company came through with tree-trimming trucks and started to create surrealist art upon some trees while doing away with others. It was too much for my neighbors to bear. The trees! They shut it all down.
Those guys are still without power right now after this land hurricane. They’re no doubt cursing, gnashing their teeth, and lashing out with blame. Still. It’s hopeless.
I’m behind the curve here but I found a site that HAS to be the winner for Wack job conspiracies;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU0C31atidw&feature=related
I originally thought this was funny, but then I realised this person was free to interact with the public. I immediately checked all my guns to make sure they were loaded and ready to go.
33: Ah, hurricane Isabel. I remember being scheduled to fly from Baltimore to Raleigh-Durham to attend a meeting in Chapel Hill when that occurred. I called repeatedly to be sure that they would fly (of course, of course, why wouldn’t we) before going to the airport. So I get there and get in line for my flight and then they asked the passengers for Raleigh-Durham to get out of line, since the plane would just fly straight to Orlando, or wherever the terminal destination was. So I got in my car and drove down 95, then 85 to my conference, about 5 hours in all. Met perhaps 5 or maybe 6 cars between Baltimore and Chapel Hill. The hurricane winds had blown the pine needles and hardwood leaves onto the road from the right until about halfway there, then from the left for the remainder of the trip. Perhaps the eye had bisected my route. When I got to Chapel Hill, they had put portable generators at each stop light in the town, and traffic was unimpeded. When I got home, the DC area was a disaster with no traffic lights in operation, and nobody would do as directed to treat the intersections as 4 way stops. I suggested on a radio show that they put generators at each major intersection, but nobody thought that was ‘do-able’. I pointed out that I had just seen it done, to no avail.
Ah … when the trappings of civilization go … what is left will absolutely get ugly for those who have become accustomed to it.
I mused on certain civilizational parallels six years ago, on the Daily Brief website:
“After the great Fall, the horizons contracted, drew in, cities in the west shriveled and the great Roman works and roads crumbled through lack of maintenance. Constantinople survived and carried on with many mutated Roman traditions until it fell to a new tribe of conquerors, but in the West, the children of empire lived among crumbling remnants, and forgot the trades and skills of their ancestors, skills that were no longer applicable or useful in the brute struggle for simple survival. Gone the baths, gone the centrally-heated villas, gone the trade, the artistry and the law, and the knowledge of how these great works were even constructed, save in a few tiny enclaves, and among a pitiful few.
The parallel between Rome and America has often been drawn often and by friends and critics alike, by those wishing to pay a compliment, or of late, otherwise. Rome fell, and the Pax Romana ended— so should America and the Pax Americana; an evil empire which has brought nothing but evil and destruction. Or so goes the current reasoning. Some of these, one gets the feeling, are drooling hungrily for the spoils that would result from the wreckage, free for the grabbing, but others— and these are the most galling— are the ones who benefit the generously from the existence of the Pax Americana, whether they know it or not, or acknowledge it or not…”
The rest of that essay is here … http://www.ncobrief.com/index.php/archives/pax-romana/
Hold on to the Pax Americana, my friends. For without it, flawed as it might appear to be, our existence will almost certainly become very nasty, brutish and short.
Do I detect karma in play with the apparatchiks of the EPA and DoE sweltering as they continue on their plans to shut down power plants without replacement sources for energy in fly over country?
wretchard:
Oh, they would not survive for very long at all. The will either become slaves or die out right.
Someone above mentioned “One Second After”. The EMP thing is much less a threat than just running out of design margin. Most suburban stores function on 3 to 4 days of stock. Once that is gone……….
I have said the real zombies will be the hungry inner city citizens stumbling out of the cities who have no skills. They will do anything to survive.
You might find this interesting : http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765327252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341285681&sr=8-1&keywords=one+second+after GBUSA
Sgt. Mom @ 36:
That’s an excellent article you’ve written, kudos. When it comes to ancient Rome vs. modern comparisons, my fear has always been that our day is like Cicero’s. Rome was founded, as traditionally stated, in 753 BC, that holy or unholy triumvirate/trinity of primes. A little over two hundred years later Cicero knew that the gig was up for the Roman Republic. He knew it, he fought against it, and he was far from alone. Yet, having been mortally wounded by the Caesars and exponentially exploding political problems, Rome staggered on for five hundred more years until her last gasp. Her agony in decline lasted over twice her ecstasy in accendance.
And that’s quite a pisser. If the firmament of our civilization has become fatally corrupted, if we are to head into terminal decline like Rome, I’d like it happen a lot quicker than that. Like, within my lifetime. Who wants to piddle around with decline when there are things to do, things to build?
Yet Rome’s experience of projected, excruciating decline hearkens to the old stockbroker’s admonition, “Things can stay crazy longer than you can remain solvent.” The truly frightening thing is that, like Ancient Rome, we do face a demographic contraction and we have no roadmap on what to do about that except, like Rome, implode. The rythym of our lives, of our finance, economy and community all assume a constant, compounding growth. How else can you explain that every American faces a $360,000 personal liability for JUST Medicare as currently financed? We assume we’ll just grow our way out of it, like always.
Matt’s contention about the soundess of absolute power aside, almost all Roman emperors from Augustus until Romulus Augustus ruled from a state of bankruptcy and crisis. If you could identify an emperor, that is, because often this was not an easy task as later Rome devolved into multiple warring claims so continually that Rome for whole generations can be said to have had no leadership at all for great swaths of time. It just staggered along on a downward path.
The amazing thing about the Roman Empire was how long it took to die. Remember, Rome’s Golden Age was born and died within the span of exactly ONE generation. All those cats knew each other, those Virgils, Augustuses, Ciceros, Ovids, Horaces.
It was a long, tortuous downhill slide from there. Please, God, be merciful and make our trial quick and recoverable. Let’s not have this torturous Dark Age fall upon us again.
RWE @25
The whole hurricane Hugo experience was definitely life altering. It was a formative period that I’m glad I was able to experience, but damn if it didn’t suck…Badly. I went nearly a year without utility power after that one.
Since then -besides the run of the mill crappy local.gov run utility’s randomized blackout schedule- we’ve had a few lesser storms that have knocked power out for anywhere from days, to weeks, to a couple months or so. Sweating it out, parched, bug bit, exhausted, and hungry in the dark listening to gunfire resounding through the long nights has a funny way of concentrating the mind. One learns to start adjusting ones personal design margins to handle the big existential stuff as well as to really appreciate such luxuries as fans and ice…Civilized stuff that a decent generator and an appropriately sized bank of deep cycle batteries can do for a fraction of the cost and risk compared to the green crap so enamored by our ‘betters’.
I hope the recent Derechos at least get more citizens to start thinking deeply and productively about what it really takes to insure they don’t unnecessarily relegate themselves and their families to the mercies of a disconnected bureaucracy…Just as I hope that some of those bureaucrats get to sweat out a little bit of the real world.
I have been in both “authority loss” [no police] and “power loss” [no electricity] situations. Even though I had been reading RAH and ZG from early childhood [thanks Dad !], the time lag for folks around to “ramp up” mentally and emotionally to the new reality was surprising. Think and plan ahead. GBUSA
Some thoughts that probably have occurred to those of us who are Gray Tribe in the event that TSHTF or TEOTWAWKI:
1.) Urban areas are deathtraps, for a number of reasons.
a) dependency on complex, vulnerable, and interdependent systems for delivery of life support.
b) a high concentration of dependent sociopaths.
c) an inability for urban dwellers in the numbers that exist to create a self supporting system. Simply is not enough room or resources.
2.) When organic waste impacts the rotating airfoil, any attempt to exfiltrate the city is going to have to deal with the combination of human stupidity in mass combined with said sociopaths. That is bad enough; but there are going to be a bunch of people trying to do the same thing as you, and they are going to be Pink Tribe.
3.) Therefore, personal design margin dictates leaving well before impact.
4.) The best plan for long term survival is to be in a group that can trust each other and has roots in small town America. Small enough to keep the number of sociopaths and Pink Tribe down, large enough to have a variety of skills available to meet crises as they come up, and to have a defensive reaction force available. Far enough away from, or hard enough to get to, to be uninvolved in urban mayhem. Those connections should be made well ahead of time.
5.) One of the greatest risks, are the groups Pink Tribe and sociopaths exiting from the cities. Their goal will be to loot and pillage, not seek a sanctuary.
6.) #5 is related to #4. Those involved in #4 probably already understand this, and have prepared as best they can for it.
7.) #6 is a good additional reason for #3 so as not to be misidentified by the local IFF.
8.) Any preparations for the impact have to note that any visible display of said preparation, or of possession of resources, will draw Pink Tribe and sociopaths. You may have power, etc.; but you need EMCON to prevent drawing the bad guys in. Besides, having lights visible plays hob with your night vision if those same bad guys come by.
Not that anybody has been thinking about such contingencies, of course. *[innocent smile]*
On a totally unrelated vein … some TEA Party groups have weekly or monthly Preparedness Meetings where families or groups of families can share techniques and ideas for ameliorating conditions if organic waste meets rotating airfoil. If yours doesn’t, it might not be a bad idea to consider it. If nothing else, it may be a meeting ground for Gray Tribe Sheepdogs.
http://forthecognoscenti.com/2012/04/20/tribes-by-bill-whittle/
Subotai Bahadur
Cowboy,
While I agree with many of your ideas and opinions, your knowledge of Roman history needs some work. You stated a few mistakes. Augustus, among others, did not rule fron bankruptcy and crisis, and I can assure you, “all those cats”, did not personally know each other.
The fall did not happen in one generation. The Pax Romana alone lasted about 5 emperors and more than 150 years.
Marcus @ 44:
Read more closely. I said “almost all emperors from Augustus until Romulus Agustus” faced fiscal crisis. That is true.
My contention that Rome’s Golden Age authors knew each other is also true.
You are correct when you say that Rome’s fall did not happen in a generation. That also aligns with my point, which was that Rome’s fall was EXCRUCIATINGLY SLOW. My point was that Rome took FIVE HUNDRED YEARS to fall AFTER its Golden Age, and my fear is that we are like Cicero who saw it coming and was powerless to do anything about it.
c 40 @ Rome was founded, as traditionally stated, in 753 BC, that holy or unholy triumvirate/trinity of primes. A little over two hundred years later Cicero knew that the gig was up for the Roman Republic.
Um, six hundred there?
It was a long, tortuous downhill slide from there. Please, God, be merciful and make our trial quick and recoverable. Let’s not have this torturous Dark Age fall upon us again.
I date the start of the New Dark Ages to 1994, when these small town shysters took office, abused the federal system in a completely clownish way, polarized politics for no productive reason, and were treated deferentially by the press and opposition, and supported by the Democratic establishment when they should have been sent packing with a swift kick … except that that would have left us with Algore. Something failed in order to let them into office, something failed when they were not removed – for travelgate and filegate and using the power of the white house to blackmail Monica, except that she came up with that little blue dress.
We were somewhat lucky with Dubya, but the political system is comatose, and then the cat dragged in Obambus.
Mitt Romney? How could anyone be placing any hope on the likes of him, if we weren’t already deep in a dark (ages) hole.
Nor are we out of it.
True story: Over the weekend our a/c failed at a time we were entertaining a group of guests. My wife thought we would have to buy a new unit and looked up replacements at Home Depot and Sears. However, we had used a small service company — AirFlow — for many years and I prevailed on her to call them, regardless of the expense.
She did so and to our great delight the owner himself arrived Monday (tonight) to inspect the unit. As it turns out he was the one who installed it 21 years ago. We had just moved into our house and the a/c failed during a sweltering day in early July 1991. He was then newly in business. We were very impressed that he came out on a Sunday to fix the home’s original unit. A month or two later it was clear we would need to replace it and called him to do the job. His company has been servicing it ever since.
We had hit it off extremely well the first time and he and I remembered each other clearly, though it was mostly other workers in his company that actually had serviced our unit over the years. To make a long story not too long, he opened up the unit — it is a central air unit located to the side of the house — and after some diagnostic tests, concluded that one part was defective. He went to his truck, installed a replacement, and the a/c worked again. Total charge: $260.00
To add another dimension, when I asked him how things had gone through the years he said, “Up and down. Right now things are up.” I prodded a bit and he then told me he had survived a rare cancer six years earlier because he was the kind of person who never let things slide, and went to the doctor extremely early in its course when it was removable by surgery and radiation. After spontaneous expressions of “Thank God” and “Baruch Ha-Shem” (the equivalent Hebrew expression), we exchanged progress reports about our children. After that I gratefully paid the bill on the spot, and thanked him profusely.
For what it is worth, he is a Yemenite Jew from Israel who has lived in California for the past 22+ years, and the most honorable tradesman I have had the pleasure of knowing.
I reflect on him after reading the post and comments. He is the kind I want to be around in a STHF scenario. And taking Subotai and Bill Whittle (I have been a great fan of his from his earliest blogs) to heart, I will set about expanding my small Gray Tribe as best I can.
Thanks to all for thought provoking posts today.
Interesting discussion @ 44 & 45 about the decline of the Roman Empire. But that was then, and this is now. Things have changed in ways which speed up processes of decline. Even in 1900, close to half the US population lived on the farm, and could feed themselves. Not any more!
Not to get into a long discussion about the time span of the British Empire, but arguably much of it was contained within the reign of Queen Victoria. The USSR went from birth to death in about 70 years. Mao’s Chinese Communist experiment lasted less than 50 years before sliding into its current fascist mode. The decline phase in each case was relatively quick.
Bottom line is that Cowboy’s wish @ 40 for a quick trial is likely to be granted. As for whether the inevitable recovery is also quick, we will have to wait & see.
Cowboy, my arguments concern the stability and reasonableness of monarchy, not “the soundness of absolute power,” which no mortal man ever has to begin with. I know I’m going to take a lot of flak for my view, and I’m prepared for that; but I’m not going to let certain mischaracterizations go by unchallenged. That quip at 40 was completely unmotivated. I’m guessing it was due to an excess of spirit and not any deliberate desire to slander me, but still it has to be corrected. There is no point in charging me with all the crimes committed by all the kings down through the ages just because I support the institution (or worse, like no mo uro, who, not being content with the actual crimes of kings, has even fancifully invented some that were never committed, the blame for which he also lays at my feet). That kings can misgovern goes without saying; but in the nature of the case, the “bankruptcy and crisis” suffered by the Roman Empire had only so much to do with the misgovernance of particular emperors, and nothing whatsoever to do with the Imperium itself as a political form.
***
Now to return to the topic at hand. If we want to sketch an accurate picture of the future of our society, a future that has a high probability of actually appearing, then I don’t think that catastrophe and Mad Max are the right themes to pursue. The retreat from the high water mark of Pax Americana will not be so swift and sudden, unless of course some incalculable incident, like nuclear-armed terrorists blowing up Manhattan, intervenes to shorten it. But barring the unforseeable, it’s going to take several generations of chastisement to mold the peoples of the West into something decent again, and even then we will never be as strong as we once were.
The successful leaders of this period will be the ones who can force, repair, or repurpose the old infrastructure so that it functions well enough to preserve a measure of order and stability. There can be no thought of building new infrastructure—we have neither the men nor the money enough for that. The public discipline required for this task will compell us to accept very drastic changes in our notion of what it means to be a citizen.
The good news is that unemployment will be a thing of the past. In fact, it will probably be against the law not to work, and laziness will be punished by the assignment of forced labor. The patterns of internal commerce will be regularized and fixed, and everybody will have his place within the system. For those who live in cities, many of us will be paid, at least partially, in some form of company script and we will do much of our shopping at the company store. Not only our medical benefits, but possibly even our housing and education will be provided directly by our place of employment.
Seen in this light, the real tragedy of Obamacare is not so much the individual mandate but its indelible connection with the sterile feminist cant of the 1960s, the horrible sins of contraception and abortion. The ACA is a deeply flawed piece of liberal quakery, but all the same I cannot side with those whose general objection to the thing is that it involves a “requirement to participate.” The very theme of the future will be “requirement to participate.” Remember, as the world gets smaller for each of us, government and politics and economics and morals all become closer together, become one. Obamacare was a furtive step in the right direction, but fatally encumbered by the baggage of the past, and all this quite without any conscious intention on the part of the Democrats, who merely thought they were that much closer to advancing their beloved socialist revolution.
Unfortunately. “conservatives” like Rush Limbaugh are very much on the worng side of this one. They are fighting the issue on entirely the wrong grounds. They don’t like mandates, they say. They will get many more of them, for the world cannot survive without them.
49. Matt
You are channeling Marx. Karl, not Groucho. “They will get many more of them, for the world cannot survive without them.” Historically, you couldn’t be more wrong. This arrangement ALWAYS ends up with workers pretending to work, while the management pretends to pay them.
“The very theme of the future will be “requirement to participate.” Requirement to participate is another way of saying slavery. Which history has made another political Dodo.
I see liberals writing about the break-up of the USA. Conservatives have been for ages. I see it as inevitable. With Florida announcing that it would NOT implement Obamacare, that breakup has already started.
A successful corporate state will be a democracy. The citizens will also be workers and shareholders. Leaders will be chosen on their ability to provide for the common good(profits).
It is not just the liberals and the greens, it is pretty much everyone and has been going on for over twenty years. Texaco was a rock solid corporation, probably could have survived the Design Margin. A corporate raider saw the situation Texaco was in and determined to make a fortune paid an outrageous price for the company. He then sold off the assets of the company and made millions. Texaco had set up the company to handle almost any situation but the books said it was not a big money maker. It was a case of the parts being greater than the whole. Big business is in just as big of jeporady as anyone else. The need for quarter profits often fails to take into account the Design Margin.
For the last 3 years the company I own has been in serious straits. So in order to lower my overhead my household has not turned on our AC or used any but wood heat. We have fans and the house is a modern one but designed for cross draft and the trees are such that late evening they screen the western sun well.
Now before you say easy, this is in south Central Texas and last summer we had about 90 days over 100 F. We adapted and at some level I even enjoy it. It sort of reminds me of my youth growing up in Houston without AC.
The years of ease since WWII have been the exception to mans history instead of the rule. We need a reset to remind everyone what it used to be like and with some luck, at the same time, we will be able to shed many of the parasites, both citizen and offical, that have grown to sap the enterprise.
The liberals will be the first to go because I think they are just a bunch of prissy folks who talk and have no skills and will wither without their Starbucks.
Popcorn anyone?
My theory about the wine-sipping beachgoers and their American equivalents is that they regard any of the grubby work involved in keeping civilization intact as mere lowly manual labor which does not befit their social status.
Or as John McCain put it those are the “jobs Americans just won’t do”- and as he is the son and grandson of US Navy Admirals I’m sure he won’t. But Americans are actually doing those jobs, in vast numbers, but the political class despises them and isn’t interested in either their fate or their contributions.
Historian Moses Finley wrote about this sort of thing. In Roman society it was a-ok for the upper crust to profit from manual labor- but it was looked down upon socially, and they despised people who had to work with their hands to make a living. Eventually during the later empire aristocrats- well versed in the Fourth Century version of liberal arts- were sent out to “take charge” of Roman engineering works such as aqueducts.
My guess is that these highly credentialed Romans had all the understanding of aqueducts- i. e., none at all- as the folks today who believe that windmills can take the place of fossil fuels and nukes in the US electrical grid.
Those are the sort of people making decisions for Western Civilization today- alas. But just like in ancient times I bet they actively despise the people who are actually able to keep civilization functioning. So we see endless regulations intended to instruct the lowly minions as to what they must do, as well as a government that increasingly writes law and behaves as if the citizenry is an enemy.
I suspect this won’t end well, for some reason. But maybe I just don’t have enough credentials.
With Florida announcing that it would NOT implement Obamacare, that breakup has already started.
So far that is just idle talk with no consequences of merit. Florida has until 2014 to implement the things that Gov. Scott says will not be implemented. A lot can happen between now and then. I’ll believe when the Florida state police escort some HHS official to the local lockup.
—
I enjoy the Roman Empire comparisons, not because the facts on the ground are so comparable, but because the plenitude of writings from the people who lived through the era prove beyond comment that human nature has not changed a whit. Pride and the insatiable desire for dominion over the minds and property of other men continue to make mountains of corpses on a bedrock of shattered lives.
Blaine @#51,
You must be talking about a different Texaco than the one I worked for. Texaco dissapeared by merging with Chevron. Carl Icon made a run at us in the ’90s but was unsuccessful. I’m not picking at your point, I just had to correct the record.
Matt, my intent was not to slander, nor to assign all the crimes of kings to your hand. Rather I was continuing to illustrate contrary evidence to your contention that monarchs make sounder fiscal policy based on their sense of ownership of the state. I enjoy your posts and I do respect your opinions.
stoi @ 50 – This arrangement ALWAYS ends up with workers pretending to work, while the management pretends to pay them.
True enough. The great waters separating our continent from the others enabled us to survive WWII w/o significant damage to industrial capability. But, after that, was freedom and liberty that fostered our dominance.
If we measure productivity over the entire populace, employed and unemployed, liberty and free enterprise are unmatched in delivering prosperity. This will always be the case.
Mankind is on the horns of a delimma. Yes, they have horns (at least the males do – look it up on wikipedia). We work hard to overcome adversity. To survive we need clothing, shelter, sustenance. Unfortunately, if adversity is removed, we stop working hard.
If these thing are provided by government or other sources, productivity declines. Isn’t the concept of retirement proof of this?
Likewise, forced labor diminishes productivity. Do slaves work harder to build the master’s house than to build a house they would own?
Charles wrote: “Wild storm here on Friday night. Never seen anything like it. The wind blew harder than it has in any hurricane that has passed through here before. The wind was seeded with dirt from dry ground. The mix of dirt in the wind was so heavy it would sand blast you if you were outside. That is –the wind hit first and then the rain. There was some rain. But it was the wind that blew everyone indoors. And blew down the trees.”
Ah, so the east coast finally caught a West Texas thunderstorm. Interesting to ride one out, isn’t it? I know everyone over there thinks its extreme, but if your house is still standing when its done, then it ain’t extreme. (thinking of a man on my sis-in-laws block once who, after all the exterior walls and roof were stripped off his residence but his rooms were still intact with all their furniture, spray painted “OPEN HOUSE” in big red letters on the part of the wall you could see from the street. I think I still got that picture somewhere)
and you think I’m exaggerating to say its not that unusual, but I remember waking up one night west of Fort Worth where I was staying at the time, and the whole building had about a two foot sway in it and the howl was so loud that even inside the house you had to shout at full voice just to be heard by a person standing next to you. That night a full sized billboard about 100 yards from me built on 4 telephone polls got snapped off and thrown a quarter mile down the road. And that whole storm only made a one paragraph mention in the local paper, it just wasn’t that unusual. Dallas had a hailstorm a couple weeks ago that may have done $1 Billion in insured damages (no kidding) and yet you didn’t see that make the national news. And even in my neighborhood, after last years drought weakened so many old trees, every storm ends up with a tree through someones roof. It just happens, and people understand that.
it does keep you in mind of the design margin, though.
O/T – but may be important – see Make sure your computer is not using rogue DNS servers…before July 9 http://illuminea.com/online-security/make-sure-computer-not-using-rogue-dns-servers/
from – http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2012/07/make-sure-your-computer-is-not-using.html#links
oh, and the viking movie with Kirk Douglas was called “The Vikings”, 1958, and featured Ernest Borgnine as RAGNAR!! (but I do think the “mare of steel” is from The Long Ships)
I confess to liking really cheesy movies, and “The Vikings!” is about as cheesy as it gets. I know Kirk has some great performances in his resume, but the acting in this one is just awful from beginning to end, and that applies to everyone in it. It puts this movie on a level with “The Conqueror” with John Wayne, which probably still has poor old Genghis Khan spinning like a top in his secret grave.
and yes, “The Conqueror” was notable for setting up filming just downwind of an atomic test site in Utah in the 50′s. Radiation – it’s good for ya!
one late addition, for Matt, on monarchy:
the real problem with Monarchy today (and remember that Queen Elizabeth is a pretend monarch, not a real one) is that all it takes is one guy out there willing to “vote from the rooftop” and you got a constitutional crisis. Leadership has got to be decentralized, not centralized, if it is going to survive in this Brave New World, which has such people in it.
I groan whenever I hear a greenie trying to tell me about wind & solar power because greenies can’t do arithmetic. Using PGE’s Bigelow wind farm as an example at 450 megawatt per 25,000 acres, you use the entire dry land surface of the earth to generate 0.7 Petawatt. America generates 1.8 Petawatts from coal alone, with over a 100 year domestic supply (and fantastic reserve generation capacity).
Ok, when I stop giggling at these math-challenged greenies, I do have to admit that they have a good point in one area – distribution. What you see happening in DC is due to an aging distribution grid – it really needs a revamp.
America does have a power grid problem and highly distributed power generation would be a good step forward. But a solar panel & battery retrofit is still about 5$/Watt installed – not many people in DC going to go for it.
Once our government is done with healthcare (good or bad), it will probably shift attention to energy. And 50 years from now the Saudi’s will be sitting on stuff that nobody wants. Prior to 1908, when oil was discovered, nobody cared about the Arabian peninsula – ever.
Politically America will likely become more like something Ron Paul would like. That is once the soggy-brained 60′s generation has passed on.
Ah to dream….
How many Romans recognized they were in the midst of a civilization in decline? What difference did it make to them?
I recently read a book set in a mostly-Jewish mountain resort as the Nazi wave built, A. Appelfeld’s Badenheim 1939. The reactions and self-delusion are most instructive.
(I wish I could remember where I saw the book referenced. I assume it was here, but can’t find it.)
WWS #58:
That’s what I used to say when I lived in California. My Mom would call and say that she saw on TV that there were terrible storms out there. I would reply that it was competely normal and not excessive by East Coast standards. I did not even try to compare it with living in Oklahoma, where I had been before moving to California.
But an inch of rain (typical Florida summer T-storm) and with no lightning and not that much wind takes on the aspect of Aramagedon – well, it’s a matter of perspective.
When TS Fay went through we had at least 34 inches of rain in less than 3 days. Imagine what that would do in California.
On the other hand, in OK and TX and even Florida the trees have been knocked down so many times by “normal” weather that most no longer threaten the power lines except in minor ways.
After Wilma knocked me off the grid for stretch I was looking at home-size hydrogen power cells. Some outfit in Canada was manufacturing them and they said that they had a few hundred installed on Long Island. The price was under $10k.
The hydrogen came from natgas, which is not available to me, and not wanting a huge propane tank in my backyard, I put the idea aside. I read later that the company had discontinued its domestic line and gone 100% into commercial installations.
I see that Panasonic is making domestic hydrogen power cells for use in Japan but the cost is about $33k and the power output is only 750 watts. Not a good deal.
Your own personal electrical supply unit seems like it should be THE big idea worthy of gobs of venture capital. Anybody have any industry insights on this?
I work contstruction, primarily roofs, on the side weather permitting. This keeps me somewhat slim and humors me because I work for cash only. My good friend LFSHeriff and I were putting a roof on a garage this past Friday (in the 106 heat index) and we heard via the jobsite radio about the terrible plight of millions “that were now without air conditioning”. After a fine chuckle, we discussed the benefits of a similar K/T boundary-scale type event where many parasitical remains would be found in the fossil record at a later date.
And I’ll throw a penny in the pool of “East coasters finally experience a real storm” and I agree fully. Midwest T storms, Snow storms, heat waves, we get them every year and somehow endure. They act like it’s
the plauges of Egypt returned.
I wait with baited breath for the purification to begin.
#49 Matt
THAT sounded familiar. I write at a couple of places. Here is something I wrote last night. Please pardon the long quote:
That part is a quote, for those few who do not recognize it, from Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED. It is the infamous “Directive 10-289″ that placed the boot on the neck of the American people. And that may well be our future. I did add, since this is Year 4, Anno Obama Regnant; the following that is in accordance with Roberts’ Lex Perfidious decree:
The “ideal state” will be underpinned by the equivalent of the little, tile-lined, basement rooms with the floor drains in the center at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. It is always so.
Will it be our fate? Perhaps. But for TWANLOC who would impose it, it will not be cost free.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai @ 66: “Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs …”
That is not just Ayn Rand’s fiction. According to Gaidar’s “Collapse of an Empire” (if I can plug that book one more time), Soviet Communists did exactly that to agricultural workers when they realized that their previous murder & abuse of that ‘Class Enemy’ had resulted in declining grain harvests and the loss of export revenues. The Communists effectively turned agricultural workers back into serfs (slaves) tied to the land.
Anything that has happened before can happen again.
#67 Kinuachdrach
It is an old idea. Diocletian tried to hold the Roman Empire together by tying people to their father’s careers. Did not work well. The rich avoided both the burdens of Empire and anything practical. The poor were subsidized. The middle class was crushed by taxes and decrees. Much of the Roman Empire willingly surrendered to the “barbarians”, because their laws and taxes were less oppressive than those of the Empire. The Empire was not able to rouse the loyalty of the people the way the Republic did.
Where have I heard of that kind of situation before?
Subotai Bahadur
Peter @ 64 – The trouble with wind and solar, of course, is storage. How to store the energy until required to meet the increased demand of dark, cold, & arriving home from work.
Hydrogen appeals, intellectually at least, because recombination with oxygen nets you very clean water. Trouble is, hydrogen in gas phase is exceeding difficult to store, as well as highly combustible (explosive).
It’s easy to generate by direct electrical dissociation of water. The potential required is very low. Less than 5 volts, I think.
Then, how to extract power? Gas turbines are neat but logistically challenging as well as expensive.
OTOH, internal combustion engines can operate with hydrogen fuel. Do-it-yourself ideas include using a fuel cell, turbo-charger, or small engine with generator.
Peter Boston #64:
My idea of a solution is what some of my neighbors have installed. It’s a Natural gas powered generator that comes on automatically and provides 10KW or more (depending on the model) to your home. It even does a weekly self-test and reports on if it is A-OK. It may not run your whole house – I would have to forgo use of my pool pump, electric dryer, electric oven, etc., but mostly it would take care of all the important stuff.
Installed cost is about $10K. I imagine you could get it in a propane fueled version with no problem. And if you used the engine exhaust to pre-heat your hot water, it would be even more feasible.
I do think that solar power has its place. (On satellites, for example. But if I was an engineering student in college now looking for a project I w)ould investigate the use of solar arrays to augment existing home cooling and heating without messing with the existing systems. For example, it would be simple to have a small solar powered refrigeration unit that would cool the outside coils of the home central air conditioning and thus decrease its operating expense. Technically feasible? No doubt! Use off the shelf hardware? Very probably! Economically feasible? That would be one of the project’s objectives.
At the end of the day, after libertarian fiction and misreadings of history have huffed their last heated breath, there still remains the stubborn problem of who will plant the fields. If you have a collapsing population, threats pressing from without, an unruly mob of lazy citizens, and a lawful duty to hold a nation together, I would think that “Get to work, or else!” would be the inevitable edict of any governing body, even if some of the problems were caused by that governing body’s own past mistakes; and to suggest otherwise is not a sterling example of that fact-based reasoning which self-described conservatives hold to be their official preserve. What was that we keep saying about common people being closer to reality than the educated? You know, it takes quite a few appanage peasants to keep Rand-reading lawyers in bread and butter.
And against these accusations of TWANLOC I must vigorously protest. I swear I have never owned, operated, or been employed by any Vietnamese sunglass stand.
# 9 – Cowboy – thank you for your post. I have had the same thoughts but without the literature context, particularly as we advanced down this road, chasing that fickle can. Only one small caveat – the wide spread belief that people fall apart in a crisis is a Hollywood one – the reality, born out by various historical studies, including the Spanish Flu pandemic, is that people respond well in crisis – PROVIDED they trust their officials… and therein lies our current dilemma – I don’t.
26. Mad Fiddler
A Clockwork Orange?
Alex’s “droogs” became cops.
Don Rogrigo,
Wow. Clockwork Orange is one of the few films I actually saw in its first theater run, and not since. Kubrick certainly had some prescience, not infallible. But the real point of speculative fiction (or as some folks say, “science fiction/fantasy”) is to consider what happens if we CONTINUE down the path of certain trends that are just beginning to be discernible.
In the mid-1960′s my brother shoved a bunch of Larry Niven’s Hugo-awarded paperbacks under my nose, among them “Gil the ARM.” In those and several other novels and stories he cranked out about that time, Niven played around with what might happen depending on whether our civilization pursued the cybernetic synthesis of artificial organs and tissues, or the harvesting and implantation of organs and tissues from human donors.
About ten years ago, People’s Republic of China acknowledged that each year it harvests the organs from some 10,000 of its freshly executed prisoners. (Statistics for total yearly executions are not so readily available.)
About FIVE years ago, a British newspaper reported that PRC was selling collagens processed from skins harvested from executed prisoners, to EUROPEAN COSMETICS manufacturers.
This series of articles culminated with some interviews with a PRC doctor who claimed that he’d frequently been ordered to begin flensing prisoners WHILE THEY WERE DYING – i.e., still alive.
No reaction from the lip-injecting Hollywood Gliterati. Pure Silence.
Niven got it exactly right.
Okay, so let’s take a closer look at some of the things this administration has been doing…
Interested reading at infowars. Do read the embedded links also, and then re-read this thread here at BC.
http://www.infowars.com/homeland-security-report-lists-liberty-lovers-as-terrorists/http://www.infowars.com/homeland-security-report-lists-liberty-lovers-as-terrorists/
And while I am no tough guy, I have been without any comforts for months while being hunted like an animal. We survived only by being more brutal and a little better than our hunters. I know that what can happen and what you think will happen sometimes does happen, but most times not in the way you envisioned it. So be prepared for all instances.
Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
My children, grand daughters and grand sons are very grateful for my survival. I have tried to teach them how to survive against all odds. To be strong and to be self sufficient.
I will continue to teach and help them as long as I shall live. They will do the same for their children. There is hope yet in our young, that is, if we teach them and help them understand the responsibility that they have not only to themselves and those that they love but to our Republic for which we stand.
Papa Ray
Matt@71 …there still remains the stubborn problem of who will plant the fields
It may be old fashioned, but in my life it has always been my choice as to what I do, when I do it, with whom I do it and the why of what I choose to do is nobody’s business but mine.
In my world, Matt, if you see a need for crops to be planted, tended and harvested, then it is you who should plant, tend and harvest the crops. In this way and only in this way, is it possible for humanity to flourish.
Living with Less. This is where the greenies have it all wrong. Success in nature is proportional to abundance. And there is plenty of waste in nature, plenty of waste in the creatures and especially the plants that succeed in nature. Sure, you can eke out a survival in nature, for a time, for even a long time, but the object, the goal is not merely survival, but success. And success benefits every other part of the system except parasites. Well, in fact it very much benefits parasites, such is the price of success, and hence the explanation for the greenies. Parasites who, in their greed, want it all, for now, even if it threatens the demise of everything on which they depend, but vociferously and sanctimoniously deny that they depend on it for their suicidal scheme to greedily acquire it, (control of) it all.