When I got back into the house this freezing morning after walking the dogs, my glasses fogged up and I took them off. As I wandered around the kitchen barely able to see without my glasses I began to think about what I might miss the most in a transition time. A transition time when we might lose connection to the world of services and products that we take for granted.
Oh Rob!!! Stop it - this will never happen. But it can.
What if Israel attacked Iran's nuclear bomb making facility and the Iranian closed the Straits of Hormuz? Could happen this week. PEI would be cut off from oil in less than a month. Electricity would become very intermittent. Maybe the economy would never recover bearing in mind how weak it is now.
I started with my eyes and then did a list that makes me wonder how dependent I am even here in rural PEI. This is not a complete list - just some random thoughts. How about you? How would you cope if the trucks stopped running and energy became scarce?
- I am blind as a bat without my glasses - what would I do if I could not get new ones and I broke or lost the one's I have? Raid the drugstore early so I can at least read. Losing my ability to read would be very very bad for me
- Of course water is the most important thing that I worry about. We have a well but only an electric pump - it's 200 metres to the river - I have a good wheel barrow. There is a an old well filled in - I suppose I could dig it out - there are hand pumps but I would have to get one now not then
- Talking of digging, I could dig an out house have enough pots around to use inside during these cold nights - paper will be scarce - the Romans used sponges but that demands a lot of water - have to think more about this one.
- At a pinch I could cook with our wood stove - nice to know we can cook and even bake bread - but where would the flour come from? If I stored flour and food and my neighbours didn't would I feed them? What if I didn't? What about most people who have no access to a stove or wood - or cannot even cook? Some kind of comunal food system will have to be set up if we are not to collapse.
- We have enough wood around here for many years but what about those in town or who did not have access to wood? I have a set of axes too and enough fuel to get next years wood cut with my chain saw. Again some kind of commual effort to provide a minimum of heat for most people is required
- Where would our food come from? That is the big challnege. We will run out of food in about a month. All the farms round here use big machines. Where would they get the seed and what would we do in the 2 years it would take to adjust? I am sure that PEI could do very well but it is the transition that is scary. Even I had had seed etc for our garden, if the trucks stopped in February it would be touch and go as we would have to wait until late summer. It's the first 2 years that will be really hard
- Huge transition back to family mixed farming - huge transition to urban agriculture - lots of small animals too - chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits - fish ponds? Need several acres per person plus we will need a lot of acreage in hay for the horses
- No gas - Well I live 25 minutes walk from town or 15 mins by bike. But what about people who are really rural? Back to having a whole life within a days walk. There are still a lot of horses on PEI and people who know how to train them to pull. Within a few years we would have a vibrant horse base. Plenty of handy folk too - so wagons and carts would appear fast
- No heating oil - I don't heat with oil much. No hot water would be a problem but in a pinch I can heat on the stove. No hot showers every day would be something I would miss a lot. In the summer you can hoist a bucket painted black in the sun and get a good shower - I did that for a year in Africa, But in winter - a tub by the fire. All my neigbours heat with wood but 80% of Islanders heat with oil - going to be ugly at first - you don't want to be living in an apartment building
- School - back to the one room I think
- Ahhhhh the internet! God I will miss it. I will have to get to town more and socialize with my PEI friends.
- Our kids...... They live far away. Why my wife wants us to move closer to them while we can. And that is another story
I haven't even mentioned money - isn't that odd. I expect that the really important things won't require much. Just this simple thought experiment shows me that it will be community or bad bad bad times. We just will not be able to cope without each other.
