Project assistance
A general call for any links that might be consolidated into a one-stop shop at Insurgent American for How-To’s. If there are sites you know of that have something similar, pass that along, too.
One of the things that seems pretty clear is that the future, however fragmented and dystopian it might be, will be easier for do-it-yourselfers. MacGiver-ism may well become our guiding ideology.
Any how-to articles on anything related to lower-tech, lower-impact tactics and techniques for food and gardening, transportation, medicine, heating/cooling, energy generation, etc etc et al, they are welcome… as is any advice on how to index this stuff to make it easy to find.
If someone is looking for a way to make soap, or a swamp cooler, or a solar oven… she ought to be able to go to that one place and find it quickly.
Send links and suggestions via the comments window (it won’t come up right away, because the blog is moderated).
DeAnander:
Can we really do a better job than Google? More selective, yes, but… it’s so easy now to research any How-To project (in fact one can get sucked into unintended hours of browsing around an endless chain of DIY stories with pictures and instructions). Recently I discovered a “build your own 12v welder using a car battery and spool gun” article that was quite inspiring.
What we might be better at is making a lexicon of those topics that a person might search for using Google. F’rexample, how many folks still know what a swamp cooler *is*? or a cold cupboard? or a root cellar? It might be more useful to make an index of “phrases and words to google for” grouped by topics such as “Food Preservation,” “Food Preparation and Cooking,” “Home Heating,” “Electricity,” “Water,” “Bicycle Tech,” “Constructing Shelter,” etc.
‘Cos a lot of people may be coming into the story as complete newbies to subsistence technology, knowing they want to build a low cost house on their property for the unemployed brother-in-law but never having heard the terms “cob” or “stack log” or “straw bale” in their lives.
Just a thought…
26 September 2010, 9:59 amStan:
Good thought.
MacGiver’s Bible
Index
Food Preservation
Food Preparation and Cooking
Home Heating and Cooling
Electricity
Water
Bicycle Tech
Constructing Shelter
Home medicine
Growing food
Composting
Clothing
Hygiene
Deconstruction (not the academic kind)
Welding (De!)
Carpentry without electricity
Vermiculture
Communications
…fill in more….
Long as we’re just throwing into a brainstorm bin, what about a bibiography, too. Really excellent practical books people know of. Two that come up for me are Food Not Lawns and Unbuilding.
26 September 2010, 11:47 amKim Sky:
NO REFRIGERATOR – I’ve been living without one for almost three years now. Most my friends come by and say, I have a small one I can give you. My response is, don’t want one. Also, NO WASHING MACHINE – do all laundry by hand. My thoughts were intuitive — most the people in the world live without one. As I continued, I realized that I felt much closer to my food. No fridge full of left overs. A feeling of connection as I eat according to what I’m presented with that day. Kind of like living with no electricity, where you find yourself waking up at the crack of dawn.
One friend came by with a different thought, and sent me numerous links — as I thought I was a rare bird.
GOOGLE prompts three entries on this topic:
no refrigerator
no refrigerator recipes
living with no refrigerator
A list of ideas is wonderful. Also, researching via google can be time-consuming, and many of the links are to sights that present doubtful information.
26 September 2010, 4:11 pmBrianR:
Using search to keep track of the ever changing how-tos and other diy tutorials is a good idea. Fortunately there are alternatives to Google.
Duck Duck Go, silly name I know, allows you to search the web anonymously and securely. (https) By anonymously I mean that DDG doesn’t track your searches and associate them to you. I imagine this might be good if Google decides to turn over your metadata. (Info about the data you generate surfing the web) If it isn’t kept it can’t be abused.
http://duckduckgo.com
You could put a Duck Duck Go search box on this site. Then when people find good stuff put their suggested sites in the comments of a dedicated post. Code for search box is at this url.
http://duckduckgo.com/spread.html
Hope y’all are well!
26 September 2010, 5:33 pmeoinmonkey:
Some more topics to add to the list:
Foraging for free food- what to look for in your area, and how to prepare it for consumption;
27 September 2010, 3:54 amHiding in plain sight- how to disguise yourself and your living space from other people, so as to avoid inconvenience;
Painless and definite methods of Suicide/Euthanasia- the bottom line in home medical treatment.
Michael Anderson:
CollapseNet is Mike Ruppert’s new site, dedicated to exactly what you’re outlining here. Carolyn Baker’s articles on “Collapsing Consciously” are quite illuminating. Good mental prep.
Too bad you and Mike couldn’t collaborate a bit more, Stan.
27 September 2010, 9:48 amMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
It’s a good idea, but why not decentralize it? There are some projects out there like instructables.com, but the ones I’ve seen (particularly instructables) tend to be a bit of a free-for-all and lean towards over-commercialization. Maybe a wiki format where there can be a mix of innovation and community oversight, as well as a more nuanced focus in terms of DIY (more about water-purification, less about fantasy football leagues).
27 September 2010, 10:59 amgdenby:
A visit to the “LATOC”* message board, http://doomers.biz, is useful. While the list as a whole is focused on all things catastrophic, particularly the crash of industrial society due to peak oil, there are many sub-forums on surviving the same, including gardening, handicrafts, hand-built water systems, and the like.
There is a wide variety of view points from left and right, but the consensus view is that oil based industrial society is very likely to collapse from the rapidly mounting strains caused by energy shortages and price run-ups.
*Life After The Oil Crash
27 September 2010, 11:30 amtochigi:
Path to Freedom:
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/ (main site)
http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/ (journal)
http://farmlet.co.nz
Introduction to Permaculture (Bill Mollison)
Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening
The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure (Joseph C. Jenkins)
A Nation of Farmers (Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton)
The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (Eliot Coleman)
The One Straw Revolution (Masanobu Fukuoka)
Building a Low Impact Roundhouse (Tony Wrench)
27 September 2010, 11:43 amhttp://www.thatroundhouse.info/links.htm
Henry:
Regarding De’s suggestion, it helps to use Google’s wonder wheel for terms. It will spit out all kinds of related terms. Ditto for “related searches.” Both items are found on the left margin of search results.
27 September 2010, 3:49 pmHenry:
Forgot to mention: Amazon is a remarkable source. Just play around with the categories and you get tons of stuff. Scribd.com also has available lots of material, which used to be free, but now charges a nominal fee.
27 September 2010, 3:51 pmDeAnander:
another topic
Edible “Weeds”, Foraging
27 September 2010, 7:48 pmDeAnander:
Also
Gleaning — much fruit is just plain wasted in affluent n’hoods, allowed to fall and rot on the ground. Sometimes the homeowner is friendly enough to allow you on the property to rescue the fruit from sheer tragic waste.
27 September 2010, 7:59 pmStan:
Nice, everyone…
What can be done to most easily get this stuff to end users? And who might the end-users be?
No reason to reinvent any wheels.
Peak oil’s sequelae won’t clutch at people’s throats for a while, but the economy has them there right now. There are already people who can benefit from transition, economically.
The broader necessity for transition will be felt at time goes by; but there are already islets and potential islets.
In the Midwest there are millions of poor people who are living in the middle of jillions of acres of farmland. Unemployment, the second plunge in housing values, and ravaged pension funds have left them bereft in the general economy, but living on this amazing quantity of productive land… now being wasted and damaged by industrial monoculture.
They don’t need any political tracts. They need to know how to keep warm in winter, cool in summer, get well when they get sick, keep their kids safe, and eat. Most of them work their asses off, and a lot of them are handy with tools.
What would one of them need, and what would keep her coming back?
Interesting note: reading a socialist document of sorts over at Monthly Review iirc, where part of a suggested program was “food sovereignty,” with a whole section devoted – informatively – to what it means. That’s progress I think.
27 September 2010, 10:05 pmStan:
Transitioners
27 September 2010, 10:21 pmtochigi:
in reply to Stan, i think if people have access to permaculture books and permaculture courses (nothing fancy or expensive, maybe a week, maybe paid for with labour or barter) and also other visionary books like The One Straw Revolution, some of those people may begin to see that there is an alternative to the mainstream economy. small local networks who have loose ties to regional, national and global networks is the way to go, imho. people geeting together to help each other out is the first breakthrough step, then they will get a taste of their own potential…
28 September 2010, 1:31 amStan:
I heard someone once on the radio who said the future is not for the PhD’s any more, but the Ph-Do’s. Do-ers, or makers, are already legion out there. Show them a practical book, and they are the one’s who figure it out right away, because they know how to use tools, schematics, and materials… and they like doing it. Long way of saying I agree with t.
Here in CR, I have zero access to books in English, and I feel the lack. Oh Lord, do I ever! I was thinking this morning how there is still a $$$ barrier between people and some of the best information and analysis. How books still require money, and so even the most new-agrarian/anti-capitalist tome you might find will still cost money that some of us do not have. Overcoming this obstacle is also something we need to think about.
My question – lurking in this thread somewhere – is whether there is any contribution we might make… I don’t want to just do another redundant project, but to do something that answers a need, that fills a void.
Kinda hard to tell what that is from a little cinderblock house in the somewhere between Grecia and San Roque. In the absence of some diagnostic instrument and an army of canvassers, we have to make educated guesses about that.
I’ve been sharecropping lately by writing short DIY articles for eHow and Livestrong, etc… for $15 each, which makes me about $5 an hour. Hey, it pays my crack bills. But that put me in mind of this whole notion, because about 95% of this is “How to clena the fuel pump on a 1953 Dodge Pickup” kind of stuff. Lotta chaff to get a little wheat.
De’s catagorization idea strikes me as a start, because we need to have an answer to whatever question, but we need a public interface that as closely as possible matches the first-interrogatives of potential users. Not sure if that’s is clear… but something that says right away, This is the right place for you. Nothing scary. Nothing controversial. Just a hand doing something you want to try.
In my imagination, I use Sherry’s childhood home, a small farming town between Ann Arbor and Toledo, devastated by deindustrialization and union-busting, and now with over 20% real unemployment. Surrounded by miles of arable land that is being abused for ADM’s bottom line, these are farmers and former farmers, whose hands are familiar with tools and psyches accustomed to hard work. Two generations ago, there was still a collective memory of things like canning and root cellars. Now, after an epoch of high wages and consumerism, they are generationally divorced from those practices, which they left behind to enter the flow of Progress.
They will experiment with new (old) ways only when it is forced on them by necessity – like pretty much everyone else – so the question is, what are the first things they will need to do? Grow worms for extra money? Slash the winter heating gas budget? Grow some vegetables?
I could go to Ann Arbor and find plenty of resilience theory and plenty of people experimenting with food systems… cohering around their own counter-culture. I was peripherally part of a culture like that in Durham; and I consider these folks to be pioneers. But how might a website facilitate the migration of practices across this semi-permeable social boundary and into groups of people who didn’t arrive here by thought and reflection, but as casualties who still cling to plenty of the old worldview… in this case, Catholic, mostly union or ex-union members, still fiercely nationalistic (if this is the point on which they are engaged – confronted, they will certainly withdraw), living amongst many old friends and foes, many relatives.
On a shitload of land.
The demographics may change elsewhere, but the problem remains the same. How to infiltrate the practices across that boundary. I am convinced – probably part of my marxian legacy – that new practices carry with them changed ideas, and that changing practices changes ideas. Not instantly, as many of us would like, but over time. There is no one who is not changed – in a positive way – by working in a garden.
I don’t want to persuade anyone of the Ultimate Truth, or even have the conversation. I have enough faith in Ye Olde Marxian Premise to allow it time to work. Live your way into right thinking, instead of trying to think your way into right living.
It occurs to me as I write this, that there ought to be a way to organize practical a resilience library to reflect regional differences, too… so people can go to the most specific information, and possible find local folk who might be helpful.
Unlike many of the peak-oil sites, which are valuable, there needs to be someplace to get the scoop on how-to without being confronted by scary, complicated things that require long explanations and inevitably generate philosophical controversy. (Which suggests I ought to give up the idea of posting such at a site called Insurgent American)
Brian, I’m studying the Duck Duck Go notion, but I may need an interpreter. And what would people use in the Piedmont region? Same question to any and all. Where is the need going to appear first and hardest? Fill in the blank for a title-hook… Saving money by __________. Free _____; just add labor.
AM thoughts.
28 September 2010, 8:57 amtochigi:
it’s true. books cost money. and computers and software and printers and internet access cost money. and tools and equipment and seeds cost money. but sharing can reduce the cost to each individual and household significantly. so local groups with mini-libraries and PC rooms, and pools of tools and equipment, and working bees to maintain these things, and the backup of a community to help a household set up a raised-bed garden, all of these can save money and duplication and give people encouragement and confidence. and help to change thinking too… as well as put food on the table… and the joy of growing your own food or building your own living environment is not to be dismissed lightly.
28 September 2010, 10:28 amDeAnander:
I’m not sure that agrarian practise in and of itself leads to what we might call “right thinking” — after all, traditional agrarian communities have often been bigoted, intolerant, fiercely patriarchal, homophobic, misogynist, racist and all the usual list. Lynchings happen out in the country as well as in the towns. And ironically “urbanisation” often brings to its core the valued (by us) principles of tolerance, multicultural life, increased scope and freedom for gender rebels of various stripes, opportunities for the Alien Other to become the trusted neighbour. I say “ironically” here because I can’t think of any “great” urban civilisation that hasn’t exported war, slavery and drudgery to the periphery or the slum, in order to support that island of civic calm (the eye of the hurricane) at the core. The golden age when Enlightenment and Democracy gained ground in Eurolander thought, for example, came at a high point of colonialism (armed robbery, enslavement, torture, mass murder, etc) committed by those same Eurolanders in resource extraction zones far from the civilised Homeland.
Having said all of that, I do think that despair and vicious poverty can exacerbate those scary human tendencies (gender and race ranking and dumping, bigotry, xenophobia, punitive/rigid social codes, cruelty) to even more frightening levels (until you get to the sad story of the Ik which I fervently hope is not a portent for our entire species)… social and personal panic, scapegoating and the whole familiar sorry story. As we are seeing today with the wingnut noise-machine’s long-legged meme: “Obama is secretly an A-rab!” [turn the Tardis back 75 years and the wording would be "Jews have infiltrated the highest levels of government!"]
So… food security is a starting place: quelling the panic/blame/hatred frenzy because personal survival fears are not being triggered daily. Or so we might hope. And I find — in my present lifeway which has brought me out of a secure intellectual/political bell jar and into daily contact with all kinds of people from complete Wallies (wingnuts) to “liberals” and neo-hippies — that working together and exchanging information are powerful bonding agents even across divisive social boundaries. That is, if neighbour-lady can show you how to do an elastic cast-on and has a really neat sock pattern to share, the fact that she has dreadlocks or a stud in her nose may become less offputting. The guy-and-guy family down the street are less “weird” and “sick” if they show up to help fence your orchard against deer — or, and this is a wonderful thing about human beings — if they need *your* help to fence their orchard, and listen gratefully to your advice. Sometimes we like people better when they let us help *them*.
One of my hopes for DIYing (especially internet based, which blur the boundaries of physical community in a creative way) is that it can forge these bonds of mutual aid and mutual mentoring between people who might otherwise distrust and shun each other. I am not known for giddy optimism but I do cop to this faint hope: that by helping one another we can get past some of these ultra-rigid subculture boundaries, this Othering that consumer society oddly facilitates at the lower (wealth-segregated) class levels even as it flattens them at the upper levels of privilege (hey, a hapa-afro guy can be Prez, so long as he’s friendly to the subculture of Money).
28 September 2010, 12:28 pmDeAnander:
Repurposing
A tip from friends out in the Cariboo: wooden raised beds require strong wood, a bit of heavy labour to build/install, reinforcements to prevent bowing and splitting, and they rot away after a few years. Dirt escapes through the cracks between boards. Crab grass and other invaders grow up inside the boards and move in from the edges. Old bathtubs from the dump have a drain hole built in, they are strong enough (the iron and steel ones anyway) to hold the dirt, the sides and bottom are impervious to crab grass and gophers, and they’re almost free. Install on a slope so the drain is downhill… fill with good dirt (hugelkultur is good here, dirt over broken-up sticks and twigs) and plant.
They can be arranged in modular groups and if you don’t like the “trailer trash” look of a yard full of old bathtubs, a short decorative fence can be built around the group
28 September 2010, 12:33 pmDeAnander:
I should say in fairness (the wikipedia entry goes into more detail) that Turnbull’s account of the Ik has been challenged. But the behaviour of people in a badly broken (ex)community has been documented in other contexts (some of the worst slum conditions in both first and third world cities, etc).
28 September 2010, 12:38 pmKim Sky:
Hum. I wonder, what would the best use of your time be? insurgent american or dedicating yourself to creating an online universe full of useful tools that will assist in creating community?
Things are happening and changing quickly. Being an action person myself, the current situation has left me confused, very confused. Seems to me that the questions you are asking revolve around an ability to predict the future.
Well, having been acquainted with your particular skill set for some time now. I’ll make a quick list of your skills: analyst, wartime/emergency experience, organizer, and writer (could do fiction). What is going to happen next, what do we need to know or create? Probably too occasionally I visit a website called “Club Orlov” http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/. He’s been gazing into the future social collapse of US-america for some time now. Having lived the collapse of the USSR, he has lot’s of great ideas about what becomes important.
Social Collapse Best Practices
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html
A couple of future predictions of yours that I remember. 1. the US-america would not suffer a mad-max scenario. 2. bush era, the US would not attack Iran / obama era, they will indeed attack Iran.
What makes sense now? Personally I am terrified of the thought that you might abandon analysis and deep thinking. As you stated above, “Nothing scary. Nothing controversial.” Wow. When the time comes, what was once scary/controversial will no longer be the case!!!
Another reference: Plentitude: The New Economics of Transition by Juliet Schor. Suggesting full time jobs change to 20 hours a week, she presents lots of evidence of heightened productivity when this is done. A belief that time for living. Changing focus to friends, not materialism. Not stated in the book, she stated personally that this is what is in the making, and that eventually there would be a kind of war between people and the corporations.
As Orlov promotes, growing food on balconies. I have a friend that lived for three years in a small village in Bosnia, completely surrounded by Serbian troops, completely cut off from the outside world. They grew food on their balconies and survived. She believed that if her people did not have families they would have lost — their village was never captured, that they remained strong because of their desire to protect their children!
What happened to your article or was it a book on coups? Perhaps you could apply yourself to an analysis of what in the heck is going to happen (maybe you think you’ve already done this, if you have can you post a link?) If not, I would be an eager reader of such an analysis! And believe that could be the best possible tool you could offer.
All right. On with the discussion. Chao.
28 September 2010, 1:21 pmDennis:
Kim makes a very important point, Stan. You should do what you do best and what you alone can do in some respects, owing to your particular set of experiences and talents. It is a real contribution. Let someone else do what your proposing–in fact it is being done, and as De said, Google makes it pretty easy to find.
28 September 2010, 5:18 pmtochigi:
i tend to think that what Stan is proposing—i interpret it as setting up an accessible resource for people wanting to get together and help themselves—is still valuable. there are lots of web sites out there that provide a lot of information and links. but building a practical, easy-to-use knowledge base and information exchange is worthwhile, imo. if my interpretation is correct, we are not talking about hundreds of categories—maybe a few dozen major categories, and of course subcategories off them. you have different types of info—original articles, free online books, links to existing articles/videos, summaries/reviews of pay-for books, video training courses, etc. once you have the structure (a wiki?), and volunteers managing and contributing, you are away… no?
29 September 2010, 6:41 amAnne:
Well someone can take him up on the idea. There are still only so many hours a day. I tend to agree with Kim. Lots of people can do what Stan is proposing; not too many people can do as well as what Stan does very well: geopolitical analysis. It’s all very well to look in the mirror and study our movies and such, but where does that get you? Just my 2cents…
29 September 2010, 12:30 pmMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
There’s two votes for wiki, and I think format is the beginning question here. If wiki doesn’t fit what folks have in mind, here are some other suggestions (with pros and cons):
- Website (lot’s of control, lot’s of control required)
- Bulletin Board (encourages more responses, encourages too much extraneous “noise”)
- Group listserv (drives more information to people, people get burnt out)
- Social networking within a social network (low commitment to involve people, low functionality)
- Independent social networking (many different widgets, none very powerful for information-sharing)
- ???
As far as resources, how intensive do you anticipate use of media will be? Mostly text? Lots of video? File attachments like schematics?
Really, nowadays it isn’t as big a deal to add on later as things take off. Maybe the question is: how do you anticipate people using this at first? I know for myself, when i am researching a new subject, I often start at wikipedia, which is why the wiki format makes sense to me.
30 September 2010, 12:21 pmJonathan:
Gary Reysa’s http://www.builditsolar.com is a fantastic resource for links and features of do-it-yourself projects (or as I like to think – do-it-ourselves projects) for living off-grid.
See for instance the page Solar Cooking and Food Drying and Solar Stills and Root Cellars
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Cooking/cooking.htm
2 October 2010, 12:08 ampetra gallert:
If you haven’t visited J. M. Greer’s site lately (i.e., the past few months), a virtual community, people with long local experience and knowledge, is coalescing around http://www.greenwizards.org. Practical stuff, with resource lists growing.
3 October 2010, 4:01 pmStan:
Love it. Thank you Petra.
3 October 2010, 9:12 pmElaina:
hey, did anyone here mention http://www.instructables.com ?? it’s pretty cool.
7 October 2010, 9:00 pm