Escape from Megalopolis

A few weeks ago, some friends of mine came to visit from the city. Part of the reason for their visit was to check out the local area to see how suitable it might be as a Peak Oil hideout. We saw many nice farms and other properties as we drove around in the unnaturally springlike weather; one large farm caught my friend’s eye, and out of curiosity he called the telephone number listed on the “for sale” sign.

The farm turned out to be much too large—and much too expensive—for my friend. We learned something interesting from the real estate agent, however. He had recently been fielding an increased number of calls from city folks looking for small to mid-sized farms in the area’s rural counties. Not an overwhelming number of calls, mind you, but enough to catch his attention. So it seems my friends are not the only ones contemplating relocation from the East Coast megalopolis.

Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are peppered with small mountain- and farm-towns that lay within a day’s drive from major East Coast population centers. Some of these are doing well as tourist towns, while others are economically devastated and stand in disrepair, all but abandoned. I believe these small rural towns offer some excellent opportunities to hunker down and ride out collapse—even the ones that stand in disrepair—and to provide a good post-collapse home. For East Coast city folks looking to get out, but for whom the Pacific Northwest is not a workable option, an alternative solution could be waiting just a half-dozen counties west.

Down on Main Street

Rural communities in the east are almost universally very old. Many were settled during the 1700s; most were established (if not legally incorporated) by the time shots rang out at Fort Sumter. It is not uncommon to find graveyards with headstones spanning two or even three centuries. And for any given town, there is a nearby Historical Society or local historian who can spin the community’s full narrative from the very first settler.

Regardless of a town’s current physical or economic state, the pre-petroleum wisdom of its founders is contained in its location. Before petroleum, settlement required any number of factors that will be crucial for collapse survival. That these towns were founded and thrived as long as they did is evidence of their suitability for life in the absence of hydrocarbons, and perhaps of their unsuitability for life in the petroleum age.

Many rural eastern communities never really recovered after the Great Depression. They carried on life in the shadow of their former prosperity, their populations ever-dwindling as younger generations made off for work in the big city. In terms of Peak Oil, this economic hardship was a blessing in disguise: success during the 1950s-1970s entailed the wholesale destruction of pre-petroleum architecture and civic planning. Towns that did not see great wealth after World War II were spared this destruction; the buildings and layout of the town remain intact, even if they are now crumbling, and reflect patterns of daily community life that did not revolve around planes, trains, and automobiles. In these places, post-petroleum life will be a matter of restoring what once was, not re-inventing the wheel as if non-hydrocarbon-based, rural agricultural communities were something new under the sun.

If the towns themselves were designed for pre-petroleum life, so, too, were the original homes and buildings designed for life in the absence of petroleum. Surviving original buildings may well contain some unsophisticated elements of sustainable design, such as being oriented north-south with larger windows on the southern face, having a large fireplace in the center of the house, or being equipped with a hand-pumped well outside the back door. My stepmother’s parents live in a house that was constructed sometime during the 1800s; it has a massive cistern in the basement, a root cellar, and an ancient four-foot square “outbuilding” in the back yard that perpetually threatens to fall over, but never does.

Many towns that were originally founded upon an area’s agricultural base have fallen prey to the effects of globalization and industry consolidation that have emptied countless farm towns in the Midwest. In some places, perfectly productive farms stand underutilized or unused altogether because planting crops at any but inhuman scales is now a money-losing exercise. Farmers instead attempt to sell their land to developers to cash in on land value and consumers’ lust for ever-more ridiculously outsized McMansions. The potential for sustainable agriculture in these places is enormous, and in fact, some farmers are already making the switch to organic production, due to the returns this niche market can bring.

Large-scale food production is not the only opportunity that can be found in the East’s small towns. Tracts of land as small as a few acres can provide enough room for other kinds of agriculture—bees, for example, require relatively little space, yet will produce wax for candles and soap, honey for food and as a base for herbal poultices, and bee pollen as a medicinal and nutritional supplement; angora rabbits produce wool for clothing and blankets, leather for clothing and shoes, and meat for food; medicinal herbs need not be grown on the scale of cereal grains or vegetables, yet will be absolutely necessary when the health care industry, as we currently know it, falls apart.

Not all rural eastern communities are going to be feasible places to ride out collapse and carry on thereafter. The decision to relocate to any particular rural town entails assessment of many factors, some of which are highly individual, and some of which hold true for everyone. Early settlers have already done much of the latter for us, while other factors are strictly post-industrial. A few of these are discussed below. As with all matters, each person needs to do his or her own research to determine the most suitable individual course of action. No place will be ideal; choosing a potential Peak Oil town is a matter of weighing the pros and cons according to one’s family and financial situation, and deciding what risks are worth taking versus those that are not.

Tradeoffs and risk assessment

The primary tradeoff for anyone considering an eastern rural community is this: the further west one travels from East Coast population centers, the more brutal the winters become. This is especially true in the Northeast where lake-effect snowfall routinely totals multiple feet over the course of the winter season, and in more northern states like New Hampshire and Vermont, where arctic air blowing down from the north can keep the high temperature below freezing for weeks or even months on end.

Lake-effect snowfall may have an upside, however. As weather patterns associated with Global Warming become more prevalent, snow and rainfall from the Great Lakes may become a source of surface water lacking in other areas of the country. Surface water is absolutely key.

Water. I believe one would be hard-pressed to find a town settled early on that was not located near a source of surface water. Surface water can take many forms: a stream or creek, a lake, a spring, a marsh. These would have served early settlers as not only drinking water but also for irrigation and to water their livestock. Depending on the body of water, they would also have served as transportation and shipping lanes.

Surface water can also be used as small-scale refrigeration. The same water that keeps one’s beer cold on a camping trip can also preserve real food when refrigeration becomes prohibitively expensive.

Groundwater lives below the surface; it is referred to as an area’s “water table.” When water is poured onto the ground in the form of rain and snowmelt, it sinks through the soil until it reaches bedrock or other barrier and cannot sink further, and it saturates the soil below the surface. Additional rain causes the top of this saturation level to rise toward the surface, while drought conditions cause it to retreat—the water table rises or falls, according to precipitation patterns. When we hear on the news that flash flooding is a threat due to ground saturation from previous rainfall, it means that the water table has risen so high that it has reached the surface.

Wells were essentially just holes dug in the ground deep enough to breach the top of the water table. The bottom of the well would then fill with water, and a bucket could be lowered to retrieve it. Modern wells also utilize groundwater in this manner, but are generally deeper, and include electric-powered pumping systems to bring the water to the surface and filtration systems to cleanse the water of bacteria and particulates.

Below the water table, water may accumulate for thousands of years in an aquifer, which can be accessed by drilling very deep wells. This is the “fossil water” we sometimes hear about, and there are dangers associated with pumping an aquifer. If it cannot be recharged through rainfall and such, it may become depleted, just like an oil well. Sometimes the water in an aquifer holds up layers of earth above it; removing this water can cause these layers of earth to cave in, permanently reducing or destroying the aquifer’s capacity to recharge.

A town suitable for Peak Oil survival must have a source of surface water, and if a property requires a well because of its distance from the surface water, the well should be rechargeable at fairly shallow depths below the surface. Eventually petroleum and other hydrocarbons will not be available to drill deep into an aquifer and power the equipment required to bring it to the surface, and water will have to be retrieved manually. Fossil water cannot be retrieved manually, and therefore cannot be considered a post-collapse water source.

Food. As previously mentioned, many of the east’s rural communities are in fact dying agricultural towns. The potential for sustainable food production is very great. Some agricultural towns are doing just fine, however, and local food production already exceeds local requirements, even though the economic structure of the town may be such that locally-farmed food is trucked out while food from far away is trucked in to the grocery store.

Other food sources will come from hunting, trapping, fishing, and wildcrafting (collecting edible plants from the wild). In some eastern states, the deer population occasionally threatens to explode and decimate both forestland and farmland—a herd of deer can wipe out a farmer’s entire crop in short order, including diversified, organic, post-collapse crops. Deer no longer have natural predators in populous eastern states, and are kept in check solely through hunting. In rural towns, venison is often a staple of residents’ diets through autumn and winter, as a single deer can yield enough meat to last a typical family for months. Other game animals in the east include turkey, pheasant, boar, grouse, squirrel, and rabbit, among others.

Fish species that live in eastern rivers, streams, and lakes include trout, walleye, pike, bass, flounder, and muskie, among others; edible plant species are too numerous to list. These food sources will almost certainly have to supplement farmed foods, and serve to diversify the food resource base against blights and pestilences, and to protect the community from contracting vitamin-deficiency diseases. Moreover, these foods are the basis of the only truly sustainable diet the world has ever seen.

Aside from farmland, access to woodlands will be necessary for these food sources. Mountainous regions are more likely to have unfarmed and undeveloped woodlands, due to the difficulty of farming and developing steep slopes.

Natural barriers. As conditions in the city deteriorate, people will flee, and many of these people will not be very neighborly. Natural barriers will be essential for protecting communities and local food sources from potential violence.

Mountains are excellent natural barriers. A mountain that sits between a well-traveled highway and a town will dissuade many potential marauders by either hiding the town’s existence, restricting access, or both. Additionally, a town so situated will typically have fewer inroads, making it easier to patrol against potential looters or to block altogether. Mountains can also serve as barriers to weather, depending on their orientation.

Rivers and streams are also good natural barriers, as well as being sources of surface water. Even a moderately-sized stream will prevent many people from crossing into the town, especially during winter months when the air temperature is deadly cold, and in the spring when rainfall causes streams to run deeper and faster than at other times during the year. Bridges over rivers and streams can be dismantled or blocked.

Distance is also a natural barrier, the primary one that people heading out of the cities are attempting to employ. We currently traverse huge distances in our cars with little thought; we don’t realize just how great a distance it is from home to work, for example, until our car breaks down and we have to walk part of the way.

There will be a period of time in which gasoline is crazy expensive but still accessible to large numbers of people. Those heading out of the cities in these conditions may be dissuaded from wasting the gas to travel to a town that cannot be seen from the main road—all the more so if road signs announcing the town’s existence are removed. Later, people will be walking out of the cities; they, too, may be dissuaded from traveling to a town they cannot see from the main road, especially if maps indicate a more accessible town lying a shorter distance down the main road.

Fuel. Life without fuel of some sort is impossible, unless one is able to grow thick fur at will. Food must be cooked to kill bacteria, and shelters must be kept above a minimum temperature if its inhabitants are to avoid falling into hypothermia-induced death.

Local fuel sources in the east consist primarily of wood and coal. Coal is a problem of course, but it will still replace natural gas and imported oil as fuel for home heating and cooking to some degree, due to its local availability. Coal is abundant in the east and need not be shipped long distances to consumers. I expect that the availability of coal will depend on electricity generation and the needs of power companies, and what kinds of laws are passed to make sure power companies’ profit margins are as high as possible.

Wood is the once-and-future primary energy source for home heating and cooking in the east, as it has been since humans first used it to warm their caves. The obvious source of wood in any community will be nearby woodlands. This, too, is a problem, and anyone who relocates to a rural eastern town should strongly consider working with local authorities to draw up guidelines for sustainable tree harvesting. Another option might be to farm trees sustainably as a fuel crop, if one can afford the land; depending on the types of trees planted, they may reach harvesting maturity just as the last vestiges of hydrocarbon-fueled heating systems become inoperational.

Assessment of a town for post-collapse suitability should include identifying all the wood sources in about a 10-mile radius, and potential competitors for that wood. Can you work with them to figure out a sustainable plan for tree harvesting? Or will they rush to the forest and cut down every last tree for themselves before anyone else has a chance to get there? If that does happen, where else can you get wood?

Currently, firewood can be had for relatively cheap as developers continue to clear land for their godforsaken McMansions. Many years’ worth of wood can be stockpiled now, for undoubtedly a fraction of what it will cost in the future, including delivery. It is also worth considering that the unavailability of gasoline means no fuel for chainsaws and woodsplitters; getting several years’ worth of firewood in order now, while fuel is still available, might be a good idea if one can swing it.

(As a quick aside, I’d like to point out that Lehman’s has a pretty nice selection of wood-fired cookstoves, some designed for both heating and cooking, and some with optional attachments for running hot water and other things. I personally like the “Baker’s Choice” model.)

Rail Lines. Believe it or not, the freight trains still run throughout the United States, and include lines through many Northeast and Mid-Atlantic small towns. Why is this?

Back when the tracks were laid, these towns were thriving and prosperous. Aside from stagecoach, rail was the only way for people to travel to the cities and back, to ship goods out, and to ship goods in—and people had money to pay for rail service back then. After the wars and the Great Depression, the towns ceased to thrive, but the tracks could not be moved and continue to be used to this day.

I believe that railroading will return as a major transportation option as airlines fall into bankruptcy, gasoline prices soar and roads fall into disrepair, and ocean freight comes to a standstill. I think the trains will continue running long after other forms of transportation have ceased, and we may even see a return of the steam locomotive, again due to the availability of coal. I have more hope in this regard than many others, if only because the freight trains rumble through my own small town every day.

This map of the Finger Lakes Region of New York State is a good example of what I mean. The rail lines are both evident and plentiful, given the relatively sparse population of this area. Towns in this region will have access to things coming in from the outside—such as goods and information—that people in more isolated areas will not have. These towns will also have the option of shipping goods out, and can potentially remain economically viable into the future as a result.

Of course, trains can also bring unwanted things, like diseases and stowaways, or troops coming to enforce martial law. My personal feeling is that these risks are worth taking if it means I also have a means of escape, if necessary.

A farmer’s market. I am convinced that America’s farmer’s markets are going to become the economic centers of the future.

As the cost of fuel rises it will inevitably drive up the prices of processed foods at the grocery store. People will instinctively turn to the farmer’s markets as an alternative; later, grocery stores will no longer be able to stock their shelves, and the farmer’s market will become an area’s only food market.

A town with an established and thriving farmer’s market is ahead of the game with regards to economic relocalization; it means that a local market for local goods need not be created from scratch, that there are already farmers in the area gearing their production for local consumption, that an opportunity exists for newcomers to join in selling their wares. It could also mean that some local farmers are making the switch to organic farming—potential kindred spirits in sustainability and Peak Oil preparations.

A community college or other institution of higher education. This is probably not a make-or-break, in my opinion, but the existence of a community college or state-university branch campus can help in the transition from urban to rural life.

Auditing night classes and attending campus functions are great ways to meet people and learn about the area. The college will be integrated into the community and can act as a social bridge; locals one might otherwise never speak with may be involved with the college in some way.

In addition, some community colleges and state-university branch campuses will already have sustainability curricula established, and perhaps programs or other relationships with local farmers that could provide volunteer opportunities, or valuable resources for those attempting to learn the art of farming, even small-scale farming as might be done on just a few acres of land.

Finally, it may turn out that a community college or other higher-education institution may retain access to the outside world after everyone else in the area has abandoned communications luxuries. Working telephone lines, mail delivery, satellite television, perhaps even internet access may remain accessible through the school, especially if one volunteers with events and programs before things deteriorate to that degree.

My personal, ideal setup for $400,000

This is of course an ideal, and probably no such perfect place exists, but if I could design my ideal for Peak Oil and beyond it would be this:

The house is made of stone, has a basement, faces due south, and sits at the back end of a four- to five-acre, partially-wooded lot. Running water comes from a well that could be fitted with both a solar-powered pump and a manual pump.

The lot is located at the southeast base of a mountain whose ridge runs southwest-to-northeast. The lot slopes at a very low grade, with the house sitting at the highest point, and a creek runs across the property at the bottom of the grade. Located a half-mile or so upstream is a healthy marsh; there are plenty of neighbors, all with their own small plots of land. Town is no more than two miles away, and has both a farmer’s market and a rail line. A community college is located the next town over, about 10-15 miles away.

This setup could easily be had—give or take a few details—in most rural Northeast or Mid-Atlantic counties for $200,000-$300,000. I would put the remaining money into a hand-cranked printing press, insulating the house like crazy, installing a wood-fired cookstove, livestock (a breeding pair of alpacas and a dozen angora rabbits), fruit and nut trees, veggies (with an emphasis on root veggies), and whatever I decide my main crop will be, depending on what my neighbors are growing and what we will need to trade with each other and with the real farmers.

It would almost sound romantic if it weren’t painted against a backdrop of war, suffering, and large-scale death.

Conclusion

The template for surviving collapse thus far seems to be limited to ecovillages and other communal models located in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately for many currently living in the East Coast megalopolis, the Pacific Northwest is simply too far away, and for many others, a communal lifestyle is neither appealing nor workable.

The small towns of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states offer “megalopolites” a potential alternative. These communities are the remnants of a bygone era of non-hydrocarbon-based agriculture and prosperity, originally settled due to their proximity to food, water, and fuel. Some eastern rural towns thrived until as late as the 1940s without electricity or other petroleum-era conveniences. These small communities need only to be restored to offer a post-petroleum option as viable as any other, and many do not even require that.

———

(CC) 2006, Paula Hay. This article may be copied, distributed, displayed, and performed, and you may make derivative works from it, so long as the original author is given credit and it is not used for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

Beyond Peak Oil A Survey Based on Primary Statistics

Beyond Peak Oil
A Survey Based on Primary Statistics