Homestead mailing list

[Cathy <goosecreekfarm AT gmail.com>]

 Maybe it's because I was most active on this list prior to 2000, but these
posts about what the non-hoarding hordes are going to do when faced with
TEOTWAWKI have got a serious deja-vu thing going for me. <g>

James wrote
> What the masses face is institutional housing,institutional food, an urban
shadow existence of what we have now but with very, very diminished
resources.  People will die of longing and despair because they
can't adjust.  Many others will adjust and make the most of what existence
theyfind in the near future.
I imagine something like this as well, but I'm not sure how suburbs will
function at all once folks are out of work and there's an absence of
affordable gasoline.  Right now, my mom has_five_super duper grocery markets
within a six or seven minute drive of her suburban home. I don't see that
kind of abundance remaining.  Due to her health, she would not be able to
walk to even the closest market, if it is operating.  Her neighborhood, if
it can be called a neighborhood, consists of tract homes and retail outlets.
Scores, hundreds, of retail outlets. I have no idea how those folks are
going to make it without the big, easy money and lots of petrol.  I forsee
lots of longing and despair.  I've always thought the houses in those
neighborhoods look like ridiculous miniatures of castles.  Now I fear they
will be even more like little castles, whose costly adornments remain to
mock the lack of necessary goods.

> The large institutions from the mega banks, to the auto makers, to the
giant store chains, and ... the important one ... the mega agribusiness
farms are all doomed.

Have any of you lived in Eastern Europe?  That's the kind of scenario I'm
imagining.  Only a fraction of the selection that we have now.  Perhaps
we'll see the poor quality as well, if government runs industries.

> For the masses little will change in the fabric of their lives except they
will not have their opiates.

I agree in that I see variety and distraction as opiates (hey, I confess to
resorting to both of them from time to time).

Cathy