I found some maps...

[conuly]

They're not all that easy to read, but NYC seems to get fairly swamped.

Well, the beauty of New York is that now that we don't depend on the port, we're actually a pretty portable city. Unlike New Orleans, which would just fold if the need for that port vanished. (And which is probably only hanging on because of that port - otherwise, even the token help they've gotten doesn't seem likely mihi.)

At any rate, it seems to me like now is the time to move inland, or at least as soon as I can possibly manage. Preferably inland to some area without fuel reserves - I like to make my safety nets free of hidden snags. Best to get while the getting's good, I always say - move now, and avoid the rush.

So, here's my plan. Pick a spot, probably (unfortunately, due to their oil) in Canada. Move there - maybe for college. Stay there. Become a citizen, stat. Buy up lots of land, pretty far inland. Cheap land - as long as I can substinance farm, I'm good. Plant lots of fruit trees - that fights global warming and makes fruit. Build a castle to defend myself against displaced invaders. I like castles. Include many secret exits and passages, why not? Invite others to come, pool our resources. Buy more land (and fruit trees). Repeat as necessary.

It'd have to be a castle that can also withstand massive storms, no? I can do that.

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Pick education or medicine to make becoming a citizen easier. Pick a spot with a long growing season -- we have a short one here, and I'm only in Iowa! And what fruit trees do we have up here? Apples? Not much more, really.

The castle would be a hard one, the materials would be very expensive. Stone is expensive. Precast may be more affordable, and they use it in housing more.

[conuly]

Medicine would also be a useful discipline to learn, but I think I'll stick with education and learn medicine... unreliably... on the side.

The temperature would be warming, right? So... longer growing season? I plan on being close to the US, anyway - I know we've got fruit trees all the way upstate, and that's bumping right into Canada!

Okay, so I live without my castle. Unless I can have one out of concrete....

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Well I'm not an expert on things like growing seasons here YET. I guess yeah it would be longer, but you know what? That square foot gardening book, even on a large scale would probably be a good read for you (or even the site) because it is like smaller scale crop rotation and augmenting soil and all that stuff. (I also compost like MAD.)

You can have one out of concrete, precast or poured molds. They really have been quite innovative both in the structural integrity and beauty of concrete, I used to read Concrete Construction every month, and still discuss things with Dan.

Concrete castle from early 1900s:
http://www.concretedecor.net/Abstracts/CD203_Mercer.cfm

Precast homes:
http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_lc_us_illinois.asp

Really I would bet concrete/precast would be the way to go for durability and economy and safety. You'd have your castle but more energy efficent and pretty strong too. And cheaper.

You ever hear about CSAs?
http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml

Community supported agriculture. It's sort of like a farm co-op, personal farmers market almost. A bit pricey to get into, you pay the farmer for a years worth of stuff, but the real fun part is some of them let you work on the farm, which can be very educational. I know you don't drive now but I would imagine at some point in all this you'll have to find some form of long distance transportation. Until you move inland, the CSA could be a good learning experience and a good way to support local farms.

Me, I hope within a few years I can turn this house over to a farmette just outside of town (not too far out to avoid the tornados, being by the river and in the bluffs has kept this area tornado free), and want to start with chickens. I think that's the most economical to start off with. I'm still struggling with figuring out what grows well here, the soil has a lot more clay than in NYC, where I actually did ok growing stuff.

This year I am here before growing season so I'm planning better. I should have more success now that I know better what its like.

Have you seen Lehmans catalog?

http://www.lehmans.com/

Best to look at the goods there, and then find them elsewhere. Thats where I got the idea for the Wonderwash hand washer, which works fantastic.

[conuly]

I would imagine at some point in all this you'll have to find some form of long distance transportation.

In the long run, a horse is a better investment. When a car breaks, you have junk that you have to pay to haul away. When a horse breaks, you at the very least have leather. If you need a new car, you have to buy one. If you need a new horse - well, horses build new horses all the time, wink wink nudge nudge.

But yeah, learning how to drive would probably be a good idea. And bike - that may also come in handy sooner rather than later.

Thanks for all the advice - it really *is* good advice, too.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Heh if you decided Iowa instead of Canada, maybe I'll have my 'hobby farm' by then. (And maybe I will know what I am doing!)

You'd need acreage for horses, not so much for running but for feed, unless you network with people. I used to ride down in Prospect Park, I miss it. But I know the kids would love if we had horses, and honestly they're on the 'to buy' list, when we have the room. Bikes we have, I'm good at walking, and my dream is a hybrid SUV if I have something farmlike. SUVs make more sense here than in cities, IMHO. Imagine a hybrid pickup truck! That would be cool.

Tractors seem to live FOREVER. I'd imagine if I was raising larger livestock (horses, and maybe sheep) I'd need more acreage to be self sufficient for hay or alfalfa or something.

Glad you like the advice, it's so nice to have someone to talk to about this, I feel like I am bursting. ;)

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

BTW its because of Dan that I know the precast and concrete stuff. Ironwork includes installing precast. And he sold concrete stuff for a while.

He has done complete home renovations/builds, with the exception of electric (which he hates), we could probably build our own home, with labor. It's a thought if the acreage we want doesn't have buildings on it already.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. Keeping that horse running can be REALLY expensive. And you still need to learn how to drive. :P

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

PS: Ifn ya want to do this in say, MO, I've got land there already. :P (For sale, unfortunately, because despite a decent school there, there's no jobs if you're a computer person.)

[conuly]

I'd suggest keeping at least some of the land. You always keep land, especially when said land is inland.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

I wish I cuold, but I can't afford to keep it and live somewhere else, at least right now. I think I'd actually buy further west, were I looking for someplace refugey, partially because although it's decent soil, it's not great- it'd be a tough, tough living to make.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Castles are militarily useless; have been since the advent of artillery. Building a house so that it's hard for people without heavy weapons to attack is easier, and can be done using green architecture, as well. Build into the side of a ridge, for example.

The growing-range for wheat is predicted to move into canada; there are sections of the US that would become more suitable for crops such as amaranth and quinoa. This'd take some rather detailed recon work; farming suitability is also related to who's been using which pesticides where for the last century or so.

I'm not thinking that far ahead ATM; if I were, I might be looking at staying in a port and getting a boat to live on.

best,

Joel

[conuly]

Yeah, but castles are also really cool - and is anybody going to have artillery at the end of the world?

But fine, fine. How about an underground house, then? Those are cool too - and you can plant on top of 'em!

As for living on a boat, that's another plan (I'm thinking sub, but I don't think that's likely....) except... aren't storms likely to get worse?

[polydad.livejournal.com]

What made castles useful was ten-foot thick stone walls. What we tend to think of as "cool" are mock-castles made long after the real ones fell into disuse. They're more like Fantasyland than castles.

Underground houses are cool, and hard to attack, and can be made resistant to light artillery, which is fairly easy to make in a decent machine shop. So yes, it'll be with us after any "end of the world" scenario I can think of; it seems likely that any given weapons technology is what we'll lose *last*, regrettably.

Subs are cool, but also expensive, difficult to make, and dangerous. I'm working with a Tall Ships program right now, and a big sailing vessel looks pretty good to me. No worries about fuel, for one thing. But it's not for nothing that boats have a centuries-long reputation as "wood-lined holes in the water into which you throw money." In order to be economically feasible long-term, we'd have to develop the skills-base to repair it ourselves, and this goes way past what I learned in wood shop those many years ago.

Storms *are* likely to get worse, but at this level of discussion I'd have to know more about what kind of doomsday you're anticipating in order to be able to talk about it sensibly.

best,

Joel

[conuly]

Well, you know me... plan and fret and whine about the worst, dubiously hope for the best.

As for sensibly, all this - all of it is contingent on me having money and a job. And the ability to live and work outside of the US, which I do not currently have. Any of it. So sensible isn't at all on the list.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Not sure where to find it, but I'd read an article a few months back written by a guy in Argentina, whose life reads very much like a lot of expressions of post-apocalyptic USA I've read. His comments were:

0. Be rich. If you didn't do this long before the excrement hit the ventilator, try anyway. Society runs to make nice on the rich, and if you're not one, it's a problem.

1. Fortify the house. Not against artillery, against anything a gang of street-thugs might grab. So, bars on windows, reinforced doors, a "safe room" inside the house.

2. Get, learn to use, and carry a handgun. Also spares, because you have to be ready to *lose* handguns on a regular basis, either to the cops, or because of them. He likes .45s, but agrees that it's personal preference; the main point is to be able to make the loud "Bang!" when you need to.

3. Have at least one strong young man in the family. Old people die a lot in troubled times.

best,

Joel. Who'd like to try *building* civilization, but that seems to be a less popular task than picking over the corpse.

[conuly]

I have no problem building the seed of a civilization - among other things, with more people I'd have a lot more money!

Get some people together, pick a place to dig in (and build from), and I'll build with you.

But you want a boat.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

>Get some people together, pick a place to
>dig in (and build from), and I'll build with you.

May I take you at your word?

One of my premises is that unified physical plant is a bad idea; makes us a Target. Distributed communities are better, though being together is necessary for linguistic reasons, "together" can mean "within reasonable walking distance" without a problem. Setting up a network of distributed communities is also a good idea; I can help you develop yours on SI while you help me develop one here in LA. Gives us each someplace to run to if we have to, though if it gets that bad we might both be running to my brother's place in Thailand.

Let me know if you want to continue with this and how far you're willing to go.

best,

Joel

[conuly]

I'm not sure building on SI is, ultimately, a great idea - but starting a community seed here anyway may still be. Ideally, though, I want to be, as I said, inland - and settled enough that I might not get shook when everybody else has the same idea.

I'm also not sure of my ability to gather resources and/or people. I get $300 a month for watching my nieces (and can't up and leave my family), and I'm not a people person. I wish I loved the human race and so on. (And I'm surrounded by people who "aren't too worried" about the situation. Gah.)

So at the moment, I'm restricted to gardening (both legit and clandestine - nobody will notice a few food plants on a nominal "park", will they?), and studying potentially useful things like "What plants around here are useful and how?"

Disaster shouldn't be that soon, right?

eeeeeee

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Just FYI there's a decent amount of wheat grown in Canada. Barley too, some oats...it's not a big tundra with no farms.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Understood and agreed; the study I'd seen suggested that the belt of weather that has been across southern Canada and the north and middle Great Plains in the US would move north to the degree that it's *southern* border would be the US/Canada line.

best,

Joel

[darkpoole.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Castle! Neat. Kind of hard to heat in the winter (at least while we still have "winter") but still really neat.

Hey! You can run a tourist business! "Come to Canada and help build an authentic replica German castle!" Globally, there's gotta be a tourist niche for that sort of thing.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, maybe. Real Goons are likely to see a real fort as a threat, and they don't respond well to threats. But if it looks like an amusement park, teh camoflage just might work...

Real castles I've seen look like *huge* piles of stone, not fairytale spires. How can we work around that?

best,

Joel

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Pick education or medicine to make becoming a citizen easier. Pick a spot with a long growing season -- we have a short one here, and I'm only in Iowa! And what fruit trees do we have up here? Apples? Not much more, really.

The castle would be a hard one, the materials would be very expensive. Stone is expensive. Precast may be more affordable, and they use it in housing more.

[conuly]

Medicine would also be a useful discipline to learn, but I think I'll stick with education and learn medicine... unreliably... on the side.

The temperature would be warming, right? So... longer growing season? I plan on being close to the US, anyway - I know we've got fruit trees all the way upstate, and that's bumping right into Canada!

Okay, so I live without my castle. Unless I can have one out of concrete....

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Well I'm not an expert on things like growing seasons here YET. I guess yeah it would be longer, but you know what? That square foot gardening book, even on a large scale would probably be a good read for you (or even the site) because it is like smaller scale crop rotation and augmenting soil and all that stuff. (I also compost like MAD.)

You can have one out of concrete, precast or poured molds. They really have been quite innovative both in the structural integrity and beauty of concrete, I used to read Concrete Construction every month, and still discuss things with Dan.

Concrete castle from early 1900s:
http://www.concretedecor.net/Abstracts/CD203_Mercer.cfm

Precast homes:
http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_lc_us_illinois.asp

Really I would bet concrete/precast would be the way to go for durability and economy and safety. You'd have your castle but more energy efficent and pretty strong too. And cheaper.

You ever hear about CSAs?
http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml

Community supported agriculture. It's sort of like a farm co-op, personal farmers market almost. A bit pricey to get into, you pay the farmer for a years worth of stuff, but the real fun part is some of them let you work on the farm, which can be very educational. I know you don't drive now but I would imagine at some point in all this you'll have to find some form of long distance transportation. Until you move inland, the CSA could be a good learning experience and a good way to support local farms.

Me, I hope within a few years I can turn this house over to a farmette just outside of town (not too far out to avoid the tornados, being by the river and in the bluffs has kept this area tornado free), and want to start with chickens. I think that's the most economical to start off with. I'm still struggling with figuring out what grows well here, the soil has a lot more clay than in NYC, where I actually did ok growing stuff.

This year I am here before growing season so I'm planning better. I should have more success now that I know better what its like.

Have you seen Lehmans catalog?

http://www.lehmans.com/

Best to look at the goods there, and then find them elsewhere. Thats where I got the idea for the Wonderwash hand washer, which works fantastic.

[conuly]

I would imagine at some point in all this you'll have to find some form of long distance transportation.

In the long run, a horse is a better investment. When a car breaks, you have junk that you have to pay to haul away. When a horse breaks, you at the very least have leather. If you need a new car, you have to buy one. If you need a new horse - well, horses build new horses all the time, wink wink nudge nudge.

But yeah, learning how to drive would probably be a good idea. And bike - that may also come in handy sooner rather than later.

Thanks for all the advice - it really *is* good advice, too.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Heh if you decided Iowa instead of Canada, maybe I'll have my 'hobby farm' by then. (And maybe I will know what I am doing!)

You'd need acreage for horses, not so much for running but for feed, unless you network with people. I used to ride down in Prospect Park, I miss it. But I know the kids would love if we had horses, and honestly they're on the 'to buy' list, when we have the room. Bikes we have, I'm good at walking, and my dream is a hybrid SUV if I have something farmlike. SUVs make more sense here than in cities, IMHO. Imagine a hybrid pickup truck! That would be cool.

Tractors seem to live FOREVER. I'd imagine if I was raising larger livestock (horses, and maybe sheep) I'd need more acreage to be self sufficient for hay or alfalfa or something.

Glad you like the advice, it's so nice to have someone to talk to about this, I feel like I am bursting. ;)

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

BTW its because of Dan that I know the precast and concrete stuff. Ironwork includes installing precast. And he sold concrete stuff for a while.

He has done complete home renovations/builds, with the exception of electric (which he hates), we could probably build our own home, with labor. It's a thought if the acreage we want doesn't have buildings on it already.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. Keeping that horse running can be REALLY expensive. And you still need to learn how to drive. :P

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

PS: Ifn ya want to do this in say, MO, I've got land there already. :P (For sale, unfortunately, because despite a decent school there, there's no jobs if you're a computer person.)

[conuly]

I'd suggest keeping at least some of the land. You always keep land, especially when said land is inland.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

I wish I cuold, but I can't afford to keep it and live somewhere else, at least right now. I think I'd actually buy further west, were I looking for someplace refugey, partially because although it's decent soil, it's not great- it'd be a tough, tough living to make.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Castles are militarily useless; have been since the advent of artillery. Building a house so that it's hard for people without heavy weapons to attack is easier, and can be done using green architecture, as well. Build into the side of a ridge, for example.

The growing-range for wheat is predicted to move into canada; there are sections of the US that would become more suitable for crops such as amaranth and quinoa. This'd take some rather detailed recon work; farming suitability is also related to who's been using which pesticides where for the last century or so.

I'm not thinking that far ahead ATM; if I were, I might be looking at staying in a port and getting a boat to live on.

best,

Joel

[conuly]

Yeah, but castles are also really cool - and is anybody going to have artillery at the end of the world?

But fine, fine. How about an underground house, then? Those are cool too - and you can plant on top of 'em!

As for living on a boat, that's another plan (I'm thinking sub, but I don't think that's likely....) except... aren't storms likely to get worse?

[polydad.livejournal.com]

What made castles useful was ten-foot thick stone walls. What we tend to think of as "cool" are mock-castles made long after the real ones fell into disuse. They're more like Fantasyland than castles.

Underground houses are cool, and hard to attack, and can be made resistant to light artillery, which is fairly easy to make in a decent machine shop. So yes, it'll be with us after any "end of the world" scenario I can think of; it seems likely that any given weapons technology is what we'll lose *last*, regrettably.

Subs are cool, but also expensive, difficult to make, and dangerous. I'm working with a Tall Ships program right now, and a big sailing vessel looks pretty good to me. No worries about fuel, for one thing. But it's not for nothing that boats have a centuries-long reputation as "wood-lined holes in the water into which you throw money." In order to be economically feasible long-term, we'd have to develop the skills-base to repair it ourselves, and this goes way past what I learned in wood shop those many years ago.

Storms *are* likely to get worse, but at this level of discussion I'd have to know more about what kind of doomsday you're anticipating in order to be able to talk about it sensibly.

best,

Joel

[conuly]

Well, you know me... plan and fret and whine about the worst, dubiously hope for the best.

As for sensibly, all this - all of it is contingent on me having money and a job. And the ability to live and work outside of the US, which I do not currently have. Any of it. So sensible isn't at all on the list.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Not sure where to find it, but I'd read an article a few months back written by a guy in Argentina, whose life reads very much like a lot of expressions of post-apocalyptic USA I've read. His comments were:

0. Be rich. If you didn't do this long before the excrement hit the ventilator, try anyway. Society runs to make nice on the rich, and if you're not one, it's a problem.

1. Fortify the house. Not against artillery, against anything a gang of street-thugs might grab. So, bars on windows, reinforced doors, a "safe room" inside the house.

2. Get, learn to use, and carry a handgun. Also spares, because you have to be ready to *lose* handguns on a regular basis, either to the cops, or because of them. He likes .45s, but agrees that it's personal preference; the main point is to be able to make the loud "Bang!" when you need to.

3. Have at least one strong young man in the family. Old people die a lot in troubled times.

best,

Joel. Who'd like to try *building* civilization, but that seems to be a less popular task than picking over the corpse.

[conuly]

I have no problem building the seed of a civilization - among other things, with more people I'd have a lot more money!

Get some people together, pick a place to dig in (and build from), and I'll build with you.

But you want a boat.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

>Get some people together, pick a place to
>dig in (and build from), and I'll build with you.

May I take you at your word?

One of my premises is that unified physical plant is a bad idea; makes us a Target. Distributed communities are better, though being together is necessary for linguistic reasons, "together" can mean "within reasonable walking distance" without a problem. Setting up a network of distributed communities is also a good idea; I can help you develop yours on SI while you help me develop one here in LA. Gives us each someplace to run to if we have to, though if it gets that bad we might both be running to my brother's place in Thailand.

Let me know if you want to continue with this and how far you're willing to go.

best,

Joel

[conuly]

I'm not sure building on SI is, ultimately, a great idea - but starting a community seed here anyway may still be. Ideally, though, I want to be, as I said, inland - and settled enough that I might not get shook when everybody else has the same idea.

I'm also not sure of my ability to gather resources and/or people. I get $300 a month for watching my nieces (and can't up and leave my family), and I'm not a people person. I wish I loved the human race and so on. (And I'm surrounded by people who "aren't too worried" about the situation. Gah.)

So at the moment, I'm restricted to gardening (both legit and clandestine - nobody will notice a few food plants on a nominal "park", will they?), and studying potentially useful things like "What plants around here are useful and how?"

Disaster shouldn't be that soon, right?

eeeeeee

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Just FYI there's a decent amount of wheat grown in Canada. Barley too, some oats...it's not a big tundra with no farms.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Understood and agreed; the study I'd seen suggested that the belt of weather that has been across southern Canada and the north and middle Great Plains in the US would move north to the degree that it's *southern* border would be the US/Canada line.

best,

Joel

[darkpoole.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Castle! Neat. Kind of hard to heat in the winter (at least while we still have "winter") but still really neat.

Hey! You can run a tourist business! "Come to Canada and help build an authentic replica German castle!" Globally, there's gotta be a tourist niche for that sort of thing.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, maybe. Real Goons are likely to see a real fort as a threat, and they don't respond well to threats. But if it looks like an amusement park, teh camoflage just might work...

Real castles I've seen look like *huge* piles of stone, not fairytale spires. How can we work around that?

best,

Joel