What is a "nutter"?  I know of no such diagnosis in the DSM-V.  Since Ted did not pursue an insanity defense and was tried as sane, you can only accept the legal system's position that he was sane.  I think sane is the opposite of nutter, though I am not sure since I am not sure of the definition of nutter.

I already stipulated that he had a low probability for success, but low probability is not no probability.  Perhaps he kept on with it because he couldn't think of anything else to do with a greater probability for success.  Given that since then nobody else has come up with anything successful in changing the trajectory of industrial civilization, he may have been right about this.

Far as his intelligence goes, he was a child prodigy and mathematician, but being smart doesn't always lead to the best outcomes.  After all, Einstein, Feynman, Tesla and Oppenheimer were all real smart, and their thinking led to the development of the Atomic Bomb and the deaths of 100s of 1000s of innocent people.  So were they nutters also?

Anyhow, TK was not your run of the mill serial killer, the whole campaign was qualitatively different so you are missing the point if you can't see the difference between him and your typical postal.  The only thing similar is the outcome, some random dead people.  Otherwise, it is very different and quite a singular event in the history so far written of collapse.

RE

A nutter is someone lost in a reality of their own making.

And that just about covers all of us.

* astute viewer will notice I am able to hack into our toolbar and change editor icons.  That is a real image of the Mona Lisa I made from a high resolution photo.  I need to find the old Mona somewhere.  Still better than what we had.

I wouldn't make a definition for a word like "nutter".  It's a totally loaded term.  It would be like making a definition of an ass wipe or fuck wad.  You don't like TK because you don't like what he did.  So you use a name and concept designed to show your distaste.  Fair enough, but don't pretend you are making any kind of dispassionate analysis here.

I never said TK was better, only that he was different.  His methodology for bringing about change was clearly flawed, but I do understand how he got there after having his brain sand blasted by the FSoA black ops folks.  The fact he spent 20 years sending out mail bombs because he was generally pissed off at the civilization he was living in doesn't make any of what he wrote less true, nor does it make it more true.  It did get him more readers though.

Far as Heinberg's back to the land plan killing millions of people, that is a ridiculous argument.  Millions of people are going to die here no matter what.  Going back to the land is an attempt to save a few.  It probably won't succeed, but so far nobody has come up with anything better that isn't loaded up with hopium and skittle shitting unicorns.  That Fusion Tokamak costing billions isn't gonna save anybody, nor will Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos' rocket ships.

Now, if I had Elon & Jeff's kind of money, I wouldn't spend it building oversize Estes Rockets to nowhere.  I would build floating submersible Bubble towns from basalt reinforced cement & glass domes powered by a micro nuclear reactors and tidal generators with desalinization plants, air filtration and oxygen concentrators, hydroponic gardens and fish farms out in international waters.  Each bubble would house somewhere between 1000-10000 homo saps and could be directed following the wind and ocean currents anywhere on the globe.  They could be hooked together to make larger cities with resources and raw materials scavenged from the land masses they were parked near.

Upon completion of each module, open applications would be available to anyone interested in becoming a resident of that town.  At the first level there would be a competitive examination for each demographic segment from age 8 to 48.  Then Pass/Fail Physical, Medical and Psychological examinations.  Finally, all the applicants would have to agree to donate all their wealth and possessions to furthering the building of more bubbles if they are selected.  Then, assuming there are more successful applicant left than there are spots available, each age cohort would be separated out and divided into male and female pools, and a lottery held to get the final residents.  All would have to move aboard immediately, no waiting until the Zombies are attacking your McMansion.

So, my question for today is if you met the requirements, passed all the tests and won the lottery to board the first Bubble, would you do it?  Remember, you have to give up all your personal possessions and break all your ties with friends and family to do it.  Chances are few if any of them would also make the cut.

A second corollary question is if your 10 year old son or daughter got a spot on the ark but you, your wife and other children did not, would you let him/her go alone?

I realize this is major topic drift from TK, but that topic is beaten to death. 

RE

I don't think all murderers deserve to be denigrated or marked as insane.  I think if somebody had succeeded in murdering Adolf Hitler or Joe Stalin he or she would have been considered a hero, at least by most Amerikans.  I can think of quite a few people alive today I wouldn't cry for if somebody decided to buy them a ticket to the Great Beyond.  I just ask myself the question, "Would the world be a better place if this person was dead?".  If the answer comes up yes, whoever murdered that person probably had a solid reason for doing it.

"Back to the land" efforts made in earlier times did not come under the same circumstances as now, they were not particularly well planned or executed and you can't identify that as the cause of death.  The problems were political and economic, they went along with political purges and economic embargos and distribution problems.

Although it did not progress very far or last long enough, the Back to the Land movement here in the 60s & 70's didn't end up with millions of dead people, in fact I don't know of any deaths you could attribute directly to that.  The Amish have been pretty successful with their version of Back to the Land living.  You are conflating political and economic issues with the philosophical and practical ones in order to justify your conclusions.  Its a lousy argument.

Given your general attitude it's no surprise you wouldn't board one of the ocean towm bubbles.  Given the fact I came up with the idea and proposed it, it should be no surprise also I would jump at the chance.  I also would gladly send my 10 year old off on the adventure.  Obviously if he or she applied they want to go and it would give a good chance for at least one of my descendants to survive SHTF day.

RE

You are very conventional thinker and staying in the civilization is the conventional choice, which is why your response was so predictable.  Boarding a floating egg while society seems to be sorta functioning is the unconventinaol, risky choice, the kind Dr. Gonzo would have taken, like going to live with the Hell's Angels.  A conventional thinker like yourself would never do that.

Far as the 10 y/o goes most of them would not choose to go if their parents weren't also going, even if their parents encouraged them to go.  Most are still too attached and dependent on parents at that age.  Only very independent and self assured kids would do that, and if my kid had that kind of guts, I sure would not be the one to stand in the way.

RE

The fact I had a more comfortable early life than you and didn't busy myself braining raccoons with a Lousiana slugger is irrelevant, although I whacked my share of pidgeons , squirrels and rats with my wrist rocket slingshot in Rio and New York in the fun days of my privileged youth.  The big floating eggs are designed precisely to avoid having to live out in the bush practicing survival skills and BBQing roadkill.  I'm no Cody Lundin or Eustace Conway, and even in my best years after wilderness camps I doubt I would have lasted long living the full primitive.

On the other hand, I'm darn good at wiring up parts scavenged up from auto junkyards to keep my EV wheelchairs running and modifying them to take trailers and lift me off the ground if I fall.  I'm a good plumber and carpenter and I've done a decent amount of welding, though that isn't a real strong point and I would need to mess with the equipment more to get really good at it.  I'm an expert chemist and know how to recycle and build batteries, do extractions from plants to make basic medicines , cleaning agents and preservatives, poisons and anti-toxins.  I know medicine and anatomy and I could put in a trach tube or set a broken bone, extract a bullet and sew up a wound, and if no doctor was around I think I could remove an inflamed appendix without killing the patient.    Keeping it from getting infected would be the biggest problem if good antibiotics weren't available, but we should start off with a good stock and could  work on making more, though we would need a good biochem lab for that.  I've never run a nuclear reactor but the principles are pretty straightforward and tidal generators are right up my alley.  So I think I would have been a pretty handy person to have around in the floating town, particularly since I'm designing it. lol.  Of course, I am talking about the me before I was 50, not the me of today.

While I have never bred any of my own kids, I've taught thousands of them and I had a full year of experience as a 10 year old, lol.  I was perfectly capable at age 10 on evaluating what I wanted to do, and if I wanted to go on a roller coaaster I did even if my mom didn't want to go and didn't think it was a great idea for me either, I got on planes to fly alone to other countries and I lived away from home for full summer camps starting when I was 8.  I picked out the camps too from the ACA book listing all the approved ones, their amenities and what they specialized in.  I don't see this decision as all that much different, just it's permanent.  That would have made it more difficult, but frankly I wasn't all that attached to either of my parents.  I already lost one of them in the divorce anyhow, though I did get to go see him a couple of times a year.

Now, I wouldn't consider myself the average 10 y/o, but over the course of my life I worked with enough of them who I think were capable enough and independent enough to make such a decision.  I definitely would have wanted the opportunity myself, so I am sure there are other ones out there like me who also would like the opportunity.  They would have to take the battery of tests to evaluate their psychological ability to do this just like everyone else of course.

This kind of separation isn't that odd, the Brit upper class has been sending their kids off to Boarding School at 7 years old for generations.  The Russians and Chinese would go out to local elementary schools looking for athletically gifted children to live at their Olympic training facilities, and intelectually gifted children to train as scientists and engineers.  They were quite successful with both programs.

Unlike the Commies back in Mother Russia, I wouldn't forcibly remove the kids whether the parents or kids wanted it or not, I would give both of them Veto power.If kid wants to go but parents veto, no go.  If parents want the kid to go but kid vetoes, no go.  As I
 mentioned though, I sure wouldn't veto my kid's adventure, the kid would hate you for life, particularly if/when the lights do go out.  I'll pass on that.

RE

You are exactly the kind of parent I had the most trouble with during my years coaching, convinced they know it all and who kept their kids from putting in the time and commitment necessary to do high level gymnastics.  Fortunately, there were enough around without that kind of god complex who gave their kids the latitude to choose how much time they wanted to put in and supported them in their choices.  The control freak parents would always pitch out the argument "She's only 10!  She's not old enough to decide to spend 30 hours a week in the gym!"   Blah blah blah, I heard that shit a million times.

Far as your paranoia regarding a Goobernmint conspiracy, I didn't posit this as a Goobermint project, it was how I would spend my money if I had as much as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos instead of building rockets and going to try setting up a colony on Mars..  Of course the whole thing could be corrupted and sabotaged, but I hardly think you will be left alone to brain raccoons in WV either.  At least the bubble towns are out in international waters and would be pretty hard to get to.

Sorry I didn't grow up with your character building history of going to bed hungry on the nights you couldn't find a raccoon to brain and boil up into granma's secret recipe raccoon stew.  I still don't see this as a prerequisite for living in a floating egg the size of a couple of nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines though.

The fact you wouldn't try such an adventure isn't of much matter, since you wouldn't pass the psych eval anyhow.  You don't have the mindset for it.

It's not a whole lot different than the polynesians on Rapa'Nui (Easter Island) who died off leaving only a few monolithic statues behind.  These were the folks who waited too long until all the trees they built their sailing canoes from were gone and they couldn't get off the island when the resources ran out and they starved.    The ones who did survive were the ones who took the last few trees early on and took off into the unknown and a few of the lucky ones found the Big Island of Hawai'i.

On their cat rigged sailing canoes they took along pigs and chickens to breed if they found land and as much food and fresh water as they could fit for the journey.  They didn't know where they were going, only where they had been and how many days it had taken to get there.  Every trip had a point of no return, which once past they could not go back. I'm sure many of them never made landfall and died at sea, but at least one made it to Hawai'i, a whole lot better island than Rapa'nui.

I look at the floating town idea as a modernized version of those seagoing catamarans.  They have to last long enough that the people who stayed behind on land mostly kill each other off and the land and wildlife gradually recovers.  Maybe a century or two.  Since there are no Hawaiis left to sail to now, your point of no return is measured by time, not distance, so you have to last a long time.  A little sailboat just won't cut it, nor will a small group of people.  So you gotta build big.  Like a space station or one of those intergalactic spaceships, just built here on earth.  At least we have an atmosphere and liquid water on this rock.

Anyhow, I wish you good luck in your raccoon hunting.  All that practice with your Louisville Slugger will finally pay off! 

RE

Given your lack of experience as a gymnastics coach and teacher, it's no surprise you think you know more as a parent about what is right for your spawn than the professionals do.  This is typical of parents with the god complex, they figure despite not knowing the first thing about children, they are instant experts just because they forgot to wear a rubber one night and popped one out of the oven 9 months later.  Even the ones who actually plan it know little to nothing, which is a big part of the reason we have so many fucked up kids in the schools who turn into fucked up adults who make still more fucked up kids.  We have gone through numerous cycles of this stupidity, leading us to the fucked up society we have today.  As you might expect, I am all in favor of Boarding Schools. lol.

Why did I never propose this idea during the SUN years?  Well, first off I didn't think of it back then, second it's too expensive except for a Billionaire who would put a significant portion of his personal wealth towards doing it.  Unlike building rockets which have the commercial application of putting satellites in orbit, there really is no commercial application for this or profit in it.  The only way you could make money off it is rather than populating it the way I suggest by competitive examination would be by selling spots to the moderately rich.  If a small Bubble Town for 1000 people cost say $5B to build, it would cost $5M/person to buy your spot.  Problem here is any idiot with $5M could buy a spot, so you don't get people with the right skills and abilities populating it.

It would of course need some defensive weaponry,but given its size and the fact it would have around a 5 foot thick basalt reinforced concrete shell it would be quite impervious to even the pirates who go after supertankers.  You would need a battleship with artillery shells to blow a hole through it, and that's only on the surface.  If you submerge it, you would need a submarine with torpedos to blow through it.  In either case, you would likely sink it, so what's the point?  Just to kill the people who live there?  It's not a source of resources.  Anybody still in control of warships capable of sinking it would be living just fine in armored bunkers on land.  Eventually the various countries competing for resources will sink each other's hardware and run out of fuel and ammo for their warships, and this level of threat will diminish.

As you mention, you are never going back to braining raccoons and I will never be boarding a 2000' diameter nuclear powered floating concrete egg, so these are just thought experiments and philosophical arguments.  Similar to arguments about the existence of God, nothing is ever proved other than the fact we  have diametrically opposite differences of opinion on a variety of topics.  That's what makes the world go round.

RE