I've talked more than once in these essays about the challenge of discussing the fall of civilizations when the current example is picking up speed right outside the window.
In a calmer time, it might be possible to treat the theory of catabolic collapse as a pure abstraction, and contemplate the relationship between the maintenance costs of capital and the resources available to meet those costs without having to think about the ghastly human consequences of shortfall. As it is, when I sketch out this or that detail of the trajectory of a civilization’s fall, the commotions of our time often bring an example of that detail to the surface, and sometimes—as now—those lead in directions I hadn’t planned to address.
This is admittedly a time when harbingers of disaster are not in short supply. I was amused a few days back to see yet another denunciation of economic heresy in the media. This time the author was one Matt Egan, the venue was CNN/Money, and the target was Zero Hedge, one of the more popular sites on the doomward end of the blogosphere. The burden of the CNN/Money piece was that Zero Hedge must be wrong in questioning the giddy optimism of the stock market—after all, stock values have risen to record heights, so what could possibly go wrong?
Zero Hedge’s pseudonymous factotum Tyler Durden had nothing to say to CNN/Money, and quite reasonably so.
He knows as well as I do that in due time, Egan will join that long list of pundits who insisted that the bubble du jour would keep on inflating forever, and got to eat crow until the end of their days as a result. He's going to have plenty of company; the chorus of essays and blog posts denouncing peak oil in increasingly strident tones has built steadily in recent months. I expect that chorus to rise to a deafening shriek right about the time the bottom drops out of the fracking bubble.
Meanwhile the Ebola epidemic has apparently taken another large step toward fulfilling its potential as the Black Death of the 21st century. A month ago, after reports surfaced of Ebola in a southwestern province, Sudan slapped
a media blackout on reports of Ebola cases in the country. Maybe there’s an innocent reason for this policy, but I confess I can’t think of one. Sudan is a long way from the West African hotspots of the epidemic, and unless a local outbreak has coincidentally taken place—which is of course possible—this suggests the disease has already spread along the ancient east-west trade routes of the Sahel. If the epidemic gets a foothold in Sudan, the next stops are the teeming cities of Egypt and the busy ports of East Africa, full of shipping from the Gulf States, the Indian subcontinent, and eastern Asia.
I’ve taken a wry amusement in the way that so many people have reacted to the spread of the epidemic by insisting that Ebola can’t possibly be a problem outside the West African countries it’s currently devastating. Here in the US, the media’s full of confident-sounding claims that our high-tech health care system will surely keep Ebola at bay. It all looks very encouraging, unless you happen to know that diseases spread by inadequate handwashing are common in US hospitals, only a small minority of facilities have the high-end gear necessary to isolate an Ebola patient, and the Ebola patient just found in Dallas got misdiagnosed and sent home with a prescription for antibiotics, exposing plenty of people to the virus.
More realistically, Laurie Garrett, a respected figure in the public health field, warns that ”you are not nearly scared enough about Ebola.” In the peak oil community, Mary Odum, whose credentials as ecologist and nurse make her eminently qualified to discuss the matter, has tried to get the same message across. Few people are listening.
Like the frantic claims that peak oil has been disproven and the economy isn’t on the verge of another ugly slump, the insistence that Ebola can’t possibly break out of its current hot zones is what scholars of the magical arts call an apotropaic charm—that is, an attempt to turn away an unwanted reality by means of incantation. In the case of Ebola, the incantation usually claims that the West African countries currently at ground zero of the epidemic are somehow utterly unlike all the other troubled and impoverished Third World nations it hasn’t yet reached, and that the few thousand deaths racked up so far by the epidemic is a safe measure of its potential.
Those of my readers who have been thinking along these lines are invited to join me in a little thought experiment. According to the World Health Organization, the number of cases of Ebola in the current epidemic is doubling every twenty days, and could reach 1.4 million by the beginning of 2015. Let’s round down, and say that there are one million cases on January 1, 2015. Let’s also assume for the sake of the experiment that the doubling time stays the same. Assuming that nothing interrupts the continued spread of the virus, and cases continue to double every twenty days, in what month of what year will the total number of cases equal the human population of this planet? Go ahead and do the math for yourself. If you’re not used to exponential functions, it’s particularly useful to take a 2015 calendar, count out the 20-day intervals, and see exactly how the figure increases over time.
Now of course this is a thought experiment, not a realistic projection. In the real world, the spread of an epidemic disease is a complex process shaped by modes of human contact and transport. There are bottlenecks that slow propagation across geographical and political barriers, and different cultural practices that can help or hinder the transmission of the Ebola virus. It’s also very likely that some nations, especially in the developed world, will be able to mobilize the sanitation and public-health infrastructure to stop a self-sustaining epidemic from getting under way on their territory before a vaccine can be developed and manufactured in sufficient quantity to matter.
Most members of our species, though, live in societies that don’t have those resources, and the steps that could keep Ebola from spreading to the rest of the Third World are not being taken. Unless massive resources are committed to that task soon—as in before the end of this year—the possibility exists that when the pandemic finally winds down a few years from now, two to three billion people could be dead. We need to consider the possibility that the peak of global population is no longer an abstraction set comfortably off somewhere in the future. It may be knocking at the future’s door right now, shaking with fever and dripping blood from its gums.
That ghastly possibility is still just that, a possibility. It can still be averted, though the window of opportunity in which that could be done is narrowing with each passing day. Epizootic disease is one of the standard ways by which an animal species in overshoot has its population cut down to levels that the carrying capacity of the environment can support, and the same thing has happened often enough with human beings. It’s not the only way for human numbers to decline; I’ve discussed here at some length the possibility that that could happen by way of ordinary demographic contraction—but we’re now facing a force that could make the first wave of population decline happen in a much faster and more brutal way.
Is that the end of the world? Of course not. Any of my readers who have read a good history of the Black Death—not a bad idea just now, all things considered—know that human societies can take a massive population loss from pandemic disease and still remain viable. That said, any such event is a shattering experience, shaking political, economic, cultural, and spiritual institutions and beliefs down to their core. In the present case, the implosion of the global economy and the demise of the tourism and air travel industries are only the most obvious and immediate impacts. There are also broader and deeper impacts, cascading down from the visible realms of economics and politics into the too rarely noticed substructure of ecological relationships that sustain human existence.
And this, in turn, has me thinking of buffalo.
In there among all the other new stories of the last week, by turns savage and silly, is a report from Montana, where representatives of Native American peoples from the prairies of the United States and Canada signed a treaty pledging their tribes to cooperate in reintroducing wild buffalo to the Great Plains. I doubt most people in either country heard of it, and fewer gave it a second thought. There have been herds of domesticated buffalo in North America for a good many decades now, but only a few very small herds, on reservations or private nature sanctuaries, have been let loose to wander freely as their ancestors did.
A great many of the white residents of the Great Plains are furiously opposed to the project. It’s hard to find any rational reason for that opposition—the Native peoples have merely launched a slow process of putting wild buffalo herds on their own tribal property, not encroaching on anyone or anything else—but rational reasons are rarely that important in human motivation, and the nonrational dimension here as so often is the determining factor. The entire regional culture of the Great Plains centers on the pioneer experience, the migration that swept millions of people westward onto the prairies on the quest to turn some of North America’s bleakest land into a cozy patchwork of farms and towns, nature replaced by culture across thousands of miles where the buffalo once roamed.
The annihilation of the buffalo was central to that mythic quest, as central as the dispossession of the Native peoples and the replacement of the tallgrass prairie by farm crops. A land with wild buffalo herds upon it is not a domesticated land. Those who saw the prairies in their wild state brought back accounts that sound like something out of mythology: grass so tall a horseman could ride off into it and never be seen again, horizons as level and distant as those of the open ocean, and the buffalo: up to sixty million of them, streaming across the landscape in herds that sometimes reached from horizon to horizon.
The buffalo were the keystone of the prairie ecosystem, and their extermination was an essential step in shattering that ecosystem and extracting the richness of its topsoil for temporary profit.
A little while back I happened to see a video online about the ecological effects of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone Park. It’s an interesting story:
the return of wolves, most of a century after their extermination, caused deer to stay away from areas of the park where they were vulnerable to attack. Once those areas were no longer being browsed by deer, their vegetation changed sharply, making the entire park more ecologically diverse; species that had been rare or absent in the park reappeared to take advantage of the new, richer habitat. Even the behavior of the park’s rivers changed, as vegetation shifts slowed riverine erosion.
All this was narrated by George Monbiot in a tone of gosh-wow wonderment that irritated me at first hearing. Surely it would be obvious, I thought, that changing one part of an ecosystem would change everything else, and that removing or reintroducing one of the key species in the ecosystem would have particularly dramatic effects! Of course I stopped then and laughed, since for most people it’s anything but obvious. Our entire culture is oriented toward machines, not living systems, and what defines a machine is precisely that it’s meant to do exactly what it’s told and nothing else. Push this button, and that happens; turn this switch, and something else happens; pull this trigger, and the buffalo falls dead. We’re taught to think of the world as though that same logic controlled its responses to our actions, and then get blindsided when it acts like a whole system instead.
I’d be surprised to hear any of the opponents of reintroducing wild buffalo talk in so many words about the buffalo as a keystone species of the prairie ecosystem, and suggesting that its return to the prairies might set off a trophic cascade—that’s the technical term for the avalanche of changes, spreading down the food web to its base, that the Yellowstone wolves set in motion once they sniffed the wind, caught the tasty scent of venison, and went to look. Still, it’s one of the basic axioms of the Druid teachings that undergird these posts that people know more than they think they know, and a gut-level sense of the cascade of changes that would be kickstarted by wild buffalo may be helping drive their opposition.
That said, there’s a further dimension. It’s not just in an ecological sense that a land with wild buffalo herds upon it is not a domesticated land. To the descendants of the pioneers, the prairie, the buffalo, and the Indian are what their ancestors came West to destroy. Behind that identification lies the whole weight of the mythology of progress, the conviction that it’s the destiny of the West to be transformed from wilderness to civilization. The return of wild buffalo is unthinkable from within the pioneer worldview, because it means that “the winning of the West” was not a permanent triumph but a temporary condition, which may yet be followed in due time by the losing of the West.
Of course there were already good reasons to think along those unthinkable lines, long before the Native tribes started drafting their treaty. The economics of dryland farming on the Great Plains never really made that much sense. Homestead acts and other government subsidies in the 19th century, and the economic impacts of two world wars in the 20th, made farming the Plains look viable, in much the same way that huge government subsidies make nuclear power look viable today. In either case, take away the subsidies and you’ve got an arrangement without a future. That’s the subtext behind the vacant and half-vacant towns you’ll find all over the West these days. That the fields and farms and towns may be replaced in turn by prairie grazed by herds of wild buffalo is unthinkable from within the pioneer worldview, too—but across the West, the unthinkable is increasingly the inescapable.
Equally, it’s unthinkable to most people in the industrial world today that a global pandemic could brush aside the world’s terminally underfunded public health systems and snuff out millions or billions of lives in a few years. It’s just as unthinkable to most people in the industrial world that the increasingly frantic efforts of wealthy elites to prop up the global economy and get it to start generating prosperity again will fail, plunging the world into irrevocable economic contraction. It’s among the articles of faith of the industrial world that the future must lead onward and upward, that the sort of crackpot optimism that draws big crowds at TED Talks counts as realistic thinking about the future, and that the limits to growth can’t possibly get in the way of our craving for limitlessness. Here again, though, the unthinkable is becoming the inescapable.
In each of these cases, and many others, the unthinkable can be described neatly as the possibility that a set of changes that we happen to have decked out with the sanctified label of “progress” might turn out instead to be a temporary and reversible condition. The agricultural settlement of the Great Plains, the relatively brief period when humanity was not troubled by lethal pandemics, and the creation of a global economy powered by extravagant burning of fossil fuels were all supposed to be permanent changes, signs of progress and Man’s Conquest of Nature. No one seriously contemplated the chance that each of those changes would turn out to be transient, that they would shift into reverse under the pressure of their own unintended consequences, and that the final state of each whole system would have more in common with its original condition than with the state it briefly attained in between.
There are plenty of ways to talk about the implications of that great reversal, but the one that speaks to me now comes from the writings of Ernest Thompson Seton, whose nature books were a fixture of my childhood and who would probably be the patron saint of this blog if Druidry had patron saints. He spent the whole of his adult career as naturalist, artist, writer, storyteller, and founder of a youth organization—Woodcraft, which taught wilderness lore, practical skills, and democratic self-government to boys and girls alike, and might be well worth reviving now—fighting for a world in which there would still be a place for wild buffalo roaming the prairies: fought, and lost. (It would be one of his qualifications for Druid sainthood that he knew he would lose, and kept fighting anyway. The English warriors at the battle of Maldon spoke that same language: “Will shall be sterner, heart the stronger, mood shall be more as our might falters.”)
He had no shortage of sound rational reasons for his lifelong struggle, but now and again, in his writings or when talking around the campfire, he would set those aside and talk about deeper issues. He spoke of the “Buffalo Wind,” the wind off the open prairies that tingles with life and wonder, calling humanity back to its roots in the natural order, back to harmony with the living world: not rejecting the distinctive human gifts of culture and knowledge, but holding them in balance with the biological realities of our existence and the needs of the biosphere. I’ve felt that wind; so, I think, have most Druids, and so have plenty of other people who couldn’t tell a Druid from a dormouse but who feel in their bones that industrial humanity’s attempted war against nature is as senseless as a plant trying to gain its freedom by pulling itself up by the roots.
One of the crucial lessons of the Buffalo Wind, though, is that it’s not always gentle. It can also rise to a shrieking gale, tear the roofs off houses, and leave carnage in its wake. We can embrace the lessons that the natural world is patiently and pitilessly teaching us, in other words, or we can close our eyes and stop our ears until sheer pain forces the lessons through our barriers, but one way or another, we’re going to learn those lessons. It’s possible, given massively funded interventions and a good helping of plain dumb luck, that the current Ebola epidemic might be stopped before it spreads around the world. It’s possible that the global economy might keep staggering onward for another season, and that wild buffalo might be kept from roaming the Great Plains for a while yet. Those are details; the underlying issue—the inescapable collision between the futile fantasy of limitless economic expansion on a finite planet and the hard realities of ecology, geology, and thermodynamics—is not going away.
306 comments:
I was hoping the answer would be at the end of the essay... I admit it, I'm lazy, and I'd like to know...
10/1/14, 6:46 PM
Sven Williams said...
If there were ever a snapshot summary of the most valuable insight your writings have imparted on me, the above would be it. Thank you for that!
I find myself wondering how the American public health system would respond to a pandemic, particularly one with multiple epicenters. Quarantine is not too viable an option at that scale, and even less so when we can no longer afford the same kind of equipment and training that's kept that horseman at bay for the last 150 or so years. Can you recommend any good sources on the Black Death? All that comes to my mind is images of doctors wearing beak-shaped masks full of herbs, and a burly guy with a cart walking around shouting 'bring out your dead'.
It also reminds me that after the dust settled and the dead were buried, the lot of the average Johannes improved considerably --- population pressures alleviated, social hierarchies shaken up, and systems of belief and signification put seriously to the test. Is that too much to hope for on this side of Hubbert's curve?
10/1/14, 6:49 PM
Tom Bannister said...
Good to hear about the Buffalos though! I've heard many sad stories about European colonization and the drastic effects it had on the American Mid west. Its nice to hear some positive news. I suspect a similar religion of progress attitude (that opposes reintroducing buffalos) hampers efforts to clean up rivers and lakes here in New Zealand. While few will disagree here with the idea of a cleaner environment, any questioning of the activities of Farmers here (they who shall be obeyed without question!)) will bring a big: Do You Want To Shut Down The Economy and Take Us back to the Stoneage?!!!
10/1/14, 6:57 PM
Mark Sebela said...
There are actually three versions of the song, (1876)(1904)(1910) and if you go to the link you can read them side by each. What is interesting are the lyrical changes in the 1904 version. I think they document the increasing industrial mentality of the day quite accurately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_on_the_Range
10/1/14, 6:57 PM
Grebulocities said...
My median-case prediction for the current Ebola outbreak is that billions of people won't die of it in the next year (although my answer to your question is September 17, 2015 at 7.2 billion current population). Instead, it becomes one of those diseases that just happens from now on, like multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis. The world adjusts to the fact that a new disease has appeared that kills a few million a year in developing countries along with occasional outbreaks in developed ones. Maybe we get lucky and develop a new vaccine, saving rich-world people from their already reduced risk of the disease. But I’m picturing a fat-tailed probability distribution with my best guess at a ~10% chance of a global pandemic. Not exactly the odds we want with a disease that has a CFR somewhere in the 50-70% range.
I previously thought about pandemics from time to time, but I dismissed Ebola - given its historical pattern of killing most of the people in a few African villages but dying out in humans because it killed people too quickly to propagate, I suspected it was fairly low on the list of likely pandemics, far below a 1918 flu repeat or something of that nature. But biological entities in general, and RNA viruses in particular, evolve rapidly when an obvious opportunity presents itself, such as 7.2 billion closely connected and susceptible apes on the same planet. I would like to admit to the Ebola virus, and to the horseman Pestilence in general, that I underestimated them. Unfortunately this is not a horseman that is likely to spare anyone in exchange for a good microbrew. I salute it anyway.
Thinking about it more clearly than I would have otherwise, I’m actually really surprised that we only managed to suffer one post-1950, new, pandemic disease, severe enough that even the richest countries had to pay attention to it: HIV/AIDS. Given the frantic effort throughout the intervening years to connect all of the world economically, and the exponential increase in global travel that came along with the exponential phase in global economic growth, I would have expected several in that timespan if I were an alien observing Earth as we observe a Petri plate. Do you agree?
10/1/14, 7:02 PM
Ventriloquist said...
The Mainstream Media is starting to wake up -- or at least a few of their ilk. This is from MarketWatch, for crying out loud, and it is deeply pessimistic about the American attitude toward climate change:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-self-destructive-reasons-americans-ignore-climate-change-2014-09-30?siteid=nwham
10/1/14, 7:09 PM
Yupped said...
But the duty is rewarding. It's been a great summer in the garden in the North East, and the fall looks promising. We've put up more food than ever this year, just made 3 quarts of fire cider and beer is brewing away. And today we ate entirely from the garden: eggs, potatoes, kale and bean soup, salad and fruit. A good life can be really, really simple. A lesson we're all going to need to learn again the hard way it seems.
10/1/14, 7:23 PM
thepublicpast said...
I'm not sure why I was never very surprised when I learned that industry was not infallible. Perhaps it was due to my childhood in the Canadian rustbelt. When every factory in town looks like a ruined castle, it's hard not to realize that all this will pass. Perhaps a community that has accepted that the better days are gone is a little better equipped to think about the future. Judging from the actions of my municipality, it has had absolutely no effect, but alas. If you know where to look, the ruins are still there
10/1/14, 7:27 PM
steve pearson said...
Also when I was in the US army in Korea in 1969 most of our maneuvers were, quite sensibly, geared around retreating if the North Koreans came over the line again.However this was referred to as a retrograde maneuver, not retreat. I made the mistake of referring to it as retreat and was threatened with quite severe punishment if I did this again. Just like Jiminy cricket: wish and repeat and it shall be so.
10/1/14, 7:27 PM
Kylie said...
10/1/14, 7:31 PM
Fleecenik Farm said...
10/1/14, 7:35 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
As for the other half of your essay about the reintroduction of the bison to reservations on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, that ties into two of my lectures. One of them I gave a couple of weeks about about the lack of integration between the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service around Yellowstone National Park. Inside the park, the bison are protected. Outside the park, the Forest Service allows ranchers to harass the buffalo and herd them back into the park. Things were worse for years before that. Because of fears of brucellosis passing from the wild animals to cattle, bison in the National Forests could be shot! Recently, I read that practice has stopped. The same page that reported that good news also mentioned the reintroduction of bison that you reported. I see it as a good thing.
The other lecture is one I'll give tomorrow about the effects of keystone species and trophic cascades. I can add the anecdotes about wolves and bison that you related to that explanation. That should be both entertaining and enlightening.
Speaking of animals that produced winds, last month was the 100th anniversary of the death of the last passenger pigeon. Both of the major state universities here in Michigan are hosting exhibits on the extinction of the species. That event connects to the survival of the bison because the loss of the passenger pigeon, which used to number in the billions, made people realize that the bison and other once-abundant species could follow them into oblivion and should be saved. So the bison were, and may roam again because people heeded the warning.
10/1/14, 7:36 PM
Renaissance Man said...
10/1/14, 7:48 PM
Bike Trog said...
10/1/14, 7:54 PM
GHung said...
...indeed, our greatest liability, I would posit. An infected fella leaves West Africa and is in Dallas mere hours later (with at least one stop-over), ends up at the hospital where he's "treated and released" only to be diagnosed a few days after he's apparently exposed others. One wonders if the (corporate) hospital even wanted to know what he had. Who wants to be ground zero of the Great North American Ebola Outbreak? Either way, this could only have happened in a high-speed global society of an industrial age drowning in complexity.
Then there's the Secret Service implosion... This 'death by a thousand cuts' is getting interesting.
10/1/14, 7:54 PM
Chris G said...
the four horsemen have a tendency to come together, all at once. The strain created by global pandemic on the global economic system could well threaten to make room for the appearance of the others. To withstand all the other winds tearing at the high tower of the elites - domestic race conflict, distrust from the internal proletariat, and resource limits - requires huge investments of energy. As the pandemic spreads, it will require large allocations of energy resources, as well as pulling labor away from industries. The damage done by disease on economic systems is not only the sick people, but the people needed to treat the sick people. Following the plague comes the famine. Famine drives people in need to rise up against the political status quo (high food prices - near famine - were the origin of the so-rebranded "Arab Spring.") Into these destabilizations gets mixed the problems of racial and religious conflict. Destabilizations in the Middle East lead to recessions of energy flow from that critical region.
All of a sudden, a year from now or 4 years from now, famine and plague ravaged Middle Eastern populations consolidate under new military theocratic leadership and invade Europe. (O before that, probably, south and east asian populations that produce much of the goods for sale in American markets have been ravaged as well by plague and famine, and the US stock market has plummeted.)
Ecological domino theory.
Regarding lessons, it's clear the only way humanity will learn is the hard way.
Having said that, this plague may not kick off the big winds. In any case, the hard limits remain and another confluence will come along. More accurately, all four horsemen are likely to come together.
10/1/14, 8:03 PM
onething said...
Who has failed to make even the most obvious and rudimentary decisions so that we are not the equivalent of the neighboring village to Liberia?
10/1/14, 8:25 PM
Goldmund said...
10/1/14, 8:25 PM
Elizabeth Kennett said...
Thank you for the usual weekly link to sanity. Did you notice in yesterday's newspapers the report of the first Ebola case here in America? And they kept insisting that it would be contained.
If I may be permitted to go slightly off-topic with a recommendation for what to do with radioactive waste?
I recommend we throw it away. Specifically, we should get it together and shoot it off to the moon, the only place I can think of which actually can be described as "away". There would be more space for payload since there would be no need for any kind of life support, telemetry, or accommodation for a return trip. I also suggest crash-landing in the Sea of Crises, as a mnemonic.
In the meantime, I further recommend it be gathered together and stored in the Pentagon. The advantages are as follows: a nice 5-sided space; security is superb; and a whole bunch of *really* *smart* people will be working very hard to find the money to make the moonshot (mooncrash?) happen ASAP. (You heard about those thousand-dollar hammers? They'll find the money.)
The future keeps looking interesting. In the meantime, please keep writing. As I said, you're a link to sanity.
Thank you.
Elizabeth Kennett
10/1/14, 8:27 PM
Redneck Girl said...
And then there would be the wild horses. Less far ranging then the buffalo, more territorial. Will new eyes see the massive piles of dung wild stallions build as boundary markers of their ranges?
Will some sloppy wild game park owners allow their apex predators loose along with small populations of African herds?
Honey Locust trees with their long thorns developed those thorns to protect them from mammoths and mastodons. Those trees still live on east coast modern America. Some planted in New York City.
S. M. Sterling wrote about an alternate world where the discoverer of a 'door' brought diversity back to the American continent to fill all the ecological niches left empty by the disaster at the end of the last ice age. The book is titled 'Conquistador' I can't help but wonder if that is the sort of future the American continent faces. (Without our current mechanical accoutrements.)
On a separate note I was listening to an old Enya song called The Poison Glen and thought of the nuclear power plants. The song made me think about our nature reverence with the line that went something like: 'let this spell be a silver lining, pleasing nature with my heart's desire.'
I know my heart's desire and I think I'll be filled with the richness and majesty of Nature in all her glory!
Blessed BE!
Wadulisi
10/1/14, 8:39 PM
Kutamun said...
There is 28 million head of cattle in Australia , 50-60 million kangaroos and 1.2 million feral camels , 400000 wild horses for good measure ( equus ferrus caballus) , though these tend to arouse great emotion and controversy whenever the subject of culling them comes up , leftovers as they are from the era of the heavily romanticised white anglo saxon stockman , descended from the hardy waler battle horses of the famous Light Horse mounted infantry divisions which captured Beersheba , Gaza and Damascus in world war 1 .
Yes the wholeness of the system is what we fail to appreciate , this and the fact there are myriad such systems contained within the world .
Seems we have interrupted more than one flow of energy , which should trickle majestically through each and every waving field of wheat , past every murmuring brook and stream , running as they do through quiet woods . By the constant ebb and eddies of the lunar cycles , perhaps we can come to liberate and recognise some uber intuitive feminine principle , Limited as we currently are by the towering edifice of our Hubris .
Like amateur magicians we have unwisely dabbled in these cause and effects , setting in train such unforeseen consequence like a bunch of money hungry Chez-Doodle sorcerers apprentices . Perhaps we shall learn to divine these various planes of expression when we are once again compelled to follow The Sun . With some good Judgement perhaps we can remain part of the wild diversity of Evolution (Evilution) that is always going on in this Argo like place !
Still, no reason to seal ourselves into the cave with the Reverend Henry Kane just yet .....
10/1/14, 8:44 PM
Repent said...
This year I drove from where I live on the Canadian prairies down though the Great lakes watershed to visit family and vacation in Toronto. On the way I noticed a grim sight, motels, many burned or abandoned littered the roadside of this formerly prosperous highway. A cultural change had taken place where people fly for trips, rather than take long car journeys with their families. These closed down, burned out motels were a symptom of the change. Still the highway coursed though otherwise nearly pristine wilderness. Yes it's all be logged before. Yes the human footprint is evident, but what really took me was that these seemingly vast spaces of nature still remain in the world. That as most people jet from metropolis to metropolis, the rural back country is still there. Drastically scaled down lifestyles would still be possible and even desirable in a return to simple living. There are still places to go after the lunacy all comes tumbling down.
I am worried however that the elites, the powers that be, whatever, will make desperate last ditch efforts to hold onto power at all costs. There's a saying, when all else fails they take you to war; and that is what I believe they are trying to start now. I personally won't riot, but there will be blow back from martial law and so forth that no one can escape.
As you mentioned last week, I was actually hoping that the stair step decline you have written about would be a 'kinder, gentler apocalypse', than the fast crash crowd is offering. Clearly this is also wishful thinking. Is there any good news for the short term for the next 20 years or so?
10/1/14, 8:55 PM
f50a31ca-49e8-11e4-84ff-3f3247c7b4a0 said...
Applying this to your thought experiment, 10 doublings at 20 days each is 200 days. That takes us to a billion cases. Two more doublings is 4 billion cases at 240 days or 2 years. Another doubling takes us beyond the current human population, so the answer is sometime in January of 2017 before the 20th.
10/1/14, 9:02 PM
Matthew Casey Smallwood said...
10/1/14, 9:02 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Historical accounts from early white settlement here also tell of a very different, open, moist, more fertile and diverse country than what I see now.
The other week, was something of a record here for the sheer volume of wildlife at one point in time: It's feral out there. The photos tell more of a story than I can. Every year, it just gets that bit more productive and fertile here.
One of the things I'm slowly learning is when to intervene and when to simply let go and let nature run its course. It is not always easy to find that balance though and at the back of my mind I'm always left wondering if I have enough time and resources to implement all of the things that I want to achieve. Dunno.
Incidentally, during the recent Alban Eiler during meditation I had a vision of tall old trees and long grass here. The trees are already about 50m (about 150ft), but they are only about a quarter to a third of the way through their life spans which can reach about 300 to 400 years with a final height of about 90m (about 270ft). Dunno, I'll take that as a good sign.
Cheers
Chris
10/1/14, 9:16 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Sven, the US doesn't even begin to have the facilities to deal with a major pandemic. If we're lucky, it might be possible to squash local outbreaks using military teams in chemical-warfare gear; if not -- well, you can imagine that as well as I can. As for the Black Death, there are dozens of good histories; I'm partial to Philip Ziegler's The Black Death, but that's mostly because I read it in my misspent youth.
Tom, both of those are classic. Notice how the farmers are stuck in the classic myth-of-progress mental trap: any alternative to the present way of doing things, unless it's even more of the present way of doing things, equals going straight back to the caves. It's high time that this logic become the target of ruthless mockery.
Mark, fascinating. Thank you!
Grebulocities, evolution isn't goal-oriented, and the RNA viruses aren't sitting there slavering over all that primate meat, so, no, I think this is about normal. It more or less matches the pace of pandemics in earlier centuries, for example. Oh, and of course you got the right answer; thank you for doing the math!
Ventriloquist, well, that's something. The photo of the Arctic, with blue water sailing from Iceland straight through the Northeast Passage to the Bering Strait, was very unnerving...
Yupped, excellent. I've also gotten the sense that people are running short on faith-based optimism, and starting to take hard looks at the world around them. I wonder if anybody in DC or Wall Street has even begun to think about the tectonic implications if Americans by and large give up on American delusionalism.
Thepublicpast, that may well have done it. I grew up spending a lot of time on the coast of Washington State, where the pilings of abandoned canneries are all over the place; it's not hard there to get a sense that bust follows boom, and our civilization can end up as nothing but nameless ruins.
Steve, I'd heard about that! Yes, I suspect we're going to hear a lot of babble about America's great leap forward to 19th-century conditions in the not too distant future.
Kylie, good -- you're paying attention. The only thing that reliably makes money in large parts of the industrial world today is money -- and that means the token economy of money is fatally detached from the real economy of goods and services. As that gap widens, quite a bit can fall into it.
Fleecenik, bingo. If this thing is already in Sudan, and spreading through the Sahel more generally, it's going to take superhuman efforts to keep the hajj from becoming a massive pandemic incubator -- and I doubt those efforts will be made while there's still time.
Pinku-sensei, I was impressed; there are times when the world just seems to want to cooperate with me, or something. ;-)
10/1/14, 9:42 PM
Ray Wharton said...
I nearly bought the movies, but then remembered that I don't have a DVD player and refrained. Recently my meditations have been focused on how the West will be lost to the Western (in both senses) civilization. On one hand is is completely lacking of the features needed to maintain anything resembling the current way of life, and yet on the other even as desolate as the west is on average, it is dotted with small lands that are inviting to human habitation, given adequate adaptation. That is to say that the West will likely support vibrant cultures, perhaps even a wide diversity of vibrant cultures, but cultures whose way of life share only the most meager commonalities with the current inhabitants. The return of the Buffalo to the planes (north of the areas overly devastated by drought at any rate) would be a wonderful step in that direction.
The seed stock of cultures and traditions who exist in rugged conditions in various impoverished rural areas are too diverse to list, and as the tenderfoots retreat those ways of living with the land which are in their infancy today will take root in the land and begin a process of ethnogenesis. What will come from it is impossible to predict, but I suspect that the Native peoples who were here when my ancestors fled the War of Northern Aggression to settle in Colorado are as good of a clue as one is likely to find; adjusting for shifting climate zones and the availability of vast reserves of salvageable tool sources, and the availability of several new techniques which might change which ecological niches humans are likely to favor in the area.
The stories of how those cultures will emerge as the current culture of beer and bicycles (to use Fort Collins as an example) looses its iron grip on the ordering of things is especially interesting to me. Obviously History will write those stories at a day by day pace, and humans will recall and interpret those stories along the way, but as the current order faces serious disruptions I wonder what those future cultures stories will say about some things.
Those Westerns were a clue, I walked out of the store thinking of the story told by Westerns and how it would go played in reverse, or with various roll reversals. The settlers who came to tame the west driven East, or to oblivion by wild reprisals from Nature and new Cultures alike. Stories of driving away those 'pilgrims' at long last. Native stories mixing and mutating in together with the stories of the Westerners who decide to embrace the lessons that 'the natural world is patiently and pitilessly teaching us' and the stories emerging from the psychic maelstrom of urban decay both in the ravaged hearts of imploding western cities and the hearts of story tellers arriving from other such forges. War stories as one people turn the tables on a force become alien to then. Heroic stories of balances being found with the Natural world, and limits ordained from the Divine figures of these cultures. Ghost stories haunting the taboos, and other spirits bringing to a people those boons by which one culture survives its childhood while the neighboring community passed into oblivion before they ever became themselves.
Sad thing the news these days, good time to remember "Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens."
10/1/14, 9:53 PM
DeAnander said...
... the psychology of sunk investment, of loss aversion, of diagnosis attachment and bias confirmation, all adding up to an inability to come to grips with facts on the ground and a desperate need to cling to some imagined future. Worth a read as we ponder apparently lunatic responses to our current predicament :-)
Just a week earlier I had been reading old J Varley short stories and marvelling at the future I used to (sort of) believe in.
My personal bet on Ebola: there will be some "realpolitik" thinkers in the affluent countries who, off the record, won't be too upset if there's a major cull of poor brown people on the other side of the world. I don't expect any substantive or really helpful intervention from the great powers for that reason.
Should it get a foothold *inside* the industrial cores however, I expect orchestrated panic -- remember all the drama and [ahem] flap over Avian Flu? People wearing filter masks while grocery shopping and so on? I expect embargoes on travel from designated high-risk countries, and forcible deportation of travellers suspected of infection. Possibly cordons sanitaires around any barrios or ghettos where infection is present. And extremely lucrative govt contracts for favoured pharma giants to produce the eventual vaccine for favoured populations.
In the worst case -- major Ebola outbreak in urban centres of power and politics, like DC, NY, etc -- I expect the great and powerful to do what they did during plague summers in old England: flee to the countryside and their walled estates :-) So I expect Ebola, like AIDS, to take out swathes of the world's poor and brown, and leave whitefolk and the ruling class almost untouched. Another ongoing tragedy, like famine, civil wars, AIDS, farmer suicides, species extinctions, sweatshop fires, to occupy a few seconds of attention span before the next rigged election, Olympic circus, politico scandal, hockey game.
I'm feeling grumpy and cynical tonight.
10/1/14, 9:53 PM
Donald Hargraves said...
I remember how my housemate had gotten pneumonia, and suffered through it for a month despite thinking that she'd eventually get over it. She HAD gone to the doctor, but he figured it was a normal cold and told her to keep going. It took a visit to an urgent-care doctor who knew what to look for. (I knew, of course, from personal experience – something that I'm still paying for, in some ways).
So I can understand the hospital letting the Nigerian leave with a prescription of antibiotics only to have him return with things MUCH worse. They didn't know what to look for, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that our medical establishment won't be able to learn what they're dealing with until it's too late.
10/1/14, 9:56 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Bike Trog, coming soon to a city near you.
Ghung, bingo. Those cuts are starting to come pretty quickly these days.
Chris, thank you -- that's high praise. As for your scenario, that's certainly one possibility; there are others, but none of them leave business as usual intact.
Onething, exactly. That's why I've been challenging people who brush the epidemic aside as an irrelevant; their bland conviction that nothing bad can ever really happen to us is the single most potent force boosting the potential for a really ghastly global pandemic.
Goldmund, I haven't read that -- thanks for the recommendation!
Elizabeth, I'd encourage you to stop for a moment and think about what would happen if one of those rockets loaded with high-level nuclear waste fails to launch properly and blows up in the upper atmosphere, spreading lethal fallout over a chunk of the planet's surface. The first thing you should always ask when it comes to a supposed technological solution is "what could go wrong?"
Wadulisi, understood and agreed.
Kutamun, the camels should certainly be left alone. Once the fuel supply will no longer support trains, you'll need 'em for travel in the Outback.
Repent, there's still plenty of good news, and I'll be discussing it as we proceed. The existence of fairly large areas that have basically been forgotten by the centers of power is one of those pieces of good news, though.
f50, I'd encourage you to actually do the math and not rely on round-number rules of thumb. The rule you've used gives an answer fifteen months off.
Matthew, yes, it's the same voice, and it's facing the same long silence.
10/1/14, 10:04 PM
Chris G said...
Ebola could be confined entirely to Africa and Asia and still have profound effects here in America, Europe and Oceania.
Not only is our political system like a tower, tall and narrow, the sustenance of its foundation is halfway around the world.
But those aren't the only factors. Add in the increasing effects of extreme weather. (A Native American saying is that when the wind blows harshly you know that Earth is angry.) Adding the increasingly distrustful and bifurcated American public.
It may not be the case of a runaway effect with this outbreak of Ebola. But you can also add Ebola to the mix of future strains on an already precarious and teetering structure.
The tower was bound to come down anyway sometime, but it might not take much to set forces in motion that will tip it over.
10/1/14, 10:08 PM
f50a31ca-49e8-11e4-84ff-3f3247c7b4a0 said...
10/1/14, 10:12 PM
Svea M said...
10/1/14, 10:24 PM
Pongo said...
I very much agree with you that the whole edifice is ready to collapse, and will probably do so with a very small push at this point. I think the most maddening part about it for me is that I can see how utterly unready almost everyone around me is from a mental and psychological standpoint. A little while back I had a conversation with one of my best friends on this topic. He's about my age (early 30's) but he has done pretty much all of the things I would tell someone not to do if they are concerned about facing the challenges ahead. He's extremely overweight and has not taken care of his health (and is now starting to deal with a lot of the medical problems that come with that), he's $60,000+ in debt to private creditors and also has the IRS coming after him for back taxes. His employment situation is up and down and up and down, and most of his jobs have been ultra ephemeral things like being a paid pop culture blogger. And he knows what's coming because I've distilled this blog's message for him on many occasions, and when we talked about it last we were discussing the attractiveness of apocalyptic fantasies nowadays and he was surprisingly more honest than anyone else I've talked to. He said: "It would be so nice for Ebola or nuclear war to just end it, because it would really save me the trouble of figuring out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life and how I'm going to possibly do with the the mess I've made of everything."
On that note, over the past few months I've actually been taking a lot of personal development courses. These ones that I've been doing aren't the tacky, lazy retreads of generations old quick fix fads like "The Secret", but rather courses aimed at building up your communication skills (both internal and external) and strengthening yourself emotionally. They very much deal with the fact that people in this world usually actually know what it is that they need to do to be successful, to deal with problems in their lives, to overcome challenges, but they can't actually bring themselves to do it or stick with it once they've decided to do it. That's a skill that's helpful for a lot of things, and I consider this training to be every bit as much a part of my preparation for peak oil and the end of industrial civilization as the practical skills that you document in books like GREEN WIZARDRY. After all, that book on organic gardening or solar heating is pretty much useless to you unless you can find the discipline to read it and then put it into practice, and I suspect that I'm not the only reader of this blog who has struggled with the fact that I know exactly the things I need to learn and practice but have had a great deal of difficulty committing to learning and practicing them.
10/1/14, 10:32 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ray, good. Times of the sort we're entering are times of stories, and anti-Westerns (Easterns?) will doubtless be among them.
DeAnander, that's certainly one set of possible scenarios. It's all too likely that nothing will be done until it's clear that the pandemic won't stay confined to Africa, and once that happens there may not be much that anyone can do: given the presence of huge immigrant populations from the Third World all through the industrial nations, and the substantial enclaves of urban and rural poverty in the industrial world, once it's jumped to the Arab world, south Asia, and the Caribbean, we're in for it. Whether the rich can keep themselves safe, or weather the cascade of social and economic impacts, is a complex issue -- more on that as we proceed.
Chris, that's a good working metaphor.
f50, okay, this time you're square on target.
Svea, there are two obvious reasons: the practices necessary to grow grain on the Great Plains waste topsoil at a frightening rate, and much of the plains acreage is being irrigated using water from Ice Age aquifers that are rapidly being depleted. Still, there's more going on than that. Farming the plains has only been economically viable when the price of grain is artificially boosted, as in wartime, or when government subsidies absorb some of the costs. That lack of economic viability is just as crucial as, though less easy to pin down than, the ecological issues.
Pongo, excellent! You've put your finger on a crucial issue -- the gap between understanding and will. That's eventually going to be a major issue for my other blog, but I have a lot of preliminary ground to cover first. I may want to do a post on that subject here, with practical issues in mind.
10/1/14, 10:36 PM
Grebulocities said...
If the Ebola virus were able to plan along those lines, it would "rather" spread among as many humans while killing as few of them as possible (at least during the initial transmission phase). Ebola used be fairly bad at spreading among humans because it killed people too quickly relative to its transmission rate. But a strain has by happenstance managed to evolve a better (more infectious) strategy.
It seems to me that it's the transition between being too quickly fatal (relative to infection rates) to spread the disease, and the opposite (ubiquit1ous but nearly harmless viruses like rhinoviruses), that is the most dangerous for humans.
Ebola has made a great leap forward in the process of bridging that divide. And now, when you've got billions of viruses per patient, among tens to hundreds of thousands of patients, evolution proceeds much more rapidly.
10/1/14, 10:49 PM
Marc L Bernstein said...
I'll leave it at that.
10/1/14, 11:08 PM
Stuart said...
10/1/14, 11:08 PM
Kylie said...
Regarding our missing keystone species: humanity was at least one of them. There's some evidence that Aboriginal people managed the land by setting period bushfires, in a practice now known as 'firestick farming'. Of course this conflicts heavily with our ideas of the 'unspoilt wilderness' and the 'noble savage'.
10/1/14, 11:42 PM
Kylie said...
10/1/14, 11:44 PM
Derv said...
I'm suddenly struck by a real fear that I'm horribly unprepared for this. I think it'd be fair to say that nearly everyone is, including the people who think they are, but that makes it more unnerving, not less so. We've taken steps as a family - growing our own food, buying Green Wizardry, weatherizing our house, learning some useful skills, building community and so on - but boy, I didn't expect it to come so suddenly. Obviously I'm assuming worst-case scenario here, but the damage a full pandemic could do is difficult to contemplate.
I'd have to agree with you that farming across most of the Great Plains has its downsides, but I would take exception for our small corner. I live in the Red River Valley (of the North) where the soil is extremely rich. We are next to a (relatively) unpolluted water source, crime is low, community is fairly strong, extravagance is already frowned upon, we produce more food than we consume, we are hundreds of miles from a large city, and we're not far removed from tougher times. It's one of the main reasons we've stayed where we are. I'm worried first about food, water, shelter. I think we can survive here. That's enough for the time being, at least. Sure, it gets very cold, but pack a few of us families into an insulated house like sardines and light a fire. We'll be fine. Economically we're in a boom, but I don't care about that. I care about the day when things go wrong and nobody will be coming to help us. And on that day, I think we'll survive well enough.
As for lands so even it looks like the ocean, well, I see that every day. You can see the curvature of the earth just outside of town. And what's more fun, I used to drive by the local buffalo (well, bison) ranch every day on my way to work!
I'll tell you what, I'll make you a deal: you keep up with the advice and posts, and I promise to set them free once it hits the fan. They'll find their niche again with or without legislation.
10/1/14, 11:53 PM
Brian Kaller said...
Jefferson sloths and gompotheres were exterminated by humans in these places too -- but long enough ago that we have no photographs or written accounts of the slaughter - and the human activity that occupies their former territory will not last forever.
Of course, not everything can be restored as it was -- I doubt anything could eliminate placentals from Australia or African grasses from the Amazon -- and restoring them now doesn’t mean they won’t just go extinct again in difficult millennia o come.
If they can be restored, however, they could resume an important former role in the system, and continue to do long after the danger from us is over.
I have never read Seton’s Woodcraft books, but there seems to have been a widespread movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to teach children self-reliant and natural skills. The Boy Scouts formed around that time, and growing food became a compulsory school subject in many European countries and in many schools in rural America.
Clarence Hall Robison’s 1911 report on American high schools, for example, recommends “320 hours of agriculture,” including studies of local fungi and insects, fossils and glacial actions, soil types and nutrients. “These are in addition to the required work in botany, zoology, physiology, physics and chemistry,” he wrote, and to their courses in music, French, German, Physics, Drawing, Astronomy, Trigonometry, Surveying and Engineering, and Rhetoric, all in country schools in places like Mississippi and Iowa. School projects he cites, created by students themselves, included experimenting with home-made pesticides and breeding crop varieties specific to their location.
On the less cultivated end of things, the early Boy Scouts were quite hard-core compared to their current incarnation – the original Boy Scout manual has chapters on slaughtering an animal for food, stopping runaway horses and helping a man regurgitate poison. I’m perennially astonished at the breadth of information learned by children in earlier eras, which few adults learn today.
10/1/14, 11:55 PM
Bogatyr said...
10/2/14, 12:03 AM
KL Cooke said...
Noteworthy in the Lomax version, the softened reference to the American genocide among all the bucolic imagery. I don't believe I've ever heard that verse sung.
When I was a boy I was encouraged to take piano lessons, starting with simple little tunes. One such I recall was "Thundercloud the Indian Brave." The tune was a simplified version of the Dant-Dant, Dant-Dant-Dant tune that used to come on in the background of old Western movies when Cochise appeared. The words went as follows.
"Thundercloud the Indian brave,
His home and land he fought to save.
But White Man he wanted peace
So wars and fighting then did cease."
(I have a long memory for the damnedest things.)
10/2/14, 1:40 AM
Jason Heppenstall said...
If this were to happen I can see a mass exodus of all those western engineers and technical operatives who keep the spigots working.
The knock-on effect of this is something worth thinking about in a global economic context.
10/2/14, 2:01 AM
Violet Cabra said...
Tragic figures are noble, individualistic and driven. Usually they are exceptional people. For the most part they live in worlds that affirm only one value system. They fall because of a fatal flaw that is invisible to them and by the time they realize it's already too late.
Looking at Western, or Faustian, Culture through this lens it becomes clear that we are a people heavily defined by the tragic. Jesus Christ could be considered the ultimate tragic figure, his "fatal flaw" being his divinity. The persistent "lone genius" stock character is another; be it an artist, inventor or scientist.
In America we are arguably settled on a tragic ideal of the Pioneer going forth into Manifest Destiny to live lawlessly in isolation.
And if I'm reading your post right we may be on the brink of the unraveling of the plot, the Denouement or Catastrophe. That we are like Pentheus from The Bacchea, right around the time Dionysius causes his madness that will lead to him to be torn limb from limb. Which of course was horrible, messy and demoralizing, and caused political waves, but still wasn't exactly the end of Thebes.
There is also the Comic figures who is usually ridiculous, ugly in some way that causes no harm. They are usually morally inferior, caring more about survival than dignity, often are focused on their bodies rather than spirits, live in worlds of conflicting values, and most crucially they move from rigidity towards greater freedom and from individuality towards group cohesion.
A great example of a comic figure is Odysseus who using his wits, sacrificing his dignity, and overcoming his “flabby legs” is able to, against all odds!...return home to his family
What makes the difference between a Tragedy and a Comedy so fascinating to me is that it emphatically isn't a different between content per se – Pentheus ends his life a duped drag queen and Odysseus was by all accounts a mass-murderer. Instead the difference is one of approach.
One of my personal disciplines is to disengage myself from a Tragic inner narrative and move towards a sense of my own Comedy. To become a Comic figure rather than a Tragic one. My hope is that if enough people stop playing along with the generally Tragic script of our culture we may be able to approach the coming trials with if not more grace at least more good humor. We might come together instead of coming apart.
10/2/14, 3:43 AM
Odin's Raven said...
10/2/14, 3:45 AM
Shining Hector said...
The constant authoritative reassurances from public figures who really should have known better just annoy me to know end.
"It will never spread from Africa." Unless you're a time-traveler, you have no way of knowing that.
"It's only one patient and won't go beyond that, we have it contained." You haven't even tracked down his contacts yet, what basis do you possibly have to make that? Oh wait, disproven less than a day later.
Little reporting on the significance of all the health care workers that got sick there if it's oh-so-difficult to transmit that bastions of personal hygiene like the U.S. will be immune. We poach enough health care professionals from Africa to fill our ranks here for me to know they get the same basic training there and know basic infection control. They've not all been sipping from a cup containing the patient's blood to appease the disease spirits, and no matter how tired you get needle sticks aren't going to be that routine.
Honestly all the bald-faced lying, sanguine statements of best-case scenarios as settled facts, and glossing over of troubling details reminds me of a toddler constantly being caught with his hand in the cookie jar, whose response is always "I didn't do it" even when actually caught in the act. It's like it's actually incomprehensible to them that anyone ever won't just take their word for it, now and forever. At least the toddler has the excuse of an as yet undeveloped theory of mind to explain the cognitive deficit, what's their excuse? It's not that they don't know they're lying, that they think short-term reassurance before it really matters trumps all other concerns, that they're so staggeringly incompetent that they can't string 2-3 ideas together to make a coherent thought. All that's really left is that for some reason no one will ever question what they say or think for themselves, which honestly in some ways is the most bizarre concept of all.
The saddest part is when the most effective strategy is to actually start telling the unvarnished truth, no one will believe them and we'll be in even more trouble.
10/2/14, 4:00 AM
Justin Patrick Moore said...
...speaking of which I found letters A-K of the Popular Mechanics DIY encyclopedia from the early '50s at a yard sale last weekend. A lot of worthwhile projects in there for aspiring Green Wizards.
10/2/14, 4:14 AM
Harriett Diller said...
Album cover from 70's-- Kansas: Monolith?
Harriett
10/2/14, 4:20 AM
ando said...
Splendid. I was just thinking a few days ago that people who are talking about Decline in the future are not paying attention to what is happening under their noses. Reading this, I was reminded of the chap in Monty Python's Holy Grail, pushing the cart in the midst of the Black Death, keening, "Bring out your dead." Is that the Buffalo Wind raising the hairs on the back of my neck?
Namaste,
mac
10/2/14, 4:36 AM
Iaato said...
The "what happens after 1.4M" is the next piece of denial that needs to be overcome. My mind doesn't even want to go there. And doing the math on contact tracing. It's coming, and our actions can only slow the process. I doubt we will take too many effective quarantine actions until too late--there's a good historical basis for that, but it will be interesting to see what unfolds. --Mary
10/2/14, 4:39 AM
mr_geronimo said...
About the buffalo wind: The Horde forming in Mesopotamia, what can become the new Yellow Turbans in China, the worst drought spells ever, not only in Cali and the Great Basin, but in the Brazillian Highlands, from where half the rivers in S.America come from, Russia and Nato marching towards war... Yep, late industrial is coming and coming fast.
10/2/14, 5:16 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
This week's thought experiment led met to a chilling realization: let's say that the things really do go global and half the human population dies within the year? Obviously, by the time the last of the rubble stops bouncing, business as usual will have been put on hold in so many departments. The global economy would certainly morph into some completely different animal.
Another thought comes to mind: the surviving population will be made up of two types, with respect to the virus: the untouched and those who managed to recover -- the latter being immune. These survivors will have a special role/ place in the emergent society. Already, healed Ebola survivors are being trained as front line responders in the present fight...
Lastly, thanks for the introduction to Seton. He seems to have a special connection to Canadian painting. Nice work he did in Paris...
10/2/14, 5:30 AM
Don Plummer said...
Writer Kathleen Norris wrote about the depopulation of the western Dakotas in her 1993 book Dakota, though she didn't exactly use this terminology. This process has no doubt accelerated in the past 21 years.
10/2/14, 6:14 AM
donalfagan said...
Two coworkers, one from Africa, were arguing about Ebola this AM. The local guy insists that if Ebola was a real threat it would be on the front page of CNN. Other than that, he's actually a fairly bright guy.
http://donalfagan.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/outrunning-the-red-death/
10/2/14, 6:26 AM
Neo Tuxedo said...
Also too (as a prominent Alaskan politician would say): One of the crucial lessons of the Buffalo Wind, though, is that it’s not always gentle. It can also rise to a shrieking gale, tear the roofs off houses, and leave carnage in its wake. We can embrace the lessons that the natural world is patiently and pitilessly teaching us, in other words, or we can close our eyes and stop our ears until sheer pain forces the lessons through our barriers, but one way or another, we’re going to learn those lessons.
...reminded me of a passage from Taoist author Benjamin Hoff's The Te of Piglet (his 1992 sequel to 1982's The Tao of Pooh), p.228 of the Dutton hardcover:
And so when we hear Big Talk about growing environmental awareness and about man's ability to solve any problem, we can't help but wonder Who's Kidding Whom.
Then we go to the natural world, watch, and listen. And it tells us that a Great Storm is rising, and that before long things will become very Interesting--very Interesting indeed.
It didn't rise as quickly as he expected, but it's certainly rising now. I believe we had a chance to learn these lessons the easy way, but we probably weren't going to, and now it's probably too late.
10/2/14, 6:30 AM
Permian Ghostrider said...
The album is Monolith by Kansas. It was released in 1979.
Inside the cover is a verse taken from the Ghost Dance popular among the Plains tribes in the late 19th century. I can't remember it verbatim, but I think it goes something like this:
"One day, the earth will be covered with dust. Indian nations long dead will come back to life. The white man will disappear and the buffalo will return."
Naturally, the pioneers were opposed to it.
tb
10/2/14, 6:31 AM
Tom Lewis said...
I sense some connections between the core principles of Druidry to which you refer, and those of Permaculture, of which I have recently become a disciple.
I very much appreciate your recent references to my website, The Daily Impact, and learned because of them that we are near neighbors, I am based in Romney WV. Here's to sanctuary.
10/2/14, 6:43 AM
Tracy Glomski said...
The album Monolith (1979) by the progressive rock band Kansas included art depicting a camp of Amerindians at a highway overpass. The pictograph on the back cover is of an automobile.
10/2/14, 6:51 AM
RPC said...
10/2/14, 6:58 AM
onething said...
I have left contact information, but have not been able to get even a glimpse of an answer as to how it actually works in this nation for us to have implemented some basic controls such as monitoring travel from a country like Liberia. No one knows, nor can they put me in contact with someone who knows.
Unbelievable.
10/2/14, 7:02 AM
ando said...
PS, if you had not seen this one, I thought you might be interested. It is by Mary Odum, daughter of H.T. Odum.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-09-30/uncharted-territory-for-a-system-in-overshoot
Namaste,
mac
10/2/14, 7:07 AM
the Heretick said...
Nevertheless, you are spot on, Western society, especially, can no longer be described as strictly human, we have a mechanical exoskeleton upon which we are dependent. Of course this machine is dependent upon a huge energy input, which fact occupies a huge part of our leaders mental energy.
The scary thing is that the mechanical revolution is not limited to the exterior of our bodies, our inner biological workings are up for grabs with gene-splicing and the latest vaccine du-jour.
Once a vaccine is developed, if one little sequence were to be off, mass inoculation could put the one wild card into play to ignite a pandemic worse than the original disease.
I am not a scientist, I know there are safeguards, but then there were safeguards at Fukushima also, and at the Deepwater Horizon.
Apples and Oranges? Who knows? Could be beets, could be carrots, just cause it's free don't mean it's no good.
10/2/14, 7:11 AM
william fairchild said...
The treaty you mention reminds me very much of the Great Buffalo Commons that was proposed in the 80s.
As a CO boy who lived in WY for many years, and comes from farming and ranching stock (on my mothers side), I can tell you, there are very rational reasons for opposing buffalo re-introduction.
Most Western ranchers consider BLM land as their personal province, even though it is to be managed as a regulated Commons. They pay the BLM an annual fee for their grazing lease, and get to graze their herds.
In theory, the wildlife is to be supported, and other citizens get to use the same land (hunting/fishing/collecting firewood? as do other industries (most notably gas and oil). In practice, though, the ranchers will often give the BLM officers, fisherman, or hunters or drilling companies trouble if they think their "rights" are being encroached upon. I once heard a rancher fenced off the Hazleton road, a public right of way (albeit just a dirt track) to prevent interlopers from driving down it. Some anglers got pissed off, cut the barbwire, the ranchers showed up with rifles, and the Sheriff had to get involved.
The guys got to drive down the road.
If they re-introduce free-range buffalo, they compete for fodder, which reduces the value of the range, and increases the rancher costs. So they oppose it.
As well, brucellosis is endemic among buffalo. Even though their is not one documented case of brucellosis transmission from buffalo to cattle, the rancher risks losing brucellosis free status for his herd, thus reducing their market value, and increasing his costs. (the disease causes cattle to abort their calves).
Finally, free-range buffalo invite meddling by environmentalists, conservationists, Game and Fish agents and other and sundry undesirables.
Thus, the BLM land ceases to be a susidized cash-cow (pun intended) for the ranchers. Their rationale is simple short-term economics, but that is the rationale for most of our miscalculations, isn't it?
10/2/14, 7:11 AM
BoysMom said...
Of course I know there's no guarantee that next year won't be dry as a bone . . . but this year I'll enjoy the possibility that there might be rain in our future instead of the predicted greater dryness as a result of climate change.
10/2/14, 7:23 AM
the Heretick said...
Can't stand the band, but it is a cool album cover.
10/2/14, 7:27 AM
Becky said...
10/2/14, 7:34 AM
Don Plummer said...
Are we absolutely, 100% certain that, as reported, one who has been infected with Ebloa virus is not at risk of infecting others until one actually comes down with the fever? Much of the public health effort is based on the belief that the Dallas individual didn't become infectious until he became ill, four days after he returned from Liberia. So health officials aren't, for example, too worried about the possibility that others on board the flights this person took might also become infected.
Regarding the upcoming Hajj, I also heard in the same NPR news segment a mention that the Saudi government is planning to try and keep people living in the Ebola-affected west African nations from attending the pilgrimage. But if it's already in Sudan and nobody is talking about that, will that be enough to keep Mecca from possibly becoming a jumping-off point?
10/2/14, 7:43 AM
steve said...
In 1890, the Census announced that there was no more frontier.
In the past few decades, however, population densities on the high plains--the western areas of Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and the eastern stretches of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado--have decreased below the 2 persons per sq. mile threshhold.
So, the frontier has re-emerged.
There has been some discussion about returning the area to the wild, the Buffalo Commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons
10/2/14, 7:49 AM
1ab9a86a-8991-11e3-899b-000bcdcb8a73 said...
Well, for insight into current Wall St mentality, I recommend this video, assuming you have a strong stomach for withstanding displays of sycophantic journalism. If that assumption is wrong, precautions are advisable.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/david-tepper-on-stocks-bonds-fannie-and-freddie-s~bPsCBFSWOmHYM5aPnTFw.html
It's an oddly wide-ranging discussion, I won't spoil it by making any comment...
10/2/14, 7:51 AM
steve said...
Not enough rainfall in normal years west of the 100th meridian except through irrigation, in large part from the Ogallala aquifer which is drying up.
10/2/14, 7:55 AM
Carolyn said...
10/2/14, 7:57 AM
Keith said...
Great post as always. The bison tell a curious tale of so-called progress. The plains were converted largely to raise cattle and grow cattle feed. What if humans had just eaten the bison, and left the grassland more intact. Would we have had just as much meat with the obscenity of feedlots.
All the best.
10/2/14, 8:00 AM
Wolfgang Brinck said...
Paradoxically, farming which is generally viewed as a renewable enterprise is primarily an extractive practice like mining, making use of finite resources topsoil and in areas such as the Great Plains, fossil water. Farming the Great Plains had an expiration date built into it from the start. Pumping rates on the Ogallala aquifer were set to deplete the aquifer in 100 years, and time is up.
Given that farming on the Great Plains is doomed, the return of the Buffalo is only appropriate. Also, the nomadic hunting culture of the Great Plains Indians was a recent development fostered by the introduction of horses. Prior to the horse, hunting of buffaloes was a difficult task and not the mainstay of native subsistence. People lived primarily in bottom lands adjacent to rivers and raised various crops. The hunting of buffaloes was a part-time occupation, not the mainstay of the culture.
Going forward, we may well see a mix of bottom lands farming and nomadic hunting cultures coming back to the Great Plains.
In general, much of the southwest is unsuitable for farming but can support a mix of small garden plots and orchards near oases and nomadic subsistence gathering where food becomes seasonally available.
The greatest asset that places such as deserts and savannahs have in a post industrial environment is sparse populations making nomadic lifestyles an option for those that do not wish to be tied to a plot of land.
10/2/14, 8:18 AM
architrains said...
When I clicked "Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever" in the "News" column on facebook, the third headline down (after the suspected Honolulu case and the politics of Rick Perry getting a second chance to look competent) was a video clip from Fox Business of John Stossel promo'ing his new show where he says that: despite ISIS and Ebola, everyone suffers from "nostalgia syndrome" and forgets how bad it used to be; the Russian general who executed his soldiers who suffered nostalgia syndrome might have been on to something; statistics show how much crime rates have decreased in the past decade.
I imagine the same comments were made as the Black Death really got rolling in any locality it touched.
In other news, I finally gave in and bought the electronic tag for the turnpike on my daily commute.
10/2/14, 8:39 AM
onething said...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2777366/U-S-Ebola-victim-helped-carry-convulsing-pregnant-woman-later-died-virus-four-days-flew-Liberia-Texas-Four-neighbors-died-So-allowed-step-flight.html#ixzz3F0CniKBF
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
"Despite news of the first Ebola case inside the United States, there are no travel restrictions from the White House, it has been reported.
Current policy dictates that anyone showing symptoms of the disease in the Ebola-stricken nations of Sierra Leona, Guinea and Liberia, be barred from travelling.
But patient Thomas Eric Duncan, from Liberia, was able to board a flight out of Monrovia on September 19 because he wasn't looking sick at the time.
It's unlikely he spread the disease while flying to the U.S., since patients are most infectious when they are showing symptoms.
Therefore, the U.S. hasn't yet changed policy towards travel from the Ebola hot-spot nations."
Wow. Here's how it happened: He and several others who have since died carried a pregnant, infected woman to the hospital in Liberia, where she died the next day. Several days later, this irresponsible person boards a plane. He is allowed on because he does not appear sick at THAT moment!!! Yet we already know that the incubation is up to three weeks. It seems that our fearless leaders have considered the problem of infecting passengers on a plane, but not of bringing the infection into the US!!! So DESPITE what has just happened, it is not deemed necessary to restrict travel! I hope you all realize that the conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this,and indeed rumors abounded before ebola that the elites want to reduce population. It will be very hard to refute their claims
10/2/14, 8:40 AM
onething said...
"So I can understand the hospital letting the Nigerian leave with a prescription of antibiotics only to have him return with things MUCH worse. They didn't know what to look for,"
No Donald. No way. We're not talking about some woman in decent health who just didn't imagine she had pneumonia. A sick person from Liberia comes to the ER? You put them in an isolation room and watch them. Regardless of whether you think it will turn out to be nothing serious. No other response makes any sense at all.
10/2/14, 8:46 AM
LL Pete said...
10/2/14, 9:05 AM
Paul Anderson said...
But that's assuming that leakages from West Africa remain infrequent, which is not a good long term bet unless efforts in Liberia and Sierra Leone are significantly increased to get out ahead of the growth in cases.
Link to LA Times story on Senegal and Nigeria: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ebola-senegal-nigeria-20140930-story.html
10/2/14, 9:12 AM
mathprof said...
10/2/14, 9:15 AM
Twilight said...
http://www.connollyco.com/discography/kansas/monolith.html
Interestingly, in the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, those giant herds of buffalo and huge flocks of pidgins are described as an historical aberration, and the result of the mass dieoff of the human population that previously kept them in check - from pandemics that were introduced from Europeans.
10/2/14, 9:22 AM
patriciaormsby said...
So, Septemberish. That's less than a year from now.
Have a nice day!
10/2/14, 9:33 AM
Ronald Langereis said...
10/2/14, 9:37 AM
onething said...
Buffalo and prairie dogs are keynote species in the west. Buffalo created wallows, which were like mini ponds, holding extra water in the land and of course being utilized by other species. Prairie dogs are used for target practice by the coke and hot dog set. Their tunnels aerate the soil, provide shelter for multitudes of other species, and also help the land hold water. That's just what I remember.
10/2/14, 9:39 AM
Eric S. said...
10/2/14, 9:58 AM
Odin's Raven said...
Discussion
10/2/14, 9:59 AM
Joe Roberts said...
10/2/14, 10:13 AM
ando said...
Mac
10/2/14, 10:14 AM
Alphonse Houner said...
10/2/14, 10:18 AM
Richard Larson said...
Ok, so I will consider that ebola will spread to my town. What steps can I take to minimize catching this? Then, of the 15% that are able to survive, what have these people that the others don't? Maybe a body full of bacteria that kills it on contact?
10/2/14, 10:25 AM
Nathan said...
10/2/14, 10:51 AM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
But even more, for me, what you are saying about the Buffalo Wind feels so timely and true. Nature isn't "safe," despite what many imagine. Efforts to dominate nature have included minimizing it, and portraying it as cute, similar to the way Disney sanitized the dark old fairy tales. Another form of attempted magic, I think, trying to re-imagine nature along the lines of an over-manicured suburban neighborhood or theme park on the theory that then it really would be safe. Tried to de-complexify, de-magic, de-sacralize, de-nature it.
Bison bison cannot be reintroduced too rapidly, in my admittedly biased opinion. Tribes are cooperating with biologists to reintroduce many other species, as well. In that is hope for the prairies. I love the joining of traditional and scientific knowledge in these partnerships.
Bison are a historic species in Illinois, as well and are also being being reintroduced here. And there was just a conference here about living with the large predators such as wolves, cougars and (not strictly predatory) black bears that are starting to find their way down from the north.
Indians, biologists, ecology-minded folks of many persuasions and stripes, druids-- that the seventh fire peoples are discovering some commonality in worldview and finding ways to work together is a bright strand in a rough, dark fabric. Perhaps a new hybrid culture is germinating. What effects will cascade, perhaps to contribute to the eco-technic future?
10/2/14, 10:54 AM
MindfulEcologist said...
Your Buffalo Wind is resonating with me too. I came across this latest ecological crises statistic a few days back. It has haunted my thoughts since. There are questions about the statistical methods used but I trust the basic magnitude of what has been reported:
“The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago.
The report says populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52%.
Populations of freshwater species have suffered an even worse fall of 76%.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29418983
It is as if we have passed a Gaian tipping point, triggered a whole new level of feedback loops.
Now the Buffalos and Wolves increase and the human population decreases.
“We need to consider the possibility that the peak of global population is no longer an abstraction set comfortably off somewhere in the future. It may be knocking at the future’s door right now, shaking with fever and dripping blood from its gums.”
These could well be some of the most chilling words of yours I have ever read. Cold water on the heart, wake up call. It gives a weight to my upcoming project I will do my best to honor. Thank you.
For those interested I started a cycle on my blog to explore the concepts in Catton’s Overshoot at MindfulEcology dot com.
10/2/14, 11:04 AM
SweaterMan said...
You stated: " it's going to take superhuman efforts to keep the hajj from becoming a massive pandemic incubator -- and I doubt those efforts will be made while there's still time"
Time's up. Hajj has started, although KSA claims that it'll be Ebola-free since they've denied visas from the hardest-hit countries. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29461229
10/2/14, 11:14 AM
peacegarden said...
Another great post…
“The Buffalo Wind is rising now, keening in the tall grass, whispering in the branches and setting fallen leaves aswirl. I could be mistaken, but I think that not too far in the future it will become a storm that will shake the industrial world right down to its foundations.”
Bring it, and let us make ourselves ready to meet the Buffalo Wind with open minds and hearts. “Teach me what I need to know, how I ought to walk the path ahead, how to surrender my attachment to “safety” and reach for the real world”
Peace,
Gail
10/2/14, 11:33 AM
Dammerung said...
10/2/14, 11:41 AM
Howard Skillington said...
This just in: "Elon Musk argues that we must put a million people on Mars if we are to ensure that humanity has a future." He further explains that this initiative will require 100,000 trips of a giant spaceship, but assures us that "all this could happen within a century."
I apologize for going off-topic but thought, in the context of an Ebola epidemic, a little comic relief might not be unwelcome.
10/2/14, 11:58 AM
Brian Cady said...
In the book _1491_ vast herds of buffalo were an aberration in the Great Plains 'pre-'history, 'cuz native Amerinds kept them in check to allow better gardening.
As an aside, I want to recommend as well-written and very probable the novel _Through_the_Eyes_of_a_Stranger_ by my friend Will Bonsall, a prominent seedsaver and vegan self-sufficient in central Maine. I think it is much more probable than the technoptomist short story I submitted to your 2nd story contest.
10/2/14, 12:02 PM
SLClaire said...
Over the summer I read Barbara Tuchman's book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. I'd chosen it for my reading on the end of a civilization because I'd found it for $2 at a used book sale. As you know, the Black Death (bubonic plague) figures prominently in the book. I did not realize at the time just how appropriate that reading would be for what we are facing. The extent to which the plague changed the underpinnings of the social order of the time, and how the social order then changed, combined with my learning of the number of Ebola cases and its doubling time, and the fracking bubble about to burst, and the fact of decline in the oil supply that isn't fracked, and what Ebola in the Middle East would likely do to oil production there, and what I'd learned from your posts on the religion of progress and the psychology of peak oil ... and the result was I spent a sleepless middle of the night in the cold hard reality of serious social breakdown heading our way. I foresee a very difficult next few years. The psychological shakeup will be extreme ... I could see those strange bright banners you've spoken of being unfurled before long. The best I can say is that knowing this, I can do some mental and physical preparation now for what is coming. Thank you for that.
10/2/14, 12:16 PM
NosVemos said...
Surely it would be obvious, I thought, that changing one part of an ecosystem would change everything else, and that removing or reintroducing one of the key species in the ecosystem would have particularly dramatic effects! Of course I stopped then and laughed, since for most people it’s anything but obvious.
It's strange that here in Utah (Motto: "Industry"), there is a very effective solution to water loss, soil degradation, arroyotization, etc, that doesn't involve an expensive silver bullet...and it's still seen no shortage of obstacles to implementation for exactly the same reasons as you outlined with regard to the reintroduction of Buffalo.
The solution to many of Utah's woes: the humble beaver.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/29/original-geo-engineers-how-beavers-can-help-save-humans
Note: You'll have to forgive me for referring to actual creatures using "solutionist" jargon. But, it tends to be the only way to convince the old ranchers.
10/2/14, 12:26 PM
Judy said...
Thanks also for explaining the Buffalo wind. I feel it too, just had no words to explain it.
10/2/14, 12:31 PM
Herr Doktor said...
Buffalo wind = Nature's revenge? (or on other words, return to a stable equilibrium?)
The history about buffalo reintroduction reminds me of the current trend in depressed rural areas here in Spain, where the slow depopulation has relieved pressure on wildlife and now there are many places with a density of wild goats or boars that was unheard of since maybe 50 years ago...
While ebola is very scary, I'm quite old fashioned regarding deadly bugs, and would like to remind people of such demode bugs as cholera, malaria, typhus or yellow fever.
Particularly water borne epidemics such as cholera will become very widespread in Western nations when the drinking water infrastructure begins to crumble- you know, as when the wastewater treatment plants upstream of your city shut off and the maintenance of the local drinking water system that takes water from the same river starts to fail...
Oh! And BTW, all the above mentioned nasties were widespread in many parts of Europe (and probably the US) until right after WWII. And will again be, even with a new push northward thanks to climate change...
It happens that my better half works for the regional health authority in things regarding precisely drinking water, and she is definitely not optimistic on this. And besides, she has pointed out another failure mode of the system: in places where drinking water is sourced from wells (in theory with very low risk of bacterial contamination), there are a lot of new found problems because increased water contamination due to pesticides, nitrates, etc. It seems that while the usual water table level stays more or less constant, the concentration of contaminants stays also roughly unchanged, but when the water tables fall hard, for example during a prolonged drought, the water quality becomes quickly really, really bad. Literally the dregs of the barrel... Has happened in Eastern Spain this Summer and I'm sure that it will be similar in California...
10/2/14, 12:47 PM
Robert Mathiesen said...
And, Ronald Langereis, anger seems an entirely appropriate emotion in the face of the coming storm. Our modern world is far, far too scared of anger, and of its big sister, furious rage. There are situations when these emotions can be good things, and cold reason must be counted as a great evil.
10/2/14, 12:59 PM
Andrew said...
Just so you know, the beak-shaped masks full of herbs that have become iconic for "Pestdoctors" never existed, but were invented by a European children's show in the 1960's, and from there took their place in the collective unconcious. The pictures that you can find on the internet that *seem* to depict this are in fact 17th century commedia dell'arte (carnaval), mocking doctors in general.
Yes, I know most websites say otherwise, but "the internet" is wrong about most of what it says about the Middle Ages.
10/2/14, 1:08 PM
Steve in Colorado said...
1. After the plague had abated, with a quarter of the world dead, England and France promptly resumed the war they had been forced to pause.
2. In England and, I think, elsewhere, the governments of the time passed laws forbidding any worker from charging more for his services than he had before the plague, now that there was a labor shortage.
I can imagine the American government, in the wake of a plague killing 50-60 million Americans, passing laws forbidding anyone from selling a house for anything less than it was worth before the plague, or forbidding anyone from occupying any of the millions of homes emptied out by the deaths of their owners. I can also imagine global corporations and trade organizations frantically trying to force workers in the depopulated Third World back into the fields and factories at the same rate of pay...
On a semi-related note, the first two stories on NPR this morning are the ebola case in Texas and the resignation of the head of the Secret Service. Both stories involve officials speaking in the passive voice, saying things like "Clearly, mistakes were made" or "Regretfully, an incident occurred." Just once, I would like to see any prominent official in American public life take responsibility for anything without their back being against the wall. I don't expect that to happen, and that doesn't exactly instill confidence in our ability to weather the crises we face.
10/2/14, 1:11 PM
Mean Mr Mustard said...
Regarding colonising Mars, I hope we don't make the same mistake as the Golgafrinchans, sadly wiped out by a pandemic after sending all their telephone sanitiser specialists on their way...
cheers
Mustard
10/2/14, 1:22 PM
Leo Knight said...
Quite a few people I know complained mightily about bringing the two American aid workers stricken with ebola to the US. I thought that risk quite minimal, considering the extraordinary precautions taken. I thought something else would bring it here, and the Texas case showed how. I felt particularly astonished at the neglect shown by the hospital in sending the patient home. When I read this in your essay, "... it’s unthinkable to most people in the industrial world today that a global pandemic could brush aside the world’s terminally underfunded public health systems and snuff out millions or billions of lives in a few years," I said to myself, "Yes, exactly!"
Nowadays, many people in the US die from treatable diseases simply because they can't afford care. I wonder if that played a part here? Don't want to deal with him, give him a prescription and send him away. As long as these weren't contagious, fatal diseases, most people didn't care. So what if some poor kid dies because an infection from an untreated toothache spread to his brain? Now that kind of neglect may come back to bite us all.
Thanks again for your writing!
10/2/14, 1:39 PM
wolfvanzandt said...
And I offer....
Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam,
And the deer and the antelope play.
Where gardeners are hired,
To clean up the yard,
And they make one heck of a pay.
I think one of the problems with the Ebola sorta-kinda-scare is that we've been told in the past that the flu or that West Nile disease was going to wipe out such huge segments of the population that everybody figures that this one is just another political manipulation on the side of various government organizations (Who out there trusts the AMA? Raise your hands. Okay, here's your lolly pop, you can go home now.)
Again, science knows some of it's limits today but individual scientists don't want to admit that they exist. Science can't deal with chaos. One of the biggest fiascoes of modern applied science is game management. Humans are not the natural predator around these parts and humans cannot control game populations. The more they try the more they screw up. The southeast has to deal with automobileacidal deer, exploding feral hog populations, and the new intrusion of the Western puma (which is replacing the vacuum left by the pretty much inoffensive Florida cougar) simply because of the involvement of the game managers, the hunters, and the farmers.
We think we can handle ecological trends - we can't. We think we can handle epidemiological trends - well, maybe a little better but not with the idiotic policies we have now.
I swear, the larger human population must want to die.
10/2/14, 1:43 PM
Kaitain said...
As someone who has long subscribed to a cyclical view of history, I gave up on the Religion of Progress long ago. I read Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee for the first time a decade ago (the local library here still has the full, unabridged editions of both “The Decline of the West” and “A Study of History”) and they both had a huge influence on my thinking. I came to Spengler and Toynbee in large part from reading “The Pentagon of Power” by Lewis Mumford, which was one of his last works. By then Mumford had become thoroughly disillusioned by the Cult of Progress and reconsidered his earlier, optimistic views about technology and the modern world. If you haven’t read “The Pentagon of Power”, it’s well worth the effort. Mumford’s observations about the World Trade Center in New York City back when it was still a set of blueprints and a builder’s scale model in 1965 were quite prophetic, especially in light of its eventual fate…
Of course the buffalo herds will return and the great experiment by the palefaces on the prairie will fail. Everything comes to an end sooner or later, but the cycle continues and time marches on. If I remember correctly, it was Einstein who said that you cannot break the laws of nature, you can only break yourself against them. Our descendents will eventually learn to work with nature, instead of engaging in a misguided attempt to bend and break it to their wills, and that will be one of the factors that eventually leads to the ecotechnic cultures and civilizations of the future. The prairie will go back to being occupied by tribes of nomadic warriors on horseback and will probably play a similar role in the future history of North America that the steppes of Central Asia did in Eurasian history. The future inhabitants of the Great Plains will probably be a mixture of indigenous nations like the Lakota, the Comanche and the Kiowa and Hispanic immigrants who revive the traditions of the vaqueros. The world keeps turning and the forces of history and nature can only be temporarily diverted or denied, but not for long…
10/2/14, 1:48 PM
sgage said...
"Cherokee, I'm left wondering what the missing keystone species was -- the common Australian bunyip, possibly? ;-)"
Pretty sure it was Drop Bears... ;-)
(say, the captchas have gotten hard again!)
10/2/14, 1:53 PM
avalterra said...
10/2/14, 1:57 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
If adding a single species can do that then what happens when you remove say 1-2 billion of another species?
Industrial scale agriculture may not be possible on the plains but subsistence agriculture certainly is.
Everyone else,
The dour mood on here is getting to me so I'm going to brighten up your days. I finally managed to get through to my friends. 14 of them are now preparing their FEMA recommended emergency kits. This Sunday, I'll be meeting with the matron of a wiccan group here in Madison, one of my friends is introducing me. I'm hoping to reach out to the rest of the neo-pagans in the area through her and relay the Druid's warning. In two weeks I'll be meeting with the pastor of a friends church to discuss emergency management plans, and get his congregation educated and prepared.
View on the Ground is also coming along. I'll be monetizing it soon, which should allow me to start doing some real news work.
Regards,
Varun Bhaskar
Director of Hope and Fuzzies
View on the Ground
10/2/14, 2:08 PM
Unknown said...
If public health services might be overwhelmed, at least in some localities, it would make sense for willing people to learn what kind of home care they can give to family and neighbors without extreme risk to themselves, and to stockpile needed supplies while those are available.
I would like to be prepared. I live around the corner from a fire station, but they will probably be overwhelmed too.
Can anyone refer me to online information on how untrained people can nurse the sick and dying? Or give advice based on your own medical expertise? First aid handbooks don't cover infectious tropical diseases.
Rehydration therapy? Homemade mix for that? Any other supportive measures that don't involve prescription drugs? Are gauze masks adequate protection, or are surgical masks required? Will eyeglasses do in place of goggles? Washable work gloves instead of latex? Boiling water and chlorine bleach for cleaning sheets?
10/2/14, 2:18 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Marc, thank you.
Stuart, that's worth knowing.
Kylie, most Native American peoples did the same thing, with good effect. Some of our descendants may well do that as well.
Derv, it's entirely possible that the river valleys will continue to be farmed, while the plains in between go to herding or hunting nomads -- that's a fairly common pattern, historically. As for your proposed deal, you're on.
Brian, I'd rather just let evolution fill in the blanks itself -- we've messed up enough. As for Woodcraft and its equivalents, exactly -- thus my comment that a revival would be a very sensible thing right now.
Bogatyr, well, yes. I expect the medical system to collapse totally in most countries if this thing gets well under way.
KL, I certainly never heard that verse.
Jason, excellent. Yes, I've been thinking about that, too.
Violet, that's a fine choice of reading matter. I think, though, that so many people are enamored of the Tragic model that they'll follow it all the way down -- they've earned their last big scene, and won't let anyone take it away from them! Those who prefer the Comic model need to lie low, in the best Sancho Panza style, and wait for the Tragedy to finish.
Raven, of course people will still be around -- remember that even under West African conditions, 30% of the people who catch Ebola survive it.
Hector, I appreciate hearing that from you. I hope you're making as much in the way of preparations as you can -- as a physician, you're going to be in the firing line if a pandemic gets going here.
Justin, excellent! I have a set of those, and you're quite right.
10/2/14, 2:21 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
I heard a segment on NPR yesterday about the guy tht made a run at the White House. He made it through 5 layers of security. There was a discussion of what went wrong at each layer. Truly, a "comedy" of errors. So it will be with Ebola. Anybody for the opening scenes of Stephen King" "The Stand?"
Besides getting buttoned up for winter, I'm also thinking in terms of "what if I have to hold up for three months?" I'm looking at everything I eat and do.
Sure, I'll probably miss some things. Hopefully, whatever I miss won't be lethal. Just something that can be done without, worked around or adapted to. If lethal, well, I'm of an age that every day is an unexpected pleasure and that an ending is inevitable. I accept that, and there's not (much) fear.
A good book on the Black Death is "The Great Mortality" by Kelly. A good book on the 1918 flue epidemic is "Flu" by Kolata. And, if you want to get all Literary, there's always "The Plague" by Camus. Lew
10/2/14, 2:29 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ando, that or the clatter of coconut shells. ;-)
Laato (i.e., Mary), you're most welcome! I appreciate your efforts to knock some sense into the clueless on this issue.
Mr. Geronimo, I wonder if they'll borrow a term from our way of talking about the endgame of the classical Maya, and refer to the Terminal Industrial period... One way or another, though, yes, I think we're at the hinge between two ages now.
Kyoto, exactly -- if that happens, everything changes.
Don, granted, but that's not the way most Americans like to think.
Donalfagan, that's priceless. If it's not on the front page of CNN, it doesn't exist. Didn't that use to be the official line, except with Pravda?
Neo, I hadn't read either of those books -- clearly a mistake. Thanks for the heads up.
Permian, thank you.
Tom, I'm embarrassed to say I only discovered the Daily Impact a few weeks ago -- though it's a regular read now. Here's to sanctuary indeed! (clink)
Tracy, thank you.
RPC, perhaps so.
Onething, no argument there. Most of the steps that could keep an Ebola pandemic from going global are not being taken, not for any particular reason, but because the people who could take them are staring blankly at their onrushing fate, blindly convinced that nothing bad can ever actually happen to them. Maybe that's the reason why barbarian warlords are so popular during the twilight of a civilization -- in a crisis they will actually do something.
10/2/14, 2:35 PM
troy said...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola
And that isn't even the first time I have seen that claim put forward in the media. Yet if that were true, what's up with the hazmat suits? Does it really need to be pointed out that doctors don't need a hazmat suit to treat an HIV patient? Why would they need one to treat a disease supposedly even harder to get than HIV? More importantly, how is it that doctors have been infected with Ebola *despite* the hazmat suits?
This notion that Ebola is less contagious than HIV is an outright lie of course-- so obviously false that I have a hard time believing that the people who frantically proclaim such things are unaware that they are spreading misinformation. But the fact that the media/government is deliberately spreading false-but-soothing information-- presumably to prevent a panic-- is, if anything, more frightening than if they were trying to whip up public hysteria (as they did with bird flu, West Nile virus, etc). Overnight the number of potentially exposed contacts in Dallas went from 18 to "about 100" and four additional people were put under quarantine. By now, damage control (by which I mean border/airport closings) should at least be on the table for discussion. Several African and Asian countries have already closed their borders to Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. But political correctness apparently prevents us from even talking about doing the same. It may already be too late for that anyway. I think it's past time for the elites to level with us and admit that they are too far behind the curve to catch up at this point. But they can't do that now-- midterm elections are coming up. Have to paste on a smiley face.
Meanwhile, the coca harvest season begins in October in West Africa, source of half the world's cocoa. Throngs of migrant workers are normally streaming into Liberia, Ivory Coast, and neighboring countries at this time of year, all set to do some seriously sweaty labor. I'm sure nothing could go wrong with that; after all, the alternative would be for the first world to pay higher prices for chocolate this year.
10/2/14, 2:45 PM
Five8Charlie said...
10/2/14, 2:58 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Heretick, I admit I won't be an early volunteer for the first version of the vaccine. Mistakes get made, especially when everything's being done in a hurry.
William, thanks for the background. Thing is, the tribes at this point are just proposing buffalo herds on their own land, not on anyone else's. I suppose the Brucellosis issue remains -- but I think the emotional issues are dominant.
BoysMom, it's quite possible that from now on, most of the rain you get will be in sudden downpours. Catchment basins and cisterns may be worth investigating.
Heretick and Becky, that's the one. Thank you.
Don, the people I know who have health care training insist that the media is overgeneralizing, and someone infected with Ebola will become infectious as soon as the viral load gets to a certain level -- which is around the time, but not identical to the moment, that obvious symptoms occur. As for the Hajj, that's got chills running down my spine; I can't think of a more effective mechanism to transmit the virus to people from all around the world, and then send them home to infect others.
Steve, I'm beginning to wonder how much of 21st century American demographics will look like the 19th century played in reverse.
1ab, thank you. That is to say, the answer to my question is, "No, nobody in DC or Wall Street has begun to think."
Carolyn, right on target.
Keith, and better meat, too. Have you tasted bison?
Wolfgang, exactly. I'll be talking about this as we proceed.
Architrains, yes, that sounds like Faux News. Gah.
10/2/14, 2:59 PM
Kaitain said...
https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-dont-shop-at-this-wawa/
10/2/14, 3:01 PM
Jacopo Simonetta said...
10/2/14, 3:04 PM
John Michael Greer said...
LL Pete, it's entirely possible. On the other hand, it may not be necessary, depending on just how brainless the US authorities continue to be.
Paul, cases caused by an individual flying into the country are fairly easy to track. The more difficult issue is the slow spread through rural populations far from the centers of power -- that's what's spread things so far in West Africa, and it's apparently gotten across the Sahel to Sudan by the same route. Watch this space...
Mathprof, exactly.
Twilight, that's the one!
Ronald, hmm. I'm not sure what to say; I haven't observed any such change in tone or approach -- I've been saying harsh things about the stupidities of the existing order since this blog got under way, after all.
Onething, that sounds like a worthwhile read. Thanks for the tip!
Eric, I was a little startled by the speed of it, too -- but it was always going to be just a matter of time. Here we go.
10/2/14, 3:05 PM
MawKernewek said...
Therefore, the prevailing mode of thinking has been that ecosystems are regulated from the bottom of the food-chain up, from plants, to herbivores, their predators, and the apex predator at the top of the food chain. The back-feedback through a food web caused by predators has been something less considered.
10/2/14, 3:13 PM
1ab9a86a-8991-11e3-899b-000bcdcb8a73 said...
"Maybe that's the reason why barbarian warlords are so popular during the twilight of a civilization -- in a crisis they will actually do something. "
...reminded me of an article I read by Robert Fisk, foreign correspondent for the UK Independent and before that for The Times. He has been based in Beirut since the mid 70s and has managed to avoid being kidnapped or murdered despite those things being very common there at various times. Undoubtedly it was the most dangerous city in the world for some years.
He explained something that the locals told him early on when he was trying to figure the place out. They said (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) that when something happens (= some kind of violence starts happening) the important thing is you must do something. Even if you don't know what is best, choose something and do it and try to look like you know what you're doing. Usually in a war zone, there is no way to be sure which direction will be safe, but standing around looking lost is the worst thing, so quickly pick something to do and do it.
(FWIW)
10/2/14, 3:15 PM
Ed-M said...
Excellent post again. I was another one who was appalled when I found out that the medical staff in that Dallas ER sent the patient home the first time, only to come back with full blown Ebola the second time. I yi yi! And how many people did he infect along the way? It may be extraordinarily difficult to track them all down; plus, I think this kind of bungling will cause the US to have transmission rates rivaling those of third world countries -- at least in the prison and homeless populations.
On a positive note, I'm glad the Buffalo Common is making a comeback. And I'm not surprised the white people out there are taking it hard. For them, it's not just a rollback of progress, it's also a rollback of 'Merrica.
I wonder what will happen and who will have the right-of-way when the first large buffalo herd crosses an interstate for the first time, he he!
Ed-M
pace deorum
10/2/14, 3:24 PM
Unknown said...
With a few clicks I found a partial answer to my own question.
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/abroad/pdf/african-healthcare-setting-vhf.pdf
This is a manual from 1998 for setting up an isolation ward to treat Ebola patients in Africa. It includes various make-do measures. The level of precautions for preventing further transmission of the disease is daunting.
10/2/14, 3:29 PM
Ed-M said...
You may not know or remember this, but Jimmy Carter leveled with us back in 1979 with his "Malaise Forever" speech (well that's what some wags called it, and the Simpsons ran with it in one of their episodes!). To cut it short, the American people reacted with a resounding "NOooooo!" and the elites have not been leveling with us since.
10/2/14, 3:30 PM
Bret said...
While the source (of course), the title and a lot of the text would say otherwise, to my surprise I did seem to detect a thread of respect for the concept of peak oil woven into the piece. Seem like a bit of an odd data point, as I feel I've been trained to expect shriller and shriller rejections of post-peak reality as time spools along.
Maybe it's me seeing things that aren't there; maybe it's a symptom of some sort of movement along the Kubler Ross spectrum in unexpected places, or maybe it's just what you get when the WSJ starts hiring writers based in Austin...
http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-peak-oil-predictions-haven-t-come-true-1411937788
10/2/14, 3:34 PM
Neo Tuxedo said...
10/2/14, 3:47 PM
Eric S. said...
As for Ebola... I think that the most sickening thing about it is that countries like the US can be so distanced from reality that a year from now the death toll could be in the multi-billions and people will still be saying "I'm worried this could get really bad" Or "there's nothing to be concerned about it's not going to get really bad." Every time I hear one of those two sentences I just cringe... It's bad enough now even if it doesn't get worse and to say it's not is just... Cold...
10/2/14, 4:15 PM
Stephen Purvis said...
10/2/14, 4:16 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yeah, watch out for those drop bears. On a serious note, they're grumpy and mostly drunk from the toxic diet of eucalyptus leaves that they eat. Plus they sound like razorback the feral boar. Nasty little claws that'll do you up a treat mate - Look at the bones!!! hehe! On a serious note and as a fun fact: they actually prefer manna gums which are so named because during summer those trees drop a sweet gum like product which is edible and a traditional source of sugar around these parts.
You know, JMG, I reckon we've had this conversation before in the distant past, but memory fades...
The keystone species here was in fact the bunyip, which most people suspect is the cultural memory of the only local mega fauna - Diprotodon.
The fossil records for this beast disappear once humans arrived on the continent. You can even see the bones at places like the Naracoorte caves in South Australia where they accidentally fell in and died. They must have been tasty beasties!
Anyway, the humans then found to their dismay that once they'd eaten all of these beasts, they then had to perform the eco-system services of this animal. They had in fact promoted themselves to the unpaid position of key-stone species.
Who'd have thunk it? Nature provides eco-system services free of charge!
Incidentally, I'm discovering here that that particular function if wielded thoughtfully, promotes an increasingly productive eco-system over time. It is just a lot of work. Once the system is set up though, it is very easy to maintain and therein lays the true beauty of biological systems.
Cheers
Chris
10/2/14, 4:23 PM
Rita said...
I just read a story of a nursing student in Liberia who kept 3 out of 4 of her family alive at home with an elaborate routine involving four layers of gloves, plastic trash bags, etc. donned twice a day, guided by her one year of nursing training. But, readers of this blog will note that plastic bags and gloves do not grow on trees. Nor do the tons of single use medical supplies that are now routine. I just found myself wondering if modern hospitals even have equipment for routine sterilization on-site anymore? Or does everything arrive prepackaged and disposable?
10/2/14, 4:29 PM
steve pearson said...
10/2/14, 4:51 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Joe, agreed. The first thing I did when Sara and I bought the place we live is start tearing out the lawn and replacing it with garden beds.
Ando, many thanks! That's the one.
Alphonse, thank you.
Richard, in the current outbreak the death rate has been running around 70% without medical care, and rather better than that if you've got some degree of care. Since I live in a small town, it's probably a safe bet that by the time Ebola gets here, the US health care system will be in total collapse, so I'm laying plans for home care. Rehydration is crucial; there are traditional medicinal herbs with strong antiviral properties, and there are also herbs that protect the liver, which is the main organ Ebola hits. It's a bit like getting ready for a all-out fight when you have time to prepare and size up the other guy: you can't guarantee a favorable outcome, but if you can make the odds better than a coin toss, that's worth doing.
Nathan, it is indeed.
Adrian, we can hope!
Ecologist, thank you. The point of this blog is to hit people across the face with the cold, wet mackerel of reality.
SweaterMan, yes, I read that. Hoo boy. A month from now, if infections start popping up all over the Muslim world, we'll know we're in for it sooner rather than later.
Peacegarden, thank you. No need to bring it; it's coming on its own four hooves.
Dammerung, it's not at all uncommon for that sort of bizarre religious movement to kick off during a time of pestilence. I admit I'd rather see people wake up to the need to live in harmony with the cycles of nature, but that's just me. (What would you call people who worship an anime character? I think the word "animist" is already taken...)
Howard, funny. Listening to Musk these days is rather reminiscent of an old Cheech and Chong movie, where the protagonists spend all their time stoned out of their gourds saying really, really stupid things. I wonder what Musk has been smoking -- old copies of pulp SF magazines?
10/2/14, 4:53 PM
John Michael Greer said...
SLClaire, my guess is that Ben just doesn't get the exponential function. It's very counterintuitive. As for Tuchman's book, that's an excellent suggestion for reading material just now!
NosVemos, well, I hope somebody gets a clue and lets the beavers get to work. I wonder how many simple solutions to massive problems are being ignored because they amount to letting nature take care of it.
Judy, you're very welcome. I remember how strongly Seton's phrase resonated with me when I first read his essay!
Herr Doktor, oh, granted. It's not as though we don't have a bubbling cauldron of pathogens waiting for us as the fragile structure of public health breaks down.
Robert, the moment you said "Tower time," that's the image I thought of. No surprises there, I suspect.
Steve, a lot depends on how vulnerable the US government and economic system are to sudden unraveling. There might be attempts to impose some such stupidity; alternatively, there might not be enough of a national structure left to do the thing. Time will tell.
Leo, I've heard -- though can't vouch for the statement, as I haven't had time to check into it -- that the guy in Dallas got sent home with an antibiotic because he didn't have health insurance. That is to say, you're probably right.
Wolf, I didn't know that the puma had expanded into the southwest -- that's very good news, though I suspect a lot of people down that way will disagree. There needs to be a climax predator to keep deer and feral hogs from wrecking the ecosystem, and Felis concolor ought to be just the ticket.
Kaitain, that's basically my take, adjusted for long-term climate change. Industrial civilization is a temporary phenomenon, and when it passes, what replaces it isn't going to look much like our notion of progress.
Sgage, now I have to look those up!
Avalterra, so noted.
10/2/14, 5:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Unknown Deborah, try to find an old book on home nursing care -- the Red Cross used to sell them -- and then combine that with everything you can find on infection control. Rehydration is easy -- water plus sugar and a little salt will do it, or you can stockpile Gatorade. Then do your best and pray.
Lewis, oddly enough, I was remembering the same book -- also George Lewis' Earth Abides.
Troy, exactly. If it's so hard to catch, why are people catching it through tight infection control procedures? I didn't know about the cocoa harvest; combine that with the Hajj, and we've got the ingredients for a global pandemic within six months or so. Gah.
Charlie, yes, that's also a possibility -- at least as much in the immediate aftermath as in the crisis itself.
Kaitain, nah, they're just too short on money to afford the media management to cover their incompetence.
Jacopo, I don't see the Buffalo Wind as hope, I see it as reality -- the reality to which industrial civilization has been trying to close its eyes and ears all these years. That reality includes pain and death, and also life and joy -- and it reminds us that you can't have one side of that balance without the other.
MawKernewek, that makes sense. I grew up in a city that was occasionally visited by pumas, and had a sizable population of urban coyotes.
1ab, that's one of the basic rules of strategy: any action is better than no action at all.
Ed-M, it depends on how heavily armed the Native American riders are who accompany the herd!
Bret, the denial is about to break. When the first big fracking firm declares bankruptcy, it'll be over for a while.
Neo, they're on the get-to list.
10/2/14, 5:36 PM
Meg J said...
In between all that, and reading the comments here, I shredded paper in preparation for soaking to make fuel pellets. It's fall--lots of leaves to soon go and gather so I can add more organic matter to the paper pulp ... As remarked by others here, looks like a good weekend coming to stock up on food supplies.
Oh, and I also attended a fitness class, where the instructor (an elementary teacher too) talked about her interaction with a young student, who wanted to create a time capsule. They had a good time discussing content as it pertained to technology apparently, and it was clear the student had high hopes for a gizmo-laden future. I was going to say something, but in the end remained quiet as there just didn't seem to be any point.
On the Buffalo wind? I'm reminded of a favourite poem by Siegfried Sassoon "Gloria Mundi". Seems rather metaphorical too right now.
Who needs words in autumn woods
When colour concludes decay?
There old stories are told in glories
For winds to scatter away.
Wisdom narrows where downland barrows
Image the world's endeavour.
There time's tales are as light that fails
On faces fading forever.
10/2/14, 5:47 PM
onething said...
Regarding home treatment of ebola, I started thinking about this last week. Keeping the person hydrated will be task number one. Those who die of ebola do so from hypovolemic shock and organ failure. It attacks the kidneys and liver, but I am unsure whether the kidney damage is from low blood volume or from the virus or both.
It occurs to me that several natural remedies that I often keep around the home might be useful. Vitamin C is probably number one. Vitamin K perhaps also, and vitamin D. And A. Research into herbs is in order. Oregano oil?
This year I gathered elderberry and made syrup. But you can buy it and you can buy dried berries in bulk. Elderberry is meant to be quite medicinal, and has antiviral properties.
Avoid tylenol and aspirin or ibuprofen. The latter can make the bleeding worse and tylenol may deplete the body of something but I forget what. Also, very hard on the liver, which is having enough trouble. I suppose that in a hospital setting, tylenol will be given copiously. I think this is a mistake.
Pine needles are very high in vitamin C and a tea could be made.
Don't forget garlic, although it is quite possible the sick will not be able to stomach it.
A dilution of bleach does indeed kill the virus. If you are caring for someone sick, give thought to collecting their vomit and feces, and have a place to remove it to. I'm thinking a hole in the ground. You might want to stock up on plastic garbage bags. They can be used on the floor under a makeshift potty, used to wrap yourself up in in lieu of other gowns.
I don't think a gauze mask is adequate, but I'm not sure what you mean by gauze. There is a light cottony mask they use in the hospitals which seems quite thin but it is comfortable and I might use two.
Not sure what you mean by washable work gloves. You want your gloves to be rubber or plastic and soft enough to let you do fine tasks. If you have the finer, medical type gloves, you can double glove. They've got pictures of people in Africa wearing what looks like classic dish washing gloves, but I think they are doing bigger tasks like removing dead bodies.
The main thing is not to touch anything in the vicinity or let anything touch your skin that might be contaminated. If caring for a person with strong vomiting or diarrhea, try to be careful, step back and don't get in the line of fire. It would probably be necessary to have some sort of bedside toilet and vomit basin, that's why I suggested taping down black plastic bags to contain the contaminated area and the sick person will probably have little strength to walk to the bathroom anyway. The sick person should be confined to one room and only a completely attired caregiver should enter.
I am supposing that your glasses would be adequate. You don't want to lean in toward the sick person's face with your own face.
I am actually wondering, if a sick person could be kept hydrated, the biggest challenge, might some home treatments of herbs and vitamins give the greatest positive outcome?
10/2/14, 6:11 PM
sgage said...
"Analysis of the collected data provides valuable insights into the hunting behaviour of drop bears and has implications for a better understanding of the geographical distribution of other rare species, including hoop snakes and bunyips."
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049182.2012.731307#.VC3zyyVXZWc
10/2/14, 6:29 PM
wolfvanzandt said...
10/2/14, 6:45 PM
onething said...
By the way, a recent research paper says the Black Death was probably not plague. Plague travels very slowly, and the Black Death traveled as much as thirty miles in a day or two. Black Death responded to quarantine, whereas rats to not obey quarantines. It seems to have actually been a hemorrhagic, ebola-type virus.
10/2/14, 6:52 PM
magicalthyme said...
Don, no. Questioning travel history is standard protocol in collecting medical history. Anybody presenting with a fever and/or sore throat and/or flu-like symptoms who has been in any Ebola country should be (and in dozens of cases, have been) immediately isolated, monitored and tested.
It was the kind of mistake we all dread making. EDs can get very busy, hospitals are running very lean, staff is overworked, overtired and prone to errors. The triage nurse got the information and passed it along to the delivery team. Somehow it got overlooked. Simple human error because we are not machines.
This is the start of a nightmare. They finally were only able to clean the apartment today because nobody was very interested in that job. Can't imagine why not?!
I read a report yesterday from the center where Brantly was treated -- they generated huge amounts of hazardous waste daily and couldn't get rid of it because nobody could meet the government requlations around Ebola waste. They had to purchase numerous large trash bins and store it on site while searching for help. They finally resolved the problem by autoclaving all the waste, with help from the CDC facility up the road from them. How will ordinary hospitals deal with this?
In the meantime, the patient's family is now under police guard after attempting to leave their apartment against orders.
Mary
10/2/14, 7:03 PM
magicalthyme said...
Ebola messes with your coagulation; the description sounds similar to disseminated intravascular coagulation, with clots forming in the liver and I think the kidneys. I'm not sure what herbs might be helpful in such a situation, but will start looking into it this weekend...
Mary
10/2/14, 7:25 PM
Michael McG said...
This expectation may be unrealistic but I'm not deterred Failte!
10/2/14, 7:32 PM
Carl said...
Found this good Ebola prep article on
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/heres-why-you-should-not-panic-over-ebola_102014
On survival blog.com. Good site for preppers but heavy on the Christian slant.
Of course most of the advise is to buy things but putting up some extra supplies might not be a bad idea .
Carl
10/2/14, 7:35 PM
1ab9a86a-8991-11e3-899b-000bcdcb8a73 said...
"Genomic surveillance elucidates Ebola virus origin and transmission during the 2014 outbreak"
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1369.full
Scientific papers usually list acknowledgements at the end, but this one has something I've never seen before, an "In memoriam" statement:
"In memoriam: Tragically, five co-authors, who contributed greatly to public health and research efforts in Sierra Leone, contracted EVD and lost their battle with the disease before this manuscript could be published: Mohamed Fullah, Mbalu Fonnie, Alex Moigboi, Alice Kovoma, and S. Humarr Khan. We wish to honor their memory."
From what I can gather here:
http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/08/ebolas-heavy-toll-study-authors
... they were very experienced and highly trained.
I think this furthers the point made by Shining Hector about transmission.
10/2/14, 7:54 PM
Ray Wharton said...
The advantage of exponents is that you have a block of breathing room at the beginning before things reach the break in the line. Here in America it is very likely that we have months before infection rates have a chance to become a major existential hazard. With some luck we might have a good bit longer than that, even moderately effective control responses could bottle neck expansion for a while. This does not change the fact that we face an extreme risk of a serious global pandemic, but it is worth remembering that exponential trends themselves are not governed by their own progress narrative and can stall out for reasons that are hard to foresee. Only fools count on such stalling, but the wise remember that they can happen, they do not mean the danger is over, and that they mean that the time frame for the danger reaching a particular area is very unpredictable. It could get a foot hold where you live in March or maybe not for years; we don't know. There is still some room for doubt that this will get out of control globally, though that room is many times smaller than is commonly appreciated.
The complication of this coming into view at a time when the popping of the Fracking bubble is also threatening to disrupt substantial and unpredictable sections of business as usual makes things more delicate.
So, I am going to make sure that I am ready with famine foods to make it to winter; I need to get my garden supplies in good order; consult the apothecary about having a good herb pouch ready; consult with trusted friends about emergency plans, duties and rights under various contingencies. And I don't even know where I am living this winter, if I face any existential threat there are enough land owners who value my services enough to intervene, and it would teach me humility!
Alright Wizards, if the next year is going to be a crazy one, lets be our best and face it with courage, grace, and wisdom. The dice are rolling, and if you think you have something to offer your community now is the time to put it on the table. If things get to the point that the Green Wizards are struggling remember that many people, potentially very good people, could be in much worse condition, if you are given the opportunity to help them at a tolerable risk level that right there is the opportunity that community in a strong sense can take root in.
10/2/14, 7:56 PM
Michael Cain said...
The population of the Great Plains proper has been steadily shrinking since the 1930s, with people retreating back towards the edges (eg, Denver on the western edge and Omaha on the eastern). The only significant exceptions are the areas of Texas (and now North Dakota) with large hydrocarbon deposits. The Poppers are going to win, although it may take a bit longer than they thought.
10/2/14, 8:04 PM
Kutamun said...
I seem to remember one of the peak oil writers disparaging this bit of magic as a waste of time and quite delusional when it was originally carried out , but sometimes i have to wonder .
Like the Australian Aborigines for whom every rock , creek , tree and mound was a living creature , the Indians are largely gone but no doubt their magic remains , and some of their curses / predictions are seemingly coming to pass .
In Ozland the " songlines " between the three hundred or so tribes circled the continent for many millennia as the group travelled to the edge of their tribal area , exchanged the songs with the neighbours , travelled to the other edge and transmitted the songs to the next group and so in and so force . Magic of this nature would undoubtedly persist for a long time after its participants had vanished , who knows who deep amd complex the cause and effext of its working out ...
At the start of Medwyn Goodalls "spirit dancer " you can listen to the words of an indian chief , must have had some primitive voice recorder ...does anyone know what he is saying ?
The effect is quite haunting .....
10/2/14, 8:21 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Stephen, you're well within rounding errors. Good.
Cherokee, I don't suppose they've been able to extract a good genetic sequence from those bunyip bones.
Rita, no, it's all one use and then throw away these days. That's going to add to the fun and games, definitely.
Steve, true enough.
Meg, Sassoon was one of the poets who saw the First World War up close, and so yes, he's relevant just now.
Sgage, many thanks -- a fine bit of scientific research! I didn't know you had hoop snakes down under -- they're a common element of US folklore as well. I suppose they must have evolved originally on Gondwanaland, and reached North America after the opening of the Panama land bridge. ;-)
Wolf, understood, and you'll get them eventually, but it's going to take a while -- pumas seem to do better in human-infested areas. Pumas are also better equipped to take down feral hogs, which iirc are a large and growing element of biomass down your way.
Onething, exactly -- it's the difference between outbreaks that can probably be controlled and outbreaks that probably can't.
Magicalthyme, having worked in the medical field (and also helped a relative maneuver his way through a hospital stay marked with stunning displays of incompetence and malpractice), I wasn't surprised at all. Appalled, but not surprised. As for rehydration, the method that's been used with some success in Africa is frequent sips of rehydration fluid -- never a large amount at once -- taking advantage of the fact that water, sugar, and salt can be absorbed directly through oral tissues. Please do look into herbal liver and kidney treatments; you won't be the only one doing so, but many eyes are an advantage here.
Michael, good. That spirit is probably the best option at this point.
Carl, thanks for the link.
10/2/14, 8:34 PM
Draft said...
10/2/14, 8:36 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ray, that's all any of us can do. Unless the industrial nations start taking this whole business much more seriously starting very, very soon, there's a real chance that some of us are going to be dead in the not too distant future. That was always going to happen -- the fall of a civilization involves a lot of death, and it's not distributed solely to the clueless -- and I know it's a bit of a shock to see it transition from "someday" to "soon." Still, here we are; it's time to choose the place to make your stand.
Michael, of course you're right. I've never lived in the plains country, so tend to lose track of the distinctions.
Kutamun, the Ghost Dance failed. The prophecies of Wovoka may come true someday, but they certainly didn't come true in time to save a lot of Native people from a miserable fate. I expect to see a lot of cargo cult phenomena over the next few decades, presuming that I live that long, as people in the industrial world try everything to make the petroleum age come back; good luck with that.
Draft, in this country I run a legal risk these days if I even make suggestions. I'd encourage you to read up on herbal antivirals and herbs that benefit and protect the liver, and if mainstream medical care is no longer available to you, make your own choices.
10/2/14, 8:47 PM
DeAnander said...
But... the reasons for destroying that immensely productive ecosystem were deeply political as well as individually selfish. For a start, the masses of bison were a *commons*, which was antithetical to the cult of private ownership and Enclosure that had swept Northern Europe starting, oh, sometime in the 1500s at a guess. Fenced-in, branded, individually *owned* cattle were ideologically acceptable in a way that bison simply were not. [I believe a similar terror of the commons underlies the enthusiasm for CAFO salmon which governments exhibit even at the cost of their precious wild salmon stocks: CAFO salmon are caged, identifiable, owned, private property, whereas wild salmon are a commons.]
And for seconds, the bison were a keystone of food security and a cultural icon of profound meaning and importance to the indigenous people; so as soon as the political decision was made to displace or exterminate those people, the bison had to go. Food security for non-whites was a nono (you can find other examples galore in colonial history of the destruction or outlawing of indigenous foodways and food sources, damming of watercourses to starve out indigenous farmers, etc).
So the decision was made, in the not-quite-informal almost-spontaneous kind-of-official-but-deniable way that such things happen, to exterminate the bison; and that accorded well with base elements in human nature like greed, cruelty, wanton destructiveness, so there was an ample supply of volunteers to commit the act of ecocide. The question of what was the most efficient, low-cost, or sustainable way to produce large amounts of excellent meat was never even, so to speak, on the table. That was never the point.
10/2/14, 8:49 PM
Janet D said...
Herbal Antivirals: Natural Remedies for Emerging & Resistant Viral Infections
For those unfamiliar with him, Buhner is an amazing herbalist, and has long, long been clanging the bells about emerging pathogens and Western medicine's complete lack of effective medicines for them.
His Herbal Antibiotics book (2nd edition, not the 1st) is also amazing. It's helped me & my family deal effectively with recurrent MRSA infections.
More later.
10/2/14, 9:04 PM
Glenn said...
"Lewis, oddly enough, I was remembering the same book -- also George Lewis' Earth Abides."
That would be George R. Stewart. One of the first, and to my mind, still one of the best "Post Apocalypse" books I've read. One of the earliest to take air travel into consideration. Stewart taught college English, but two of his other books also had ecological themes. One about a Pacific storm, the other a Sierra forest fire.
Empty wallet, full larder. More harvesting yet to come.
Glenn
In the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
10/2/14, 9:09 PM
DeAnander said...
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/4/ebola-deforestationclimatechange.html
Some researchers think that human incursions into remote forested areas, deforestation, "development" in other words, have facilitated the initial exposures which started the epidemic.
10/2/14, 9:35 PM
Edward said...
Ed
10/2/14, 10:45 PM
Bogatyr said...
Anyone out there in a position to confirm this? Because if it's true, that would seem to be a bad thing....
10/2/14, 11:35 PM
beneaththesurface said...
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/texas-hospital-makes-changes-after-ebola-patient-turned-away-n217296
“However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case,” it added.
“In our electronic health records, there are separate physician and nursing workflows. The documentation of the travel history was located in the nursing workflow portion of the EHR, and was designed to provide a high reliability nursing process to allow for the administration of influenza vaccine under a physician-delegated standing order. As designed, the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician's standard workflow.”
Whatever benefits and efficiencies electronic medical records and highly specialized assessment & decision-making may have had during the industrial growth phase (although I would argue they've been problematic before serious social and economic deterioration are setting in), it seems to me that these computerized systems and high levels of medical specialization will become increasingly disadvantageous (for many reasons) as the global economy contracts and public health further deteriorates.
10/2/14, 11:50 PM
Zachary Braverman said...
10/3/14, 4:26 AM
Don Plummer said...
A friend of mine who is a public health nurse and has spent considerable time in east Africa told me that Ebola has been in Sudan since about 1976. He went on to say that there are five strains of Ebola virus, and one of them is called the Sudan strain.
I asked him if he had any idea why the Sudanese government would want to keep a tight lip on this current outbreak, but I don't have an answer yet.
10/3/14, 4:32 AM
Kutamun said...
Ebola is a wormlike , filament shaped virus
From the Berkley National Lab Website
"The crystal structure of Ebolavirus GP reveals a three-lobed chalice-like structure. The three GP1 subunits (colored blue and green), mediate attachment to new host cells and are tethered together by the three GP2 subunits (white). GP2 forms the protein machinery that drives fusion of the viral membrane with the host cell. The human antibody KZ52 (yellow) binds the GP at the base of the chalice, where it bridges GP1 to GP2, before fusion of the membranes."
This particular nasty glyco-protein pgp :::
"It is responsible for decreased drug accumulation in multidrug-resistant cells and often mediates the development of resistance to anticancer drugs. This protein also functions as a transporter in the blood–brain barrier."
I wonder how many animals it has killed ?
It seems to be in the shape of a cup or chalice , and the number three and the colour red seem to crop up with it .....
Perhaps like Professor Dumbledore , we will be forced to drink , every drop ......???
10/3/14, 4:37 AM
magicalthyme said...
Also from memory, anything in the mint family has antiviral properties. (I successfully treated shingles a few years back with an infusion and poultice that included every mint in my garden, from plain mint, catmint, and lemon balm to oregano, plus licorice tea.)
Mary
10/3/14, 5:21 AM
Ice Torch said...
Now that the MSM has you on their radar, maybe "greering" will become a verb:
Definition: shamelessly striking terror into the hearts of decent patriotic Americans with loose talk about "peak oil" and "civilisational collapse".
As for ebola, well, climate change will increase the incidence of lots of diseases. Last summer I was astounded to find a mosquito in my London living room, and again in my bedroom this summer. This is not supposed to happen in England. On both occasions I was bitten, producing the tell-tale lumps. Luckily they didn't even itch. Though I'm white English with Celtic ancestry in the 1800s, I have Mediterranean looks and tan at the drop of a hat, so I'm hoping I have some genetic immunity from somewhere in my ancestry. However, the popular press here has been writing articles about mosquitoes being here to stay and how disease-carrying species are poised to cross the English Channel. So, yes, "bad" means "it affects me", as you wrote in answer to one comment. I did not enjoy being on the menu of these tiny creatures, when I'm supposed to be at the top of the food chain, and the sound of their horrible whiny buzz drives me crazy.
10/3/14, 5:41 AM
Phil Harris said...
This is not behind a pay-wall
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/ebola/
I am not sure whether this is behind a pay-wall but stories from survivor medics in W Africa stress they do not know in most cases how they got infected.
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/ebola/
In one hospital (now closed) in Monrovia with 15 cases, nine died, most having apparently caught it from the Director who tested negative wrongly and was ill for 10 days before testing positive. I will spare you the details.
Hospitals are pretty good for some things but they do in general present concentrations of both infections and connectivity. And staff can live semi-communally. However, while infection numbers in the ordinary population remain few and localised, hospitals provide a means to quarantine patients during their most infectious phase. I guess though if numbers in the towns go up as in Liberia, hospitals are much less use in containing an epidemic, and also in this case add only modest prospects of better survival for individuals.
One disturbing result of tests on survivors indicates the virus in one case reappearing in semen. 'Carriers' if that is what this man is, represent a future serious threat.
best
Phil
10/3/14, 5:47 AM
Phil Harris said...
Further to, as it were, ... all bets are off? (Gallows humour)
Quote If the virus continues to spread at the current rate, Liberia and Sierra Leone alone will have reported about 550,000 Ebola cases by 20 January, the authors write. But if the official numbers so far represent only 40% of the real burden—which many believe may well be the case—that would mean a total of 1.4 million Ebola cases in those two countries by 20 January. “I certainly hope that we see nothing like those projections,” Donnelly says. “But I think it is a realistic projection of what would happen if we didn’t get our act together."
http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/09/who-cdc-publish-grim-new-ebola-projections
Getting real?
Phil
10/3/14, 5:56 AM
donalfagan said...
"First, let’s look at the situation in West Africa, because that is way more important than anything going on in the US right now. The WHO has said two things about this. First, if there is not a full intervention, there may be hundreds of thousands or even millions of cases of Ebola several months from now (cumulatively). Second, with full intervention they can stop this epidemic.
What is full intervention? They say that full intervention is the development and manufacture of an effective vaccine, and the deployment of that vaccine to a very large percentage of the affected population.
Putting this another way, the current response has been inadequate, and while it can be improved, it can’t be made adequate. Things are pretty bad, are going to get enormously worse, and there is little hope for any other outcome, unless full deployment of a vaccine that does not exist over the next six months is realistic.
Now let’s look at the US. Public health officials and public health experts have been saying the same thing for months. Don’t worry about an Ebola outbreak in the US. We can handle it. We know what we are doing, and we have the systems in place to take care of this. So just don’t worry.
I’m going to tell you now why this is probably both true and untrue."
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/10/02/ebola-in-dallas-texas-is-our-response-to-a-threat-adequate/
10/3/14, 6:05 AM
Eric S. said...
You said to Ray:
"there's a real chance that some of us are going to be dead in the not too distant future. That was always going to happen -- the fall of a civilization involves a lot of death, and it's not distributed solely to the clueless."
I remember way back in the Long Descent, in your bulleted list of things we can do to prepare, one of the things you listed was "work on your spirituality." I'm sure to a lot of people that probably seemed like a strange thing to list as a prep skill, but more recently I've come to realize that a part of that does relate to the role of death in the future. The idea that living in times like this is necessarily about surviving them is, in a way, rooted in the myth of apocalypse, and the idea that the world that comes out on the other side of times like these is supposed to belong to us. It seems to me that part of the reason spirituality is so important in times like this is that our inner state can wind up making the difference between welcoming death openly as an old friend when it comes and dying in agony and turmoil, refusing to let go until the very last moment. Dying early and dying brutally doesn't mean you can't die well.
10/3/14, 6:05 AM
RPC said...
10/3/14, 6:19 AM
peacegarden said...
“Where There are no Doctors” can be downloaded for free, also look for the Merck Manual…basic care and symptoms of common illnesses. That’s a start…a lot of home care is common sense; keeping the patient comfortable, hydrated and well rested.
Peace,
Gail
10/3/14, 6:56 AM
RPC said...
10/3/14, 7:12 AM
peacegarden said...
I did not read your entire entry…oops!
Good hand washing is almost as good as wearing gloves…it’s easy to contaminate your hands while removing the latex ones (there is a technique in doing so safely, but it isn’t always followed.
Cloth gloves? I don’t think that would be useful. Rehydration…yes…salt, sugar and potassium possibly magnesium. There is a product you can buy now called Emergen-C; the ingredients Potassium phosphate, Magnesium hydroxide, Potassium bicarbonate (it fizzes), and some vitamins. Look on the interwebs for correct proportions…Merck Manual may have that too.
They are saying Ebola is not transmitted through breathing, but it may be larger droplets that are infectious…or may become so as this virus evolves.
I would say rest and rehydration are the main treatments…as to glasses verses goggles, there is all the rest of your face not covered by either, and gauze masks will get wet quickly from your own respirations…as can paper ones.
In a home setting, we will have to do the best we can; laundering bedding by hand, even with chlorine bleach, will be difficult. I am making an assumption that we may not have constant or even intermittent electricity; and we know what they say about assuming…
Peace,
Gail
10/3/14, 7:15 AM
thecrowandsheep said...
Ebola -bola -bola!
increasing ex-po-nen-tial-ly
Ebola -bola -bola!
killing you and fa-mi-ly
Ebola -bola -bola!
already getting Su-da-ne-se
Ebola -bola -bola!
this time no vac-cin-ne
Ebola -bola -bola!
thanks to the god of mi-se-ry
Ebola -bola -bola!
underfunded grossly neglected bureacratically bogged down industrial medical complex unable to han-dle it
Ebola -bola -bola!
sh**
10/3/14, 7:32 AM
Raymond Duckling said...
Intuition spoke to me and told "it is going to be at least as bad as the Spanish Flu". I really recommend you to go check the wikipedia article about that (and request if anyone can recommend some more serious resource about that too). It was the Great Pandemic of the 20 century, and studying it will teach us aspects of how this things move in a modern setting that simply do not exist in the Black Death references.
For starters, it is called "Spanish Flu" because at the time Spain remained neutral during WWI, meaning it had no incentive to fudge with the reports to prevent morale to go down in the troops, meaning the media spread the meme that Spain was hit disproportionally hard.
Some will say that there is no comparison, since Ebola is much more deadly. While this is true, Spanish Flu was not a walk in the park either. With mortality rates firmly in the double-digits percent and easier to transmit, it spared no continent, nation or region and killed 3-6% of the world population in a 2 year span. If Ebola manages to spread this much, there might as well be 1 billion lives cut short in a very messy and painful way.
Reflecting on this has made me realize that the odds that all of us will be spared are uncomfortably low, but the odds that all of us will die in this round are even lower. Without doubt someone's going to stay behind and will have to pick up the pieces afterwards. To think otherwise is to engage in apocalyptic fantasies.
10/3/14, 7:47 AM
Tracy Glomski said...
First, in response to this: "It’s hard to find any rational reason for that opposition—the Native peoples have merely launched a slow process of putting wild buffalo herds on their own tribal property, not encroaching on anyone or anything else..."
The broader discussion that's underway covers more than tribal lands. You can download a PDF of the Department of the Interior report here, about halfway down the webpage under the header "Holdings." There's a handy map on page 24, which shows the scope of public lands that are under consideration. When I look at the locations in Nebraska—Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, for example—I can't help noticing how much is still unknown, and how difficult it's going to be to manage the logistics, and how much budget is likely to be required. Where is the funding for that going to come from?
Second, in response to this: "Still, it’s one of the basic axioms of the Druid teachings that undergird these posts that people know more than they think they know, and a gut-level sense of the cascade of changes that would be kickstarted by wild buffalo may be helping drive their opposition."
I'm not personally opposed to the general idea of reintroducing bison, not at all. I do think there's a lot of truth in that statement, though. The issues are not as simple as "bison good, cattle bad." Not meaning to pick on any of your commenters in particular, but I sorta wish that everyone with a "huzzah, let the buffalo roam free!" attitude would at least take time to skim that very readable essay, which addresses some of the complexities that are involved. I could go on and talk about certain incidents and accidents involving bison in my immediate area, which have occurred over the past few years, and which have affected people I personally know. But, I won't.
10/3/14, 7:51 AM
RPC said...
Gatorade: I got a bottle out of the basement (I have a kid in marching band; they have us parents bring in cases of the stuff during band camp in August) and checked the nutrition label. We're aiming for about 130 calories of sugar per liter of fluid, so original Gatorade needs to be diluted with an equal quantity of water to be used for ORT. G2 looks ready for use as is, probably because much of its sweetness comes from sucralose. You can use the above ratio to appropriately dilute other sports drinks.
10/3/14, 8:04 AM
peacegarden said...
Stephen Harrod Buhner’s “Herbal Antivirals” is the one I would recommend , it includes treatment protocols, materia medica for a large number of plants (more than a third of the book!), and a great bibliography for further research. Impressively comprehensive.
Peace,
Gail
10/3/14, 8:59 AM
whomever said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/california-drought-tulare-county.html
Make sure you read the conclusion, where the local officials flat out admit they are helpless:
“We will give people water as long as we have it, but the truth is, we don’t really know how long that will be,” said Andrew Lockman of the Tulare County Office of Emergency Services. “We can’t offer anyone a long-term solution right now. There is a massive gap between need and resources to deal with it.”
10/3/14, 10:15 AM
D.M. said...
10/3/14, 10:36 AM
mr_geronimo said...
I'll probably take my chances with them: paracetamol will be a death sentence in liver-killing disease.
10/3/14, 10:40 AM
heather said...
Thank you very much for posting the link to the VHF care manual. It's exactly what I had been hoping to find. My husband is an ER doc at a hospital serving a low-income community in California, so it's not at all unthinkable that he, and therefore the rest of my family, will be exposed to Ebola some time in the coming months. If this happens, I am assuming that the institutional care facilities will be overwhelmed. His ER has ONE room with air ducts that vent to the outside, thus suitable for isolating an infectious patient. The rest of the hospital's preparations are similarly pathetic. Right now the direction coming down from on high is that anyone who comes in with fever, headache, etc. and reports international travel is supposed to be isolated and tested for Ebola. So every guy coming back from visiting family in Mexico who comes in with the flu is going to get this level of examination and resources? You can see already that this directive is impossible to follow and so will be widely ignored- thus allowing real cases to slip through undetected. So I expect things to be bad here at some point. Rather than abandon any member of my family to the tender mercies of an Ebola tent in the parking lot of the hospital, with overwhelmed care staff and inept, panicked government officials "in charge", I am planning to care for family members at home, if, God forbid, it becomes necessary. So understanding how to do this with lower risk and with supplies I can round up without alerting homeland security is very, very helpful.
This mental exercise has been very useful for me in understanding the choices of many West Africans who do not want to take their family members in to Ebola "treatment" centers. It's not necessarily that they are ignorant or superstitious- quite the opposite, perhaps. They recognize that there is no magic treatment coming through the official channels, that the isolation wards are warehouses to hold the infectious until they either die or get better by themselves, and that perhaps they can better care for their loved ones at home. The trick is doing so without spreading the disease. All those who may be horrified at the idea of my planning not to use the official channels can rest assured that we will be self-quarantined in our rural home if these events should come to pass. Again, God forbid. Wish I had another incantation to ward off these events I fear, but that's all I've got.
--Heather in CA
10/3/14, 11:22 AM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
Re the ghost dance (if the reference was to my mention of the seventh fire peoples):
Just for clarification, when I was speaking of the seventh fire, I was not speaking specifically of the historical cult and misplaced hope of the ghost dance; rather, I was using the term in the sense of a modern Anishinaabe version I heard, in which the peoples of the seventh fire metaphorically "travel back along the path to pick up bundles" of old and useful modern knowledge to carry with them into the future. The surrounding dangers in this version are very real, any kind of success is not assured, and the story actually reminds me of the "story project" of this blog: green wizards and cultural conservers, not to mention ecologists, herbalists, druids and so on, in my view, are going about a similar project. So are the Indians and white (and Indian) naturalists and biologists working to reintroduce native prairie species, as well as organic farmers and gardeners and so on.
It is not a question of emerging into a new life of utopian peace and plenty, it is a question of understanding that human life should be based on natural systems and learning the traditional knowledge and other kinds of knowledge that can help heal ecosystems and help make a way of life in the midst of dark times. And developing an appropriate spirituality, I suppose, if an individual or group is led in that way (I am).
There is also the idea that the people working together in this way might cross traditional ethnic/racial/political fault lines--thus the idea of a "hybrid culture," which feeds into JMG's discussion of how new ethnicities could easily arise in the future.
That being said, I completely agree that all kinds of end-times, cargo-cult kinds of mythologies will sprout, not to mention nihilistic theologies/ideologies that place a premium on the taking of life. We humans are good at that sort of thing. I choose to employ hope (not optimism) and look for ways to help where I can and to associate with others who are working together to benefit our natural systems, along with learning to live within those natural systems.
(One reason I appreciate this blog community so much!)
10/3/14, 11:40 AM
peacegarden said...
You can load up on IV supplies, protective gear and a good supply of nutritious food that will keep you and yours going if trips to the grocery store become impossible. Your husband can teach you how to install an IV if he were unable to get home; that is beyond most of us. I hope that will not be necessary for you, but it is good to think ahead.
I second the elderberry syrup as a daily tonic…it’s easy to make and tastes delicious.
Think through all the events that will need to be handled as per the CDC’s VHF booklet, and do your best to gather all you can think of to have on hand.
Have to agree that if this goes bad, many of us will choose to stay home and do what we can…thank you for reminding us that people are not always as presented by our government and media promulgate. Wisdom can be found in many forms…you seem to have a good handle on this thing.
Green blessings,
Gail
10/3/14, 12:02 PM
streamfortyseven said...
The study says that genistein alone (as well as tyrphostin AG1478, a pharmaceutical preparation) are effective but the combination has enhanced effectiveness due to a synergistic effect.
It turns out that genistein is found in fermented soy products, such as miso: "Miso, like other soyfoods, contains high concentration of a potent anti-cancer agent known as genistein. Researches indicate that miso contains 25 times more genistein than other unfermented soyfoods, like soy milk and tofu. As such, miso is beneficial in lowering the risk of cancer, especially breast cancer." http://recipeclout.india-server.com/miso.html
10/3/14, 12:45 PM
SaintS said...
Incidentally, a vibrant direct descendant of Seton's woodcraft movement survives in the UK. It's the Wood Craft Folk', which still retains certain tenets and a view icons/slogans from his era. It's quite strong (20k members). Have a look here if your are interested.
http://woodcraft.org.uk/
10/3/14, 12:50 PM
ed boyle said...
I am now reading people's history of us by zinn as reccomended by pcr on his blog and the mindless slaughter of indian peoples by all whites and the superior human values and social values of indians are stressed. Nothing changes. Our civilization is sick in a real technical sense. Illness spreads and then dies off or infects everything then everything dies off.
Perhaps a lack of fuels to expand would stop the disease and we could be forced back to nature, without metals as indians lived. They also had civilizational cycles however and all was not perfect.
I was doing a bit of awareness meditation and noticed the wind always present on my skin as I go about my day. We are like fish in water and don't notice air pressure. The more sensitive skin gets as in tingling by tai chi the more one becomes sensitive to atmospheric pressure difference perhaps. The butterfly effect comes to mind. I wave my hand in air and it pushes like a bottle in water to next continent over time, like a meme in internet.
10/3/14, 1:29 PM
1ab9a86a-8991-11e3-899b-000bcdcb8a73 said...
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentary-health-workers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola
...
Then there was this:
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/doctor-boards-flight-in-ebola-protection-suit-to-p/nhZk8/?icmp=ajc_internallink_textlink_homepage
(FWIW)
For weeks we've been hearing that Ebola wouldn't spread in the US like it does in Africa, due to better hygiene etc etc.
So in Africa we see teams of guys in spacesuits equipped with chlorine sprays. They spray everything, including themselves, rather a lot.
In Dallas? First they couldn't persuade anyone to do the cleanup. Then (if media reports are accurate) they got a "contractor" whose idea of cleaning up a bunch of ebola vomit is to hit it with high pressure water, thus creating a lovely infectious mist right next to a large apartment building.
(I really thought someone was making that up, but the report persists).
The CDC is in charge of what exactly? They can't even coordinate a single case! Are they pleased with ebola-vomit-blasting?
They seem to be low-balling the infectiousness issue.
Then consider that incoming flights are apparently still permitted from countries whose neighbors are trying to quarantine off ...
It hit me just now that I've seen this kind of epic fiddling-while-Rome-burns before. Hurricane Katrina. This is what it was like watching that unfold. But obviously this is in another risk league entirely.
What does this all add up to? The only thing I'm left with is that the options for serious action will disrupt a lot of business-as-usual. Airlines would be instant casualties and plenty more to follow. They'll be kaput anyway but it will take a little longer if we all just pretend.
Very hard to keep up a "growth" or "recovery" narrative in the face of that. So it seems to me that what "they" are doing is defending the mountains of abstract value locked up in the "economy" against the all too concrete reality of a plague.
So we have a collision between the abstract and the concrete. Or more realistically, a collision between the abstract and the wet, squishy reality of nature.
If the elites wanted a better way to exhibit their senility to all and sundry, they'd have a hard time beating what they're doing right now.
10/3/14, 1:38 PM
Jason Heppenstall said...
I'm mildly astonished by that comment. Mosquitos are widespread throughout the UK and always have been.
Mosquitos with malaria ... well, that would be a different matter.
10/3/14, 1:42 PM
latheChuck said...
Our ARES group has a monthly "net" (on-air meeting) which all amateurs are welcome to join. We usually use 3820 kHz, LSB, at 7:30 PM Eastern Time, on the Wednesday following the third Monday of each month. Though we're focused on Maryland, stations as far away as Georgia, Ohio, and New York may be able to check in.
Regarding home-treatment, this is from the Washington Post:
One speaker struck an especially optimistic note: Melvin Korkor is a Liberian doctor who contracted Ebola while working alongside an infected nurse. He was given a one-in-10 chance of survival. Kokor quarantined himself, forced himself to eat and took solace in prayer. “I said to myself I was going to make it,” Korkor has said.
Unfortunately, there's no information on WHAT he ate, or the nature of his prayers.
..............................
I have NPR news on at the moment, and just heard this crucial bit of analysis: "confident shoppers are all-important as the holidays approach".
10/3/14, 1:51 PM
DeAnander said...
10/3/14, 2:03 PM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
Greetings from the Illinois tallgrass prairie region! You make excellent points re bison and the complexities of reintroduction. Chris Helzer's blogpost you linked really does a good analysis of management issues. I read his blog often.
Interestingly, Helzer doesn't discuss the different physical grazing methods of the two species or differences in hoof anatomy, but perhaps this is obviated by the different habitat preferences and the general effects of overstocking. Too many grazers in too small a space will have a negative effect on the plant life, no matter what the species. (Deer are a problem in the forest preserve areas I help maintain.)
At Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois, one big hurdle that has had to be overcome for bison reintroduction is the building of a special corral for inoculation against brucellosis, a controversial subject in itself.
I guess when a native wild species is reintroduced or even simply encouraged there will always be complex issues, controversies and difficulties. My area of knowledge really is more native plants than animals; you'd be amazed at the controversy and even legal battles sparked by gardeners who plant wild native plants in their yards or what happens when groups want to plant prairie grasses instead of turfgrass in a public area. This is starting to change, thank goodness, though slowly.
I think the social, political and cultural issues surrounding reintroduction are as thorny as the physical and monetary issues. Around here, people are having to learn to live with the fact that coyotes are a presence; there have been incidents involving small dogs--but the answer is not to exterminate the coyotes (even if we could, which is highly doubtful). There are camps--coyotes ok and coyotes evil; it just depends on how people view ecosystems and the human place therein, I guess, and also how well they understand how ecosystems function--which you clearly do--no criticism implied!
Are you familiar with the rewilding going on in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe?
10/3/14, 2:14 PM
jonathan said...
as to ebola, i suspect that the u.s. government would not have purchased 160,000 virus resistant hazard suits if the situation was not worse than we are being told.
10/3/14, 2:17 PM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
10/3/14, 2:20 PM
Tony Rantala said...
I found this some time ago:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/estrogen-drugs-clomid-and-fareston-block-ebola-infection-246956
Study:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955358/
It seems that estrogen antagonists might be an effective treatment to ebola, which makes sense since ebola appears have something to do with estrogen and/or nitric oxide.
Amiodarone might also work, but I did not find any animal studies on the subject.
I also wanted to ask the Archdruid if this is actual magic :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09/22/4chans-latest-terrible-prank-convincing-west-africans-that-ebola-doctors-actually-worship-the-disease/
Some horrifyingly racist people have been making sacrifices of blood, semen and energy to ebola, and it seems that some Africans have reacted by accusing aid workers. Which is not suprising considering the history. I don't really believe in magic, but reality does not seem to care what I believe in.
10/3/14, 2:27 PM
donalfagan said...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/03/d-c-hospital-evaluating-patient-who-has-ebola-like-symptoms/
10/3/14, 3:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Janet, I actually prefer the first edition of Buhner's herbal antibiotics book, as it concentrates more on commonly available herbs and less on exotics. Still, whatever works for you!
Glenn, of course it was -- thanks for catching that.
DeAnander, and that's been being predicted now for decades. Not that anyone was listening...
Edward, good. Also spot on -- all I asked was the month and year, after all.
Bogatyr, every photo I've seen of people doing much of anything around that apartment has had a noticeable shortage of protective gear. Oh well, I don't suppose we'll miss Dallas much.
Beneath, true -- and of course it's equally true that complicated data processing systems also provide people with a galaxy of additional excuses for their own incompetence.
Zachary, thank you!
Don, of course. The Sudanese strain of the virus pops up every so often; like most of the eastern African strains, it's apparently less transmissible than the West African strain. The question is which strain is involved in this outbreak. As I mentioned in my post, it might be an ordinary outbreak of the local strain; if it's not -- if the West African strain has already spread along the old Sahel trade routes -- we are much closer to a global pandemic than most people realize.
Kutamun, zoologists are very worried that it may wipe out the gorilla -- they've had an epidemic of it as well. It seems to be harmless to fruit bats and wild pigs, but not to primates.
Ice Torch, I hadn't heard that the mainstream media has noticed me -- one clumsy negative review in one financial blog, I think, doesn't quite count. If they ever do, it'll be entertaining.
10/3/14, 3:42 PM
Charles Justice said...
Many countries in the world have strong enough governments and public health systems to control this disease. Nigeria, a huge neighbouring country had some cases, but quickly isolated them. If anything, this should be pretty good evidence that strong central governments and public services are vital for our survival.
10/3/14, 3:44 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Donalfagan, every time somebody loudly insists that an Ebola epidemic can't get going here in the US, that makes it more likely that an Ebola epidemic gets going here in the US. Complacency is the worst risk factor of all.
Eric, well, we'll see! For what it's worth, I don't expect the internet to go down as a result of this crisis, even if we get a full-blown epidemic here in the US. That possibility lies further off, I'd say.
RPC, so noted!
Crow, how very cheery. Ahem. ;-)
Raymond, exactly. That's why I put the upper end possibility around 2 to 3 billion deaths. There will be survivors; it's just by no means certain that all of us will be among them.
Tracy, of course there would be problems. Once a trophic cascade gets set in motion, it's hard to guess what consequences would follow. I have a wholly emotional attachment to buffalo, and the story made a good anchor for the overall theme of the post, is all.
Whomever, it's refreshing to hear someone in authority admit that. Perhaps the illusion of omnipotence is finally wearing off.
DM, true enough.
Mr. Geronimo, I know boldo is much used for that by herbalists here as well, so your grandmother may have been on to something. ;-)
Adrian, fascinating. I wasn't familiar with the Anishinaabe prophecy. Going back and picking up bundles is most of what I do these days!
Stream, good heavens. Okay, that's good to know -- given that miso soup is a common item of diet in my house!
10/3/14, 4:00 PM
Michelle said...
Heard on NPR news this evening (paraphrase): "People are too pessimistic in the US. The economy is recovering and will keep getting better. People are just pessimistic because of the lack of leadership from Washington."
To the person(s) who linked the Boston Globe article about rising electricity prices in New England last week: Thank you. I have printed off your comment and posted it on my refrigerator, and have started trying to impress its urgency upon my four children. We do have solar panels, but that isn't enough to cover all of our needs - plus we're grid-tied.
To JMG: I was talking to my local librarian last weekend, recommending the DVD "Blind Spot," and she jumped up from her desk and said, 'oh, you'll want to read this.' She came back with your "Not the Future We Ordered"! I now have it checked out and lo! my next-door neighbors' griping about the "unbearable odor of my rabbits" sure sounds a lot like the scapegoating you mention early on.... {n.b. my rabbits to NOT stink. But then again, neither do they smell of bleach or Glade plug-ins, which seems to be what Mr and Mrs Next Door think the world should smell like. I don't get to gripe to the health department about the stench of their (nightly) dryer exhaust, full of petroleum-based perfumes}
10/3/14, 4:03 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ed, nothing human is ever perfect. Why would people in the future do without metals, by the way, when there are so many millions of tons of it free for the taking in the ruined cities of the Old Ones?
1ab, exactly. The clownish way in which this whole business is being handled is the reverse of comforting.
Lathechuck, one useful takeaway is that it's possible to survive Ebola, and that there are things each of us can do to tilt the odds in our favor. As for those confident shoppers, I wonder how confident they'll be when the fever hits...
DeAnander, that's almost impossible to say. It depends on how long new cases keep appearing in your locality -- and I don't know of a good model for predicting that.
Jonathan, yes, those haz-mat suits are on my mind as well.
Adrian, please let us know what your EMT friend has to say!
Tony, good. You don't have to believe in magic if magic believes in you. ;-) More seriously, magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will. The Ebola-chan business is a nastily effective little tool for causing changes in consciousness, and not helpful ones, either.
Donalfagan, yes, I just heard.
Charles, I noted in my post that it's entirely possible that some countries will be able to marshal the resources necessary to stop an epidemic on their own territory long enough for a vaccine to be developed and deployed. It remains to be seen whether the US is one of those countries, but that's a secondary issue. The point I'd make is that a very large number of Third World countries are failed or semi-failed states with minimal health care systems, and if Ebola is allowed to spread outside its current hot zone into those other failed states, a huge number of people are going to die.
The Nigerian case is misleading, as it involved people who were wealthy enough to travel by plane and get access to Western-style health care, and both of those factors brought the situation to the attention of the government. The mode of transmission that matters, rather, is among the rural poor, especially in the northern half of the country where civil war with Boko Haram has plunged much of the countryside into chaos. That's what needs to be watched, and odds are it won't be detected soon enough to matter.
10/3/14, 4:18 PM
Dwig said...
Now, some thoughts triggered by the confluence of pandemics, Indians, buffalo, and passenger pigeons. (I haven't read all 183 comments -- so far -- so I apologize if I'm repeating something.)
First, for those who enjoy indulging in alternate histories, imagine how the contact between the indigenous Americans and Europeans starting in the late 15th century might have played out if the diseases introduced by the Europeans had been only a mild annoyance to the natives, and thus the Europeans had to deal with thriving populations and well-established civilizations.
Back to our current reality, but keeping the longer historical focus: Charles C. Mann, in the book 1491, points out:
Until Columbus, Indians were a keystone species in most of the hemisphere. Annually burning undergrowth, clearing and replanting forests, building canals and raising fields, hunting bison and netting salmon, growing maize, manioc, and the Eastern Agricultural Complex. ... But all of these efforts required close, continual oversight. In the sixteenth century, epidemics removed the boss.
American landscapes after 1492 were emptied ... Suddenly deregulated , ecosystems shook and sloshed ... The forest that the first New England colonists thought was primeval and enduring was actually in the midst of violent change and demographic collapse. So catastrophic and irrevocable were the changes that it's tempting to think that almost nothing survived from the past. This is wrong; landscape and people remain, though greatly altered. And they have lessons to heed, both about the earth on which we all live, and about the mental frames we bring to it.
(Actually, Brian Cady beat me to referencing this book -- thanks, Brian.)
Pinku, thanks for the passenger pigeon reference. Mann also gives an interesting account of their nature and fate. Before the epidemics, the pigeon and the people were competitors for many of the same resources, so the people ensured that they never got too numerous (think of rats with wings -- my image, not Mann's). So, the vast throngs of pigeons that the "new bosses" encountered were the natural result of the lifting of an ecological constraint.
On another topic: some of the comments have mentioned growing populations of Native Americans in the Midwest, and generally a slow recovery of their culture and identity (not exactly as it was, of course). In my area, the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, the local tribes have been quietly establishing a modest presence. It may be, when the population of us "newcomers" has declined far enough, the Tongva, Chumash, and Tataviam will inherit what we perforce abandoned. May they take better care of it than we have!
Yet another topic, on Great Plains agriculture: Janine Benyus, in her book "Biomimicry" has a chapter on "growing food like a prairie".
(The captcha number is 747 -- hmmm.)
10/3/14, 4:30 PM
1ab9a86a-8991-11e3-899b-000bcdcb8a73 said...
"… complicated data processing systems also provide people with a galaxy of additional excuses for their own incompetence."
Well, we need a laugh, so I'll just point out that this phenomenon is also known as "computer says no":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4A18tUUb2Y
10/3/14, 5:20 PM
Michelle said...
10/3/14, 5:43 PM
Josh Jacobs said...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola
Yes, it is going to affect vulnerable populations in countries with the lack of sanitation and access to health care...which potentially includes some sectors in the so-called "Developed world". However, the grim hyperbole portrayed will not happen.
10/3/14, 5:49 PM
SLClaire said...
I'll make some suggestions too: if you are looking for a very good basic book on preparing herbs, the one I use is Making Plant Medicine by Richo Cech. He tells you how to do it both without making exact measurements and how to make preparations using simple math and cheap glassware (a graduated cylinder) so you can make preparations of fairly well known strength. He also offers dosage info for many common herbs. My copy is well used. Buhner's books are excellent for the details on each of the herbs he profiles, but in my opinion not as helpful on making preparations, where Cech's book shines.
If you want to use the more exact method you can buy graduated cylinders of various sizes from American Science and Surplus at http://www.sciplus.com/ Everything else you'd want is easily obtainable if you don't already have it.
Consider, too, measures to keep your immunity level up to at least slightly increase the chance that you won't get Ebola (or other communicable diseases). Getting enough sleep, walking or similar kinds of physical activity, doing something you enjoy whenever you can, and similar things may help with this. Look into vitamins, minerals, and/or herbs along this line that you can use every day.
Yesterday I learned that a friend from the dulcimer club my husband and I belong to died of West Nile virus. That's the third person I know who has died in the last month. Puts me in mind of general demographic decline as you spoke of some weeks back. Not that Ebola won't overshadow other diseases in the near term, but as others have said, there are plenty of diseases out there and they will all prosper with declines in public health measures.
10/3/14, 6:06 PM
latheChuck said...
Quick solution: if the world-wide progression is from 7000 cases to 7 billion cases (a million-fold), then to get to 350 million (here) means we need to have 350 current cases (here). Whether that sounds like a lot or a little is a matter of opinion.
The funny thing about exponential growth functions is that, no matter where you are on the curve, it looks like something dramatic is just about to happen. That is, just as it did five doublings ago, the very next interval will grow as much as all prior intervals combined! Compared to WHATEVER the current level is, history looks benign, and the future catastrophic. That's just the nature of exponentials.
10/3/14, 6:35 PM
latheChuck said...
"The droughts caused by climate volatility have lowered water tables in parts of the U.S., so fracking may soon be profitable only where there's greater access to water, such as in the Northeast," says Wolfe.
The U.S. may have to choose wisely where it drills, says Christopher Wolfe, CIO, Portfolio Solutions, Private Banking and Investment Group & Institutional at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
.........................
This was in a Merrill Lynch investment newsletter. I guess they're not totally worthless cheerleaders for BAU, after all.
10/3/14, 6:49 PM
Kevin said...
I live deep in the jungle of the coastal ranges on 300 acres of thick uncleared forest. I feel and smell the earth, the grass & the trees every day. The trees talk, the birds call out, the stars & moon at night are beyond spectacular. I am off grid. The Peace & Harmony & Beauty are captivating. A lostt world.
And on occasion, when I go to the City 3 hours away, I see traffic jams, new horror suburbs, bulldozers, screaching noise, shopping malls, acres of concrete & harried angry people.
And I see Societies Collapse right there in front of me in the lost soles in the economic madness of the city. The drugs, the alcohol, the crime, the gangs, the fear, the suicides.
They do not know the Buffalo Wind. They have lost their attachment to the natural world. They are already fully in the Collapse of their Civilization.
JMG, I have read you for years. This is my first, & possibly my last comment. I know exactly where you are coming from
10/3/14, 6:49 PM
William Church said...
Alas, I think it's a long shot.
The great depression almost put even the most prolific game animals extinct. I'm only in my mid 40s and can remember as a kid that whitetail deer just plain did not exist around our part of the country. Good hunters would travel hours to hunt and might see 4 or 5 legal deer in their lifetimes.
Combine a large, armed, hungry group of people with a group of large tasty game animals. Take away the regulatory protection hunters have paid for? Leave these folks unsupervised for a long protracted economic decline? A century or two?
Be lucky to have a breeding population of possums left, let alone deer, elk, buffs, etc. I wish it weren't so.
But maybe I'm wrong. I hope so.
Will
10/3/14, 7:04 PM
patriciaormsby said...
And you are to be praised for your caution in addressing this. People are already under attack for proposing alternative strategies.
There are reports that nano-silver solution was effective in vitro against ebola virus. In vivo, not known, but worth a try. If nano-silver is not available (a distinct possibility), colloidal silver can be made at home. Again, worth a try.
Vitamin C megadoses, IV in particular, look hopeful, and I've read (but not confirmed) that ebola kills by vitamin C depletion.
As far as alternative health sites go, I have been most favorably impressed by Dr. Mercola. He has not weighed in on this ebola outbreak yet. He is cautious about vetting the information he presents. My husband and I visited his clinic about ten years ago, and our health has improved dramatically since. I would refer to his site for information on immunity, liver and kidneys. He himself has dealt with kidney issues, apparently due to mercury poisoning during amalgam removal.
I use dandelion root tea regularly for my liver. Dandelions are everywhere, and every bit as good as milk thistle.
I have not tried couch grass, but for kidney disease, I know that is recommended.
The Emotional Freedom Technique is another powerful tool. I have eliminated my use of painkillers entirely for the past ten years.
Regarding home treatment, I downloaded a copy of "Where There is No Doctor" (not sure that is exact), but I would also seriously look into isolation techniques, now, while the information is available.
10/3/14, 7:27 PM
charlie sheldon said...
My concern is not bout ebola cases felling millions of Americans. I think actually we will be able to contain this once people realize we must. The bigger danger is much more immediate. At what point does the system begin to shut down through fear and raising the moat? Much sooner than we all think, I fear. If cases appear in India and Europe and China and Brazil, even if one or two, suddenly flights are empty, borders are closed, materials and food left on the docks. This can all happen way before any epidemic gets out of control. Parents will not send their kids to schools, nobody will ride the bus, public meetings will cease, stores will become deserts, empty. People will not go to football games, sports events, perhaps even churches. And by the time everyone realizes that this disease like SARS and others is not the world ending scourge everyone offered, it will be too late. The scourge will have already happened.
10/3/14, 7:30 PM
Random Man said...
I just don't know how many more of these our civilization can take. The healthcare system is taxed to breaking point with the chronically ill and elderly.
10/3/14, 7:44 PM
Tracy Glomski said...
Greetings back at'cha from the mixed-grass prairies of the rainwater basin of South-Central Nebraska. I love the Illinois tallgrass prairies, and I regret that I don't get to explore those more often. Usually my husband and I are passing through by train on our way to Michigan when we're in your part of the country.
You and I on the same page with all of your comments, I think. I don't work directly with livestock myself (much less with wild bison)—I'm simply fortunate to have connections with a few people who do. I'm so glad to hear that you read and enjoy Chris Helzer's blog. He's every bit as personable in face-to-face conversations, wearing his considerable expertise and talents lightly.
I wish I could say I'd be amazed at the controversies generated by planting natives, but since the city government here has served us with a couple of notices over the years, concerning the "weeds" in our yard, I'm already intimately familiar with that. ;-)
I'm not familiar with the rewilding in the Netherlands that you mention, however. If you'd like to talk more about that or anything else, and if you think that conversation might wander off-topic for our gracious host's posts, please feel free to drop a comment (marked not-for-posting, if you like) at my newish blog, As to the Wonder, and I'd be delighted to chat with you further!
10/3/14, 8:32 PM
Redneck Girl said...
Wolf, I didn't know that the puma had expanded into the southwest -- that's very good news, though I suspect a lot of people down that way will disagree. There needs to be a climax predator to keep deer and feral hogs from wrecking the ecosystem, and Felis concolor ought to be just the ticket.
I don't think the puma will be the biggest cat down there. Or not for 'long' at any rate. I recall reading not too long ago (within the last year maybe two?) that on the American side of the border a jaguar was caught on a game camera. With people being fewer on the ground jaguars will have a chance to come back again. I don't think a puny little mountain lion will have much choice other than to move over or get out!
To be honest with you, I don't think I'll survive this epidemic. I'm 62 and have no one who could care for me if I get sick. And at my age I don't believe I'd be a high priority. Although I may watch the proceedings from the spirit world on my little Appaloosa gelding I lost a couple of decades back. Riding the Buffalo Wind on him would be a blessing and a privilege! Not to mention joyous!
Wadulisi
10/3/14, 9:31 PM
Grebulocities said...
I knew ahead of time from you that it contained far more parallels to the 2008 crash than most people would have liked to admit. But I didn't expect that there'd be a chapter titled "In Goldman, Sachs We Trust", several other actors including Lehman Brothers and the National City Bank of New York, a property bubble that fed into the stock bubble, many "new" and "innovative" ways to bundle together securities to create financial products, and so forth.
The last few pages contain comments about how the financial structure of the 1950s is built to be considerably more resilient, how the US has a persistent trade surplus and vastly reduced inequality (as of back then), and so forth. But even under those conditions, he considered speculative bubbles to be at least as threatening to capitalism as Communism would ever be.
But progress has still been made. Back then, the stock ticker couldn't keep up with what was happening and people were making panicked trades based on hours-old data. This time around, automated algorithms make trades with millisecond speeds, causing the occasional flash crash along with the real crashes. If that isn't progress, I don't know what is.
10/3/14, 9:35 PM
Unknown said...
Another crisis, another shopping opportunity. There's a good herb store within walking distance of my place. Today I bought Herbal Antibiotics and Herbal Antivirals, housemade elderflower syrup, zinc tablets and an herbal tea mixture to strengthen the immune system. (I don't have space to grow many herbs or places to gather most of them.)
I've read part of the antiviral book and skimmed the rest. Things I've learned so far:
Stephen Buhner is a very good writer, well organized, direct and clear about his sources. He is also a punster, sarcastic, and funny. Chapter Six has a two page rant about taxonomy that had me laughing out loud repeatedly.
The first chapter contains a long scientific explanation about how viruses propagate. I had an odd double reaction to this. I tried to read with detachment, emulating Buhner's respect for viruses and their ingenuity at overcoming obstacles. OTOH, from a more personal point of view it's a horror movie. I learned that there are DNA viruses and RNA viruses. RNA viruses mutate more rapidly.
Chapter Two has clinical details of the progression of symptoms in Spanish Influenza. I had thought it was just a more severe kind of flu. Turns out people soaked sheets with blood. I also didn't know that one third! of everyone on earth caught it (a much smaller number got very ill).
When one gets into the chapters on remedies and prevention, things get cheerier.
Wikipedia says Ebola is an RNA virus. I draw three conclusions from that. First, as it spreads, new strains will develop, and it won't be possible to create vaccines for all the strains. Second, natural selection favors mutation in two directions: easier transmission to new hosts and reduced lethality to those hosts (so they will have more opportunities to pass the virus on). When both those tendencies are pushed far enough you get the common cold, which you can catch from touching a dry doorknob, but nearly everyone recovers from.
Those are general trends and the way any given virus mutates in a short period of time isn't predictable. So I believe the course of this epidemic is not predictable. Just as medium sized earthquakes teach engineers how to build more earthquake resistant structures, the good that might come out of this would be realistic but not utterly destructive testing of both the public health system of the entire world, and the ability of human beings to keep calm and carry on.
Captcha 1900
10/3/14, 11:38 PM
goedeck said...
" In the 1870s, an immense horse flu outbreak swept across North America. City by city and town by town, horses got sick and perhaps five percent of them died. Half of Boston burned down during the outbreak, because there were no horses to pull the pump wagons. In the West, the U.S. Cavalry was fighting the Apaches on foot because all the horses were sick... The horse flu outbreak pulled the rug out from under the economy.""
10/4/14, 12:19 AM
Marcello said...
It has become patently clear that such measures are going to be undertaken far too late to make a positive difference. The following picture is worth a thousands of words:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/workers-spray-ebola-patients-vomit-sidewalk-pressure-washer-protective-clothing-photo.html
We are in the hands of the Gods now
10/4/14, 12:42 AM
Taraxacum said...
My speculative approach that I would use if I were to come down with the disease, would consist of a cocktail of at least three of the antivirals in Buhner's book, of which I already have several quarts prepared, as the primary approach. Say, elder, chinese skullcap, and lomatium, for example. Elderberry syrup is a good preventative. A tablespoon taken daily is something that some claim will ward off the flu. It may help with ebola as well. It's not at all considered curative though. Elder flowers, and perhaps leaves, bark and root, may carry curative properties not contained in the berries. The two have quite different biochemical profiles.
In addition to direct antivirals, I would reach for supportive herbs. Echinacea is excellent. It's one people tend to dramatically underdose. The dosage given on a bottle of echinacea tincture is likely to accomplish exactly nothing at all. I prefer it by the ounce, hourly, when fighting off a bug. You might as well toss out your capsules as well, you don't even know what's in those things. The other supportive herb that jumps out at me is licorice. Licorice is synergistic with a number of herbs that have antiviral properties. It is seen as an adrenal tonic, and ebola is believed to target the adrenal system. In addition, it is known to have hypertensive properties in some people. This is typically considered a harmful side effect, but when hypervolemic shock is a risk, it could potentially be a good thing.
Milk thistle is the most broadly liver-protecting herb I am aware of, with effects well verified scientifically. It is best consumed in a whole/crushed or encapsulated form. The extract is considered by some to be worthless.
Blood volume balancing herbs and antihemorrhagics come to mind as a possibility. Yarrow is viewed as an herb that balances bloodflow and blood volume, stems hemorrhage, and is a diaphoretic, useful in fighting viral infections that are fever-producing. Yarrow can be consumed safely in copious amounts. If I had ebola I would drink several quarts of hot yarrow and elderflower tea a day. Shepherd's purse tincture and cayenne powder, tea or tincture come to mind as strong antihemorrhagics that I would also attempt to use in small, supportive doses.
It isn't widely known, but if all else fails, water can be absorbed through the skin. I'm not sure just how much you take in that way, but for someone soaking an a warm bathtub, given enough time, it can be enough to matter. Rectal injections, while distasteful for most to think about, are also very effective in getting fluid aborbed quickly and directly into the bloodstream. Plain water, electrolyte solutions, and also herbal teas.
These are just speculations. I have no idea if any of this is any good, and I welcome criticism or suggestions. It's simply where I would start if I were looking for answers.
10/4/14, 1:22 AM
Phil Harris said...
Plague was a regular visitor to the British Isles, long after the Black Death. The huge late mediaeval London was still fast growing in 18th and 19th C and seems to have been an epicentre for repeated waves. (London grew from c. 80,000 to over 700,000 inhabitants between 1550 and 1750.) Rural areas were not spared from plague, however, and we have numerous examples of ‘plague villages’, abandoned, with the archaeology still in the ground.
There is one village apparently of this kind close to where I live. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancroft Legends of others suggest examples (Eyam in Derbyshire) of heroic self-isolation, not so much to avoid plague but in an attempt not to pass it on. http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/derby/article_1.shtml
South from here is a village abandoned after in this case a cholera outbreak in 1847 http://www.chollerton-churches.org.uk/thockrington.html Recently by choice the intellectual father of our post-war welfare state ennobled as Lord Beveridge is buried here with his wife. As the Church link above puts it - “Rarely is there anything less than a significant wind here and rain falls horizontally on most occasions.” But I can personally verify it is a very quiet place.
It all seems but a breath away. I remember well my Auntie Jenny an orphan child of a young couple died from Spanish Flu 1917 – 1919, who was brought up as young step-sister to my mother.
So it goes
Phil
10/4/14, 3:34 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Seems a bit unlikely! However, there is actually a remote possibility that such an event may occur with the recently extinct Tasmanian Tiger and it would be a good thing if it is successful.
Hy Kylie,
Spot on! A tidy bit of understanding of our place in this environment.
Cheers
Chris
10/4/14, 5:10 AM
Dagnarus said...
"Travel restrictions could worsen Ebola crisis: experts"
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/mobile/health/travel-restrictions-could/1342384.html
The rationale for this statement.
"If we impose an aerial quarantine on these countries, we undermine their fight against the epidemic: the rotation of foreign medical staff and distribution of supplies, already inadequate, will become even more difficult,"
To my mind this reads as, either we are too cheap/underfunded to organize private flights for medical staff. That said it could also be that their is some fair that restricting travel with west Africa will lead to a slowdown in the economy.
Some other choice quotes from the article.
"Even in the rare event of an exported infection, provided countries know how to identify a possible infection, then respond appropriately, the risk of wider infection ... is low."
"Closing the borders is like closing your eyes," said Michael Kinzer of the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who led a recent surveillance and advisory Ebola mission to Guinea. "It makes more sense for countries to spend their money and energy on preparing their health systems to recognise an Ebola case and respond correctly ... so that the virus does not spread."
Well it looks like we will get to see whether they are right or not, I guess. Hopefully they are, taking into account recent events I doubt it.
10/4/14, 5:21 AM
Degringolade said...
I must admit, I like your flavor of your prose much better than I like the news you bring. Not that I disagree with you. I just don't particularly like it.
I just wanted to be one of those "correctors" that plague all blogs.
Now you posit a twenty-day doubling rate for Ebola. At the risk of sounding pedantic, per the latest data from Science, August 28, 2014
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1369.full
The doubling rate appears to approximately 35 days. So, most folks would say to themselves "whew, that bought us some time."
Well buckaroos, sorry 'bout that.
As copiously proved by adherents hunched over their Casio calculators in suburban kitchens across America, the date that our buddy Mr. Marburg takes 1,000,000,000 of our family to their long home is July 20th, 2015
Exponential functions are tricky. I deal with them better than most, when I saw the doubling rate assumption nearly doubling, I did do a little “whew” myself.
But when you plug the numbers into merciless Mr. Excel Spreadsheet, the truth is, they really don’t buy you much. a thirty-five day doubling time takes you out to December 17th. One hundred and fifty days.
Oh well
(BTW) I posted also posted this on my blog (http://mightaswellliebackandenjoyit.blogspot.com/)
as a shameless plug to draw some visitors to a sadly disused corner of the internet.
10/4/14, 8:25 AM
Shane Wilson said...
Where do you think the cattle/bison balance will be struck in the deindustrial future? Certainly, cattle are here in North America to stay, yet bison are native and geared to the plains. What sort of ecosystem/balance do you see in the future?
Regarding the patient in Dallas getting sent home, we have an epidemic of unthinking ignorance that permeates everything in the U.S. today. My guess is that what's behind the lapse. My guess is that the triage nurse was just another soulless underpaid zombie on autopilot, stressed out, with a barely contained rage simmering beneath the surface, of a kind that is all too common in most every American workplace nowadays. I see it daily, myself. My guess is that sort of ignorance was behind the lapse of judgement.
10/4/14, 11:30 AM
Shining Hector said...
Lots of interesting stuff in this thread. Thanks to Tony for the article about Clomid, that was astonishing, I'm surprised it hasn't been publicized more. Were I a suspicious man, I might wonder if that has something to do with it being a 50-year old drug, orally administered, easily tolerated, and fairly cheap. I kinda facepalmed about the miracle Zmapp hoopla at the time and now it's even more laughable. Yeah, we get a serious hemorrhagic fever outbreak and the nurses/doctors that actually do show up for work are going to be able to hook up thousands per city to IVIG drips and monitor them, dream on guys. And that's if they can actually manufacture enough, which is by no means assured. Meanwhile an entirely practical existing drug with a known side-effect profile that by the way would be 100x easier to manufacture and have production ramped up right now is basically ignored. Yep, sounds like modern medicine in action.
10/4/14, 11:58 AM
Moshe Braner said...
10/4/14, 12:42 PM
Ixtlan said...
One of the key discoveries of this century is that co-operative processes in general seem far more likely to survive than isolated, rampantly selfish entities wherein survival is all about group or team effort.
I'm reminded by a stunning article in Le Monde by Robert Lion called "Doing better with less" the essence of which is:
"Let's stop claiming to dominate nature and the world; let's stop making possession a superior end. Let's put our cherished deviancies, such as the manufacture of desire and its bulimic satisfaction, back in their place. Humanity's progress must be situated on the side of being rather than of having."
...and for our so called leaders;
"Let us dream: A politician takes the side of talking to us about the world as it is, as it risks becoming; he or she forecasts not sweat and tears, but difficult tomorrows; she or he proposes that we talk about it, as responsible citizens, and allows us to perceive robust paths along which to advance, with a smile, towards the era of less ... A less that will consequently take on the character of better." Robert Lion, France, circa 2006
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/63993:doing-better-with-less
10/4/14, 1:46 PM
onething said...
Phil, The body seems to shed ebola virus from any possible fluid, although I am quite curious as to whether the urine will contain dead virus - but yes, it is known that men who recover will have infected semen for some time, and as many here probably know, that is because the lifecycle of sperm is about three months.
Crow and sheep-
Thank you! I needed that.
10/4/14, 2:24 PM
Renaissance Man said...
As for Ebola, if ever there was a reason to have an agency like Homeland Security in place, this would be it...and yet it appears to be conspicuously MIA.
10/4/14, 3:52 PM
Ing said...
I'm trying to understand how Ebola works in the body so that what I put together is as sound as possible. I would love some help understanding this if anyone here grasps how it functions. It looks like the virus "rides" on the immune system and takes advantage of it, so straight up immune stimulants such as Echinacea might not be indicated. However, it may be wise to support the immune system in other ways with Astragalus and use other gentle herbs such as Red Clover and Cleavers. One area where herbs can really help is in supporting the liver, which will be hit hard by Ebola, so Dandelion root, Burdock root and Milk Thistle seed tinctures.
Taraxacum (the commenter), I would also use Elder as I have it at hand, although would suggest berry and flower together in a syrup or flower on its own in a tincture. The stem and bark are purgative and emetic, so I'd save those for another time. I would not take the root of Elder unless given freely and then I would be hard pressed to use it directly as medicine. Yarrow comes to mind for me, too. I'd probably lean toward Shepherd's Purse before Cayenne just because of how irritating the latter can be. My thinking on this in general has been informed by a podcast by herbalist Sam Coffman wherein he also suggested that Andrographis has been researched specific to Ebola, but I have no experience with this herb and will be reading up on it for the first time tonight. (Podcast can be found here: http://prepperbroadcasting.com/2014/08/05/ebola-virus/ ... the prepper intro is relatively short). I'll look into Lomatium, too, so thanks for bringing that up.
Astringent berberine containing herbs may be appropriate for the diarrhea. These would include Goldenseal (although over harvested), Barberry or Oregon Grape root.
For hydration, I'd make a strong nettle infusion with a pinch of licorice or on its own to mix with a cold infusion of marshmallow and use that as a base. If it were accepted in small sips, then there would be some much needed nutrition as well as hydration. There is only so much that a person can take in, I think, so I'd work on making concentrated infusions.
I tend to use herbs energetically in drop doses, but in situations like this I agree that larger and quite frequent doses are probably necessary. There isn't much time to experiment.
For now, we're taking care with what we eat, including more fermented foods, taking Elderberry and flower syrup, and bitters—many of which are hepatoprotective. It's good to have a plan and stick to it, but I want my focus to be on our being as healthy as we can now.
Best to you all. I'm grateful for the conversation and the chance to discuss what approaches we each might take.
10/4/14, 5:35 PM
steve pearson said...
If the current shopping cart of Ebola & economic crises comes anywhere near its maximum potential, do you feel that could lessen the effects of global warming we will experience , or is the desertification of most of the American west already a fait accompli?
regards, Steve
10/4/14, 5:50 PM
BoysMom said...
10/4/14, 7:18 PM
Redneck Girl said...
I would love to see the shaggies make a comeback. I have dreamt of what seeing the buffalo migration in person must have been like.
Alas, I think it's a long shot.
I disagree with you William, true, in the more populated east game populations will decrease a great deal but human population is already decreasing in the US and IMO most of the city people in the east know diddley squat about hunting. As finances decrease so will imported ammunition. Many of those city boys will be crashing through the woods scaring the game to ground for miles around. Plus you've got to remember that without gas most of them won't be going very far. Even given they ride bikes they're only good for fifty miles and seasonally time and temperature is going to be problematic. The learning curve for bow hunting is going to be ugly steep for most of them and where are they going to get their bows, not to mention good arrows. It requires a Good bow AND a Good arrow to make a kill. Without either one and the skill required a kill will be plain dumb luck!
My money is on survival for the wildlife and famine times for the beginners.
BTW, being a bowyer and a fletcher is a future job opportunity for someone. ::hint:: ::hint::
Blogger Kevin said...
wotfigo: There are no buffalo in Australia, but I smell the Buffalo Wind every day.
LOL! Kevin, you're wrong. Horse people and Cattlemen are the same here in the US as in Oz. We have a sport here that's called cow penning and your countrymen have picked it up! One of the premier horse trainers in your nation has imported buffalo to use for training horses in cow penning because cows get burned out fast in training, buffalo don't! You won't have a large enough gene pool to produce the huge herds we'll have but in some areas you'll likely have some big bison to make life interesting, at least for awhile!
That wind is infused with the spirit of the earth and it's pulling on you, on a place in you that most 'civilized' people don't recognize. Its risky to let go and follow it but is there any other way to be truly alive? To open up your heart and soul to the width and breadth of the wild spirit, to become something others don't recognize and are frightened of?
Time to get 'lost' and live people!
Wadulisi
10/4/14, 8:46 PM
Taraxacum said...
10/4/14, 9:46 PM
John Michael Greer said...
1ab, funny! Many thanks.
Josh, keep repeating that to yourself. I'm sure you'll find it very comforting.
SLClaire, it's good to remember that Ebola isn't the only microbe that's expanding its range rapidly, and causing increased death, in a world that's gone out of ecological balance. With antibiotics failing due to overuse, and a great many unfamiliar diseases spreading fast, we're basically on our way back to normal: that is, to a situation in which infectious disease is once again a very common cause of death.
LatheChuck, exactly. That's also why nobody gets exponentials intuitively -- it's a learned thing. As for the Merrill Lynch thing -- good heavens. If they're talking in those terms in investment letters, they've basically thrown in the towel.
Kevin, I see the same thing here. I suspect it's a thylacine wind down your way.
Will, my guess is that you're wrong -- as population contraction intersects with decreased access to transport, getting to the targets will be an increasing challenge, and then there's the question of just how heavily armed the Native peoples guarding the buffalo will be. But we'll see.
Patricia, thanks for the suggestions.
Charlie, the panic's also a factor. I hope you're right about the US response; so far it's looking pretty inept.
Random, yes, and that's also a worthwhile point. Most civilizations fall from a death of a thousand cuts, and ours is getting pretty sliced up just now.
Wadulisi, er, the pumas I used to see now and again in Washington State weren't little, not even by jaguar standards. I have no idea whether they'd compete directly, or sort themselves out by preferred habitat, but I'm far from sure the jaguars would always come out ahead.
Grebulocities, thank you. Every time somebody reads that book on my recommendation, and gets the point of it, I feel as though I've contributed ever so slightly to decreasing the total burden of cluelessness in the world!
10/5/14, 12:03 AM
ed boyle said...
did not change our attitudes to middle class ambitions, conceits, US patriotism. It happens all so fast and we naevr knew what we missed.
10/5/14, 12:27 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Goedeck, fascinating. I didn't know that.
Marcello, yes, I saw that, and yes, your assessment seems reasonable.
Taraxacum, good. Myself, I'm looking at antivirals that are part of the local ecology -- we've got some useful ones here in the north central Appalachians, including one (Erigeron philadelphus) that also prevents hemorrhaging in the stomach, bowels, and other internal organs. But there's still time to draw up plans.
Phil, it is just a breath away. That's normal. The last seventy-five years aren't.
Cherokee, I'll certainly cheer for the tiger if it gets another run at things.
Dagnarus, I have to admit that these claims about how we can't restrict travel seem stunningly daft to me. It's as though we're rushing on our fate.
Degringolade, I'm sure the figure will vary up and down due to rounding errors, etc. As you say, though, if it's an exponential process, no matter what the doubling rate is, we're in trouble.
Shane, I'm not sufficiently familiar with the different environmental needs of buffalo and cattle to say. The Great Plains have been a depauperate region in terms of megafauna since the end of the last ice age, though, so my guess is that there's ample room for both, and for wild horses as well.
Hector, as a physician, you might be able to do a lot of good, knowing that about Clomid. Just saying...
Moshe, I've seen that also. Much of the carbon went into the Amazon basin, which was thickly settled and farmed before 1492 and turned into impassable jungle after that, but there was a fair amount elsewhere. Depending on how far Ebola gets, we might see a reprieve from global warming along the same lines.
Ixtlan, thank you -- I'm clearly going to want to read more of what M. Lion has to say.
Onething, I wish I could say that I'm surprised. Appalled, yes; surprised, no.
10/5/14, 12:32 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Ing, all that sounds very solid.
Steve, of course the buffalo will have to range eastwards as the plains dry out. They used to do so -- how do you think the town of Buffalo, NY got its name?
Ed, when you say "bring it on," are you including in that the possibility that you, personally, will die of it? If you've already grappled with that and accepted the possibility, that's one thing; if you just expect other people to die from it, that's quite another matter.
10/5/14, 12:35 AM
patriciaormsby said...
10/5/14, 2:37 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Very amusing! People get lost around here because the tree canopy makes GPS directions unreliable.
You know what though? I always provide them with a map plus explicit easy to follow instructions and 9 times out of 10, they ignore those to listen to the demented computer voices which really have no idea and should possibly keep quiet.
PS: I'll keep a watch out for those dreadful drop bears - you just can never be too careful...
Cheers
Chris
10/5/14, 4:24 AM
Kutamun said...
"It is an Native American expression from the 1800's. I think it came from the Sioux.
this is pretty close "where there is one white man many are sure to follow". It was the realisation they were going to get swamped and not cope. So it is
haunting.
Best Wishes
Medwyn"
10/5/14, 4:50 AM
Violet Cabra said...
Reading this blog is helping me get over my immediate aversion to thinking about the likely reality of imminent world pandemic and is helping to prime me towards action.
As mentioned by others ebola seems to attack the kidneys as well as the liver. I would like to make the recommendation for the use of burdock root in the months ahead. Burdock root grows wildly in most of the temperate regions of the United States and it is renown as a kidney tonic, which according to the book in front of me Medical Herbalism by David Hoffman "In general, burdock will move the body towards a state of integration and health," which I imagine (not a herbal practitioner let alone a medical one and can't offer medical advice!) would be good in any case, especially one where you may need every scrap of vitality your body has and where one of the primary causes of death is renal failure.
Over the course of the next week I plan on compiling the info from the discussion of this blog, and other sources, to make an easily readable "ebola survival guide" on my blog http://winterstrickster.blogspot.com/ so the information can be readily accessible and organized.
10/5/14, 5:11 AM
Andy Brown said...
If we wanted to turn Ebola from medical curiosity to epidemic this would probably be the shortest route.
I guess the CDC has some competent medical anthropologists on staff, because it was remarkable how abruptly officials changed course. The official in charge removed the family from the apartment, and gave effusive apologies, insisting that “I want this family treated as I would like to see my own family treated,” and purportedly spirited them off to isolation in some luxurious suburban McMansion. It is not in the DNA of Texas politics to hear a top government official speak of dark-skinned immigrants in those tones, so I can only assume that someone in Washington pushed hard to head off the damage that was about to be done to the ability to deal with an outbreak of Ebola.
With one patient, the CDC was able to hold the line against counter-productive official panic. Maybe I should find that reassuring, but I don’t.
10/5/14, 6:04 AM
Shane Wilson said...
10/5/14, 6:55 AM
Shining Hector said...
I dunno, I'll have to look into it more. As usual, carping about a bad situation is infinitely easier than actually doing something about it. Ugh, I might even have to collaborate with other doctors rather than sit around musing about what I'd do if I were in charge, perish the thought.
10/5/14, 8:14 AM
MawKernewek said...
Assuming that someone is contagious for 20 days, after which they either recover or die, then if each sufferer infects two people you have a doubling period of 20 days. This doubling period is sensitive to the choice of this number. At 1.4 it is now a doubling time of 40 days, 1.2 80 days and 1.1 160 days. The rule of thumb of 2^10 = 10^3 can help thinking what sort of numbers of cases will be reached.
Without really knowing the situation on the ground in the affected areas, it's hard to say how this will pan out.
Even the exponential function is a simplification. It could be that as the number of cases increases, public health infrastructure becomes increasingly overwhelmed in the affected areas, leading to a larger average number of infections per sufferer, or that over time, the virus finds the most vulnerable communities and grows faster there. Thus it would become superexponential. Or else that in relatively speaking more developed countries such as Nigeria and Ghana the infection rate would be too low for a self-sustaining epidemic, at least until the numbers of infected people coming out of the worst affected areas are sufficient.
The prospect of groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria deliberately spreading the infection is another frightening element to the mix.
The search engine Wolfram Alpha can be useful to get an idea of the populations of different countries. It is possible to search the populations of countries, but also list the largest cities, or compare areas and do calculations.
10/5/14, 9:53 AM
team10tim said...
The Ebola thingy may be making a turn for the better. I ran the exponential fit from the Wikipedia data two weeks ago and it made me really nervous.
I just reran the numbers with the current data and the number of new cases per day is falling, which is inconsistent with exponential growth. It's early to tell if this is just noise, random variation in an otherwise exponential increase, or if it is the beginning of real containment. Here's the data constructed from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa#Timeline_of_cases_and_deaths
new cases date
? 8/1/2014
36 8/4/2014
34 8/6/2014
23 8/9/2014
64 8/11/2014
76 8/13/2014
38 8/16/2014
117 8/18/2014
71 8/20/2014
91 8/25/2014
106 8/31/2014
98 9/3/2014
91 9/7/2014
160 9/10/2014
123 9/14/2014
141 9/17/2014
125 9/21/2014
156 9/23/2014
117 9/25/2014
128 9/28/2014
100 10/1/2014
Thanks,
tim
10/5/14, 10:15 AM
Raymond Duckling said...
From what I have read about Spanish flu, it killed mainly by a cytokine storm, which is basically a strong overreaction of the immune system. The result was that mortality amongst young healthy adults was higher than the equivalent among children, the elderly, and the otherwise sick (which are typically the most vulnerable groups). This is the same pattern followed by the much smaller epidemics of 2003 (SARS) and 2009 (A(H1N1) influenza), but official results are preliminary/contested.
Nothing I have read so far suggest that Ebola in general, or the West African strain in particular, follows that pattern.
What I think you have read is that after infection (and this is a key issue, will come back to it later), Ebola virus makes affected cells to produce a type of glycoprotein (sGP) that helps it inhibit early immune response and bind itself to some type if while cell, neutrophils, which then allows it to travel through the blood vessels to the internal organs (specially, but not exclusively, the liver and kidneys).
I am neither a doctor nor a military officer, and what I am going to say is highly speculative... but the strategy you propose is the equivalent of Defense in Depth: the conscious decision to give up territory to the enemy, in the hope that it will spread its lines thin while you conserve strength for a powerful and decisive counter-attack. I don't think that strategy is going to work. The disease will not grow weaker as it moves inside your body, but stronger, and since there is no known cure the possibility of a decisive counter-attack is nil.
Back to the issue of infection, you have to consider that having contact with the virus is not game-over. First, it has to enter your tissue through either broken skin of natural body orifices (most likely nose, mouth or eyes). Once it has entered your tissue, infection is not complete until at least one viron has managed to break a cell's membrane and get himself into the safety of its cytoplasm. Before that happens, the viron is floating inside the aqueous mean called the interstitial space, where it is preyed upon by the immune system.
If my argument is correct - and I am far from sure it is - having a strong immune system will prevent infection in exactly the most common situations where exposure is likely for non healthcare workers: direct contact with non symptomatic patients that are borderline infectious at the time.
@all. Please tear down my argument if you can. Advice is a dangerous thing for both giver and taker, and it's way better to be proven wrong during cross examination than on first contact with the enemy.
10/5/14, 10:50 AM
team10tim said...
Caveats and addendum:
I am still very worried about Ebola. The drop in new cases per day (if the data is accurate) might be the beginning of a trend. If it is the beginning of a trend then it could still be thwarted by the Hajj, or the cocoa harvesting season, undocumented cases in Sudan, etc.
Further, if it is a trend, we could still have a lapse that gets it going again. I understand (someone told me, I don't have a source) that Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia each had Ebola contained once and were reinfected after containment.
Lastly, if Ebola peters out then it will be something else. The four horsemen are a regular feature of a civilization in overshoot. It's a question of when, not if.
Thanks,
Tim
10/5/14, 11:23 AM
Violet Cabra said...
admittedly it is limited by what I was able to understand, and is by no means comprehensive. However I personally feel better coming up with some sorta protocol and contingency plan I can adhere to in the months ahead, rather than just fearfully ruminating.
hope others might find it useful, just please remember I'm not a medical professional and am not providing medical advice or even suggestions! It's most ideal if people work out their own contingency plans based on the details of their life.
10/5/14, 1:05 PM
Robert said...
http://www.ecointernet.org/2014/10/01/ebola-a-symptom-of-ecological-and-social-collapse/
Chickens coming home to roost?
10/5/14, 2:43 PM
Ms. Krieger said...
In short, they ran out of basic protective supplies (gloves, gowns, masks) but continued to take patients anyway because they did not want them out in the community, infecting others. It is a travesty that they actually had colleagues in the US advocating for them yet still could not get the supplies they needed in the capital of Sierra Leone.
And another link, less Ebola-oriented link is here...apparently even mainstream think tanks and professors in places like the University of Connecticut are getting a clue that civilization goes through cycles and endless progress is a myth. This ran in the Eurasia Review: http://www.eurasiareview.com/03102014-international-relations-time-accelerating-dynamic-instability-analysis/
10/5/14, 2:47 PM
Ms. Krieger said...
Your description of Ebola infection is incorrect. I recently interviewed an infectious disease specialist who said that Ebola--unlike Hep C or HIV--does not require a blood-to-blood contact. It may not even require mucus membrane contact. It may be able to pass from skin to skin. They just don't know, he said.
10/5/14, 2:50 PM
onething said...
http://saharareporters.com/2014/09/01/ebola-dangerous-virus-how-does-it-really-kill-professor-edward-oparaoji
According to this article, it is indeed the cytokine storm that kills, part of that storm leads to the extreme fluid loss that can cause such loss of volume to the vasculature (nothing in the veins). Extreme loss of blood pressure is also very damaging to the kidneys.
The best the Nigerians have been able to do is 60% survival with supportive care. I wonder if that could be improved with some natural supplements and herbs.
10/5/14, 3:25 PM
7a688e80-b988-11e3-97eb-000bcdca4d7a said...
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/27/health/ebola-hiv-drug/index.html
I'm no doctor, but getting the death rate down to two out of 15 sounds decent.
10/5/14, 3:34 PM
Robert said...
10/5/14, 3:56 PM
Ing said...
Violet, that's a great book. I also like the idea of working with tonic herbs now to strengthen our systems in general. In addition, I've been motivated to change some habits that while not outright detrimental probably weren't contributing to my overall health. I'm looking forward to reading your blog!
JMG, I'm delighted to have the thread to follow for Fleabane (Erigeron—I really need to be in the habit of botanical and common names), thanks! We looked for it today while on a walk and have many look-alikes growing everywhere. We either don't have it where we have access or it's season has passed. I found a terrific write up in The Earthwise Herbal, A Complete Guide to New World Medicinal Plants by Matthew Wood and another one from King's American Dispensatory on Henriette Kress' site, which is a great free resource online (http://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/kings/erigeron.html).
10/5/14, 4:06 PM
onething said...
I applaud your efforts. When thinking of cytokine storm, it is indeed complicated. Reading around on sites it seems there is some folk knowledge out there re which treatments are anti inflammatory (good in this case) and which might not be the right thing for a cytokine storm. For example:
The Bad Guys (Remember, we're just talking about cytokine storms here - these herbs are generally very good for immune systems!)
Elderberry Juice (Sambucal) - AVOID - Increases production of cytokines TNF-a and IL-6. This substance is very effective against the common flu but may not be desirable for the H1N1 virus. Increases in these cytokines may trigger a lethal cytokine storm. (Isr Med Journal2002 Nov;4:944-6)
Micro Algae (Chlorella and Spirulina) - AVOID - Increases production of cytokine TNF-a. (Pubmed PMID 11731916)
Honey - AVOID - Increases production of cytokines TNF-a and IL-6. (Pubmed PMID12824009)
Chocolate - AVOID - Increases production of cytokines TNF-a and IL-6. (Pubmed PMID 12885154, PMID 10917928)
Echinacea - AVOID - Increases production of cytokines TNF-a and IL-6. Although it is often used for normal flu, research shows that it may increase the chance of cytokine storms for H1N1. (Pubmed PMID 15556647, 9568541)
Kimchee - AVOID - Increases production of cytokines TNF-a and IL-6. (Pubmed PMID15630182)
Coiloidal Silver - AVOID - While silver will likely work to kill the swine flu virus, in many healthy individuals it is likely to elicit a severe cytokine storm reaction.
Some good things to use might be (everyone should research everything), um, well...nicotine, and oil of clove, turmeric, garlic, feverfew, green tea and St. John's wort.
However, a nauseated person might not tolerate garlic too well.
10/5/14, 4:27 PM
Unknown said...
@Andy Brown--I had the same thoughts as you about the mistreatment of the Dallas family of the infected patient.
History is rhyming again. The responses of various factions to the arrival of Ebola in Texas echo the outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco and Honolulu 1900-1907. That episode is more directly comparable than is the Spanish Influenza pandemic to what's happening here (so far). In particular, the vector of contagion was international travel, was associated with a despised immigrant population, and the medicos knew enough enough about the disease to diagnose it accurately and to have some agreement on containment measures.
There are a lot of places to read up on the Chinatown SF plague outbreak of the early twentieth century. Here's one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_plague_of_1900%E2%80%9304s
Some of the most telling details about the back and forth between politicians, the business community, the newspapers, and the residents of Chinatown are toward the end of the article.
10/5/14, 5:16 PM
magicalthyme said...
The good news is that Ebola is relatively fragile outside of the body. It does persist longer in cooler temperatures than at room temp. It is also destroyed by UV light. The absolute best protection, frankly, is to avoid exposure.
More to come.
Mary
10/5/14, 6:06 PM
magicalthyme said...
Patients that do survive often have severe organ damage, some permanent. Convalesence is slow and the immune system obviously compromised for some time. Here is where I think herbs could best help, by supporting the injured organs and helping to rebuild the immune system.
The best prevention is to avoid exposure, cover even the tiniest scratches, keep skin from becoming chapped. If there were an outbreak, I'd hunker down at home. The cameraman remembers getting a little splashback on his face while he was helping to clean a chair that a victim sat in. I read that 40-50% of exposures result in infection.
Mary
10/5/14, 6:16 PM
Violet Cabra said...
I've updated my blog post, eliminating elderberry and including a new section called "contraindicated herbs and foods" which is copied from here, with a footnote giving you hearty thanks.
I encourage anyone who reads the essay to likewise submit feedback - I will take everything into account, and am more than happy to edit my writings as new info comes to light.
10/5/14, 6:44 PM
Dornier Pfeil said...
If you want to get rid of the radioactive waste of our society the best you could do would be to fuse it into glass and concrete cylinders 100 feet long by 5 feet in diameter and shaped like the common darts you find in bars anywhere in the country, complete with pointed nose and detachable tail fins. Then you sail over the Marianas trench and drop them. 35,000 feet down the muck has the consistency of peanut butter and a 100 ton projectile moving at about 50-60 knots will bury itself nicely. Then subduction will finish the job for us, eventually taking the waste into the mantle in a few million years. This has the added benefit of ensuring the waste is inaccessible to malign forces who would see it as a weapon.
10/5/14, 7:31 PM
Emmanuel Goldstein said...
Where I live, in the suburbs of Baltimore, wild deer eat everything in sight. The same gardeners who complain about the deer are shocked at the idea of letting hunters cull the herds during hunting season. Once again JMG, you have pointed out the obvious, all-natural solution--Re-introducing wolf packs in the suburbs! It works in Yellowstone, and it will work in our neighborhoods too! Packs of wolves roaming the suburbs of Baltimore would solve the deer problem, cut back on the stray cat-and-dog problem, and could even discourage burglary in a way that will not bog down the courts or clog up the jails. I think this slight ecological change can work wonders throughout suburban America, if given a chance...
10/5/14, 8:10 PM
DeAnander said...
More dots being connected. Naively polemical, but yes, I do suspect that deforestation, desperate resort to unconventional food sources, etc, are all factors. Not to mention the CAFO or prison-style crowding of 3rd world slums (and some in the 1st world as well), the perfect incubation/transmission environment for new and improved bacteria and viruses (viri?)...
Increasingly it seems to me that there are a few basic, tried-n-true healthy lifeways for humans, and the further we stray from them the more precarious our civilisation becomes. Farming, fishing, forestry, nomadic grazing/herding, hunting in the higher latitudes... gathering/hunting in the rainforests... people managed to get along and multiply and succeed for millennia doing this kind of stuff; and they had culture, music, dancing, arts, lots of extras. But start concentrating in big urban areas and building ambitious empires and pretty quickly there's trouble (along with Art with a cap-A and Byzantine politics and obscene concentrations of wealth).
Of course I'm delivering this little sermon sitting at a laptop, and painfully aware of the cognitive dissonance.
10/5/14, 8:16 PM
Raymond Duckling said...
As we keep digging into it, and sharing what we find, more jigsaw pieces will fall into their places.
@Ms Krieger. It was not my intention to say that the transmission mechanism is the same as HIV/Hepatitis C. And you are probably right when saying that it is best not to expose any skin at all.
That being said, I still do not buy the idea of "any contact is equivalent to infection". The virons themselves are, strictly speaking, not alive and cannot reproduce until they manage to hijack a living cell. I do not think there are any suitable candidates in the epidermis, so they need to find their way in to the internal tissues, though the mechanism(s) is(are) not completely clear.
@Onething. That's a very interesting article, and I will probably end up reconsidering my preparation strategy to include the info into it (though I would feel much better if I had access to the per-group-age mortality of current Ebola outbreak and check the pattern by myself). My family and me are semi-regular users of echinacea, so it was highly relevant.
@Violet Cabra. You have got a nice summary there, thanks for sharing. I specially liked the analogy to Sun Tzu's.
10/5/14, 8:52 PM
Shining Hector said...
It's plausible HIV drugs might help, it is an RNA virus. n=15 isn't a whole lot to go by, and there might have been other confounding factors. There's really not enough to go on to say it's not due to random chance. It's worth further study, though.
I don't know what the plans are for testing drug efficacy down there. A randomized control trial with a control group would be unethical to say the least given the situation, but comparative studies of different treatments might be helpful. I would just hope promising existing drugs would be in the mix too and not just these new experimental drugs.
Whether you'd get the patients to agree to the studies would be the kicker, there seems to be a lot of anxiety down there concerning being made into guinea pigs for the drug companies. Somewhat justified given past history, but it can be done in a manner which puts patient welfare foremost, and it's going to have to be done in some fashion or we're left with just throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and hoping something sticks, which often does more harm than good.
10/5/14, 11:16 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Congratulations! This weeks ADR essay which I've dubbed the Ebola entry is a record for comments.
Mind you, last December I - who hasn't has a single day sick leave for 6 years - had to be hospitalised.
Anyway, it got me thinking about herbs, so I put together a quick video in this weeks blog:
Now you see it now you don't
Cheers
Chris
10/6/14, 3:59 AM
Unknown said...
Aldabra
10/6/14, 4:20 AM
Phil Harris said...
My mind had turned to adjacent 'plague villages'.
You replied: "Phil, it is just a breath away. That's normal. The last seventy-five years aren't."
I wrote to a friend just now: "I am professionally limited to experience with Plant (crop) Quarantine and containment of plant RNA viruses, but remember the struggle a few years ago in this part of the world with Foot and Mouth virus in sheep and cattle. Without a massively available effective vaccine we are pretty much as vulnerable as mediaeval populations."
BTW For those who have asked you for your source for "riding on the back of the immune system" , I can back you up with a good technical intro to Ebola and similar viruses - using the infected immune system - which is here http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentary-health-workers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola
Quote: "Ebola virus, on the other hand, is a broader-acting and more non-specific pathogen that can impede the proper functioning of macrophages and dendritic cells—immune response cells located throughout the epithelium.15,16 Epithelial tissues are found throughout the body, including in the respiratory tract. Ebola prevents these cells from carrying out their antiviral functions but does not interfere with the initial inflammatory response, which attracts additional cells to the infection site. The latter contribute to further dissemination of the virus and similar adverse consequences far beyond the initial infection site."
best
Phil
10/6/14, 6:08 AM
magicalthyme said...
Per the WHO, along with bleach and UV light, topical alcohol will destroy the virus. Note that you will need to allow the alcohol to air dry since it works by dehydrating the surface membranes (at least, that is how it destroys gram neg bacteria). Also be aware that UV light does not penetrate glass, so use it outside. In Africa, they wash, disinfect and air dry reusable PPEs outside in full sun.
A Liberian nurse recently saved 3 out of 4 family members she treated at home, using an IV setup up and gloves from work and fashioning her own PPEs from ,things around the house. Presumably we won't have IV setups or hospital gloves, but when you aren't trying to find a vein and insert a needle, you don't need them. That's a good thing, since accidentally needlesticks are the worst kind of exposure and hospital gloves tear easily. You will want to use inprenetrable gloves, such as kitchen gloves.
The nurse used multi-layers of large plastic garbage bags to cover her feet and legs, taped below her knees. I'd tape them above knee if possible, but you get the idea. Tall, uncracked rubber boots would be ideal, since cleanable and reusable. She wore a waterproof raincoat. She wrapped her hair in stockings and then covered her head. She also fashioned a face mask.
How to remove disposable gloves: with your nondominant hand, pinch up the glove on your dominant hand between thumb and forefinger near, but not over, the edge of the glove and pull it inside out while you pull it off. You can now take the unexposed inside of the glove into your uncovered dominant hand. Using the inside/unexposed glove to protect yourself from the gloved hand and finger, slide the forefinger of your dominant hand under the edge of the glove and pull it off inside out and over the free glove. You will now have 2 gloves inside out, one completely wrapped inside the other, without having touched the outside of either glove. It's a good trick to practice a few times before you need it.
If you don't have disposable gloves (and we probably won't, or at least not enough), then wash and disinfect the gloves totally, letting them air dry.
I'd wear a waterproof rain hat and if possible, fashion a clear plastic face shield for complete facial protection. If opened at the back and bottom to allow air to enter, it will protect from splash back while cleaning.
Patients generate massive amounts of infectious waste, from sweat-soaked sheets and clothes to towels and rags used to clean up vomit, etc. So you will need to be prepared to double or triple bag the waste and if possible remove immediately to a large, sealed plastic or metal bin for temporary storage until you can incinerate or otherwise deal with later.
If you keep the sick person in one room with a single entrance, and keep plastic bags, rags, hand washing materials and an alcohol foot bath right at that entrance, it will help control the ongoing cleanup and prevent spread throughout your home.
Mary
10/6/14, 6:22 AM
magicalthyme said...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/02/a-liberian-doctor-is-using-hiv-drugs-to-treat-ebola-victims-the-nih-is-intrigued/
10/6/14, 6:30 AM
Ellen He said...
On another note, there's such a thing as the pessimistic branch religion of progress. It differs from the optimistic mainstream in stating that:
1. Progress is not inevitable and "we" must fight for it
2. The resulting interstellar civilization will always have problems.
10/6/14, 7:28 AM
redoak said...
I think the intersection of beaver and modern roads is going to be pretty interesting. As many of you probably know, beaver are pretty good at plugging up culverts. In modern road design we tend to level the roadway through “cut and fill” techniques that are totally dependent on culvert maintenance. Next time you are out for a ride imagine what happens when every little creek and trickle along your way has a resident family of beavers taking up management of the operation. The impoundments they can create against a modern road can be pretty “dam” big. Pretty soon you’ve got wetlands, ponds, and lakes all over the place. Now that’s a keystone species at work.
The longer term impacts are significant. Roads are not meant to be dams, so eventually they will give way and release whatever impoundments happen to be behind them. Eventually the beavers will remove all the “cut and fill” and formerly sensible level roads will become very difficult or impassable routes. Modern interstates use heroic applications of “cut and fill” and will suffer the most from beaver action.
Imagine those beavers at work on your next commute, they’ve got big plans!
10/6/14, 8:58 AM
Bob Patterson said...
10/6/14, 9:08 AM
Ing said...
This continues to be a great conversation.
10/6/14, 9:08 AM
onething said...
Also, I am wondering about nanosilver being on the no list. It states it might create a cytokine storm. I don't understand that as I thought silver was essentially "cidal." I also read that a study was done on silver for ebola and it had great efficacy - but only when taken after exposure and before symptoms.
It is very interesting that 40 or 50% of people exposed do not get the disease. This is worth looking at, although not really surprising. I also want to know more about the ones who survive. It looks like it is similar to the 1918 flu pandemic, in that children fare slightly better, perhaps due to not putting up as strong a storm. But it also occurs to me (What do you think, Magicalthyme?) that it might be sheer luck in that if you get just a tiny exposure of a few virions, perhaps your body begins to spot the problem before enough replication has occurred to totally overwhelm you.
I should go over to your site Violet Cabra, but along with treatments, there should be components about how to avoid exposure and what to do with contagion/decontamination if you are trying to treat someone at home. For one small example, it will be better to give them some sort of bedside commode than let them use the flush toilet, as flushes send small particles all over your bathroom - yes, better don't keep your toothbrush too close to a flush toilet! For the same reason, don't flush their vomit or feces.
10/6/14, 9:42 AM
Violet Cabra said...
I'm in total agreement! It is absolutely baffling, and perhaps it would be better to focus solely on preventative care?
A vital part of the thought experiment is "what if there are no doctors or hospitals available?" I am in earnest that if I were to get sick with ebola the first place I would go was the isolation room in a hospital, granted that one was available. If not then I would muddle along the best I could with the knowledge I have. The result wouldn't be total certainty, it would be putting one foot in front of the other and praying a lot. I honestly think I would stand a much better chance through western medicine.
The part about disposal of contagions is an important detail, though ideas about caring for others is unfortunately way beyond the scope of my essay and the parameters of the thought experiment, in large part for legal reasons, and also because of my own lack of familiarity and knowledge about caring for infectious sick people in any capacity.
I would be honored if you posted your thoughts as they come up to my site. I'm sure that would enrich the essay as they already have.
10/6/14, 4:22 PM
Kylie said...
Warning: the link is not friendly to older versions of IE.
Also on the topic of limits: it seems like the entire superhero genre is an exercise in rejecting the limits of ordinary life. Getting old? Regret your choices? Time travel will save you! Find an alternate dimension! Never mind dealing with those pesky complications of dealing with other people, technology and violence will solve all your problems! This blog has quite ruined the genre for me.
The next question is whether the current fashion for superhero movies is a result of good marketing, or whether they're popular as a way for people to escape the limits on their own lives.
10/6/14, 5:38 PM
Unknown said...
@Andy Brown--Update on my previous response to your speculation about what brought about the change in the way Dallas officialdom treated the family that had been exposed to Ebola.
Tonight TV cable news host Rachel Maddow interviewed the man she credits with having found them a house to move to. He accepts the credit and was televised carrying the girl in his arms and giving her a car ride, not wearing any protective gear.
His name is Clay Jenkins. His official title is Dallas County Judge. According to Maddow, he is the top elected official of the county.
Jenkins received praise from Maddow this summer when so many women and children from Central America were crossing into the US and surrendering to immigration authorities, expecting to be allowed to stay. Judge Jenkins made a public commitment that Dallas County would find decent housing for all the children who arrived in the county and not try to ship them off somewhere. He stated that children deserved to be treated as children, not as enemies or threats. That wasn't a popular stand in all quarters.
In the interview this afternoon, he said, "The science [about the disease] is known, and I rely on the science." He said that the delay in rehousing the family happened because all the places that were asked refused to house them; "There was no room at the inn." (Exact quote.) He said he found the house where they are now staying by turning to his "faith community."
Apparently Clay Jenkins is a leader and a Christian who takes the Golden Rule and Jesus's saying about how we treat the least of these to heart. His use of the term "my faith community" instead of "my church" also indicates that he doesn't parade religiosity or wish to imply that only Christians have concern for the welfare of others.
Altogether an unusual man and I hope he doesn't lose his post in the next election.
10/6/14, 7:17 PM
Morgenfrue said...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/spanish-ebola-case-rapid-response-allay-western-fears
10/6/14, 11:28 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
This week's responses to your essay has made me truly wonder. Honestly, I’m shaking my head.
So much of the energy expended by our civilisation is used to insulate the human population from nature.
However, whilst I find the threat of Ebola to be concerning and even somewhat alarming, that virus is also part of the natural world in which we exist. We don’t live in isolation.
This concept is lost on most people, because: as humans are stressing the environment in which they live, so to are the lives of those humans in that environment becoming equally stressed.
It is folly to think that we are somehow separate from the environment that we live in.
You can see this principle in action when you try to grow a fruit tree in mineral depleted and biologically depleted soils. It gets diseased and quickly prone to attack from predators.
Look, we might get lucky and get past this outbreak unscathed, but as environmental stresses build up, so to do the potential predators and pathogens waiting to act as the negative feedback loops which is what they in fact really are.
That is what decline looks like. It would be good for people to consider what the soils in their own backyard look like.
Phew, where did that lot come from?
Cheers
Chris
10/7/14, 3:27 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
The Buffalo is sort of like Ebola really in that they're both with us as part of the natural ecology. Both can kill you though.
10/7/14, 3:31 AM
magicalthyme said...
I also noticed that number correlates nicely with the 90% fatality rate when untreated. Correlation does not equal causation, but it does give some pause.
re: 40-50% contracting the disease after exposure, if you get a splash of vomit on your skin you are exposed. If your skin is intact and you wash it off immediately, you'll be ok. If you have a tiny cut there, even microscopic, it can get in and infect. Or if it's on your hand, you aren't aware of it, and you rub your eye, it can get in through the mucus membrane and infect.
Studies show that it only takes 1-10 virions to infect, but that would be monkeys. Hard to imagine, but it it more devastating to monkeys than humans. They have a 100% fatality rate.
Until now I've been feeling pretty lucky. Locally we have Somalian communities, but they're on the opposite side of Africa with strong countries and the ocean around them. And they're not exactly a "go to" place if you're looking to escape a disease. And we have international travelers, but I haven't seen any from Africa. Just some Asia and mostly Europe. A Spanish nurse with only 2 potential exposures contagious on vacation and sent away when she called in her initial symptoms is making it a little too real to me.
I have concerns about the guideline criteria for suspician. The ony 2 positives diagnosed outside Africa, and both initially turned away because their low fevers didn't meet the 101.5F threshold tells me the criteria need to be revisited. Duncan's temp was 100.1. Personally I think any symptom of a potentially exposed person should be enough, and 100F works for me. Or course, nobody's asking me, lol.
10/7/14, 5:19 AM
Dan Bashaw said...
I would inject an uncharacteristic note of optimism into the discussion though... having followed emerging diseases over the years, I have noticed that they are oddly self-limiting in an unexpected way. This was especially obvious with SARS, where the disease should have done a global run based on its distribution in Asia and its transmissivity, but suddenly, and seeming inexplicably just... stopped. This reversal was so dramatic that at the time I wondered if SARS had an engineered component, but since then have seen similar effects with the various flus.
Science would probably not support it, but I have begun to think of acute viral diseases as having Transmissivity (R0) and a 'Timer' (X0) that is seemingly an independent variable. R0 has it's way until X0 is triggered, and then the virus suddenly goes underground to gloat at its success and plot its next outbreak, perhaps decades later.
Based on the JMG principle that "It's not really that different this time" I would not be surprised to see Ebola just...quit.
So, I prepare, but I also keep in mind that the last half dozen times I did so the preparations were not used, and I try to maintain a balanced stance when I discuss it with others. I encourage them to do the same, and to keep an eye on how the Buffalo Wind is blowing, but also to keep in mind that they are preparing for one possible scenario, not for a certain outcome.
I have found there are upsides to being over-prepared in this way -- One is that I'm never short of N95 masks when I need to insulate an old attic!
10/7/14, 7:57 AM
Dagnarus said...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/07/ebola-crisis-substandard-equipment-nurse-positive-spain
Apparently one of the nurses caught it while caring for a repatriated patient. The article suggests that the transmission was caused by substandard hazmat suit. I wonder how many other hospitals in the developed world have cut costs in the same way?
10/7/14, 7:57 AM
Ing said...
10/7/14, 8:03 AM
Scotlyn said...
10/7/14, 9:00 AM
rawillis3 said...
10/7/14, 12:12 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
"Environmental pessimism makes strange bedfellows. We seem to be having a moment in which three groups with very different agendas — anti-environmentalist conservatives, anti-capitalist people on the left, and hard scientists who think they are smarter than economists — have formed an unholy alliance on behalf of the proposition that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is incompatible with growing real GDP."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/slow-steaming-and-the-supposed-limits-to-growth/
This time, his target is not the Post-Carbon Institute. Instead, it's Mark Buchanan at Bloomberg, who posted a response to the same opinion piece that prompted your essay last week. The title of Buchanan's piece is revealing--"Economists Are Blind to the Limits of Growth."
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-05/economists-are-blind-to-the-limits-of-growth
This sent Krugman off into a discussion of how economies can use energy more efficiently, doing the same with less, using an example from shipping. He completely ignored the possibilities arising from resource depletion. Peak oil? As I wrote before, he's not having it.
Krugman also revealed that he's been critical of "Limits to Growth" for 40 years. When he was the research assistant to William Nordhaus, he picked up the latter's distain for both the ideas expressed and especially the execution.
It turns out Krugman has been beating up on "Limits to Growth" and its predecessor Jay Forrester’s "World Dynamics" for at least six years. Here's a link to an blog entry from 2008. Paradoxically, it also notes that things on the energy front haven't worked out as well as the optimists in the early 1970s thought they would. As Churchill once wrote, people will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them will pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had ever happened.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/limits-to-growth-and-related-stuff/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
10/7/14, 2:37 PM
onething said...
No, I certainly don't think we should focus on only prevention. That's number one, but if it fails, it is certainly better to have something rather than nothing. I think that some things are also pretty reliable as being helpful. Coping with fluid loss by rectal administration or slow sipping to avoid retching, and using the right mix of salt and sugar in the water seems very safe. I would be quite comfortable adding vitamin C to the mix. In fact, Emergen C already has electrolytes and some B vitamins. People with diarrhea run short of magnesium and potassium. It seems very likely to me that ebola would deplete vit C, D, and A. And D is apparently soothing to the immune system so far as the storm.
Personally, I think the ideal would be to go to a hospital that provides the above, and they are unlikely to do so. They just don't operate that way.
My approach would be to research other herbs carefully, and then use them as the base for all efforts at hydration.
I know you are young and single, but those who have families, esp children, will need to think about that. Quarantine and cleanup. If you care for someone, you would need to be incredibly careful to suit up every time, and decontaminate carefully.
I have wondered about burial of wastes - whether that is safe. Ebola may have animal vectors that could keep the virus in the background. I also am not sure about burning. I believe both would have to be done correctly. If burning, I think a cover should be used, preferably over a hole in the ground. Also wondering what to do with plastic waste.
10/7/14, 2:54 PM
exiledbear said...
Something about the way people respond when anyone brings that "sigil" up rubs me the wrong way, in a way I can quite put into words. I'm not a master of magic, I'm sure you have the words that I lack from lack of training.
All I can say is DON'T PARTICIPATE IN THAT.
That I know for sure.
In fact don't bother saying anything, just do stuff. Like getting facemasks or laying in supplies if you're going to shelter-in-place or getting a gas-powered scooter if you need to evacuate a big city and you expect a traffic jam.
Shut up and do something. Like my old flight instructor told me, do something, even if you're not sure it's the right thing to do.
Doing something > doing nothing.
10/7/14, 3:46 PM
Avery said...
10/7/14, 5:32 PM
Stephen said...
It was about 2 weeks ago that the numbers infected went over 6000 but the tatal number has only just gone over 7000 (does anyone have a link to a site with regularly updated figures with graphs?)And countries like Nigeria with smaller outbreaks claim to of brought it under control. So it may be that a better response is slowing down the spread but as its still growing the heath workers in Liberia and Sierra Leone could still be overwhelmed and the slower growth in the figures could just be that less people are bothering to report the infected or dead and dying to the overwhelmed clean up crews. Which would mean the infection rate is actually accelerating despite a slowdown in the growth of official figures.
10/7/14, 7:49 PM
DeAnander said...
well that's not saying much :-)
10/7/14, 8:37 PM
Violet Cabra said...
Personally, I continue to be overwhelmed by the amount of subtlety and information I need to consider for contemplating homecare for myself. I'm grateful that it isn't "crunch time" yet, so there is still time to make intelligent preparations and learn about the subtleties involved.
But wow there are a lot of subtleties and details, some of which appear to be waiting to eviscerate me.
TO EVERYONE:
This conversation is going to close later today and I don't know if it will continue to be on topic to discuss ebola on the archdruid report. I hope that doesn't mean though that the conversation stops. I would encourage people who are interested in planning for the contingency of self-treatment and/or home care to keep the conversation going on my blog http://winterstrickster.blogspot.com/2014/10/surviving-ebola.html. If this is already happening on some other corner of the internet please let me know so I can check it out and learn valuable things.
The conversation we're having is important, and I think it benefits all parties to have more eyes doing over it and voices speaking up. If we continue to check each other's work and preparations and do research we can potentially arrive at a highly refined course of action should we depend on it for our lives. I think that people working in isolation on this are less likely to get as good of results as fast.
10/8/14, 3:42 AM
Robert said...
10/8/14, 6:50 AM
troy said...
"It was about 2 weeks ago that the numbers infected went over 6000 but the tatal number has only just gone over 7000 (does anyone have a link to a site with regularly updated figures with graphs?)"
The WHO's site seems to be the best about keeping their numbers updated. Here's the WHO Ebola site:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/
On the right side of that page, look for Situation Report Update. I would link the report directly, but it's a PDF so the link changes whenever they upload a new one. They don't have graphs, but they do have maps of where new cases are coming from.
The current official figures of 7470 cases and 3431 deaths (as of Oct 3) is an enormous under-count, however. I suspect the leveling off of new reported cases is due to laboratories reaching their maximum capacity to test samples. An Ebola case is not "confirmed" unless a lab test is done that comes back positive. A case is not "probable" unless there is a verifiable epidemiological link to another confirmed or probable case. You can probably see why these criteria would result in an under-count. I'm reminded of that New York Times piece a few weeks ago about a cemetery in Freetown where they had recently buried over a hundred Ebola victims while the official count for Ebola deaths for all of Freetown at the time stood at only ten. So, yes, perhaps the number of new cases plateauing could be a good sign, but it is just as likely that the disease is outrunning the affected countries' Ministries of Health ability to even measure its impact, let alone contain it.
10/8/14, 8:55 AM
Janet D said...
The Next Pandemic.
Think Ebola is alarming? Scientists expect a much deadlier virus to emerge in the not-distant future.
http://theweek.com/article/index/267190/the-next-pandemic
(Sorry, I still haven't figured out how to hot-link articles from Blogger....perhaps Chris can enlighten me!)
And then I saw on CNN today that the Marburg virus has broken out in Uganda (Marburg is, apparently, Ebola-like).
I think at least one of those horsemen is mounted and fully galloping now.
10/8/14, 9:14 AM
queeniemusic said...
10/8/14, 10:04 AM
Laylah said...
10/8/14, 11:27 AM
Raymond Duckling said...
About the increase in suspected ebola case count. I think what you are describing is an anomaly/limitation in the measuring process, rather than in the dissemination of disease itself. I have been following the WHO page since August, and the trend is roughly 2-3% daily growth for suspected cases. Confirmed cases growth has been falling behind in the last weeks, and now it is about 1.5%, but this is consistent with a saturated healthcare system that is working at or near capacity. I expect the tendency to turn linear, at least until the next infection gets a foothold in a new country with an intact healthcare system.
Around September 15th, there was a big bulge in statistics, but I think it was more a matter of correction for previous under-reporting. Measurement is never an exact process and, since it depends on cooperation between different entities, any particular data point may give you only very coarse reflection of reality. But the trend over time is closer (though may be subject to it's own set of biases).
10/8/14, 12:38 PM
Unknown said...
I wonder what JMG and others think about Allan Savory and other people I'll call soil scientists (for lack of a better term) belief that our best way to reverse carbon levels is through the soil? They believe it can happen rapidly, at ridiculously low cost compared to other schemes for lowering emissions and the accompanying benefits are worth it all on their own.
For Savory, it's using biomimicry of large herbivore herd behavior grazing in pastures, allowing the plants to fully recover until the herbivores (cows, bison, etc.) return again to graze. For the more plant-based, it's non-chemical agriculture and adding more biomass to feed the enormous amount of bacteria and fungi that could be in living soils.
I've been completely fascinated by this since I heard about it 5 years ago or so, and its potential to restore a verdant earth, but there are a lot of naysayers.
What do others think?
10/21/14, 8:44 AM
James said...
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Tall grass prairie wasn't bleak; nor were the short grass great plains. On the contrary. Bleak is what occurred after the Europeans came and turned nomadic steppes into agricultural "cozy" farms. The phrase reflects a common prejudice in favor of "civilization" as understood by settled peoples.
11/12/14, 7:20 PM