EROEI / EROI For Doomies

 

“Pyramid of Energetic Needs” representing the minimum EROI required for conventional oil, at the well-head, to be able to perform various tasks required for civilization. The blue values are published values, the yellow values increasingly speculative. Each increment in EROI allows more and more work to be done. EROI 

Chart from “EROI of Global Energy Resources Preliminary Status and Trends” Jessica Lambert, Charles Hall, Steve Balogh, Alex Poisson, and Ajay Gupta State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Oh, the ER-O-I was a'fallin'
And the win was gettin' low...

-- Adapted from the ER-I-O (Erie Canal) folksong

EROEI / EROI For Doomies

Energy Return On  Energy Invested, a.k.a., Energy Return On Invested is a core concept for those of us thinking of our present and near future. But it doesn't travel alone. Here, I'll try to lay out a useful set of related concepts, their dynamics and consequences.

Useful terms

EROEI -- The ratio of an amount  of energy divided by all necessary investment of all EI inputs (expressed as energy) required for ER outputs (energy extraction, refinement, production and distribution... from here on, I'll use the shorthand production for all of these).

Historically, EROI has fallen and is falling significantly. Lower numbers tend to account for more, often overlooked inputs.

Any complex, adaptive system (e.g., a living organism or an economy) requires an EROEI > 1 by some significant factor as its minimum for survival. This is in accord with the laws of thermodynamics, and remains undisputed.

NOTE: EROEI is often expressed as a ratio (EI/ER) or a proportion (usually EI:ER).

Gross Energy -- The total amount of extracted energy under discussion, before adjusting for its production overheads.

Net Energy -- The amount of surplus energy left over from Gross Energy, after its production overheads.

Surplus energy (that not used for energy production) is available to systems for metabolic function, activity, continuance (e.g., reproduction), infrastructure, maintenance, education and electives.

NOTE: Gross and Net Energy can increase, even while EROI is falling. This has been the case, historically, prior to the present moment.

Peak Energy -- The point at which approximately half of energy resources have been extracted. At this point, the easy pickings have been picked and the (energy) cost of remaining, harder-to-access resources rises. From this point, required energy investment for extraction rises exponentially and EROI accordingly falls.

For further reading, see Hubbert Curves, which describe the prospects of any given resource being commercially extracted, and have successfully predicted Peak Energy for any given energy resource.

NOTE: Peak Energy from fossil fuels could conceivably become moot in the face of new energy sources, but for the foreseeable future, they are dominant and likely to remain so.

Implications

By industry assessments, we already have- or are soon to enter post-Peak Energy. EI to produce energy from fossil fuels will increase exponentially (rapidly declining EROEI and Net Energy).

Falling EROEI consequent to rising production costs in a post-Peak Energy environment chews away at Net Energy in proportion to Gross Energy. Gross Energy may be increasing, but the available Net Energy (GE minus overheads) is an ever smaller fraction of the gross. Eventually, as necessary extraction investments increase, Net Energy falls toward zero. 

At the same time, should Gross Energy plateau or decline (as considerable data suggest is now or soon to be the case), Net Energy falls toward zero.

For us Doomies, this is an alarming double squeeze!

Net Energy is what pays for shit. All the stuff we really need or think we need. All the stuff we think of as wealth. It's what Finances it. Grows it. Builds it. Produces it. Maintains it. Moves it around... roads, rail and bridges, shipping and supply chains. Keeps the lights on, water clean and flowing. Education, entertainment, arts. Everything. When we run too low on Net Energy, it's TEOTWAWKI.

But it's slow to unbuild. As the surplus dwindles, things start to be under energized at the fringes. It's made worse by wealth inequity, where the powerful turn wealth-sharing flows toward themselves. The disenfranchised don't have the energy/wealth/power to organize and defend themselves, and become prey to 'strongmen' who use their plight to their own ends.

As the surplus energy available to global, industrial civilization decreases, we can foresee the following:

• Failing infrastructures
• Increasing pollution (from energy investments, lower quality fuels, less remediation)
• Increasing climate instability
• Resource conflicts
  
  
• General impoverishment and reduction of total wealth
• Reductions of social services and safety nets
• A political turn toward far-right 'solutions'
• Increasingly authoritarian state control
• Increasing social unrest, protest, war and displacement
  
  
• Cascading failures and contagion proliferate
  
• Tipping points are reached
• Collapse

All of these (including localized Collapses, world-wide) are the major headlines of our day.

*****

Objections and IMHO

Here are a few of the standard objections to the above...

There's Still Plenty of Fossil Fuel

Well, yes - about half, give or take, and that's a LOT - but that's not the point.

The point is that that post-peak half is trending toward a point where its production is prohibitively expensive. The half that's left is lower quality (e.g., tar sands and shale), plays out more quickly (e.g., fracking) or deeper, under water or found in extreme environments. All this means low EROEI.

This is a consensus view among industry analysts (vs. PR types). Only the timing and what might intervene is in debate.

Green Tech will Save Us

Well, maybe, but both the will and a pathway are absent. It appears to be a long shot.

One large problem is that the conversion of existing infrastructure and systems to 'renewables' is energy (and materially) intensive, with its own, lowish EROEI. It is unclear whether, even given the will and commitment to the cross-over, that there would be enough Net Energy available for the task, not to mention related environmental impacts of the project.

Time is another... whether we have time for such conversion before some critical tipping point is reached? But of course that applies to all paths forward. Still, we're talking best case in terms of decades.

Tech Tech will Save Us

Well, maybe, but...

Alternative energy projects at BAU (Business As Usual) scale are promising but distant. Nuclear fusion has just passed operational EROEI slightly greater than 1. That is to say, a skosh over break-even so long as we don't count the infrastructure, conversion (heat to electricity) or distribution costs. This after years and billions of dollars in hot pursuit of the dream.

Deep-bore, grid-scale geothermal may be the best possibility in the offing. In this tech, high energy beams (from gyrotrons developed for nuclear fusion) replace mechanical drilling techniques for much deeper wells reaching into high heat regions of the Earth's mantle. It's in development, uses existing infrastructure for conversion/distribution and should be boot-strappable. Unfortunately, it too appears be well behind schedule with very little success to report. Bootstrapping is predicted to require decades.

The Market will Provide

Well, no. The market has worked wonders, but is not magical.

That the market will provide is an economic article of faith among Cornucopians who believe (more or less) that, given a high enough demand in the face of low supply, and substitutions can and will be made. 

This may be theoretically true but is pragmatically false. For example, since e=mc^2, given enough market incentive and energy, any resource could be synthesized. In practice, the EI of this approach would be prohibitive.

Further, the implicit assumption is that solutions will be found and implemented on demand (i.e., just-in-time innovation and production) given enough market incentive. Problem is, this flies in the face of considerable experience with Scientific Method... discoveries are not made on a schedule, regardless of the incentive. Industrial scale production is also far from instantaneous. Other market forces, such as cost, are in opposition.

An example would be the fairly recent discovery of one of the side-effects of sildenifil citrate, originally studied as a treatment for high blood-pressure... despite vast market incentive and effort across centuries, this active ingredient of Viagra(R) is without an historical peer. It was observed serendipitously during clinical studies, and, approximately 12 years later, hit the market.

Who says it's all gloom and doom?

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that EROEI and related concepts are a lens for viewing the lifeblood of our global industrial economy and civilization.

That EROEI and Net Energy are falling with nothing assured in prospect would indicate that we are suffering from terminal, congestive heart failure.

Time to set our affairs in order.

For further reading, here's a good place to start.

Ozone Generators and Sterilization

Diagram from PrimaZone

PATHOGENS... Some dis-assembly is required.


Ozone Generators and Sterilization

Ozone (O3) is a potent toxin that works by oxidizing most anything it touches, damaging large organisms and killing smaller ones. O3 gives up one atom of 0xygen which aggressively combines with other molecules, leaving breathable O2 behind (O3 => O2 + O).

We've been using an ozone generator for several years, now, to sterilize our boat cabin and holds against various fungi including dry rot, mold and mildews. We also blow into a garbage bag to sterilize small items, now including masks, gloves and other PPE.

An advantage over UV sterilization is that it fills a space, where UV is line-of-sight and won't work in the 'shadow'.

 << Our EnerZen unit costs about $85 as I write.

A word of caution... this type of generator sterilizes the space by elevating O3 concentrations to lethal levels for a short time. No People, Plants or Pets while working and until fully aired out. Don't even want to breathe a little of it. We amateurs should probably leave the building, even if you're only doing a single room within it.

Here's a quick article that hits the main points.

There is another kind of ozone generator on the market which uses low levels of O3 to ionize particles to help purify air with people in the room. But these are not recommended by medical authorities ever, due to oxidation and irritation of airways.

If breathed in, ozone irritates, inflames and even kills cells all along the respiratory tract. This makes the cells even more susceptible to virus and bacteria, and if infected, inflammation is a serious co factor for worse outcomes. 'Safe' levels for O3 can be understood as merely 'negligible damage' for normal times.

Incidentally, ozone also clears away smells such as as smoke, decay, locker funk, diesel or gas, wet dog, bilge, etc..

Pretty handy tool in a pandemic.


NOTE: Most hospitals have ozone generators for sterilizing operating and patient rooms. PPEs can be treated for re-use in room-sized batches. Please help spread the word.

Gypsy Rules for Survival

Cruising Live-Aboards

 The sky became their canopy

The earth became their throne

And as their raiment ran to rags

They thought it nothing wrong

For earth and sky are robe enough

When you sing the Gypsy Song.

-- From Beggars to God by Bob Franke

Gypsy Rules for the Survival

The term Gypsy - our outsider's name for the Romani peoples - stirs in settled folk a feeling of nostalgia and sometimes unease. Nostalgia for their own, lost, nomadic past, whether real or imagined. Unease from xenophobia - fear of the stranger. As a consequence, the Rom have had to navigate many hostile centuries, yet largely kept their identity and cultures intact.

Live-aboards and shanty dwellers have much in common with them, to the point that we often share the Gypsy moniker. We too are mobile among those who would prefer to see us settled down. We too often have more in common among ourselves than with those ashore. We too live along a fringe; in the cracks, as it were.

The following Gypsy tips, or rules for survival/thrival appeared in a post by Ugo Bardi, plus a few gleaned elsewhere. I'll start with the bare list, which I've paraphrased, generalized, rearranged and loosely grouped in triads, then take them one by one. They're presented as 'rules', but consider them advice...


Be yourself.
Cultivate a free spirit.
Family First.

Protect your privacy.
Blow smoke.
Never stand and fight.

Stay mobile.
Live light, travel light.
Seize opportunity.

Cultivate know-how.
Minimize overheads.
Waste not.


*****


Okay... let's unpack 'em a bit:

Be Yourself

BE yourself! Don't yield to conformity. Homogeneity. The pressure to be like everyone else. To blend in. We are each of us unique in all the world. In all the Universe. Don't trade that away for love nor money!

To do so is to impoverish both ourselves and the world.


Cultivate a Free Spirit

Dance, sing, celebrate, make love! Never lose sight of the joy of living.

It's what makes it all worthwhile. What makes living more than mere survival.


Family First

Our family - be it your partner, your children, your kin or your tribe - are our first priority. our Family is our strength and well-being.

Invest yourself in them and theirs.




Protect your Privacy

Lots of folks are curious about how we live. But be cagey about what you tell whom. Not all of those interested are your friends. Detail can be used against you as gossip, rumor or as a pretext for official action.

Loose lips sink ships!


Blow Smoke

Mis-direction and mis-representation have their place, especially when dealing with officialdom. We want to appear as though we fit within the boxes on their forms, whether or not we do. We want to appear more settled and 'legit' than in fact we are.

Smoke and mirrors, my friends.


Never Stand and Fight

When in danger, when in doubt, hoist your sails and bugger out!  - Tristan Jones

Those dedicated to keeping freedom freedom-free tend to have the upper hand. To fight them is at best a full time job. At worst a losing proposition.

This is not to say that we shouldn't give due process a chance. But standing on principle come-what-may is a good way to lose our home, freedom and possibly more.

Consider moving along before push comes to shove.




Stay Mobile

Mobility has us ready to roll on a moment's notice. Extends our range of options and access to resources. Keeps us fresh in outlook. With mobility, we are not bound to the misfortunes of one place. Nor must we suffer a bad neighbor.

If not mobile, we are sitting ducks.


Live Light, Travel Light

Don't you carry nuthin' that might be a load. Ease on down, ease on down the road. - The Wiz

To live and travel lightly keeps us focused on essentials. This good advice has been passed on from the most ancient of Wise Ones to the most successful of present-day sailors.

Take what ya need and leave the rest.


Seize Opportunity

Make the most of good fortune. Recognize the Opportune Moment. Act decisively when a windfall comes your way.

Strike while the iron is hot!





Cultivate Know-How

DIY maintains our independence. Knowledge is portable, cannot be taken from us and makes us intrinsically valuable to others. What we can do is stock-in-trade.


Minimize Overheads

Overheads eat away at our substance. While we can never eliminate them entirely, we can keep them low.

The lower our overheads, the greater the return on any investment. The greater our freedom.

A penny saved is a penny earned.


Waste Not

We want to make full use of what we've acquired at cost. We often want to make full use of what others have neglected or abandoned.

Recycle, reuse, repurpose.

Thrifty does it...


*****


So there you have 'em. Rules for the Road from those who've been traveling a long time gone.

Like most advice of this nature, they're for our consideration. Take 'em or leave 'em. Adapt them to our unique situation. Add to them from any source we deem fit...

And ease on down the Road.







PS. Here are the original rules from Ugo Bardi's post, Survival Tips from the Gypsies, in order presented:

1. In battle, the best strategy is flight.
2. Don't carry and don't use weapons.
3. Cherish your mobility.
4. Travel light in life.
5. Cultivate creative obfuscation.
6. A man's family is his refuge.
7. What you learned to do yourself, can never be stolen.
8. Catch the occasion when you see it.  
9. Be jealous of your identity.
10. Be a free spirit.

Note:  I skipped number two in the preceding post. Definitely a point to consider seriously. It may be somewhat more context dependent than the others? Certainly, the use of a firearm against a human being is a choice fraught with consequence, however justified one may feel.

Forgetting How to Farm

 

It ain't the Old Days

Hell, before the War we was all organic farmers.

-- Overheard between two elder farmers in the 1960s

Forgetting How to Farm

One of the themes I yammer on about, here, is that things are different this time... that history is not a reliable guide for the collapse of modern civilization. And forgetting how to farm is one of the main reasons I believe this to be so.

I stipulate that more food is being produced, today, by fewer people than ever before in human history. Furthermore, I accept that modern transport and preservation technologies help maximize distribution and minimize scarcity.

So how, you may ask, can I argue that we have forgotten how to farm?

In a very real sense, human agriculture and animal husbandry are new on the scene. As homo sapiens we have only been farming for a tiny fraction of our existence. Nevertheless, some thousand generations hammered out their ways and means.

Only in the last eight millennia – a mere slice of deep time – did civilizational farming emerge. At first confined to flood plains and favored pockets. Later irrigated by labor and mechanical means. The horse harnessed and the plow perfected. Cultivars developed and breeds bred. Crop regimens and rotations increased yield. A host of supplementary technologies sprouted alongside, gradually improving the efficacy of farming within the budgets of sun and land (though not always the case).

And we thrived on its abundance. Our numbers grew in steady, exponential increase. Malthus famously plotted population growth versus the growth of food production and (correctly) warned of famine if trends continued.

Also famously, they did not. The discovery of the New World and its crops (especially potato and maize (corn)) and nitrate deposits bought some breathing room. The Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels brought new, mechanical muscle to the land. Dams and deep well technology allowed irrigation far from surface water tables. Chemistry brought pest- and herbicides and, best of all, the means to liberate vital nitrogen from the atmosphere.

And now, monoculture, 'marketable' hybrids, GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), slash-and-burn practices and other profit accelerants are displacing ever more traditional varieties.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well... there are costs. Arable acreage lost to 'development'. Topsoil loss and salination. Accumulating toxins in soil and environment. Fresh water and aquifer depletion and pollution. Evolving resistance among pests and infectious agents. New diseases leaping via crowded domesticated species to ourselves. Climate impacts. Ecosystem infringement and collapses. Our own burgeoning numbers as other species fade and fail. Systemic stress across the spectrum.

Each of these, individually, undermines the conditions for agriculture. Collectively, they undermine the very foundations of agriculture. Still, that's not the problem, per se. Societies have faced combinations of these factors in the past, and variously thrived, transformed or fell with trauma relatively local in time and space. Hence the notion that the past is a guide to the future..

But, in the course of only two or three generations, we have all but lost the means to farm without industrial technology. Should we stumble in our course – should the inputs from the grid, industrial chemistry, seed, fuel and machinery, transport, cold storage, processing and canning pause for longer than we can live from food on hand... if we collectively miss a planting season... what then?

Every two farmers feeding each hundred of us would be hard pressed to feed themselves in such a case. Hybrid seed is only worth a single crop. Plowing, planting and harvesting by hand (to name only three steps)? Water must flow by gravity or locally-powered pump. How to store the harvest? How to distribute it? To whom? Some jury rig is possible... modern understanding may ease the reinvention of some practices... but we'd be in deep doo doo.

Could something bring the global economy to a halt? I and others argue (elsewhere) that yes, it could, and sooner or later, will. Like the human body, any complex adaptive system is mortal. Blunt trauma, infection and 'normal accidents' go with the territory.

History does guide us in this; all civilizations come to an end. Ours is now global.

My great-Grandfather knew how to farm the old way. In his lifetime, truck and tractor replaced horse and wagon. He saw harvesters and later combines run the hands from field to city. By the end of his life, he was a living anachronism.

The Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites still carry the torch, but their entire output can feed no more than a small, modern city. Third World farmers are often much closer to traditional ways, but taken together can feed no more than a small, modern country.

Peoples of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, the first farmers, those who came after through WWII... they all carried with them knowledge and tools that we have scattered or lost. For some thousand generations, the ways and means of agriculture and husbandry carried survivors forward through thick and thin. But it is different this time...

We have forgotten how to farm.

PS. Even worse, we have forgotten how to live as non-farmers in the wild. How many of us thrown 'naked into the wilderness' could survive, much less thrive? How many could build a shelter or make fire? Gather wild forage? Hunt or fish with DIY tools? Dress our wounds? Find our way?

But all these things can be learned. If nothing else, they comprise a fascinating hobby!

Survival Mnemonics

This one is a little long for my taste and slides off my brain,
but embodies a lot of good advice!

Eselsbrucke (Donkey's Bridge) -- German word for mnemonic... a memory aid.


Survival Mnemonics

When crunch time comes, we may feel overwhelmed, dazed, traumatized or caught up in emotional turmoil... in many cases all of the above.

First of all, breathe... deep breaths. Still the mind. Come back to the moment.

Are we back? Seriously, this first step must be taken or nothing... and I mean nothing will help you. But the moment you have done so, you are ready to face and improve your situation.

I present the following mnemonics as among many applicable to survival situations. They are shorter than some, so I think more likely to be memorable and therefore useful. But when you find one you like, add it to your personal collection. Feel very free to craft your own.

What works for you is what counts!


F.E.A.R

There are many variations, some I find more helpful than others. Here a few of those:

Fight/Flight. Emotion. Acceptance. Response. -- This helps version progress through the series of human instinctual responses to a crisis. Without serious training, we may not be able to avoid them, but we can certainly step through them faster when we realize it's a sequence. [From SHTFSchool.com]

Face it. Explore it. Accept it. Respond. -- This one deals specifically with denial, a very common human response to crisis.

Focus. Equip. Act. Review. -- Once through the instinctual reaction phase, we might substitute this set. It's a very powerful problem solving algorithm. You might say it's the scientific method in a nutshell!

Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise -- While this is a 'mere' attitudinal bucker-upper, many experts consider attitude to be the essential for survival. I'd add the caveat that - despite the slight sneering tone regarding the first option - when SHTF, it may be the better part of valor.


Triple A

Assess. Address. Appraise. -- This is one I use throughout every day. It produces what I think of as the upward spiral of stepwise improvement, whether I'm fixing the sink, facing a bureaucracy or in crisis.


S.T.O.P

Stop/Sit. Think. Observe. Plan. -- This one stems from the Search and Rescue community. Persons who become lost often travel for considerable distances, becoming very much more difficult to locate. Literally stopping and improving the situation at hand is important to survival.


Rule of Threes

As a rule-of-thumb, one can survive...

3 hours without shelter
3 days without water
3 weeks without food

This rule helps us prioritize our activities, especially as regards shelter. Be aware that hypothermia (cold exposure) is the most immediate threat in most outdoor emergencies.

*****

These mnemonics can help you get through the first moments and hours of a crisis.

Skills, tools and supplies - in descending order of importance - will help us throughout the crisis,  increasing our odds of survival. The more we have on-board before SHTF, the better the chances for us and our'n.

It's called prepperation!

The Half Urban World for Doomies

Rapid globalization and economic conditions will continue to produce increasing uncertainties and risks, as well as new opportunities that will impact all phases of urbanization—often with unanticipated consequences. As a result, uncertainty must be a critical component of planning and policymaking. Economic uncertainty must be taken into consideration when new and innovative projects are developed to ensure that they are “successful” in local and global terms, and better equipped to withstand fluctuations in local and global economies.

-- From Urban Policy in an Uncertain Economy by the East-West Center


The Half Urban World for Doomies

(Roughly rounded terms, ahead. Original numbers gleaned from UN, IMF and World Bank sources ...)

• About 10,000 years back, agricultural civilizations first arose. From that time through the 1700s, it took from 95 to 98 persons actively engaged in farming to support 100 people; themselves and 2 to 5 non-farmers. Today - leveraged via modern, industrial technologies heavily reliant on fossil fuels - 2 to 5 farmers support 100 people when averaged worldwide.
  
• In recent decades, lean production and inventory philosophy (Just In Time or JIT production and supply) has become widespread. This means inventories of supplies on hand are kept to a minimum. In the case of urban centers in the U.S., food vendors and local warehouses are stocked on average to supply only two to three days of normal demand.

• A few years back, we passed the Half-Urban World mark. This means that more than half of us now live in urban concentrations of 2000 or more people. Current world population about 7,500,000,000 souls.

Each dot is a point along one of several exponential curves -seldom related - each of which now describes rapid, dramatic change.

Each development, in itself seems just another historical milestone on our road to the stars. Each a symbol of progress marking our advance as a species.

Taken together, they comprise an unprecedented recipe for disaster.

What we see is a situation in which an otherwise short-lived cessation of urban supply is going to have drastic consequences for urban populations who, in their desperation, will damage critical infrastructure beyond hope of recovery.

Supply chain failure essentially stops most food production in its tracks. Without steady inputs of seedstocks, fertilizers, feed, fuels, parts and manpower, production and distribution grind to a halt, with a horizon of the next planting/harvest cycle. Irrigated areas would soon lose water, as would many reliant on pumped ground and aquifer waters. No markets or transport, no point in harvest even where possible. Livestock would be put down as feed on hand is exhausted, saving only what can be pasture fed.

The hundred fed by each one or two farmers would go hungry, even if some emergency transport were arranged.

What follows is my best guess as to how this might play out on a near global scale. There will be many variations, especially among towns set in low density, rural areas. Size and local food production industries may follow a different course. Third world urban areas may have better local supply, but tend to be high density.

Stage One: Urban Implosion

This plays out much as collapse fiction portrays it. Panic, food riots, collapse of utilities and services, overwhelmed police and emergency services, emergence of gangs controlling resources and black market trade.

What is often overlooked, I believe is damage to urban infrastructures, including many which are vital to service extra-urban regions. Rioting, fire and looting can easily damage power and water stations and conduits, telecommunications, fuel storage, computer networks, railway and general equipment. Experienced, irreplaceable personnel will not be able to commute, abandon their stations to protect their families, and/or be lost to violence.

In fairly short order, without resupply, resources on hand will be exhausted or hoarded out of reach of many to most.

Stage Two: Urban Explosion

Individuals and small groups must at some point decide to abandon the city in search of food. Water and shelter will be of constant concern.

Likely, roads will be beset by 'highwaymen', exacting a toll of refugees.

Surrounding suburban areas, where present, will have their own pitfalls and dynamics, both for residents and for the refugees flowing out of the cities. Food here will likely have been exhausted or corralled as well. Their mere extant along with attrition from violence will cut into refugee numbers. Never the less, I expect many (hundreds to millions, depending on initial population) will reach the rural surrounds.

Stage Three: 'Locust' Behaviors Threaten Rural Populations

By this time, people will be desperate and ravenous. Every animal, grain, food or material deemed edible will be consumed. Every rumor that can be pursued will be, as mobs large and small pour through the countryside.

In particular, gardens will be uprooted and seedstock consumed. 

At some point, cannibalism becomes inevitable.

EROEI Energy Return On Energy Invested), I believe, will play a large role in this phase. Pillaging individuals and groups must achieve a net return, or they starve out. Dense or concentrated resources may support larger groups organized as bandits or raiders, but these will deplete quickly. Low density or well hidden resources will not, and any bandits straying into these areas will burn out.

It is an open question as to whether ex-urban mobs will topple rural societies, which will have problems of their own when supply fails. Clearly, initial urban numbers will be well down. Rural populations will diminish, but likely not to the proportional degree as urbogenic ones. They will also have intimate local knowledge on their side. It may be that some can hold out and retain social cohesion.

In this stage, something I think of as Demographic Winter (analogous to Nuclear Winter) seems possible. Large numbers of ex-urbanites burn what they can for warmth and cooking. Some percentage will get out of hand in uncontrolled forest and prairie fires. Globally. Smoke produced will likely have climate scale consequences for some time, further stressing survivors.
Stage Four: Forage, Gardening? and Husbandry?

Sooner or later, the population much reduced, small bands will begin to relearn wild forage and hunting technologies.

Limited gardening may begin as non-hybrid seed caches are discovered, and growth propagated from those which escape being eaten. Hybridized cloned varieties may survive for propagation in this phase, as well, so long as they are not overly dependent for success on insecticides and other industrial measures.

Livestock may be propagated. Most draft animal technologies as well.

But propagation of skills, plant- or animal stocks, takes time.

Of course, somewhere in here, domestic nuclear plants and spent rod storage facilities go LOCA.

Stage Four: Return to Organic Agriculture?

Assuming our species makes it this far, methods of organic agriculture, if it happens at all, will have to restore what is remembered and reinvent much that has been lost, under conditions of changed climate.

My guess is that this stage is unlikely. That we will not return to agriculture in any near future (millennial scale), and will likely have to rediscover it by the time we do.

But most of human experience did without it, and by some estimations, were better off before its adoption transformed us.


*****

Are full economic and urban collapse  plausible? And if so, are these dynamics likely?

If we are indeed approaching the limits to growth (see this blog's header), the conditions underlying the capital-based, global industrial economy. Events over the last 45 years are in high conformity with that hypothesis. We have seen the depicted curves flattening, with the model suggesting the dropside is nearly on us. Should a tipping point initiate cascading failures which outstrip capacity to halt them, ensuing collapse may well be catastrophic.

Global economic collapse is entirely conceivable to the IMF, World Bank and central bankers at national and international levels. Crushing global debt (national, corporate, individual), fiat currencies weakened by quantitative easing, non-productive spending (e.g., military), wealth disparity, rising cost of insurance, unstable business environment... and under it all plummeting EROEI on fossil fuels... are seen individually as potential threats to the global economy. Collectively, they are ominous indeed. Notice that growth within a limited system is not appreciably on their radar.

Global supply chain cessation would be the natural result of economic collapse (arrest). Again, there are many historical cases of financial breakdown leading to supply interruption. Typically, these have been short lived as support arrived, originating from stable surrounds.

Are tools available sufficient to restore confidence and restart interrupted global trade in a time to avert runaway, systemic failures (of which urban collapse is an example)? It's a matter of debate, but the very concept of 'too big to fail' implies that failure is not an option since it brings down the house. Once something big gives, it may well be that issues multiply faster than they can be brought under control.

There have been many historical examples of dramatic urban collapse due to war (especially siege), local economic collapse or natural disaster. Most of them follow stages one through three to some degree. Deviations appear to be more or less proportional to how much outside supply and assistance they receive, and how soon 'normalcy' is restored. How well the general population is armed plays a role. Long duration and/or lack of significant outside assistance makes the worst case the probable case.

Should supply chains fail, military and National Guard assets, running on strategic reserves, may attempt to run stopgap supply services. But the task will be enormous, and efforts diluted by attempts to establish order and control. Personnel will be difficult to keep on task as they go AWOL in support of families, taking what they can get away with. Most assets will be stranded overseas.

To my mind, the combination of low on hand inventories, food producer to consumer ratio and staggering numbers of the people involved and the high aspect ratio of critical dependencies in service infrastructures mean that we are in uncharted territory. 

That the transition from functional to desperate can proceed in remarkably short order. 
That urban breakdown will not be confined within urban city limits.
That the infrastructures necessary for restoration of function can be damaged beyond repair.
That rapid population loss - both urban and rural - can be catastrophic.

In a scenario of global economic arrest, extrapolate outward, demographic explosion from every urban center, world wide. Looking at a map, the world appears a minefield..


*****

In regard to the rural vs. urban bug-out debate, the preceding considerations suggest that rural wins hands down.

Urban areas, producing no significant foods from their own ground must be abandoned. Sooner or later, survivors will bug out rural. Those already rural will be ahead of them.

A further observation is that, the farther one is from urban concentrations, the better, lest the locust phase sweep over your position.

My advice? Relocate rural, now.

Git while the gittin's good.





PS. I searched the terms "half urban world" collapse in several variations looking for serious, non-fiction analyses, and found little to nothing (mostly my own, amateur efforts!).

I would welcome serious consideration of global urban collapse dynamics by anyone who's guesses might be better informed and referenced than my own.

Survival from a Survivor: Selco's SHTF School

Note foodstock at lower left

Learn things, people always need somebody who know to fix things (people, shoes, whatever).

It was not survival movie, it was ugly, we did what we have to do to survive.

Nobody wins, we just survived, with a lot of bad dreams.

-- Selco

Survival from a Survivor: Selco's SHTF School

In my opinion, there is a whole lot of BS in survivor circles.

Sometimes, this has to do with profiteers, hyping their nostrum for survival. Sometimes, it's those whose 'experience' is drawn from media stereohypes (sic). Sometimes the scenarios for which they prepare appear improbable in the extreme. Sometimes the scenarios are plausible, but advocated responses are not. Cruising through resources - both on and offline - it's buyer beware!

So I perk up when I encounter someone who a) has real life experience, b) seemed to learn from it, and c) can share it effectively.

Selco, a Bosnian man writing largely at SHTFSchool.com, shares very hard-learned, first hand lessons from surviving a year of urban collapse in Bosnia.

In the early 1990s, his town of around 50,000 people was surrounded during civil war. Civil authority disintegrated, public services (electricity, water, information) ceased. A desperate struggle for survival ensued among civilians, gangs and the dregs of authority. And all the while, the town was being shelled and bombed.

It was dirty, messy, smelly and deadly.

Selco writes eloquently and movingly about impossible choices under pressure of life and death, and long and short term prices paid for survival. Paid in blood and soul. Not only what must be done to survive, but the impacts of survival itself. He affords both rare insight and example in the struggle to survive and the struggle to live with it.

His is a sobering counterpoint to those who revel in the idea of coming collapse. Who look forward to grand adventure.

Who lived and who died? Persons alone and Rambo types were  the first to go. Those who sought or prioritized violence. Those who were too curious. Or trusting. Or inflexible. Or just unlucky. Many, many choices led to quick death. No honor. No glory. Guts required.

As you read, recall that - bad as that situation got - it was not a full collapse. Airdrops of MREs were ongoing... while mostly commandeered by gangs, these reduce the overall competition for food. Smuggling provided a trickle of resources from less affected areas. It was a crisis, lasting 'only' a year before 'order' was restored (rather than permanent collapse).

From these experiences, Selco has assembled a unique resource. What he and others did, what they might have done, how we might see disaster coming and what we all might do before, during and after.

Social distance is a term borrowed from pandemic response. I believe it to be a foundational strategy of any response to SHTF with a chance of success. In urban settings, it is almost impossible to achieve, and - as Selco's experiences confirm - only then at considerable cost. Relocation to a rural or wilderness setting, outfitted with appropriate skills and tools, is strongly recommended.

If you live in or near a city, or if you must pass through one; if you plan to bug in or out; if you merely plan to survive, Selco and SHTFSchool.com have something we all need.



List of open access articles by category, here.