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The Flight From The Cities

Ibrahim Turner

My Sufi teacher, (an Englishman) in the 1970, (he died in 1974) predicted that there would come a time when farmers would be protecting their crops with dogs and guns. He also commented on the sustainability of so-called new-age communities, which you might recall, were very popular in the swinging sixties, but that is something for a different article.

It seems to me, although I didn’t fully appreciate what he meant then, that I now see, is that it is sure to happen, as the problems of Global Warming, overpopulation, depletion of resources, peak oil, etc are becoming more apparent, especially peak oil.

He also talked about the large corporations and institutions; comparing them to the dinosaurs – they should not be any cause for worry, they will fade away like the dinosaurs did, and in any case, there is nothing we, even in groups, can do about them.

But I don’t see that happening any time soon, given the corporate greed and the profit motive depleting resources and destroying the environment.

So consider this; overpopulation is already causing over consumption of resources including fossil fuels, metals, minerals, food and oil. Do you think that the governments will get it together and limit the population growth let alone reducing it?

Peak oil, predicted by some to be already upon us, and others not to happen for another ten years, will inexorably and undoubtedly arrive; bringing massive disruption to our way of life. Driving your SUV when gas is $10, $20 or $50 a gallon or more, will be for only the very rich. The number of people owning a car will drastically reduce, leading to widespread unemployment in all the related industries leading to further unemployment in non related industries as the former workers in the car industry cannot buy things.

Have you ever seen the plight of a small shop in a mining village when the pit closes? Suddenly nobody has work, so nobody buys things, so the shop’s trade dies. I personally witnessed this, not in a mining village, but in a pleasant West Country village in England, where people would rather go by car to the supermarket in the nearest town, to save a few pennies on a tin of beans, than pay two pence extra at the local village shop. In little over a year, their short sightedness lost them the convenience of the shop, as it could not survive.

Further to the non-car scenario, think about the supermarkets and all the trucks that deliver four or five times a day to each branch. The gas costs will slowly price them off the road. The price of food will soar until there are finally no supplies in the supermarkets which will cause riots because of the empty shelves and people will go looking for food elsewhere.

Where will that be? Into the country where the food is grown. Raids on fields of potatoes will bring out the guns and dogs to protect the crops. People will be shot. Blackwater and police will attempt to restore order and will fail or succeed, but many hundreds of people will starve, or die in one way or another.

There will be a massive flight from the cities.

Those that can will prepare in advance. Sustainable communities, growing their own vegetables, producing their own power from wind turbines and solar panels, with their own water, are the only chance of survival in such a bleak future.

The cities will be unsustainable. No fuel to run the facilities, no food, no electricity; they will empty faster than you can say Jack Robinson. In northern climates, winters will be harsh, so people will move south. The farms will be much smaller with no tractors and no fertilizer (made from oil) – it will be back to the hand reaping and threshing of just a short time ago.

I remember in my childhood, ‘helping’ the local farmer, with a lot of other kids, get the sheaves in to take them to the corner of the field where this ‘modern’ thresher, rigged up by belt drive to the tractor worked. There will be no combine harvesters, threshers, seed drilling machines – everything by hand and aching back.

This might not happen overnight, the price of oil will climb, the price of food will follow, but slowly the realization that all is lost with this mechanized civilization will dawn - but once the idea takes hold, once the price of gas goes above a certain critical level, due to shortages, the proverbial sh** will hit the fan, and a cascade of events will unfold. And you will see just how thin the veneer of civilization is in each and every one of us. Those who have always been poor will have the skills to survive, just as they have now.

There will be strong groups, such as you see in science fiction movies, taking what they need from others who are weaker or unprepared.

It will be the age of the warlord, worldwide.

Farmers protecting their crops with guns would be the norm.

In such circumstances, who will have the courage of their convictions, to be a good Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist?

It will take a saintly character to hold on to his beliefs faced with a marauding mob trying to take his precious crops.

Fortunately there will be lots of metal lying around from the abandoned cars and trucks to make weapons from.

The age of the motoring public will finally be over and we might be able to breathe again! Ford and the model T will be history. There will probably be nobody interested in writing history any more. The things you have been taught in order to survive in this civilization will be useless to you. Salvaging alternators and water pumps from cars and putting them to use from wind turbines would be useful knowledge.

A better skill to learn now, would be how to grow crops and harvest them; animal husbandry (what a quaint word), to find water, use simple irrigation schemes, plough with a horse, to make useful things out of what is available, just like your great granddad and grandma used to do. Since I was a child, I’ve had this thing about how to make soap – weird, but finding out how before all the soap is gone from the emptied shops might come in handy.

End of the ‘Industrial age?’

It’s been a very short ‘industrial age’ – a little over a century and a half, a very short time in even the history of humans, and considering the geological age of the earth, it is a mere second by comparison. It will take some time to die down as trains can go back to the coal and steam age, but why would you go anywhere? That was the question asked by the first people who saw a train. The next village is the same as this one, why would we want to go there?

Alternatives?

By the way, there isn’t any alternative to oil power oil distribution networks (gas stations); all renewable sources just do not measure up to the power ratio of 30 to 1 for oil, or for that matter the portability of gas (petrol).

Just ‘google’ peak oil, alternative energies and you will soon find real credible information for what is possible and what is not. It might take you an hour to inform yourself about all the alternatives, but then you would not believe the hype about oil from plants

On a national or state level, there is just nothing that can save the car, or the way the cities are sustained now, that can replace oil. But is anybody doing anything about it? Governments? Congress? Focus groups? Al Gore? Trying to sustain this way of life with hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids and the like is not going to cut it, it will just prolong the decline.

Cooperation on a small scale, just like a village, is the only way to survive, but keep in mind that within a very short time, all the books where you might learn how to survive or make things, will be gone, burnt for warmth in the cities. You really will have to appreciate those who have skills and knowledge that contribute to your future and survival.

I myself have been interested in alternative energy, having lived through the sixties and borrowed a huge book put out by some hippies with instructions on every conceivable cottage industrial process – from methane gas from pig’s manure, wind turbines and all the rest - to how to bury your own with all the legal obligations. It was a great source and I wish I had that now, for my children’s sake. But not having ever put anything into practice, I would probably still be in the dark (pun intended) trying to rig up a wind turbine from a car alternator and battery bank.

But no doubt farmers do that all the time, to pump water, to grind grain, etc. There are a lot of skills that will be useless, and a lot that we have forgotten, which will be essential for survival. There was also another book in the 70’s, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered: by EF Schumacher.

Can you smelt iron to make an axe? Make one out of rusting car parts?

How far down towards the Stone Age do you want to go?

And you wont be reading this on the Internet either.

Authors Bio:
A well traveled and slightly worse for wear 72 year old Englishman; widower, several children and grandchildren and a penchant for wondering 'what is the hidden agenda' in almost everything I read. A keen interest in American culture (an oxymoron?) (JOKE!) and politics and an international world view, except where I haven't got first hand experience of the parts of the world I have not visited. Editor of some books about the Qur'an and Islam. Teacher of English in little known countries like Mauritania, Istanbul, Turkey and Morocco.