If our civilization crumbles.

If our civilization crumbles then what? I often entertain myself by dreaming up scenarios. In movies such an event is always shown to be immediate and severe; otherwise they wouldn't have much of a movie would they? This is not as realistic as you might think, except in the case of an electromagnetic pulse event, a new bubonic plague or something of that type.

The main reason Americans are bound to our current delivery system for goods and services is that we can't do these things ourselves anymore.We lack access to the raw materials, tools and know-how to make things outside of the capitalist mass production delivery system. Without pretty much total co-operation we would freeze for 3 days in the dark until we dehydrated, or if we had access to potable water, starve for 40 days.

The stores only have a maximum of three days of supplies (as long as not everybody wanted to stock up at once.) If you have stored food and a garden that has irrigation you will last until your seeds run out or people come from the city to steal it from you. So unless you have running water, irrigation, non-hybrid seeds, stored food, and a well armed family (with training)you will be "wolf poop 72 hrs after the Apocalypse" (as I once heard a talk-show host remark.)

If you had dairy cattle, chickens, pigs, non-hybrid seeds (seeds that aren't sterile), stored food, irrigation/adequate rainfall, a planted garden, potable water,and the weapons and personnel to defend your "survival farm" you would still very soon be naked and probably cold and in the dark all winter.

The survivalists who think that they will just hunt deer can forget about it; there are not enough deer to fully feed a significant number of people. Proof of this can be found in North Korea where the hungry population has killed all of the wild birds, quite a feat in a country where folks don't have shotguns. So all the folks buying up guns and ammo are insuring that they will not be easy victims, but they too will starve within a few months.

Another possible melt-down scenario is that business will degenerate to the point that all buyers must pay C.O.D or even before delivery.The barter system might even enter in if things get bad enough. After all our cash is based on "the full faith and credit of the federal government" and things could get to the point that people no longer have confidence in paper money. If things get to that point the government would just step in and redistribute food with police power as Stalin did to the Ukraine (and starved millions of dissenting farmers to death purposefully in the process.)

Like I said, nobody is truly prepared for such an eventuality and if it does happen not many of us will survive. The scary thing is that even if you had all the things I mentioned you would barely eke out an existence; "life was nasty, brutish,and short" before and it would be again. Even if you tried to replace all the goods and services available in our modern civilization you (and your family or small team of families) would spend all of your time surviving.

So it is suicidal for Americans to let things melt down in a sea of red ink, but it didn't make sense when Pharaoh drove his army into the Red Sea either, but I guess as the leader of the biggest, baddest civilization ever (up til then) he probably thought he was "too great to fail." You have to wonder if our leaders have thought these things out or understand that their deficit spending cannot go on forever without consequences. When I see how even now every bill is packed full of the most offensively ridiculous spending I have to conclude that obviously not enough people are worried enough yet.