Deck chairs on the Titanic

[Ixion]

Precisely.

However. Back then, people didn't have things that did all the really hard work for them. Like washing machines, electricity, and internal combustion engines. What were basic survival skills then are utterly foreign to their modern descendants.

Back then infant mortality was rife, and people died of the flux more often than you'd think, because they simply didn't understand the concept of disease transmission vectors. Most of us do now, but we don't know how to prevent the transmission of disease without running water, and enclosed sewers.

Course we do. Same way as we did when I was a boy.

I was born in a house without electricity or running water . No enclosed sewer, long drop down the back. Didn't see a washing machine until I was about 10. Didn't have one for many years after. And that's not so many years ago.

What you are not taking into account is knowledge. Even if the world falls apart we won't lose the knowledge. Primitive people died of dysentery because they didn't KNOW how it was caused. We do. We know about trace minerals. We know shitloads of stuff that nobody knew only a few hundred years ago. We KNOW what the causes of infant mortality are (well, were) . Yep, premature or sickly babies aren't going to make it if the world caves in. But no way would we revert to infant mortality like the 19 C.

So we have it both ways. We are still close enough to the world of my childhood to be able to survive without "modern comforts" .Wouldn't care to do without steel, but there'll be enough of that around for along time, scavenged from now useless high tech stuff. And we have the knowledge that we didn't have back then.

No internal conbustion engines would be a shit.

But, we'd survive. Well, survive the natural stuff anyway. Surviving the social disorders might be a bigger problem. I think what ammo one could get ones hands on would be too precious to use for hunting animals. So, back to traps (I reckon there's enough possums in NZ to feed most of the population. Then add bunnies) . And pitfalls. And poison.

[RantyDave]

Economies collapsed, farms were abandoned, whole villages in England.

And this, I think, is my point. History shows that really big disasters - be they famine, war or pestilence - can and do occur on a fairly regular basis. Just because most of us don't realise what a big F-off ecological disaster looks like, doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.

Dave

[MSTRS:Me]

Fookinell...I thought things were bad over there in the Scottish Thread, and then I poke a nose in 'ere...
I'm off to track down my loved ones, and make it the end quicker...

[Hitcher]

More or less describes my current feelings.

Take up blacksmithing, or become an armourer. That way, after the Cataclysm, you can name your price!

[idb]

So how would NZ fare with it's selenium deficiency in the soil etc??

Hasn't spoken of NZ, only several case studies - Easter Island, Mayans, Greenland Vikings, Rwanda, Japan, China, a couple of pre-European Pacific Islands, an American Indian tribe I forget the name of and a couple of others.

One interesting irony (to digress for a moment, which I never normally do) is that Australia has the lowest forest cover of any First World country, 14% if I remember rightly.
It is milling that forest cover and chipping it to sell to Japan (which has the highest at 74%) for $7 per tonne.
This is turned into paper and valued at $1,000 per tonne and Australia buys it back!!!
Australia also has the most nutrient-deficient soils of any continent and its forests are unable to regenerate at anywhere near the speed they are being milled.
The argument is that Australia is exporting environmental degradation.

It's all part of globalisation I suppose and the need to keep 'friends' happy.

[SPman]

Nope . Not romanitic. F**k'n hard work.

Shit yeah - we planted and harvested 3 acres of oats, by hand, last year, just to see what it was like!!! Planting was OK, the bloody harvesting almost killed us, but, we did it!
If people have to, they will.

[idb]

...All of our fertiliser is imported...

Then what do we do with all of that lime that is dug up in Southland?

[Hitcher]

Shit yeah - we planted and harvested 3 acres of oats, by hand, last year, just to see what it was like!!! Planting was OK, the bloody harvesting almost killed us, but, we did it!
If people have to, they will.

Another consideration is how much "notice" they will have in order to prepare for such eventualities. If this sudden requirement to become self-sufficient were a sudden thing, then probably a whole growing season would be lost while people got their shit together. This would have a significant effect on dependent populations.

In reality such a change would only be driven by dire calamity, as people could never make themselves "transition" to a lower plane of production without some pressing incentive.

[Hitcher]

Then what do we do with all of that lime that is dug up in Southland?

Lime isn't a "fertiliser". It's a "sweetener". It changes the soil's pH level more than it imparts any meaningful chemicals for plant uptake.

[Ixion]

Dunno where the "all our fertilser is imported" notion came from

Ballance Agri manufacture fertiliser at plants in Mt Maunganui,Awarua, Kapuni and Whangarei. Ravenscroft (surely EVERYBODY ahs heard of *them*) have plants at Dunedin Christchurch and napier.

Probably others too.

And of course that ignores good old dung.

[MSTRS:Me]

Dunno where the "all our fertilser is imported" notion came from

Ballance Agri manufacture fertiliser at plants in Mt Maunganui,Awarua, Kapuni and Whangarei. Ravenscroft (surely EVERYBODY ahs heard of *them*) have plants at Dunedin Christchurch and napier.

Probably others too.

And of course that ignores good old dung.

It's the raw materials that are mostly imported. Ravensdown at Awatoto (for example) is just a place that blends into the finished products.

[Ixion]

That is just global economics , though. It is cheaper to bring phosphate rock from Morroco than to dig it hrere.

But NZ has rock phosphate deposits . Near Clarendon in Otago, and near the Millborn cement site are two I know of.

If we stopped getting it from overseas we would not be bereft .

[Okey Dokey]

There's so many knowledgable people contributing to this thread that I'm hesitant to offer my thoughts. At first I thought it was going to be all doom and gloom, but the further we moved on from the original article the better it got.

What troubles me about these future scenarios is human nature itself. Never mind the dysentary, or the desperate struggle to plant, grow & harvest food. I feel up to that struggle (really)

It's the lawlessness and breakdown of society that alarms me. The dirty and desperate baddies banding together to steal from the good tillers of the earth. I think Ocean1 is right to suggest arming his boat! Maybe that does sound a bit like a survivalist attitude, but mankind always seems to descend into warfare/gangsterism. The Maoris here in NZ had a very tough existence, but according to history found plenty of time to raid the other tribes each year.

There is nothing new about the battle of "good" vs "evil" , but I sure hope I have time to spare from my subsistence farming to bond and train a defensive militia with some good guys...

[Ocean1]

Course we do. Same way as we did when I was a boy.

I was born in a house without electricity or running water . No enclosed sewer, long drop down the back. Didn't see a washing machine until I was about 10. Didn't have one for many years after. And that's not so many years ago.

You have an uncanny knack of making me feel old.

Stop it.

Take up blacksmithing, or become an armourer. That way, after the Cataclysm, you can name your price!

I already am.

And I already do.

[mstriumph]

Are we able to get Carbon Credits for everytime Fatjim farts?
...........

dunno - but carbon TABLETS work a treat for that ---- we feed them to the pup and no-more-mr-stinky!!!