NOTE: This article has been posted a Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/5/22839/57074) as well as Life After the Oil Crash (http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/Planning.html).

Written January 1st

It doesn’t matter where in America you live; it doesn’t matter what your job is. Let’s imagine, for an instant, that tomorrow you wake up and the nation has entered a Post-Carbon Era.

What exactly is the Post-Carbon Era, you ask? Just judging on the name, you’ve probably already guessed: it’s an era where Cheap Oil and Gas – and all the modern conveniences that rely on them – no longer exist in economically viable form, or, through supply disruptions, are no longer available to the continental United States.

There is no question that the actual Post-Carbon Era (if and when it does show up) may not look anything like the picture I paint here; the future is notoriously hard to predict.

The point of the version presented here is that this version, in some combination or permutation, seems relatively likely to eventuate itself, given current geopolitical events.

The whole point of this exercise – and the point of this article in fact - is to Be Prepared – for what is most possible, or even for what is the worst case scenario. Remember the Boy Scouts: Expect the worst, hope for the best. That way you will be both prepared, in the event of disaster, and pleasantly surprised, in the event of anything else.

So, back to the Post Carbon Era. It doesn’t matter why it happened, at this point – all you know is that it did happen. It may have been another terrorist attack with low-yield dirty nuclear bombs in key cities. It may have been long-range, high-payload strategic ICBMs from Russia after Putin finally popped off. It may have been that the Saudis and Iranians and everyone in the Gulf just got sick and tired of our imperialist meddling and cut off the flow of oil. It may be that China got tired of holding all our worthless IOUs and called them in at once, causing our entire economy to melt down.

Whatever the cause, the effect is the same: lots of General Unhappiness in the states.

Having said all that, what does the state of a PCE actually comprise? What events will come to pass before we can truly say, "Yes, okay, now we are living in the Post Carbon Era?"

Below are some rough guidelines, any of which taken alone would be cause for general societal alarm, but two or more of which will suffice to act as an operational definition of our theoretical Post Carbon Era:

• Interruption or breakdown of federal services (banks, police, fire, hospitals, jails, sewers, power generation)
• supply chain disruptions (food and consumer goods)
• prohibitively expensive energy price (oil, gasoline, natural gas, diesel, bunker fuel)
• economic difficulty (extreme currency deflation or collapse / skyrocketing unemployment)
• the erosion of the basic social order (i.e. nobody going to work, rioting and looting, etc)

Basically, to envision the PCE, one must only think of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, multiply that effect by 2 or 3, and broaden it to a national scale.

So here’s the actual scenario. This is where the exercise becomes fruitful.

The Scenario
Imagine you wake up tomorrow, as I did today, to an eerie silence. The noisy garbage trucks that show up outside at 8AM didn’t show up; the parking lot across the street is suspiciously empty. Many parked cars are gone; some are still around.

Now imagine, if you will, that all this strange activity (or lack thereof) is not due to a national holiday (as it was in my case this morning) but to the sudden arrival of the Post Carbon Era.

Further evidence of this is apparent as you stumble outside your apartment/townhouse/condo/McMansion. There is shattered glass in the streets; far-off sirens wail, punctuating and eerie silence. Looking towards your nearest Major Urban Center, all you can see is a huge pall of smoke hanging over it. You hear far-off gunshots.

It is slowly dawning on you that Something Happened.

You run inside to turn on the TV, but your power is out. There is no electricity; maybe you are able to raise a wireless connection on your computer enough to check your favorite news website. The size 30 headlines say it all: DISASTER STRIKES.

Again, it doesn’t matter what the disaster is: foreign terrorists, crazy Presidents unleashing nuclear hell, economic failure, bird flu outbreak, comet strike. The point is, before the last flicker of Internet dies and your computer turns off, you realize that You Are Now On Your Own.

The landlines are down. You can’t call the police, or for an ambulance, or for a cab. In fact, it becomes quite clear to you very quickly that everything you have come to rely on, all the material wealth and social position and modern-day gadgets that you have spent so much time accumulating, your fancy internet-browsing cell phone, hybrid fuel car, water-based lubricant and Ninetendo Wii, they all mean roughly the same thing:

Diddly Squat.

The skills you used to rely on to get you around in the world: highly refined social climbing skills, office politicking skills, internet-browsing skills, report-writing skills, memorandum-drafting skills – these, you realize, are skills ill-suited to the Post Carbon Era. You would be better off now, perhaps, to have a different set of skills: negotiating skills, conflict resolution skills, bow-hunting skills, fire-making skills, or carpentry skills.

Additionally, all the stuff you have accumulated, that once stood you in such good stead with your fellow man, and in fact may have helped you attract a mate – your 52" plasma TV, your deluxe nail-head block-framed leather sofa, your environmentally-friendly unbleached paper lamp shades – all that stuff, you realize, is worth roughly the equivalent of all those skills you have:

Diddly Squat.

Coming to these two realizations in already panic-inducing circumstances will not be easy; fortune favors the prepared, and the prepared will have already walked through these mental steps, and taken some time to evaluate the implications of having your entire skill set and net worth of material possessions rendered virtually valueless by a single stroke of world history.

And thus we arrive at the entire purpose of this article: to prepare the unprepared, to introduce to a mind that boggles at this scale of catastrophe the very real possibility of it actually occurring, in an attempt that, if such horror should come to pass, the survival rate for the prepared individual will be much, much higher.

Reading survival handbooks, once quickly discovers the first (and one of the only) consensus in survival literature; the mentally prepared stand a much better chance of survival than those Pollyanna’s who always cheerily maintained that "nothing bad will happen....at least not in our lifetimes!" Survival is at least 50% mental – that is, having the will to live, and additionally the will to make some simple and sound preparations, if only in one’s mind.

So here, in what I think is a logical order, is a series of decisions that one might have to make in a PCE scenario such as the one described above. As you read through this list of questions, first read the question: the answer it for yourself, in your own mind; then read the explanation, and the accompanying questions that follow your particular decision.

First: the basics. Shelter, food and clothing.

1.Should I Stay or should I Go?
The most fundamental PCE survival question, and the first that I believe will face most of us should any of this come to pass. In your neighborhood, your apartment building, your housing complex, your farmland county, the first basic split in people’s psychology and decision-making in a disaster instance is likely to be: should I stay with my dwelling, counting on it to protect and shelter me, or should I leave it, push out and onwards searching for "someplace better?" We shall call this fundamental distinction one drawn between the Homebodies and the Refugees.

For the Homebodies:
a. What are the benefits of staying put? What are the costs?
b. Are you 100% sure you can count on your (dwelling) to shelter and protect you? What about against armed attacks by roving bands of looters?
c. Is your house or dwelling sustainable? Will it regulate normal temperatures well? Does it need lots of power for heating up or cooling down? What rooms or areas are most easily heated up / cooled down? Do these areas coincide with any major living areas / bedrooms?
d. Is your dwelling situated on property with access to fresh water? Firewood? Renewable energy sources?
e. Do you have a portable generator of any significant horsepower? Can you generate your own electricity in other ways (solar panels, windmill, etc)? How much power can your property generate? How much fuel do you have in reserve? How many days’ worth? What if you drained the gas out of all your cars? Do you have enough "latent energy" sitting around your house and cars to create sustainable power (i.e. set up a windmill?)_of any sort of non-trivial generating capacity?
f. Do you live in a area where there is heavy, frequent fresh rainfall? Is collecting rainfall or dew water possible and sustainable? Are you aware of your daily water needs and those of your family / pets? (Hint: the average adult human needs about 1 liter of water a day; 3 liters in very hot conditions).
g. Who are your neighbors? Are you friendly with them? Enemies? How closer are they? What stands between you and them? Is there a neighborhood association you belong to? Would you trust the people in it with your kids? Your life?
h. Where is the nearest source of natural food (NOT a grocery store!) Are there fruit orchards nearby? Vegetable gardens? Livestock? Within 5 miles? 10 miles? 35 miles? Would your land (if you have any) support a garden? Fruit trees? A crop? (Even something tradeable like tobacco?)
i. What sort of "neighborhood" do you live in? Rural? Agrarian? Urban? What is the socioeconomic perception of your neighborhood? Is it the ghetto? A gated community? How likely is it to be "targeted" by a disaffected proletariat 200 men strong with torches and pitchforks (and firearms and homemade bombs?)

That’s enough questions to get the Homebodies started.

Now, for the Refugees:
A. Where are you going? If you’re not sure yet, how will you decide?
B. What are the benefits of leaving your dwelling? What is the purpose of your outing? (i.e. scouting, emergency supplies, serious long-term travel across borders, etc)
C. What will you take with you that will ensure A) Your own food security for the duration of your travels, B) emergency medical care for yourself or someone else along the way, and C) security in case you are approached by unfriendly individuals who wish to deprive you of A and B?
D. If you discovered you had to leave your dwelling in 30 minutes and never come back, what would you take with you (weighing less than 10 lbs)? What if it was 5 lbs? What if you only had 10 minutes?
E. How long will it take to get to your destination? Will you be just on foot, or on a bike, or in a car?
F. How will you navigate? Do you have maps (road maps, terrain maps?) Do you have a compass? Do you understand dead reckoning using the sun, moon and stars?
G. If you are on foot, how far are you prepared to walk? Do you have comfortable shoes? Sturdy, comfortable shoes that you would take hiking over, say, broken, torn-up concrete with sharp rebar sticking out of it?
H. If you are on a bike, what route will you take? How do you know that route is still open? Do you know of alternate routes that do not follow major streets that may be clogged with traffic and/or people?
I. If you are going to take your car, what will you do about security? Gasoline is now a resource more valuable than gold, how will you preserve it in face of unfriendly strangers, perhaps armed? Is this usage of your tank of gas the best use you can put it to? How far can you go on a tank of gas? Do you even keep your tank filled up?
J. If you are going to take your car, do you know what roads are open and what closed? Have you reconnoitered the area? Do you have alternate routes in mind in case of road closures, delays, mass panic in the streets, etc? How well-known are these alternate routes?
K. If you are making a supply run, where are you going? What stores or markets are still likely to be open or, if not open, mostly intact? How likely is it that you will find all you need at your first destination? Do you have alternate destinations?
L. If you are scouting, where is it most important to scout, based on your longer-term goals (i.e. leave the country, leave the state, leave the county or city or area)? Alternate routes? Which areas will it probably be easiest to get to? How long will you be gone? Is there a time limit after which you would like someone back home to come looking for you? Is there any way to stay in contact with loved ones at home while you reconnoiter (cell phone, 2-way radio, shortwave, smoke signals)?
M. If you are planning on leaving the country, what will you take with you? What is absolutely essential? How big of a mess do you expect the border to be? Do you anticipate many people will try to flee along the same route you are taking? Might certain border crossings be closed? How much food and water will you need – for a straight through drive (or walk), or for one with complications and alternate routes? Do you have a way of persuading border guards to let you across – valuable items for barter? Enough cash to make it worthwhile, even if deflated? Jewelry? Food? Gas?

That’s a lot of questions; but hopefully, now you have some idea of the very preliminary steps you might take to ensure your survival in a Post-Carbon Era.

Next, we get down to the nitty gritty. We extrapolate from the first two groups of decision-makers, Homebodies and Refugees, and go into more detail on how life might unfold for an individual from each path as time goes on, starting from the moment of decision to either be a Homebody or a Refugee.

1. If you are a Refugee, how are you going to deal with all the other Refugees in your way (remember all the disaster movies with miles of parked cars on freeways leading out of disaster zones, essentially queued up nicely to be eaten by the 200-ft lizard / tripod alien / tsunami / next comet)? Are you going to ask politely for a spot? How do you currently cut into lines, and how might that be adaptive or maladaptive when everyone around you is near-panic? How are you going to deal with Homebodies, preparing for a life of hoarding, perhaps trying to rip off your stuff before you are quite ready to leave?

1. If you are a Homebody, how are you going to deal with Refugees that may try to rip off your stuff as they leave?

1. If either, what mental parameters might you set that would convince you to change your mind from a Homebody to a Refugee and vice versa (i.e. # of armed attacks per week / day, or amount of traffic between you and the border, etc)?

1. If either, fill in the following blanks: 3 Skills that would be in some way useful or marketable in a Post-Carbon Era. Good examples might be: medical skill (esp. field medicine), carpentry, animal husbandry, machining, organic gardening:

My most important skill would be: _______________
My second-most important skill: _______________
Third-most important: ________________

(Hint: if you have trouble listing even 3 skills, then list 3 skills you think WOULD be highly valuable that you know YOU can learn in the next 5 years)

1. For either, do you know 3 people who live within 15 miles who you would trust with your life? Would they also trust you with theirs?

1. For either, do you know how to defend yourself against any sort of physical attack (besides ducking and running; that is hard-wired in)? What sort of defensive or offensive skills do you have? Martial arts? Do you own firearms? Do you keep a non-trivial amount of ammo at home? Have you considered how maybe a societal breakdown might actually turn out worse if everyone had guns and lots of ammo?

1. Are you prepared to kill someone? What about for valuable resources that may mean the difference between life and death for you and yours? What about to protect yourself if attacked? To protect your family?

1. Would you be comfortable living in an "intentional" or "working" community where every member had to work for the good of the entire group? Or are you more of a loner, preferring to live off the land in some measure of isolation? Which do you think would be "easier"?

I realize that these are heavy questions, but I absolutely believe they are essentially to answer now, given that they may one day be essentially to answer in a Real-Life situation.

We've covered a lot of ground already. The above has more or less temporarily exhausted the questions that come into my head when I think on this issue. However, if anyone reading has any further thoughts or questions, I would love to see them, and probably incorporate them into a second draft.

Writing all this out (95% on New Year's Day) has really helped crystallize, in my own mind, the key challenge behind these types of Doomsday scenarios: or any horror-story scenario you care to imagine (such as personal catastrophes like car accidents, death of a family member, losing your job or house, etc). That challenge is Fear.

Thinking about catastrophes on this scale may seem morbid, or fatalistic, or even perverse and fetishistic; but I believe it is important, because it allows us to look through the scenarios of The Very Worst and arrive, on the other side, perhaps mentally taxed but overall unscathed, having gone through the Unthinkable in our minds and emerged onto a whole new mental plateau that I believe is unreachable unless we go through the Unthinkable.

It is true that we live in a fear-based culture. The media encourages it and stokes it; a population in fear is a population more easily ruled. For the longest time in my life, my actions were defined and caused primarily by fear - I daresay this may be true for many other Americans. I know, from long, hard experience, that a mind influenced (let alone paralyzed) by fear is in fact the least-capable mind in a given situation.

Writing all this down has not only helped me release some of my fear, it has brought me to a key realization in my young life; and that is that a fearful life, like an unexamined life, is not worth living.

This year, and every year hereafter - come whatever may - I have determined in my own mind that I will not be afraid. Despite what the television tells me; despite the threat of terrorism; despite Asian bird flu pandemics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria; despite a warmongering President shredding my civil liberties by the day; despite a potential firestorm in the Mid East and disastrous economic ramifications for my home country; despite a rapidly warming climate, deforestation, and the odd possibility of planet-killing meteor strikes; despite my fellow countrymen, many of whom own firearms and live in fear themselves, and may hate me for what I believe; despite the possibility of dark, cold oppression, imprisonment, separation from loved ones, torture, and desperation, despite all of this, despite these many reasons to be terrified, I have decided that I will not be afraid.

In a culture defined and ruled by fear, I think that is a revolutionary act. Please join me.