I estimate 60 - 80% probability of radical global chaos coming and persisting for the remainder of my life, beginning roughly in 2018 in earnest and worsening again after 2024. I don't think it will be absolute loss of governance and society every where. But it is very difficult to predict all of the ramifications and situations are likely to be very fluid and changing, so any one regional advantage could at some point turn against you.
The best advice I have is try to move before the SHTF to a warmer area that is either too wet (thus some drying trend won't cause total drought) or a more rarely a warmer area that is too dry that might experience an increase in precipitation due to changes in prevailing winds or something. I don't have the data on which areas were best in the last Little Ice Age. Can any one dig up this data?
And then you need to make a decision whether you trust society in that area to remain civilized; if yes then go for populated areas and depend on community. If not and you can afford it, then maybe go for your own ranch heavily defended by sturdy male family (or perhaps robots will be available soon to employ as a defensive army).
Seems right now one of the most productive activities we men could do is start to acquaint ourselves with each other and making compacts to be neighbors and bond together to be able to provide the economy-of-scale to have a small rural community defense and diversification of food production and trading.
Photo of some of the nutcases we will be up against:
that's the question. It seems impossible for this to happen. I can buy a pound of rolled oats for 30 cents, you could quadruble the costs and life would go on*.
You apparently lack appreciation of the significance of both marginal prices in economics, and also the non-linear effects of chaos.
1. With marginal prices in Economics 101, the price you pay is set by the most expensive producer. It is not a useful model to think of a 3/4 reduction in food production causing causing a 400% increase in prices, because when you take away 3/4 of the lowest cost producers, the new supply is highest cost producers. So as was the case in Bosnia, where the cost of food was driven by the highest cost producers, a tin can of Spam was $30 to $40, i.e. roughly a 1000% increase. You need to visualize this as disruption of economies-of-scale not only in farming, but also in terms of distribution economies-of-scale, security of farming and distribution economies-of-scale.
2. When the population has become dependent on high economies-of-scale in farming, distribution, credit, government, corporations, etc., and that is taken away by mother nature and or widespread war/pestilence (-4.5 F average temperature reduction in cold climates, with great aggregate effects such as flooding, droughts, etc), then the F.U.B.A.R. human effects are quite non-linear as described in that link bigtimespaghetti provided on
surviving the war in Bosnia (which I had read long ago when it was first published). This can further exacerbate application of solutions and thus drive prices another 1000% higher.
Adaptation was essential as explained below, but the following adaptation can't be done if you are surrounded by humans who are suddenly thrust into a situation for which they are not prepared because they will hunt you instead of adapting:
http://archive.archaeology.org/1209/letter/iceland_hjalmarvik_irminger_east_greenland_current.htmlDuring the coldest winters, sea ice would have covered the bays at Svalbard. This usually meant a short summer with little time to grow grass to feed sheep, but the ice also brought a food resource with it—seals. According to Woollett, the excavations around Svalbard reveal that after the Little Ice Age began, the amount of seal and fish bone in the middens dramatically increases, demonstrating that these animals were an important part of the diet. The people of Svalbard could also rely on getting a certain amount of food by fishing and by butchering beached whales.
At the same time, the farmers at Svalbard changed their herding strategy. The farm would have kept a few cows for dairying and a few horses for transportation, but almost all of the animals raised at Svalbard were sheep. According to Woollett, this was a good approach because sheep are hardier and require less fodder than pigs and cattle. The pastures in northeastern Iceland aren’t as productive as those in continental Europe, so the strategy at Svalbard seems to have been to raise a relatively small number of sheep on a large amount of land. “The land is pretty crappy, but there is a lot of it,” says Woollett, adding, “they’re not producing what you want to eat if you are an elite [i.e., beef], but it is a predictable and durable system.” A similar system persisted for centuries. Even after farmers began to use tractors in the early to mid-twentieth century and were making money from tourists who wanted to fish in their rivers, sheep herding remained the agricultural focus of the area’s farms.
http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_lia.htmlMarginal regions
During the height of the Little Ice Age , it was in general about one degree Celsius colder than at present. The Baltic Sea froze over, as did most of the rivers in Europe. Winters were bitterly cold and prolonged, reducing the growing season by several weeks. These conditions led to widespread crop failure, famine, and in some regions population decline.
The prices of grain increased and wine became difficult to produce in many areas and commercial vineyards vanished in England. Fishing in northern Europe was also badly affected as cod migrated south to find warmer water. Storminess and flooding increased and in mountainous regions the treeline and snowline dropped. In addition glaciers advanced in the Alps and Northern Europe, overrunning towns and farms in the process.
Iceland was one of the hardest hit areas. Sea ice, which today is far to the north, came down around Iceland. In some years, it was difficult to bring a ship ashore anywhere along the coast. Grain became impossible to grow and even hay crops failed. Volcanic eruptions made life even harder. Iceland lost half of its population during the Little Ice Age.
Tax records in Scandinavia show many farms were destroyed by advancing ice of glaciers and by melt water streams. Travellers in Scotland reported permanent snow cover over the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland at an altitude of about 1200 metres. In the Alps, the glaciers advanced and bulldozed over towns. Ice-dammed lakes burst periodically, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing many people. As late as 1930 the French Government commissioned a report to investigate the threat of the glaciers.
Understand how important the functioning of trade (which could be disrupted by wars and coming global chaos) between disaffected regions was (but note this improvement also coincided with the lifting of the worst of the minimum sun spot cycle by 1715):
Agricultural revolution
During the later Middle Ages, slowly but steadily farmers started to experiment with new agricultural methods, in order to adapt to increasingly unpredictable climates and also stimulated by the growth of profitable markets in growing cities and increasing long distance trade.
This initially low technology agricultural revolution started in Flanders and the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Dutch farmers experimented with lay farming, the deliberate growing of animal fodder and cultivating grasslands for cattle. In addition they started systematic breeding of cows and the Frisian milk cow is probably the most famous example of this.
Another innovation was the continuous growing of specialized crops. Instead of letting valuable ground lay fallow, they planted peas, beans and especially nitrogen-rich clover, all of which provided food for humans and animals alike. The vegetables were rotated with grain, turnips and later potato for export but also for feeding dairy cattle. As a result of this system the amount of fallow land contracted rapidly until it totally disappeared. Agriculture became an intensive activity.
The new intensive agriculture produced such a high surplus that Flanders and later the Netherlands could specialize and diversify their agricultural activity. With abundance of fodder, animal and dairy farming (think of Dutch cheese) became increasingly important economic activities. More meat, wool, and leather as well cheese came on the market as the new agriculture broke the dependence on grain. At the same time farmers diversified into industrial crops such as flax, mustard and hops for brewing beer.
This agricultural revolution could not have succeeded without the development of new ships to withstand the harsher climatic conditions imported large amounts of grain form the Baltic, undermining local grain production. These grain imports made the Flemish and Dutch economy independent from climatic fluctuations causing famine.
