Collapse looks like....THIS!

I sent an email to my mom today, and then thought i should post in on my blog, and now I think everybody here should know about it too…

http://www.mythic-cartography.org/2007/03/16/a-vision-of-the-future-khabarovsk-in-collapse/

A series of three articles by Dmitry Orlov
One: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060105_soviet_lessons.shtml
Two: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062805_soviet_lessons_part2.shtml
Three: http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/071805_soviet_lessons_part3.shtml

Thank you for posting the first Orlov link, Willem. It is definately worth the read.

Curt

Thanks Curt! Jeez. Wondered why no one responded.

Dmitry Orlov can be damn funny too. Here’s an article of his railing against cars.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=33

Hilarious!

Thanks for these links, Willem. I just finished reading the “Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’” article from your blog.

I lived in Kazakhstan for a semester back in 1995 and was amazed at how well the country was doing at that point. There was a lot of peer polity in the form of foreign market influx–Iran, Turkey and China were leading the US by a lot. In fact, it was getting hard to find soviet goods at that point.

Orlov’s presentation brought back a lot of memories for me. How factories that could no longer pay their workers a salary started paying them in goods. My family knew a man that worked at a doll factory who was then forced to try to peddle cheap-ass barbies on his own in order to feed his kids–problem was that nobody could afford a barbie regardless. So bartering happened everywhere. “I bet your girl would like this doll. Maybe for some potatoes, you could make her happy.”

Orlov also made some really sobering points about why we won’t fare as well as the soviets did. They built shit to last–even if it didn’t work when you got it home, once you got it working, it kept working. We build our shit to break down right after the warranty expires so that you’ll have to buy a new one.

Another thing that help the local where I lived: in Almaty, almost every family had a “summer cottage” (dacha) in the mountains. The government didn’t want anyone living outside of the city, so you couldn’t have electricity or running water in your cottage. But after the collapse, these became second–or for some primary or even only homes. The people had know how to shit in a hole and read by candle and heat with wood for time immemorial, so to do it on a daily basis was no big stretch. My family’s grandparents moved into their dacha permanently and supplied the city-bound family with lots of garden goods that wouldn’t grow in the smog below the mountains.

I plan on reading the rest of the Orlov links you’ve shared. This guy’s perspective is invaluable.

Awesome stories Rix! Yeah - the dacha/country-garden culture there blew my mind. I feel like, in 1993, I traveled into the future of post-peak oil collapse, and got to see what it will look like for those who adapt. CRAZY!

I really enjoyed reading your post, WildeRix.

Orlov also made some really sobering points about why we won't fare as well as the soviets did.

Yeah, he really did. I kept thinking how important Beyond Civilization, by Daniel Quinn really is when it comes to preparing for the collapse. Of course, I know DQ wrote BC as a handbook to escape wage slavery, but at times I think he may have had the Peak Oil induced collapse in mind too.

Take care,

Curt

thanks, curt. yeah, i think quinn was pointing more to the wage escape. maybe the reason he didn’t feel inclined to answer the age old ishmael response of “what do i do?” was because he was thinking “meh, just wait for the oil to run out.”

i just remembered the thing that struck me most about kazakhstan after the collapse: stray dogs everywhere! nobody could afford to feed a pet anymore. plus, maybe some of their owners died. but the streets were run by the dogs. they started forming packs. they usually weren’t threatening to people, since they were recently feral and still very neotonous. but they were more common than kiosks.

there was one pack of dogs that would hang out on the roof of some building on my way to school, and you could see the Tian Shan mountains in the background behind them. i must have wasted a few frames of film everyday on my way to school trying to get just the right picture of feral dogs on a roof. i never did–mostly because i was shooting with a crappy old communist camera that the locals told me was “for tourists”.

but i bet the dogs will revert back to their wolf ancestors pretty quickly.

i also liked what you pointed out in your blog, curt, about orlov’s point on the governments cleaning up their shit before it hits the fan.

i remember one crane that was forever stuck in the process of constructing a building that would never be built. it was on the edge of the city, dangling its payload next to the building’s frame. i don’t know if the operator got fired in the middle of lifting the load and nobody ever went back to lower it to the ground, or what. but for 4 months, that slab of pre-fab concrete hung a couple of stories in the air. i almost bet it’s still swinging there today if the cable hasn’t broken yet.

i feel like there are going to be a lot of the poisons of civilization that end up getting left just swinging in the air when we collapse. factories full of ooze that leaks into rivers. underground coal deposits that burn for decades. i can’t even begin to imagine what will become of arkansas’s two nuclear power plants. and i’m just imagining my local hazards.

How weird Rix to read your stories about Kazakhstan - you describe Khabarovsk (in the russian far east) almost exactly. I have pictures of the same building that the workers would never finish…except for this building, I did see workers there every once in a while. They just didn’t build anything. The building itself, looked like hell. It already needed someone to demolish it after standing for 10 years in the weather with no windows or walls.

I actually adopted a street dog in Russian, named him “Voyin” (warrior!), and fed him canned steak that my russian roommates eyed hungrily. Apparently if I hadn’t adopted him a street person would have eaten him, according to my roommates.

Do you see any gypsies in Kazakhstan?

lucky voyin to have some canned steak from an american! was it canned ram’s meat (baran) per chance? i loved that stuff. it smelled like a mildewed canvas tent, but i had developed a taste for it by then. we used to buy the baran in the little market next to our dacha when we were on “spring break” (that they let us take since we were americans) and we would make up rhymes about it: “baran: from the can to the pan to the man” and pat our stomachs.

i dont’ recall any gypsies in Kz. but most non-kazakh ethnic groups had fled the country by that point. my roommate’s twin brother had been there 2 years before us, and he described the “white flight” of lines of people at every embassy trying to get visas and get out of the country. it was pretty much just down to kazakhs and the whiteys that couldn’t afford to leave at that point. i’m sure to most of them living in Kz was like living in the sticks–even in the glorious capital of almaty (which is no longer the capital).

there was one pack of dogs that would hang out on the roof of some building on my way to school, and you could see the Tian Shan mountains in the background behind them. i must have wasted a few frames of film everyday on my way to school trying to get just the right picture of feral dogs on a roof. i never did--mostly because i was shooting with a crappy old communist camera that the locals told me was "for tourists".

You still have any of those pictures? Even if they’re bad shots, I’d be interested in seeing them. It sounds remarkably like gangs of people. At least that’s how I’d hang out when I was a kid. Find someplace that was out of the way, yet still noticeable. Conspicuous hanging out.

I really like the crane story too, WildeRix.

I can’t believe I actually use to think that we were all going to voluntarily powerdown and clean up our messes and live happily ever after. I think there is going to be a lot of projects that never get finished when we start to experience the hyperinflation of the dollar.

i also liked what you pointed out in your blog, curt, about orlov's point on the governments cleaning up their shit before it hits the fan.

Thank you. And I had to laugh at this part of the slideshow:

Slide [12][i]When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn’t make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.

In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.[/i]

I don’t know about everyone else here, but I’ve been to a few family gatherings where things got pretty tense. I don’t if it will be worse during economic hard times or not. We’ll see, I guess.

Take care,

Curt

I don’t remember!

"baran: from the can to the pan to the man" and pat our stomachs.

Ha ha. It almost sounds like life in the army, you know? Weird industrialized food in the middle of nowhere.

I found Voyin as a puppy just rotting on the sidewalk. He had a leg wound. All the Russian passers-by just ignored him. It blew my mind…nobody even paid the least attention! I couldn’t handle it. A puppy! And I don’t even like dogs. They smell bad.

Curt-

I also found Orlov’s comments on American family hilarious. ‘Family values’ indeed. Christ. Fortunately I have a family of wacky enough types that enough the non-collapse ones will come around sooner or later.

locke, i think i do have the prints somewhere of the dogs on the roof. the unfortunate thing is that i could never take a shot that was as interesting as the concept i saw in front of me. but if i find any i’ll try to share them somehow. but i think you may be on target about the “conspicuous hanging out” concept. i don’t think the dogs were trying to intimidate the humans, but they were definitely making their presence known to the other packs of dogs.

willem & curt, i agree: the family reliance thing is going to suck for most of us. i like my in-laws better than i like my own parents. but i know it will be difficult to live with either when the shit goes down. i think one of the most difficult things–despite the natural grating that will happen from personalities that haven’t adjusted to each other–will be getting everyone to see the situation for what it really is: the end of the old and the beginning of the new. we won’t be able to rely on old ways of thinking and doing, and getting someone you’re living with to buy into that news will be tough.

my host dad in Kz didn’t like his wife’s parents, but they could agree on pretty much anything over a bottle of vodka. (damn that babushka could put it down.) we don’t have as good of a social lubricant here in the bible belt.