remarkable and sobering text about survival if the world wide economy collapses

[dogindia]

Posted by William Tamblyn on http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyRoundTable/

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Issues/2007/DR011007.html

(this text is about half way down the page)

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Move over Mogambo - in the battle of "who is best prepared for the worst" Nathan Lewis has you beat…hands down. Read on for some helpful hints on how to be equipped for a worst-case scenario…

THE ULTIMATE CONTRARIAN INVESTMENT FOR 2007
by Nathan Lewis

Posted by William Tamblyn on EnergyRoundTable

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Issues/2007/DR011007.html

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Move over Mogambo - in the battle of "who is best prepared for the worst" Nathan Lewis has you beat…hands down. Read on for some helpful hints on how to be equipped for a worst-case scenario…

THE ULTIMATE CONTRARIAN INVESTMENT FOR 2007
by Nathan Lewis
Of all the "investments" one might make at this time, one of the best may be to be prepared for a breakdown of the economy as we know it. This is not necessarily a prediction - any more than having fire or flood insurance is a prediction that you will have a fire or flood. Nevertheless, it is based on an observation that there are many factors that may render the relatively near future quite a bit different than the recent past. This may seem kooky to some, but at least I am kooky in good company. I note the billionaire master investor, Richard Rainwater, has gone public with his own "preparing for major change" plans, and if you begin to pay attention you will find that many wealthy individuals have been making similar preparations for themselves. Is there something they know that you aren't hearing about on the evening news?

What I am talking about could be summed up as: the lights go out and don't come back on again. Foreign oil shipments stop, or are blocked. Maybe freight shipments of goods from China and elsewhere become impossible. Maybe food is no longer delivered to the supermarket. In short, an economic breakdown something like what happened to the Soviet Union, but possibly on a worldwide scale. In such case, there will be no rescue because there will be nobody to do the rescuing.

There is a surprisingly long list of factors that may lead to such an outcome. The gradual and irreversible decline of world oil production, beginning approximately now, is one that has been getting the most attention. I would also note the much more dramatic potential collapse of North American natural gas production, which is imminent since the continent's natural gas production verifiably peaked in 2001. Major ice deposits such as the Antarctic ice shelf or the glaciers of Greenland have been melting at an accelerated pace, with some geologist and geophysics types now whispering that their collapse could take place within a couple decades, raising sea levels by tens, if not hundreds of feet. Given that most of the metropolises of the world are less than a hundred feet above sea level, we can imagine the effects of all of these going underwater simultaneously. Fisheries production is near collapse, and grain production has been falling for several years now. Grain production is now well below consumption, and formerly large world grain stockpiles have been run down to multi-decade lows on a days-use basis.

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and it continues with lists survival prescription lists