Preparedness for when

pineapple

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

On another tack and back again to subject of heating. I've not yet read the "ins and outs" of it. Just heard a headline earlier today about people not going to be allowed gas cookers anymore in the future and thought "Sympathies to those people. Thank goodness I have an electric cooker".

Then I walked back in the door to hear a chat news programme going on on the radio and it was expanding on this and saying "No they don't mean gas cookers - they mean EVERYTHING gas - including the boilers for our central heating systems":eek:.

Next few comments were along lines of "There's 15 years to do it in - and gas cookers, for instance, will naturally waste themselves. You just won't be able to replace your gas cooker come the time - its not that you will find it doesn't work any longer". I think they were thinking along the same lines for gas boilers. Personally - my boiler is 2 years old and will hopefully give me many years of service yet.

But - I'm wondering what happens about the fact that should no-one create problems about me "using it up" until it needs replacing anyway - there is still the question of the fact that I have gas radiators.

Admits to not even knowing if my radiators I have here would work off electric instead. Also wondering who would pay the cost of the various amendments my house would need anyway to swop the heating to a different fuel (has nasty sinking feeling the Government might think that should be me and not them:eek:).

Anyone any the wiser about likely impact of that on yer average householder?

This will probably affect most solid fuels as well. If you can get it, it will be expensive. But I don't see how you can pull the plug in such a short time. There are plenty of people out there who just spent an arm and a leg on heating systems and who can't afford to start again.
It will affect house values too.

jk0

It sounds utterly ludicrous to me to ban gas cookers, (and gas generation.) Unless you build umpteen nuclear stations, how is anyone going to cook their supper in winter when it's dark and there's no wind?

I thought they were trying to reduce electrical demand between 4 & 7pm? This is going to increase it, isn't it?

BTW, how are they planning to heat flats? There will likely not be enough grounds to provide ground source heating, never mind that it's going to be difficult for any flats above the ground floor to connect to.

fuddle

Reading up on the issue a little bit I understand it that the climate deal has experts claiming that cooking/heating with gas will have to be phased out to meet the targets. I can't find any suggestion that there's going to be a ban coming amongst government sources. The wording is 'may' or 'could' etc. It seems the report I have been reading is from mail online and the expert being a university lecturer.

I can't find any suggestion at how we're going to meet the targets but I expect we'll hear more through the years.

I can't help feel it's a bit of a good thing in terms of the way we use fossil fuels to heat and eat but I suppose that depends on what we have to change to.

Anyone managed to find any more info?

The-Joker

Well, it is certainly true that some sort of shelter is a necessity, be it an apartment, or a dorm room, a bunk in a barrack, a boat, a camper, or a tent, a teepee, a wigwam, a shipping container... The list is virtually endless. But there is no reason at all to think that a suburban single-family house is in any sense a requirement. It is little more than a cultural preference, and a very shortsighted one at that. Most suburban houses are expensive to heat and cool, inaccessible by public transportation, expensive to hook up to public utilities because of the long runs of pipe and cable, and require a great deal of additional public expenditure on road, bridge and highway maintenance, school buses, traffic enforcement, and other nonsense. They often take up what was once valuable agricultural land. They promote a car-centric culture that is destructive of urban environments, causing a proliferation of dead downtowns. Many families that live in suburban houses can no longer afford to live in them, and expect others to bail them out.

As this living arrangement becomes unaffordable for all concerned, it will also become unlivable. Municipalities and public utilities will not have the funds to lavish on sewer, water, electricity, road and bridge repair, and police. Without cheap and plentiful gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil, many suburban dwellings will become both inaccessible and unlivable. The inevitable result will be a mass migration of suburban refugees toward the more survivable, more densely settled towns and cities. The luckier ones will find friends or family to stay with; for the rest, it would be very helpful to improvise some solution.

One obvious answer is to repurpose the ever-plentiful vacant office buildings for residential use. Converting offices to dormitories is quite straightforward. Many of them already have kitchens and bathrooms, plenty of partitions and other furniture, and all they are really missing is beds. Putting in beds is just not that difficult. The new, subsistence economy is unlikely to generate the large surpluses that are necessary for sustaining the current large population of office plankton. The businesses that once occupied these offices are not coming back, so we might as well find new and better uses for them.

Another category of real estate that is likely to go unused and that can be repurposed for new communities is college campuses. The American 4-year college is an institution of dubious merit. It exists because American public schools fail to teach in 12 years what Russian public schools manage to teach in 8. As fewer and fewer people become able to afford college, which is likely to happen, because meager career prospects after graduation will make them bad risks for student loans, perhaps this will provide the impetus to do something about the public education system. One idea would be to scrap it, then start small, but eventually build something a bit more on par with world standards.

College campuses make perfect community centers: there are dormitories for newcomers, fraternities and sororities for the more settled residents, and plenty of grand public buildings that can be put to a variety of uses. A college campus normally contains the usual wasteland of mowed turf that can be repurposed to grow food, or, at the very least, hay, and to graze cattle. Perhaps some enlightened administrators, trustees and faculty members will fall upon this idea once they see admissions flat-lining and endowments dropping to zero, without any need for government involvement. So here we have a ray of hope, don’t we.


Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security. Security is very important. Maintaining order and public safety requires discipline, and maintaining discipline, for a lot of people, requires the threat of force. This means that people must be ready to come to each other’s defense, take responsibility for each other, and do what’s right. Right now, security is provided by a number of bloated, bureaucratic, ineffectual institutions, which inspire more anger and despondency than discipline, and dispense not so much violence as ill treatment. That is why we have the world’s highest prison population. They are supposedly there to protect people from each other, but in reality their mission is not even to provide security; it is to safeguard property, and those who own it. Once these institutions run out of resources, there will be a period of upheaval, but in the end people will be forced to learn to deal with each other face to face, and Justice will once again become a personal virtue rather than a federal department.

I’ve covered what I think are basics, based on what I saw work and what I think might work reasonably well here. I assume that a lot of you are thinking that this is all quite far into the future, if in fact it ever gets that bad. You should certainly feel free to think that way. The danger there is that you will miss the opportunity to adapt to the new reality ahead of time, and then you will get trapped. As I see it, there is a choice to be made: you can accept the failure of the system now and change your course accordingly, or you can decide that you must try to stay the course, and then you will probably have to accept your own individual failure later.

So how do you prepare? Lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of high-powered, successful people about their various high-powered, successful associates. Usually, the story goes something like this: “My a. financial advisor, b. investment banker, or c. commanding officer has recently a. put all his money in gold, b. bought a log cabin up in the mountains, or c. built a bunker under his house stocked with six months of food and water. Is this normal?” And I tell them, yes, of course, that’s perfectly harmless. He’s just having a mid-collapse crisis. But that’s not really preparation. That’s just someone being colorful in an offbeat, countercultural sort of way.

So, how do you prepare, really? Let’s go through a list of questions that people typically ask me, and I will try to briefly respond to each of them.

OK, first question: How about all these financial boondoggles? What on earth is going on? People are losing their jobs left and right, and if we calculate unemployment the same way it was done during the Great Depression, instead of looking at the cooked numbers the government is trying to feed us now, then we are heading toward 20% unemployment. And is there any reason to think it’ll stop there? Do you happen to believe that prosperity is around the corner? Not only jobs and housing equity, but retirement savings are also evaporating. The federal government is broke, state governments are broke, some more than others, and the best they can do is print money, which will quickly lose value. So, how can we get the basics if we don’t have any money? How is that done? Good question.

As I briefly mentioned, the basics are food, shelter, transportation, and security. Shelter poses a particularly interesting problem at the moment. It is still very much overpriced, with many people paying mortgages and rents that they can no longer afford while numerous properties stand vacant. The solution, of course, is to cut your losses and stop paying. But then you might soon have to relocate. That is OK, because, as I mentioned, there is no shortage of vacant properties around. Finding a good place to live will become less and less of a problem as people stop paying their rents and mortgages and get foreclosed or evicted, because the number of vacant properties will only increase. The best course of action is to become a property caretaker, legitimately occupying a vacant property rent-free, and keeping an eye on things for the owner. What if you can’t find a position as a property caretaker? Well, then you might have to become a squatter, maintain a list of other vacant properties that you can go to next, and keep your camping gear handy just in case. If you do get tossed out, chances are, the people who tossed you out will then think about hiring a property caretaker, to keep the squatters out. And what do you do if you become property caretaker? Well, you take care of the property, but you also look out for all the squatters, because they are the reason you have a legitimate place to live. A squatter in hand is worth three absentee landlords in the bush. The absentee landlord might eventually cut his losses and go away, but your squatter friends will remain as your neighbors. Having some neighbors is so much better than living in a ghost town.

What if you still have a job? How do you prepare then? The obvious answer is, be prepared to quit or to be laid off or fired at any moment. It really doesn’t matter which one of these it turns out to be; the point is to sustain zero psychological damage in the process. Get your burn rate to as close to zero as you can, by spending as little money as possible, so than when the job goes away, not much has to change. While at work, do as little as possible, because all this economic activity is just a terrible burden on the environment. Just gently ride it down to a stop and jump off.

If you still have a job, or if you still have some savings, what do you do with all the money? The obvious answer is, build up inventory. The money will be worthless, but a box of bronze nails will still be a box of bronze nails. Buy and stockpile useful stuff, especially stuff that can be used to create various kinds of alternative systems for growing food, providing shelter, and providing transportation. If you don’t own a patch of dirt free and clear where you can stockpile stuff, then you can rent a storage container, pay it a few years forward, and just sit on it until reality kicks in again and there is something useful for you to do with it. Some of you may be frightened by the future I just described, and rightly so. There is nothing any of us can do to change the path we are on: it is a huge system with tremendous inertia, and trying to change its path is like trying to change the path of a hurricane. What we can do is prepare ourselves, and each other, mostly by changing our expectations, our preferences, and scaling down our needs. It may mean that you will miss out on some last, uncertain bit of enjoyment. On the other hand, by refashioning yourself into someone who might stand a better chance of adapting to the new circumstances, you will be able to give to yourself, and to others, a great deal of hope that would otherwise not exist.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html

moneyistooshorttomention

Errrrm....think previous poster is American????

Back on topic of fuel. I'd certainly be interested if anyone has any links to specific info. on these proposals/plans re gas.

Just heard enough of that radio broadcast to gather that they are trying to shove people off gas (ie in all likelihood onto electric) before they're worked out suitable environmentally-friendly ways of dealing with the extra electric demand. Sounded par for the course...:cool:

..and instantly reminded me of my cynical thoughts when they were trying to shove people over onto diesel cars as being less polluting (so they said) and I thought "Yeh....really....???:cool:".

I'm the sort of person who would be interested to see that the words used are "may" or "could" - rather than "will". One of my pet hates is people using different words to the absolute accurate ones they should have used.

chickens11

Hello girls , and boys if there are any , thanks for the welcome from all the girls I know from our other threads ........Ive got crap loads of toilet paper !!......

Just been to see hubby today and alls well there , hes so well looked after there im so pleased to say ...( for those of you dont know what im talking about , my hubby had a stroke at 49 yrs old which left him seriously disabled and epileptic , I did have him home for 6 years but it near killed me so hes now in nursing care full term ) im going to see him for christmas lunch if the weather is okay as its 60 mile round trip , I definitely wont drive all that way if we have fog , dont mind what else the weather throws at me but fog is a bummer .........

Im pleased to say my freezer and cupboards are fairly stocked up , and as theres only me here to eat it I dont have to shop too often , as long as ive got enough milk for me tea im happy ......

Ive just lit my fire as its such a dismal day again and and so dark today , the fire is cheerful , its not cold but I do like real flames , plus me dawg love the hearth ........

On the subject of fuel thankfully ive got mains gas and its so quick to get to temperature and very flexible where as storage heaters are terrible . you have to look at the weather forecast the day before you want the heat to see what the temps are going to be .........When we moved here the gas was already in the bungalow , we just changed a few rads and its okay , but ive also got the open fire which I absolutely love.....

Ive got a bit of SAD this past week , probaly due to lack of sunshine so I will have to start my lamp off soon .....I hope your all in fine fettle , bye for now ....Sheila .....chickens ....shegar ...!! haha

nuatha

The result of COP21/CMP11 is that all 195 parties agreed there is a problem and that something needs to be done. If at least 55 countries representing 55% of the greenhouse gas emissions pass legislation between April 2016 and April 2017 adopting the principles and sign the treaty in the same time frame it will become international law.
The principles include attempting to limit the growth in carbon output to 2% or less. Countries are to set their own limit when they enact legislation. There is no enforcement procedure other than naming those countries which fail to pass legislation or otherwise legally ratify their participation.

The discussion about gas is speculation on how to achieve this reduction, basically a complete end to the use of fossil fuels. There are multiple ways of generating electricity, nuclear and renewable which do not use fossil fuels, there is no large scale method of producing gas other than fossil fuel, hence the discussions this week regarding gas.

The reason that there are only vague statements and no hard and fast proposals is that no one knows how this treaty (assuming it actually becomes a treaty) will be implemented by any country.

The major success is that all the participants agreed there is a problem and that something needs to be done - it took 12 days to produce a 12 page proposal for a treaty that may or may not gain the necessary support internationally (and if passed may well be ignored by the two largest carbon emitters) there is no political consensus on how to achieve the aims or even whether halting the rise in carbon emissions will solve the problem.

fuddle

I am sitting on the side of the fence that thinks that the language used in the article is to try to make a story before there's anything to report. :cool:

I do think a change will happen in my life time though but what or how I don't know because everything that comes to my mind as viable wouldn't be lucrative enough for all involved as far as I can see.

Just listening the the news - all LA schools closed due to an unspecified threat. :cool:

Living_proof

fuddle wrote: »

I am sitting on the side of the fence that thinks that the language used in the article is to try to make a story before there's anything to report. :cool:

I do think a change will happen in my life time though but what or how I don't know because everything that comes to my mind as viable wouldn't be lucrative enough for all involved as far as I can see.

Just listening the the news - all LA schools closed due to an unspecified threat. :cool:

At first I read this as all Local Authority Schools! I hope the threat proves to be unfounded.

Frugalsod

greenbee wrote: »

The Icelandic population wasn't happy about the way it's politicians responded to the refugee crisis (the difference being, at the moment when they disagree, the politicians pay attention - so they decided to take more).

Well at least they listened, ours pay lip service to the term of representing us and not those who donate most to them.

Personally I think we need to make the House of Commons one that really represents the people. So have an income cap before they can be eligible. So if they earn twice the national average they are not eligible to stand for Parliament, also have a wealth cap (including house). Above say £500 000 you are also ineligible to stand. If at any point during parliament you breach either of these caps you have to resign and a by-election is to be held. This would really clear Parliament of all the lawyers and make it represent the people far more. There could be additional parameters like they must pass a psychiatric assessment, so no more sociopaths like Blair get selected.