Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[FullMoon]

The summers are broiling in Texas. Also, proximity to Mexico is an issue. With climate change, I'd prefer empty states like Vermont or ND.

My ultimate destination will be northeast Nebraska after diesel supplies start to run out and 3-5,000 acre farms have to become smaller. It'll be a hard life.

The empty states are the ones with lots of dark green on the population map. They're also dry as a bone.

I settled on the P Coastal range with low population. I was hoping for N Idaho and there are some excellent options in that area but had family considerations and whatnot. I was hoping for a developed mini-farm for reasons I'm now fully understanding. But land clearing helps with consideration of farm layout. But I'd suggest just getting something already setup. It would be easier to fix up an established place. It'll probably take some time to get used to managing a small farm and I decided that we don't have many years, if any more, and it would be good to get a head start. It's hard on the joints and muscles unused to this labor. It's good to get fresh air and have space outside of town.

[Higgenbotham]

I was hoping for a developed mini-farm for reasons I'm now fully understanding.

That's a good suggestion for people to consider. Once in a great while on sites like permies.com there will be a small farm for sale where the owners are old and/or tired, have built up the soil, and are ready to cash it in. Someone might end up in Oregon or Virginia that way (I've seen good ones both places) but a lot of the hard work will be done.

I had 20 acres in northern Idaho outside Sandpoint at one time and sold it in 2004. If you haven't been someplace in 20 years, you really don't know much about it anymore, but it was fine at the time. However, I prefer something that's not so well advertised, will be too inhospitable to attract many people, and where I know and understand the people and culture.

Something a single person might want to consider is there are some ranchers that will let people live on their land for free. I'm aware of 2 situations like that. Life will be even tougher out there.

[Higgenbotham]

The empty states are the ones with lots of dark green on the population map. They're also dry as a bone.

Almost 30 years go, I was in eastern Montana and found a gas station up on a hill. Got out of the car and looked out and it seemed like I could literally see 50 miles. Nothing in sight but grassland. It was silent in a unique way.

The gas pump was old style. Not old enough to see the gas in it, but probably the next model after that. Had to go in and pay cash. There was a woman in there with a pen and paper notebook. She must have been 85 years old. She wrote the sale down in the book. The place looked like an old general store that hadn't changed in 60 years.

A car drove up and a mother and daughter got out. The car could be noticed coming from a long way away. They looked me up and down as if to search their entire life history to make a determination they had never seen me before. I'm going to guess there may have been less than 100 people living in the whole county. Then without saying a word they walked into the store.

When I got back to the city it took a few days to get used to the noise and things like people creeping out into intersections and just crowds in general. It made me think that I was living in an abnormal environment and had never realized it, and that eastern Montana was more normal.

The previous day, I had talked to an old Norwegian guy in western North Dakota. He told me his dad owned some land around Miles City, Montana. He told me the going price (at that time almost 30 years ago) was $50 per acre.

[Higgenbotham]

What do you think of Buckminster Fuller, HB?

A lot of periodicals found their way into our home when I was a kid (late 60s and 70s). Buckminster Fuller would be featured here and there. He was sort of a cult figure at the time and there were a few others. I remember one guy who had developed a pedal powered plane called the Gossamer Albatross. Others were sitting inside pyramids to get "Pyramid Power". Uri Geller was bending spoons with his mind, or maybe he wasn't. From my memory, Fuller was just another guy who thought of a lot of off the wall ideas. I'm not placing a value judgement on any of his ideas.

What comes to mind is those years were a mini precursor to what will be seen when the dark age proper finally arrives. It will be a time where freedom to experiment and think outside the box comes to the fore for individuals. So there will be lots and lots of individuals like Fuller coming up with off the wall ideas and some of them will be good ideas and some of them will stick. None of that exists today. People are too busy trying to figure out how to pay for things like rent and property taxes that are way too expensive.

[Guest]

However, I prefer something that's not so well advertised, will be too inhospitable to attract many people, and where I know and understand the people and culture.

Western North Carolina.

[Guest]

What do you think of Buckminster Fuller, HB?

A lot of periodicals found their way into our home when I was a kid (late 60s and 70s). Buckminster Fuller would be featured here and there. He was sort of a cult figure at the time and there were a few others. I remember one guy who had developed a pedal powered plane called the Gossamer Albatross. Others were sitting inside pyramids to get "Pyramid Power". Uri Geller was bending spoons with his mind, or maybe he wasn't. From my memory, Fuller was just another guy who thought of a lot of off the wall ideas. I'm not placing a value judgement on any of his ideas.

What comes to mind is those years were a mini precursor to what will be seen when the dark age proper finally arrives. It will be a time where freedom to experiment and think outside the box comes to the fore for individuals. So there will be lots and lots of individuals like Fuller coming up with off the wall ideas and some of them will be good ideas and some of them will stick. None of that exists today. People are too busy trying to figure out how to pay for things like rent and property taxes that are way too expensive.

My mother had one of those pyramids in the mid-70s. I never saw her use it, but I remember it in the house and box in came in.

The only people that will make it will have to live in isolated communities like the Hawaiian islands, Montana, or the Dakotas.

I know people who have underground bunkers, and they nice places, really. They think that if they can stay undetected for a year that when they do emerge from hiding 90% of the people will be dead. Makes sense.

[Higgenbotham]

If the descent is a time of private selfishness
behind public generosity, the darkness will be a
time of private selfishness without public
generosity. There will be no welfare system.
People will be thrown back on their own devices
and life will suddenly become much simpler. On
the bright side, this will be a time of extreme
personal freedom, given that freedom ‘is just
another word for nothing left to lose’. It will
also be a time of rapid change with no constraints
on creativity. There will be a far-reaching failure to
transmit the knowledge, attitudes and certainties of
the pre-dark age society, providing fertile ground
for new ideas. Yet people will be too busy
struggling for survival to record what is happening
to them. The burst of creativity will take place
behind a thick screen, its details never to be
revealed. To future historians looking back on the
dark age, these fifty to two hundred years will be
another chapter missing from the human story.

The Phoenix Principle and the Coming Dark Age by Marc Widdowson, 2001
p. 280

[Higgenbotham]

The only people that will make it will have to live in isolated communities like the Hawaiian islands, Montana, or the Dakotas.

For someone looking for a non nuclear war option, has good resistance to cold, and rural living skills, living near a Hutterite community may be a good option. There are Hutterite communities scattered through North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as I best recall.

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/hutte ... h-america/

[aeden]

As before the more debt the dumber they will get and are in real time.
Thugs who attack will be addressed by other ideas.
The verbiage is from a lawmaker. Those zones are simply finished.

[Bob Butler]

I would like to live where there is a functional state government, for now, and have been in Texas for 17 years. Once things go completely to hell in a handbag, I think it would be better to be in a place that has as little government as possible at the state and local level.

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/hutte ... h-america/

While there may be Luddite colonies in the imaged area, there are also nuke ICBM squadrons in Montana and North Dakota. I was safely in the balmy Chinook climate of Great Falls Montana's Maelstrom SAC base when the Blizzard of 78 hit back in New England. If a nuclear exchange occurs, that may not be the place to be.