The Amish were Right

[james03]

Brother James, be sure to drop me a line if you hear it through the grapevine. Novice Misanthrope Melkor has the itch in his right hand to clang the Annoyingly Small Bell and grin like the mad fool he is as the Great comet descends upon the faggots and baby-killers.

Spoken like a True Brother of the Annoying Cowbell, Brother Melkor.  Maybe Brother Greg will allow you to carry the sack of dung when he travels to Brussels.

[james03]

Imagine that: Maybe 50 families gathered in an "internal exile" community, centered around the Traditional Liturgy. As was mentioned, you can have technology (cars, farming machinery, computers) and still make it work just fine. That civil freedom would be valuable. Me and my trad friends discuss this from time to time.

A big weakness is local currency.  The Populist Left actually has some good material on the "Buy Local" movement on how to LEGALLY set up a system with local script and local tokens.  The key is to only grow it 2% per year, and donate the increase to the local chapel.  You'd start by using it at a local farmers market.  As a use for it gets established, people might start taking part of their pay in script.  You might pay some kids in script to stack hay bales.  The important thing is to establish it as useful.

And as the dollar inflates, you just keep upping the exchange rate.  As dollar devaluation becomes more-and-more obvious, adoption of the Local Currency will spread.  Once Local Currency is up and running, a currency collapse in the US can be mostly ignored (except the complete meltdown and Mad Max violence in the cities.)

If anyone tries this, make sure to do it LEGALLY, and get an attorney to review the set up.

[Truthseeker]

I'm just a lil' sick of this constant apocalypse-mongering. Maybe the rest of y'all are cynic old folks; but Melkor is young and has dreams. I'm also woefully weak so I pray the end times comes a little later, y'know?

You are carnal, not spiritual.

You should seek the Truth - the true Catholic Church.
If you let go, this false one will prevent you from being saved, and if you are aware of his heresy, you will condemn yourself. Beware of false prophets.

Your home should be heaven, not this world, and there you should direct your thoughts and store up treasures (good deeds regarding the soul and those regarding the body).


You should pray more often and intensely, fast and give alms. This should help you.

You should also read the Lives of the Martyrs from a reliable source.

Epistle of St. Jacob the Apostle [4:3-10].

[Severinus]

As Clau's comic pithily showed, it is simply not possible for a young man to live out a Catholic life with the operative assumption that everything is definitely about to collapse and even the world is about to end. Until that is before his very eyes in material fact, he must wake up each morning and set to work as though life goes on and wonderful things are possible with God. It is immensely destructive to do otherwise, no matter the amount of prayer.

[Truthseeker]

As Clau's comic pithily showed, it is simply not possible for a young man to live out a Catholic life with the operative assumption that everything is definitely about to collapse and even the world is about to end. Until that is before his very eyes in material fact, he must wake up each morning and set to work as though life goes on and wonderful things are possible with God. It is immensely destructive to do otherwise, no matter the amount of prayer.

He should not think about what he will suffer, but act with zeal for the glory of God according to His will every day as if it were his last (he does not know when he will die). But he should fear Lord God, remember death and the Last Judgment, the reward and punishment of hell.

[clau clau]

So it might not happen.  However really bad times are coming.  The US debt guarantees it.  30's style depression at the bare minimum.  And even though the anti-Christ didn't come during the moslem head hunting invasion of Spain, it really sucked.

Jack Hylton - Happy Days Are Here Again (1930)



1930's eh.  Perhaps we will get another Laurel and Hardy

[Severinus]

As Clau's comic pithily showed, it is simply not possible for a young man to live out a Catholic life with the operative assumption that everything is definitely about to collapse and even the world is about to end. Until that is before his very eyes in material fact, he must wake up each morning and set to work as though life goes on and wonderful things are possible with God. It is immensely destructive to do otherwise, no matter the amount of prayer.

He should not think about what he will suffer, but act with zeal for the glory of God according to His will every day as if it were his last (he does not know when he will die). But he should fear Lord God, remember death and the Last Judgment, the reward and punishment of hell.

You're missing a small but important distinction between being prepared to die and operatively believing you're about to die and/or total social collapse and the end of the world are at hand. The former is necessary, the latter is destructive for a young man, who should have a different operative belief until the end is before his eyes.

[Akavit]

Therefore after the Former West collapses and the West can be reestablished, things will bounce back quickly.

Depends upon how many people have the right skills.  If we lose the ability to produce semi-conductors and chips, other industries would need to be retooled with mechanical automation or they will eventually go down.  Most of the people who used to do that work are dead.  This is why I advocate that people practice the basics of various crafts then purchase and store books on those topics.  Rediscovering lost knowledge can take centuries.  Mastering a new craft can be done in a few years if the core knowledge is at ones fingertips.

One of my woodworking mentors needed many years to learn how to steam-bend wood because the techniques commonly used before WWII were lost after they were discarded from industrial use.  He might have failed if he hadn't discovered a single publication that provided him with the last clue needed to redevelop the process.  I learned how to do it in one day because he told me how to do it.

...I'm guessing a lithium battery will last 10.

Lithium ion batteries have a charge/discharge lifespan.  If they aren't used, they could last decades.  Constant, heavy use will wear them out quickly.

"Sustainable" agriculture is not sustainable with a large population.  It merely slows the depletion of nutrients by recycling poop and piss.  Where is the fish getting nitrogen to make protein in aquaponics?  The fish food.  Which contains the fertilized mono-crop derived soy protein.  However the fish waste is not wasted, but supplies nutrients to the plant roots.

Depletion of nutrients isn't the problem.  Properly managed food plots can increase in fertility over time. It isn't necessary to plow in a legume crop to get the nitrogen boost since the nitrogen is in the roots.  Pick the beans then plow or chop and drop and the nitrogen gets released as the roots die off.

The big problems are the amount of time it takes to prep new plots and the amount of manpower it takes to make it happen.  Shifting that many people into food production would probably destroy the rest of the economy and shut down a large number of factories.

But speculation about superiority of farming methods is a moot issue if everyone's best buddy Schwab says, "No fertilizer for you!" Trying to stick with modern farming methods without fertilizer would result in more deaths than switching to alternatives.

Speaking of Schwab, bug farming is a viable method of turning kitchen scraps into high protein food which can be fed to fish or poultry.

[Akavit]

3. Passive solar was used everywhere and makes more sense than photovoltaics.

Passive solar is unbelievably powerful.  Last year I put up a quick and dirty panel consisting of black and greenhouse plastic over a 20'x16' garage door.  Even with just a single layer of polyethylene plastic, the temperature between the garage door and the plastic would exceed 130 degrees (measured 4' from the ground) on a sunny, midwinter day if we didn't open the door to let the heat escape into the building.  Double-wall polycarbonate should be even better.

Now I just have to figure out how to design something that is easy to put up and take down every year then build one for every overhead door in the building.  This sort of thing is easy to do when erecting new construction.  It's much harder as a retrofit.

[Truthseeker]

As Clau's comic pithily showed, it is simply not possible for a young man to live out a Catholic life with the operative assumption that everything is definitely about to collapse and even the world is about to end. Until that is before his very eyes in material fact, he must wake up each morning and set to work as though life goes on and wonderful things are possible with God. It is immensely destructive to do otherwise, no matter the amount of prayer.

He should not think about what he will suffer, but act with zeal for the glory of God according to His will every day as if it were his last (he does not know when he will die). But he should fear Lord God, remember death and the Last Judgment, the reward and punishment of hell.

You're missing a small but important distinction between being prepared to die and operatively believing you're about to die and/or total social collapse and the end of the world are at hand. The former is necessary, the latter is destructive for a young man, who should have a different operative belief until the end is before his eyes.

Didn't Noah, when warning people about the Flood, warn young people for their crimes ? 

Were no young people in front of Noah when he was warning ?

2 Epistle of St Peter the Apostle [2:5]

[james03]

Depletion of nutrients isn't the problem.  Properly managed food plots can increase in fertility over time. It isn't necessary to plow in a legume crop to get the nitrogen boost since the nitrogen is in the roots.

I stipulate that the ag we are discussing is efficient and beneficial.  For a small Catholic community getting self-sufficient in food, it is very beneficial.

There's a difference between nutrients and fertility.  Potassium and Phosporous can't increase over time unless you add them.  In nature I suspect this is done by volcanic plumes fertilizing the rain.  Another possibility are trees with deep roots accessing these minerals.  When they die, the wood rots and releases the minerals.  Annual flooding in riverine areas also brings in minerals that might have washed down from mountains.

If you are in the plains, you'll deplete the soil eventually.  A stop gap measure would be to collect wood ash and use that for fertilizer.  That would get you through until civilization is reestablished.

As far as crop rotation, nitrogen = protein.  So if you harvest beans, you are removing the nitrogen the soy plant produced.  Every cell has protein in it, so plowing in the soy plant will add some nitrogen. But compare a harvested soy plant to a fully grown cereal plant that still has the grain.  Obviously the cereal plant has a lot more nitrogen (concentrated in wheat and corn gluten).  It's doable, but you would have to grow 2-3 years of soy and then rotate in a cereal grain to stay in nitrogen balance.  However you'll lose phosphorous and potassium every time you harvest.

You could establish pastures with alfalfa, vetch, and clover, and then raise cattle on them.  Add some wood ash from time to time.

For a Trad Haven, such methods would be very beneficial.  They don't work at large scale.

[ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez]

Depletion of nutrients isn't the problem.  Properly managed food plots can increase in fertility over time. It isn't necessary to plow in a legume crop to get the nitrogen boost since the nitrogen is in the roots.

I stipulate that the ag we are discussing is efficient and beneficial.  For a small Catholic community getting self-sufficient in food, it is very beneficial.

There's a difference between nutrients and fertility.  Potassium and Phosporous can't increase over time unless you add them.  In nature I suspect this is done by volcanic plumes fertilizing the rain.  Another possibility are trees with deep roots accessing these minerals.  When they die, the wood rots and releases the minerals.  Annual flooding in riverine areas also brings in minerals that might have washed down from mountains.

If you are in the plains, you'll deplete the soil eventually.  A stop gap measure would be to collect wood ash and use that for fertilizer.  That would get you through until civilization is reestablished.

As far as crop rotation, nitrogen = protein.  So if you harvest beans, you are removing the nitrogen the soy plant produced.  Every cell has protein in it, so plowing in the soy plant will add some nitrogen. But compare a harvested soy plant to a fully grown cereal plant that still has the grain.  Obviously the cereal plant has a lot more nitrogen (concentrated in wheat and corn gluten).  It's doable, but you would have to grow 2-3 years of soy and then rotate in a cereal grain to stay in nitrogen balance.  However you'll lose phosphorous and potassium every time you harvest.

You could establish pastures with alfalfa, vetch, and clover, and then raise cattle on them.  Add some wood ash from time to time.

For a Trad Haven, such methods would be very beneficial.  They don't work at large scale.

I believe that MIRG solves these problems pretty nicely.  It has the added benefits of producing a lot of meat and less frankenstein monoculture row crop.

[james03]

Cattle and cereal grains are two different forms of food production.  Raising cattle is fine, and switching a Trad Haven to the carnivore diet would be healthy, however it doesn't scale for large populations, unless you finish with grain.  If you don't, you'll cut your production in half for grass finished beef.  It's healthier for you, but it produces less.  Which is why you pay more for it.

Same thing with farm eggs vs. factory eggs, or pasture raised broilers vs. factory chicken.  I love farm eggs, but the volume is a lot lower.

[Akavit]

Potassium and Phosporous can't increase over time unless you add them.  In nature I suspect this is done by volcanic plumes fertilizing the rain.  Another possibility are trees with deep roots accessing these minerals.  When they die, the wood rots and releases the minerals.  Annual flooding in riverine areas also brings in minerals that might have washed down from mountains.

If you are in the plains, you'll deplete the soil eventually.  A stop gap measure would be to collect wood ash and use that for fertilizer.  That would get you through until civilization is reestablished.

I've done some reading on the topic of how minerals are distributed naturally.  There are microbes that can break down rock and clay and release the minerals.  Trees and other deep-rooted plants can pull up nutrients and over time, deposit those on the surface.  Lightning creates nitrogen oxide which is carried to earth by rain.  Legumes form a symbiotic relationship with rhizobia to pull nitrogen out of the air and store it in the roots.  I'm sure there's a lot more than that going on but scientists have barely scratched the surface on this topic.  Apparently mushrooms and other fungus also connect trees together and enable the flow of nutrients and water between trees and thus increase the reach of an individual tree.

The JADAM approach is based upon the theory that these microbes are super important which is why practitioners make their forest microbe solution and spray that onto their fields.

Since natural processes do renew the land, it's only necessary to slow the depletion enough to allow those processes to keep up and/or add whatever inputs are locally available (manure, humanure, wood chips/sawdust, leaves, rock dust, etc.).  This may not be useful to commercial farms but it is sufficient for people that need to produce food for internal consumption and it can be done indefinitely.

All the people I've seen who managed intensive food production use animals of some sort.  I suspect this is why wannabe world dictators have a vendetta against the use of livestock.  They need control over both fertilizer and livestock before everyone can be forced to obtain rationed food from centralized factories.

[awkward customer]

As Clau's comic pithily showed, it is simply not possible for a young man to live out a Catholic life with the operative assumption that everything is definitely about to collapse and even the world is about to end. Until that is before his very eyes in material fact, he must wake up each morning and set to work as though life goes on and wonderful things are possible with God. It is immensely destructive to do otherwise, no matter the amount of prayer.

No-one want to live through a collapse or the end of the world, or live with the absolute certainty that disaster is definitely imminent. 

But there's no "definitely" involved here.  Some people, myself included, look around and see an entirely unprecedented situation which appears to fulfil certain Scriptural predictions.  That's all. 

Young men, like everyone else, would do worse than learn to live with that, just as we all have to learn to live with the fact that we might die at any time.

Memento mori ....