I am not really a doomer. But I do think that societies and individuals that do not prepare for the worst (and hope for the best) are needlessly endangering themselves. Tail risk events happen. An MIT study earlier this year predicted that the global economy would collapse by 2030.
A new national survey by National Geographic and Kelton Research finds some interesting results:
Which cataclysmic movies do Americans worry might come true?
7% of Americans think the Planet of the Apes might come true? Really? 30% of Americans think that the events of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 might occur?
And how prepared do Americans think they are for such events?
But in reality — in terms of what people have actually accomplished — few people seem ready for anything:
9% of people have alternative power sources? 21% have made some attempt to grow their own food? Only 43% have a spare supply of drinking water?
Not prepared at all.
azizonomics 
“7% of Americans think the Planet of the Apes might come true? Really? 30% of Americans think that the events of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 might occur?”
I’d say given the popularity of Reality TV, Al Sharpton, Justin Bieber, the reelection of Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, & Orin Hatch, I’m surprised it’s not higher.
I will admit I have stocked up (2 years worth) and i plan for more, so im going to step it up this week.
I believe its better to have and not need, than to not have and need…Giggle and laugh to your own foolish peril
“YOU WOULD BE THE ONE BEGGING IF SOMETHING HAPPENED”
and im converting all my savings to .999 bullion silver
Max Keiser has got me addicted to silver 🙂
Why not just learn of to live off the land? I would believe that if worst comes to worst, it would be difficult lugging around a few hundred pounds of silver on your back, no?
Re your advice to “learn to live off the land”: that IS the best preparation, along with alternative evacuation plans and preparation. While gold has a >50 value-to-weight ratio over silver, the risk is that no one is around to exchange food, water, etc. for gold or silver. As the anti-gold bugs say, “You can’t eat gold!”.
Depending on your location, risk-managing for the next five years or so:
1. Definitely should cover natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, forest fires — all of which require evacuation but do not threaten extended cutoff from resupply, IF you are in a modern society and NOT in a city & state governed by political hacks such as doomed pre-Katrina and current Sandy victims.
2. Should consider a (very unlikely) unluckily-aimed CME (solar flare) or supernova (x-ray burst), shutting down electric/electronic/photonic power, communication and control — utilities, communication, transportation, etc.
3. Should low-rate the threat of widespread terrorist attack, i.e., Muslim Jihad invasion. Even less likely would be attack by a superpower. Our enemies are not stupid; they recognize that taking over from within is easier.
4. Should recognize that financial collapse is near-certain — sooner or later, by default or hyper-inflation.
Now I must stop theorizing and get to work practicing what I preach!
I agree with everything you wrote there.
Best plans and theory I read in a succint form. Don you should be in charge of FEMA!
DG, the financial collapse already happened, and the current suffering is a result of such. It is a fallacy that things will get worse [in real terms]. How can it get worse than this? No choice of 300 cable channels? You have to eat healthy food? You have to work for a living?
I have planted 9 gardens for friends and family over the past 3 years.
Its a small contribution.
Bury fish that are not suitable for eating, or chicken. Watch plants grow. This is how the pilgrims survived by what the Indians taught them. It works. I use dead sheep when they pass on. Another method is piling up sticks and branches and having a burn pile, but dont use dry wood you need semi combusted organic matter. Mix this in with your soil. Carbon increases and bio diversity increases.
Buddy,
I like those ideas!
Survival of the fattest.
John and Buddy: thanks for posting your agreement. Now I’ll post the REALLY BAD news — there is 100% certainty that 100% of our planet will be destroyed! The sun will exhaust its nuclear fuel and become a “red giant” star, expanding to envelope the inner planets, including earth. We have only a few billion years left!
Haha agreed!
Hmm. Not 100%. Maybe the Earth can be moved from its current orbital trajectory.
Well said Aziz. A few billion years leaves room for some speculation about the advancement of science.
Touche, but HE’s got the whole world in HIS hands and it may depend on how we appease him. A stroke of genius it may be, but free will is a falacy.
Too bad National Geographic survey didn’t list diesel/gasoline-powered generators plus fuel. This is probably just another example of “elite”/urban ignorance and/or denial of reality — they are ubiquitous here on the Gulf coast, but apparently not on the eastern seaboard.
I wonder if NG considered listing the movie “2016” by Obama biographer (unauthorized!) Dinesh D’Souza?
It would be helpful to know the type of disaster portrayed in each movie. Hollywood disarmament propaganda movies from the early cold war era, e.g. “On the Beach”(?) (last surviving couple dying of nuclear fallout in Australia) and “Seven Days in May”, were very popular.
Don, My remote cabin is gearing up for 12 volt, with Air Conditioning powered by 5 kva waste oil diesel generator. see listeroid engines. Waste engine oil does not go off and is free. Like running off your own supply of crude. Solar powered electric and hydronic heating. Nothing beats building your own cabin and having zero utility bills.
BTW this is an investment property and is advertised for sale. Big demand for cabins Prepped ready to go 😉
You Aussies are amazing! I no longer think that Crocodile Dundee was “one of a kind” of you guys!
Crocodile dundee is reflective of most top end blokes but they are not as arrogant and wear clothes like he did. If you wore clothes like he did you would be thought of as a homosexual. Most wear red neck atire now. But i found a good second hand Akubra hat yesterday. sun is frying us now!
Wow Buddy sounds great!
I think it’s very relevant to consider this issue in it’s broader context. I suspect the reason for the lack of interest of the majority is that most people assume that their government is prepping on their behalf. The more cynical amongst us suspect that government prepping actually consists of senior public servants using taxpayers’ money and their own positions of power to prep for themselves. Witness all of the exclusive government bunkers built at the height of the Cold War for ‘the important people’. The elite rarely have the same vison for survival of their minions as they have for themselves. It would be so nice if those in power took an approach to good governance of their peoples commensurate to that which a good parent takes to their children. I’m not holding my breath.
The purpose of the government is to simply codify the most efficient contemporary mechanisms for the elite to steal from everybody else.
After all, what other ends could government possible serve?
I thought those nuclear command centres were to ensure the President was safe and could direct the army to maintain essential services.
Essential services:
1. Collecting taxes.
2. Collecting levies.
3. Collecting fees.
4. Figuring out new methods to collect taxes, levies, and fees.
5. Taking other country’s stuff.
6. Protecting the Elite’s stuff.
7. Bombing the shit out of anybody who gets in the way of #’s 1-6.
Well I guess Government employee unions are very powerful. You have to be to be able to blackmail the US Government into paying such great benefits. People do extreme things when thugs standover them.
“Personal relationships versus empty transactions”
Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust
The West just needs to realise how powerful it can potentially be
“The gateway is now open to move beyond the jet age”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/uk-science-spaceplane-idUKBRE8AR0R520121128
So the new teachers are young people who love teaching science and are in the process of building profiles on Youtube with already millions of followers, so with that combined with a less hierarchical and more open source based series of academic journals produced by way more flexible publishers…is it really that unreasonable to expect far more efficient, and now novel types of energy to emerge in the next 10 years? Necessity is the mother of all creation, someone once said…
You mean this isn’t the Planet of the Apes? 🙂
Even more bizarre is that 99.999% of the population believe that their is something called, “themselves.”
The smartest primates among us are the ones that scratch their backsides and flick “pebbles” at inquisitive lower primates.
Anyway Mayans didn’t say anything about the end of the world.It was hollywood. Mayan’s said it end of the calendar and start of a new one ( called the Golden age ) ….All dog vomit…i say
Damn i paid good money for that 2013 calendar .
The only element that is worrying to me is that 21st December might prove a self-fulfilling prophesy. Lots of people will have it in the back of their mind. All it would take for a major disaster (like BP oil spill for example) in our interconnected global system is one critical link to worry themselves into screwing up. Still quite unlikely though.
It should be good for booze sales! Long Johnnie Walker!
21st December is the Winter Solstice. with the age of aquarius, TPTB will announce the news from mars rover and everybdy will have to reflect on their belief systems. It will be a symbolic new age of enlightenent. I have a good feeling Deism will thrive.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=21/12/2012
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=mayan%20calender
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=end%20of%20world&cmpt=q
Currently reading “The Great Wave” by David Hackett Fischer
Its about about the 4 great waves of inflation in the Western World over the last 800 years.
A short synopsis is thus, There have been 4 “Great Waves” of inflation since the 1200’s. The waves have varied in duration from approx. 90 years to 180 years. Our “Wave” started around 1896, making our current Wave 116 years old.
A quick take away from the book is that food and energy prices ALWAYS out pace the wages of the population.
FUCK THE BLS. Sorry for the cussing, but I can’t help reading about starving peasants in Medieval Europe (My ancestors) and not want to take my fist and smash the face of the BLS a-holes for excluding food and energy from the CPI.
“But food and energy are volatile!” Yes, in the short-term they are volatile, but over longer time periods, food and energy show very clear trends. (There is only 800+ years of data to support these…………….facts.)
“Gold is a monetary instrument”
Lol!
“As you do” ~ Felix is a genius! 😉
Luckily, i have no need to store up, as my out plan is to simply to get to my summer home on an island. with 10 acres of land, olive oil, water source (which needs electricity unfortunately), stored non-genetically altered seeds, fruit trees and very good agricultural knowledge, i can very easily create a food source. adding, chickens a few goats and mule. Wood burning heating system and a few small homes. This is a more of a retirement investment but it also is an out plan just in case. And weapons are not needed as they can be made with proper knowledge. i have the bullets.
To be honset i do not believe in any of the hollywood doomsday movies. Nor do i believe in global warming. The earth is going through a warm cycle and mankind is simple making it worse by a small coefficient. I do believe in a balance that man should have with nature which is nonexistant.
The movies are out there for a purpose, aside from making a quick buck at the box office. Judging by the misery of society and stress that all people have, i welcome a cataclismic end to humanity. to put humanity out of it’s misery. but it won’t happen.
the strings being pulled on the whole of society is simply the tool which is pushing all of mankind into a common mold, as to better control society from having freedom of thought.
Freedom does not exist. it is more of a dream rather than a reality, it is why everyone cries when they see movies of freedom and heros of freedom. Because subconsiously everyone know that they are a modern slave, to a system. That which remains is the lobotimization the idea of free thought. Once that is achieved we do not need an invasion of the “planet of the apes,” because we will be the apes!
That 10 acres will be the best investment you make.
Wait to the affluent Chinese get sick ofliving in apartments, with the “others” They will be seeking hideouts.
Western man is 150 years ahead of the Chinese. I am seeing Indians and Chines “early adopters” buying getaway farms. Wait til this becomes “cool”
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I’m baffled about how come this old (but very interesting) posts of yours pop up in my inbox… I thought I subscribed to your current activity…
Anyway have you considered ‘being friends with your neighbors to such a degree that you may count on their help’ as being part of an adequate preparation for what ever we might have to confront in the future?
Reblogged this on nicichiarasa and commented:
Have you considered ‘being friends with your neighbors to such a degree that you may count on their help’ as being part of an adequate preparation for what ever we might have to confront in the future?