Civil Collapse Strategy Group

Some strategies would be:

Get to know your neighbours, start a veggie garden, store some food and water, stop spending money on luxury goods that are only worth value as a status symbol.

Trade your home grown veggies with others in your area (have a look at http://www.mygarden.co.nz/Trade/Default.aspx).

I guess, most important, is community. When it comes down to it, that is the key to survival.

However I will make the point that NZ is more than self sufficient in food production in everything other than staple grains and pulses. So I would suggest any crisis management would have to focus more on the logistics of getting produce to where it is needed as opposed to “emergency” production.

In saying that I am not convinced we will find ourselves in a state requiring emergency type management. Again its more likely to be “the long emergency” of minor crunches and slow decline as opposed to a sudden event

However good bioregional auditing is the first place to start preparing for either scenario.

Some suggestion are

Is there bulk food stored in your region? i.e grain silos, warehouses supermarkets, processing plants. If so how much?

What alternate means of transport are in your area. i.e rail, boat.

What local centralised infrastructure could be utilised for distribution. i.e sports stadiums/carparks, rail stations, wharves etc?

How much food is already grown locally? What types?
Are the growers connected through existing local market and distribution networks etc.

How much arable land is there in your area currently not being utilised? i.e sports fields, parks, schools, lifestyle blocks.

What resources are easily available? i.e Waste refuse stations, bulk compost makers, fish processing, timber processing etc

What skill sets exist? Polytechs, exiting growers, food processors, local industry manufacturers, community workers/organisors etc

What social networks already exist and how can they be utilised i.e TT, OOOOBY, Farmers Markets, co-ops, rotary, lions, probus, widows clubs etc

What energy resources are available? Wind, water, biomass

…and so on. Without an appropriate audit of whats available, its pointless divising strategies that may fail if key inputs are not there.

Some members of Permaculture in New Zealand have created an "Emergency Response" Working group. Let me know if you want to hook up with the co-ordinator of that project team

Some useful suggestions, but I think the op is referring more to a collapse of Law and Order?

Not something that Civil Defence or most kiwi's are prepaired for.

Get real well acquainted with your bike.

For longer trips, buy a scooter. They're cheap to buy and cheap to run, requiring only a couple of litres of petrol per fortnight.

As petrol prices continue to go up many others will switch to bikes/motorbikes/scooters also, so the danger of being hit by cars will steadily decline in future.

I would be very happy to support a forum on a civil collapse strategy at a regional level. Has anybody got a written proposal?

Disruption of fuel supplies. Susan Krumdiek has proposed a market system similar to that used for airline tickets, where availability determines price and demand. However, that needs a functioning internet system.

There are a number of other emergency situations not mentioned above.

1: loss of eftpos.. people with cash may be able to make purchases for a limited time, then we will move to barter! Could be a software problem, supperbug, loss of power supply.

2: Water supply. Rain water collection tanks will ensure some supply.

For a likely scenario I would consider what happened in Russia in the years following the revolution. The country was in disarray due to the aftermath of WW1, and they were also under embargo from the major powers who were also backing the "White Russian" forces in their counter-revolutionary civil war.
The populations in the cities were starving, and the ruling communist party knew that they had better be fed or they would lose control of the situation, so they dispatched commissars with militia units to the rural areas to sieze food supplies from the peasants and "kulaks"(larger landowning farmers)who, of course were vilified as "counter-revolutionaries" in order to justify the appropriation of their goods. As a result of this many of the rural workers and experienced and knowledgable agriculturalists starved- guess what that did to the food supply?
I suppose what I am saying is that, in this sort of a crisis, the government is more dangerous to you than random pilagers if you had the foresight to produce enough food to keep yourself and your family (which we do).
Provision needs to be made to enable the movement of significant numbers of urban workers to be billeted in areas capable of food production- ideally with friends and relatives at first. Surveys need to be done to determine which areas of the country best produce the foodstuffs we mainly import (principally grains) which shouldn't be too difficut as NZ was self-sufficient in grains until the 1970's.
The political parties will never address these issues as political power lies principally in the cities. City dwellers would be horrified by what I am suggesting (I can hear the cries of "Pol Pot" as I write) but how many of them have ever actually experienced an empty belly? Many city dwellers produce "wealth" on paper but in a crisis their efforts become completely nullified as they create no tangible benefit with respect to peoples immediate needs. In the longest term I would expect to see a reduction of urban population to between 10 and 30% of total population. I sincerely believe every one of us needs to develop three skill sets to survive and thrive- as a food producer, as a craftsperson, and a cultural / artistic component too.

I am fairly new to all of this, although I have been aware of climate change for about 20 years and peak oil since End of Suburbia came out. However since seeing Mike Ruppert’s Collapse I have had more of a sense of urgency. I feel that some fairly major changes in the economic front driven by oil which has already peaked are coming, so those of us who are aware of this need to give some urgent attention to developing a lifeboat movement (Transition Towns)

The problem is that the main response is denial - it reminds me of the Ministry in Harry Potter “Order of the Phoenix”. The truth is just too much to acknowledge so quite a lot of effort is expended to pretend everything is normal (as in National Radio Geoff Robinson ‘s “pumps on the road to recovery”)

Because of this we are unlikely at this stage to be able to persuade local or national authorities to take any action to preapre the population. To the extent they have any awareness of this they will be wanting to avoid panic .

That means that we have to concentrate on developing our own movement and links between those that are far-sighted enough to prepare.

In addition to becoming as self-sufficient as possible through gardening and water tanks (and possibly solar heating for those that can’t go off the grid) I would also add two things that have been emphasised by Mike Ruppert in the US.

The first is buying in and storing staples such as grains - enough for about 2 months. With Russia banning the sale of wheat and crises in other areas of food production, the cost of food is likely to go through the roof.

Seeds is another area.

No one really mentions gold and silver very much. I was, until very recently comparitively disinterested in economic areas but have been persuaded that, for those with some savings, unless we want to lose it some investment in gold and silver is advisable. Ruppert talks about it as a transitional phase between the (probable) collapse of fiat currency and the development of more sustainable ways of organising our economic life.

Just some initial ideas.