How are you preparing?

one big thing that i'd recommend is getting heirloom seeds. specifically heirloom seeds! these have no genetic modification and are the "old school" seeds that haven't been bred for the grocery store look. most seeds you buy in the store are weak and monkied with, heirlooms are worth the extra money you'll spend on them, and if you find the right place you won't even spend much more.
other than that, learn as many fabrication and repair skills you can. when you can't buy your stuff at wal-mart you'll need to make do, and being good at that is a good skill for barter with others. just consider how useful it will be if you're the only one in your community that can make/repair tools and such, you've become irreplaceable. just share the knowledge while you're at it. ;)
as for convincing people that won't listen, there's not much you can do. in my experience hand them what you've said that's come true and tell them outright what's coming. don't sensationalize or anything, but if you're dead on all the time and they still won't listen, then they never will.

~*~-~*~ 'Versal Free Agent ~*~-~*~

=======Memetic Komando======

======Khayos Ryzing Skwad=====

-Ehsewtearik Uhkullt Warfheir Devijon-

... and starting cleanup/relief as best I can.

I like all these ideas and am either doing or planning on many of them.

One that i haven't see and that would work, here in my town anyway, is to get in touch with and train with the city and county emergency responders. It is very practical and can keep you in the loop of what is going down. This may not be for everybody, but the more we are informed and out there helping people the better, I think.

I believe in being active in preparing my community and my home without mentioning 2012 or the possibility of a breakdown. Right now I'm helping organize a community garden network in my community and I'm growing my own food at home. When I explain to people in the general public why getting involved with it is important I give the following reasons; cutting down on oil dependency, strengthening the community, bringing life into the community, cutting down food costs for struggling families, and general economic development. I don't tell them; society may collapse any day now, the government may be planning world war III therefore we should build victory gardens, and I certainly don’t tell people that we are approaching the end of time. I find that people in my community, my family, my friends, all believe that no big change is coming and everything is going back to normal (it's all just part of the business cycle). People just don’t want to face it. And since they don't want to face it they sort of roll away from a conversation of societal collapse when it comes up. And I think that in order to be taken seriously by people who can contribute huge to the project; maybe it’s best to leave conspiracy theories at home.
The point that I'm trying to make is that we shouldn’t make the reason for change be a hypothetical future event. In order to make real change happen (i.e. a very successful community gardening program) the focus should be put on how anyone can benefit this year from being a part of a transition project. Many people need to get on board with this. In order to make it appealing to several different types of people one should provide reasons for why change is necessary that would make any right-wing-asshole, or blind-bat want to be a part of making change happen. It’s sort of like I’m acting casual about what’s going on but deep down inside I truly believe that we are in for an economic revolution/ political revolution/ spiritual revolution and so on. By getting people involved with the community gardening program they are building societies safety net and they are a part of the transition whether they see it or not. From what I see people want to act like nothing is wrong, I say, let them think that way for now and when the shit hits the fan it will get harder to ignore things. Just cross that bridge when you get to it and hopefully by then if enough people have helped out we will all have a bridge to cross.
This outlook that I am living by and these ideas that I have is something that I struggle with everyday. There is no simple answer for how to think, what to do, and how to react in these interesting times. But I’m sure that this path I'm on that people call "optimism and hope" is the best place to be in the world.

God Bless

Its like waking up. The system most of us were raised in lulled us to sleep. On a deep level most forgot their natural connection to and dependency on the cycles of nature. Now the alarms going off and not everybody is stirring and some are hitting snooze. We can shake them a little but still they are responsible for getting up. Maybe when the house starts burning you could slap them, but that is a personal choice.

I like stump grinding's idea of activation without indoctrination, and when people are open, sharing as much as they can use.

As a general strategy I think its best to live close to the cycles of nature and have a sacred relationship with your food, medicine, and Earth Mother regardless of the health of the system.

Preparations at my place looks like this so far:

Seeds- we collect them, honor them, plant them, share them, sell them, trade them.

Plants- We are growing many varieties of food and medicine. There is 100 healthy young tomato plants in my kitchen right now, chamomile sprouting in abundance out back, peppers etc. (Cayenne is an awesome medicine that I put in everything I can and you can squirt some, in water, up your nose when your sick or use a tincture to bring someone out of a heart attack.)

Also my partner can walk through any woods in the area and pick out what we can and can't eat, and we collect and grow as many medicinal herbs as we can.

Water- We have 25 gallons delivered every month in reusable containers from Vermont Pure. It could probably last about three months if rationed.

Yerba Mate- A wonderful plant from South America that we carry in our health office, was found by the Peace Corp to be supporting the health of native people during times of scarcity when most had to live on one meal a day. It has more health benefits than just about anything I've come across and can be brewed in any temperature water in about 10miutes. We currently have about 15lbs of Mate in stock.

Pantry- We try to keep a stocked pantry of cans and jars of various foods. Most of which come from the dollar store. As much as we like to eat the best fresh organics, when your starving its not going to matter. Jars of gravy, it lasts and can make roots, bark, and even your shoes more palatable.

Chocolate- We have a case of organic fair trade candy bars. When times are tough every little luxury can be a sanity saver, and their profits all go to support the Huichol's cultural heritage.

We're hoping to stock up on some Hemp Milk, coffee, fire wood, can openers, candles, matches and lighters, recycled paper products, rags (for when the toilet paper runs out:), etc.

We live in a semi-urban area without a lot of growing space, so we supplement by foraging in the many natural areas surrounding the Capital District here in "upstate" NY.

I don't claim to know a thing about how the economy works. I presume now is the time to research and learn. All of this seems very abstract to me - the supply lines cutting off. My mind is a flipbook with only two scenes:

1.) Supplies become harder to obtain; food, gas, electricity prices all rise. There's no such thing as recreational travel anymore, or buying art, or investing in musical endeavors. But we are all surviving.

2.) Apocalyptic-sized changes. Many of us living in the mountains, woods, and valleys, hunting and growing our own food. The dollar disappears. The internet crumbles. All levels of American infrastructure are no more.

I am very ill-prepared. This Winter I bought the book "How To Stay Alive in the Woods"...I began reading it but became sidetracked by academia (silly). I do however know that I want our current system to fail. And I want to live to see it.

I must begin preparation.
See you on the other side? :)

Well right now I am living in a major american city pointlessly attending college but I've decided to leave school after this semester and jump into the world of sustainable living via WWOOF (worldwide opportunities for organic farmers). There are thousands of farms throughout the world that you can get into contact via this organization where you can work and in exchange for working there you have a place to live, free food, and a wonderful learning and life experience. This is a great opportunity for anyone like me who is stuck in a major city and has no opportunities around to learn about sustainability and is wondering how to jump into the world of sustainable living.

and letting egoic tendency fall by the wayside.

I have a feeling the key is less about stockpiling resources{that's our current modality eh?} and more about relearning to co-operate , need little, give effortlessly and to form symbiotic relationships with each other.
Of course take care of your individual needs but don't hesistate to share with those around you. Have no fear of going hungry and cold. Feed and shelter those around you in need.
I have given and been given so much recently. It's beautiful! The more people know the world can be a giving, kind, and nuturing place the less angry hungry cold souls there will be and the more likely this is the outcome of the transition we are heading towards.

We are our greatest resource!

Open houses: http://www.couchsurfing.com/
Open travel: http://www.erideshare.com/
Open communities: http://www.wwoof.org/

Prepping could include a little meditation and keen attention to the events/focus of ones life as well. I'm brushing up on my "Hero with a 1,000 Faces" - might this be a collective hero's trial?

For economic collapse, I offer this advice: spend all your dollars on real things before novemer 09. This is when the webbots say things'll deteriorate pretty fast, especially starting the 5th.

This would pertain to (death of) the dollar, Israel attacking Iran and sucking the U.S. into some sort of war, and lots of strange behavior and energy floating about.

Time to get that Pineal Gland cleared out and reved up!

I just subscribed to Wilderness Way magazine hoping that I will learn a thing or 2 about living off of the land. Also saving organic heirloom seeds and teaching the youngsters in my family how to garden so they will be prepared. (canning foods/drying foods) I am getting books on local wild edibles/medicinal herbs and trying to learn them. I wish there was a class in the Fargo/Moorhead area for edibles around here and in Minnesota. I remember going to a wild edible class @ the state park w/my mother when I was a kid. What happened to the classes??? Also gradnparents have a great farmstead w/log cabin and wood stove. If anything happened my entire family would make it there to hopefully live. Wishing I knew of more people in the FM Area interested in this and evolver.net. Let me know if your out there!!! Also knowing how to stay calm and happy during chaos is a must!!! "I have not yet encountered a temple as blissful as my own body." ---- SAHARA"

Reading the above comments in response to Daniel's suggestive query I fear that, at this late date, only 2 or 3 in 20-30 people (@10%) have a clue as to what might best serve them. And this is a sample taken from a population of people who are seriously considering the possibilities! As a percentage of the global population they (Eureka, Colin, et al.) would have lots of room left over on the head of a pin.

If we are truly anticipating the Mother of all Paradigm Shifts sometime in the next 6 months to 4 years it is unlikely that gardens and a water supply will play much of a role, depending on the rate of change. If electricity and water suddenly stop flowing, food and fuel supplies stop being delivered and money becomes meaningless overnight, the chaos will be overwhelming. If you boil the water gently enough, a lot of the frogs won't notice (but they will still die in earnest).

In any case, to say that "the immediate future may look totally different than what they have been expecting" barely hints at the magnitude of the question. There are very few people, no matter how excellent their education, who are able to even think about quantum mechanics - it requires a 'language' they simply don't know. You can speak as slowly and clearly as you want and they still won't be able to understand. Asking someone to prepare for a future that cannot be imagined is equally incomprehensible to them.

For myself, I'm hoping to find someone in my vicinity that I can 'tag along' with, because although I think I grasp the concept I know that I haven't mastered the tools I would need to succeed in the transition to... whatever. But I sure do want to be present for the main event.

...someday. Ha, and in the mean time what is melting down besides icy things is the belief in a system, a matrix born out of Babylonian obsessive worship of the planets. This whole trade system on Earth, based on papery inky things, some believe is money, is all linked to the nasty old clock. The clock's math, 60 minutes of 6 degrees of space, is an old celebration of the 60 year conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn which the Babylonians so loved. Here we are at the decline and fall of modern civilization and humans are still using this outdated planetary technology.
PREPARE for survival??? Prepare for a new world! The seeds of star people are here in the new children, there are more alien beings in and around this planet than any other time, telepathy is rampant, the unified field is about to be made public. This, my friends, is the time to practice high spirituality, the golden rule - the rainbow way. The meltdowns happening now are irreversable and Don't Panic is the first preparation.
Alas, melt we must. With a few solar flares. And the melt down is what will trigger a higher order of organization in human affairs. Spontaneously!
Prepare? We are going to the 4th dimension and then quickly to the 5th. Soon. Prepare?
Yes save heirloom seeds and store electricity in your spare tire and have clean water for children and find out which totem animal best suits you. But be prepared to leave behind this nightmare called Post-modern Babylonian civilization. Be prepared to burn paper money and leave the token coins at the steps of the courthouses. Be prepared for a reality beyond the wildest sci-fi movies. Prepare by seeing all others as aspect of yourself.

The real question may be... why prepare for anything? When no one really has any idea what future we may "attract", why not just go with the flow, assume that it's ALL good, and enjoy the RIDE! When we really begin to understand that "This too shall pass..."

Keep the head broke open,

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

Philip K. Dick

Waterlily I live in an urban enviorment and lots of empty lots so I decided to make victory gardens. my neighbors just walk by and watch me and some comment i respond by inviting them to be a part of it. no one has come back yet, i live in a very poor part of a city and there just not use to see empty lots being used for gardens. mostly there used for old tires and trash. Well we took the old tires and filled them with dirt and planted potato and beets and pumpkins. Can't wait to see the looks on there faces when I start to cook this stuff out in the garden straight from the vine.
I'll keep you all updated on the results, I hope to inspire these folks to get busy preparing but first they must see others doing it.
I have also a fifty gallon rain water container, storing rain water rather then plastic containers.

I agree with you styagrahi, and in my own personal experience, living a simpler life, with little or no luxuries has led me to be an outkast, a status I don't mind, because I have the good company of a few like minded individuals, but I think a big reason many people are afraid to move toward a more simple existence is because they feel they won't fit in, if only they had the insight to see that simplicity is the key, and that quite likely in the near future our infrastructure will crumble and all their devices of high culture and technology will be rendered useless to them. How many times have you heard someone say, " I don't know what to do when I don't have my cellphone," or, "I can't LIVE without my phone?" As most of us here on evolver would agree, this is certainly not the case, and in my own experience in the past when not having a cell phone, I always felt more at ease, and a closer connection to the earth, perhaps the telephone is a precursor to telepathic communication, a realization of our innate desire to want to be able to communicate with people across great distances. But i digress, I enjoyed reading all of these postings, and they have helped encourage me to find my center, stay positive, and get back to the core of my being, simplicity. Thank you all.

"Simplify, Simplify." -- Henry David Thoreau

Here on Evolver we usually lean towards the bright side of things so I had been avoiding this subject in the hopes that our collective positive energy would help the world rise above any oncoming disasters.

That being said, it is very difficult to ignore the high number of signs pointing towards a crisis. I worked in banking for 8 years and one of my most experienced colleagues told me once that, "If the system collapses, the public won't even know until they go to use the atm. They will just lock the doors at all the bank branches and let people deal with it."

That freaked me out so I have been trying to learn as much as I can by buying helpful books at yard sales and taking a really good multivitamin as well as eating a much healthier diet. I also cut down my alcohol intake and quit drinking coffee. The less addictions we have to feed the easier it will be.

For sometime I thought of arming myself but that would only feed into the negative energy that is out there and if one is on the right path then weaponry is unnecessary.

We are turning off the cable and planning to move towards a forest area in the next two months. Right now we live in Oakland and it might not be the best place to survive in an economic meltdown.

I encourage people to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Farnhams Freehold by Robert Heinlein for some interesting reading on this subject matter.

I have to say that Evolver is helping us prepare by connecting us to each other. I have learned so much from all of your blogs and I feel like this site has helped me tremendously.

Maybe as we continue to form together the unification will help shift the planet towards better days? I hope.

.

A sustainability/think tank site that is just up recently and with which you might consider involvement:
http://futuredawningadmin.ning.com/ This group was put together by my friend, Mary Rose, who has spent a good portion of her life in consciousness/sustainability research and service. She worked for quite some time with Dr Vern Wolfe (http://www.holodynamics.com/---he'd be a great subject for your writing, an amazing man).

As to alerting others to the coming challenges in food supplies: I see it as a responsibility to calmly alert others to this---and I see it as coming very soon----yet it is clear that many are stuck in the old fears. My intent is to reach those who are receptive to listening, and to let those who are not live (or die) though the consequences of their decisions. I believe that both of these are at the heart of true compassion. The next few years are going see a lot of us kissing a lot of others goodbye, letting them be. My sense of it is that we are all best-served by touching the lives of those willing to be touched. We can lead others to water, but force-feeding just sucks everyone's energy.

BTW, Daniel, I truly appreciated your 2012 RoQ book. Thanks for so effectively being amongst the ranks of us "wake-up artists".

This has been a wonderful thread to read ... especially as it moves over time.

My sympathies to us all as we try to get our minds around this time ... who we are ... and why we are here.

At the practical level, I began to regrasp the structure of "collapse" and profound cultural change as a youth. By the early 80's it began to feel more inevitable, because I had been a lifelong student of the human story. And if one attempts to study this wide spread of time and culture, the pattern of our time becomes more clear. History will likely ask, "Jeepers! Couldn't they see it coming?" Or, "Who the heck did they think they were?"

Anyway ... I began moving toward the edges of the culture decades ago as I found my way back to an indigenous point of view. I work in nature with forests and living systems. I live with my work.

Freedom from mortgage and other cultural traps has long been a goal. Thoreau and others, plus life experience have shown that simplicity and natural connection has ALWAYS been a prosperous, healthy and meaningful path.

So I take care of the biological basics: Warm and dry, water, food and community. Choosing to live where my heart called ... in the lush diversity of temperate forestlands ... has made all the difference. I have no paper wealth, no stocks or bonds or gold. I have access to and knowledge of a large natural land where the resident population possesses little clue to the natural resources everywhere around them. I live where the ratio of resource to population is highly favorable to anyone with basic native sense of a place. I have many things gold and paper cannot buy.

Shelter, water and food are free for the making. Why then grasp at a career that would require separation from what is free to do for oneself?

I invested in health, land and resources, and knowledge of how to live well with the Land. When the collapse began, and as it continues and crescendos, I have nothing personal on paper to lose. But I can feel the psychic shudder of the old form suddenly standing naked and dumbstruck like a deer in the bright headlights of a screaming semi.

I prepare by living my daily life in search of sanity. I make firewood for the future of warm and dry.

I chop wood and carry water.

And I build community connections. I share my surpluses with my neighbors without account, and receive treasures in return. My diet includes bread and wine, cheese and fruits of all descriptions and would cost a king's ransom if I tried to purchase such a diet. But it arises quietly and naturally out of our regional neighborhoods. I have invested in good neighbors and Friends.

I practice a form of Listening ... quieting and opening. My teacher is always all around me, and I've learned that really all I have to do is "show up" ... that is be present and awake. Nature communicates in a pattern language. Nothing magical here. Truly native or new native transformers will know this language. Shamans know it.

My circle is complete and today is a good day to die. With the fear of death behind, the natural playhouse opens. It seems all of Nature has been standing on its tiptoes straining to see how we will now respond. The first major obstacle is fear. So I tell my children mostly, "I don't know, but it seems to me we have come here to this time on purpose. We have a mission, and that mission cannot be realized or accomplished if we run in fear. We WILL be afraid ... of that we can all be certain. The trick will be to keep our balance, remember to breathe and relax ... and open to the other side of this collapse."

This is not just denial and happy thinking. If we obsess with the tsunami of collapse, it will consume us. Sort of like the biblical character of Lot. As he was turned and told to move away from the collapse and consumption of Sodom and Gomorrah he was instructed to "not look back". I suppose if he did, and if he fixed all his attention on the collapsing structures and institutions, he would freeze up and be consumed.

If you really want to come through this, make your connections and prepare to let go of everything you thought you knew. The real question is not how do we patch this mess, but how do we simply get out of the way. As Paul of Tarsus said to the Romans, "be not conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind".

Or ... chop wood and carry water.

Warmest best wishes to you all.

vinekeeper

IMHO, the Northern hemisphere is pretty screwed up. It's only a matter of a few generations before all that radiation kicks in and you'll be living in an X-Men world. We're talking radioactive jellyfish and seaweed spreading across the pacific. Hanging out anywhere near NY or DC will assure you of low survival stats, unless you're an ex-marine. Thus, my simple life saving advice from me would be for you to emigrate to Cape Town, South Africa ASAP! I'll be waiting at the airport, if there's still air traffic. Call me on your SAT phone, if the solar strike doesn't blow all the communications satellites. I'll pick you up in my UNIMOG and we can go hang out in my bunker, 5000 metres under Table Mountain.

peace and love

Schwann