LATOC as a springboard?

[Keela]

LATOC however is good for making you get your act together NOW! I tend to ignore most of the more "out there" type of threads/posts, but enjoy their Food/Garden forum.

I think they should market and sell some of their homegrown cancer cures.

They must be ALOT smarter than the other Peaker sites, none of them is claiming to cure cancer...just pitch this bell shaped curve thing....

[Keela]

Hi Sally, thanks for your reply.

Just about to start Long Emergency, any good?
Hope it doesnt freak me out all over again!

LE is good doomer reading! Written in 2005 I think so some prices quoted are out of date, but worth the read.

[Norfolk In Chance]

I came to PS via DODGY TAX AVOIDERS. I think James had mentioned this site on a review of Party's Over. Never knew of LATOC until I arrived at PS!

[careful_eugene]

I was directed to LATOC in August 2004 during a debate on another forum. I then spent a lot of (too much) time on PO.com, ran round like a headless chicken trying to prepare for the end of the world, upset my wife by trying to force P.O onto her then finally ended up here. Although I don't post that often, I do spend a lot of time reading here.

[RuncornBridge]

I'm a lazy armchair survivalist, would like to try the pre FF lifestyle for ..... maybe a few days, if someone could build the stuff and set everything up for me. Hehehe, So far this doesn't bode well for me does it?
Anyway I started looking on Alpharubicon, how to make butter, keep chickens, that side of the site. then to PO.com, LATOC et al, then finally found the sanity here. I'm so glad I did as the first month after swallowing the red pill was AWFUL!!!!!

[CountingDown]

Can't remember how I first stumbled onto PO, even though it was only a couple of months ago, but it do remember it scaring me rigid - the site I'd come across was a "sane", carefully reasoned discussion of how the world was going to end in mass carnage, death and riots with only a life of drudgery and life as a Middle-Ages-style serf to look forward to.

Since then I've been reading everything I could come across in the vain hope that I could disprove it - that it was just a crank theory. Unfortunately it all seems too realistic to me, so now I'm busily reading everything I can find to make sure that we can get as ready as we can - while skirting the sites that suggest a return to the Middle Ages, and/or the purchase of an AK47.

I think I'm just about getting past the headless chicken stage . . . .

[fubar1977]

I only found LATOC because my boss e-mailed me the link after reading Last Light.
Very glad he did. It`s just a pity there are so few people local to me who actually "get it", there are probably only 2 or 3 people I see regularly that actually believe there`s a problem.

[CountingDown]

Just went over to LATOC, and they are definitely the guys that scared the pants off me - not necessarily sure that's the best way to handle PO awareness as it almost got me into "Nothing I can do, so might as well not care about it". Well done all on PS for presenting a confronting, but not paralysing, view on PO.

[kenneal - lagger]

I got interested in the mid seventies with the first oil crisis. I read books such as The Energy Question, Oil & World Power, Only One Earth and Food Resources which made me realise that growth was limited and we only had limited resources which would run out one day with the exponential growth in their use. I only read Limits to Growth recently.

We built our first energy efficient house in the late seventies and sold it to move to our present farm in 1983. The idea of the farm was to build our self sufficiency, inspired by The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency, and later The Lore of the Land, by John Seymour. The struggle for survival, for various reasons not connected to farming, put our original reasons for the project, thoughts of resource depletion, out of our minds somewhat but we still worked towards our ideal.

In 2003 I saw the CAT MSc advertised in Clean Slate, the CAT magazine, and thought that I could do the course. In 2005 I finally found the money and started the course. I "found" Peak Oil again and Energy Bulletin while researching for an essay. Mike Peplar found me at a Biomass conference after I asked a few awkward questions, as usual, about Peak Oil and the relevance of current energy policies.

From Mike, I was straight into Powerswitch (Thanks, Mike) and haven't looked at any of the other sites apart from TOD. There was quite a shock in realising that something we had been working towards for thirty years might be arriving soon, and it is still there to a great extent, but we have enjoyed most of the journey and have two children who know how to cope in adversity. One even has a degree in Disaster Management.

We are now working towards teaching others how to cope by turning the farm into a training venue for earth and straw building techniques, permaculture, survival, wood working, efficient woodburning and cooking and food preparation and preserving. We hope to have an eco village here in the near future and are working with Transition West Berkshire.

I am also working on the local Conservative Party to try and turn them a greeny blue. The local Agent and MP are onside but most of the others are of the dinosaur/ostrich mentality at the moment.

There are a lot of us old fogeys out there who lived through the 70s/80s who know what sudden oil depletion can do to an economy. Some of us just need reminding and telling that this time the reason for the lack of oil isn't political and is likely to be permanent. So get out there and tell them and hopefully they will see what is necessary.

[mikepepler]

I think I read LATOC first, it's a while ago now, and then James responded to me through the ROE2 Yahoo group and asked if I'd like to help him with PowerSwitch, which he'd just started. The rest is history...

[fubar1977]

I think I read LATOC first, it's a while ago now, and then James responded to me through the ROE2 Yahoo group and asked if I'd like to help him with PowerSwitch, which he'd just started. The rest is history...

All I can say is keep up the good work.
Great Site, sensible people, interesting topics

[Miss Madam]

God the ROE2 Yahoo group, that was years ago... I remember that that group kept me sane - before this place was even invented. I found out about PO whilst doing some desk research on energy futures (for the Scottish Parliament - I think they were my client at the time), and sat dumbstruck having read LATOC and TOD, and Kunstler. I'm so glad I found Powerswitch, as now, I am aware of PO, and preparing but also able to enjoy real life and live in the moment. Hence, I'm moving to Hong Kong for four months at the end of the month (to do a climate change impact study), I may as well see the blazing glory of rabid consumerism at its zenith before the slide.

[leroy]

Fantastic food in Hong Kong - best place to eat in the world that I have visited. Great French, Italian, Korean, Sushi and of course Cantonese - I am very very envious.

[Miss Madam]

Well, work is giving me free use of our company apartment, if anyone else fancies a last splurge of hedonism, consumerism and generally a good vantage point to watch Rome burn - feel free to come and visit!

[emordnilap]

I confess I was quite pleased to realise it's likely humanity isn't going to be able to continue the consumerist wasteful lifestyle forever. My first reaction was glee. Since then I've become more interested in encouraging redundant and diverse energy supplies than planning for the downfall of this civilisation. Too many people would suffer to take any overt pleasure in its ending. Still, it's created in me an interest in truly sustainable approaches to living, not out of a desire to be one of the survivors but because on some emotional gut level it feels more beautiful than the globalised, specialised, optimised economic system.

Beautifully put.