I think Middle Ages standard of living is still a ways off, at least here in the FSoA for most of the population.  Electricity will be with us for a while, just it will be progressively more intermittent with blackouts and brownouts happening with greater frequency.  Sort of like what they currently have in places like Venezuela and India.

Also, it will be very dependent on what class you are in.  The rich not only will have priority service and power restoration after weather related outages, they'll also be well backed up with generators, solar panels & batts and able to use the batts in their EVs to keep power on during the periodic blackout hours.  Gated communities will also probably have their own Microgrids powered by mini Nukes.  Their homes will be wired in to the mini Nukes powering the AI server farm they own.

Geographic location also will factor in.  The low population rural areas that were the last places to be wired up will be the first places where the grid power is shut off for good.  It never was economically viable to wire these neighborhoods in the first place, the power always had to be subsidized.  Farm houses will go back to having their own generators, and as fuel becomes more scarce and expensive go back to candlelight, supplemented by the smaller 3000W installations a lot of Doomsteaders currently use.  These neighborhoods will be the first to go the Full Monte with Middle Ages level tech.

The economically powerful Big Shities like NYC will maintain full grid power the longest, but the less succesful smaller and older cities will turn into post-Apocalyptic hell holes like portrayed in Children of Men and other Sci-fi doom films.  The Skyscrapers will all be vacant above about the 5th floor, they'll just be scavenged for glass, plumbing pipes and wiring.  They won't have any water or functioning toilets.

Of course, as this becomes more pervasive, law & order will break down and it will be pretty anarchic.  The Death Rate will soar and murder and cannibalism will be common.  Disease will spread like wildfire and only hospitals for the rich will still have electricity.  Poor people will be rounded up and transferred to Death Camps where they will be euthanized via Nitrogen asphyxiation, the corpse sterilized then processed to make Soylent Green wafers.  So it will be a little different than the Middle Ages.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/next-drought-not-water-technology-energy/4989/

The next drought will not be a water drought, but worse: experts are already talking about a return to the Middle Ages

RE

Quote from: RE on Jul 28, 2024, 07:19 PM

Of course, as this becomes more pervasive, law & order will break down and it will be pretty anarchic.  The Death Rate will soar and murder and cannibalism will be common.  Disease will spread like wildfire and only hospitals for the rich will still have electricity.  Poor people will be rounded up and transferred to Death Camps where they will be euthanized via Nitrogen asphyxiation, the corpse sterilized then processed to make Soylent Green wafers.  So it will be a little different than the Middle Ages.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/next-drought-not-water-technology-energy/4989/

The next drought will not be a water drought, but worse: experts are already talking about a return to the Middle Ages

RE

If there is cannibalism going on the rich have already been eaten.

Seriously, a house of cards surrounds rich living.  There will be no supply chain to support gated neighborhood power and neighborhood AI.

Once the diesel stops everything goes to shit, for rich and poor alike.  Money won't buy love or anything else.  The only thing to do will be to die.


Remember Alice. 

QuoteBut even if a windmill had a positive EROI?  SO WHAT?  Any contraption that generates electricity isn't worth a fig newton, because tractors, harvesters, logging and mining trucks and equipment, construction and road trucks, cranes, forklifts, 18-wheelers all run on diesel fuel.  Not electricity. The 8,000 parts of the windmill aren't going to arrive at the factory without trucks.  The wind mill isn't going to be moved to its destination without trucks.

In the long term I agree,  but those in power will maintain control with force, which means control over remaining energy supplies, food etc.  Imagine an African country run by a Warlord who dispenses the food drops from the UN to his friends.  The FSoA military and National Guard will be handing out the food and get all the fuel for their trucks.  Eventually these military units also will be unable to get food and fuel, at which point it's anarchy for everyone.

RE

Do you think in collapse America will be able to project any power abroad? 

There will be no UN food drops.  Such things can only happen with an economic surplus.  The world becomes hugely bigger when oil gets scarce.  The ability for the US to be the worlds policeman is already threatened, but the need to be the worlds policeman vanishes.  What is left of America will become isolationist like it was before WWII.  Capitalism needed world markets because a feature of capitalism is that it ALWAYS needs larger markets.  Globalism was baked in the cake, it was not an idea.  The antecedents were a system feature. 

When capitalism dies the rest of the world becomes exotic and far away.  Perhaps in 500 years sailing ships will arrive from Africa to settle North America.  Not before then.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 30, 2024, 11:46 AMDo you think in collapse America will be able to project any power abroad? 

There will be no UN food drops.  Such things can only happen with an economic surplus.  The world becomes hugely bigger when oil gets scarce.  The ability for the US to be the worlds policeman is already threatened, but the need to be the worlds policeman vanishes.  What is left of America will become isolationist like it was before WWII.  Capitalism needed world markets because a feature of capitalism is that it ALWAYS needs larger markets.  Globalism was baked in the cake, it was not an idea.  The antecedents were a system feature. 

When capitalism dies the rest of the world becomes exotic and far away.  Perhaps in 500 years sailing ships will arrive from Africa to settle North America.  Not before then.

The UN was an analogy.

You're looking further into the future once we have reached total failure.  I'm looking more near-term where we just have intermittent power failures, food is rationed and there still is some commerce ongoing.  Again, my example would be one of the 3rd world countries like Colombia or Algeria right now.  Most of the population is living in extreme poverty, but an elite class of warlords maintain their power by force.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 30, 2024, 11:46 AMI'm looking more near-term.

RE

Your near term is right now.  too soon.

Here is an American headline from today: 

Criticism mounts against Venezuela's Maduro and the electoral council that declared him a victor

Venezuela is documented as having extremely fair elections.  That does not matter.  It is EZ to lie to the ignorant flock.  Another color revolution has been attempted.  Right now.  Here is another headline.

Kremlin says Venezuelan opposition should accept defeat and congratulate Maduro on election win

From your point of view collapse has already started.

Analysis of a video (fake) which claims police were disrupting voting.

Critical thinking (augmenting what the narrator says) asks the question.

Why would police interfere in a 'Rigged Election'.  The police would do the rigging.  They would not be stopping people from voting.  They would want people to vote knowing it does not matter.

A bureaucratic snafu?  The authors of the video seem not to have appreciated he fact that police would not be chased from a polling station.  There would be no reason for a crowd to do that.  The police at a polling station would be maintaining order REGARDLESS of which side they were on.  To keep voting fair or to keep it bent.  Order would be maintained regardless.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 30, 2024, 01:33 PMFrom your point of view collapse has already started.

Absolutely.  Collapse has been in progress for quite some time, particularly in Venezuela.

RE

Venezuela has been at war with the United States.  Collapse in Venezuela is not due to resource depletion or environmental catastrophe.

It is not the same thing.

Two headlines.

QuoteMexican president says no evidence of fraud in Venezuela elections

QuoteVenezuela's Dictator Can't Even Lie Well

It is not hard to tell which one is the lie.  The second was written by Anne Applebaum.  I know who she is.  She is a total tool of the State Department.  A cheerleader propagandist for empire.  She has pissed me off more than once.  She pisses me off every time she opens her mouth CIA megaphone.

The pain in Venezuela is a direct result of American Aggression.  Collapse from rich American white privilege is a different kind of collapse than the kind of collapse we general concern ourselves with here.

* As I typed I heard the first ripping thunder of the fucking Blue Angels.  Top Gun is back in town as it is every year for seafair.  Will spectators be thinking about proxy wars?  If they did, they would hide with the dogs.


But perhaps the spectators think.  My genocide, right or wrong.

Orchestrated violence from Kamala and Co.  Money financed people with criminal records to generate mayhem.  Hoping to stage a coup.

Venezuela's oil fields are mostly depleted.  Oil revenue is low.     

RE

Quote from: RE on Jul 31, 2024, 03:26 PMVenezuela's oil fields are mostly depleted.  Oil revenue is low.     

RE

Venezuela's true level of oil production is difficult to determine, but OPEC analysts estimate that it produced around 2.47 Mbbl/d (393,000 m3/d) of oil in 2009, which would give it 234 years of remaining production at current rates.

Is it easier to steal if we pretend it is not there? 

That was 2009.  What's it doing now?

RE

Quote from: RE on Jul 31, 2024, 05:54 PMThat was 2009.  What's it doing now?

RE

It has dropped almost every year since.  At the current rate it will last 1000 years.  US sanctions cut production.

America has been at war with Venezuela since 1999.

QuoteAccording to the United States Army Combined Arms Center:

A few year after Chávez rose to power in 1999, he began implementing a political-strategic plan he called the 'Bolivarian Revolution,' which threatened North American rule by promising a Latin American liberation from the Monroe doctrine. Chávez's plan was characterized by a hostile and confrontational posture toward the United States, actions designed to export Chávez's autocratic, socialist model to other countries of the region, and a foreign policy that embroiled Venezuela in international-level conflicts.

The American Government will not allow socialism, I thought you knew this.


Markets must expand.  Rich useless eaters demand it.  Freedom doncha know.  Socialists owning the gas tank is not allowed.