I lived in a big city, and now live on the outskirts. I have studied y2k and the most likely scenarios. Given the horrors in the spectrum of human reactions that we are likely to witness, I believe that the resulting fear and distrust will be so great as to preclude any real possibility of barter between strangers for an indefinite period of time. People will kill you now for your tennis shoes. The level of fear and distrust now is substantial. Consequently, after witnessing what I posit that we are about to witness, I am putting no confidence in the possibility of bartering for items I do not have, and I suggest that those near the cities do the same. It may be a little different in the sticks but I believe that for the most part, if people find it easier to kill you for a loaf of bread than barter for it, they will do so. Life is cheap in 20th century America. Prepare accordingly.

-- Pessimist (dreadingit@scared.com), March 25, 1999

Answers

I think you are probably right.

-- Linda A. (adahi@muhlon.com), March 25, 1999.

As long as there remains millions of guns, there will be much more order than you would think. I was in LA during the riots and the earthquakes and I saw many run at the sight of a gun. I remember when the looting shifted to the Korean neighborhoods and stores. The Korean merchants had a rough time the first day. The second day the came back armed to the teeth. That ended that.

Got a gun?

-- Tomcat (tomcat62@aol.com), March 25, 1999.

In the beginning when I first started storing away I started thinking barter. As time went on and I become a more "seasoned" survivalist, I have since changed my opinion. It is my theory that if things do get severe there will be shortages and even unavailability of goods. Why would I want to barter my food and water for something that I do not need? The people around me have not prepared so they will be coming to my door asking me for a handout with nothing in exchange except for possibly money or trinkets. Of course I won't have any use for those items. You are right Pessimist, people will kill you for a loaf of bread that's why it's important to take precautions beforehand and have the proper weapons to defend your family and property. Everyone I know that is preparing for Y2K have taken necessary measures and it's at the top of my list for survival. Don't think barter, think survival. P.S. I think Gary North is a 10.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), March 25, 1999.

Tomcat: I remember watching it all on the news! Wasn't that cool those Koreans on the rooftops with their 12 guages protecting their property? Lock and load!

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), March 25, 1999.

Bardou: Yes Bardou, it was cool. Let me tell you more. The first day the tension and fear amongst the Koreans was severe. When the decision to bring the guns out the fear subsided a bit. But when we saw the looters scatter at the sight of the guns the tension left and was replaced with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that mens' fears are greater than their depravity.

Yes, people's fears can cause great harm. But understanding those fears and being willing to confront them with a gun allows those fears to work in you favor.

Life is not cheap; even to the depraved.

-- Tomcat (tomcat62@aol.com), March 25, 1999.

I agree Tomcat, that's why I think WTSHTF and people know that you have a gun to protect yourself, they will more than likely go on to find someone who isn't protected. After all, you wouldn't do something stupid in front of a police officer now would you? I don't like thinking about the fact that I would have to shoot someone, but I wouldn't hesitate to do so if it we're between me and thee.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), March 25, 1999.

Foreign-born Koreans firing on American-born blacks? Always seemed odd to me.

-- Spidey (in@jam.com), March 26, 1999.

The problem I see with bartering is that it shows people what you have. I don't think if things are tense that it is wise to show people that you have anything more than they have. Otherwise you are just setting yourself up to be attacked.

If everyone else looks ragged and a bit dirty, it would be good to look that way somewhat also. If everyone else looks hungry, you are going to look strange if you don't also. If you have things to barter, and others don't, they will hate you. They will spend their great deal of free time trying to figure out how to bring you down.

Conclusion, its good to look like you fit in when times are bad, even if you have it better than others. Otherwise, you may not live through the event, or you may be armed, but when your children go out, they may not live through it. Retribution.

Sincerely, Apple

-- Apple (villarta@itsnet.com), March 26, 1999.

Get Real everyone. If there is enough infrastructure collapse to generate widespread Civil Disorder, Civil Disorder is the last thing you need to worry about if you have done your prep.

Famine and Plague cannot be defended against with guns and force. They arise much more spontaineously than does Civil Disorder.

Civil Disorder burns hot and fast, an astute person with a bit of luck can avoid it.

Famine and Plague burn long, and even an astute person with a bit of luck might _not be able to avoid them.

But, I agree, it is much easier to think and fantasize dealing with the pointy haired mutants than it is to think about death from bad water, no sanitation, insufficient medications, dying from exposure, dying from famine, dying from any one of the very numerous Plagues.

The Muties are sexy to talk about, Famine and Plague are not.

Sometimes I really wonder if we all really deep down fantasize and have a deep seated desire to kill other humans. Or is it that we are going after the easiest target causing our dis-ease.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 26, 1999.

A couple of questions...

How many of you hard core realists have ever leveled a twelve guage (or any other gun) at a human being, squeezed the trigger, watched them die, in civilian life?

What was it like? (Please share the details. What did it look like? How did it sound? Did their guts come out the back? Did they die right away, or flop around, scream, say things? And what did you do after it was over? Leave them laying there and move on? Bury them? Drag them out of your house or yard? Call the cops? And please... Don't leave out the part about how it felt, what you thought, what you see in your mind and feel about it today when the scene - or scenes - pop back up out of your memory. Be honest. And of course, be real.)

-- Hank Partstell (part@seasons.net), March 26, 1999.

Spidey -

American shop-owners firing on American looters. Sounds about right to me. Certainly makes as much sense as the "King Verdict Riots" ever did...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), March 26, 1999.

The usual troll garbage. Ignore.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), March 26, 1999.

Mr. Spain,

I don't know if you're including my questions in the "usual troll" blowoff or not, but just in case, I'm serious. I'd really like to read some answers. A lot of people are doing a lot of talking about the use of deadly force on this forum. They sound like they know a lot about it. Like it's all very matter of fact, cut and dried, understood. I'd like to read about actual experience they've had with it.

If you were referring to my posting, please explain why that should be ignored? I'm asking people who are saying they're preparing themselves to take other's lives if they had any civilian experience with that, and if so, what that experience was like. I'd say that's a valid question and request.

If you weren't encouraging others to ignore that post, but the one following it, excuse me. I just want to eliminate any possible confusion because I'd really like to know about this one.

-- Hank Partstell (part@seasons.net), March 26, 1999.

King, I hope you weren't calling me a troll, though in this case it might be positive.

Mr. Partstell brought up some of the real nitty gritty about killing and why I think ever so many people talk a lot but will not be able to do the act in the time of need.

It is apparently very easy for people to fantasize, in a rather mediocre Hollywoodish fashion, killing fellow human beings. Yet when someone calls the game, they get called a troll.

Now, what are you going to do when your y2k hidey hole, or safe neighborhood, or concrete bunker, or suburbe, or safe small town entertains two or three kinds of highly infectious plague for two or three months?

What are you going to do with the bodies, some of whom you knew, some of whom are related to you, some of whom are bloated beyond recognition when you as part of a clean up crew find several days after death, summer of 2000? Are you going to volunteer to be part of the group who goes thru the streets every day collecting the previous night's dead? Are you going to bury or burn them? Either method is a LOT of work. What are you going to do with the inevitable children who survive their parents?

Anyone who thinks that talking about the psychological reaction to shooting people, or talking about the psychological reaction to plague is trolling is foolish. Anyone who thinks they are going to kill someone and NOT have the psychological reaction is foolish. Anyone who thinks that there will not be psychological problems re plague is foolish. Anyone who creates a contingency plan without paying attention to these psychological problems doesn't really have a good CP. Anyone who creates a contingency plan without taking into account bullet riddled bodies, bodies killed by plague, and just in general bloated, rotten, falling apart bodies doesn't have much of a contingency plan. In all cases these will be of great impact upon the sanitary conditions and upon psychological good health.

If this this now trolling, then color me TROLL, and get used to it. This Forum is just way too white bread, everyone talking as if nothing bad is going to happen, or the consequences will be trivial.

Think about that 30 Million without water or sanitation. Think about the former Yugoslavia. Think something real BAD CAN'T happen here?

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 26, 1999.

Pretty quiet around this thread. I look in every once in a while but it doesn't look like anyone's got much to say. Thought while we're waiting, some of this stuff may fit. Might even come in handy.

Natural Death
Death should be treated as a natural part of a life led as part of nature. Medicalized, hospitalized, sanitized death - which denies death, and stifles grief - should be replaced by natural death and natural grief.

Albert Einstein, when his life was threatened by bleeding from a hardened aorta, refused an operation which would have given him a fifty- fifty chance of survival, even though this meant almost certain death. "The end comes some time," he told his housekeeper, "does it matter when?"

How complicated does a burial have to be?
"Nicholas Albery, editor of The Natural Death Handbook and a director of the UK educational charity the Natural Death Centre, prefers to leave his body to nature. In his will, he has specified that he wants to be buried on a piece of farmland that he and his wife were given as a wedding present, with no coffin, just wrapped in a sheet, and with an apple tree planted on top of him."

Eco- Cemeteries  The Ultimate Recycle
There is a growing movement in England for farmers, local authorities and wildlife charities to establish Woodland or Nature Reserve Burial Grounds, often with a commemorative tree planted for each body there.

For those who think more than sheets are needed: A source for plans to make your own cardboard coffin

In the Been There, Done That, Don't Worry department, in a review of the movie, Fearless, the writer (who's had a near-death experience), wrote,

"Then, if you've really gone along with Weir's enormously skilful lead-up to that scene in the rest of the film and can let yourself experience the roaring, screaming disintegration with Max himself, I believe you'll find a meaning you've never dreamed of in Shakespeare's now hackneyed statement that love 'looks on tempests and is never shaken'. I'll admit unashamedly that tears were streaming down my face as I watched it, for it recaptured for me the most important experience of my life, when I myself came to the brink in 1983 and discovered, in the moment of time-stop, that human consciousness is grounded in the same fundamental energy that moves the sun and other stars and tempests too - an energy for which 'love' is the only word we have, though its common sentimental associations are hopelessly misleading."

And a few paragraphs from a related, interesting (maybe even y2k- applicable), page on the apparent affects of near-death experiences entitled "Unblocking a malfunction in consciousness"

Over the past few years some researchers have begun to turn their attention to the remarkable effects of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) in this life. NDEs almost always leave the experiencers freer, happier people than they've ever before dreamed possible.

Moreover, while this new-found capacity for joy in living seems to drive all NDE-ers to use religious language in trying to do it justice, it doesn't necessarily involve any particular conviction that the soul is going to survive the body's death. It's more like a basic shift in consciousness whereby life in each moment becomes so vivid that anxiety about future survival, in the body or out of it, simply ceases to be important.

The hypothesis I've come up with is that the block which cuts off so- called normal human consciousness from its roots in that other, impersonal consciousness, is some kind of inflation or hyperactivity of the psychological survival-system. Exactly how or when this originated in the history of our species I have no idea, and at present don't propose to speculate. But the effect of this hyper-defensiveness is to focus individual consciousness so rigidly on the business of securing its own future that the underlying universal consciousness, with its every-present- moment happiness, peace and wonder, gets shut out. The only satisfaction allowed into awareness is that which comes from meeting the needs (or supposed needs) of the individual body-mind, while pain becomes wholly negative suffering instead of a life-enhancing signal. And this basic malfunction is epitomised in the fact that dying, which in nature is simply part of life's great flow (or of that secondary game called individual manifestation), becomes the object of ultimate fear and horror, with all the catastrophic psycho-social consequences to which Ernest Becker and others have directed attention (Becker, 1973).

Close encounter with death is able to break this whole spell because the survival-mechanism gives up at this point which I'm sure is why the Tibetan Book of the Dead Evans-Wentz, 1960) calls the dying-moment a time of special grace when Nirvana can suddenly become apparent to anyone. And this is why some who return from the brink of death have been privileged to come back knowing what consciousness really is - knowledge which, once acquired, enables the survival-mechanisms to resume functioning without their former hyperactivity. I've observed that, since Thailand, my feeling about death, my own included, is that, although I still intend to avoid it as long as possible in life's secondary game and still mourn the loss of friends, it has in itself a very special kind of beauty, like the dying leaves of autumn, whose splendour we are allowed to see in ordinary consciousness because our minds don't associate it with the ultimate taboo. A corollary of this changed attitude to death has been the discovery that ageing, including even its more obvious decay-aspects, has become interesting rather than depressing or disgusting.

And lastly, at this page, http://www.globalideasbank.org/befaft/contents.html, these (and other) topics:

A refusal to supply coffins
Heaven on Earth's coffins as bookcases
A coffin bag to sling over the shoulder
Coffins made of flax or cork
Willow coffins
A green burial stretcher
Refrigerated plate for bodies kept at home
A blue coffin for a ritual of transformation
A secular funeral
I became the 'Funeral Director'
A grave that took four days to dig

-- Hank Partstell (part@seasons.net), March 27, 1999.

Hhhmmm. For a hospice caregiver, the above post was interesting. Hhhmmm.

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), March 27, 1999.

Hank,

As long as you're into imagining things:

Imagine YOURSELF being shot in cold blood by someone else. Does it hurt? What are you thinking? Did your guts come out your back? Did the blood feel warm as it ran down?

Imagine your wife or child being raped, tortured, mutilated, killed by someone simply because that someone was bored, and because your loved ones were available.

Imagine your few pitiful possessions, the things your life depend on, being rifled, stolen, trashed.

Imagine your house, your only shelter, being torched for no reason.

Imagine these things being done to you by hard-faced strangers, people you have not seen before and will not see again. People who don't know you and don't care about you, to whom you exist only as a resource, a source of plunder or amusement. People who don't even respect you enough to actively hate you but who just don't care about you at all one way or another.

Imagine not having the spine to stop that. By stopping them however you have to. Just imagine... .

-- (li'ldog@ontheporch.com), March 27, 1999.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000eqc

hey all who are following this thread, I've created a new thread at the above location.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 27, 1999.

lil'dog,

I don't think Hank was saying that the use of deadly force might not be necessary. He was saying that few, if any, of the people on this forum who talk about it actually know anything about it. He also said that there is a lot to get over if you ever do kill anyone.

Have you ever drawn a bead on a human being and taken the slack out of the trigger? I have. It's tough. Luckily we had well defined rules of engagment, and this guy stopped just short. So, I didn't have to complete the squeeze.

I found out I could do it......but I was glad I didn't have to. I know darned well I would have had nightmares had I squeezed off that round and then had to clean up the mess.

He's right. Think long and hard, now, about what you're going to do after you shoot someone. You may decide, when the time comes, that you have to shoot the guy(s), but at least it will be something you've thought through.

-- De (delewis@inetone.net), March 27, 1999.