There are things we take for granted in the country. Lots of things actually, widely available food in a wide array of choices, functioning electrical grid, peaceful elections, so on and so forth. Today I’d like to focus your attention on what you take for granted right under your feet, or wheels. Some of the best constructed roads, bridges and tunnels ever pumped out by a single country.
These systems are fantastic! If you’ve never been to a country with sub-par roads, you may not appreciate the difference that 12 inches of re-bar, concrete and asphalt can make for your daily commute. We can blithely zoom around at 60, 70 mph most everywhere, with no fear of the road being washed out ahead, the bridge being out or the tunnel flooded.
The thing is though, we were willing to pay the price for these back when we had more oil and iron than we knew what to do with. Now that things have slid to the other side of Hubberts curve, the cost to maintain these treasures is becoming harder and harder to bear. As a nation we’re trillions behind in infrastructure repairs.
What does that mean for a prepper? - You need to take the failing of infrastructure into account for everything from your daily work commute to your BO plans. How many bridges do you cross every day? Are there alternate routes you can take if one of those is no longer safe to drive over? Is your commute still affordable at that point? Can you get to and from your house or BO location if the main bridge or highway is impassable? Are there multiple ways to get to the local trading centers from your house or BO location? (Grocery stores, banks, markets, etc.) You need to take into account the life spans of roads and what condition they’re in now to extrapolate how much longer you can expect to use them. 41% of Iowa’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, we have tens of billions worth of work that realistically won’t get done. That bottom 40% of our roads is likely to be the first to go out and not come back.
Worse scenarios than bridges collapsing - Dams. Oh yea, nobody likes to talk about dams in this country. There’s not a lot of good news on that front, even here in Iowa where we’re relatively flat and dry, we have 83 high hazard dams. (A high hazard dam is defined as a dam whose failure would cause a loss of life and significant property damage.) 95% of high hazard dams in Iowa have no emergency action plan (EAP). (An EAP is a predetermined plan of action to be taken including roles, responsibilities and procedures for surveillance, notification and evacuation to reduce the potential for loss of life and property damage in an area affected by a failure of a dam.) You’d better know where such dams are in relation to you, and have your own EAP in place to handle their failure. My Maine peeps, you have less to worry about here, fewer dams and only 8% of them are lacking EAP’s. States like Colorado with hundreds of dams are much better about the EAP’s, but they have similar problems as the rest of the US about maintaining roads and bridges.
Mitigation strategies – Roads that won’t support cars and trucks probably will still be able to facilitate walking/biking and perhaps even things like horses or 4 wheelers if you have the funds for such things. If bridges are out, it’s conceivable that local communities could band together to patch things together for awhile. The Celts in Ireland used to pole jump across streams. Tribes in regions like Pakistan and Peru use knotted bridges to get people across rivers. Our kids will probably just have to get creative about things.
Check out states that are of interest to you here – thttp://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/states
- Calamity Jane
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{ 23 comments }
travel will revert to what it was 100 years ago.
vehicle travel would be theoretically possible, as long as we can produce fuel and lubricants. (and retread tires) tree stumps in the road will need to be cut as low as possible. steel production, electric power and rail travel will be possible as long as we can produce coal.
shoe leather, and bicycle will likely be the most common way to travel… horses aren’t practical for most people. (even some flying will still be possible, if we can produce linen or cotton fabric) water crossings will mostly happen by ferry boat.
maintaining knowledge about how it was all made, is the real key to fixing it in the future.
worse still….what happens when all those nuke plants start melting down. their spent fuel rods must be kept under cool water or they will catch fire and burn like magnesium, but with radioactive smoke. no fuel for generators/pumps, no cool water….. joy joy.
It’s only a matter of time before our failing infrastructure directly causes a disaster (such as a burst dam that washes away a town). Then we’ll HAVE to look at it more seriously.
Good one Jane & you hit a great point about being spoiled here in the US. Now please understand, the following is not directed at you, you simply opened a great door for discussion & opinion both of which I am not shy of expressing.
I’ve prattled on before about being in other 3rd world countries & seeing their level of acceptance for things. Unfiltered water, inadequate bathroom facilities (some “public” places in the Middle East must regard porcelain as a semi precious stone), 2 lane roads just wide enough for Vespa’s & so forth. The residents know this is the norm & have no problem with it.
Initially as an outsider looking in, I was aghast. Don’t you people know there is a better & safer way??? Actually, they feel just fine about their existing conditions. Would they like a better setup? Of course, who wouldn’t? But that is not a reality.
Here in the US if we see a pothole larger than a quarter we start complaining to the state road crews to fix this condition immediately! Or the highway rest stop bathroom is out of toilet paper – are you kidding me??!! And what do you mean that the road is closed due to flooding – get out here and unplug the drainage system, now – I’m late for my carmel whatever latte!!
I think it is high time to count & truly embrace our the blessings we’ve had since before we were born & roll with the punches. Honestly, we’ve been spoiled well beyond 99% of the world & deserve very little of it.
Sure we pay taxes to improve our lives and if it gets misappropriated what are we supposed to do, sit back & complain? That is exactly what the politicians want us to do – shake our fists & take NO action to solve the problem(s). This way they can continue on with their unaccountability & greed agendas while shaking hands, kissing babies & pointing fingers at their opponents telling you that they are responsibility for your lot in life.
What gets me, is this whole prepping/survival mindset seems to be about moving away from the problems instead of standing up and or moving towards a solution. People give up far too easily & that is not a survivalist mindset.
Most “preppers” believe that when the SH’sTF, they are going to disappear into some isolated secret spot while driving in their 4 wheeler around the potholes & burning bridges. Gas will be $20 a gallon, gangs will be roving around with AK’s sticking out the car windows & stealing your pantry of beans & freeze dried weenies.
Is this really acceptable, more importantly have we really sunk this low? Hardly – statistics prove quite the opposite. Besides, 98% of man/womankind is not that depraved – believe it or not.
So what’s my point? Accept the current conditions – you have NO choice AND do something to correct or better things – that’s what a survivalist does. The problems are big but not that big – remember, 13 tiny colonies with an untrained army of farmers & merchants defeated the most powerful war machine in the known world – a machine that crushed many other larger countries & ruled with an iron fist.
Otherwise, accept what you have, smile, get on with your day & wait for the other shoe to drop … and hopefully it’s not a size 17 …..
“Most “preppers” believe that when the SH’sTF, they are going to disappear into some isolated secret spot while driving in their 4 wheeler around the potholes & burning bridges.”
I hate to say it, but this part is all too true. 3 months’ worth of beans, a water filter, and a bunker full of weapons isn’t going to cut it. The only real secret spots will be so damned isolated, that everyone is going to rush towards them the moment everyone decides to get out of dodge. After all, the term “head for the hills!” means that the destination is in, well… the hills – an isolated place.
So by default that means the isolated places will become the cities – I knew there would be light at the end of the tunnel!
Well, wait. My response is vastly incomplete here.
What I mean to say is, the fantasy of trotting off to a small town the moment the world goes ‘splat is going to be 100% not feasible. First off, most anyone else who has given the idea any thought at all has the same idea. Coupled with the masses whose idea of survival post-collapse will be “run for the hills!”, and you end up with highways jammed to the safety rails with sheet metal. Good luck getting your 4×4 past that.
When I first started seriously studying the whole SHTF planning thing, I saw that one coming almost immediately. Why? Simple research into any massive and ugly event shows the same story: You either went through the hell of gridlock, or you hoofed it (and good luck carrying all those #10 cans of freeze-dried food on your back for 150 miles!) I also got to see a taste of what traffic would do myself in a very typical situation: first snowstorm in Salt Lake City in 2005; it turned a 45-minute commute into a 4-hour slog… turns out this happens every year. Now if this is what happens to a big fast road like I-15 when everyone knows it’s coming, imagine what the freeways will turn into when it’s full of scared, confused, and frantic people.
This is why I started looking into evacuation by boat… seems to make a ton of sense in some situations. In my neck of the woods, it makes perfect sense, well, if you already live in that boat.
Even if you get out, you get to contend with ambushes, guards making sure you don’t go into various small towns, and the like.
So, let’s just say that evacuation is out of the question – if you don’t already live in a small town or out in the sticks, you ‘re going to have a very tough slog of it.
Because of fear, don’t you evacuate when SH’sTF ?
Think about it …
Not fear… planning. Sounds like O.Q.’s saying, make sure you’re already near your bunker. SHTF will make Memorial Day look like a fast commute.
Some of the older states have less-used roads , but out west Jane is right, there may be only one road outta town – and everyone will be on it. Sometimes it’s better to wait & watch everyone else stampede north ,then you quietly head south & then make a U-turn…
The one thing people in a third world country wont accept is birth controle , which is the only thing the US should be giving in foreign aid . It is also the only thing other nations should be giving to us now that we cant pay the interest on all the money that has been loaned to the government .
Simply pay them folks with some nicely printed colored paper! That’s all they lent us.
They didn’t lend us anything of VALUE, just a way to exchange value.
…. and a pretty convenient way to see some really great artwork!
Sort of like going off the gold standard .
well-said Jason – amazing how we take this infrastructure for granted… we don’t even remember how much of it is beneath our feet!
I wouldn’t rely on coal/biodiesel/rubber being extracted & delivered on the scale we’re used to, especially if the roads & rails weren’t in shape enough to have coal and rubber delivered to keep them in shape… Instead of trying to keep the interstate open, aim to have a nice country road the width of a wagon, grade it as flat as you can, hope for gravel/stone from new-plowed fields… go back to the early 1800′s, rebuild small-scale, deliberately.
Great post.
I’ve seen that some places in the mid-west are letting lesser used roads go back to gravel to save money. Much better to have a coordinated contraction than to just let things fall apart.
I’m within walking distance to work and don’t believe in the whole bailout thing, so I’m set on that front.
Calamity Jane- A great piece which is food for thought. As Kunstler and other critics have said again and again, North America had best rebuild it’s rail infrastructure riki-tik and fast lest the majority of the citizenry are born, schooled, employed and passed-on within thirty-miles of their origins. This being said, I’d like to envision a time where the collective got their collective act together and literally lobbied their representatives to prioritize rail transportation to the exclusion of all other minus water transportation, so that when Ghawar and Cantarell go the way of the dodo, at least it will take a week from Los Angeles to Washington instead of three months via horse drawn Conestoga Wagon. Of course will this happen, no it won’t, however some regions are certainly doing better than others in this regard, for example the Northeast has the most extensive rail network in North America, followed by the West Coast, so will they do better, in a long-term decline, yes but in the quick lightning fast Black Swan, of course not. As Irish says: we’ll be good as long as we can extract coal, but that leads to the question can the existing domestic industry still manufacture steam locomotives? I know of only six such steam locomotives, which actually operate on North American Standard Gage as opposed to specialized gage like the so-called Mountain Railway companies in Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia. Oh and the Disney Trains aren’t Steam Locomotives in the strict sense, they are Diesel Powered albeit soy-based bio-diesel, and not built to North American Standard Gage. Needless to say, that along with a re-vitalized rail industry, a comprehensive effort will need to be made in the re-adoption of Animal-Traction Transport. For while much has been written about horses, let us not forget that Western North America was settled not only by Pioneers on Horseback, but Mule Train, Donkey Cart and Bullock Drawn Conestoga Wagons as well. Something of interest to preppers of all stripes, would be the Milking Devon and Irish Dexter breeds of cattle which provide the small-time prepper with a “quad-threat” benefit (i.e. Milk, Beef, Fiber (Hides) but also can be trained to harness with which to pull a wagon) giving a degree of flexibility not commonly seen with other draft animals. In closing while North American Infrastructure may be on the ropes with little hope of recovery, as Homo Sapiens we have become masters of the planet because of our unfailing ability to adapt to practically any situation, we’ve stared down extinction once and we will certainly give a great account again in the future.
is there any crop besides soy that can produce significant ammounts of bio-diesel? we’ll be needing to grow it on every bit of reclaimable farmland. (there are other crops besides corn from which we can produce fuel alcohol) the “Mainline” of the “Pennsy” was electrified all the way to Chicago. that can be kept up if no one steals all the copper… first hand knowledge on how to run a steam loco will take a long time to expand beyond the places it’s still maintained, just like “horse sense”.
we’ll be running the diesels until they can’t run anymore…
electricity use will need to be prioritized. hydroelectric power can keep going until the dams colapse, or silt up. it’s likely that regions with electric power, will need to cut off their grid feeds to places without…
every bit of aluminum available will need to be recycled, because it uses too much power to produce new. they will probably need to mine old landfills for plastic and aluminum to recycle.
engineers will never need to worry about retirement. we will need to keep them in university towns, as tutors etc. so all of their knowledge can be passed along to the next generation.
Irish-
Switchgrass, which grows wild in Southern North America as well as parts of the Midwest can be harvested for Ethanol like what is being done in Brazil and Argentina. Additionally as every Diesel Nut knows, when Dr. George W. Carver invented Diesel Fuel with cooperation from Rudolph Diesel, it was not Petroleum but the simple Peanut which provided the punch that Diesel provides over Petroleum Gasoline. Additionally Diesel Nuts know that Both Soybeans and Peanuts are excellent Nitrogen Fixers to the soil as they grow, being an excellent crop in rotation for high maintenance cereals such as Wheat, Oats Barley, Sorghum, Spelt, Quinoa, and Buckwheat. This being said, While it is postulated that American’s have an addiction to “happy motoring” please remember that after a collapse of Petroleum Civilization, there won’t be the funding available for the modern North American Paved Road network, hence there won’t be as many privately owned motor vehicles left on those deteriorating paved roads, ergo it could be a realistic bridge to presume that the Bio-fuels that are actually produced in said collapse/Post collapse environment would in fact power either trains or ships using the inland waterway network instead. As you’ve posted earlier, the extraction of coal will continue unabated since there won’t be an environmental protection agency and people will still desire a link to their Homo-Colossus past, and without millions of privately owned motor vehicles expelling millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the need for such agency is a moot point. So it’s safe to again presume that coal will power the trains and possibly the steam-ships that will ply the continent again as it was in the nineteenth century.
On your point of recycling of polymers and aluminum from existing landfill, is right on point with Kunstler’s maxim being that the garbage dumps of today will be the gold mines of the future (See a World Made by Hand for details). Of course said recycling would be an excellent employment opportunity for millions of otherwise idle young men, who would be hard pressed to do something constructive like subsistence agriculture, but instead could turn to violence to get their daily bread. What can I say, while being a pessimist about the future of the nation-state experiment, I’m most certainly an optimist about the future of the species, since nation-states are artificial and phoney while procreation and the furtherance of one’s genetics are completely natural.
Wow, that was very well put, enjoyed your opinion & agree with you. Great contribution.
right on KC:
see this example of homemade “trains” even when no locomotives – human ingenuity:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081023-train-video-ap.html
KC:
thanks for the crop information.
i was somewhat misinformed about the railroad. it was only electrified as far west as Harrisburg…
regarding the tons of CO2, that in itself doesn’t bother me in the slightest. it’s the other trace elements in the coal, such as sulfur or mercury that “pollute”. sequestration of “carbon” is total fooloshness (at best) IMHO. i’m in favor of “scrubbers” on the smokestacks.
i think the “nation state” republic is the best system that mankind has come up with so far. it can only work where there is still the inate understanding of right and wrong.
Good article , Here in AZ , I would LOVE to see every dam in the state blown up . The natural water distribution in the state was much more desirable before they did that . Tucson had steamboats going up and down on a river that now no longer exists .
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about – there’s not so many roads out here, and any natural ‘disaster!’ takes them out in a day.
In the 1880′s many of the first “streets” in Western cities were bike paths through the woods – cyclists wanted flat non-bumpy trails . Then the streetcar lines were built along the trails – then paved for cars that couldn’t make it up the hill roads. (Now people assume those same streets were all “built for” their SUV’s – and they slide down the hill streets when it snows.) Heavy hauling used to be done by boat & river. This is why cities are where they are. Rivers were changed and streams were paved over, and we forgot.
Like I said I’m personally doubtful about ‘we’ll just keep it going’ industrial scenarios, especially if hordes of able-bodied people die. Even hydropower is controlled and maintained by a lot of equipment and technology that takes the place of many human overseers, not to mention human labor. And I don’t forsee a lot of modernized Americans lining up to become John Henry before the remaining human overseers die off, even in peaceful times.
Hideouts in the hills are inaccessible. This is why we choose them. This is the disadvantage of commuting to/from your hideout. After SHTF, just an hour drive to/from town will be like going to Europe, even with a draft animal. This is assuming anyone can get their hands on a decent draft animal… remind me map out the nearest Amish community. I have a question for K.C. or other farmers: I have heard recently that breeds are often good for only a couple things – either draft and meat, or milk and wool – but are rarely “all-purpose” in one breed. Do you have advice on that?
thanks