As regular readers will know, I am rather fascinated by the phenomenon of collapse, i.e. the relatively quick fall in socio-political complexity that tends to accompany the fall of nations, empires, and civilizations. Now it’s all well and good to theorize about “diminishing returns to complexity” (Tainter) or to construct computer models to project world trends to their logical conclusions (Club of Rome), but it is equally interesting – and certainly much more personally useful – to recognize how a collapse may look like in “real life”, and to know how to prepare accordingly.
This is not a post about how to homestead or urban survival; there’s a plethora of specialized books and websites covering the technical aspects. This is an introductory post to the psychology of collapse, i.e. getting a “big picture” view of how it happens, from two of some of the most prominent bloggers on the subject: Esteban Morales (“Ferfal”) and Dmitry Orlov. Given the reality of resource depletion, the ever-present threat of nuclear war, and the imminence of runaway climate change – which the industrialized world is doing next to nothing to avoid – collapse is something we as individuals and community must prepare for.
Ferfal mostly writes about the economic and social collapse that overtook Argentina in the early 2000′s, when a currency crisis led to a severe devaluation, soaring unemployment and inflation, and the impoverishment and crime that followed in its wake. Given Argentina’s rough resemblance to the US (immigrant nations, high socio-economic inequalities, minimal welfare, similar physical geography, etc), there may well be Lessons from Argentina’s economic collapse. I’m going to quote some nuggets of wisdom I found to be particularly useful or poignant.
First off – urban or rural? Forget all that “doomstead” nonsense.
1) Those that want to harm you/steal from you don’t come with a pirate flag waving over their heads.
2) Neither do they start shooting at you 200 yards away.
3) They wont come riding loud bikes or dressed with their orange, convict just escaped from prison jump suits, so that you can identify them the better. Nor do they all wear chains around their necks and leather jackets…
4) A man with a wife and two or three kids can’t set up a watch…
Although a farm naturally tends to be better off in terms of food-security than the cities, for obvious reasons, actual physical security may be a whole lot more precarious.
After all these years I learned that even though the person that lives out in the country is safer when it comes to small time robberies, that same person is more exposed to extremely violent home robberies. Criminals know that they are isolated and their feeling of invulnerability is boosted. When they assault a country home or farm, they will usually stay there for hours or days torturing the owners. I heard it all: women and children getting raped, people tied to the beds and tortured with electricity, beatings, burned with acetylene torches.
Big cities aren’t much safer for the survivalist that decides to stay in the city. He will have to face express kidnappings, robberies, and pretty much risking getting shot for what’s in his pockets or even his clothes. So, where to go? The concrete jungle is dangerous and so is living away from it all, on your own. The solution is to stay away from the cities but in groups, either by living in a small town-community or sub division, or if you have friends or family that think as you do, form your own small community.
+1 for eco-urbanism, Mark! But don’t celebrate yet. There will be many more problems with the services – water, electricity, gas – that cities depend on, 24/7, to successfully serve as the hosts of a functioning society.
The real problem starts when you spend more than just a few hours without light. Just after the SHTF in 2001 half the country went without power for 3 days. Buenos Aires was one big dark grave. People got caught on elevators, food rot, hospitals that only had a few hours worth of fuel for their generators ran out of power. Without power, days get to be a lot shorter. Once the sun sets there is not much you can do. I read under candle light and flashlight light and your head starts to hurt after a while. You can work around the house a little bit but only as long as you don’t need power tools. Crime also increases once the lights go out, so whenever you have to go somewhere in a black out, carry the flashlight on one hand and a handgun on the other.
Summarizing, being in a city without light turn to be depressing after a while. I spent my share of nights, alone, listening to the radio, eating canned food and cleaning my guns under the light of my LED head lamp. Then I got married, had a son, and found out that when you have loved ones around you black outs are not as bad. The point is that family helps morale on these situations.
The above should be familiar to anyone who’s experienced a real blackout. Given the Third World-like US electric grid, this will certainly be a major concern.
On the positive sides, there will appear “grey markets” selling all kinds of stuff, much cheaper than in the shops.
These markets were usually placed on warehouses or empty land, and were managed by some wise guy and a few thugs or hired security. Anyone can go rent a kiosk inside these markets for about 50-100 pesos (about 20-30 dollars) a day and sell his goods and services. [Peace] within these markets is usually respected… lets just say that these managers don’t call the police if someone tries anything funny, like stealing, fighting or taking advantage of women. That’s not good for their business and anyone that tries to mess with their business finds out how much pain the human body can actually [experience] or gets a free ticket to meet the Lord. Sometimes even uniformed cops manage security on these markets, for a small fee of course. As always, you still have to be careful. They may still try to pick your pockets or even attack you once you leave the market. Once you leave the market, you are on your own, as always.
What can be found at a local markets? Mostly food and clothing. Some have more variety than others but cheese, canned food, spices, honey, eggs, fruits, vegetables, beer, wine and cured meat are generally available, same as bakery products and pasta. These are less expensive than those found at supermarkets. Fresh fish is sometimes available but not always, people don’t trust much products that need refrigeration, and they get those at supermarkets instead. Clothes are also popular and you can find copies of brand name clothes, imitations, or even original stolen new clothes, the same goes for shoes and snickers…
Some offer their services and repair stuff or offer work as handyman. You would be amazed of the junk that these guys manage to fix: TVs, CD players, Power tools, etc. They even manage to solder the small integrated circuits boards sometimes. Give one of these guys a screw driver and a bar of chocolate and he will fix a nuclear submarine. After food and clothes, the 3rd most popular item has to be CDs and DVDs, movies, music, play station 2 and Xbox games, programs, it all ends up there just one or two days after the official release in USA. Seems that they have a guy hidden under Bill Gate’s desk or something.
Anyway, almost everything can be found there, and if you want, you can ask around, talk to the right guy and buy illegal stuff like drugs or black market guns and ammo. The quality of the drugs is questionable, of course, and a lot of addicts die from the mixtures these guys sell. Guns are mostly FM High Powers, Surplus 1911s and Colt .45s, Sistemas, and old Colt Detective revolvers in 38 special that found their way from police and military armories into the black market. Condition isn’t very good but if you have money you’ll be amazed of what you can end up with. Everything that is used by the military and police, including SMGs a, Browning 50 BMG Machine guns, and even frag grenades, is available in the black market, if the customer has the amount of money and a little patience, of course. The big guns may take a while, but the handguns and grenades are readily available.
That totally tallies with my 1990′s impressions of the Moscow bazaars, best exemplified by the anarchic Cherkizovsky Market (no wonder the Putin restorationists eventually closed it down in 2009).
Concepts of social and physical security change. Get cheap gold jewelry to pawn after the SHTF. Guns are extremely important: since conventional law and order collapses, the police force becomes essentially privatized by the highest bidders.
Even though crime has always been an issue in South America, my country was quite the exception. It was dangerous, yes but nothing like after the 2001 economical crisis. One used to be able to let kids play on the sidewalk, or walk back home from a party, a few blocks, and be somewhat safe. This all changed now. There are no kids playing on the sidewalks anymore. I should emphasize this a little more. There are absolutely NO kids playing on the sidewalks at all, at any time of the day. …
There are no “bandit’s law” anymore. One used to hear people talk about “You shouldn’t resist a robbery, give them what they want and they’ll go away”. That holds true no more. These guys are under the influence of drugs, epoxy glue, or just hate your guts so much, because you have a better life than they ever dreamed of, because they were abused since the day they were born, that they will hurt and humiliate you as much as they can. Letting a criminal inside you house almost guaranties you that he will rape/beat/ torture and abuse whoever they find inside.
By far, the most dangerous moment of the day, is when I (or my wife) leave/enter my house. A solid, secure house cannot be broken in easily, so criminals wait until you are standing on front of the door with the keys on your hand to jump on you. This is why we are extra alert when approaching our house, look all around us and if we see anything strange, keep walking around the block or keep on driving. No door is ever opened when there is a strange person around. Whenever someone knocks on our door (and we don’t know him/her), they are answered from a second story window. Criminals sometimes disguise as electric company guys or something like that, saying that they have to fix something. NO! If there is something to be fixed they can fix it on the sidewalk. …
On the car/driving issue, that calls for an entire post dedicated to SHTF driving. For now I’ll just say that windows and doors have to be closed at all times, a weapon must be within arms reach, and that stop signs and traffic lights have a hole new meaning once TSHTF. If your country ever falls as mine did, you’ll remember me whenever you see a traffic light. You never stop at a red lights or stop sign unless there is traffic, especially at night. At first, police would write you a ticket for not stopping at a red light if they saw you (another way of saying that they will ask for a bribe if they see you pass a red light), but after a few months they realized that nothing could be done, people would rather risk a ticket than risking their lives, so they decided to turn traffic lights to permanent yellow at night, after 8 or 9 PM. This is, of course, very dangerous. Night car accidents are both frequent and brutal since sometimes both cars hit each other at full speed. …
… If I could give one advice concerning SHTF security, it would be: Eyes and ears wide open when you enter/leave your home. If possible, keep a gun on your hand when doing either one. If something looks, even “feels strange, then go around the block and check again, carefully. If you see them still there, either call the police (if still available) or get help. If you approach the house with a large number of people they will leave. … Every now and then someone tries to force me to stop my car by standing in front of it (I suppose there are still fools out there that get robbed this way), in the middle of the street. I just aim at them and accelerate at full speed. They always jump out of the way before I hit them. By the way, at first, doing this made me feel nervous, but can you believe that now it’s just common driving, as normal as changing gears? I guess it’s a little sad.
Again, in many respects he could have been describing 1990′s Russians (though not as many guns – at least in non-criminal hands, and apartments instead of houses). The entire social mentality changes.
Then there’s this poignant anecdote:
We understood it the same way a kid understands photosynthesis: Because a teacher coldly explained it to us, even used graphics. I slept 5 hours yesterday, 2 hours the day before yesterday. Saturday night I didn’t sleep at all. I’m already used to it. Deadlines at the University, staying late at night, drawing in CAD 3D, waiting until Renders are ready. It’s a competitive world out there, and no one sympathizes with what you are going through, they just want you to perform as expected, and the standard is always high. It happened 4 years ago, almost a year after the December 2001 crisis. It was a social studies class and this teacher, don’t remember if it was a he or a she, was explaining the different kinds of social pyramids. God! Now I remember more! We even had a text book with those darn, cruel pyramids!
The first pyramid explained the basic society. A pyramid with two horizontal lines, dividing those on top (high social class) those in the middle (middle class) and the bottom of the pyramid (the poor, proletarian). The teacher explained that the middle of the pyramid, the middle class, acted as a cushion between the rich and the poor, taking care of the social stress. The second pyramid had a big middle section, this was the pyramid that represents 1st world countries. I which the bottom is very thin and arrows show that there is a possibility to go from low to middle class, and from middle to the top of the social pyramid. Our teacher explained that this was the classic, democratic capitalist society, and that on countries such as Europeans one, socialists, the pyramid was very similar but a little more flat, meaning that here is a big middle section, middle class, and small high and low class. There is little difference between the three of them.The third pyramid showed the communist society. Where arrows from the low and middle class tried to reach the top but they bounced off the line. A small high society and one big low society, cushioned by a minimal middle class section of pyramid.
Then we turned the page and saw the darned fourth pyramid. This one had arrows from the middle class dropping to the low, poor class. ”What is this?”, some of us asked.
The teacher looked at us, “This is us. It’s the collapsed country, a country that turns into 3rd world country like in pyramid five where there is almost no middle class to speak, one huge low, poor class , and a very small, very rich, top class.”
“What are those arrows that go from the middle to the bottom of the pyramid?” Someone asked.
You could hear a pin drop. “That is middle class turning into poor.”
I won’t lie, no one cried, though people rubbed their faces, held their heads and their breath. No one cried, but we all knew at that very moment that all we thought, all we took for granted, simply was not going to happen.
“You see, the income from the middle class is not enough to function as middle class any more. Some from the top class fall to middle class, but the vast majority of the middle class turns into poor”, said the teacher. I don’t know how many people in that room suddenly understood that he/she was poor.
The teacher continued, “You see, we have a middle class that suddenly turns to poor, creating a society of basically poor people, there is no more middle class to cushion tensions any more. Middle class suddenly discovers that they are overqualified for the jobs they can find and have to settle for anything they can obtain, there for unemployment sky rockets, too much to offer, too little demand. You see they prepare, study for a job they are not going to get. You kids, you are studying Architecture because you simply wish to do so. Only 3 or 4 percent of you will actually find a job related to architecture.”
We all sat there, letting it all sink in. After a few months, it all proved to be true. Even the amount of students that dropped out of college increased to at least 50%. They either so no point in studying something that would not make much of a difference in their future salaries, had no money to keep themselves in college, or simply had to drop college to work and support their families.
Also,
I have a hard time seeing people eat out of trash cans, that’s one thing I’ll never get used to. Every night entire families, wife, husband and 2 or 3 kids, little kids about 3 years old go throw trash cans in search of food. At almost every light stop there’s little bare foot kids begging, all dirty and skinny. That’s the thing that affected me most, the starving children. One guy in another board told me he didn’t care for this “bleeding Heart thing” and that “Life is rough. Get used to it.” I told him that I didn’t need someone that lives in San Diego, California, explain me how rough life is.
I’ve seen dead people, man, I once saw a guy “sew” his mouth shut with a piece of rusted wire he got out of a broom, and all that I can handle, but a 3 year old sobbing because he’s starving, Im sorry, I can’t. Believe me, it’s one thing to see a little kid starving in Africa, you probably saw that terrible image a million times, but now imagine that that kid speaks English, with an American accent, and you see the Hollywood sign in the background.
Tap water becomes dangerous as the water companies fail to pay for maintenance (AK: even today much of the US water pipeline network is almost a century old). There are regular blackouts and there is no such thing as free healthcare, even if the government says it is (AK: the hospitals have no money for even basic supplies, as money dries up or is lost to corruption; the more you pay, the better the healthcare you will receive). Corruption seeps in from the top to affect all facets of human life, including the police and courts, and democracy metamorphoses into “virtual democracy”, in which elites agree to exchange unaccountable power for untaxable wealth.
On cars and consumerism:
I would have bought a 4×4, even though I live in the city. A 4×4 allows you to dive over the sidewalk or through wasteland, away from roadblocks or riots. I’ve see those that have 4x4s simply go off road, climb over a boulevard and leave while the rest of us poor car owners have to stay.A 4×4 truck also has more mass and power in case that someone tries to cut you off or rams you with the car. It’s less likely to stop running if you hit someone or several people (in a riot situation) since it’s prepared for cross country use and the engine is much more protected.
… Going out for dinner or to the movies is not only dangerous but also expensive. You WILL find much better use for that money if SHTF. There are places in Buenos Aires where you can go out for dinner, movies, or theater shows and have a good time, safely. … But these places are either for tourists or for the extremely wealthy. … Going out for a walk is a possibility, and we do go out for a walk every now and then, but lets just say that the view isn’t that good, and you can only walk about 6 blocks in the same direction before you get out of the are which is guarded by private security, after that you are on “you are on your own” land. …
Reading is nice, I love reading myself, but once the SHTF, going out with a date at night wont be that easy, nor will it be that cheap. You will end up paying for that added security the shop/bar/theater owner hired, the higher price of gas and food, while a DVD copy can be found everywhere, and costs only a couple of bucks.After the SHTF there will be a lot of “why don’t we watch a movie” nights. Like it or not TV is cheap, safe entertainment. A play station or xbox is also nice to have. Even if the country collapses, there will always be a guy with a DVD writer making copies. Just something to think about if you like movies.
For the gunslingers (yeah!):
Guns & ammo: I always liked guns, so I always had weapons… If you don’t have a good survival selection of weapons, buy them now, or as soon as your budget allows. Make it one of your priorities, just after food, water and shelter. There are several posts on the ideal choice of weapons. Get at least a service size pistol and a military semi auto rifle and a 22 handgun/rifle. (try to get both if you can, they are not that expensive). A bolt rifle (preferably in the same caliber as the semi) a pump 12 ga shotgun and a sub rifle, like a SMG or pistol caliber semi auto carbine (same caliber as pistol) would complete the package. I forgot to buy a 22 pistol until after 2001, and ended up paying for a Norinco 22 pistol the same price I would have paid for a Ruger pistol before the crisis.
And of course one will have to develop an aptitude for bribery.
My advice is: See what you use regularly and what you expect to need after TSHTF. Of those goods, see where they are made. If they are made outside your country, they will either increase in price of stop importation entirely after TSHTF… But as I said before, check what is being imported.No point in buying cases of Cubans for trade after TSHTF if you live in Cuba, right? I wouldn’t think of these items as trade goods, but as “gifts” to buy favors, build up relationships with police, government officials, doctors, people you might need favors from. Stuff, like liquor/wine, a nice pen, perfume, makeup and other “free shop” kind of items can go a long way when you need some strings pulled, or a “friend” within certain circles. And it’s not only the item, sweet talking also must be applied.
… In other occasions people will let you know that they want a plain and simple “bribe”, and there 50 bucks or 100 bucks according to the situation will get the job done. I’ve used “gifts” ( a perfume) to get my passport faster, saved a few months, and I’ve used bribes every single time the police stopped me for “inspection”. I know this does not apply to 1st world countries were most officers are honest self sacrificed people, I mean no insult to the law enforcement community on this forum, but please understand that it does apply to 3rd world countries, and I’m not getting shot by an angry cop over 10 or 20 pesos, let them have their bribe. I tried it once and I will never try it again. A cop stopped me and started BS me. I told him “ok officer, guess you’ll have to write me a ticket, I understand”. He didn’t want to write a ticket , he wanted money and things got ugly. I’m never doing anything that stupid again.
Food will get more expensive, as due to the devaluation exports will become much more profitable (the author noted the return of dearth to some northern Argentinian provinces, in one of the world’s grain-baskets no less!). He recommends getting canned food, dried food, and a vegetable garden. Fix your health and get eye surgery if possible to do away with the need for glasses. In other words, practice self-improvement.
I mostly agree with what Ferfal says based on my own (admittedly, very limited) experience of collapse in post-Soviet Russia. Some differences – though that collapse was much deeper and more traumatic than what Argentina experienced – not only in terms of the collapse in physical output, which at 40% from peak to nadir was twice as deep as the Great Depression in the US, but also in that it entailed the delegitimization of an entire ideology and values system which had previously prevailed for 70 years.
That said, the embedded inefficiencies of the Soviet economic model ironically made it far more “collapse-prepared”, in the social sense, than Argentina (or today’s United States, for that matter) – though the center gave way to centrifugal forces, certain subsystems such as transport, education, healthcare, etc, continued functioning, albeit in an atrophied way. And just like Argentina, Russia eventually rose up from collapse, propped up by the world capitalist-industrial System; considering that in many ways the US is the linchpin of that System, how quickly (or at all) it would be able to effect a recovery is open to question.
More to come in Surviving Collapse Part 2, in which we take a look at Dmitry Orlov‘s direct observations of post-Soviet collapse, and musings on their current relevance.
Related posts:
Excellent post. I mostly agree that the survival post has been done to death. I think the important focus is finding like-minded community members to share the psychological adjustments.
One thing you should focus on in a future segment: the difference between regions. Right now, as much as different parts of the US try to claim they are nothing like one another (Southwest vs Northeast vs South, etc), it is an incredibly uniform country, in terms of life expectations, legal processes, corruption indexes, public services availability.
How will this change? Which cities/states/regions will see the most dramatic dissolution of public services and law and order? Which will see relatively little change, even in the case of significant resource or climatic upheaval?
My personal feeling is that the west coast and northeast will see the least effect from a collapse of social complexity, even though in terms of development they are the most complex parts of the US. This of course has to do with my theory that older, more diverse cities are better prepared from a social services standpoint. They are less reliant on auto transit, they already have lots of corruption so people are already prepared to deal with it on some level, they have a ‘shop local’ mentality and are more resourceful in terms of sourcing basic needs, and most of all, they are where the current wealth and power reside and thus would be best able to suck resources in from the periphery if a major collapse occurred.
And, ultimately, they’re more fun to live in now, so just in case there is no collapse I can enjoy something I already do
Mark, I’m going to do the regional breakdown (no pun intended!) in detail in a forthcoming American SSR.
I agree with you that in an Argentina-like collapse, the best off places will be the North-East, the North-West, and perhaps the Bay Area (though I’m skeptical about California in general). The South-West will get screwed in a big way, though.
As you know from FaceBook, I am slowly working on that – I hope to build a Collapse Party.
About the Party:
Very interesting post indeed…
I must agree that smaller communities are better suited to withstand an event of collapse. For example in the place I come from the people generally know each other, not that their relationships are always good but a change in fortunes might bring them closer together.
On the other hand in London I don’t know any of my most immediate neighbours at all.
“And just like Argentina, Russia eventually rose up from collapse, propped up by the world capitalist-industrial System; considering that in many ways the US is the linchpin of that System, how quickly (or at all) it would be able to effect a recovery is open to question.”
If you want to be literal about the word industrial, then China has been the linchpin of that system for a while now.
The War Nerd had a great post about societal collapse some time ago:
http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-apocalypse-never/
He ridiculed the survivalist ideal of a single man or a family with lots of guns and canned food making it very far in the absolute worst case scenario. He said that highly motivated groups in which everyone trusts each other like the Mormons or small religious cults will be more likely to survive.
If you haven’t seen the movie The Road, you should. It treats the theme of complete societal collapse in what I thought was a surprisingly realistic way for a Hollywood movie.
Anatoly, thanks for the link to this very interesting article.
As to the question of regional differences within the US in response to societal collapse, I think that the differences are more apparent at a local level.
I have visited several rural areas and small towns in the US where the local residents could not care less if the “older, more diverse cities” disappeared completely tomorrow, since they are already 99% self-reliant. So what if their cable service would go away and they couldn’t get out-of-season vegetables and seafood from the coasts?
Americans who live in the overpopulated areas of the east and west coast regions are pampered, arrogant, and highly dependent on large-scale public services, so naturally they assume that everyone else is the same. Being close to centers of power, they would still be provided for in some fashion by the atrophied subsystems; however, the people who don’t rely on them in the first place will be able to form safer and more sustainable communities going forward.