The Survivalists

World Electricity

I've lived during extended electrical outages, done special camping, manned a forest fire tower, and engaged in military operations, all without the services of electricity. I've visited villages in other countries that had no electricity ... ever. I have a deep appreciation for not having electricity.

I've told myself stories of the world without readily-available energy but I was fooling myself and could not sustain the tales. I always ended discussions of alternative sources (coal, oil, gas, geothermal, wood and other biomass, tidal, nuclear, wind, solar) with some foggy notion of all amalgamated somehow with losses over wires from whatever were the popular and most cheap sources that could be gained from holders and defenders as "electricity."

Then today I saw a map of the electricity available to people throughout the world. I am in anguish! Somehow I knew, but I had failed to accept, to internalize that this fundamental element of a quality of like ... by any criteria for "quality" ... is still missing for millions of people over vast area of the world.

There is so much to be done for so many people. How some people elect to use the last of the energy they are able to get, electricity wasting some it, will be grim stories. I cannot begin to think of a happy one for the neighborhood children or those of the world.

After You’ve Predicted, Then What?

Here are a ten ways to predict the future, to “prognosticate.” (Predicting in not "knowing.")

1. Study history. The future is likely to be somewhat like the past. Emphasize change per unit time. Generalize categories ... change of what?

Study and isolate trends and cycles. Compare related trends and cast the trend forward. 

Use statistical techniques such as time-series analyses, multiple linear regression, and non linear regression. Use logistic regression to estimate probabilities.

font face="Times New Roman" size=3>Use computer simulation (perhaps based on a good regression analysis), a model that allows you the study the effects e.g., of A changing to AA and B changing to BB and C changing to CC, then Y in the near future will likely be YY.

Assemble a team of experts and use their combined opinions and estimates about changing factors, encouraging their revisions based on opinions of their peers.

Write and study scenarios, accommodating all of the sources and results of the imagined future condition.

 Estimate the high and low limits of likely changes in local or relevant factors (soil, ore, etc. the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere including solar dimensions, and the biosphere. These define the small and large tetrahedron for life and action.

Isolate recent or pending changes (or published plan) and follow their actual or likely changes. Develop a "consequence" table. Use the results as in 4 above.

Isolate Precepts or fundamentals of how the world, business, or natural systems work. Use all of them to describe to describe a likely total system.

With experts, get their highest numerical estimate (people, size, budget, time, etc.), H, then their lowest, L, then their most likely-to-occur estimate, M, and compute the most likely future, F. F = (H + 4M + L)/6. The result is a median that works well in many situations. Round or adjust depending on whether you are risk prone or averse.

Having spent valuable time on such predictions, then what do you do with them? Use them in feedforward, part of a systems approach. Feedforward  is a special input and process to a decision. It is what you really believe (and will defend and stand by) the conditions are going to be like for the period affected by your decision (e.g., a building, a 5-year budget, a bridge, a by-law). Practical feedforward is making a bold decision about the believed future.

 

A small office system can be created for assisting in doing the above 10 easily and efficiently, thus increasing the chances for doing them, doing them with improvements (feedback), and increasing the goodness of decisions in a very dynamic world.