(Part 2) Best products from r/collapse

Ok, so your B.O.B will be different from mine, and everyone else's. There is no 'one size fits all'.

The bag itself - Should be a solid backpacking bag. Keep it light enough that it's manageable. For a very fit individual, the max weight should be your body weight divided by 3. Most of us are not that fit, so adjust accordingly. It should have hip support, well stitched straps, several compartments and a way to attach things to the outside (molle webbing, carabiner loops or exterior straps). Should be weatherproof.

Water - Depends entirely on your location. I live in Canada - Land of lakes and rivers. I wont need to carry a ton of water all the time. I've got a sawyer squeeze as my primary water filter. The collapsible water bottles it comes with work great for water storage as well. Wife and daughter carry a lifestraw as backups. We have some iodine drops as well.

As far as water carrying devices go, i find nalgene bottles work great. Theyre light and strong, and come in various sizes. A canteen is great if you want to use it to cook over a fire. Its not a bad idea either to have a large (5 litre+) collapsible water container. They're plastic and light. I havn't used mine extensively enough to recommend.

Sharp Things - I've got a Kabar as my primary fixed blade. It's tried and true. Good metal, full tang. I've got a leatherman wave multitool. Carry it everyday on my belt. Super handy. I should really add a 3-4" folding knife to my pack as sometimes the kabar is too big, and the multitool is hard to clean.
I also carry a Cold steel shovel. I looked into folding shovels, and they didnt seem reliable. Moving parts means they're more likely to fail. I haven't used this one extensively, but the few times i have tried it, its done an excellent job. If your pack's too heavy, put this one in your car.

Food - Your typical protein bars, dried rice/bean mix, snickers, small jar of PB, oatmeal and dehydrated fruit. A small bit of olive oil packs a ton of calories and adds flavour. It's good to have a small container of salt and pepper, or other spices to add flavour. You can grab MRE's or those mountainhouse dried meals, but theyre expensive. If you regularly buy pepperettes or jerkey, stick some in your bag and rotate it out when you buy it next. Multivitamins can keep you up if youre not getting a ton of food, but dont rely on them. Bring any meds you need, as well as tylenol or aspirin.

Hygiene - Pack a couple rolls of TP. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant (chuck if too much weight), wash cloth, soap, soap for clothing, feminine products (if applicable), couple garbage bags (can separate dirty clothes), wet wipes, lip balm, hand sanitizer. Sun screen and bug spray in small bottles.
Clothing - Carry at least 7 pairs of good socks. Some warm ones if the location's cold. Extra shirts, underwear are essential. Pants/shorts and sweater are optional (besides whatever you're wearing). Stick your clothing in a waterproof sack. Try to keep only clean, dry clothes in there (no airflow + damp = mold).

-Paracord and rope

-Carabiners

-Sewing kit

-Tent patching kit (if you have a tent or a tarp)

-Tarp (who saw that coming). Doesn't have to be massive. Just know how to set it up to keep you dry. If mosquitos are a problem, grab a net. Tents are heavy and expensive.

-Fire Source. Have many. Lighters are cheap, stash away a bunch (7?). The lighter leash is awesome. You should be able to find that cheap at a corner store. Storm matches, for when its rainy. I think these are what I got. You can light them in any weather, put them under water, and they'll still be lit. Not a bad idea to carry regualr matches in a waterproof container. Firestarter packets are great. I just soak cotton balls in Vaseline. Flint and steel is cool, but only useful if youve exhausted all other fire starting methods.

-Super Glue

-Safety pins

-Zip ties

-Light. Hand crank flashlight is awesome. If you have a battery powered one, carry spare batteries. The mini maglite has a belt holster. Those small LED flashlights are great too. Grab a few glowsticks.

-fork and spoon

-emergency blanket or emergency sleeping bag. Only useful if you're SOL.

-poncho

-sleeping bag for your location. If its warm you don't need this. Can use a hammock or sleeping pad. Try and keep these small as they take up a ton of space.

-Compass. Useful if you have a map.

-Map of your location/where youre going.

-Signal mirror and a good whistle.

-Fishing supplies. I've got an emmrod. You can put a fairly small cheap reel on here. I've got the shimano ix2000. It casts a pretty good distance. Hooks, weights, bobs etc. Can all fit in small waterproof containers or camera film containers. Dont forget line! Mines already on the reel. A fishing vest gives you lots of little pockets to keep things in arms reach.

-First Aid kit. There's extensive lists online depending on how large you want it. Some gauze, band aids, polysporin, burn cream are a good start. Try and build it yourself, don't buy the gimmikey premade ones. Keep yours in a waterproof Tupperware container.

-Tiny roll of Gorilla Tape

-Games. Some dice and a deck of cards go a long way. Don't underestimate the value of laughter. If a sudden collapse ever happens, these might save you from depression.

-Headlamp. I've got this rayovac one (i think). Seems easy on batteries and has lasted a few camping trips. Haven't put serious use on it tho.

-Eating equipment. A mug and a small plate go a long way. A folding pan goes a long way, but is heavy. I would love to learn to use a pressure cooker over fires.

-Handkerchief or travel kleenex

-Bandanas. 3 of them.

-Bungee cords can be useful, but they run the risk of snapping and taking out an eye.

-Ziplock bags are handy. Keeps a lot of small things organized and dry.

-Pencils, Pens, notepad/book, sharpie.

-Hatchet is useful, but heavy. Take one if you can. The sven saw is awesome and hasn't broke on me yet.

-Spare pair of glasses (if applicable)

-Some sort of firearm is almost necessary. I don't have one yet, but i was planning on a 10/22 takedown. It's small and easy to pack. Bullets are light. If you need more stopping power than a .22, you're in a heap of trouble. Guns are not my specialty (can you guess), so ill leave it up to you to do your own research.

-In lieu of a firearm, you could grab a crossbow. If that's still too much, a good slingshot will do great.

-phone booklet and address's. In case your phone craps out and you cant charge it.

-A small windable clock is great. A solar watch is better. I think thats the one i have.

All this stuff is useless unless you know how to use it. Do your research, take some courses. Learn the necessary skills to survive, because that's what's really necessary. I like Les Stroud's (survivorman) book Survive!. Learn to tie knots, fish, hunt, forage, fight, build a fire in all conditions, etc. Practice going out with your pack and seeing if you can survive for 3 days. Then try 5. Pack everything up in the morning, hike with your bag then set it all up again.

Everyone's situation is different. Bugging out should only happen if you can't bug in.
If you have questions on the use of any of the above items, ask away. Any advice or suggestions, I welcome those too.

> You seem to be forgetting the minor point of agriculture failing -- or is that no longer "your point"?

How is this not willfully obtuse, if not an outright misrepresentation?

I was the one suggesting that more northerly locations would be better situated to avoid temperatures driven to 45°C+, and you responded by pointing out that even Moscow "gets heatwaves" too.

I then demonstrated that Moscow has never experienced temperatures in the 40s. Ever.

A perfectly relevant refutation of your generalised exaggeration. That's all.

> water is going to vanish, everywhere?

Obviously not what I'm saying.

Some won't get enough, and some will get far too much. And some will even get just the right amount for some time - but at some point in a collapsing biosphere, not reliably enough in any one place to ensure sufficient crop survival and reliable harvesting to make agriculture viable.

No, I don't have a crystal ball, and can't tell you exactly where that point will be, but this extinction event is unfolding with unprecedented speed, and we are still accelerating it, so I really don't believe that ignoring uncomfortably pessimistic sources is a wise strategy.

> You're now blaming me for not engaging in threads I wasn't involved in?

Sorry, I was getting it confused with the other thread we're discussing similar matters in. I have to do all this on a crappy, broken smartphone since I don't use a computer, so no split-screen windows/advanced clipboard functionality/fancy keyboard for me.

It was referenced in this thread, not the other one.

> On the contrary, I've pointed out the "links" (really one link posted multiple times)

Since /u/Goochymayn posted the link to the projected effects here, I have posted a dozen different links that weren't this one in this thread.

> Man, you people are obsessed with this one website

Far from it, though a little stubborn in trying to encourage some sort of engagement with it on your part - it's sort of the opposite of cherry picking, to go on blithely claiming that it doesn't say what it does, and that the whole thing's just too silly to even acknowledge.

I read many websites, have read the book this summarises by Mark Lunas (FWIW, it won the 2008 Royal Society Book Prize and was turned into a National Geographic TV series, so it's not just some crappy little blog.)

And I agree it would be better if the summary had hyperlinked references. I don't post it here much/ever myself, precisely because of the lack of easy to follow hyperlinks to make it easier for people to check sources online. The book is better (books are always better than this internet rubbish.)

OK, you don't recognise it or any of its sources (though they've been bandied around here often enough,) - I will add some more links tomorrow when I've had some sleep, though it will be at the expense of speedily responding to your other posts (lots of busy-ness ATM.) I will come to them when time allows.

I accept that the descriptions of the effects at each temperature band may not be accurate. Which is why it would be interesting and useful to discuss what it actually predicts, and how much, if any merit there is to their arguments (it would be even better to discuss the book, but that's less feasible online in the temporary conversation cloud that is Reddit, given how few people have probably read it.)

It's less productive in the extreme, to only ever see it analysed by McPhersonite fanboys, too busy obsessing about the doom to look at it with a critical eye. But if they are accurate, then farming will self-evidently NOT be possible, because we will all be too extinct to practice it.

Other interesting topics exist of course, but they're pretty academic if we're looking anything like +7°C by the end of the century.

That too is an interesting topic in itself, and one I would like to see more people engaging in disputing, rather than just avoiding having to consider it at all on the one hand, or obsessively and unproductively doom-mongering about on the other.

They both seem like less productive (if understandably human) approaches.

I find it convincing enough to have committed to taking the measures I have anyway, though I try to keep an open mind.

> doesn't say what they claim it does. It literally doesn't say it.

It doesn't say exactly QUOTE farming will not be possible UNQUOTE, but FFS, it's predicting the sky effectively catching fire because of the methane content, superstorms at least as extreme as the ones that caused the Permian-Triassic extinction, with ""super-hurricanes” hitting the coasts [that] would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived."

It says: "That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space.” On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs."

And you think agriculture will be possible in this?

It is true, this is at 5+°C, but they also state "Chance of avoiding five degrees of global warming: negligible if the rise reaches four degrees and releases trapped methane from the sea bed."

You've made no effort to refute any of this - you just refuse to engage with this source.

It explains the inexorable runaway temperature effect that will be (possibly has already been,) initiated, and so 4°/5°/6°/7°/+ is largely irrelevant - it's going up, up, up.

And the methane is already being released in observably huge quantities already at <1.5°C, so this does not look so unlikely that it's sensible to simply dismiss it to me, considering the fucktons of the stuff there is down there.

But hey, you've got potatoes and trees, so you'll be fine.

I (and probably other less optimistically- inclined folk here,) would be really interested in knowing why you, or other more optimistic folk, think this is not going to happen.

IF (and I freely admit that is not certain, but if) we're looking at anything like these projections coming to pass this century, then at some point this century, agriculture WILL fail.

And IF the runaway effect from all these tipping points we're burning through is real, then over some timespan, that's inevitable.

> A little emotional, aren’t we? The part where "the world" = "modern civilization"?

No. The part where everything bigger than a lystrosaur, including very probably humanity, is rendered extinct.

And actually I don't get emotional about it - I'm past that.

I get stubborn, and start building an Ark.

> The article they keep linking to doesn't say what they claim it does.

It claims unsurvivable, extinction-level conditions are coming, so yes - it does say what they claim (whether or not it's well-founded - that is a different argument. One you seem unwilling to engage in.)

> I've said that multiple times to them. They have no response for me. And neither will you, I expect. Read the goddamn article.

I have. And I can understand what it's saying. I'd like a reason to disbelieve it, but you're evidently unable to provide one.

I recommend reading the book (I ought to buy another one - lent it out, and never got it back.)

>I'd feel like a crazy person stocking up on food now

Call it an investment. Prices WILL go up; perhaps faster than budgets will tolerate.

Grains and dried beans will last 20 years or so if repackaged properly. Ask yourself how likely it is that the price of grain will go up and/or it's availability will decrease in the next 20 years. Use these bags and O2 absorbers, and this heat sealer. Of course it's not a forever plan, but your money will retain it's use value for 20 years and it could save your life. Hopefully it's a buffer to bridge the gap between the onset of a food shortage and the first productive harvests of new locally grown food sources.

When you're ready, consider transitioning to a /r/PlantBasedDiet, then start growing and preserving some. In any case, storing some food for the long term is reasonable at this point.

Kaczynski is pretty much the only one who has promoted the viability of this approach. Anti-tech Revolution: Why & How

If anybody wants the .pdf let me know; it's an interesting read even if I think the chances of revolution are fairly low.

Best collapse novel: Flan by Dogbowl.

The author is also a musician and recorded an amazing album inspired by the book.

Note: It's extremely disturbing.

Loosed Upon The World - The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction - Great collection of mid-collapse or post-collapse short stories from good authors. Edited by John Joseph Adams, who also was involved in editing the 3-pack compilations of "The End is Nigh", "The End is Now", and "The End has Come". My favorite story series in those books is Spores by Seanan McGuire, which focuses on a GMO fungus that eats the world.

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Another editor of those 3-pack compilations was Hugh Howey, a great author that wrote the "Silo Series" - A post apocalyptic series based on the only survivors of a nanobot "grey goo" attack that wipes out the human race.

I highly recommend "Northern Bushcraft" by Mors Kochanski:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mors_Kochanski. I also have and recommend the Army manual. Not exactly same thing but I recently bought "When Technology Fails" http://www.amazon.com/When-Technology-Fails-Revised-Expanded/dp/1933392452/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290468358&sr=8-1. It has a lot of very useful information in a surprisingly compact volume.

Sadly, in the USA, nose to tail seems to be for “high brow” folks.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Nose-Tail-Fergus-Henderson/dp/0062282611

> Adventurous palates as well as some of the most famous names in the food world—including Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, Jamie Oliver, and Daniel Boulud—flock to Fergus Henderson’s London restaurant, St. John, to indulge in his culinary artistry.

Poorer countries seem to be less picky-wasteful. Last last week, I saw a couple of episodes of that Taco series on Netflix. Mexicans seem to like eating heart, liver, kidney, etc. with their tacos.

Maybe check-out Mexican restaurants in your area.

I am pretty sure op is talking about the book by Mark Lynas.

First things first - I don't think the author's alternative, in this case being decolonization, would advocate for return to hunter-gatherer societies. Nor would the alternative of de-development. It would likely be decentralized communities independent from capitalist institutions, but that's not mutually exclusive to using agriculture, innovative technologies, and organizing.

Second - I have several sources indicating that decoupling works.

(A) The Zapatista movement lays an empirical blueprint from de-linking.

https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=soe_etd

Importantly, these are lessons learned through reflection on the struggle of the Zapatista’s over the past decade for dignity and autonomy against Globalization and policies like NAFTA. Furthermore, they are lessons in the Zapatista’s struggle to create autonomous and self-sustaining communities de-linked from the capitalist economy through campesino culture and direct democracy over health and school. As a transnational pedagogical movement hosting over 1700 students and bringing together many languages, Escuelita Zapatista sought from the beginning to form “a climate of fellowship (hermanamiento) among a plurality of subjects” (Zibech, 2013). Escuelita Zapatista reflects movement towards new definitions of citizenship and agency shaped in resistance to neoliberal policies. Education in each aspect is directly related to political struggle that will transform illegitimate forms of power. The Zapatistas example is concerned with the privatization, patenting and capitalist control of both knowledge and life itself. The Zapatista movement, however, is grounded in creating autonomous self-sustained communities intentionally de-linked from Western modern/ colonial ideology. Decolonial pedagogy offers the framework for a process of education committed to a restoration of economies, ecology and ecosystems managed from the bottom-up that moves toward action of politicized agency. Importantly, it is place and context specific and while their strategies may be abstracted and appropriated, it is important to understand the context out of which they emerge, and find strategy that is locally responsive. Local, then, is not an end in itself, but its own strategic political formation that cannot be appropriated simply to the terms of purchasing local, but is about responding to local and specific contexts that are not particular, but are unique in their own historical formations with specific actors and interests.

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(B) Do other such movements exist? Maybe they could reinvigorate dedevelopment.

https://www.amazon.com/Sufficiency-Economy-Enough-Everyone-Forever/dp/0994160615

The largest empirical analysis of the Voluntary Simplicity Movement (Alexander and Ussher, 2012) shows that there could now be as many as 200 million people in the developed regions of the world exploring, to varying degrees, lifestyles of reduced and restrained consumption. This signifies an emerging social movement of potentially transformative significance, especially if it were ever to radicalise and organise itself with political intent. Notably, that same empirical study showed that the movement was developing both a ‘group consciousness’ and a ‘political sensibility’, features that are arguably necessary for any social movement to use its collective power in influential ways. As more people are exposed to the type of reasoning unpacked by Kevin Anderson – that is, as more people see that responding to climate change actually requires consuming less – the Voluntary Simplicity Movement could well grow in size and influence, perhaps with surprising speed. ...

The best we can hope at this late stage is to deliberately ‘crash’ the existing fossil fuel-based system and build a permaculture alternative as the existing system deteriorates. His provocative theory, to oversimplify, is that if a new, relatively small social movement of anti-consumers were able to radically reduce their consumption, this reduction in demand for commodities could destabilise the global economy, which is already struggling. More precisely, Holmgren hypothesises that if merely 10% of people in a nation could reduce their consumption by 50%, this could signify a 5% reduction in total demand, which, although small, would likely cause havoc with any growth-based economy. It is important to emphasise that Holmgren does not romanticise the process of collapse; he acknowledges the worrying risks his strategy poses. First and foremost, it is unpredictable in its consequences. Nevertheless, he argues that whatever risks his strategy poses, there are greater risks – both socially and environmentally – in letting the existing system continue to degrade planetary ecosystems. What is most interesting about Holmgren’s strategy is that it does not rely on a mass movement. He believes that a relatively small but radical anti-consumerist movement could be a truly disruptive force.

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(C) Is it possible?

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss4/art15/

This paper set out to explore how we can understand the economic crisis from a transitions perspective. The persistency of problems associated with our currently dominant economic regimes (e.g., unemployment, inequality, ecological degradation) seems evident and reason for concern and action. We summarized a variety of alternative perspectives or discourses from which the argument for more fundamental systemic change is made. These debates combined with the perceived effects of the crises create space and agency for transformative social innovation. We argued that there is an increasing convergence among the transformative discourses, narratives, and practices, but also that it is impossible to foresee or predict future developments. In exploring the economic crisis this way, we also sought to unpack the concept of landscape and further develop our conceptual understanding of interacting different types of change.

From a transition perspective, we argue that the combination of such different types of changes (crises internal to the presently dominant economic system, counternarratives, and a critical mass of concrete alternative practices and models) are the ingredients for a chaotic, nonlinear, and structural period of structural systemic change (Loorbach 2014). Game changers such as the economic crisis tend to give rise to (or at least coincide with) emerging social unrest, political debates, discussions about the dismantling/redefining of the state, and debates about the (re)scaling of governance mechanisms. Social innovation initiatives, such as time banks and transition movement, often go hand in hand with narratives on (re)localization (Bailey et al. 2010) and self-governance and self-organization (Boonstra and Boelens 2011, Eriksson 2012, Meerkerk et al. 2012). A pertinent question is how these narratives on new forms of governance relate to the role(s) of governments and intergovernmental institutions such as the EU, and how (the interaction between) different types of governance responses and approaches influence the dynamics of transformative social innovation. With this paper, we hope to encourage further analysis into the economic crisis as a game changer and stimulate further work on understanding societal transitions.

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I haven't read Vaclav Smil's work yet, but I just ordered his new book Energy and Civilization: A History. Thanks for the recommendation!

It's a review of the book The Scramble for Europe by Stephen Smith. There is a video of him giving a ten minute presentation here:

• Africa's Scramble for Europe YouTube (10 min)
  
  Hopefully someone will post a mirror for you soon.

Even better,read the whole book Twilight's Last Gleaming. Great story.

I got this one from Amazon and I really like it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H7HFINS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In a ruined and toxic future, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.

Really good book on this subject by Stephen Smith: https://www.amazon.com/Scramble-Europe-Young-Africa-Continent/dp/1509534563

That's disappointing, I haven't read his fiction. The best geopolitical thriller I've read in the collapse realm was John Michael Greer's Twighlight's Last Gleaming. The thing that was amazing was it was completely plausible for a future scenario in almost every detail as far as I could tell.

http://www.amazon.com/Twilights-Last-Gleaming-Michael-Greer/dp/1782200355

Some good starting points

https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Nature-Economics-Survival-Mattered/dp/0865716730/

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Economic-History-Geerat-Vermeij/dp/069112793X/

https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Civilization-History-MIT-Press/dp/0262035774/

https://www.amazon.com/Overshoot-Ecological-Basis-Revolutionary-Change/dp/0252009886/

https://www.amazon.com/Environment-Power-Society-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0231128878/

https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/

http://bpeconomics.org/

https://biophyseco.org/

Sounds like a good plan.

Something similar does exist and may give you more ideas and areas to cover.

When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency

https://www.amazon.com/When-Technology-Fails-Self-Reliance-Sustainability/dp/1933392452

Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. Great book, he read 3000 papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, with extensive references. One chapter per degree C.

At 3C it just looks disastrous. At 4C the survival of modern civilization starts to look doubtful. At 6C it's hard to imagine our species surviving to any meaningful extent.

This is similar to what Theodore Kaczynski has been calling for for the last 20+ years. His new book, Anti-Tech Revolution is dedicated exclusively to understanding how and why a revolutionary movement can halt an existential apocalypse. https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Tech-Revolution-Why-Theodore-Kaczynski/dp/1944228004/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26J1NLSAR4RDN&keywords=anti-tech+revolution+why+and+how&qid=1555346239&s=gateway&sprefix=anti-tech+re%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1

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The only difference is that Monbiot is a reformer. But if the industrial system is incapable of reform, then what is needed is an out and out revolution.

Here is the mobile version of your link

I'm basing this on Mark Lynas' book Six Degrees

> Basically that things aren't great, but they aren't catastrophic either, and that we actually are kind of on the right path, or at least a path good enough that we'd 'only' heat the planet up another 2-3deg in the next 50 years instead of the near fatal ~8deg statistics I've seen. We could be doing a much better job as a species, but we'll still be OK.

There's a book on global warming, Six degrees. It has six chapters, one for each degree of warming. There's no need for a seventh chapter because there won't be any humans left in that scenario. According to the book, if we exceed +3°C, industrial agriculture will collapse (more or less quickly, depending on the region), and billions will starve.

We're currently on the trajectory for a warming of roughly +3.4°C. I imagine that the despair that comes with the early consequences will push down this path down to something like +2.8°C. Still, the lives of roughly five billion people are very insecure on that path. That's apocaplyptic enough for me.