Search Results for: horses

Horses will be essential to wars in the future

Source: De Decker K (2008) Bring back the horses. Low-Tech Magazine. Preface. Horses will not only play a key role in agriculture in the future after oil decline, they’ll replace the dozens of kinds of trucks that exist today, and … Continue reading

Posted in Muscle Power | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Replacing diesel tractors with horses or oxen – what will that be like?

Preface. Since fossil fuels are finite, at some point increasing numbers of farmers with diesel vehicles and equipment will want to replace them with horses, which can do the work of six people.  Below is what  energy expert Vaclav Smil … Continue reading

Posted in Farming & Ranching, Life Before Oil, Muscle Power, Peak Food, Vaclav Smil | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

From Horsepower to Horse Power. When Trucks stop, Horses start.

Preface. Before the industrial revolution there were only four sources of mechanical power of any economic significance. They were human labor, animal labor, water power (near flowing streams) and wind power.   Work done by animals, especially on farms, was still … Continue reading

Posted in Life Before Oil, Muscle Power | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

How horses changed native cultures after 1492

[ This is a very brief overview of Peter Mitchel’s “Horse Nations”.  As oil and other fossils decline, will we will almost certainly return to using more horse “muscle power” as we did in the past. Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author … Continue reading

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Unpave concrete & asphalt to save energy and money

Preface. The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume … Continue reading

Posted in Concrete, Roads, Transportation, Transportation What To Do | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Subsistence life in West Virginia before capitalism

Preface.  These are a few of my kindle notes from Steven Stoll’s “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” that may give you an idea of how people might survive after collapse. It is a damning critique of capitalism.

Posted in Jobs and Skills, Life Before Oil | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Want to survive Peak Everything? Become a Mormon

Source: Salt Lake Tribune. For Latter-day Saint families, preparing for emergencies is the norm Preface.  Ted Koppel’s book “Lights Out” highlights the many risks to the grid from cyber and physical attacks, electromagnetic pulses from weapons or solar flares, large … Continue reading

Posted in Blackouts, Electric Grid & Fast Collapse, EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Energy Books, Where to Be or Not to Be | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Book review of Turchin’s “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”

Preface. This is a book review of both “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”.  I recommend reading “War & Peace & War” first, then the more difficult “Secular Cycles”. Turchin has found patterns in the rise and fall … Continue reading

Posted in 2) Collapse, Overpopulation, Peter Turchin, Predictions, Social Disorder, Stages of, War Books | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Book review of Turchin’s “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”

Deforestation in the news

Preface. I wrote in “Life after fossil fuels” that as energy declined, it would be hard to cut down distant forests with limited oil supplies.  I thought this because even in Britain, so denuded of trees people turned to filthy … Continue reading

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Review of “Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”

Preface.  This is a book review of Rundell’s “Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”. If this book is right, things have gotten a lot better in Saudi Arabia than when my other review on Saudi Arabia was written … Continue reading

Posted in Middle East, Peak Oil, Peak Resources, Threats to oil supply | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment