The Vision, Intoduction

Welcome!

"The Vision" is a narrative based on the assumption that the power has been lost in North America. Many of the concepts from my, "Royal Flush in Spades" series (found in the January achieves) are incorporated to bring forth this scenario. I first described this last year over at BNB (Bullnotbull.com).

All trails have a beginning and a end. The beginning of this trail can be found under, "Collapse or Decline? Or Just Another Day?" By reading your way upward you'll be actually going down this trail with me.

"The Little Sisters" series, is a story about the spirit world I encountered while being in the backwoods of Northern Michigan.

I'll try and answer any questions that you might have, good luck!

Thanks, yooper

The Royal Flush in Spades, Part II, Adding it up

After reviewing many of the concepts I've presented here, it's my hope dear reader, that you might add a lot of these up and make something of it as you see fit. Many writers when describing a scenario have themes of Peak Oil, Climate Change, Financial Collapse, as you might have noticed, mine is of Natural Consequence. Perhaps our society will evolve in a natural process to a new environment from the consequences of all three and more? Just exactly what that natural process will be, I think is anybody's guess. Back at the old school house, the instructors took very little stock on just how collapse would happen but what that collapse might look like and the consequences of it.


Under the "lights are out for good scenario" I'm going to attempt to explain what the consequences of this might be. In this attempt, I'll be going back to each card and describe what the consequences might be under this scenario.

Starting with the Ace first, or electricity, we learned that indeed that it is possible the entire North American electrical system could go down, so it's a real possibility that the lights can go out for everyone. In this case, it would be extremely hard to imagine for the power to be restored in time, before catastrophic events would begin to emerge. It's a fact, that wide spread area's of the country can go down at once and a possibility, that even more areas can go down in attempts to bring the power back on line. Time being of the essence until problems escalate into something insurmountable within the time frame before our society breaks down. Furthermore, as time wanes, the possibility of this actually happening becomes greater. Not only is this system aging, but there is more and more demand put on it. Could it be just a prolonged heat wave that will actually bring it down? The people over at BNB, was just shocked when I revealed that I thought this eventually might bring down one of the regional networks. Where was the electromagnetic bombs or terrorists attacks?! I also expressed my view that if one regional network went down it might be likely the other two would eventually go down the same way or by attempts to restore the broken one(s). Moreover, I thought it wouldn't matter anyway.


Even if the system were to go down like the size of the Northeastern Blackout of 2003 for a couple of weeks, it would be doubtful that even if the whole world came to our aid, it could stop the chaotic situation of 50 million people! Especially if this happen during the winter months. If this country had a hard enough time rescuing the people of Katrina, a catastrophe of this magnitude would be unimaginable and unmanageable. How would these people keep warm? How could the world even deliver the amount of relief to that many people in time, before they expired? Without power, it simply cannot happen. It's just not feasible.


Almost all modern infrastructure was designed, built and maintained under the assumption of continuous power. Without this infrastructure our environment will change immediately. It will be the end of our world as we knew it. As discussed earlier, city water would not last after this many days, how would you get fuel to all these thousands of back-ups in time? Wouldn't the grocery store be cleared out after the first day or two? How would it be restocked? How well does your furnace work without the blower powered by electricity? How far do you think you would get on a road system that is dependent on lights? How would you refill your tank? How would you take money out of a bank dependent on computers?


By the way, do you think you'll go to work under such conditions? Can you even perform your duties without electricity? Do you actually believe police, firemen, and other crucial personal in keeping order, will actually report to work, leaving their families behind under such a scenario? Even if they did, how long would it take before this type of personal would be overwhelmed? Don't feel alone if you don't have answers to these question, I don't either. However, this is the consequences if the lights go out for good or for any lenght of time. Not looking to good, eh?


On to the King of Spades, population dynamics. What happens to a population when you suddenly take away their daily requirements of food, water, shelter and security? Of course, you will have a chaotic situation at hand. That is exactly the situation the Dept. of Energy has suggested would happen. When the lights are out for good, better yet, if the lights don't come back on in time, the environment that we are so dependent on expires. Many of those who are unwilling or incapable of adapting to the new evolving environment will die, since they cannot meet their daily requirements needed for survival. There will be some seeking to isolate themselves from this situation and flee to yet another environment, perhaps the woods, hills, desert, etc.. They will have to have the acquired knowledge that comes from experience in order to do so and a good deal of luck. Perhaps there will be another day when the sun will shine for these people, however that will be after "the monster" has moved on... Good Luck to the people who attempt this and hope to see you in the woods!

The Queen of Spades, water. Without electricity, there will be a whole lot, less of it. Almost the entire population gets their potable water from deep wells. It takes power to pull that water up, called electricity. This is an example of the decoupling of electrical generation/uniform parts of mass production (the pump), that I was referring to earlier, that had supported a population of this size. Without it, well...... Therefore most of the population will have to rely on surface water to meet their needs. If this water is potable, how long will it be? Back on BNB, I predicted that there will be more people who will expire from dehydration and water born disease than from starvation. This only makes sense because when the body is deprived from both, it'll die quicker from lack of water, that's a fact.

The Jack of Spades, food. Without power, how can we expect to feed the present population? This is impossible! It takes electrical power to process seed, power to transport seed, power to plant seed, power to nourish seed/crop, power to harvest crop, power to transport crop, power to transform crop into edible food, power to distribute food, and power to prepare this food to be acceptable to a population of 300 million people. Have I missed something here? Imagine feeding the entire population of the average community from the gardens grown in that community! Even if the gardens were large enough, try hand pumping the required water that garden would need. Of course, this is assuming the water table is within reach. This is also assuming that crop would be left to mature to produce next year's seed. Is that even possible with most of crops grown today? I think not. Of those that do have a resonable stock of food, they would likely have to defend it from those who do not. Especially, those that are not isolated from large populations...

The Ten of Spades, our industrial environment. Our industrial environment started when cheap fossil fuels made it economically feasible to couple electric generation with mass production of uniform parts. Take any one of these out of the equation and we don't have this environment any longer. If we don't have this environment, we cannot support the people that was produced by it. It's just that simple. People will have to find another environment and try to adapt to it, as I said before, this is easier said than done. Isolation can be a double edged sword. Areas where the populations are high and the physical boundaries (water, mountain ranges, etc.) are hard to breech, present unique problems within themselves. Another facet of this thought might be physical limitations, an example of this might be, if a population cannot reach water in time, if the distance is too great to reasonably obtain it, than that population becomes isolated. The extinction process begins since that population cannot reach another similar environment (one that has water). Yet another facet of isolation, of those that do breech another livable environment become isolated themselves from the rest of the population, this too can pose problems within itself....

The industrial environment's area mass is hugh, it encompasses everywhere that has infrastructure, transmission lines , roads and such. Land that does not have this feature of being civilized is hard to find. Land that can support even a small population without infrastructure, even harder. A small population that can support itself, even harder yet....

God, grant me the ability to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.................................

The Ace of Spades, V, Power outage

Power Outage




While gleaning through the Wikipedia article, "Power Outage", I've came up with most of these facts.



A power outage may take one of three forms. 1) Blackout: where power is completely lost. A "rolling blackout" is a common term for a controlled way of rotating available generation capacity between various districts, thus avoiding wide area total blackouts. 2)Brownout: where the voltage level is below the normal minimum level specified for the system. This can be particularly damaging to electric motors. Some brownouts , called voltage reductions, are made to prevent a full power outage. 3)Dropout: where loss of power only lasts seconds.



Power failures are particularly critical for hospitals, since many life critical medical devices and tasks require power. For this reason hospitals, just like many other enterprises have emergency power generators which are typically powdered by diesel fuel. Power outage may also be the cause of sanitary sewer overflow, a condition of discharging raw sewage into the environment (water).



Under certain conditions, a network component shutting down can cause current fluctuations in neighboring segments of the network, though this is unlikely, leading to a cascading failure of a larger system of the network. This may range from a block to an entire city, to the ENTIRE GRID. Modern power systems are designed to be resistant to this sort of cascading failure, but it may be unavoidable. It has recently been argued on the basis of historical data and computer modeling that power grids are self-organized critical systems. These systems exhibit unavoidable disturbances of all sizes, up to the size of the ENTIRE SYSTEM, and any attempts to reduce the probability of small disturbances only increase the probability of the larger ones. Some observers have expressed concern that there is a tendency to erode the resilience of the network over time which is only corrected after the major failure occurs.



Restoring power after wide-area outage can be difficult, as power stations need to be brought back on line. Time being of the essence, before cascading problems amount to insurmountable problems. Normally, this is done with the help from the rest of the grid. In the total absence of grid power, a so-called "black start" needs to be performed to "bootstrap" the power grid into operation.



An example of this power loss through cascading events occurred Aug. 13, 2003. It was the largest blackout in North American history. Effecting 10 million people (1/3 the population) of Canada and 40 million (1/7 the population ) in the U.S., encompassing eight states. During this outage water systems in several cities lost pressure forcing boil water advisories. Cellular telephones experienced significant service disruptions. Most interstate passenger rail transport in the affected areas were shut down and the power outage's impact on international air transport and financial markets were widespread. Meanwhile, the reliability and vulnerability of all electrical power grids was called into question....

At this point we can assume that a threat of the entire grid shutting down is real, it's a possibility. To think that the Northeast Blackout occurred in 2003, leaving 50 million people without power, is fact. I view this threat to our present environment very much as viable as Peak Oil, Climate Change and Financial Collapse.

The Ace of Spades Part IV, The North American Grid

THE NORTH AMERICAN GRID

Again, I must ask you my dear reader, "Why do you suppose, almost everyone associates the power being out with collapse?" Could this be some kind of worldwide, wide held premonition? However, when it comes to discussing this topic of what life might be like without power, it ranks a close second to that of die-off, of being unpopular. It is so unpopular, that almost no one knows much about it, they simply can't imagine what life might be like without it or have some kind of fantasy, totally unrealistic view. Could it be, like the industrial environment (the coupling of electrical generation/mass production of uniform parts) that has produced and maintained the present population and the "de-industrial" environment (the de-coupling of electrical generation/ mass production of uniform parts) will actually produce the die-off? Do you suppose some people are unconsciously associating life without power with die-off? Or do mechanisms that assure survival of the species block these kind of thoughts of some people? I think it could lay somewhere in between.....

Back at the old school house, the instructors likened the electrical grid or grids, to that of the nervous system of the human body. In fact, our nerves run much like electrical current, that it's electrical current sending messages to the brain. An example of this might be, a pin prick to the finger will send an electrical charge through the interconnected nervous system that will stimulate pain in the brain. Any damage of nerve along this route and brain never receives this "message". If the body sustains enough nerve damage it automatically begins to shut down and die.

What is the North American grid? Gleaning from an article entitled, "GridWorks", from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, these are the following facts. The North American grid, consists of three independent networks, Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection. These networks incorporate international connection with Canada and Mexico. In 1940, 10% of energy consumption in America was used to produced electricity. In 1970, that fraction was 25%. Today it is 40%, showing electricity's growing importance as an energy supply. It has the unique ability to convey both energy and information. It's a world-class system, however it's facing some serious challenges. The majority of the 10,000 power plants, are generally long-lived investments; the majority of the existing capacity is 30 years or older.

Electric power is essential to modern society. Economic prosperity, national security and public health and safety CANNOT be achieved without it. Communities that lack electric power, even for SHORT PERIODS have trouble meeting basic needs of food, shelter, water, law and order.

Isn't this what I've been eluding to all along?

Has Progress Peaked?

The above picture is what was the modern day "scrapper" of the 1870's. It was brought to the farm undoubtedly by schooner ship and was very likely the first piece of heavy equipment in an 80 mile radius. A team of oxen were used to pull the pre-industrial piece of machinery and the levers in back of the shovel were driven into the earth by men. It was primarily used to scoop earth making a ditch and dumped making a road bed. This process of making roadway is still used today.

Progress: a proceeding forward; advancement or improvement in mental, moral, or physical condition. growth or development. source The Winston Dictionary, Advanced Edition, 1946.


Back to Duncan's Olduvai theory, the first phase of human history basically was when simple tools and weak machines (like the one pictured above) limited economic growth. The second "industrial" phase encompasses modern industrial civilization where machines temporarily lift all limits to growth. The final "de-industrial" phase follows where industrial economies decline to a point of equilibrium with nonrenewable resources and the natural environment.


Without getting too technical and looking at a worldwide view, it might be fair to point out that we're probably in the latter stages of the second "industrial" phase. Not quite yet in the third phase. The instructors thought that once global progress ceased, the die-off would soon begin. Furthermore, once forward progressed stopped, there would be a "pause" before another direction or decline could take place. An example of this might be that a train must come to a complete stop from going forward before it can go in reverse. Pauses can be very hard to spot, when looking at market trends for example, sometimes they are only realized in retrospect. However, what we're talking about here is a break within the 100 year industrial life span. Perhaps, the severe recession we had during the early 1980's, was this the pause in this country? This is mighty close to what Duncan predicted to happen in 1979. Have we progressed beyond this? The answer is, yes, beyond a doubt, we were still growing beyond 1979! Correct? We cannot continue growing in population, economy, and extraction of resources, once the extraction of those resources begins to diminish! Of course, all resources are not all going to diminish at once, making it extremely hard to pin point when the scales actually dip the other way. An example of a diminished resource could be the fisheries of the world.



Even though, I believe we have declined here in North America for the past thirty years, we are becoming more and more a part of a global economy that hasn't. Hasn't this actually "masked" our true situation in this country? Thinking of Russia, without a doubt, they have come back and their standard of living continues to grow from the early 1990's when the former Soviet Union collapsed. Look at the growth of the economies of India and China! Another notion the instructors had, is that there would very likely be a explosion of resources extracted and consumed toward the end of the "age of progress". I am certain, they were thinking of terms of 1930- 1970, however they are still correct in that respect, only that there's a lot more resource than they dare imagined. Of course, this only makes sense as it would require more resource to maintain the population.


The instructors all believed that once the world ceased to progress, there would be a short pause and then we would start our descent. That this era will be short lived and marked by power outages, finally bringing down entire electrical grids around the world. That is, once electrical generation was decoupled with mass production of parts (one cannot happen without the other and this actually defines the industrail society), this present environment (age of progress) would end adruptly. At that point, the industrial society (age of progress) could not support the population it created. Once that happened, the die-off would begin in earnest, end of story (the instructors would not speculate what might happen after that).

Pedaling Backward, Going Foward

Here's a pic of my Great Grandmother's wood oven. Gee, do you think there will be a day when I'll be happy to have it? Do you think I should go over and get that heavy pup, right now?

I'll just bet that when my Great Grandmother got this oven new, she had the newest modern innovation of the day! Suppose, the other women in the small community came over to gaze at it? Marvel at it? Do you think there will again be a day, that this very oven will be marveled at again? If you answered "yes" to that question call yourself a "reversalist".

Right now, a very interesting conversation is going on over at The Oil Drum. Sharon Astyk has an article called,"Is Relocation Doomed?: A Response to Staniford's "Fallacy of Reversibility". My friend FAR and I are discussing this over at his site, "Tales from FAR Manor". What's actually being talked about? Ha! ha! "going back", we learned from the Olduvai Theory, that as energy consumption declines so will our lifestyle and population. Going back a little further, I discussed Jay Hanson's thoughts of why most people can only think "progressively". This could be the classic example, of someones vision of the future who simply cannot think of terms of decline. They may see a future with less energy however, we'll invent our way out of it, or do something different to continue the linear progression of human history, as they see it. Most of the "controlled theories" of the future are derived from this kind of thought. Most of these people have one thing in common, they do not understand the laws of thermodynamics. It takes power to make power! You cannot come up with more power if it's not there to be had. Can't borrow it and pay later either. For every action there is a reaction.....

Back over at BNB, I described a concept, "pedaling backward, going forward". Those of us back at the old school house enjoyed going on our annual spring trip to Mackinac Island. There is no motorized vehicles allowed on the island, so it's either pedal or horseback to get around. Naturally, when we were over there, the kids from the island would show off their skills on bicycles. This included "pedaling backward, going forward". That is their butts were on the handlebars, they were pedaling backward, going forward. What a strange site to see! Anyway, I liken this to what we could expect on the other side of the curve on our descent. With our energy resources depleting, life could be similar as going back in time when we had the same amount of energy. The kids knew the roads very well, they have traveled them all their life, by viewing the past (facing the scenery backwards) they could tell where they were headed (going forward) in the future. They would only once in a while turn around, look ahead to see if any obstacles lay in their path. Furthermore, I explained, that anyone who could not understand this concept, would not be able to understand anything that I would later pertain to. Sharon was in full agreement with this thought. It was at this point she wanted to "see" my vision. Again. our "good doctor" from Oxford could not grasp this, but desperately wanted to "see" this vision also. Kentar had left the conversation at this point. However, I think he was just shocked, after I revealed this point. He often thought that I'd, "be sigging along and then would suddenly zag."

So at this point, I've pretty much have shown my hand here. However, I could be very, very, wrong about this. I do believe we've been in decline now for almost 30 years, and I am assuming this. Staniford, does have a point when he questions us, "So why do you industrialize a society, is that process reversible? This is a very good question especially after using the example that we cannot repeat back much of what is already done....

It's quite likely, that Staniford doesn't believe that this society has declined at all and he's not alone. Neither do my instructors! These individuals are the darkest people, I've ever met in my life! And it will be their vision (our vision) of what life without power might be like, that I'll reveal. I'll explain why they don't think we've declined, in my next article.

The Ace of Spades Part III, The Olduvai Theory

THE OLDUVAI THEORY and going back to the stone age.....

The above photo was taken almost twenty years ago, and shows one of my primitive tepee camps and my old hunting dog. I stayed at this camp for a month and a half before moving to another similar camp and stayed there another two months.

The Olduvai theory states that the industrial civilization will have a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years (1930-2030). Gee, that 1930 date is mighty close when electrical generation was coupled to machines of mass production, eh? This theory was first introduced by Richard Duncan PH. D. in 1989 (almost ten years after my formal education), and divides human history into three phases. The first "pre-industrial" encompasses most of human history when simple tools and weak machines (like the photo posted earlier), limited economic growth. The second "industrial" phase encompasses modern industrial civilization where machines temporarily lifted all limits of growth. The final "de-industrial" phase follows where industrial economies decline to the point of equilibrium with nonrenewable resources and the natural environment.

The decline of the industrial phase is broken into three sections: 1) The Olduvai slope (1979-1999), 2) The Olduvai slide (2000-2011), this marks escalating warfare in the Middle East and the peak of world oil production, 3) The Olduvai cliff (2012-2030), by 2012 an epidemic of permanent blackouts spread worldwide, first there will be waves of brown outs and temporary blackouts, then finally the electric power networks themselves expire. Finally culminating to a world population of 2 billion circa 2050.

A staunch supporter of this theory, Perry Arnett, (a frequent poster on Jay Hanson's "lists"), has a timetable of the following events: 2005, oil probably peaked, still on an undulating plateau in 2007, starts cliff 2010-2012 or before. 2012, U.S. electricity brownout and blackouts become the norm, or sooner. 2015, World die-off begins in earnest. 2030, U.S. per-capita energy consumption hits the "30% mark-After Peak" equaling a 1930's lifestyle (probably much sooner).

I only wished that one of the instructors lived long enough to see this! Would it have changed his apocalyptic view? Probably not, it hasn't changed the other instructors view of the future, either.......