End Of Britain

[huntergathereralex]

The end of Britain has happened many times(although the land wasn't always called Britain). Normans conquering Saxons, Vikings conquering Saxons,Saxons conquering Romano-Britons, Romans leaving Britannia, Romans conquering Iron Age Celts, all the way back to the last Ice Age in one form or another...this time it may be economic. There will always be a Britain, just not in the form you recognize now.
Random ponderings.
Cheers
Alex

 

[xylaria]

If society crumbled something would fill the vacuum and a good percentage of us would be dead within 6 months

not sure about that. Wayland post, societies have came and gone time and time again. Mostly the first bit to go is the over consuming ruling class, followed by the artisans. The people that can dig or rob and those that whatever look out for each other survive. But then the modern european is pretty stupid, many cant light fires, grow food, kill or gut an animal, if there isnt an app for it or it cant be googled a lot people pretty stuffed.

 

[Dougster]

not sure about that. Wayland post, societies have came and gone time and time again. Mostly the first bit to go is the over consuming ruling class, followed by the artisans. The people that can dig or rob and those that whatever look out for each other survive. But then the modern european is pretty stupid, many cant light fires, grow food, kill or gut an animal, if there isnt an app for it or it cant be googled a lot people pretty stuffed.

Necessity is the best teacher. Most of the kids I teach haven't a clue because it isn't important to them, but if they need to they would pick it up pretty fast.

 

[Countryman]

I think a lot of people are struggling to deal with the pace of change and the stress of a modern consumerist society.

I don't think we were designed to deal with this. I yearn for wilderness. I think the reality of living several hundred years ago would be pretty grim. However slowing down the pace and getting more in touch with nature is always welcome.

I know I am a predator, I'm wired to hunt. It's hard to do now and that in itself is a stress.

Is Britain going to fail? What is Britain? If you are talking about the millions of welfare consumers herded by Nanny State then I think I actually hope it does. This country is deeply ill.

If Britain is a strong independent Island underpinned by a sense of liberal democracy and fair play founded on 2000 years of Christian ethos then no I don't think it will.

Does it make sense to hoard for the Zombie Apocolypse? It's personal choice. Does it make sense to be more self reliant and have a little put by for adversity? Hell yes.

The best "Prep" anyone could have is living debt free.

 

[mountainm]

We love excess but can live with a lot less. Theres a number of small steps the nation would take to prevent collapse. Ration books would probably be amongst the first. Shorter working week. Power and water rationing....

We've been there before in a number of guises. And were ok.

 

[Corso]

Up until a year ago I would be on your side of the fence I'm in my 30s and have spent the most important years of my children's lives chasing money and a presumed happiness that I would find whilst having enough of it but guess what there is never enough and upon losing everything once the initial oh my god reaction passed I'm now happier than I've ever been and it took losing all of my material things to realise that the things that make us rich were running around waiting for me to stop and take the time to notice them
So yes I'm young but would rather of had 20 years like the last six months than 80 years of what many regard as a normal life
And I would of laughed at you if you explained to me how much happiness you can find planting ,growing and harvesting your own food with your family

Not spending all your money chasing the latest fad/gadget/must have is one thing but wishing away modern advances is rather shortsighted.

I agree grow your own is cool as is a bit of healthy prepping. We keep a couple of weeks worth of food and the ability to still function without electricity and gas.

what worries me is those who believe they would be ok long term so finding a solution isn't worth their time. If society crumbled those needing regular medication (insulin, heart meds, cancer meds) would die, there would be outbreaks of once gone diseases, childbirth would be significantly more dangerous to both mother and child, anyone on mental health medication that they use to help cope would be a concern. Accidents and injury would rise due to the more manual activities the population would undertake and without the access to antibiotics alot would die and this is just what the NHS currently deals with.

Maybe you/your family would be ok/lucky so this might not bother you but also figure if we lost 10-20% of the population to this your going to be burning a lot of calories burning the bodies....


I enjoy living the simple life and even go out of my way to go back to basics/ re discover old skills and technologies but I'm grateful when I pull the switch the electrics come on or I can hop on the bus and do my shopping when I need to.

 

[Elen Sentier]

I've just watched it !!! WHAT an advertising statement !!! "click on the link below" and let us save you ... for a fee of course !!!

"people like you" - "responsible, hardworking people who've saved all their lives" etc, etc ... so glad I'm not one of them !!!

It's all the welfare-state's fault - we shouldn't care about others, etc !!! "I'm all right, Jack" !!! compassion does not compute with wealth ... etc, etc.

The whole concept of "pay back the debt" is wrong - look at Iceland, which I notice was NOT mentioned.

I'm not saying the collapse they speak of won't happen, I've been watching this grow for the past 40 years and I'm not some poncey "financial expert" just an ordinary educated person who was taught to think at school over 50 years ago. I'm certain "thinking and reasoning and problem solving" are no longer on the curriculum, they may be "extras" as they are at Hubby's expensive private school. When he was a pupil there they were part of the normal fare but that was back in the 1950s.

Furthermore, I was a grown-up, working person during the 1970s - I doubt the person who wrote the comentary was even born then, certainly not out of nappies. I've no idea what history book he learned his speach out of but it weren't like what he pretends at all !!! But there you go, watch any rubbish history programme on TV nowadays and you find your life re-written if you're over 50, or is it 40 now?

The whole concept of shares, investments, interest, stockholding, property-as-investment instead of a place to live, etc will change. Ownership is the death-sentence, the whole concept of ownership, along with the idea that "wealth" is something to be desired, and along with the whole concept of money as a "commoditiy" instead of a "means of exchange". Add in the "fear-concept" ... I must have more just-in-case ... and you build the gods-forsaken attitudes by which most of the 7+ billion people currently infesting this planet live by. And there's a real root to the problem ... the fact that the human population has risen from 1 billion to over 7 billion in about 120 years ... and that it has more than doubled (yes more than doubled) from 3 billion to over 7 billion, in the last 60 years. If that happened to the cells in your body your doctor would diagnose cancer ...

So, yes, we (the whole world) not just Britain are at crisis point but this weasel-worded con-advert is not telling the truth, only little bits of it carefully spliced in to confuse you into agreeing with them and buying their product - like any ad-man or politician - just enough to scare you into doing what they tell you. Independant ... my backside! All they want is to increase their rating and readership - ie get your money and increase their own wealth and power!

On interesting thing to note from the graphs they put up ... the debt begins to grow in a serious exponential manner from 1980 ... now, can I remember who came into power in Britain then ???

Advice ... discover in yourself what makes you happy - other than money, wealth, ownership, et al ... and focus your life on that. I do realise I'm likely doing this

 

[crosslandkelly]

Well said Elen.:You_Rock_

 

[Wayland]

Spot on Ellen.

I eventually decided to watch that claptrap but gave up after a few minutes.

Rubbish, peddling fear to the gullible.

 

[sandbender]

Well said Ellen, I didn't get beyond the five minute point either.

 

[boatman]

Join the Specials or the Food Rationing Board if it came in during a real crisis. Best prep would be to work on the inside of the establishment. But not to worry, a sovereign country can always renege on its debts.

 

[Ronnie]

The financial crisis is basically a symptom of two larger colliding crisis, i.e. climate change and peak oil. Once the end of cheap oil became a reality, people began to realise that the mountain of debt could never be repaid.

The end of cheap petroleum means the enternal growth paradigm is dead, having hit the hard limits of resource depletion. Economists can spout as much crap as they like, but our planets resources are finite and geology will have the last word. Without growth, we have recession, depression, or whatever euphemism the mass media have chosen this month. A contracting economy can't afford the repayments let alone the interest on the debt. The chart of UK National Debt in the OP is accelerating despite austerity because we need to borrow in order to meet our debt obligations - our economy is bust:

Our entire concept of money is based on debt, it is debt. If the debt is worthless then so is the money. Once this idea takes root then collapse is well and truly upon us and at that point we will move quite rapidly to a centrally planned economy.

The problem with comparing our current situation to the old times is that there are far too many of us now:

Where have all these people come from? The simplistic answer is cheap petroleum. We burn 10 calories of petroleum for ever calorie of food we consume - we are in effect eating oil. Once the oil becomes more expensive, then so does the food. We have seen this happen quite clearly over the last few years and it will continue. We are drawing down fossil energy reserves in order to support an unsustainable population. Once these reserves are exhausted we are then in population overshoot.

This is happening globally. Here's an interesting model of population explosion, resource depletion, environmental degradation and population collapse:

http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/st-matthew-island/#page-1

Easter Island is another. Here an advanced civilisation squandered its limited resources to produce huge and pointless monuments to their theology.

 

[rik_uk3]

But we are nowhere near peak oil yet.

 

[Wayland]

So some of us will die and the rest of us will die too.

Nothing changes apart from the schedule.

Stop worrying about it and enjoy the time you have now...

 

[Ronnie]

But we are nowhere near peak oil yet.

Prove it

 

[sandbender]

Lots of graphs there Ronnie but we don't know the provenance of them, they may have been knocked up on someones home computer or represent the best research we have on the subject, who knows?

Peak oil, maybe, probably not, there is lot of oil left but it seems clear that that oil is now much harder to get at. There was a time when you could shovel crude out of the ground with your hands but these days we have to drill deeper or process tar sands and such to get what we need. The process of digging deeper or processing something previously not worth looking at to get our oil will eventually cost more (in energy) than is worth spending, we might be there already but oil is needed for so much in this world we'll keep drilling and cooking to get the stuff.

 

[Gaudette]

An interesting case of marketing your product using a recognised formula. Although the " facts" cannot be denied their interpretation can. The object of the article is to get you to buy the product hence all the links. Basically create the fear and then sell the solution. Probably our oldest institution has been doing it for years. At the end of the day the cycle of life will carry on.

 

[mountainm]

ITER the french/international fusion reactor is expected to cost 10 billion to build. Sounds a lot. But when you consider the bankers bonuses added up to 7 billion it really is pennies. Predections are it will provide economical power. Peak oil will be liberating. We will stop looking to the past to solve our problems and start looking to the future.
http://www.iter.org

 

[Ronnie]

Lots of graphs there Ronnie but we don't know the provenance of them, they may have been knocked up on someones home computer or represent the best research we have on the subject, who knows?

Feel free to do your own research. In my haste I missed out Russia and Kazakhstan who both have increasing production, although Russian growth is decelerating and is expected to top out soon. The real player in this is Saudi Arabia. They are injecting massive amounts of sea water into their wells to maintain production - the back slope of their Hubbert's curve is likely to be precipitous as a result.

You are quite right that the remaining oil is difficult and expensive to get at. The low hanging fruit was picked and eaten long ago, and now we are left with the difficult reserves which require far more resources to be expended to tap them. This is often expressed as Energy Returned Over Energy Invested, or EROEI. Once you find yourself investing as much energy as you recover, the gig is up and the operation becomes futile.

There are virtually no more reserves to be discovered:

Yet everyone want's liquid fueled vehicles:

There is an energy gap which no amount of renewables is ever going to fill

 

[Corso]

oil production is one thing oil reserves something else