EATING SEEDS
(Posted 2007-10-25 16:38:03 by ArchPaladin)

Some interesting food for thought [
http://www.survivalblog.com/2007/10/us_food_riots_much_closer_than.html ]
[survivalblog.com].  No pun intended.

Now granted, these are the musings of some random individual on the
internet.  (You'll notice the actual blog post I link to is itself a
reprint of said musings.)  Also granted that I'm not sure what the probably
is of this scenario occurring.  When reading the thoughts of
survivalist-minded people, it's best to approach everything with some
skepticism.  Nevertheless, when you hear enough doom-saying speculation you
start to believe it, especially when a whole lot of different areas of
society issue statements about how one really good catastrophe can
significantly affect our standard of living.

I end up reading all of this stuff with mixed reactions.  Part of me would
like to believe that none of this is actually going to happen, that I can
safely ignore it, and be on my way.  A different part of me thinks that
preparations would be in order and that I should focus a lot of my efforts
on being able to survive if a disaster did actually happen.  Most recently
I've realized that in getting married I now have to extend whatever plans I
make to my family also.

All of which leaves me with the question of how much preparation is too
much?  I don't exactly want to spend my time eating seeds in a bunker, but
ignoring the possibility of disaster seems equally stupid.  And whatever
preparations I do make has to fit in with my budget, which imposes
considerable restrictions on what I can do on a short time scale.

I think the best course of action ends up being the same advice given to
people concerned about losing their jobs or other lesser emergencies: the
initial time you spend planning and preparing for trouble is the most
fruitful.  After a while, all your effort becomes subject to the law of
diminishing returns - ie. you have to put more in to make progress, and
what progress you make is always decreasing in quantity.  On a scale of
societal-collapse disasters, I suppose this entails having a plan to be
able to get to a place that is secure and provides you with an opportunity
to support yourself again, being concerned with quality of life only once
you're in a stable position.

And if that means for you that you need to go build a bunker and stockpile
seeds in it, well be my guest.

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