I find it hard to write about our motivations for taking on this challenge. When I was a child, people who built and stocked bomb shelters were a source of humor for sitcoms. After Jonestown I learned that religious groups have been predicting Armageddon throughout the ages, and believers have gathered on the fateful day, only to be disappointed. As I grew older, bomb shelters and religious nuts gave way to survivalists, holed up in Waco or Ruby Ridge with guns and ammunition stockpiled behind barbed wire fences. After that came Y2K, when people stockpiled supplies to prepare for a global technological meltdown. Peak Oil, the current going concern, is only the latest in a long series of focal points for a recurring fear of disaster.
After watching all these concerns come and go over the years, it's hard to shake the feeling that people who prepare for disaster are a bunch of kooks and nut cases. So I feel a bit like I'm coming out as a nut case myself, when I admit that preparedness is a concern of mine. But at the same time, I firmly believe that our exponential growth rate is unsustainable, and our situation is growing rapidly more precarious as we approach and overshoot global limits to growth in food production, cheap fuel, climate stability, and availability of fresh water (among other things.) Sooner or later, something's going to give. The only real questions are when and how.
Greg believes we might see a sudden global crash -- sixty to zero in 3.6 seconds -- whereas I think we're more likely to experience a sequence of local and regional disasters, each with a different impact on the world's economy, political stability, production capacity and supply chains. In either case, food security could become an issue, so we've agreed to create a food buffer in our pantry to protect against price spikes and supply disruptions. We've been working on this off & on for several years, and it seemed like a good time to give it a test run.
After watching all these concerns come and go over the years, it's hard to shake the feeling that people who prepare for disaster are a bunch of kooks and nut cases. So I feel a bit like I'm coming out as a nut case myself, when I admit that preparedness is a concern of mine. But at the same time, I firmly believe that our exponential growth rate is unsustainable, and our situation is growing rapidly more precarious as we approach and overshoot global limits to growth in food production, cheap fuel, climate stability, and availability of fresh water (among other things.) Sooner or later, something's going to give. The only real questions are when and how.
Greg believes we might see a sudden global crash -- sixty to zero in 3.6 seconds -- whereas I think we're more likely to experience a sequence of local and regional disasters, each with a different impact on the world's economy, political stability, production capacity and supply chains. In either case, food security could become an issue, so we've agreed to create a food buffer in our pantry to protect against price spikes and supply disruptions. We've been working on this off & on for several years, and it seemed like a good time to give it a test run.