[Peakoil] Head for the hills - the new survivalists

[Keith Thomas]

Alex posted an item here from Andi Hazlewood a few days ago. Here's an 
article with reference to Andi's story from the Weekend Australian.
--------------------------------------------
Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
--------------------------------------------
Head for the hills - the new survivalists
by Mark Whittaker
 From the Weekend Australian, 23 November 2006

So what do you do when you're pretty sure that the end of the world as 
we know it is coming soon, but your girlfriend doesn't believe you? 
Sure, she might nod her head when you confront her with some of the 
gloomier facts, but then she shrugs and goes back to her pursuit of 
modern pleasures. She doesn't like it when you talk about it to other 
people, either. No one likes being told their hopes and dreams are 
about to turn to dust.

  This is the problem confronting Adelaide aircraft engineer Steve 
McReady. Sick of trying to warn people who won't listen, he is bugging 
out. He has sold four of his seven investment properties, and has a 
fifth on the market. He's putting his collection of 10 classic Triumphs 
and BMWs up for sale. The girlfriend begged him to keep the BM 
convertible, but there won't be much use for it in the world he sees 
coming.

  He has bought a property in New Zealand - which he says fares well in 
climate-change models - and once he gets his affairs in order he'll 
move there to learn about growing vegies and raising chooks. He wants 
to build a big shed to stock with all the important things that will 
become difficult to obtain, such as fencing wire and Band-Aids. But he 
worries that he's left it too late, and that the world might start 
getting ugly before he can learn how to make cheese and grow potatoes.

  He would have been talking marriage with his girlfriend now if it 
weren't for all this. "She's a really nice person, great morals, but 
the lifestyle she aspires to is what most modern women want," McReady 
explains the first time we talk on the phone. "We're still going out 
and doing things together. We have talked about this issue but we 
really haven't resolved it. I'm relying on time. Maybe $2-a-litre 
petrol by Christmas or if the United States invades Iran ... Perhaps if 
she saw that what I'm talking about was true, she might change her 
attitude. But currently I can't see it happening."

  When I meet McReady a few weeks later, they have split. He says he was 
unable to devote himself to her the way she needed. How could he when 
the calamity ahead colours his every waking thought? His whole future 
has spun off its steady track since he first picked up a document from 
a colleague's desk about the end of the oil age. At 44, he had worked 
hard to be able to talk about early retirement. He was going to develop 
an industrial block, rent out two factory units and use another to 
tinker with his cars. But he's sold the block now because in a future 
without cheap oil to power the modern way of life - and therefore 
without cheap food, without cheap anything - he can't see much call for 
industrial blocks. He also can't see much use for
  aeroplanes, so he sold his half-share in one of those, too.

  He's well aware that the economy is booming, unemployment is low, the 
sun is shining. Surely the system is working?

  "This is what a peak looks like," he says. "That's where the 
economists and cornucopians get it wrong. They don't see that for every 
bright day there's going to be a grey day."

  Sober and serious, McReady is part of a new wave of survivalists 
making plans for big trouble. Whereas once it was nuclear holocaust, 
big-government paranoia or religious rapture that motivated such 
people, now it is more likely to be climate change, energy shortages 
and economic collapse. This story is not about whether what they think 
is true, but more about the social phenomena of what they're doing 
about it. Most never discuss their beliefs with friends and colleagues 
because they're frightened of ridicule. But they are getting ready for 
a world morphed into "Argentina on a very bad day" or plunged into a 
never-ending depression, or famine, or, worst-case scenario, Mad Max IV 
and the die-off of billions of people.

What is Peak Oil? (sidebar)

  Peak oil is the theory that world oil production will one day peak and 
then begin a long and continuous fall. There will still be plenty of 
oil in the ground, but it will be in harder-to-reach places and come 
out slower. Just as the US peaked in 1970, Britain's North Sea peaked 
in 1999 and Australia peaked in 2000, so too will the world's total 
production peak at some point. Because of the high oil use in 
agriculture, and because oil is used to transport every single item in 
your supermarket, and because almost all plastics are made from oil - 
every Barbie doll, every contact lens, every Band-Aid, every car tyre, 
every polyester shirt - the effects of a decline in oil would be 
far-reaching.

  Extreme pessimists predict hyper inflation and collapse of the global 
financial system. Optimists say that the increased energy prices will 
drive alternative energy sources and the world will come in for a soft 
landing.

  Of course, not everyone agrees with the idea of peak oil. ExxonMobil 
Australia chief executive Mark Nolan said in September that oil scares 
bubbled up every time there was a price rise. "The fact is that the 
world has an abundance of oil and there is little question 
scientifically that abundant energy resources exist," Mr Nolan said. 
"According to the US Geological Survey, the Earth currently has more 
than three trillion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources. 
So far, we have produced one trillion of that."

  A perusal of the US Geological Survey's opinions at 
http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/WEcont/chaps/ES.pdf shows that the US 
government body found there was a 5 per cent chance there might be 3.5 
trillion barrels of oil. But it also said there was just as much chance 
that there were only 1.9 trillion barrels of conventional oil to be 
had.

  It said there are just 859 billion barrels of "proven" reserves, but 
that this figure will grow as more oil is discovered and more is 
extracted from existing fields through improved technology. In order 
for the 3.5 trillion barrels to come to fruition, the world has to 
discover 1.1 trillion more barrels - the equivalent of four Saudi 
Arabias - at a time when discoveries are in marked decline, and 
improved extraction has to find a further trillion barrels.

  Peter Ward surveys the shrivelled seedlings in his vegie patch after a 
hot wind has blown in from the desert, and he knows there's a long way 
to go. He didn't move out to the dry country east of the Adelaide Hills 
a decade ago to survive any sort of Armageddon. He, his wife Sue and 
their children were going to produce boutique olive oil, but the day 
after ABC TV's Catalyst program ran a story about peak oil in November 
last year, Ward went out and bought a motorbike.

  He researched it some more and decided that while oil was in no danger 
of running out soon, when production started to decline the flow-on 
effects through society would be massive, as the price of everything 
skyrocketed, interest rates rose calamitously and industrial farming 
faltered. There would be shortages.

  The Wards knew life would be hard in their low-rainfall district. The 
ruined chimney of the original soldier settler on their 8ha block is 
testament to that. But they reasoned it would be harder in the suburbs 
- a decision complicated by Sue's encroaching multiple sclerosis.

  They began stockpiling enough food to last up to six months. They've 
found it difficult figuring out how to manage the stockpile so that 
nothing goes off. And they're still remembering things they will need. 
Just the other day they realised they hadn't stored any toothbrushes.

  Gardening took on a sudden urgency. "We've played with vegie gardening 
over the years. It sounds romantic and it never works ... The bugs eat 
the plants, you put seedlings in and there's a hot day and they all 
die. Or you get too much of something ... everybody groans when you 
bring another zucchini in. You've been eating them for three weeks 
solid. So knowing how to grow a good range of vegetables, growing them 
at the right time, and keeping them alive, is a pretty skilful thing.

  "We feel that if we're three years away from the start of the 
difficult times, that three years is a very important time to practise. 
And particularly when you look at our vegie plot you'll see we need a 
lot of practice."

  They have a paddock full of 10-year-old olive trees. They hope to use 
the olive oil to barter for other goods. They hope their neighbours, 
all on several thousand hectares of cropping land, will run a few dairy 
cows whose milk they can trade. They have some young fruit trees 
surviving in the septic run-off and Ward has built a shade shelter for 
his five precious avocado trees to protect them from the desert wind.

  "I can't stress enough, once you decide there's a problem, you need to 
get cracking," he says in his refined South Australian accent. "We have 
time - but once things get tough, that's a bad time to be moving. The 
problems are likely to be both getting to the supermarket, and also 
getting produce to the supermarket, because most of the stuff in the 
supermarket has been shifted a jolly long way."

  They have started trying to shop fortnightly, but found even that 
difficult. "It should be simple but it just isn't. This just-in-time 
mentality is so ingrained now. And it's all based on the availability 
of cheap oil transport."

  Ward tries not to dwell on the more dire scenarios and what would 
happen if hungry hordes started to pour over the hill from Adelaide. 
He's thought about buying a gun for the rabbits, which might also be 
used for defence. "But I'm not skilled with it, I'd probably shoot 
myself rather than any intruder. And it's an unpleasant thing to think 
about." Their son James, 24, who is building a petrol/pedal bicycle 
which he hopes will get 150km to the litre, is doing a PhD on 
groundwater hydrology. But when he finishes that, he plans to do a 
DipEd and become a school teacher. He's not the only "peaknik" to take 
this career path.

  Dr Shane Simonsen, 28, formerly a research scientist at the ANU 
working on plant defence mechanisms, has also packed it in for a DipEd. 
"I think we're heading for what is going to look like an economic 
depression, so I'm looking for a more stable form of employment," 
Simonsen says. "In the Great Depression, three out of four people kept 
their job. So you just have to pick the right kind of job."

  He has bought a 1ha block with his parents in Queensland's Sunshine 
Coast hinterland. "We're going to put in an orchard and vegie patch and 
derive at least some of our food from that. Anything that requires 
transport and refrigeration is going to become a lot more expensive and 
less accessible. This is just a small buffer. "I've had to have a hard 
look at what we're doing and realise that I would do it regardless of 
whether peak oil was happening or not. The survivalists who run off 
into a bolt-hole and wait for the end to come, you can't live like 
that. Even if solar or free energy or fusion comes along and everything 
keeps motoring along, I'd be perfectly happy with the way I've decided 
to go."

  Dr Dan Kortschak, 35, has been published in Nature for his work on the 
genetics of coral evolution, but he has also dropped out of the glamour 
end of science to become a high school teacher. Living just 2km from 
the heart of Adelaide, in Maylands, he has three pushbikes for 
different jobs, including a recumbent trike with a large trailer for 
carting gardening equipment and building materials. He now grows all 
his fruit and vegetables in his backyard, doesn't eat meat because of 
the transport costs, and survives each week on about $50 of groceries 
for him and his dog.

  He lived in Nepal for a while, promoting permaculture 
(self-sustaining) farming. "I live luxuriously compared to people 
there. You look at an eco--footprint calculator and I'm still above 
what would be a sustainable level if everyone were to do it. Which is 
scary, because most people wouldn't want to live the way that I live."

  (sidebar) As "an ageing nerd" David Clarke has gone for a technical 
fix to survive any future crisis. The holder of two software patents, 
he is continually at pains to point out what a geek he is. He had heard 
theories about a looming oil crisis, but always dismissed them as the 
ravings of a lunatic fringe. Late last year, however, he was chatting 
with a friend in the power industry, John Roles, who was unusually 
glum. Roles told him about his research into the future of oil, 
painting a picture of $5-a-litre petrol and an almost certain 
depression.

  Clarke had just had a baby son, Nicholas, and so decided to treat the 
boy like a major business project by doing a "threat analysis". After 
weeks of research, he concluded that the quantifiable threats were the 
collapse of fisheries, global warming, an agricultural decline and a 
decrease in oil supplies. He couldn't believe how gloomy he was being. 
He knew he must have made mistakes in reasoning so he went back over 
it, but could find no assumptions that were not conservative. And he 
certainly hadn't written a worst-case scenario. He refuses to let 
himself go there.

  The best analogy he could think of was Russia after the fall of 
communism - more a severe disruption than a collapse of society. He 
started searching for a way to feed his family. He planted fruit trees 
in his suburban Melbourne yard, but he wanted a techno fix. By May, he 
had developed an "aquaponics" system that used the waste water from a 
fish breeding tank to feed hydroponically grown vegetables. There was 
nothing groundbreaking in the broad system, but he had devised a way to 
minimise evaporation and use only a $70 solar panel from Dick Smith to 
power it. The only input needed was his kitchen scraps.

  The system, which he is scaling up to 2000 litres, will supply, he 
says, 4kg of silver perch - full of omega 3 oils for his son's brain 
development - and 12kg of vegetables per month. "Not enough to live on, 
but a good first step ... I am an optimist. I believe that I have at 
least 10 years to prepare. I also believe that here in Australia we 
will be insulated from the really tough times ... Will I let my 
concerns completely change my life? No. But I will spend money that 
might otherwise have gone into expensive dinners and a new home 
theatre."

  This new survival movement has two distinct philosophies: those who 
think that by building strong communities around sustainable 
lifestyles, modern society will pull through relatively unscathed, if a 
little slowed down; and the "Mad Maxers", or dystopians.

  John Cotis, 27, is a student of the history and philosophy of science 
at Melbourne University. He's also a Mad Maxer, but says there's no 
point preparing for the apocalypse. He cites Jared Diamond's Collapse, 
which has a case study on the fall of the Anasazi native American 
civilisation, in the southwest of what is now the US. It, too, had 
outlying areas where people had little gardens. Archaeologists found 
their bones cooked and chewed. "If you live in a complex society 
there's no getting out of it. So it's pointless to build your 
permaculture garden or raise your chooks. It's about trying to save the 
whole boat. So my preparation is basically writing to politicians, 
going to industry lectures, and networking with anyone I know to get 
the word out."

  He paints a picture of a pre-industrial world where your snotty-nosed 
kids are illiterate, your wife dies in childbirth, and insects eat your 
food. "It's not feasible to survive individually ... I sound like a 
raving madman, right? What's scary is that you become used to the idea. 
I still have faith in humanity. We went through the Dark Ages, but the 
knowledge got stored in monasteries and we came out better."

  Simon Beer expected a very dark age. The physicist and astronomer won 
a University Medal at Sydney's Macquarie University in 1999 after 
discovering one new nebula (where a star is forming out of a vast cloud 
of gas) and confirming the existence of another only previously 
speculated about. He turned down a PhD scholarship because it seemed 
like there just wasn't much point in astronomy. He went into computers 
and by 2001 his programming business was coming along nicely. He lived 
in a pad overlooking Sydney Harbour. Not bad for a kid who grew up poor 
in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. But the day after the September 
11 terrorist attacks, he went to the opera and, at a nearby cafe, he 
was watching the TV news continually showing planes crashing into 
buildings and he couldn't help looking out the window to make sure the 
Opera House was still standing. He wondered how he'd fare if things 
started to fall apart. "I wasn't pleased with my position. I had no 
savings. My health was good, but other than that I was completely 
dependent on the system, and becoming more so."

  He felt an overriding urge to flee to the wilderness, but life went on 
as normal. Then he read a book called The Last Hours of Ancient 
Sunlight by Thom Hartmann, detailing potential disasters awaiting 
planet Earth, such as oil depletion, water shortages and 
overpopulation.

  "I took it very seriously. More seriously than I'd recommend for other 
people, because I wasn't prepared for the changes." In 2002, Beer left 
his middle-class life and moved back to his mum's house in the Blue 
Mountains to prepare for the looming crises. He was certain that a food 
garden was not the way to go. If four million people didn't have 
gardens, he'd need a gun to defend his. He decided to learn primitive 
technologies so he could simply disappear into the vast mountain 
wilderness until the hordes had starved themselves out.

  He acquired a large library of books and started teaching himself 
crafts such as rope-making and plant identification. There was too much 
to learn, though: building shelters, tracking, hunting, trapping, 
skinning, making clothes and tools. He was certain that time was 
running out. He had a bag packed with cordage and knives, ready to walk 
out the door, but he knew that if the shit hit the fan tomorrow he 
would die. Clearly, the modern essentials of a big mortgage and a big 
car were going to pass him by. He didn't see himself as some hippy 
alternative lifestyler. He had normal friends, but unfortunately none 
of them believed him when he tried to tell them where the world was 
headed. He started feeling like a loser - isolated and lonely.

  "And I think I underestimated the effect that would have," he 
explains. What happened was that the over--stimulation of his adrenal 
system caused by the stress led to a muscular illness, fibromyalgia, 
which robbed him of his chance to get out there and practise the skills 
he needed.

  "I've come to the conclusion that most people have a psychological 
block. Their mind prevents them from seeing something they can't deal 
with. In a lot of ways that's a good thing. I didn't have that. I was 
thinking: 'This is real, I have to face it now, and I have to face it 
on my own.'"

  Psychologist Kathy McMahon has cut a niche for herself ministering to 
people like Beer, wandering the internet in various stages of 
foreboding about the end of the world. She was a couples counsellor and 
sex therapist in western Massachusetts before she reinvented herself 
under the nom de keyboard Peakoilshrink. She'd been through it all 
herself, the shock upon first learning about this coming oil crisis, 
followed by trying to disprove it, then various stages of despair and 
furious activity as she learned how to dry fruit and farm chickens (she 
has 28).

  She also felt the rejection of friends telling her to take a chill 
pill as they went off and refinanced their houses to take a cruise and 
as the Dow rose inexorably. She also knew that if she fronted up to one 
of her psychologist colleagues, they would disregard her fears as 
irrational and start looking for other problems. The first thing they'd 
ask would be something like "How is your relationship with your 
husband?" or "How did you get along with your mother?"

  "People in the peak oil community are dealing with a mass delusion [in 
the wider community]: that there is no problem with fossil fuels; that 
we're just going to find a solution and there just isn't anything to be 
concerned about. When they get those messages over and over and the 
public assumes that if they're not covered in the popular press then 
they aren't real, it creates a dramatic emotional impact for those with 
that distinct minority view ... I would argue that the symptoms people 
in the peak oil community are experiencing - what we in the 
psychological community would label as paranoia, anxiety, or obsessive 
compulsive disorder - are actually a vigilant adaptation to what's 
happening around them ... I'm trying to educate psychologists to start 
to frame it as a legitimate fear. Because by saying it's a personal 
problem, the psychiatrist is doing exactly what the person's family and 
friends have been doing and the patient will end up more isolated and 
more fearful."

  ONE 33-year-old scientist from Wollongong in NSW contacts me by email 
and agrees to talk. "One thing I'll have to explain first, though ... I 
won't be giving you my real name. Part of the problem with this whole 
peak oil issue is some people are going to prepare while the majority 
of the population won't. When the oil crisis comes, and it is 
inevitable that it's going to happen at some stage, the people who have 
prepared will be targeted by those who haven't. I have a very young 
family and part of the reason I am getting ready for an oil crisis is 
to protect them. The last thing I want to do is jeopardise their 
personal security by advertising to everyone that I have stuff to help 
during 'The Long Emergency'."

  When I phone him he explains that, being a scientist, he'd like to go 
public and start campaigning about peak oil, but again he won't because 
he says it will make him a target. "I'm a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde at 
the moment. Where I work, nobody knows about the sort of things I'm 
doing or thinking or involved with. You start talking about these sort 
of things to your colleagues and they think you're nuts. It's just 
looking after yourself and looking after your family. It might be 
considered wacky and a bit hippy - but to me, to prepare for this is 
just common sense."

  The first thing he did was get depressed as he mulled over the 
diabolical possibilities, but as soon as he got over that, he rang his 
dad, who'd grown up out west of the Great Divide with no power, no tap 
water. He didn't tell him why he was asking about the old days - not at 
first. His father told him how they only had fruit and veg in season 
and so they preserved things. They were too poor to buy powdered milk, 
which most people used back then. So they bought a cow which they ran 
on land rented from the railways. They made their own cheese. Everyone 
had chickens.

  He also grilled his father-in-law, who taught him how to harvest honey 
and a bit about vegie gardening. "He came from a little bush town where 
the only thing they bought was some of their clothes. Everything else, 
including food and tools, were made in the village. Try doing that 
these days with our extremely limited knowledge."

  His instinct told him to head bush and hole up somewhere totally 
isolated. "But humans can't live like that. You'd get sick, you'd go 
mad. We need communities." So he started cultivating neighbours. Saying 
hello to them. Talking to them when he was in his suburban yard. He 
installed 10,000 litres of rainwater tanks. He got bees even though he 
hates bees. Aside from the honey, he'll use the wax to seal in the 
cheese he's learning to make. "You can store it for years." He's got 
six chooks on order and he's started a vegie patch.

  When he eventually told his dad about his fears over peak oil it 
didn't take the old man long to come to the same conclusion - that the 
world was stuffed. But rather than come on board and start preparing, 
his dad did nothing. "He thought it's going to be so bad there's 
nothing anybody can do about it, and so why bother."

  American Andi Hazelwood and her Australian husband, Dean, met and 
married in a whirlwind trans-Pacific internet relationship in 1997. 
They were living in Atlanta, Georgia, in early 2004 - she was producing 
radio ads, he was an internet development manager - when they heard 
about peak oil. "Literally that day, and once we realised there was no 
argument for this not happening, we started realising we needed a plan. 
It was either Australia or America and the options in America weren't 
as good."

  They moved to the Burnett region of southern Queensland because they 
could afford a block there without going into debt and because Dean had 
family in the state. "When we told people we were going to quit our 
jobs, move to the bush and grow vegies, they're just like, 'What? Why 
in the world would you do that?' People think we're crackpots and 
people ask 'What are you going to do if there is some magic solution 
and there's no problem?' And our answer is we've built our own house on 
a piece of property bought and paid for, we're growing our own food and 
only having to work part time. What's the problem?"

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 798 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://act-peakoil.org/pipermail/peakoil/attachments/20061124/07f3689e/attachment-0002.bin