What Comes Next

I sat last night at my work talking with a rather anxious Jen current events. It is a strange thing seeing what usually plagues painted all over another person's face. That conversation was fresh on my mind when I read Kunstler's latest. Here are a couple of passages that really jumped out at me:
"The larger underlying reality is that the United States as an entire, integral organism, has got to contract, downscale, and reorganize. The mandates of energy resource reality demand it. We can't maintain our way of life at its current scale and we have to severely rearrange and rebuild the infrastructure of it if we expect to continue being civilized. We have to get the hell out of suburbia, shrink our hypertrophic metroplexes, re-activate our small towns and small cities, reorganize the way we grow our food, phase out the big box retail (and phase in the rehabilitated Main Streets), start making some of our own household goods, and hook up the far-flung reaches of this continental nation with a public transit system probably in the form of railroads. By the way, there are plenty of "jobs" in this process, only not the kind of work we've been used to... sitting in cubicles or assigning tanning booths.
No amount of wishing for techno rescue remedies, or techno-triumphal fantasies, will overcome this basic reality. This is change you have to believe in whether you like it or not. Most of America doesn't like it and doesn't want to think about it and is doing everything possible to prop up the old arrangements. Bailing out the banks is just a lame attempt to keep banking oversized. Bailing out the automobile companies was just a way to avoid the recognition that Happy Motoring will soon be over. Bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was just a way to avoid understanding that suburbia is finished. The "green economy" that so many people idly blather about -- imagining that it will just mean running WalMart by other means than oil -- is actually an economy of awesome stringency. It's nothing like they imagine. It's a world made by hand."

For those wondering what to do, you can start with learning new skills. Learn to mend clothing, cook/garden, fix bicycles, or perform first-aid. More importantly, do acquire these new skills with other people. We are a lazy generation whose inability to stay focused on a single topic for more than a moment has warranted the creation of new disorders. Working with other people will help with our gadfly-esque attention spans but our mutual accountability; additionally, these experiences will be good for community building/reinforcing. Not everyone is going to be good at everything, so don't be discouraged if you don't immediately find skills that resonate with you. Keep looking. As our world gets smaller, there will be plenty of necessary skills.

Two skills that we all need to work on are growing our own food and learning to use firearms. For those of you in apartments, look into container gardening or community gardens. For those of you living in underground bunkers, well...As for guns, we can't let possession and knowledge of firearms be the sole domain of the right. I would much rather know how to use a firearm and never have to than not know when I need to. Additionally, the world changes very quickly. We need to be prepared.

If none of these ideas work for you and you still find yourself tossing and turning at night, go work in a soup kitchen or be a CASA. There are many ways to assuage White Guilt. Don't complain, do something.

Clarification

I probably need to stop writing in any sort of public forum after work and a few cocktails. I'm going concisely explain what's going on and what I am looking at going forward.

As I think I made clear in the previous post (even if it was the only thing...)that I bluffed my way into my job. I was not qualified. Period. Since getting the keys, I've worked diligently to feel qualified and I feel like I'm finally there.

What I also tried to articulate in the last post was that in the process of pitching my business proposal, I offered what I believed to be a conservatively optimistic estimate of sales figures. The numbers that I worked with were from the Monsoon Room after it had been open a year and well established. While the expenses are about what I thought, the sales have been significantly less. This has led the owner's to become impatient. How impatient? I don't know. I don't know if I'm too up in my head or if I'm seeing some ominous signs for my future at the bar.

Jared was hit by a drunk driver. This bears repeating. Another friend we think was drugged at the bar. Try as we might, drunk driving and date rape are situations that we can't avoid. And, quite the contrary, we facilitate or abet this kind of behavior in the sale of alcohol. It is, as I mentioned, an occupational hazard. I think these are hazards we all strive to avoid, but after doing our due diligence, we avoid looking at the obvious: We send strangers, friends, and family away with maybe one too many drinks virtually every night.

I've mentioned many times how much I work. I knew going in that it was going to be something that required most of my attention, but I really had no idea what I was in for. I don't do anything else. All of my creativity and mental energy goes into the bar. If I'm not working on new product or trying to find more efficient ways to get things done, then I am negotiating personalities or state/local bureaucracies. I get home or have a free day, I am out of gas. I sit on the couch and watch television. Not only is my life passing me by, I'm doing very little with that I am experiencing. Too much of it is lost to a drunken haze in the middle of the night.

Finally, if you're reading this then you probably know me pretty well. You know that I wrestled with how to best apply my resources to make my community, if not the world, a better place. I vacillated between going back to school and opening a bar/restaurant for quite sometime before the 1022 fell in my lap. I justified it in a number of ways, not the least of which was that having a spot for people to come together and enjoy each other's company while enjoying unique cocktails would be a good thing for Tacoma and Hilltop. I still believe that this is the case. I still believe that 1022 in it's current incarnation is good for the neighborhood. I am truly proud of not only the space and my staff, but also of the cocktails and culture of drinking that we promote.

Now that caveats are dispensed with, a 600 sq. ft. craft cocktail lounge in Hilltop (or probably anywhere) is not the lever with which I will move the world. What is this lever? I don't know. I have serious doubts about it involving children. Regardless of whether or not that is where I end up, I need to go back to school. I need to take math classes, a few science classes, then go from there. It has been my intention for a while to go back to school to initially study chemistry, which would dovetail nicely with what I do now if I chose to stay in the field or would lead nicely into an environmental science degree.

I suspect things are going to change very soon.

DMFJ

So, we went and saw old DJ the other night. Since the only people who read this were there, I'll spare everyone the recap (nice sweater!) As always, that asshole inspires me. He inspires me against my better judgment, he inspires he against my rationale self. That floppy haired, D&D-playing, non-dresser somehow makes me want to quit my job and blow up a dam (of course, then I'd go live under a log somewhere and play with baby foxes (kits?), live in harmony with nature...until a hungry bear ate me.)

I read his work and it changed everything. Now, I didn't and don't buy it completely, but I buy enough that I keep listening, I keep reading. Once I read the latest, I think I will probably have read more words by him than any other author. He has a way of framing ideas that are both disputable and inspiring. Who cares if he is inconsistent in his numbers for rates of sexual assault against women? If his most conservative estimates are close, it's still far too many. Who cares if it's not "90%" of the fish in the ocean? Say, it's 60% and it's only the large fish. That's still too many. Say there's not dioxin in "every" woman's breast milk. One is far too many.

Let's talk about what we can do. We can go and blow up dams(for shits and giggles - more shits that giggles, btw - google "number of dams in us"), take down cell phone towers, or lop off the heads of CEOs. The unfortunate thing is that this isn't The Monkey Wrench Gang and that they will kill or imprison us. We lose. One dam blown up, one dead white guy, one stupid cell phone tower down and that's it. They rebuild the dam; like the hydra, another CEO pops up in its place. We cannot win. Whether it means "getting there first with the most...," or "in war, they will kill some of us; but we will destroy all of them," we lose. We lose no matter which way you count it. Or spell it. Or sing it. Or dance it.

We can have well attended protests, beautiful and inspiring words, we hustle door to door to get out the vote. We lose. No one gets to a position to being elected without selling out, without being a corporate shill. That includes Obama, whose race occludes the fact that he is an agent of the status quo, and Clinton (both of them), who are agents of industry. They don't care about you, me, us. But this is old hat...

Let's talk about how this isn't a war to be won. Let's look at each other and be frank and honest. The war is lost. It was never a war; it was a slaughter. Any bloodshed that could have (maybe...) made a difference happened a century before we were born. Let us look at each other and admit that we are not going to change the world. Whether we are woofies or school teachers, bartenders or longshoremen. Yea, we can change a life here or there; we can work in a soup kitchen, or protest outside the SeaTac Mall (or Federal Way Commons - not ironic at all - or whatever it's called), or try to teach kids to read in our "spare" time, or we can do whatever, but what we are doing is useless. I'll spare you obnoxious metaphors about tweezers and sand. What we are doing amounts to vanity projects, to padding our social resume or appeasing our guilty consciences so we can go back to eating fast food at 3AM, smoking, porn, teen romance television, getting drunk, or whatever.

Full disclosure. More than you probably want to know (although it is a blog...), so if you don't want to go there, then click away.

Porn. Ok, so it was porn, smoking, and baseball. Now it's porn, football and eating meat. Which, after typing that out, sounds really gay...These are the concessions that I make that I am not proud of. I'll allow myself some porn erstwhile feeling guilty, not because I am watching porn, but because how the women are treated. I'm almost exhausted typing that because it's such a trope, but really, if you doubt it at all, then go to you porn and check that shit out. It's awful. Best case scenario, it's actresses pretending like they like to be raped. It's fucking awful. More than likely, it's a whole lot of women who have been assaulted, are sad, lonely, desperate, and don't even really know it. I remember reading Endgame when I was in Mexico and just wanting to hug the strippers or the girls pressing their tits into tourists faces. And like so many things, the feeling faded away with time. Now, porn.

But it's not ok. It's not ok to watch women get fucked, women who most likely have been assaulted early on (get there first with the most) and whose assault reverberates throughout their lives now reenact the violence for our carnal pleasure. Everytime. Every single fucking time I look at porn, whether I am out of mind (for whatever reason) or dead-to-rights sober, I think, "She's been raped." I know it in my belly. It's the same way I know it when I see it. Still, I left click until I find something that is not quite so disconcerting, take care of business as quickly as possible, then move on about my day. But, to be completely honest, I know what just happened. I know what I watched. I know what I did. It's despicable and I should be ashamed.
Lest anyone thinks that this is me being crazy about sex and all that, I have no problem with porn (eerily enough, the same way I have no problem with the death penalty) in and of itself; it's the knowledge that a fair number of the women participating are not doing so from an exhibitionist desire ("Yah, I totally want you to fuck me in the ass on camera so lonely, sad human beings can watch it on their computers late at night..." That conversation happens...), but from something far more unhealthy.*

Porn is bad. Porn is bad because of the probability or merely the possibility that these women are only doing this because they've been assaulted. Period.

Ever since reading DMFJ for the first time, I've been unable to reconcile any idea of resistance with the fact that I smoked. I was consoled by the fact that many other people who read him or felt the same way smoked as well. Janice died. That was the last night I smoked.**

I banged most of this out with ESPN on in the background. K gets whatever teen romance makes her forget her shitty day, I have baseball and football. I can do better. We can do better. Nate once challenged me to stop watching, listening to, and reading sports. In return, he would give up meat (except at the mom's, which is fair to middlin).*** I failed long before I had a chance to catch up to see where he was at. Progress not perfection, I suppose.

Here is what we do. We are all very busy folks. This makes dinners difficult. So we rally when we can. We get together, we stay in touch, we stay close. When we get together for dinners and drinks, we savor it and appreciate it. And.

And.

We make dates. Ya, let's have dinner and rally the troops. Let's get greased and talk politics. Let's scare our more timid friends and inspire those that are ready (it's happened already...). Let's also go shoot guns, take gun safety courses, and learn how to clean and maintain firearms. Let's go fishing. Clean and gut fish. Let's garden. Then we can have real dinner parties, the way it really should happen. Harvest celebration. Let's talk first aid, preservation techniques (see gardening). Let's have pickle and jam parties. Let's have stitch and bitch, all genders welcome. Let's talk self-defense. What do we do? Let's stockpile food and each summer, if the worst hasn't happened, tap into it for our camping. Then build it back up each year. Let's be creative about this. What's the worst that can happen? And in the interim, we can work to make our community better, our world better. Hell, we can and should challenge each other continually. We can be better than we are in virtually every imaginable way.

And in the meantime, if there's any question of what we can or should do, I would say rally around the family...




*This most definitely is not the word I want, but I'm going with it for the sake of expediency.

**On an edit of the last paragraph, I'd left a sentence that I'd thought read, "And I hope I'll never do it again." I read it multiple times and I had a subsequent paragraph that mas o menos responded to the idea of hope. Well, the actual sentence was lacking the never. It took multiple passes for me to notice. While sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes it's a cigarette haunting you.

***Give me the opportunity again. I'll both go vegan and throw down with the sports abstinence. If you got it in you...

My eye is twitching,,,

Why aren't we talking about what we need to do? What are we waiting for? Jen? Nate? I'm looking at you. Food, guns, first aid. Let's figure something out. The time is now. Rain barrels, water filtration, using grey water, growing high calorie crops in small spaces. Did I mention guns? Did I mention fishing? Seriously. No excuses. You both make more money than I do and I work more than both of you. Let's make this shit happen asap.

Crash Course and required reading

I just finished watching Chris Martenson's The Crash Course (h/t to Nate.) This is the required reading Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make Believe, James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, and finally Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. Watch Martenson's Crash Course. Next time we meet for dinner, bocce, drinks, or to run, we are going to talk about what we need to do. Then we will keep talking about it. Now, you tell me what I should be reading.

The Coming Night

Those that know me know that I've wrestled with how I can best apply my efforts to either make the world a better place or simply benefit my community. In the end, I took the path of least resistance, stayed in the trade that I know, and the result is that I spend my hours, which stretch into days and months, running a bar. Before I continue too far down this path, I must offer the following caveat: I am proud of what I do. I work hard and have created a place in the neighborhood for people to come together, imbibe, and enjoy each others company. That is it. I work at what I know and I am good at what I do. Some friends are carpenters, some teach, and some push papers. I make cocktails. It doesn't change the world, but it does give people a bit of respite in the face of an increasingly ominous future. It is this future that concerns me this morning.

James Howard Kunstler over at Clusterfuck Nation does good work. His book The Long Emergency is a must read. Kunstler writes about how our Culture of Leisure and Happy Motoring is predicated upon easy access to cheap energy. This is going to end sooner or later (all signs point to sooner...), at which point what happens to the suburban sprawl, planned obsolescence, and the general toxins and detritus left behind from 60+ years of rampant consumerism? Look around you at everything that is plastic. “Except for a small amount that has been incinerated...every bit of plastic manufactured in the world in the last 50 years or so still remains.” (The World Without Us, Weisman) This plastic, a large portion of which ends up in the ocean, concentrates pollutants in the environment and as it degrades enters the food chain at the smallest levels. Now, just so we are clear, these are compounds that have a shelf life greater than the Pyramids of Giza and the Roman Aqueducts. These tiny pellets and everything that we make out of them has an expected life that is measured in terms of a geological scale. Say 100,000 years. To put this in perspective, 100,000 years ago we were living caves; we were far from the only bipedal hominid; and (although still contentious), we (as Homo Sapiens) began our mass exodus from Africa. Your cell phone, plastic bag from Safeway, and potentially the majority of the buried newspaper in landfills, could be around long after our art, philosophy, and science have been reduced to dust and ash. Our great legacy will be sun bleached plastic and garbage that has reduced to the size of krill food and, the elimination of biodiversity that is being called the sixth great extinction, the Holocene extinction. This anthropogenic event promises not only to be a dark legacy of our over-consumption, but also promises to make it much more difficult for us to return to a sustainable way of living. Even after we kill each other in the streets as we run out of energy, fresh water and food; even as the coastlines rise and displace or kill millions; as the era of mass production ends and we are left with a wide swath of aggrieved, unemployed peoples looking to scapegoat someone (always the Other...); even after desertification, floods, malnutrition, AIDS, obesity, and cancer wipe out large portions of a soft, artificially-supported population; there still might not be enough for those who are left. Those that live into the Long Emergency may look out upon a world that resembles more McCarthy's The Road than Mad Max. Those left will rummage through the great wastes of the 20^th century culture looking for things that will help them grow or catch food, capture or filter water. I-pods, digital cameras, laptops, 20 pairs of shoes, and $12 cocktails will be revealed for the decadence and luxury that they are. History will not look kindly upon us as we rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic whilst talking about how to resist as the world around us ended. Already we enjoy too much at too small a price to us and too high a price to everyone and everything else. Our sporting events, muscle cars, personal electronics, fast food, and Cult of Convenience come at a price. That price is the degradation of environment, the loss of biodiversity, the subjugation of peoples half a world away, and endless background noise of wars that we no longer (or ever did) understand. Our enemy is the Other (be it the Terrorist kind or the Faceless Government Bureaucrat); we wonder why they hate us or why they send poor, brown children to kill and die for us as we listen to NPR podcasts on our techno-fetishist accoutrement while riding our ridiculously expensive bicycles (because we're Green!) to political rallies protesting the cause du jour or the bar to get drunk, get laid, to be seen. In this way, the literate, angry, rational among us are worse than the fat, burger-eating, nose-picking, reality show-watching, shuffling, gray mass of humanity; we have a moral responsibility not only to affect change directly and to resist constantly, but we have a responsibility to lead our lives by example. We have no room for laziness or excuses like, “Progress, not perfection!” How many people have died in the name of progress? How many die each day as we assuage our guilt with the petty, insignificant acts that have come to define resistance? Eat vegetarian, ride a bike, go to a protest, plant a garden. These First World choices are not enough. Do more and get ready, for night is coming. Watch the unemployment rates around the country, especially in impoverished areas. Watch what happens when a country that has moved from manufacturing “things” to a “service” based economy reacts to contraction that is permanent. What is optional resistance now will be a matter of survival soon. It will start with people pissed off because they can't have the Blue-Ray deluxe edition of the new Michael Bay explosion montage and end with people pissed off that they can't cheaply procure white fish (or any other sort of fish, which should be a luxury item) that was caught in the Great Lakes and processed in China. I fully believe that our way of life is so unsustainable and will end so abruptly that I'll dispense with the rest of this rant about broken I-pods, green Chartreuse, and the regular reoccurence of these fits in my life. We all read the same books and listen to the same podcasts. You know what has gotten me particularly agitated. I'm going to go finish my book, take some valerian root, then fall asleep with the tenuous hope that tonight is not the night that my neighbors kick the door in or simply burn my house down. Tomorrow I'll think more on how resistance is no longer an act of self-congratulatory idealism, but the groundwork for survival as the lights dim.

Edit: I'll learn to like paragraphs when I learn to be coherent. First things first. Sorry.

The Victory Garden

I started gardening for the first time last year when I was out of work. Inspired by the convolute ramblings of Derrick Jensen a my own dissatisfaction with my life in general, I spent last summer working at a DIY bike shop and a community garden. Here I am a year later, still unsatisfied, by trying my best to make it work. Here is a little documentation of the work at home. This first pic is of the bed that is mas o menos devoted to tomatoes and basil (purple and gree). There are a few Walla Walla sweet onions and a potato going as well. I moved the peppers (Anaheim and another hot type that I don't know that name of) over to the bed with the corn. The soil here is fantastic as we composted in the box all winter, added a bit of top soil, then called it good. I must say that in a lot of ways I am pretty lazy about this kind of thing; I simply threw all of our organic matter in the box without worrying about turning it too much or really doing much of anything. The worms seemed to have taken care of everything for me.

In this bed we cut the sod, added a bit of organic top soil, then put the corn, sweet peas, artichoke, and greens in the ground. A bit later I moved over here volunteer potatoes and squash.

Finally, over behind the beds where the soil appears to be the worst, we have planted more volunteer squash and potatoes, strawberries, and a blueberry bush.

So, we have soil of varying degrees of apparent health in each spot. It will be interesting to see how each group does. Philosophically, I think that getting the plants in the ground is the most difficult part. After that, it simply requires watering, occasionally weeding (although I keep this to a minimum as well), then enjoying the fruits and vegetables. Of course, everything could die, at which point I will been proven wrong about the amount of work required...

Green is this year's black

I'll return to work in a couple of weeks and I feel a sense of urgency w/r/t a few projects that I've started. While I'm happy about some of the preparations I've made for the apocalypse and my brief Mexico excursion, I am still disappointed that I haven't accomplished more. So, without further ado, here's where I am at so far:
- Volunteer at 2nd Cycle bicycle collective. This has been a great experience. I get to work with my hands on one of the most efficient engines ever created and learn about something that I use everyday that I didn't really know anything about a few months ago. The practical experience has been gratifying; I'm curious whether the administrative will prove to be equally so. We are doing something that is good for the community as well.
- Gardening. I've been teaching myself to garden by working in the community space down the street and in my own yard. Yesterday I built to 6'x6' garden boxes from cedar planks and salvaged wood from an old couch and a box spring, both of which contained a remarkable amount of easily salvaged pine. My goal is to grow most of my produce by next year. In the next couple of weeks I'm going to work on building a removable green house and a compost bin. Maybe soon a chicken coop as well...if not, then maybe a dog house.
- Writing. I've made my return to fiction. I've been writing everyday and excitedly researching a number of projects. I probably have the publication of an old story in PICTURE|STORY|SONG to thank for this. The bulk of my fiction will probably end up being graphic novels. Rob agreed to help me with 3 book proposals that I hope to have done soon.
-Sewing. I've started mending my clothes and I'm hoping to make panniers before the end of the summer. I have a feeling that this project is probably bigger than I realize.
-We've been brainstorming ways to make our house "green." We recycle significantly more than we throw out, but we still need to compost (the last attempt ended, er, badly), and I would like to reclaim graywater. Along the same lines, I need to build/salvage rain barrels. Any advice for this or any other project that promotes self-reliance or living locally, send my way.

I've got more projects on the horizon as well. I'm really excited and happy, not only because it's my birthday. Did I mention it's my birthday? Yea, so, no big deal or anything, but you know, it's my birthday. K got me awesome presents and there's going to be a party here on Saturday.

Slow Motion Armaggedon

Reprinted w/o permission from J's LJ. While I don't agree with everything, I still think it's work reposting.

-Apparently the food crisis is real. Last night on NPR's Marketplace, they interviewed an economist from the FDA who confirmed that globally the price of staples is rapidly beginning to evade the ability of the poorest to afford it. This has led to several SE asian nations to shut down exports of rice in an attempt to stabilize local prices. This of course will have a chilling effect on domestic production which will lead to further scarcity and shortages.

-Gasoline will probably top 4 dollars a barrel for regular unleaded by the summer, and there's really nothing we can do about it. This is even though according to several studies, demand for gasoline has in fact been reduced. As Gasoline, and particularly diesel fuel, continue to rise in price, everything anyone in the first world buys will begin to cost more money. Add to this the fact that we're nearing a recession and the continual decline of real wages for the middle and working classes in north america, combined with the fact that the EU's freight infrastructure is much less robust than North America's, and we're looking at a pan first world crisis within the next couple of years. And unfortunately, it looks like it will only get worse.

-Climate Change is increasingly leading to bizarre weather all over the place. In seattle, we had snow in April, which is unheard of, and our daily weather fluctuations are strange and ugly and provide a sort of Natural Born Killers backdrop to daily life.

-The Bush administration continues its course of sabre rattling in dealing with Iran and Syria, the two nations with whom we should be attempting to diplomatically engage in much more real terms and also begin to distance ourselves from the Saudis.

-Still no legitimate replacements for fossil fuels have been found and what fossil fuels are still available are apparently rapidly approaching peak supply. As soon as peak supply is reached, the only way to reduce prices on them will be to reduce demand. with maybe a couple billion cars, trucks, airplanes, and ships reliant on fossil fuels just to move and an increasingly globalized supply chain for agricultural and industrial products, that demand is not likely to abate and as a result the prices on everything will continue to rise.

-China owns close to a trillion dollars of the US national debt, putting us a in a precarious position of being at the mercy of another state for our continued fiscal solvency. Granted that even if China did elect to dump their dollars it would be disastrous for them as well as us, and it's not likely to happen as a result, if things continue to get worse in Asia, it becomes more and more of a real possibility as a way for them to leverage assistance.

-John "The Disaster Waiting To Happen" McCain is starting to look a little too teflon thanks to the hyperfocus of the mainstream media on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's campaign gaffes. McCain's image as a Maverick Independent, carefully crafted since the early nineties when he was nearly arrested on criminal charges for his involvment in the S&L scandals, is being bantered about uninterrogated by the same people who will unashamedly attempt to tie Barack Obama to the Weather Underground, and who have more or less decided that Hillary Clinton has no chance of becoming the Democratic nominee for the presidency. This Teflonacy of McCain's makes him a more viable candidate, and given recent revelations about the nature of the Iranian and Syrian nuclear weapons programs, there is now good reason to fear that McCain might do something truly crazy in the middle east should he be elected.

-Should that truly crazy something happen, it is unlikely that we will be able to continue as we have with a completely volunteer army. Our Military Readiness is already sorely taxed by the ongoing debacle in Iraq and the escalating problems in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani border. Fighting in Iran or Syria alone would possibly push us past the breaking point, never mind what might happen if violence broke out in south asia or china due to food shortages.

-What can we do to prepare?

As I see it, there are a number of things the average person can do to prepare for the collapse of western civilization as we know it.

1.) Buy Chickens: Eggs are an excellent source of protein and get a good return on investment from chicken feed. If you have a reasonably sized yard, then four or five chickens are cheap, easy to care for, and will produce eggs.

2.) Plant a vegetable garden and learn how to cultivate seeds from plants. Depending on where you live, there are any number of high input to output vegetables that can be grown. Also worth considering are fruit trees and berry bushes.

3.) Learn how to make electricity. One of the biggest challenges we may start to face as the energy markets destabilize is insufficient supply. We in the pacific northwest are likely to be spared this so long as our hydroelectric infrastructure remains intact, but people living in the southwest in particular need to look into how to construct small scarel windfarms and photoelectric panels and keep them working.

4.) buy a fishing pole, a hunting rifle, and a shotgun and learn how to use them. also learn how to skin and clean a large animal. this goes for vegetarians too. I look at hunting as a sort of last resort survival skill, but if things get truly bad to the point that the food transportation mechanisms break down, it will be a useful skill.

5.) read up on anarcho-syndicalism. In small groups, anarcho syndicalism is the most workable ad hoc system of governance. should there be a widescale breakdown of law and order, we will still need communities in order to live, and communities need a way to keep order internally. most people understand the principle of direct democracy, but in the absence of any sort of authority in times of stress, direct democracy can also be fragmentary. An anarcho syndicalist group functioning on an internal gift economy and an external barter economy will be able to function well and maintain it's internal cohesion.

6.) go to health insurance websites and find the names of young doctors in your area. if health care breaks, you will need to know who to go to to treat the sick, and younger people will have a less established group of patients demanding their attention in times of crisis.

7.) Buy a road bicycle with some sort of trailer. Bicycle travel is the most energy efficient means of transportation ever invented. it takes a lot longer to travel long distances by bike, but it will always work. Also worth your time would be to stock up on a few extra inner tubes, replacement brakes, tires, seat posts, chains, and gears. also, buy an extra helmet in case you get into a crash with your main helmet and they've become cost prohibitive.

8.) learn as much first aid as you can and if you can, invest in a home defibrulator and a top notch first aid kit.

9.) learn how to build a fire and fire pit. you never know when that might come in handy.