Lovelock says the planet is now past the point of no return, and its self-regulating feedback mechanisms are turning from maintaining a liveable planet into a downward spiral of warming and flooding that will soon lay waste to civilisation as we know it. Now we must prepare to survive as best we can. - James Lovelock

Life as we know it is fast coming to an end. But you’d hardly realize it if you are just paying attention to the MSN, which simply refuses to report the facts. Television is just a distraction and quite obsolete when it comes to information and “news”. What you learn on the Net can be learned months before the MSN is forced to report.

It used to be that alternative publications were more ‘newsworthy’ and informative regarding issues of critical importance. They still are, just not nearly as timely as surfing the Web. Shortwave is kind of a ‘hit or miss’ proposition, with a great many hucksters trying to squeeze you for a dollar or two (or few thousand). I don’t listen to shortwave (at all). It’s been overtaken by the Internet, whcih I consider a far better resource.
The best news I’ve found is on the Net, bar none. But you have to be careful and sort through all the hype and propaganda and disinformation online too. Too bad we can’t buy bullshit filter software, because we could sure use it. You’re going to have to rely upon your brain, which hopefully is intelligent enough to judge the b.s. quotient.

I’ve got a ton of sites I check periodically for news and information and my particular persuasions probably aren’t yours. I check many sources. I’m looking at evidence of catastrophic devastation on a planetary scale, ruined habits, overfishing, depleted soils, global warming, climate shift, political jerrymandering, reports and statistics regarding peak oil, war, global conflict, presidential ‘perogatives’ (think secret government), privacy, police state, economy, world commerce, bird flu, emerging diseases, etc.

I digest this all down in my brain computer, apply the b.s. filter and my dash of experience and consistently come up with the same solution each and every time. We’re bushed, through and through (if you don’t know what bushed means, you need to be visiting the Sustainable Living & Common Sense bulletin board, it’s a perfect replacement for a common four letter word).

We are dead meat for a lot of reasons, a few which I’ve bothered to post and blog. I simply don’t bother with the majority of it, since it would take all of my limited time and I’ve got better things to do, like figuring out how I’m going to survive this. Right now, and for the rest of my life, that’s taking a top priority, as it should.

Long gone are mundane thoughts of career, security, retirement, investments, stability, future, abundance, wealth, etc., these are all ‘old paradigm’, completely replaced by the new paradigm. The new paradigm involves self-sufficiency, self-reliance, personal production, simplification and sustainability. Obviously, I’m preparing for a world of shortages, destruction, death, disease and disaster. Wait a minute - that’s already happening. Well, okay then, I’m preparing for this on a global scale of unprecedented proportions.

I no longer believe that there is any future of ‘promise’ - the mess we left behind is taking care of that. Nor do I believe that this life of plenty is going to last much longer, how can it? All this stuff we see piled up around each and every one of us came from somewhere (of course), but we’ve not really been paying attention as to what it took to get it here into our greedy little hands and this gross oversight is now catching up with us. I’m absolutely convinced that the life of plenty and pleasure is about to end and the life of hardship and endurance is about to begin. Unfortunately, this means a whole lot of people aren’t going to make it, they are neither mentally or physically prepared to deal with it.

I’m getting ready to ‘gear up’ and ‘power down’ by preparing to take care of myself without outside help or assistance. This is the only prudent and proper response I can determine in light of all the evidence that our world is about to come crashing down. Life as we know it is going to end and if I hope to survive, I’m going to have to take personal responsibility for a lot of things that used to be handled by someone else. Like feeding myself. Or running to the grocery store. Heating my home. Transportation.

It’s not going to be easy, but hardship never is. I have the advantage of having advance knowledge and warnings that this is all going to happen, so I’m trying to make the best use of it as I can. So here is a free piece of advice: Stockpile. Stockpile. Stockpile. I can’t say this enough. You need to buy yourself some time, which best spent, is learning how to take care of yourself and your needs and to become a self-sufficient as you can.

Stockpiling won’t be enough, but it will buy you some time. The rest really is up to you.

From the Sustainable Living & Common Sense board, posted by Lonewolf -

It’s starting to become a LONG list of potential countries with human BF

Below is a list I compiled from recent ‘news’ and general speculation”

Confirmed human cases - China, VietNam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey

Suspected human cases - Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Bulgaria, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Iran, Iraq, South Korea, North Korea, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Syria

Not reporting but adjacent - Albania, Bangladesh, Burma, Byelarus, Eygpt, Kuwait, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Tunisa, Uzbekistan, Ukraine

Since the vectors (birds at present, soon expected to be humans) are not limited to any particular region, zone or country, the potential for the world wide spread of bird flu is extemely high (and expected).

As scary as bird flue is (50% mortality rate), I doubt many people have come to realize what it is might mean when we lose ALL the bird populations of the world.

As the world grinds onward and energy becomes increasingly more expensive (think all forms of energy, fuel, natural gas, propane, wood, electricity, etc.) - people are going to start hoarding stuff, primarily survival stuff in order to survive.

Governments around the world are already doing this and have been for some time. But that won’t really do you any good because they’re not really planning on taking care of you, they’re planning on taking care of themselves. It’s an elitist club and if you don’t belong (and most of us don’t), then your going to be on your own.

The cost of energy is directly related to the cost of your survival. 99.99% of Americans (I’m guessing, but I’m sure it’s close to that figure) are entirely dependent upon the larger society to provide for them all the things that they cannot provide for themselves. They (remain) victims to the increasing cost necessities.

What is now happening is hoarding is now taking place, before the costs of these necessities becomes unreachable. This is quite understandable because what you invest in today will cost double, triple or even ten times as much in a few years. That, plus the abandonment of the dollar as the world’s economic standard is causing a flight from cash reserves into ’stuff’.

There are many other reasons to hoard goods. Availability is also becoming a serious factor. Certain goods are going to become scarce as people drive up demand. Backorders become more commonplace and the price increases correspondingly.

What is being hoarded? Food, water, medicine, energy (all forms, including heating fuel, wood, batteries, etc.), raw materials (cheaper to stockpile then to tranport these in the future), guns, ammo, clothing, all the things that are essential for your survival. This of course, applies to business entities too. Companies stockpile those things that they need to stay in business (if they can) as prices increase. It’s a better investment to pay today’s price on raw materials, then tomorrow’s price, because shipping costs are skyrocketing.

What won’t be hoarded? All the crap that won’t make any difference to your survival. Consumer junk - all types of electronics, cars, etc. All the crap you see when you walk into Wal-Mart. Almost everything in these type of stores is utterly useless to your survival. Except for food, over-the-counter medicine, toilet paper and clothing and a few hardware items, there’s nothing else in these type of stores that I’d want or need. Which goes to show how a multi-billion dollar corporation is pumping out an unbelievable amount of ‘consumer goods’ (crap) that nobody needs. It’s pretty damned sad when you think about it.

These corporations generate a lot of ’stuff’ but it’s almost ALL useless stuff, while raping and pillaging the planet for increasingly limited resources. We think it’s a privilige to be an American and have such ‘abundance’, but we’re not looking at it the right way. All of this crap is going to be our downfall as we are now witnessing. We’ve become entirely too dependent upon this constant infusion of useless junk into our lives and have utterly forgotten how to take care of ourselves. Meanwhile, our jobs are exported overseas and we are constantly running back and forth to the myriad of “store’s” to buy shit that we don’t really need. The stuff we really DO need is skyrocketing in price and we just keep going back, again and again, to the trough of consumerism and dependency, never realizing just how incredibily dangerous this dependency cycle really is.

We are in trouble folks, really, super serious trouble and it’s just barely catching the public perception. Our lifes ‘blood’ is consumer production put out by corporate monstrosities. If they stop - we stop (we die). It’s as simple as that. We have zero ability to actually take care of ourselves if this corporate madness stops. So we close our eyes and stop our ears to the insanity of corporations (and governments) destroying the planet that we live on. What else can we do? To announce this gross injustice to humanity would put us at odds with the entire world and direction of the human race.

But that is indeed what we should do. Renounce this madness, this cycle of consumer dependency and corporate greed and immediately ween ourselves individually off the suckling tit of consumerism.

The natural reaction to this is to start hoarding. But hoarding will only take you so far, because all things eventually do come to an end. We need to return to a concept of individual responsibility for all of our needs (and actions) if we hope to survive into the future.

It’s extremely serious and governments are starting to pay attention - but are you? It’s about skyrocketing energy costs (in part, because there is a LOT more going on too that will directly affect whether you live or die). The latest Culture Change has this to say:

But here’s the rub about Peak Oil, that makes this disaster different from all other disasters: With Peak Oil, even if you survive, life as you know it won’t.

According to the starkest of the Peak Oil paradigms, we each face two possible fates:

1. Die in the ‘die-off’ (an awful expression, complains a friend who prefers to remain nameless for a reason you’ll understand in a moment: She says it has the impersonal ring of ‘jerk-off’).

2. Survive while everyone who refused to heed the warnings dies.

Either way, you’re fucked:

1. You die.

2. You don’t die; you’re the Last Man Standing in your neck of the all-too-metaphorical woods. Now what?

Add into peak oil (which is really both peak energy and peak civilization) the other very real threats facing us - bird flu (imminent), climate change (now happening, meaning drought, flood, crop failure, starvation, displacement and economic destruction worldwide), collapsing fisheries (75% reduction), pollution (world wide), declining fresh water (worldwide), war (if you’re reading this, you already know we stand on the brink of WWIII), and all of the other garbage coming down around us and it’s pretty easy to see that the future of the human race is in great peril.

Of course people are hoarding. If you’re not - you won’t survive and neither will your family. You wil remain dependent, helpless in the face of monumental disasters.

What you need to do is to chart a course of getting from ‘here’ to ‘there’ - which includes planning for the immediate needs for survival, learning how to wean yourself from state-sponsored dependency and developing the critical skills and attitudes to endure the terrible future awaiting us all. Developing an ethic of self reliance and self responsibility is even more important (critically so) then hoarding. What are you going to do when the batteries run out or your food supply is depleted? With the right mindset, this won’t be a problem, because you’ll have already figured it out.

Hoard what you need now and then learn what it’s going to take to survive into the future.

I apologize for a lack of posts - I have been very busy with a dearth of activity here, including new UPS rates. Watch it folks - the fuel crisis is really starting to hit. It may not seem like it, but from my perspective, this is getting rather serious.

Here is a view of the future - Sacramento on Empty.

Sacramento 2036: It???s a rare thing to see a car of any kind on J Street, and then it???s most likely to be an armored police vehicle. From time to time, a small convoy of these–three or four–will emerge, usually to protect against civil unrest at one of the food-distribution points. They used to be called ???supermarkets,??? but they didn???t look like armored warehouses then. They are fairly safe these days. Most people who don???t have money to buy food have signed on to work at a farm in exchange for food or have been court-ordered into indentured labor to pay off their debts.

Except this won’t happen in the year 2036. I expect this to occur in just a few short years, certainly less then a decade. The rise in fuel prices and global greed that is occuring is phenomenal. It doesn’t even matter if the oil shortage is real or not, what matters is what are you having to pay (for everything)? With what? The export of jobs, depressed wages, and the intent of the Administration to create a serfdom labor force, and the extreme potential for many kinds of catastrophes all point to a very dark and forboding future.

But the decline of oil is VERY real -

In 2000 there were 16 discoveries of 500 million barrels of oil equivalent or bigger. In 2001 there were nine. In 2002 there were just two. In 2003 there were none.

The very basic necessities to survive are going to become items of extreme demand as the world finds itself rooted in total war with the elitist and globalist who are rabidly destroying our present way of life. You will have to fight for your food and future. This is approaching very fast, driving by war, oil and fascism. The assault upon individual liberties presently underway is designed to make future civilian internments possible. Don’t think that torture will be used exclusively upon ‘enemy combatants’ of different nations. Your being prepped and primed to accept that here, against Americans (dissenters who dare speak out). The Presidential ‘perogatives’ and secret government is part of this plan. All of the ground work is now being laid to have total control of the future - who lives, who dies.

Get ready.

Oprah is supposed to air her ‘preparations strategies’ today. That might get a lot of attention and action here in the United States by individuals, but where is our government?

New Zealand is going much, much further, projecting 33,000 deaths, and complete border closure on the first sign of outbreak (anywhere in the world).

I’ve been trying to get the warnings out in my own fashion, regarding the number of serious issues facing humankind. The fact that our world is in severe peril and growing worse every day should be of significant concern to every living, breathing human on earth.

It is, unfortunately, probably too late. This is the worst kind of ‘too little, too late’ you can possibly imagine, since what we are talking about here is the eradiation of the human race - and all other life forms on the planet.

Our situation is dire - and quite probably, utterly irreversible.

the planet cannot sustain our current levels of consumption, much less the projected increase in consumption of the U.S., China, and India

That’s not really saying it strong enough, “projected increased consumption” makes it sound like we’ll somehow manage to stop, slow down and reverse this trend towards planetary destruction and species extinction (including us). But that is most certainly not happening. What is happening is this:

the planet has already passed the point of no return for global climate change.

He advises the world’s governments to plan on how to secure food and energy in a global environment run amok, and warns that coastal cities must be protected from rising sea levels. He expects a population crash, with the survivors living in what is presently the Arctic, and a few other places on the planet.

What is causing all of this havoc is human greed. Resource depletion worldwide, environmental pollution, excessive extraction and overused land and water areas. Driving it is mega-corporations - who seek to deny the damage while raking in billions in profits.

Current world events are being played out against a setting of resource depletion and other environmental problems which are not recognized by most people, nor even acknowledged by many of the world???s decision makers. In fact, there is a concerted effort by many corporations and economists to dismiss these problems as nonexistent. Corporations choose to dismiss these problems because they do not want to admit their own culpability, and because the solution to these problems will prevent them from carrying out business as usual. Economists refuse to face these problems because to do so they must admit that their pet economic models are deeply flawed, and because these problems point up the unsustainable madness of capitalism with its market mechanisms. Yet the scientific community reached a consensus over the last decade and has attempted to sound the warning bell.

Obviously, the corporations are not alone. Each of us is responsible for our part in this life-and-death drama now unfolding.

A short (and incomplete) chronological history of these warnings, beginning in 1992, reveals how a decade plus later, we are still ignoring these warnings. The significance of this should be obvious. Widespread global disaster is now a certainty.

This is but one of many (thousands) of reports and warnings that have been issued, revealing how our present way of life is ensuring the future destruction of our planet. I simply haven’t the time to document them all, but I read them every day. These hard facts seemingly somehow fail to sink in and have not made much of a dent at all in our way of ‘doing business’ on planet Earth. Unfortunately, its soon to be too late for it to matter much.

Life as we know it is about to get much, much worse. TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) is a very real event. I hope you’re making ready.

It’s real simple. Stock up, stay home and stay put. If pandemic hits, then you’re exposing yourself and your family to serious risk by simply venturing out to the store. You don’t know who’s been there or where they’ve been or who they’ve been exposed to.

I had to laugh when I read the health advice ‘avoid breathing air breathed by other persons’. How are you going to do that? Stay home and minimize your risk. Stock up now while you still can and if pandemic doesn’t hit, don’t fret over it. It’s your insurance plan, no different then the insurance you buy today (except this one you get to eat).

Stay put. Don’t be venturing out because ‘you have to’. You may have to, but proper advanced planning will help you park your butt where it belongs and you can reduce your risk exposure significantly.

Read between the lines - what they are saying is if you’re not prepared, you already a ghost.

London has it’s wayward whale, and I’ve got a lost moose calf. It’s in my ‘backyard’, sleeping by my camper. About 5 ft. high at the shoulder. I took some pictures, but they’re not really publishable, the camera was set to a reverse image and they look terrible. Now it’s too dark to shoot some more, but the calf is still there.

It’s pretty neat to have such wildlife come up to your door. He’s checked out the garden, the compost pile and the cat, who got scared and ran up a tree. That was funny. I went outside and restocked the bird feeder, the calf just stood up and figuring I was no threat (I’m not) bedded back down.

I’m giving he/she a wide berth, although I did set out a bale of alfalfa. There’s not a lot to eat out there right now and if I can give the calf a boost to get through the winter, I don’t mind. Still, you don’t want to domesticate them, since that would only insure their death by man sooner then normal.

Their natural fear and distrust of mankind serves them well. I suspect mamma tossed the baby out, perhaps because she was going to give birth to another calf. Hard to say. It’s long past hunting season, but you just never know.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some new pictures up if I can figure out how to reset this camera.

Now, wasn’t that better then more doom and gloom?

A new tape has surfaced of Bin Laden. I don’t really put much stock in these tapes, since this kind of stuff always seems to play into the hands of our gifted leaders. Nor do I personally worry about terrorist attacks, I think Americans are much more in danger of their own government then any so-called terrorists.

There is indeed a long list of “gotcha’s” to be watching out for, but Bin Laden doesn’t even make my top ten. Or twenty. I don’t buy the government story that Bin Laden was behind 9/11. If he was - he had a lot of inside help, right here in America.

No, the real threats are far more tangible (and provable) then yet another video tape. The Bush Administration is seeking to attack yet another country, unprovoked. I don’t consider the so-called ‘threat’ of Iran generating nuclear power a credible threat to the United States or her allies. Not yet. Nor do I believe that the United States should be the nuclear watchdog that it proposes to be.

I’m not advocating we trust Iran (or anybody else), but trying to be global cop is ridiculous. Freedom doesn’t mean that you sacrifice your own citizens livelihood and prosperity (which is what is happening now with bloated military spending) because you decide (arbitrarily) that only you can have nuclear weapons or nuclear power. One of the prices of freedom is to accept the risks that comes with liberty - not only among your own citizens, but among other nations. You also have to respect national soveriegnty. Once you start down that dangerous path of supressing liberty (anywhere) in the name of “freedom”, you soon find out that you are actually opposing to the principles that you claim to uphold.

And that is exactly what is wrong with the United States. Every governmental institution in America that advocates freedom is busy taking it away, claiming they are actually doing us a favor by protecting us from boogy men. I don’t buy it - not for one second. This is, as history as repeatedly showed, a very dangerous path to totalitarinism. Which we’ve already arrived at.

The “unitary doctrine” embraced by the Bush Administration proves that. As does a whole bunch of secret orders and directives done behind the scenes. Everyone is trying to gauge “Are we there yet?” regarding a dictatorship - if this doesn’t prove it, then rendition, prison camps, torture, indefinite imprisonment and domestic spying should. But there are of course, many more proofs that we’ve already arrived at Nazi America.

Why do I write (again) about the bird flu? Because it is far more serious then most people think.

In November, the Department of Health and Human Services released its pandemic influenza plan. The report offers a thorough and frank assessment of the havoc a full-fledged pandemic would wreak. The nation, the report says, “will be severely taxed, if not overwhelmed.” Disease will break out repeatedly, for as long as a year. Hospitals will run out of beds and vaccines. Doctors and nurses will be overworked to the point of exhaustion. Mass fatalities will overwhelm mortuaries and morgues with bodies. Before it has exhausted itself, the report estimates, the disease could spread to as many as 90 million Americans, hospitalizing 10 million and killing almost 2 million. - Wired Magazine

An outbreak in the United States will shut this country down. Instantly. Walk over to your cupboard and look in. That’s what you’re going to be eating. For a long time.

Here are some links to get you up to speed (at your own risk, found on the Internet) -

Stuff to get now and use (even if there was no Bird Flu): red wine and grape juice, green tea and Vitmin D.

Virus inactivation by grapes and wines. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=170457

Grape Juice - Better Than Wine?

Resveratrol Content of Wines and Grape Juice

Catechins in green tea show antiviral effect on influnza virus

Antiviral effect of catechins in green tea on influenza virus.

Epigallocatechin gallate, a constituent of green tea, suppresses cytokine-induced pancreatic beta-cell damage.

Antiviral properties of prodelphinidin B-2 3???-O-gallate from green tea leaf.

Vitamin D Council November Newsletter (lots of info about Vitamin D and influenza)

And if you ever need to have a ???sick room??? one ought to purify the air, like hosptals and laboratories do, to help keep other people from being infected. To do that you need a forced air purifier (one with a fan), multistage mechanical filters and a UV light source. I haven???t found a cost effective one yet.

FYI: great Bird Flu summary and more info at http://www.arielco.us/page3.html

Another Bird Flu site (comprehensive) - http://pandemic360.com

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt says:

There will be agonizingly difficult choices about the distribution of food and resources.

We are in, in biologic terms, overdue but under-prepared.

In the 16th week, 90 million [in the U.S.] would have had the disease at some point. The actual fatalities would be somewhere in the two to three percent range, we believe. It’s millions of people. This is a very serious world- changing event if it occurs.