How Can We Prepare for Social Unrest & Civil Disorder?

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I don't claim to know the future, but I don't believe it's realistic to assume that humanity has seen it's last devastating disease epidemic or that a pandemic in modern times couldn't lead to a return to unstructured mob rule.

The worst of the smallpox epidemics among the northern plains Indians occurred during their early contact with the Europeans, before the buffalo had been wiped out and before the Indians were confined to small reservations.

They had the horse by then, and hunting buffalo on horseback was an efficient way to produce food. Wholesale starvation did not become commonplace until years later.

There's some controversy about the origin of the term "Pikuni," a name used by two of the nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy, The North Pikuni and the South Pikuni. One of the more favored explanations is that the term originally meant "many possessions."

Crowding, starvation, and filth are not absolutely necessary for mass death from disease.

The North American system of food production is not highly stable. Much of our food is harvested on a massive scale entirely dependent on abundant diesel fuel and cheap water, then transported to collection points, then transported again to processing operations, then transported again through a system where it ends up in grocery stores.

The cheapest bread where I live is a buck fifty a loaf for a few pennies worth of wheat.

If a shortage of diesel, water, or labor occurred, North Americans would not have food, and lack of food is generally not conducive to stable governments.

Off-Topic: Start making bread for your own. It is not that difficult and when you learned to manage an sour dough you are even independent of commercial yeast. An if the social infrastructure would break down, you have at one skill which is worth that others may protect you ...

It does not have to be humans, a new and so far unstopable Wheat Rust has come out of Africa and taken up residence in India and Southeast Asia.

We are food short with no reserves, a 5% decline in production would trigger world panic.

A billion starving people is a breeding ground for People Rust.

Coincidentally, I've been working on that. So far, my efforts at baking have produced a good substitute for concrete if the construction industry gets going again.

Now and then, my bread comes out better, and with a lot of sugar it could pass for bubble gum.

Still Off-Topic: I strongly assume that you work with wheat. Wheat contains gluten, gluten makes the bread soft and keeps the C0_2 in the bread dough. But the gluten must be released from the flour. This happens via intensive kneading. If the rare dough has soft "pleasurable" structure than it is ready. You also shall learn to handle yeast and see on the structure and smell of the dough when you can start baking.

well don't forget about that super volcano that's over due to erupt.

You're certainly right in the first bit; aids in parts of Africa is close to or at Great Plague levels. As to stability, however, even parts of medieval Europe where plague wiped out half the population did not collapse into mob rule (though it did lead to major social and political changes) although obviously it did lead to an emergency-rule situation. In an apocalyptic scenario in which a plague wiped out an overwhelming majority, civilisation would clearly break down completely, but that's a rather far-fetched scenario.
Don't forget that the smallpox in the New World was used as a biological weapon; it was delierately spread to the Indian population in the British parts. True, famine is not absolutely necessary for an epidemic, but epidemics do tend to happen when famine or brutal overwork have already weakened the population.

I've heard of Spanish flu wiping out entire villages, both the old and the young, in Revolutionary Mexico, but that was in the middle of war and famine.



There was economic collapse, a change of leadership at the top and some territories seceded, but it wasn't a Somali-style descent into chaos or a true societal collapse, unlike in Yugoslavia. But Yugoslavia was of dubious viability to begin with, whereas the US has already shown itself to be resilient to economic catastrophe (the Great Depression). It would take more than bad loans for civilisation in the developed world to collapse; frankly, for that to happen, I think it would take either a natural disaster of Biblical proportions (a comet hitting the Earth or something) or nuclear war (which is probably not survivable, making any questions of postwar survival of civilisation moot). If I had a garden, I'd grow some of my own vegetables, but that would be for freshness purposes, not because I expect the collapse of civilisation. I'm with Dussel, it's actually extremely difficult for a society to break down.

Are you talking about the one in Yellowstone? When that does erupt again, it will wipe out most of the USA and will affect the whole world. I saw a program on TV about it but I forget everything I learned. I'd have to google it and read up on it.

Wow, thanks for the pointers. Gives me some stuff to watch for. Ain't much that's better than fresh baked bread, at least not much that I'm likely to experience.

Actually, this is about as on-topic as it gets. It won't do much good to have ammunition and guns if you can't feed yourself.

May I recommend the following?

Vault-Co

is run by a self-confessed Aspie, an American who moved to Australia to get away from it all. He's sometimes rather over-the-top in his apocalyptic predictions, but hosts some good snippets of information about our collapsing world. Warning: if you're of a left-wing/liberal persuasion, be prepared for some shocks!

LATOC

is one of the best forums for those awaiting the downfall. Intelligent, sane, but eyes-open about what is happening.

LewRockwell

If you thought conservatives were foaming-at-the-mouth nasty buggers, read this to get a new perspective on right-wing ideas. Very intelligent, cosmopolitan and intellectual.

EndTimesReport

contains plenty of tips and ideas on weathering the storm.

ClubOrlov

is run by a Russian who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and lectures about how America is about to go through the same thing. Witty, cool, one of the best doomsters out there.

I get a drift that people in general form their opinions about governmental collaspe based upon the financial/ economic and political information obtained from the grovernments and their 'experts' which is many cases has been proven to be in error of outright bogus to begin with. For instance a recent TV program hinted that the US gov has been 'overstating' the amount of gold in Fort Knox by huge margins. Who can one believe in times like these. Getting factual information if extrememly difficult.

Believe me.

The losses last year were greater than the National Debt. The piddiling few trillion the goverrnment has thrown at the problem were at most 8% of last year's losses.

Most of Obama's Plan was in abolishing the Minimum Tax for the year, allowing unlimited write offs, welfare for the rich. The Republican vote price.

Since then things have gotten much worse, as defaults were insured with 60 to 1 leverage, the insurers were bankrupt when 1/60 defaulted.

Now the default rate is just as high for fixed rate mortgages, which are a much larger percentage of all mortgages.

Losses are expected for the next wave of corporate earnings reports, and without credit, companies will default on bonds, which are also insured, and that will be a larger wave.

Commercial Property is a biggie, dropping 30%, and most do not own 30%, it is a short term debt market, so they have no choice but to default.

Thousands of shopping center, car lots, big box stores, are going to be given to bankrupt banks, and that debt was insured.

When it was working we had a $15 Trillion dollar economy, but the losses up to this summer will be $200 trillion.

While most of this falls on Banks, Brokers, Insurers, about half of the world's Capital has been lost.

That leaves no one to borrow or steal from, tax by another name.

Income, Sales, Property Taxes are going for a record low, and Local, State, Bonds are going to default.

That was insured.

I agree with Gietner that the recovery could start by the last quarter, after the last of the house of cards falls, but is more likely to take a few more years as even more notes come due.

Recovery in this sense is when the crater gets no deeper.

The plan being followed by the government makes sense. An orderly liquidation of defaulting organizations.

We are all in, the plan to print a few trillion was needed for no one will loan us money, and $500 Billion went to the FDIC, enough to close the ten major banks.

The rest is for unemployment, food stamps, then welfare.

This will send the National Debt to $15 Trillion, a 50% increase, and as far as we can go. That is 100% of GNP, an unsupportable number.

When the FDIC takes over a bank it is because it's liabilities exceed it's assets, it is bankrupt, so all stock and bonds become worthless. It means it cannot cover it's deposits, so the FDIC has first claim on the rest of the assets, and so far, all have been net losers.

These are the people who have insurance claims, who also caused insurance claims, and We The People own AIG. It is cheaper to close them than to pay them. It gets the bad assets repriced.

Out of 8,500 banks, most are solvent, well run, and local. Closing the ten money center banks will double their assets, they like the idea.

Most corporations are still solvent, everything is still here, it just needs to be re-priced and get new owners.

Recovery comes after you hit bottom, we have a ways to go.

It would be awesome if a Savant could sit down with the President of the United States and leaders from other countries and tell them EXACTLY how to solve national debt, reduce crime, etc. Like have ALL the answers and just lay it all out for them in order of importance with facts and statistics and such.

A girl can dream, right?

A long way to go before we hit bottom may be right. Our local property tax accessor has said that he expects continued delcines in property values thru 2013 and that they may be 'significant' declines so he has put the City on alert as not to be expecting any more revenue from property taxes since he will begin reassessments this week.

"the revolution will not be televised. . ."

Gil-Scott Heron

"the revolution will not be televised. . ."

Gil-Scott Heron