If not, um…sure? Send it to “2334 Imaginary Address Ln., Safety Purposes, TX 71490, c/o Whatsthat Ticcingsound, Mrs.”

Seriously, keep your sleeping bag. 300 bucks doesn’t go too far these days, but a warm bed still works in a pinch.

From the AV club:

“I mean, Tim Russert, he’s a fat guy from Buffalo who did his job okay. I don’t have anything against him. But people die!” —Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi

http://bucketworks.org/blogs/danknauss

I disagree with the idea that we are reduced to “savage” conditions without oil. This country existed for many years without it; we just need to re-learn how it was done. You can’t completely nix a breakdown of society, but you also can’t completely nix a smooth, peaceful transition to a post-fossil fuel economy. My guess is it will be somewhere in between. There may be pockets of chaos, but it doesn’t have to happen everywhere, which is why we need to work to rebuild our communities to prevent that from happening in our own backyards.

I think our most desperate challenge will be the same as it was during the Great Depression: “The only thing we need to fear is fear itself.” Panic and hoarding will ruin this country if we let it. We need to work to make everyone realize that it is in their best interest - on both a societal and an individual level - to work together and develop interdependent, sustainable communities. You are more likely to suffer greatly in a chaotic society, and a chaotic society is more likely to occur if you act purely in your own self-interest.

That’s the thing that the last ten or twenty or even forty years of American societal progress has virtually erased from our lives: we need to remember that these individualized, atomized, personalized lives we’ve developed for ourselves with the help of the Internet and Tivo and iPods and Pizza Hut delivery have weight in the larger world. We are worth something, and our actions have repercussions that affect our own well-being and that of our neighbors.

I know this is starting to sound a little like New Age therapy or something, but I truly believe we’ve lost something that can explain many of the noxious issues of our time: voter apathy, media cynicism, moral decline, erosion of the family, etc. We’ve come to view ourselves as worthless — while simultaneously seeing our selves and our immediate self-satisfaction as the only occupations worth our time. We need to come back to a place where we see ourselves as adding worth and value to our communities. I don’t know how that would work for each specific person, but I think the real revolution we’ll need (and see) will be a shift in personal mindset.

On a more honest note, I have a fear that your future is in some ways very possible. Without oil we are reduced to the same societies that we would consider savage now. We talk about being in a civilized society, but can you completely nix the idea of a breakdown occuring?