The Survivalists

In the Face of Terror in India

I received a message from a friend in India, Dr. Bharat Bhushan, relaying a message from a survivor in the recent Mumbai, India, attack. With permission of Rahul Welde, I share his practical ideas on surviving terror.

Mr. Welde was in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai  (late November, 2008) and trapped inside when the Trident-Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels were attacked.

“I was … in my room at the Taj Hotel the fateful night of the terrorist attacks. I managed to escape by the skin of my teeth at around 4 am, in sheer denial of allowing fire and smoke to swallow me.

“By God's grace, I managed to make the run down six floors and some few metres without the devil in my way. You can imagine how happy I am to be here typing this away…. I leave a few messages which might be of help to all good people.

“In the modern day world, risks are a plenty. Terrorists, tsunamis, earthquakes - the list can go on. None of these check on your profile, company, religion, class or seniority when they hit. They just hit. And we know now it can happen anywhere.

“Here are a few things we could all do to keep it safer and better.
1. Value your family and friends. Make sure you are covered well by insurance. Even if you are well off; leave them better off if the unfortunate were to happen.
2. Let them know details on things like bank accounts, investments, etc. Keep a folio with your spouse and close family members.
3. Use every waking moment to cherish what you have - family, friends, nature. Stay smiling, laughing and caring.

“Admittedly these aren't things I'd thought about deeply till now. I shudder at the thought of what if...

More practical, … “a few lessons that I want to share:
1. When in a hotel or a new place, please NOTE where the FIRE EXIT is. The fire exit route saved my life. I had no clue of where it was and why I ran where I did. Why I turned left or right. Providential escape for me - nothing more. I've stayed in hotels for years and don't remember ever paying attention to this. It's a few seconds invested that can save you from big trouble.
2. Insist on taking a room in the outer periphery - where the fire brigade can reach you. My room was on the inside and I tell you there was no chance the fire brigade would ever reach me. They would have always been a few yards, but several hours away. Ever thought of this detail?
3. A key item on your survival kit is your cellphone. I give it to Apple for developing the iPhone … Whatever your phone – a critical checkpoint is battery life. Often we wait for the battery to go down before charging. Don't! Keep it fully charged all the time. All the SMSes saved my senses and maybe even my life.
 4. I learned for the first time that when running through fire and/or smoke - run bending down and wrap a wet blanket around you. I did that, thanks to a friend who advised me. It's a different story I chucked the blanket thinking that the cops would gun me down, mistaking me for a terrorist. Good tip nevertheless.
5. Don't miss the aspect of staying fit - in running shape. Can help you and maybe even you can help someone.

“These last few days I have heard and read a lot about peace marches and candles and politician bashing and police bashing and whatever else. I am sure a lot of energy will go in all that. Having been there, I can only say that every soul - the cop, the fireman, the medico and even the common man on the street was doing the best he could. I don't blame anyone. I am sure good will prevail over evil in the long term. The short term blips we cannot avoid.

“I have a lot to say and yet not much more. God is the greatest and leads to the ultimate destiny. I am thankful for all that has been and all that there is now.”

Simmons' Comment

Matthew R. Simmons, chairman and CEO of Simmons and Company International, believes that a radical change in the way we live is inevitable. "We should basically be going back to creating a village economy, so that we really reduce the energy intensity of how we live," he says. "We need bigtime conservation, not feel-good conservation. Make things where they're used. You'll end long-distance commuting, and we have the tools to do that now with webcams. Grow food locally. Grow food in your backyard. If they're not commuting, people will have time to do that."

Quoted from Fortune Magazine, September 22, 2008, "The Prophet of $500 Oil" by Brian O'Keefe.

Converging List

Three days ago there occurred the greatest daily loss in the US financial market ever. I'm not wise enough to know how to respond to that. Fix it is not possible. I suspect few do and that it will take many adjustment, best-efforts, over many years to do so.

There is a national emergency, for, in addition, we are now under attack from the linked list:

1. urbanization without adequate physical structures
2. health-care and insurance system failures
3. a war and threats of war that we cannot afford
4. fossil energy unavailability; Eastern US coal will be gone in 12 years
5. groundwater shortages in quantity and quality
6. coastal seawater rise (glacier melt) and ground water intrusion of salt water
7. transportation system inadequacies for the future (train, airlines, trucking systems)
8. unplanned dependable food supply system (quantity and nutritional/"clean" quality)
9. crime emerging from the growing gap between very rich and poor (800 million people are in poverty)
10. terrorism with roots in the same gap
11. endangered species, a not-long-enough official list, and the reasons for their endangerment
12. loss of the Jeffersonian principle: Democracy can only flourish in an educated society ... and we are surrounded by them and and have a less than superior educational system.

I, we all, need wisdom, intensive thought, and some planned personal action. It is a very troubling time.

Parallels

A few days ago a guy in Madeira Beach, Florida, thought his new .25 cal pistol wasn't working so he jokingly tested it by pointing it at his head and pulled the trigger. It worked. He’s in the hospital expected to recover.

I few months ago a woman bought a big house she knew she could not afford. The bank foreclosed. She’s on the street, expected to recover. She’s very unhappy. I am very unhappy for her children. She’s getting assistance from local and federal tax pools.

A realtor sold contract “paper” to a home buyer. The buyer had no savings, down payment, or permanent job.  It was fraud. The buyer is now on the street. The courts have not worked; the owner whines; realtors were once respected; the legislators seem dazed.

The bank foreclosed on many places. It’s the law … one of them selected. Now the banks have empty boxes, declining in quality, most losing value; no buyers, no workers; no builders; no retail sales; declining customers and their pool of money. They are surprised by the crime increases and hire extra protection. They have the records; they knew. They whine. Now, certainly as planned, they are getting assistance from state and federal tax pools. They will recover.

Escalating greed paired with failure of law enforcement is the problem now faced, not “the market collapse” or other euphemistic diversionary phrase. Stupidity can be very harmful but there are few excesses. The pair …TV-clouded greed and enforcement failure … is a big problem and in the grand scheme, only one of several that, when they occur together, will do us in as a nation. We have little history for dealing with converging major bad events, and read little of that.

The Difference

I took this shot in Hyde Park in the mid '70s. I was delighted by the free speech and open dicussions and debates I found there. The wrath that I expect  now is that of the convergence (aka train wreck) of the long list of consequences of climate warming with limited oil availability (a package of supply, price, extraction and shipment cost, refinement, policy, and war fare). One or the other will be bad; the convergence may be too much to deal with in open debate or active programs,

I see the need for rationing, for new policies of resource use, new efforts with embodied energy, for major corrective programs and projects, and for education ... all leading to how to live the new life in a crowded, saddened population that knew the good life for a while and still wonders where it went. Blame will be assigned, increasing the sadness. We have to start  planning in new dimensions, not for now, but for what to do now to get ready for the future in which our children will sit wondering how it all could have happened. Maybe the fall can be stopped. I doubt it. Maybe actions can be taken to reduce the pain for many people. That could be the difference.

Climate Effects

Perhaps it is global warming and my location, but my blood is boiling as I read that EPA sent a report to Congress in December, 2007, and it has just been made available (July 2008) and now says “there is nothing new here.” It includes:

• "Climate change can be attributed to the heating effect caused by global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

• "Based on the evidence before him, the Administrator [EPA] believes it is reasonable to conclude current and future emissions of greenhouse gases will contribute to future climate change.

• "The Administrator is aware that the range of potential impacts that can result from climate change spans many elements of the global environment, and that all regions of the U.S. will be affected in some way.

• "The U.S. has a long and populous coastline. Sea level rise will continue, and exacerbate storm surge flooding and shoreline erosion.

• "In areas where heat waves already occur, they are expected to be more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting.

• "Wildfires and the wildfire season are already increasing and climate change is expected to continue to worsen the conditions that facilitate wildfires.

• "Where water resources are already scarce and over-allocated in the Western U.S., climate change is expected to put additional strain on these water management issues for municipal, agricultural, energy and industrial uses.

• "Climate change also introduces additional stress on ecosystems which are already affected by development, habitat fragmentation, and broken ecological dynamics.

• "In sum, the Administrator is proposing to find that elevated levels of [greenhouse gas] concentrations may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public welfare."

We're in deep trouble. The President has known; EPA knows; now we know. We have to come together to work on this, find solutions, or prepare for the coming changes. It will take more than prayer to help the financially challenged. Rights to land or water will mean little if they no longer produce products of value. Individuals who benefit from "warming" will peek as "new rich" among the survivors.

Precept 2 Net Energy

Energy may be transformed from one form into another but it is neither created nor destroyed (the first law of thermodynamics). All of the gross energy that we have seems to come from the sun, that is, originates as solar energy and nuclear radiation. It has been captured (transformed) by plants and these captured and compressed beneath Earth layers. We see it as crude oil . That is grade-school knowledge.

We use-up stuff and know that over the long-run we'll see it again in some form. That is the subject of mineral cycles and recycling. We don't destroy it, only its form. We still have it, and it keeps going around. Not so for energy! We can't make it. We can capture waste energy so that it will be lost slowly but me can't make it. It cannot be created. One we have it, we spend it it burn it, or use it, and then it's gone ... into the atmosphere... then outward... into "the cosmic otherness."

Now we must get past school room knowledge and concentrate on net energy which is  gross energy minus the energy costs of securing, processing, storing, and distributing it. Net energy is the amount of immediate concern for all people, not reported amounts stored, known reserves, or probable reserves. Net fossil energy is in critically short and declining supply. Energy resources that consume more energy to get them than they produce are worthless as sources of energy.

The phrase "peak oil" is used in international and policy discussions to mean that humans are pumping the the same amount of oil from wells that they are discovering in new wells. We're at peak oil now. It's another way of saying we're now at the break-even point, from here there are no net gains in oil.

We have to be careful about quick solutions and "conservation" tactics. They must not cost more energy to produce and install them than the energy they allegedly save. It's "new-think," think net energy.

(Later, in a survival society, oils may have special utility for products or services other than gained by burning them.)

African Food Security

There are growing food shortages.The World Bank, historically one of the largest donors to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, is revamping its approach to more directly boost food production after acknowledging in a recent internal evaluation that its market liberalizing policies had backfired. In addition to nearly doubling its agricultural aid package to Africa next year, it is also providing $10 million to Liberia to help fund imports of food for children and the country's most vulnerable groups.

Donors as well as Africa has failed before. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization has noted that Africa, with its poor market access and insufficient capital, is set to be the biggest loser in the current food crisis which results from a unique combination of weather, floods, rapidly changing life styles and food consumption, using grains for ethanol production, and market forces. Failing is very risky and can destroy much investment and progress.

Sustained food production is required for people around the world and that requires diversified production, protection, and storage and a knowledge of local agro-ecology that is rare... death, or migration. The future will be rich for the new urban planners in Africa and around the world, those who can plan and help operate refugee camps. The market for such experts grows.

The New Old-Steam-Engine

From the post-2030 electric grid (supplied by limited coal, wind, solar, and nuclear energy and more-limited biofuel sources) we will be able to draw energy to drive modern steam engines . The energy to manufacture such machines, relatively inexpensive now, will make them very expensive in the energy-short future. They may have co-generating sources (such as wood, but that will be seen to be exploitative, and wood will be of far greater use as a solar-power collector and as a carbon sink) but their prime uses will be in manufacturing identical machines "making themselves." Thoughtful investor today will see the potentials of owning such machines and prepare for adding and advancing findings in their uses. Such machines will be the sources of essential tools and services (such as pumping water). The machines are a good example of embodied energy.

When? 2030

It's very difficult to predict events, easier to predict conditions. (Really, it's very easy and gets easier with age because since the future cannot be known, you can only be judged wrong in the future ... and when very old, there's not much of that left. It's more difficult and dangerous to predict when some event will occur.

It's June, 2008, and about 2010 or 2010 plus or minus 2 years. I'm 75 years old. From 2010 I look back 20 years to 1990. I was working with Fay Cotton out of Quebec on analyzing beaver population data, with Moumar Gueye on wildlife management systems for Sengal, and with Seth Diamond on the energetics of pre-settlement people in Eastern North America. It seems like yesterday. Resource management plods along, land abuses continue, global warming is noticed by those in power, the value of time and a dollar changes slowly. Predictions made in the '50s are coming true.

I keep encountering questions about surviving. When is all of this going to happen? What's a realistic planning horizon? When are we really going to be in trouble?

History can be used to establish trends and observe responses to change. The straight-line projection for trends in simple systems, assuming the future will be like the past, has served well in the past when conditions were fairly stable. Increasingly, these projections or trend analyses are found erroneous. Complex systems are not linear, but curvilinear. There are thresholds, break points, and even reversals. As Forrester said, there are counterintuitive events that occur m large, complex systems. The best intentions often go astray because of these complex system-interactions. Changes in dominant factors cause dominant, unexplained changes. Complex computer models are needed to avoid these counterintuitive events.

I think we are in trouble now but that few people realize it (like having an undiagnosed cancer or living below a dam with a fracture that no one knows how to fix). I compare rates of desirable change now with those during the recent past. Not that many in society are increasing. The next 20 years however will not be like the last ones. Changes within society (not those of political promise) relating to labor, farming,  importing, transportation, real estate, human population changes, education, climate change, heating and cooling, supplying quality water, HIV/Aids epidemics, and pollutants will be much faster because we are dealing with withdrawing from all aspects of society readily-usable energy, a fundamental, root, without-which-nothing, addictive-when-cheap resource. Everything affects everything. Everything seems to be converging. I suspect profound, drastic, very evident, widespread changed conditions for the US society. I can only begin to imagine the stresses in Europe. I have seen poverty in parts of India, Nigeria, Senegal, and the Peoples Republic of China. Those people there already know and have adjusted to their bases of existence.

We are now on the way to that base and 2030 will be the date acknowledged by historians when new draconian actions were taken, powerful leadership emerged, or the country was engulfed in new barbarism.