Transition Town arrives in York Region

Are you in York Region?

Do you believe in peak oil?

Are you concerned about the impact of peak oil?

If so you'll be pleased to know Transition (upper) York Region is born.

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Things I want to see for Newmarket/Aurora

In light of peak oil, pollution, global warming and those pesky food security issues that are dear to my heart(and belly) there are a great many things I’d like to see happen to make Newmarket Aurora a better and more sustainable place for what I believe will be a harder more austere future.

No more irrational development, yes we should increased density but stop building those damn 4000 sq ft homes, and stop allowing big box developments. Mixed use high density is the best model, each block should have a grocer, a restaurant, a bar, a play ground etc. Grouping all the retail and services around main arteries that no one can walk to is insane.

LEEDs certification for all new homes and major rebuilds, simple additions must be at least R2000 compliant. If people’s houses are so inefficient that they cannot heat them affordability you will get people freezing in the dark or installing in wood stoves that create smog and lead to deforestation, not to mention the number of dumb asses that burn down their houses or gas themselves when they bring the BBQ inside.

New Commercial buildings must utilize their roofs as green roofs, Solar PV or Solar thermal applications, 20 year phase in for all existing commercial buildings.

I’d like to see more open mindedness in the building codes regarding alternative building materials; Straw bail, earth bag, rammed earth etc. The carbon footprint of the building process must also be taken into account, not just the day to day carbon use.

No more drive through businesses with notice that existing ones must be phased out in 10 years. Having both an anti idling law and numerous drive throughs makes absolutely no sense.

I want the city to stop planting foreign ornamental trees everywhere. All trees should be indigenous species with at least half being productive varieties of fruits and nuts, providing both natural foods for wildlife and energetic citizens.

I don’t want the Widening of Davis Drive for public transit lanes.
Peak oil is going to severely reduce the amount of public traffic on the roads within the next 10 years. Widening this road to accommodate transit on the assumption that oil availability or price will never impact car use is blinkered thinking. The age of the car is ending, stop building infrastructure that perpetuates a broken model.

I want people to come forward to found a transition town movement (I’ll certainly join and take part but I won’t kid myself that organization or consensus building skills are my strong point, I’m too much the lazy malcontent)
Transition towns is a great movement devoted to helping towns and communities adapt to peak oil and more self reliance.

I’d like to see the creation of a food not lawns movement. The waste of water, energy, time and fertilizer on grass is a national disgrace. The potential benefit to food security, biodiversity and the survival of pollinators greatly outweighs the benefit of the uniformly boring dead zone we call lawns. While it’s your right to have a lawn I it’s also my right to utilize my soil to grow food.

I also want a lobby for the legalization of small urban livestock, hens, rabbits, dwarf goats as part of a greater Right to Farm legislation.

I want to see tax relief and zoning concession that encourage land owners to lease, donate or even use their honking big lawns to grow food locally. Just drive around the Pony and Stellar Drive industrial area, the lawns on some of these properties could supply 100s of people with produce. The utilization of urban lands to feed people is becoming more prevalent

Stop jerking us around on community gardens. After years of improving the soil in Newmarket’s community garden the region is giving urban farmers the boot, our new location will be a dead field of clay adjacent to the Magna center. In reality Magna should be additional garden plots not replacement plots

I’d like Ontario hydro to allow us the use of the hydro corridor for garden plots. There are many acres of untended and usable land going to waste.

I want a local food cooperative selling locally grown fresh and canned produce as well as bulk purchases of food staples.

I want to see the careers ended for those local politicians who think that the only thing they must offer to get my vote is more public ice rinks. There is more to life and their jobs than facilitating hockey…arrgggg!

I want to see strict enforcement of the no free range cat bylaw. If your dog, child or spouse is running amok in my yard I can call the police, if it’s a cat however you must trap it yourself because police or animal control won’t do anything. Cats and their freakishly zealot owners are apparently above a law that protects indigenous species like song birds from being hunted by a foreign and destructive species. If you’re too lazy to clean your own cat box put the cat down, don’t send it to crap in my garden

Ban golf courses- a place that Ontario exempts from the pesticide spraying laws

I want to see a group of environmentally aware people create a slate of like minded candidates in the next round of municipal elections.

I’d like the Newmarket Farmers market to have its board fired and a neutral party placed in charge. The market has lost good vendors because board members did not like losing market share to a better product, (the best meat pies are sold by a guy at the Aurora market now.) It also looks pretty obvious that many current vendors are breaking the rules and bringing out of region produce from the food terminal.

I’d like to see at least one weekend Go train that goes down 9:00ish a.m. and came back at 5-6 pm so that people can do the Ex, trade shows, theatre, the islands etc.

There are so many things that I want done yet I see no awareness to the need for change. I guess there are several answers but they all boil down to 2 categories

I’m a delusional crank
or
People are inherently short sighted and stupid

Or maybe there are people out there who will say, "Those are great ideas, I want to get involved" and will contact me to do something.

No, you are right. I must a be delusional Crank!!! bwahahahahaahah

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Embracing the Doom pt 3: Urban Adaptors and food

Spring has sprung
De grass is riz
I wonder where dem doomers is?

Spring or not, no grass will be rising in this part of Ontario for another week or more so this doomer is sitting in the basement sorting seeds, checking the calendar for planting dates and filling planting trays with starting mix in preparation for the season ahead. It’s now only 7 weeks until last frost which allowed me to plant the first of my tomatoes “Ardwyna Paste” under grow lights, joining the strawberries whose vague instructions of “plant in early spring” enticed me to start them right away. I have no doubt I planted them too early but I’m sure we can live with a few strawberry pots on the coffee table for a few weeks if needs be. My cabbage, onions and a couple of test Tomatillos are already sprouting and due to my usual planting exuberance I’ll probably have enough surplus plants to sell at this springs garage sale or give away to friends as an encouragement to start their own gardens.

As an urban adaptor with limited space it’s a daunting task trying to figure out how one will strive for any reasonable level of food security but there are options, some are quite reasonable, some require actual work and others many be a little to extreme for the more squeamish doomer (and no I’m not talking cannibalism …….. yet!)

Any discussion on food security should start the same way every energy security discussion should, simply cut back! Unless you are uncommonly active, thin and modest in your caloric intake most people could easily drop 100-400 calories or perhaps even more from their diet per day, freeing up supply for others and cutting the costs and work required to feed yourself. On average we eat too much; we eat out of boredom, for entertainment, and for simple gluttony so this is the most logical place to start the conversation.

Likewise we must take a serious look at what we eat and how we use it. The production of meat is up to 7 times less efficient than eating the grain yourself. Eating meat negatively impacts the number of people our agricultural system can support, our health, the availability and quality of our water resources and increases green house gases. In a time of hardship whole grain, bean, lentil, and tofu based meals can provide adequate protein, improve your health, save you money, all with the side benefit of treading lighter on the earth.

You should also remove the empty calories that add cost but no utility to your diet such as refined sugars, alcohol, etc and then calculate what you really need to survive. If you have the means to purchase or produce these things when times get tough great, but having a target of real needs instead of wants as a baseline is an important step in planning your food security. And before someone who knows me starts sniping and calling me a hypocrite, I admit to being an over exuberant consumer of meat and beer but I also know a time will probably come when I won’t be able to do so.

Finally we must look at our level of personal food waste and ways to reduce it, especially considering studies in the U.S place waste as high as 30%. That’s a lot of food grown, shipped, bought, and tossed out. It’s also a perfect example of low hanging fruit, an easy and free way reducing your total consumption.

Do you refuse to eat leftovers? Or maybe only use them once rather than until they run out?
Do you cut around a blemish on a fruit or veggie, or do you toss the whole thing?
Do you make stock from a turkey or chicken carcass?
When you eat out do you use the doggy bag?
Do you habitually buy lettuce every time you shop because you know you should eat more salad but end up tossing one out every weak because you could not be bothered making one?
Have you ever bought an entire container of something with an expiry date only to use a single dollop in one recipe knowing full well you have no use for the rest of the product.

We all do irrational wasteful things that endanger our food security and blow a shit load of money. I’m not saying you should not buy that container of sour cream but perhaps you should plan a menu allowing you to have leak and potato soup, perogies/tacos, baked potatoes or a homemade veggie dip all within a two weak period making use of the entire container. Don’t buy the damn lettuce unless you are committed to 2-3 salads in 4 days and eat those leftovers or convert them into new dishes like sheppard’s pie, soup, or bubble and squeak. Bake or make sauces with overripe fruit. Plan and shop to a menu and stick to it.

I’m convinced that if most people looked at the questions of how much do I need? What should I eat? And how can I fully utilize what I do have? They would only need 50-60% of their current food supply, How much effort put into gardening or stalking a deer could you save by cutting consumption by 40%? How much money would a 40% reduction save you?


Food strategies

Once you know how much food you really need you can then decide on the appropriate strategies to acquire it. All food strategies can be broken down into 3 categories, purchasing food, growing food or scrounging food.

With today’s access to a wide variety of cheap and easy foods from around the world few people even farmers make any attempt to be food independent. As adapters we will try to produce as much of our own food as possible but true independence is simply not possible. One person cannot expect to be a gardener, a herder, a butcher, a miller, an apiarist or a blessed cheese maker all in their backyard plot. Specialization and barter between many urban farmers can eliminate some of these deficiencies but there will always be some things that can’t be done on the small, local, and urban scale. This means we will always be dependent on vendors, be they grocery stores, co-ops or farmers markets to supply those things we cannot produce ourselves.

The secret is to optimize those purchases you are required make by shopping in bulk. Now it’s understandable that most people cannot afford to buy a skid of flour even if they did have somewhere to store it but there are other ways to buy large quantities. You might find that club stores work for you despite the problems of membership fees, rarely being walkable or not always having the best prices on some items. Other alternatives include bulk food stores or even better food cooperatives that have local ownership, help form community bonds and can have access to local producers who don’t want to deal with the hassle of individual sales. If you do garden or have a useful craft you might find your co-op an ideal place to sell or trade your surplus. I think co-ops are the way to go and I would encourage anyone to join one or investigate forming a group to create one. Sadly this is not a business model that has gained much ground in Canada.

Eventually things we’ve grown accustomed to like imported off season fruits and veg may no longer be available, we must again learn to eat seasonally and preserve our local bounty just like our grandparents did.

Gardening/urban agricultural

Provided you have access to land the best way to gain food security is to grow it yourself. You may not have a lot of space, you may not have good soil but short of having 100% shade nearly every property should be able to produce at least some food. Square food gardening shows you how to get a considerable amount of produce from a limited area and even if you don’t have great soil you can always build raised beds or use container gardening. Having no gardening skills is no excuse, the ability to grow food is a basic skill that let humans form communities and civilization as we know it (not necessarily a good thing). Surely such a basic skill mastered by Neolithic man is not beyond your skills, but start now it does take time.

Starting now also gives you time to improve the fertility of your soil by adding organic matter, improving the drainage, Ph and level of helpful micro organisms. All around us there are sources of organic matter that can improve your soil, do your own composting, collect sea weed by the sea, grass clippings from your neighbors who don’t spray, leaves from a park, or ask for the coffee grounds from your neighborhood coffee shop, it’s all good. Many municipalities even have events where you can get cheap or free rain barrels, composters or compost. Soil is only poor and unproductive because you let it stay that way.

If you really don’t have enough space to garden you should look into joining a community garden program. While some areas like mine are severely limited in space (70 plots for over 70,000 population), added demand and/or advocating to businesses, towns, utilities and school boards to provide land for more community gardens should eventually create more gardening spaces. Demand municipalities support community gardens. If you can find someone who is speculating on vacant land for the long term you might even negotiate cheap leases on properties large enough to support a profit generating market garden, creating food and employment.

In your daily lives look for opportunities, perhaps a local business could be convinced to give up its lawn so employees could garden at lunch and after work and you as adviser/manager would get a portion of the garden as your own. Sell it to them as a way to help their employees save money and become healthier, a way to show they are a good corporate citizens, and a way to save money on a lawn service. The same offer could be made to use a portion of a school yard supplying both you and the cafeteria with real food all while teaching students a real skill they can use.

A sick or elderly neighbor may let you garden their yard simply to get some free produce and a little company, before too long you’ll probably find them puttering along behind your doing something they did not think they were still able to do.

I just noticed a mistake above, even if you do have 100% shade in your yard you could bring in wood shavings, logs, straw or some other appropriate medium and plant mushrooms or morels. No yard need be barren of edible life.

Somewhere between gardening and purchasing is the CSA , Community Sustained Agriculture. In a CSA you buy a share of farm’s crop for the year and each week during the growing season you receive a basket of what ever is in season. Some CSA’s require their members do labour especially at planting and picking time, others like the one we belong to does not.

All CSAs are not equal however, some are organic some aren't, I said before some may ask for your labor, most won't. Unless you eat anything it may take you some time to find a CSA that grows a selection of vegetables that suites your tastes. Our current farm did not originally meet our needs and after a summer of drowning in honeydews but no beans to speak of we dropped out for a couple of years. With better planning, experience, and more understanding of what their customers wanted we have returned to the same CSA finding a much more balanced food basket.


Guerrilla gardening is also an option, simply pick plant types that require minimum care and plant them on vacant land and hydro corridors and see what happens. You might lose it all to animals, lack of care or vandals but you might also end up with a field of squash or patch of amaranth ready to harvest come fall. If you back onto a hydro cut simply put up temporary snow fence and extend your yard past your lot line. You might get told to remove it immediately or be left alone for years to garden on free land, either way begging forgiveness is easier than asking permission.

In the same vein as begging forgiveness rather than asking permission, most municipalities will ask you to comply with bylaws before they fine you or start legal proceedings, with this in mind don’t be scared to put a ½ dozen hens or a rabbit hutch in your back yard, hell if you have a good sized yard try some miniature goats. Be mindful to raise them in extra clean conditions so smell won't bother the neighbors and so no one gets the Humane Society involved. Some municipalities in the U.S. are rescinding old rules about small livestock so push the limits and get like minded people to lobby for such changes. In Canada you can join CLUCK, Canadian Liberated Urban Chicken Club, a group that is involved in education and legal challenges to anti chicken laws.

Scrounging

There's lots of food around around if you just look for it, be it dandelions found on unsprayed vacant lots or fiddle heads and morels in the forest, you just have to put the effort in to find it. In the local green belt near my home I know I can find choke cherries for wine or jelly, crab apples for canning or jelly, sumac for fake lemonade, and morels and that’s without having any expert knowledge or having spend any amount of time actually looking. There is always something edible around if you look hard enough which brings us to the “I’m not that desperate yet” behavior of the Freegan.

The Freegan is someone who salvages edible food from the garbage. “Freegan” was originally used as a label for anti consumerism activists outraged at the 25-30% level of western food waste. These activists began to eat salvaged food from dumpsters to lower their ecological footprint and their participation in the normal consumer model. If you look around there are web sites, meet up groups and probably facebook pages dedicated to Freegan activates. While some people do this as political statement are also many people with more basic motivations like starvation who have been forced to eat this way, certainly a sad commentary on our society.

While I don’t suggest you go out and root in the garbage behind the Lowblaws or the Piggly Wiggly tonight (unless you are really desperate), there should be some procedure to intercept and utilize this food before it gets dumped like this. High quality produce or stuff set to expire the next day should be sent to shelters or food banks for immediate consumption, lower quality produce should be shipped to local farmers for animal feed and the real rotten stuff sent to composting facilities rather than the dump. Fear of litigation is scaring some retailers from donating food, even for livestock. You might however convince them its for your composter or worm farm.


We should all lobby companies to be compassionate rather than wasteful with damaged foods and we should lobby that governments alter any laws that make being responsible hard for companies.

The final scrounging pointer is to look for a gleening program. I was quite surprised to find that the York Region Food Network runs a gleening program where you can register and get notifications throughout the growing season as various participating farmers allow people to wander their fields and harvest produce that is either surplus, not of salable quality or simply was missed by mechanical harvesters. This program allows the salvage of tonnes of food for those willing to work and with no veggies left to rot in the field the quantity of harmful insects, fungus and disease in the soil for the next year’s crop is reduced. While you may end up with far too much of one item to use in a timely manner you gain the opportunity take up canning on the cheap, stock a root cellar or share with others.

Damn these posts are getting long

Associated posts

Embracing the Doom: What kind of doomer am I?

Embracing the doom pt 2: How doomy How soon?

Top doomer accessories

Renewal in Canning and Stealth Doomers

Being your own Seed Bank
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Embracing the Doom Pt 2: How Doomy, how Soon?

Having arrived at the point were I’ve admitted I’m a doomer and have decided that that the only course of action for me is to adopt an “adapt in place” strategy I must start setting my priorities and start planning. To set my priorities and plan actions I must first analyse the threat, how long do I have to prepare and how bad will it get?

As with all survival planning one has to look at the possible crisis and decide how this will impact ones life. With peak Oil there has been a great deal written by the likes of Kunstler, Heinberg, Astyk and many others who have looked at the issue discussing economic impact and opportunities, social upheaval, and adapting to the new reality of a low or post carbon society.

Looking at all the scenarios put forward I’ve chosen to believe that peak oil will progress in a pattern of strong price spikes and retrenchment such as the one we are in now. The traders and markets know that a diminishing resource is a money maker but they don’t want to have just one kick at the can and will encourage volatility as a way of making the same play year after year. The pattern however cannot ignore the real decline in resources which will usually result in the top and bottom reached in any one cycle being higher than in the previous cycle. In a decade $150 oil may be considered the yearly low not the high.

While it’s probable that depletion will be more of a slow grind than some huge messy crisis there will still be fluctuations in supply and demand causing regional shortages, perhaps as soon as a year or two out. This is not just a lack of oil issue but an overall infrastructure problem as many pipelines and refineries are either too old or too poorly maintained to be reliable. Demand and refining capacity have been so closely matched in N.A. for nearly a decade that it’s been impossible to schedule full maintenance shut downs reducing both the level maintenance and upgrades on our refiners. This lack of maintenance increases the chance of breakdowns and accidents, and more accidents which are becoming a regular occurrence.

Refineries must also be designed or at least tweaked for a particular grade of oil. As more light sweet oil fields are depleted they are more often than not replaced by poorer quality heavy sour oils requiring more extensive treatments. Plant breakdowns or the lack of the right grade of crude can both cause major regional shortages even if the world market appears to have adequate supply. NA also imports a great deal of already distilled product like diesel making us reliant on someone else’s supply, refining capacity and stability. The first Crisis will likely be the end of next year when Mexico is expected to become a net importer of oil.

Of course there is always the danger huge messy crisis like a war, terrorism or political manoeuvring that cuts off supplies from the Middle East or North Africa….. yikes!

So how bad will it get?

I believe we will be living in a world where lack of energy, economic collapse and the damage done by climate change will impact food production, medical care, water supplies and even world charity to the point that a major die off of humans will occur. Yes, there will be new technologies that could mitigate some of the problems associated with peak oil and climate change but I don’t believe they will be practical, affordable, timely enough, or scalable to maintain a growing population of 6.7 billion people plus.

James Lovelock of the Gaia hypothesis fame has recently stated that he sees a world population of 1 billion people in 100 years. I wouldn’t argue Lovelock is wrong, in fact some days I actually hope he’s right and the sooner the crash the better so that the most diversity, carrying capacity and quality of life will be maintained for a smaller human race. I don’t believe that we were put here to breed the planet full and I would prefer a smaller population of healthy diverse cultures rather than a homogeneous mass of flesh choking on its own filth. A people to poor to have any culture but desperation.

Breeding is not a right that allows us to kill the beauty and genetic diversity of the planet in order to fill up all the empty space. As the only species without a natural predator and with the means to destroy it all, we have to temper all our actions even breeding with humility and responsibility. At least some of us are willing to acknowledge the need to curb rabbit like behaviour!


While shortages and crisis may or may not arise immediately, the price of heating our homes, driving, and manufacturing will continue trend higher for years if not decades before a new equilibrium is established by an entire population that has been forced to adapt. The rising costs for everything will create hardship and job displacements. Many “Normal” consumer goods will enter the realm of luxury goods and the age of consumerism will fade away. If you make your living selling anything but essentials you should expect that a change of employment will part of the adapting process.

Infrastructure and government services will both suffer as it becomes obvious that the constant growth required to sustain today’s perks on tomorrow’s earnings can no longer be counted on. Tough decisions will need to be made between roads and health care, education and social assistance but no mater what decision are made we will get less than we used to and we will be forced to become less reliant on state. (at least the libertarians will be happy)

In some countries it won’t take long for the complex systems of Western society to fall apart. In my opinion Mexico is just such country on the verge of becoming a failed state. As depletion causes oil exports dry up, Mexico will lose 40% of its direct government revenue, economic spin offs from the oil economy and lower remittances from family members working in the U.S.

Mexico is already in what can only be described as a civil war with drug lords taking over entire cities in the north as well as the treat of terrorism and insurrections in the south of the country. While some countries are destined to fail anyway for a myriad of otehr reasons, Peak oil in particular is a powerful force that will push some like Mexico over the edge quite quickly.

For us the biggest single whammy will likely be in food production where every step from planting, fertilizing, harvesting, spraying, processing, and shipping uses huge amounts of oil or Natural gas. Some farmers have found that a reduction in chemical fertilization and lower yields are better for business as the extra fertilizer costs were not justified by the yield increase. If farmers purposely lower yields to increase profit margins prices could go to the moon. Today we have increasing populations and increased asian afluence leading to higher meat consumption, any reduction in yields will quickly impact an already tight market for grain products.

Eventually, long term, labour will be foreced to move back to agriculture to offset inaccessible energy. The labour costs of food production will soar as will retail prices. Like Victorian times, we could go back to an era where food was one of the biggest parts of a household budget.

So do we have time to adapt?

Yes and No!

Yes, we do still have time but No you cannot put it off indefinitely. Indeed the sooner you start the process the more control you will have over how you adapt and trust me you want to have some control. The choice of ignoring the issue until you are forced to change is available, waiting however will not save you money now, will not lower your carbon foot print now, will not allow you to moderate the pace of change, and instead it will be like a bucket of cold water thrown over the shower curtain on an unsuspecting victim. Zyban vs. cold turkey! It’s your call, but the choice to change can only be delayed not avoided.

You also can’t just turn a switch and say “today I use 80% less carbon, I will become food independent on Wednesday, and on Friday I will bring about world peace and create an unlimited alternate energy source”. It’s just not that easy or that quick to achieve.

The process of adapting is a journey that could take a considerable amount of time and if you stall too long, you may not have enough time. To adapt you will need to learn new skills, routines, attitudes/expectations and incorporate them into your normal life

It’s not only you that must adapt to survive; society and the market place must all adapt together. If everyone decided to eat local today there would not be enough food available in stores. If everyone tried to buy tools and seeds for this spring the market could not meet demand, if we all go to the farmers market on the same Saturday all the stalls would be sold out by 9 am. A sudden panic with everyone tyring to adapt at once when the SHTF is destined to fail making it that much more important that we all start making some changes now even if they are only small ones. There are leaders, followers and victims, and your level of preparation will be a great determinator of what you will become in the future we doomers expect.

Learning to adapt is going to be different for each person. Some people may look first at those things that give them the most bang for their buck or the low hanging fruit, others may see adaptation as an opportunity to learn some long desired skill or perhaps take a hobby to the level of small business. Someone who is infirm or has no access to land may not be able to garden yet they have a house that is adaptable to passive solar. Some adaptors may have financial resources allowing them to go off the grid while others will have no choice but learn to do without 20 electric appliances. Adapting could mean renovations to make your house more efficient or suitable for more people, something that will take considerable time or materials you might need to save for. Adapting could also mean looking for a new career path that will be in demand in a lower carbon economy. Selling speed boats and snowmobiles are definitely dead end jobs while repairing things or installing solar water heaters may be in great demand.

Regardless of the direction someones adaptions takes them it will take a considerable amount of time to reach that goal, Start Now and embrace the doom!

Associated Posts

Embracing the Doom Pt 1: What Kind of Doomer am I

Embracing the Doom Pt 3: Urban Adaptors and FoodRecommend this Post

Embracing the Doom: What kind of doomer am I?

Well according to last week’s Star article I am officially a doomer simply because I accept the possibility that the last 50 years of greed, excess and prosperity may come to an end , the result of peak oil. I'm totally comfortable with this label.

However unlike classic peak oil doomers I also believe that debt, monetary and fiscal mismanagement, environmental degradation, global warming, and even unsustainable population growth are all issues that alone on in concert will lay a world of pain on our species and/or our planet in the coming years. I don’t even need to be right about all of these issues because each one alone could sow the seeds of despair.

So I if I’m a doomer what should I do about it?
What are my options?
My priorities?
What kind of doomer am I?

I think the last question may be the most important in deciding how people will deal with the issue of our impending doom, so let’s look at the kinds of doomers, their sub groups, those confused with doomers, and the various strengths and weaknesses of particular survival strategies.

Survivalism

Despite the stereotypes portrayed in many articles the vast majority of doomers I know are not survivalists.

Survivalists have been a noticeable and growing subculture since the height of the cold war and have not suddenly sprung up just because of peak oil. While part of the movement was based on nuclear survial others rose from people’s fear of a societal collapse due to monetary issues like devaluation, inflation and the destruction of stable hard currencies that were replaced with Fiat currencies. Earlier preparedness advocates were often divided between retreaters, those who would opt out of normal society and become remote homesteaders or hermits (that crazy guy on the hill) and those who were more militant, who talked at length about self defence and purchased significant firepower; these were relegated to the survivalist category.

While some cold war survivalists turned away as the threat of nuclear Armageddon abated the hard core simply adapted to other threats like Y2K, terrorism, natural disasters, pandemic, the rise of domestic fascism, the old standby of financial collapse or more wacky reasons like the end of the Aztec calender, magnetic pole reversal, dark planets or stars swinging through the solar system or the weird acid trip Armageddon of Revelations.

The common Survivalist

Survivalists are not just people who are prepared but people who also expect societal collapse, lawlessness, banditry and feel the need to defend themselves and every damn combat ration they managed to hoard. Many survivalists also have their own social agenda be it racial, religious, anti government/anarchist/radical libertarian, anti urban and some even supporting class warfare.

Not all survivalists are doomers and few doomers (IMO) are survivalists.

The classic Survivalists take preparations seriously and often form communities of like minded people giving them strength of purpose and manpower but the advantages of this set are often offset by their very agendas. Today is an age of information and if they think their compound, stash of weaponry and often intolerant social ideals have not been flagged by law enforcement, municipalities and their neighbours they are naïve. While their claims of defensive preparations may be legitimate they may find their failure to integrate, share and aid the communities they choose to bunker up in make them a perceived threat. The survivalist’s own agenda and beliefs may create the very confrontations they expect.

Much of the survivalist literature I’ve seen seems to believe that a finite crisis will pass allowing the survivalists a “coming out “ where they will be higher up the pecking order than before the crisis. Storing food rather than being prepared to grow their own seems prevalent which can also add to the perception that they may become predators rather than neighbours. Hoarding is all fine and good for a short emergency but the ability to grow food for future seasons is paramount for Kunstler’s Long Emergency

The Retreater

The retreater like the survivalist takes preparations very seriously but is more likely to live the life rather than just plan for it. These people will move into a remote area alone or in larger groups in a belief that a low profile avoidance strategy is a better bet than the “Let them try to take my MREs“, gun toting bravado of the survivalist. Retreaters do not have to be pacifists any more than all survivalist are looking for a fight it is simply a variation in optimizing ones chances of survival.

Retreaters are more likely to live full time in their retreats and try to become totally self sufficient. This drive to be away from society pushes them to the fringes, away from good land, medical services, and even neighbours. The choice of being cloistered like a hermit on marginal land poorly suited for agriculture begs the question “is this a life worth living”. To simply live and survive may not be enough for many people and the lack of community and social interaction may weigh heavily on those opting to retreat from society.

Both the survivalist and retreater share the worse case scenario of how the future will unwind believing there is no point staying part of society and trying to save it for everybody. This seems an overly pessimistic and selfish vision and I cannot consider myself either of these despite the label of doomer I proudly wear.


Homesteader: back to the land

Like the retreater the homesteader moves back to the land and tries to achieve some level of self sufficiency. A homesteader may still be on the grid but in most cases will also be preparing their property and lifestyle for a time when private or government utilities and services may be lost or become unreliable. Unlike the retreater the homesteader is not limited to live on the fringe of society, rather their limitations on location are based more on affordability and their personal land preferences than a need to hide.

Homesteaders will not shy away from contact and the wise ones will dive in with both feet in an attempt to forge lasting bonds and friendships with the established community. It is nearly impossible for any person to become proficient in all the skills needed to be self sufficient. Not only would it be difficult to learn all the skills it would be inefficient in both time management and the cost to acquire the specialty tools required. Horse ownership gives us a perfect example, while the average person can learn to care for and groom a horse, and perhaps even give it rudimentary training the average person is not going to have the tools, training or experience to be their own vet or farrier. A homesteader would need a great many skills to become totally self sufficient including farming, animal husbandry, building skills, cooking, baking, hunting, canning, bee keeping, cheese making, brewing, nursing, midwifery, sewing, weaving, spinning, knitting, shearing, yada, yada, and will most definitely never be totally self sufficient. Society and technology even at the level of 1600s cannot be individually sustained, community is a must and something that will cause most retreaters and survivalists to fail.

Homesteading like the other models can be single family, extended family or a cooperative venture like the Eco village.

As a doomer I see the homesteading model as preferable survival strategy. Anyone who can both feed his family and have surplus to trade for more specialized services and products will be as close to self sufficient as practical and depending on the level of surplus may actually be considered affluent. I also believe I have a wide enough skill base to at least make a go of it.



Adaptors: Adapting in place

Most people because of their current employment, family ties, lack of the capital needed to start over, the shear lack of the skills required, ignorance of the issue or just because the have no desire to live in an rural setting will be forced to adapt in place and make the best of what they have; they just don’t know it yet and are in for one hell of surprise.

Unlike the masses who will have this decision made for them by circumstance, some doomers actively decide to remain and adapt to the coming changes where they are. These are the people who are already modifying their houses with small wind mills, solar panels, solar hot water and high levels of insulation so that their homes can remain comfortable in a low carbon economy. Adaptors vary in their preparedness plans but often do things like replace their lawns with veggies, hide rabbit farms in their garages, join community gardens and advocate for more gardens, lobby for zoning changes to promote urban agriculture, join CSAs, form food co-ops or buying clubs, buy local food, learn to can and cook from scratch, take up home crafting like knitting, weaving, spinning, sewing.

Like the other varieties of doomers Adaptors probably still store extra quantities of food, water, medicines, seeds and barter goods it’s just they don’t plan on moving. Some may even own a gun despite their lack of bunkers and camouflage macho wear. Adapters may also be reorganizing their homes so they can become multi generational homes or welcome friends or strays to lower living costs.

An adaptor may not have the means to BUY into adaptation but rather be a King of the thrift store or Queen of the garage sale going out of their way to duplicate the thrift and creativity that served people so well in the Great Depression.

Of all the options adapting in place is the one that will be the norm because most people will have no choice. Cities hold the majority of jobs, the majority of homes, and the majority of government services and despite an eventual need for additional agricultural labour to offset some of the energy inputs, people are not going to flee the cities unless everything falls apart and the survivalists were right.

The adaptors and homesteaders both believe change is coming but believe that we can survive, thrive and have purposeful lives even in a post or low carbon environment. I have to have to accept this belief and work towards it as the best option I can provide for my children. While I may be wrong I will not give into chaos and anarchy willingly.

Decision making

People have to decide several things

Are the fears of doomers regarding peak oil without merit? (no!)

Can you say without out a doubt that you believe bad things never happen and that oil depletion can be managed without a severe impact to your lifestyle? (no!)

If you can say at this point you are not a doomer go back to reading your people magazine and drinking your Staryucks coffee. (oh look, Brad is having Angelina Jolie cloned so she can pump out more babies faster, but rumours have it Aniston stole the zygote with the intention of raising it to hunt down the real Jolie. Wow fascinating)

If you can see the threat, what can you do about it? (Prepare?, ignore?, suicide?)

If you do want to prepare which survival strategy outlined above suites your means, yours skills, your willingness to uproot and your view of how bad it can get?

In my case this has been a long evolved decision process. I’ve always wanted to live the homesteading life even before I knew of any sound reasons to want it, yet I do not have the means to leave my job in the city and give it a go. My job currently ties me to a desk 60k from where I live and I cannot support two separate properties. I’ve found no kindred spirits to share a property with and my employer despite selling telecommunications does not believe in telecommuting for its union employees, sucks to be me!

So while I would prefer the homesteader’s route and have tried to learn some of the relevant skills, I will be forced to become an adaptor and can only hope that some opportunity will come along allowing me to change course before it’s too late. I also believe that at some point there will be increased pressure for people to return to the land in order to off set expensive energy inputs with manual labour. When this time arrives I want to own my own land and treat people fairly rather than becoming someone else’s serf or share cropper

What kind of doomer are you?

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