Economic Collapse is Coming - Time to Leave the U.S.

The Dollar Vigilante's Jeff Berwick is back chatting about a myriad of economic and stock market-related issues with Cambridge House Live's anchor, Bridgitte Anderson. Taped at Cambridge House International's Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.

This is more opinion and food for thought on the coming financial-economic collapse. Cast your knowledge net wide, collect and analyze that information, discard what is bunk and plan/prepare. 

Poverty - A Catalyst for Collapse

The Real Numbers: Half Of America In Poverty — And It’s Creeping Toward 75%

I don't know about the 75%, but those in poverty increase everyday and the only remedy being applied is government handouts which not only cannot continue unabated but at some point may stop abruptly. Make up your own mind from this article from Liberty Crier.com

Where does that leave you and your family? In the majority of population in poverty looking vainly for a way to survive? Are you one of the 1% who are prepared to last a period of time in a "no food" available environment? If so, how long? 30 days? 6 months? Two years? Are you and your family going to be victims of those without? - and make no mistake about it - those without will do anything to sustain themselves - wouldn't you?

Anyway, the article from Liberty Crier:

The Census Bureau has reported that one out of six Americans lives in poverty. A shocking figure. But it’s actually much worse. Inequality is spreading like a shadowy disease through our country, infecting more and more households, and leaving a shrinking number of financially secure families to maintain the charade of prosperity.

1. Almost half of Americans had NO assets in 2009

Analysis of Economic Policy Institute data shows that Mitt Romney’s famous 47 percent, the alleged ‘takers,’ have taken nothing. Their debt exceeded their assets in 2009.

2. It’s Even Worse 3 Years Later

Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report states that “inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve,” with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages has worsened since the recession, as low-wage jobs have replaced formerly secure middle-income positions.

3. Based on wage figures, over half of Americans are now IN poverty.

According to IRS data, the average household in the bottom 50% brings in about $18,000 per year. That’s less than the poverty line for a family of three ($19,000) or a family of four ($23,000).

Census income figures are about 25% higher, because they include unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, public assistance, veterans’ payments, and various other monetary sources. Based on this supplemental income, the average household in the bottom 50% brings in about $25,000, which is just above the $23,000 poverty line for a family of four.

Even the Census Bureau recognizes that its own figures under-represent the number of people in poverty. Its Supplemental Poverty Measure increases, by 50%, the number of Americans who earn between one-half and two times the poverty threshold.

4. Based on household expense totals, poverty is creeping into the top half of America.

A family in the top half, making $60,000 per year, will have their income reduced by a total tax bill of about $15,000 ($3,000 for federal income tax and $12,000 for payroll, state, and local taxes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau agree that food, housing, and transportation expenses will deduct another $30,000, and that total household expenditures will be about $50,000. That leaves nothing.

Nothing, that is, except debt. The median debt level rose to $75,600 in 2009, while the median family net worth, according to the Federal Reserve, dropped from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in

5. Putting it in Perspective

Inequality is at its ugliest for the hungriest people. While food support was being targeted for cuts, just 20 rich Americans made as much from their 2012 investments as the entire 2012 SNAP (food assistance) budget, which serves 47 million people.

And as Congress continues to cut life-sustaining programs, its members should note that their 400 friends on the Forbes list made more from their stock market gains last year than the total amount of the food, housing, and education budgets combined.

Arguments about poverty won't end. Neither should our efforts to uncover the awful truth.

Preparing Defenses for a Bug Out Location

I received this e-mail from a reader named Jeremy: "Dear UrbanMan, I really like your survival skills blog posts I wish you would do more of them on tactical subjects and defense subjects. I have a ten acre parcel in the woods with a gravel road leading to a hunting cabin that I was awarded from my father's will. The hunting cabin is about all done in as it needs a new roof and repair of the wooden floor which is over dirt. I have a bumper pull RV that I'm going to move next to the cabin. This is all going to be my Bug Out location. I do not have water on the property but there is a stream that is about 400 feet away actually off my property but there is no one closer than a farm house with some milk cows(?) about 3/4 miles away. My road is gravel and connects to a state road about 1/2 mile away. What kind of things do you recommend that I do to make my defenses better? "

UrbanMan replies: Sorry about the loss of your father but in his death he has probably made you safer with willing you a Bug Out site with running water, albeit a bit of a walk away. Your RV can give you a place to live if you decide to re-furnish the cabin, as the cabin would be handy as you can heat it with wood and you probably can't do that in the RV!

While I have not seen your property nor an map of the area, here are some general recommendations on basic factors for you to consider, and forgive me is I go outside the requested "defenses" request.

On Defenses

I woulds consider these factors:

Observation - the ability to see your threat is a two way street sometimes. Early warning devices such as magnetic, IR beam and camera sensors should be considered but also consider simple methods such as a trip wire which connects a circuit to ring a bell, light a bulb or other visual/audio means if someone drives up your gravel road. Observation also means a vantage point whether it's a ground based LP/OP with a covered and concealed route back to your buildings, and/or, a high point such as the roof of your cabin (after you fix it) or some other type high point. Again, plan for a protected route back to the buildings.

Fields of Fire - It would be nice to have say a 500 yard cleared area around your cabin/trailer so you can see and engage threats before they knock on your door. Map out and make plans for any dead areas that would provide cover for any attackers.

Obstacles - Fences, barriers, barbed wire, etc., are not necessarily used to keep bad guys out, they are used to sort the curious from the evil - the evil will keep on coming. Obstacles and barriers however can serve to channelize the threat into position where it is easier for you to engage them.

Consider anti-vehicle barriers as well, so people can't drive right up to your building or use them as moving cover upon an assault. 5 foot long buried posts with about 2 feet of it sticking out of the ground can be one barrier for vehicle, but consider a defense in depth. That may be followed up with spike strips for tires and as a anti-personal obstacles. Barbed wire can be yet a third barrier, Consider setting up barbed wire right behind the spike strips from your potenntial threat's point of view....they may get tunnel vision on the barbed wire and not be looking for the spikes. Concealment. This also includes disguise. Do something to make it look like your gravel road connecting to the state road looks not to be used. You may want to look at sterilizing any signs of use,...maybe putting up a gate with a rusty locked to look unused.

The below sketch is an example of begijnning a baseline defense in depth, provided you have cleared fields of fire, and have negated any advantage of dead space - that is space that attackers can use to approach and attack that offers cover and/or concealment from your buildings or positions.  Also consider blindsides to your buildings from observations.  Every position should be mutually supporting from others.   

Water Supply

First of all water is a most valuable commodity. It would be nice to have a way, maybe a solar or hand powered pump to pump water from the stream to you buildings/trailer. I woulds consider purchsasing some water storage tanks, 750 gallon to 2,500 gallon, and maybe even several of them to place behind your bldgs/trailer and the access road - so people upon the most likley approach will not necessarily see them. Anybody doing a visual reconnaissance around your property would see them anyway. Having some sort of overhead cover on these water storage tanks to replicate a shed or garage from overhead observation. Even as GoogleEarth updates their archive imagery every couple of years, some bad guys looking for sites to raid or to occupy may see your water storage tanks from the web is they are not covered or disguised.

Food Supply

You will have to grow your own food. This means an appropriate area that you can water and protect; adequate seed supply on hand and the necessary tools. Probably means a green house in the winter time as well as the ability to can your harvests.

Neighbors

If I was you I would find out more about your neighbors with the dairy cows. They may have chickens (think eggs) or other livestock, and be a great source for living off the land such as planting a survival garden. If you can build rapport with them then you may be able to mutual support each other through hard times.

Good luck Jeremy. 

Prepared to Survive: Urban Grown Food Supply

UrbanMan's note:  I have previously written about urban farming where there is a trend for urban situated dwellers to have gardens to supplement their food supply.  Everyone in America should be doing this no matter where they are at.  Of course, remaining in a city during the collapse is a very risky proposition, but there are no doubt many people who have basically no choice, and while growing vegetables and such in an urban environment would take some effort and a continuing water supply - it is doable for those who have no choice and offers a small effort to alleviate the growing trend of U.S. based small farms disappearing.   

Urban Grown Food Supply from a BBC article, "Can city farms feed a hungry world?",

There will be billions more hungry people in 2050. Growing our food on vertical farms or under radical new lighting systems may be key to ensuring they have enough to eat.

Challenges for the cities of 2050

What’s for dinner? For that matter, what’s to eat, full stop? In a few decades time, that second question may become pressing. Mankind’s awareness of our food supplies has been heightened by massive crop failures due to millennial level floods, protracted droughts, and numerous food-borne disease outbreaks caused by microbes such as salmonella, E. coli strain 0157, toxoplasma and listeria. Consumers the world over now demand to know where their food comes from and how it is produced.

As if that were not enough to keep us up at all hours of the night, larger issues loom in the near future as our population continues to expand, placing greater pressure on the world’s agricultural industries to meet demands. As a species, we need to know whether modern farming is sustainable and compatible with the rest of the natural world, or is it causing irreparable damage to the environment that will eventually turn today’s serious problem of today into a food crisis of epic proportions in the near future?

To answer some of these questions, it’s important to recall how things got this way to begin with. In the beginning of the modern era of humankind, around 10,000 years ago, most of our earliest cities were located close to agricultural land. Cities needed crops.

In the Middle East, for example, einkorn wheat was first successfully cultivated around 11,000 years ago in the south-eastern part of what is now Turkey. Farming then rapidly spread through the whole of that region. It had many advantages, including the fact that when wheat yields exceeded demand, its grain could be stored without losing any nutritional value. These early cities – Ur, Nineveh, Jericho, Babylon – became established next to their farmland, and for a time flourished in concert with the fields that provided their sustenance. Yet despite the invention of farming, eventually all of these early cities fell into disrepair, their decaying fortified walls and crumbling buildings blending seamlessly back into the harsh, arid landscapes which gave rise to them.

The cause? Desertification. Drier weather patterns caused the failure of this single crop their civilisation depended upon – a mono-crop dependent upon a constant source of water to survive. It was irrigation which allowed such large amounts of wheat to be grown – but falling water levels brought the Middle East’s first agricultural revolution to an end. Only Egypt survived in the long term, thanks to the Nile River.

Today’s cities are at risk from a different set of issues. If trends in urbanisation continue at their current rates, cities could evolve into places where intolerable numbers of people may have to live, and who are forced to live well below the poverty limit, threatening to overwhelm sanitation systems and housing. Food and drinking water would be even scarcer than in many of today’s developing cities.

But this doesn’t have to happen. Most urban centres are experiencing a re-birth of their direct connections to agriculture. Within just the past 10 years, an increasing interest in city farming has been paralleled by the creation of the slow food and locallly sourced, or "locavore" movements, a foundation for the rise of urban farming initiatives.

Bright lights, big city

Included in the mix of successful city-based agricultural projects are rooftop gardens, rooftop greenhouses (both low tech and hydroponic), above-ground planting beds, the use of empty lots as farmland, and vertical farms that occupy tall buildings and abandoned warehouses. Collectively, these examples show the validity of growing food in the city. Not only could be they be carried out efficiently – such as rooftop greenhouses giving much higher yields than outdoor farms – but they could also operate without the pollution associated with outdoor farming.

Already, we have large-scale indoor farms such as EuroFresh Farms in Willcox, Arizona (318 acres (1.3 square km) of one-storey-high hydroponic greenhouses), supplying fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, and FarmedHere in Bedford Park, Illinois, a 90,000 square-foot (8,360 square metre) empty warehouse several storeys tall that was converted into an indoor farm producing tilapia (freshwater fish), a variety of leafy green vegetables, and several value-added products. Indoor farms (controlled environment agriculture or CEA) will undoubtedly replace most outdoor urban agricultural initiatives as the advantages of farming within protected environments become more widely accepted.

Judging by current trends in the development of advanced technologies, city-based CEA appears to have a bright future, as newer strategies emerge enabling indoor farming to be carried with increasing efficiency. Grow lights, for instance, have evolved from ordinary fluorescent light fixtures – expensive to operate – into a series of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting schemes. These LED lights can be adapted to emit light spectra at two dominant wavelengths (red 680nm; blue 460nm) tailored for growing green plants. The benefits of LED grow lights are obvious when compared to other outdated lighting schemes: LEDs cost less to run, and produce greater yields of most commercial crops, such as leafy greens and tomatoes. In early 2013, Phillips in the Netherlands announced it had invented an LED light with energy efficiency 150% greater than existing LED grow lights. This new development promises to significantly reduce energy costs involved in growing such crops.

Although most current vertical farming operations have chosen to specialise in cash crops consisting of leafy green vegetables (easy to grow and much in demand), in the near future, consumers are likely to ask for a wider variety of vegetables and fruits grown without pesticides, herbicides and other harmful chemical contaminants. At that point, vertical farming in tall buildings will replace less productive single-story greenhouses as the source of all city-grown produce. Some form of vertical farming now exists in Japan, Korea, Singapore, the United States, and Canada. New vertical farms are planned for a number of cities in the United States (Milwaukee, Memphis and Jackson Hole in Wyoming), and Linköping, Sweden.

Urban agriculture has the potential to become so pervasive within our cities that by the year 2050 they may be able to provide its citizens with up to 50% of the food they consume. In doing so, ecosystems that were fragmented in favour of farmland could be allowed to regain most of their ecological functions, creating a much healthier planet for all creatures great and small.

UrbanMan's note:  I ran across this other site that is just standing up and proposes to map out urban sources of food, which also brings to light the basic survival skill of recongizing edible (and poisonous) plants and fruits.  

Mapping the Urban Harvest, checki it out at FallingFruit.org


Falling Fruit is a celebration of the overlooked culinary bounty of our city streets. By quantifying this resource on a map, we hope to facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in our neighborhoods. Not just a free lunch! Foraging in the 21st century is an opportunity for urban exploration, to fight the scourge of stained sidewalks, and to reconnect with the botanical origins of food.

Our map of urban edibles is not the first of its kind, but we aspire to be the most comprehensive, bringing together the maps of foragers from all across the internet. We are also including edible species found in municipal tree inventories - databases of street (and sometimes private) trees used by many cities, universities, and other institutions to manage the urban forest. This already amounts to 554 different types of edibles (most, but not all, are plant species) distributed over 570,559 locations. Beyond the cultivated and commonplace to the exotic flavors of foreign plants and the long-forgotten culinary uses of native plants, foraging in your neighborhood is a journey through time and across cultures.

The map is open for anyone to edit, the entire database can be downloaded with just one click, and our code is open-source. We created Falling Fruit driven by our passion for food and the environment.