WHEN TECHNOLOGY FAILS
Self-Reliance,
Sustainability
&
Surviving the
Long Emergency
www.whentechfails.com
www.matstein.com
“Is it not already too late if one
waits until one is thirsty to begin
digging a well?.”
—Chinese Proverb
Why I Wrote When
Technology Fails
I asked for “guidance &
inspiration” and received a
pictorial outline for the whole
book!
The voice of inspiration indicated
that huge numbers of people would
need this information soon!
How Might Technology Fail?
• Natural: Fire, earthquake, hurricane, tornado,
etc.
• Major Grid Melt-Down: EMP or solar storm;
terrorism, earthquake or superstorm.
• Pandemic (like 1919 Spanish Flu, which killed
50-100 million worldwide and pretty much shut
everything down for months)
• Peak Oil / The “Perfect Storm”
• Financial melt-down or societal collapse
EMP / Solar Super Storms
• May 1921 solar storm 10X as strong as
1989 storm that knocked out Quebec
Hydro main transformer. 1859 Carrington
Event 50% stronger than May 1921 storm.
• If either event happened today, grid down
for years except in tropical latitudes.
• Single EMP from terrorist or rogue state
air burst nuke disrupts Dallas to Quebec!
• HILF event (High Impact Low Frequency)
game changing, economy busting,
government toppling, mega-event.
Really, how bad is the situation on
planet Earth?
• We are facing certain environmental collapse if
we keep doing business in the same way as we
have been
• A “Perfect Storm” is building from six threats,
each of which are potential civilization busters
on their own.
• If we do not confront these threats directly
and collectively, thus changing the course of
this “Perfect Storm”, these trends will
guarantee the collapse of civilization as we
know it!
The Perfect Storm: Six Trends
Converging on Collapse
•
•
•
•
•
•
Climate Change / “Global Weirding”
Peak Oil
Collapse of the World’s Oceans
Deforestation
Food Crisis: Soils / Water / Climate
Population and Overshoot
Today’s talk is more focused on Peak Oil
because barring some miracle or catastrophe
that will hit us hard in the next few years!
We all Know the Weather is Changing
• The ten warmest years on record all occurred since 1990.
• Due to a few hundred years of burning fossil fuels, over ½ of
which has occurred since 1980, our atmosphere has more
carbon dioxide now than it has had for the last million years.
• Other green house gasses collectively contribute about the
same effect as carbon dioxide.
• MIT study says climate change is “accelerating” and could
reach 6.3 F, which would collapse global food production
long before that was reached.
• Climate scientists say they have a 90% certainty that man is
causing current climate change. The media focuses on that
10% uncertainty, but would you fly on a plane that had a 9
out of 10 chance of crashing?
• There is a global “climate conspiracy”—a well documented
conspiracy of powerful oil, coal and gas companies to cloud
the issue with “junk scientists” and bogus experts.
Why is this happening?
What is “Peak Oil”?
Oil Companies Have Mega-Money
and Technology, But Oil
Discoveries Peaked in the 1960’s!
World’s Oil Field Depletion
• In 2008, the International Energy Agency (IEA)
study shows world’s major oil fields declining at
9.1% per year.
• Why doubled previous years estimate? (DATA!)
• With investments of major $ for Enhanced Oil
Recovery methods (EOR), rate is 6.4% per year.
• Keeping up with this depletion would require the
discovery and development of Saudi Arabia
sized mega-oil fields every few years from now
to eternity—An Impossible Fantasy!!
• We are consuming oil about 4X faster than we
are finding new oil reserves!
Why Should we Care?
•A 5% drop in global oil production in the
1970’s resulted in gas rationing, a major
recession, and tripled gas prices at the pump.
•Fossil fuels are feedstocks for synthetic
fertilizers and fuel the machinery to feed 6X
what the world could feed using draft animals.
• Buying foreign oil has been called, “The
largest, most-rapid, wealth transfer in history”.
• The Credit Crisis + The Coming Energy Crisis
= The Perfect Financial Storm
Official USGS Oil Predictions
Government figures typically project that oil supplies will
keep increasing to match demand while ignoring the
hard facts of depletion. US, British, and German
militaries recently released reports warning of potential
problems in 2012, and severe shortages by 2015!
Our Oceans are Dying
11 out of 15 of the world’s major ocean fisheries are in se
decline or collapse
1/3 of all commercial species of ocean fish are below 10%
previous levels (definition of collapse), and 90% of the o
large predatory fish, like tuna, marlin and swordfish
already gone.
Coral reefs, the “rainforests of the ocean” are dying at rec
rates. By 2004, 20% were gone, up from just 11% in 2002
another 26% in serious trouble.
Ocean acidification, global warming’s “Evil Twin” threaten
shellfish, coral reefs, crustaceans, and possibly many
planktons (British study shows 73% drop in oceanic
zooplankton since 1960, 50% since 1990).
Our Forests are Disappearing
• Forests are critical to the water cycle on our planet
• The evaporative surface area of a single large tree’s
needles or leaves is roughly equal to a 40-acre lake, and
a single rain forest tree will pump over 3 million gallons
of water back into the atmosphere over its lifetime.
• Roughly ½ of our forests are gone, and much of the
reminder is in serious trouble. When the trees are gone,
soil disappears and downwind farmlands turn into
deserts.
• In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much
CO2 as 8 million people flying from London to New York
• Deforestation accounts for roughly 25% of all
greenhouse gas emissions—nearly as much as all
transportation and industry put together!
Food Crisis
• For the first time since the “green Revolution”
started our world is producing less food each year.
• Climate change contributing far more to losses than
technology to gains.
• Increasing food riots in 2008-2010 threatening the
stability of many governments.
• In 2010, extended droughts threatening the
breadbaskets of China and India, home to more
than 1/3 of the world’s population.
• Irrigation accounts for 16% of world’s cropland, but
40% of its food, and it is declining due to climate
change, unsustainable water usage, and soil
depletion.
Population: The Elephant in the Closet
We Have Overshot Our World’s
Bio-Capacity
We Would Need 4.5 Earths, and Unlimited
Oil, If We All Lived Like the USA
Coping with a changing world
• “It is not the strongest of the species that
survives, nor the most intelligent, but the
one most responsive to change.”
—Charles Darwin
• We all buy car insurance, but most of us
don’t plan on getting into a wreck. Peak Oil
& emergency prep are forms of disaster
insurance.
• A few skills, preparations and planning can
bring great peace of mind
Bumps In The Road
• Even if we do everything just right, we face
probable failures in central services for
significant chunks of time.
• If we continue “business as usual”, we
face almost certain systemic collapse.
• The old Yankee adage says it all: “Hope
for the best, but plan for the worst.”
Start with a 72-Hour
Grab-and-Run Kit
• Provides food, water, first aid and basic
emergency supplies for yourself and family
for three days or more.
• Thorough list in my book, or for free at
www.whentechfails.com
• 1 gallon H2O per person per day X a
family of four weighs 100 pounds!
• Water filter with carbon core plus
“Steripen” and/or “PolarPure”
Surviving the Long Emergency
• Self reliance is the key
• Develop mental and physical skills now, while
everything is still working reasonably well
• Learn gardening skills and connect with the
Earth—use a community garden/window
gardens if you have no suitable land.
• Develop your wilderness skills. Start with
some car camping and graduate to
backpacking / mountaineering.
• Local energy co-ops could still provide
services after major grid melt-downs
Self-Reliance
• Foraging skills- Arizona survival story
• Build library of “old timer” skills: Carla Emery,
When Technology Fails, and ref guides
• Better to drop back to 1800’s level than a
“Mad Max” scenario, or “caveman days”
• In initial “vision” back in 1997, I “saw” that
even with my engineering background, and
backcountry experience, if I was dropped in
the Amazon basin, could not reproduce any
of modern day technology. Develop shared
skill sets and tools in your community!
Gas Rationing & Shortages
• Odd-even rationing of the 70’s won’t work
due to self service stations (no attendants)
• Matthew Simmons said US officials were
on the verge of printing up rationing books
after Hurricane Ike
• Plug-in hybrids, motor scooters and
electric bicycles provide hedge against
rationing.
• Most fuel injected vehicles can “learn” to
run on ethanol. Can distill ethanol locally.
Transition Communities
• Communities planning for Peak Oil and climate
change.
• Re-localizing agriculture and production of
essential goods.
• Develop local mass transit and ability to live our
lives with little or no autos.
• Develop local energy coops based on bio fuels,
solar, wind, tides, etc.
• Community ownership of local energy projects
has local multiplier effect on the economy.
• Network! No one knows or has it all!
• Local currency, trade and barter.
First Aid and Self Healing
• I encourage every adult to take advanced
first aid and CPR training—this could save
your life!
• Factory farms put antibiotics into animal
feed—making these animals, and our bodies,
into factories for breeding antibiotic resistant
super-bugs!
• Simple things—like homemade colloidal
silver, hyssop, oregano oil, homeopathy, etc.
can heal when pharmaceuticals fail or
unavailable
10 Steps for Making Shift Happen!
1) Change the tax structure
We must make it financial suicide for
companies to do business unsustainable
ways!
Plan B will only succeed if we shift the tax
structure to support those materials,
processes, industries and investments that
contribute to sustainability, while
penalizing those industries and structures
that stick to the “old way” of doing things
2) Rebuild our cities & Homes
By restructuring our cities for mass
transportation, moving away from their
current focus centered on the individual
automobile, and retrofitting our buildings
for energy efficiency and renewables we
could make our buildings net energy
producers! The crash in the building
market could be turned around with easy
credit and tax incentives to retrofit
buildings, putting America back to work
while cutting green house gas emissions
and reducing oil imports and trade deficits.
3) Rebuild our railways,
waterways, and mass transit
• A world running short on oil must focus on
efficiency rather than simple convenience.
If we don’t act now, how will most of us get
around, or ship our goods, when gas goes
to $10 or $20 dollars a gallon and we don’t
have any decent alternatives to diesel
trucks for long distance hauling and
private gasoline powered automobiles for
local transportation?
4) Rebuild our industries
• There must be domestic and international
financial incentives to revitalize economies while
saving energy and materials through junking old
inefficient processes and machines and
replacing them with state-of-the-art
technologies. By sharing renewable and
sustainable technologies with the developing
world, we will do our part to ensure that we leave
behind a world that can feed and sustain our
children. We will fail If we take care of our own
country without replacing the inefficient
processes and industries of rapidly
industrializing giants like India and China.
5) Fund and support renewable
energy development
• Focus on the rapid development of
renewable energy sources, such as solar,
wind, geothermal, and biofuels. Particular
emphasis on wind power, which is already
cost competitive with coal. When you level
the playing field by eliminating subsidies,
wind energy is already more cost effective
than coal, nuclear, or oil for the generation
of electricity. [ currently a 10:1 subsidy
advantage of fossil fuels over renewables]
6) Eliminate population
growth
• Reduce global population growth to the
point where the population of our planet
levels off, followed by a decline in world
population. On a planet where the
estimated long-term carrying capacity may
be on the order of 1 to 2 billion people, if
we can’t control our own population
growth, nature will do it for us.
7) Share the wealth and
knowledge
• Must make it economically preferable for third
world countries to preserve vital resources like
rain forests and coral reefs, rather than to
liquidate for short term gain.
• The developing countries of the world all want
what the Western countries already have
(decent food, clean water and standard of living)
• By sharing new sustainable technologies with
the developing world, we can help to
significantly improve their standard of living
while at the same time allowing them to leapfrog
older coal and oil-based technologies.
8) Replace coal-burning
power plants
• If we are to stand a chance for capping
greenhouse gas emissions, current coalburning power plant technology must be
replaced. If a successful carbon dioxide
sequestering technology proves feasible,
we could continue to burn coal, but only
when the new technology is in place.
9) Global Relocalization:
Buy Local!
• Economies are bound to relocalize as energy and
transportation costs rise, making it once again both
environmentally and economically beneficial to live,
work, produce, grow, and buy locally.
• Buying local helps keep our dollars circulating locally
in what is known as the “local multiplier effect.”
• In the United States, the average item of food
traveled 1,518 miles in 1998, and this number has
been increasing about 10 percent per decade.
10) Make all decisions based
on sustainability
• Sustainability must be incorporated into society
with “religious fervor”
• All business decisions should be made while
giving serious consideration as to whether that
particular decision contributes toward
sustainability or takes us farther from the goal of
creating a sustainable world.
• We must legislate and regulate sustainability.
• Doing business in non-sustainable ways must
be financial suicide, or this game will be over
and we all lose!
What Can I Do?
• Reduce—Reuse—Recycle: a “food chain”
of energy and materials conservation
• For example: 1.8 tons of raw materials are
used to manufacture the average PC, and
most of these materials are dumped
somewhere as waste.
• So, when you repair an item rather than
throwing it “away,” you are reducing your
consumption and ecological footprint on
the planet.
• Carpool, ride trains, bus, a bike.
Planet-friendly diet
• Health and environmental impacts from the agribusiness
production of meat range from massive destruction of
rainforests for cattle grazing to methane pollution and the
consumption of huge amounts of pesticides, oil, fertilizer,
water, vegetable protein, and topsoil. Fisheries are
collapsing across the planet due to annual catches that
far exceed the sustainable rate, combined with
destructive practices, such as the use of huge driftnets.
Eating less meat and wild fish helps the planet.
“Raising the livestock needed to produce the 276 million
tons of meat consumed in 2006 was responsible for
almost a fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions.”
—The Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2007–2008
Humans Are Social Animals
• Take a look at the person next to you. Look
him or her in the eye. Most disasters, bring
out the best in people!
• Most of us do better in groups than alone
• Community allows us to pool skills/resources
• There is strength and security in numbers.
• Community renewable energy co-ops have
been very successful in Europe and can
provide local energy security against grid
failures.
CAN WE DO THIS?
• After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt called on
the manufacturing power of Detroit to
support the war effort 100%.
• In just 6 months, Detroit switched
completely to supporting the war effort. All
private cars production was shut down.
• Huge targets were set, that many felt were
“impossible”. Not only were these targets
reached, they were far exceeded!
How Do We Do This?
“Backcasting” is an incredibly valuable tool for
mapping out a viable path to reach a future we
all want.
It gets around the pitfalls of projecting the past
into the future, and being limited by the same
outdated modes of thinking that got us into
trouble in the first place.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it.”
—Albert Einstein
We Can Do This!
• We never would have defeated Hitler if it
was number 10 on our priority list.
• Some say people will never change.
• How many cannibals do you know?
• How many slave owners do you know?
• Only 1/6 of the world’s annual military
budget to implement “Plan B”!
• Is not our physical and economic survival
worth this price?
MY MOTTO:
DO YOUR BEST TO
CHANGE THE WORLD!
&
DO YOUR BEST TO BE
READY FOR THE
CHANGES IN THE
WORLD!