Condition and Control - How the Governments and Corporations Will Use the Energy Crisis To Maintain the Police State While Selectively Starving the Population

What's The Problem?

To put it as simply as possible, there are too many people on planet earth. Because of that fact we are now dealing with the following issues:

1) Weather related crop failures and infrastructure destruction from the effects of Anthropomorphic Global Warming.

2) Risk from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) to our health and the environment.

3) Loss of species (extinction) averaging more than 600 times the normal background rate.

4) Ocean Acidification and ocean dead zones due to agricultural and waste water runoff.

5) The triggering of several (possibly irreversible) climate warming/atmospheric composition changing feedback loops.

6) Food scarcity/cost increases and the health and political side effects.

7) Our food is grown, processed and shipped using fossil fuels that are depleting fast.

8) Increased energy and material costs as well as decreasing quality of remaining energy and mineral deposits.

Population pressures not only become apparent in relation to resources. As a society, we face many mental and physical difficulties when dealing with population pressures.

No species has been able to grow beyond the  naturally set limits and not face population collapse or extinction. We are no exception. While we have currently exceeded the natural limits for our species, we are on borrowed time. We have used our intellect to 'cheat' nature and in doing so, we have created a predicament. A predicament has no solution and neither do we if we look at the problem with the same mindset that caused it.

The problem is not how to keep a growing population of 7+ Billion people alive. The problem is determining how many people we can keep alive at any one time without running out of necessities or destroying the environment.

Governments are not lost on this. People in high places are well informed by experts from many different fields of study. So assuming the government knows that there is no solution and that economic collapse and famine will be on our doorstep possibly as soon as tomorrow, how can they and how would they respond?

Currently the military in the USA is the largest consumer of fossil fuels in that country. It's dependency on fossil fuels is nearly one hundred percent. In a shortage due to economic collapse or other factors that prevent the availability and affordability of fossil fuels, the military would be directed home. At the same time, rationing would begin here in the USA and all kinds of hell will break loose. Unemployment will be skyrocketing as well as prices for everything including fuel.

Renewable energy will and is falsely being touted as the saviour of industrial civilization and the government will jump on it when it is left with no choice in order to maintain command and control. Corporations will go along to get along, manufacturing these technologies. Meanwhile the food situation will deteriorate as brownouts and fuel shortages continue to hamper the operations of industrial farming.

Is the government prepared to resolve this issue? No. It's a predicament. Are they prepared to react to the issue? You bet. The government has already contracted for and built expansive facilities designed to contain (imprison?) hundreds of civilians. Members of the armed forces are already being employed at these facilities in preparation.

The most intriguing question surrounding these facilities is whether they were designed for protecting the few or imprisoning the rabble rousers. We can almost be certain that with America's prison system already maxed out, the need for more prisoner housing will be paramount in a crisis of this proportion.

What then of the prisoners? With food scarce, will the government see to it that these troublemakers are fed? Would you feed the 'bad guy' while your children are crying tears of hunger? I think it is highly likely that hundreds of thousands of prisoners across the nation will face starvation and cannibalism in the coming crisis unless they are fortunate enough to be imprisoned in facilities that have the climate and grounds to produce food year round.

Entire cities may become open air prisons where meager supplies are brought in by the government, but nothing and no one gets out alive. The countryside is too vast and disconnected from command and control systems for the government to be rounding people up. Besides, the population concentrations are where the greatest need for control lies. Get out of the city while you still can.

No, the government will not actively starve the population, but since they, or society at large is not freeing the food system from the ravages of fossil fueled soil degrading monocultures and GMOs, they will have to manage the starvation that is certain to ensue.

What is the solution?

As I said earlier, we are in a predicament so there is no 'solution', only triage. And the sooner we accept that, and make sacrifices, the better off we will be and the better our chances of not starving to death.

Of course, in the long run, this depends on how much damage we have already done to the environment and how much more damage is done as a result of the collapse of our industrial civilization.

Here is the best way to prepare yourself:

1) Small communities (150-200) of like minded individuals working together for the following:

2) Learn and acquire the necessary skills and hardware to defend yourself

3) Obtain land that is in reasonable condition to support agriculture

4) Learn and acquire the necessary skills to practice permaculture principles as they apply to agriculture

5) Develop a strict policy regarding reproduction and immigration into your community.

Why energy itself, not the lack of it, is the nemesis of our modern existence

Any energy that we ‘create’ or produce in excess of the total available energy of the sun will express itself in exponential growth until the point at which the ability to produce the excess energy is not possible or the unusable byproducts of that growth destroy the environment that enabled it.

We cannot carve the earth up and live as if energy is something we might have to be bothered to conserve or use cautiously. We cannot have the energy intensive lifestyles of our current paradigm without sacrificing our environment.

Much of the damage has already been done, but in the process, humanity discovered many wonderfully useful sciences that do not need high-tech infrastructure and processing to be relevant. Through simple breeding techniques and organic, permaculture styled food production, we can feed quite a lot of people with much less energy than is being used now with fossil fuels. Also, the food will be much better for you and for the land when being produced, guided by these low energy methods.

We really do need to live fairly low tech, productively active lifestyles in order to fit in with the earths requirements for successful organisms. Yes, we are smart, but being smart, and being successful are not always the same. Sometimes we do things that aren’t that smart for minimal, short term advantage which threatens the long term success of the species.

There is an equilibrium, a place where human civilization can live happily, with and about nature. But there will never be a condition where we can live outside of nature*. We will find this equilibrium eventually, and when we do we will be very different people from who we are now. Those of us that are still around when this great change has been fully realized will tell stories of the technological wonders that once existed, practically anything you wanted to know could be answered within seconds from a small device in your hand.

Some technology will survive, but in the long term, it will not last, not without the abundant resources and complex monetary/global trade structures to support repairing and replacement of parts. Unless we can figure out how to do amazing things organo-chemically with every day resources like rocks, wood, or dirt, we aren’t going to be able to keep our technology.

We have plenty of ways to use these types of resources as infrastructure, and thus they then become an energy sink, requiring energy, either human, animal, combustion, or electricity from Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Tidal, etc. to extract, form, transport and assemble. But we can’t use rocks to produce energy, say by simply polarizing their atoms (I am totally making this up as an example) which suddenly causes the rock to produce electricity in the company of light.

Electricity itself requires a carrier, or conduit, and a source. Normally the source is a hydroelectric, nuclear, or natural gas/coal powered plant. But with the alternatives like solar and wind, you run into intermittency problems as well as load distribution issues. So you fix that with batteries, but batteries are expensive, require many rare materials, are usually toxic or corrosive, and do not have a long life span.

The introduction of excess energy into the biosphere from humanities discovery and utilization of massive amounts of ancient solar energy in the form of fossil fuels has created one of our greatest conundrums. We are a pulsing and adaptable species which works well to keep us going, but in an energy rich lifestyle, that skill inadvertently turns to growth and our whole life becomes about earning wealth and accumulating products and investments.

The very fact that the majority of people in the developed world have not or do not often eat something that they themselves have grown, or harvested shows how deep this is. We need to get back to food production being a large employer of the population, and something that only a few would have little experience with. We cannot afford to mine, refine, form, assemble, treat, package, transport and consume our way through life with the merits of a credit economy and infinite growth.

It is a difficult position for politics to address. Ultimately, it becomes a choice between giving up our chance to escape earth rather than die with her. Now if I was alive and this was a choice right now, like an earth killing meteor is going to hit and there is a spaceship taking off with a hundred thousand light year capability, I would be on board.

I think we all know that just isn't going to be a possibility right now and in the mean time we are losing our hold and heading toward disaster in the face of energy decline.

Culture and Value

Initial assumptions:

• Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is real
• Environmental destruction due to pollution, resource extraction and human habitat expansion is real
• Overpopulation is real assuming current consumption trends continue

Culture is a product of individuals collectively engaging in certain activities. The activities that these cultures engage in is how we identify and discern them from one culture to the next during a specific time frame or across the entire span of human existence.

In order to better understand the initial assumptions and what they mean for humanity I am going to use a cultural 'lense'. Over time, cultures appear to be dynamic and elastic, as well as being very short lived in some cases. The dynamism, elasticity and longevity of cultures is determined by many factors such as environmental conditions, resource availability, access to information and much more. There is no question, however, that cultures can and do change or disappear entirely.

There is a new culture that has arisen recently in the human experience and that is the culture of consumerism. Now we normally do not think of ourselves that way in the developed world. When we think of our culture we might think of things like Baseball, Rock & Roll, fast cars, etc.

But there is a level at which our culture is something more than the sum of its parts and this is what we fail to see when we consider the way we live our lives. We want to have the many things that we take for granted and we want to create them with the least cost and greatest efficiency and expediency. We don't have time to wait for fast food, there are so many things we have to do in our day, so many places to drive and resources to expend.

Some have less hectic lives, but exist within the same cultural paradigm so in one sense, they cannot extract themselves from the responsibility or the burden entirely. But they can begin a shift in our culture by leading the way in less consumptive behavior and more resilient living. Like most people, culture does not change just because a certain inconvenient truth is realized. Culture is slow to change and must start at the local level. You cannot force cultural change without serious social consequences.

We cannot continue with the culture of consumption and thus our culture must change and it will. How and what causes the change is the key to knowing and understanding the culture that will emerge from the ashes of consumption.

It is certainly desired that the change be voluntary and that it does not shock the population with such drastic changes in a short amount of time. A gradual shift into this new culture would be much better for society in general. This seems to be what is happening now as movements like Transition spring up and grow around the world. So there is an idea of how we would like to live beyond consumerism, an expectation. But there is no guarantee that these transition communities will survive the changes expected to occur within the next two decades with the rapid decline of fossil fuels and the increasing tensions and conflicts around the world.

But the best we can do is to try to build the world we would prefer in the absence of mass consumerism and the infrastructure and energy that drives it. Resilience is the key to the success of these movements. Resilience is also key to the success of culture. Until the expansion from the industrial world into the jungles of south america, resilient cultures of native Americans existed in large numbers for thousands of years. They were resilient because their culture was simple, there were few rituals or requirements beyond hunting and gathering.

We can simplify our culture but it will require sacrifices that many are just not ready to make. There is still a large number of people led to believe my initial assumptions are false. Misled by propaganda provided by those that profit most from the continuation of our consumer society. It comes down to what Gandhi said, we need to ‘be the change’ that we want, or rather that we know must happen to survive as a species.

Thoughts on anthropomorphic reasoning and the concept of good and evil.

It is difficult to embrace life and to envision meaning without imparting the learned values and self advancing tendencies that accompany the thoughts of a conscious mind.

We spend the majority of our efforts in acts of self preservation, eating, working, sleeping, etc are all activities that we engage in for the purpose of self preservation and they tend to take up a majority of our time. It is easy to see why our thoughts would include something of a looping mechanism that always returns us back to the question of self interest. Any idea or thought we have is weighed to some degree by this looping mechanism.

In fact, why should we wonder, worry or concern ourselves at all with anything that does not immediately benefit us in one way or another? It would seem pointless on the surface, but just below that surface is a world of understanding that easily eludes us. But we have proven effective at this throughout history. Many of the great thinkers and scientists of the past have unwoven a stunning story of our existence and many without recognition until long after the fact.

So in what other ways can a lack of human-centric thought lead us to new understandings of our reality and our place in it? If I only knew. The idea though is that it allows us to think outside of the human box.

We don't usually think of the concepts of right or wrong when we think about nature or the cosmos. But realistically, the relativistically loaded concepts of right and wrong can easily be extrapolated to the concepts of order versus disorder, and in the natural world, this is a battle that never ends.This then brings us back to 'us' and the evolutionary processes that brought us into being. We have been fighting an ongoing battle to lean toward order or 'right' and away from disorder or 'wrong'. This is not just a metaphorical example, it is ingrained into our very being by millions of years of evolution driving us toward more cooperative social behaviours.

We devised the concepts of morality and the theory of ethics not simply as an experiment or wishful thinking, these premises were expressions of what our social evolution was doing and continues to do. Morality, Ethics, Right or Wrong, whatever we think of these concepts, they are not 'man made'. They are simply expressions of the universe being spoken by one of it's creations. We can quantify them and express them in varying degrees, and this is where anthropomorphism comes back into play.

The biggest setback to purely human-centric thought and pursuits is that humans are programmed to seek the greatest reward in the least amount of time. This conflicts with reality in many ways as we approach the limits of our physical world and this is where we need to think in a systems mode. The earth, the solar system, the universe, are all part of a system based on a few simple laws. Now the biosphere and the earth system are quite a bit more complicated than large bodies pulling each other this way and that in the vacuum of space.

The earth has many complicated mechanisms that maintain just the right conditions for humans and the rest of life to exist. We need to first and foremost protect those systems so that we can continue to survive as a species, but the earth is large and seemingly unlimited to a single mind living a single lifetime and with much more to worry about right now rather than what will be happening a hundred years from now.

So right and wrong are concepts that can be observed in nature with the right kind of eyes. It is not a conscious right or wrong, but it is there and it does influence our existence. It is like the black hole, we cannot see it directly, but we can see how it affects all of existence.

Back to 'us', from an anthropological point of view, good and evil, right or wrong, are concepts used and useful to humans alone. The elemental products of nature do not and cannot concern themselves with the concepts of conscious minds.

So I hope I have at least imparted on you the idea that right and wrong are not owned by humans. Their many variations are spread across the cosmos.

Order versus disorder in a world struggling endlessly against the effects of entropy easily seems pointless. And without a doubt, so is life. Pointless. We create the meaning in our lives and very much of that meaning comes from the core foundations of what we as individuals observe as right or wrong.

Why Solutions Are Illusions or There Is No Way Out of This

On the idea of Top Down vs Bottom Up solutions, It appears that both fail to relate to what will be possible in a world of decline and localization.

Since the current form of trade and commerce depends on cheap fossil fuels, it will be crippled by rising energy costs. This will eventually bankrupt nations and lead to revolution or dissolution as they are forced to localize.

From the Bottom Up perspective, it forgets the true dependency of the masses. It only works when there is enough land in the locality to support the population living on and around it. Food will become very local.

But that assumes we survive the mass exodus that will occur as food stops being imported into major cities and their starving masses begin to spill out in search of anything edible.

It will be amazing if deer and boar survive the decline.

So from a resources and ecology point of view, neither approach can work for the amount of people currently living on the planet. The complexity and energy requirements of that kind of governance would not be possible. Culture is the only thing that can provide any hope. But it will not avoid the pain.

Small farms, permaculture projects, and other natural food production oriented lifestyles and the people those systems support will be the only thing that survives. There will be no city or urban lifestyle where electricity powers almost every aspect of daily life.

Water and food and the ability to utilize and transport them ultimately determine what is possible for civilization. There is a definite maximum at which we could utilize the most sustainable and hospitable areas of the planet in an agriculturally formed lifestyle. If we were doing more then simply trying to find a solution for our cultural paradigm and instead, thinking about a solution for the long term, we would be focusing more honestly on what is possible by cataloging what is available in finite form and renewable form.

Let’s get the numbers, but I am afraid the numbers would not provide the answers needed to walk the current population through the resource bottleneck. This is the reality that we must accept. Once we do, more reasonable approaches can be made as to what is possible in the long term, and how we can mitigate the crisis in the meantime.

The primary goal is to increase organic, sustainable agriculture and thus increase the amount of people occupied with that particular activity. This is where culture plays an important role. We can pretend that we can keep being a culture of consumers, or we can accept the culture that is available to us via our realm of possibility.

But alas, the current culture is deeply engrained in the modern human psyche of developed nations. Often people speak as if humans never have or could survive without the luxuries of only the last century. Given the entirety of the human experience, our modern experience is a mere exception to the rule of what has been and is possible for life on earth. 

In the evolution of life, there are many dead ends, and Industrial Man is only one. 

ENERGY PRIMER

>INTRODUCTION

The what is energy, the question is not who, when, where, or why, but how.

This is a quick and dirty primer on our energy situation. It is simplified, but I have tried to cover the most important concepts and explain them and their relationships compared to one another and to society. I believe the energy issue is somewhat complex, but it is THE critical ‘issue’ for our globalized, growth based, consumer society and that will become painfully obvious in short order. We need to have informed awareness about the problem if we expect solutions.

This is not politically suggestive, nor does it propose solutions on how to deal with the energy issue, I leave that up to you. This is strictly observational.


>EROI/EROEI

“It takes money to make money” – Energy Return on Investment / Energy Return on Energy Invested is fairly straightforward. In the first years of commercial oil production, it took one barrel of oil energy equivalent to produce one hundred barrels of CRUDE oil. Now days it is between ten and twenty to one and getting worse. The difference is that EROI focuses on the monetary investment where as EROEI focuses primarily on the actual physical energy required (usually measured in btu’s).

EROI or EROEI, in a sense, represent the profitability of oil extraction, or the economically recoverable amount of oil (or any finite resource) that can be extracted.

>ECONOMICS (Supply & Demand)

“I can’t afford it.”
“Well then I can’t afford to produce it.”

This is the cycle that plays out as the EROI number goes down and the economy struggles to grow with the high costs of energy. As the costs get higher, the oil industry can invest in more production and so ‘excess’ energy is once again delivered to the economy. But soon the abundance drives the price back down and the oil industry can no longer afford to discover and drill for more.

At some point this imbalance could level out, but always with energy availability in over all decline. As the Super Giant fields around the world that still provide the vast majority of the worlds Crude oil continue to decline.

The economy depends on a growing and cheap supply of energy to feed the machines of modern industrial society. The problem is that the supply is getting smaller and less productive.

>ENERGY DENSITY

The different types of fossil energy sources vary, but they can be broken down into Gas and Oil. Each have their own subtypes but are the primary differentiators when it comes to their use in our civilization.

The “Low Hanging Fruit” applies to all energy exploits. People go after the mother load that is easiest to get to. But also there is the issue of Energy Density. As some resources are mined, such as coal, the resource contains less of the material that makes it energy useful, and more of the material that does not. In short, it doesn’t burn as hot.

So as we expand our reach for fossil energy, we are forced to resort to lesser and lesser quality sources of energy that are more and more costlier to extract and refine.

>ENERGY USES

Knowing the different types of oil is a prerequisite to understanding their uses.

Conventional Crude Oil is the black gooey stuff we all think of, but it is ‘fully matured’ and energy dense, where as the ‘Oil’ like substances coming from Fracking are not always fully ‘cured’ and require expensive treatment to make them available as gasoline or other useful oil based byproducts.

The process of Hydraulic Fracturing (I am lumping Tar Sands in with these fuel types even though it is strip mined) (Fracking) produces Gases like Methane and Butane as well as ‘tight oil’ and gas that is trapped in rocks and must be blasted out. There is quite a bit of energy available around the world with this method and resource types. However it still only buys us a few decades, and that is if the economy can continue to adsorb the increasing costs of the energy.

Our primary uses for Crude and some types of the Fracked oil is transportation, as well as other things like plastics and pesticides.

Our primary use for gas (Methane, Propane, Butane, and many others) is in some small and larger vehicles as well as fertilizer, cooking and heating and producing electricity.
It does not contribute to transportation in any significant way and our infrastructure isn’t set up for it.

Though we have a ‘lot’ of natural gas in the US, Natural gas does not have the kind of global market like Crude oil and therefore is primarily subject to local costs. Although there have been talks about building more Natural gas ports. But Natural gas is expensive to transport due to it needing to be very cold and under very high pressure.

We are setup to run on highly energy dense, combustible liquid fuel, or Gasoline.

>ALTERNATIVES

Alternative energies such as wind and solar have the potential to provide energy for a few decades longer, but only in limited areas, and subject to sunlight and wind variations. We would have had to divert all of our efforts for building our infrastructure around that type of energy decades ago.

It is highly unlikely we will reach that level of renewable capability before the costs of energy make it impossible. Developing these technologies requires that the fossil fuel dependent backbone of the global economy continue to be greased with cheap, abundant energy.

>CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change forces us to look at the humanity side of the coin. And it doesn’t tell a pretty story. The climate changes naturally, the Sun has warm and ‘cool’ phases, we can see it in the data. But the data also tells another story. A story of rapid acceleration of many recent data points that do not occur in the available historical data, ever.

Humans are certainly impacting the climate, but whether or not we are causing the damage, Climate Change is still a game changing issue, not merely for our convenience, but for the survival of almost every multi-cellular life form on this planet (which includes humans).

The newer methods of extraction and fossil sources not only prove more expensive and of less quality, but they contribute more of the chemicals that scientists tell us are the main culprits of our environmental and climate impact.

Timothy Dickshttp:\\FutureReferenceOnline.com
futurereferencefarm @ gmail.com
Video of the farmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxyyGW5RKs

Cell Phones - A Preppers Guide
by Timothy Dicks

The short:

1) GSM device
2) Full knowledge and operational control of all of the devices communication capabilities
3) The applications and databases that will be useful in a long or short term prepper scenario.

Technology is always adopted slowly in the prepper community. It’s an instinct to stick with what works and can be easily maintained and controlled. But admittedly, technology works much better in some ways to ease the burden of temporary or even long term distress.

Cell phones fit the bill, they are definitely a, if not the most important tool in an emergency situation in which someone elses assistance is needed who is not currently available.

However, there is a perspective in which cell phones can easily become our worst enemy, tracking our every movement, purchase, communication and interests, knowing all, all the time. It is the same world that brings us all the wonders of technology, but demands our obedience.

This is the system we have created for ourselves, the very system that is teetering on the brink of ecological, energy, resource, monetary, political, and religious upheaval. It is a very delicate system that depends on the quivering masses, struggling to keep it afloat, meanwhile we give it more control with every new submission of indulgence.

So how do we take advantage of a cell phone in a safe and effective manner? With any technology, the issue of security mainly comes down to what you don’t let the system do, or in other words, turning the machine off is THE MOST secure way to operate the machine. Now this is very basic, but that is really all it needs to be to understand the cell phone.

What you do not ‘allow’ the device to do is what determines how secure it is depending on the situation.

To cut it short for those using feature phones or lesser cell phones, your best bet is to simply keep them off unless you need to use them and giving up your location and identity are not a concern.

For the more advanced phones like the iPhone, Android devices, or the myriad of other devices with cellular and wifi capabilities, we need to exercise a bit more control.

These amazing devices with life saving information storage capabilities could be priceless in certain scenarios. Many of the preloaded apps have several useful tools for practical tasks, such as a calculator, level, barometer, and temperature, and many more can be downloaded and operated locally on the device.

The trick is in what information is stored on these devices versus what information you are remaining vulnerable to severing by way of the internet.

So lets build a survival Cell Phone, and lets assume we want maximum security at all times.

Maximum security implies that we are at the highest level of security and our location cannot be given up at any time without actively engaging a known risk communication.

Security -

As stated, we are operating at Maximum security and we must be able to retain control at all times. In this case, you have done the first and most important process of removing your sim card. (If you had a CDMA phone, you would have already known to get a GSM phone without the identifying hardware built in by skipping down to the hardware section.) Once the SIM card is removed from the GSM device you would no longer have your device be at risk of being identified by the surrounding cell towers. However you are not in the clear. You will still need to disable the wifi. If there are any open wifi networks in the area, your device may connect and ‘identify’. Oh, but wait.

RFID/NFC,

Yes, RFID is old news in the tech community AND the prepper community by now, but NFC is the new RFID, and it’s out there offering up its conveniences at the price of our willing submission. Keep your eye out for the NFC functionality of your device, and believe it or not, the RFID ability. It was rumored a while ago that the new thing in phones would be RFID, but hey, the RFID tech could already be there simply for inventory purposes, so look out for that. I couldn’t find anything specific to my phone on a quick Google search, oh wait… ;)

The point is to know what your device is capable of and make sure you can maintain control over that ability at all times. Having a cell phone with you but hidden, could still jeopardize your security in close quarters, even if it’s turned off.


Applications -

What we are looking for is applications that can provide extremely quick and useful results to queries that we might have relating to a range of issues including medical, location and survival, among others. Applications that involve communications, and remotely stored databases are of lesser importance and can take up valuable space.

The best advantage in terms of the technologies interactive features is the GPS, hands down. You can download the app, download the maps for your region and never even need a network connection. You would have a fully zoomable GPS mapping device. You can determine your location without risking your location.

There are many information databases available online, but make sure their databases are downloadable and that you have plenty on and off device storage. At this point, entire family albums, modern DVD collections and valuable information can be stored on a handful of small microSD cards.

Think utilitarian and even think outside your thinking box by downloading advanced apps that you might never use but could be useful to advanced tinkerers and other brainiacs you may run into in the new world.

Hardware -

Choosing your hardware usually means choosing something you want more for it’s communication abilities than it’s ‘unconnected’ abilities. But this is really the least important feature in a long term survival scenario. Assuming the worst, your cell phone/tablet becomes a repository for information and a tool for advanced mathematics. Oh and even a GPS. That is if you can keep it running that long without grid power. So you’ll need a portable solar charger, (or two) to keep it going.

Long term you want a powerful processor and possibly a decent way to document the new history that arises out of the ashes of our technocracy.

In the way of security, a GSM device is your priority as you can simply remove the SIM card to no longer identify you to the Cellular network. With a CDM device, it will attempt to identify itself as soon as you power it on.


A Cell phone is a computer today, and a computer is an awesome thing to have. But it’s functionality has long since been overlooked by its ability to perplex humans with endless, random, and sometimes just downright BAD information. In a long term collapse scenario, that ability will more than likely subside as the remaining technology is put more and more to use as a tool rather than a playground.

Thanks for reading and for joining me on the journey of life.

Timothy Dickshttp:\\FutureReferenceOnline.com
futurereferencefarm @ gmail.com
Video of the farmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxyyGW5RKs

Environmental Inactivism

Let's face it, Environmental Activism is dead. It's not for lack of effort, rather it is because Environmental Activism is an oxy-moron in a growth based system running up against the limitations of a finite planet.

I propose that we align the name and the tactics to fit what would for all intents and purposes be a more accurate description of the movement and it's goals. So, I came up with an easy change, Environmental Inactivism.

Why? Because it makes sense, why else?

Think about it. Let it settle in for a moment.

All of these various NGO's exist to protect the environment, but what are they proposing to protect the environment from? It would appear that they are intending to protect the earth from the same system they are actively engaged in and in effect, supporting.

What should I do to protect the environment? Should I give money to organizations that proclaim to have the environments interest in mind? Maybe I should start my own NGO?

Both of these paths of action involve supporting and contributing to the same system that is causing the issues we are concerned with in the first place. So how can you be an Environmental Inactivist?

Stop supporting the system, stop supporting all industrial, non-local systems. Stop spending your money. Grow and preserve your own food. Provide for yourself. Do everything you can to NOT be an active participant in our decaying industrial society.

Being a conscious and concerned citizen has much more to do with what you DO NOT do than what you DO do.

DO less, BE more.

Thanks for reading and for joining me on the journey of life.

Timothy Dickshttp:\\FutureReferenceOnline.com
futurereferencefarm @ gmail.com
Video of the farmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxyyGW5RKs