How are you preparing for the end of the world?

“The signs are everywhere.

Gas and food prices skyrocketing, crime, fear, evil, aliens....

the end of the world as we know it is coming.

Prepare yourselves! Katrina was just a taste....
last edited: 6/18/07 10:58:52 AM”

“Go blow it out yer didgeridoo!!

Are you some kinda cultist?”

“She is from Kalifornia.”

“Hey, i do have a didgeridoo :)

No, I'm just paranoid. Religion has nothing to do with it. Plus, the aliens told me. I DO have a nose implant communication device you know.
last edited: 6/18/07 11:04:50 AM”

“not to mention that bees, butterflies and dinosaurs are going extinct.”

“Alien implant? The first episode of "South Park" suddenly comes to mind...”

“polar bears are going bye-bye.”

“Sounds like someone needs to add another layer to their tin foil hat.”

“I found out foil doesn't work when you are already implanted.”

“If she adds much more foil to that thing on her head she'll look like she's advertising Jiffy Pop popcorn.”

“A few signs of things to come---

#1 - The steadily increasing prices of food, fuel, anything made of steel, animal feed, and just about everything else!

#2 - The seemingly never ending contamination/adulteration/counterfeiting of imported food, feed, and medical products.

#3 - The increasing amount of government control and regulation over just about everything (NAIS, bird flu, terrorism, and so on).

#4 - The apparent vulnerability of many parts of our vital infrastructure to terrorist attack and natural disasters.

#5 - Skills needed to survive that were being passed on from one generation to the next back then, aren't being passed on anymore. Such skills as canning, root cellaring, heating and cooking with woodstoves, animal husbandry, gardening, etc. are far, far less common. In some cases...rare.

#6....and more important. With the disappearance of much needed skills of self reliance, this attitude has been replaced with the expectation that the govt. should be taking care of us. During the Great Depression it never really dawned on Pres. Hoover to take care of all the poor and homeless. Roosevelt was reluctant to do it, too. There was a different social mentality back then. People were simply expected to take care of themselves. What's more, is when aid was finally offered, many refused it. Saying, "I don't need charity, I need a job!" Even then some even refused help from the WPA as they considered it a form of welfare.

Matters have come to the point that I can easily see waking up one morning to find that one or more vital supplies are simply unattainable or priced beyond reach.

We seem to be living in a time of ever increasing uncertainty. I don't know that anything hugely bad is going to happen, but it feels like we're at greater risk of it.
last edited: 6/18/07 11:12:40 AM”

“Someone cue R.E.M.”

“That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and
snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed
it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, the Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire
in a fire, representing seven games, and a government
for hire at a combat site. Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furys breathing down your neck. Team
by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing. Fine, then. Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it'll do to Save
yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign
towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself
churn. Lock it in, uniforming, book burning, blood
letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament,
tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other night I dreamt of knives, continental
drift divide. Mountains sit in a line, Leonard
Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester
Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You
symbiotic, patriotic, slam bug net, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel
fine...fine...”

“Why thank you, thank you very much.”

“Sounds more like Texas.”

“Lowest grain reserves in 50 years.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdhome.aspx

The food reserves used to be 2 years but now it is expressed in days.
NATIONAL FARMERS UNION
National Office
2717 Wentz Ave.
Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 4B6
306 652-9465 Fax 306 664-6226

SASKATOON, Sask -- Today, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its first projections of world grain supply and demand for the coming crop year: 2007/08. USDA predicts supplies will plunge to a 53-day equivalent- their lowest level in the 47-year period for which data exists. "The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer," said NFU Director of Research Darrin Qualman.

Most important, 2007/08 will mark the seventh year out of the past eight in which global grain production has fallen short of demand. This consistent shortfall has cut supplies in half-down from a 115-day supply in 1999/00 to the current level of 53 days. "The world is consistently failing to produce as much grain as it uses," said Qualman. He continued: "The current low supply levels are not the result of a transient weather event or an isolated production problem: low supplies are the result of a persistent drawdown trend." In addition to falling grain supplies, global fisheries are faltering.

Reports in respected journals Science and Nature state that 1/3 of ocean fisheries are in collapse, 2/3 will be in collapse by 2025, and our ocean fisheries may be virtually gone by 2048. "Aquatic food systems are collapsing, and terrestrial food systems are under tremendous stress," said Qualman.

Demand for food is rising rapidly. There is a worldwide push to proliferate a North American- style meat-based diet based on intensive livestock production -turning feedgrains into meat in this way means exchanging 3 to 7 kilos of grain protein for one kilo of meat protein. Population is rising-2.5 billion people will join the global population in the coming decades. "Every six years, we 're adding to the world the equivalent of a North American population. We' re trying to feed those extra people, feed a growing livestock herd, and now, feed our cars, all from a static farmland base. No one should be surprised that food production can't keep up," said Qualman.

Qualman said that the converging problems of natural gas and fertilizer constraints, intensifying water shortages, climate change, farmland loss and degradation, population increases, the proliferation of livestock feeding, and an increasing push to divert food supplies into biofuels means that we are in the opening phase of an intensifying food shortage.

Qualman cautioned, however, that there are no easy fixes. "If we try to do more of the same, if we try to produce, consume, and export more food while using more fertilizer, water, and chemicals, we will only intensify our problems. Instead, we need to rethink our relation to food, farmers, production, processing, and distribution. We need to create a system focused on feeding people and creating health. We need to strengthen the food production systems around the world. Diversity, resilience, and sustainability are key," concluded Qualman. - 30 - For More Information:

Darrin Qualman, Director of Research

Stewart Wells, NFU President


Backgrounder to the NFU's May 11, 2007 news release

The United States Department of Agriculture reports recent grain supply and demand numbers on its World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) website at

http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/Man...documentID=1194

The longer-term data on world grains supply and demand is at Production, Supply, and Demand Online (PSD) at

http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdhome.aspx

The NFU created the graph below using USDA data from the above-noted sites. The graph takes stocks/use ratios ("ending stocks" divided by "total use") and multiplies these percentages by 365 to get a more intuitive "days of supply" number. World total grains, days of supply: 1960/01 - 2007/08


(Sorry, The Graph Won't Post)

Note that the graph projects supplies for the upcoming year to hit their lowest record levels- lower even than the 1973 levels that spurred a rapid price increase. Note also the unprecedented and steep downward trendline for the past 8 years.”

“Where do you get tin foil, all I can find is the aluminum kind?

Maybe that's why the aliens won't talk to me.”

“Well I guess we should stop exporting then, eh?”

“I said you need a implanted communications device. They force it on you.”

““Well I guess we should stop exporting then, eh?”
treebait
11:20:52 AM
6/18/07
ignore this user

Especially to china, the damn commies are trying to poison us.”

“I laugh at humanity. We are so vain that we always think that the worst times that have ever happened are the times we are living in.

Now is better than 1940.
Now is better than WW1.
Now is better than the epidemics (cholera, yellow fever, influenza, etc) of the 1700 and 1800's.
Now is better than the black plague.

Now is better than anytime in recorded history. We have longer life expectancy, more leisure and recreation, more and better medicine, better food production, better environmental protections, etc. What is so bad about the era we live in that people in earlier times would not have traded us their miseries for?”

“I'm just worried the beer will run out...”

“it's the evil cheese!

two things that make me think we are closer but not yet there.

we are in the age of instant information.

Christians are being persecuted, maybe not so much here, but certainly in other countries.”

“Monster , you'll soon be fighting your next door neighbors' Honda for that last beer.”

“BINGO, Rosey.

Ever since that "Day After" movie came out in the 80s, I've always kept at least one Emergency Beer in the fridge in case of Armageddon.

Here's the plan: pop that last brewski; kick back and watch the fireworks.

(it would be soooooooooooo depressing if it just turned out to be a bunch of drunks with shotguns)


Let's hear it for Global Thermonuclear War!


last edited: 6/18/07 11:39:07 AM”

“http://youtube.com/watch?v=MzaN2x8qXcM

It's already started in the Czech Republic!”

“Everything is horrible, yeah, really really really terrible
I'm really depressed, I'm really downtrodden
I'm downtrodden square uh-huh
The whole world is doomed, yeah. We're all gonna die.
25,472 people die every single minute uh-huh oh yeah
Seventeen hundred and fifty people just died
Cancer, death, AIDS, inflation, taxes, George Bush
Hell, Satan, cancer of the face
Cancer of the colon
Cancer of the wrist
And John Denver on compact disc
Oh”

“Better not #&%!$ with my damn Pilsner!!!!”

“Ænema: Some say the end is near. Some say we'll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bulls--t three ring circus sideshow of Freaks here in this hopeless fVcking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fVcking time. Any fVcking day. Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay. Fret for your figure and Fret for your latte and Fret for your hairpiece and Fret for your lawsuit and Fret for your prozac and Fret for your pilot and Fret for your contract and Fret for your car. It's a bulls--t three ring circus sideshow of freaks here in this hopeless fVcking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fVcking time. Any fVcking day. Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay. Some say a comet will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dips--ts. Some say the end is near. Some say we'll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will cuz I sure could use a vacation from this Silly s--t, stupid s--t... One great big festering neon distraction, I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied. Learn to swim. Mom's gonna fix it all soon. Mom's comin' round to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim. FVck L Ron Hubbard and FVck all his clones. FVck all those gun-toting Hip gangster wannabes. Learn to swim. FVck retro anything. FVck your tattoos. FVck all you junkies and FVck your short memory. Learn to swim. FVck smiley glad-hands With hidden agendas. FVck these dysfunctional, Insecure actresses. Learn to swim. Cuz I'm praying for rain and I'm praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away. I wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you flush it all away. Time to bring it down again. Don't just call me pessimist. Try and read between the lines. I can't imagine why you wouldn't Welcome any change, my friend. I wanna see it all come down. suck it down. flush it down.
last edited: 6/18/07 11:53:06 AM”

“The end is near

Paris Hilton is in jail.”

“Can the end of the world wait a while? My garden is doing great, and the tomatoes aren't ripe yet?”

“With friends like these, who needs an enema?”

“The doomsayers average is at 0% correct.
I wouldn't expect an increase in performance if I were you.”

“How are you preparing for the end of the world?

sticking my head between my legs and kissing my @ss goodbye

oh and stocking up my bar
last edited: 6/18/07 12:36:38 PM”

“...go back to sleep...we like for you to be asleep when we sneak through the wire.... it's easier to cap you when you're all snug and warm and cozy......go ahead there, that's a good fella, drift off to sleep...sleeeeep, sleeeeep.......”

““The doomsayers average is at 0% correct.
I wouldn't expect an increase in performance if I were you.”
humanpackmule
1:34:02 PM
6/18/07

I disagree, we have had huge disasters in the past. I remember reading a book by Kenneth Burke which ended with the sentence "And in this staggering disproportion between man and no-man, thereis no place for purely human bosts of grandeur, or for forgetting that men build their cultures bu huddling together, nervously loquacious, at the edge of an abyss."

My first though from this and other statements, was "wow, what fearful doomsayer" then I realized that the book came out in 1935. The storm gathering at that point did bring us to an edge of an abyss and brought tens of millions over that edge.

Then there is Nietzsche who around 1880 wrote that (quoting from memory so not exact) "one of the awesome spectacles of the next century will be the resolution of the fate of the Eurpopean Jews. When you read what he said about Jew, anti-semites and anti-semetism, he comes out as doom-sayer who dead on nailed it.”

“I guess I missed it when the world ended and we all died.

Last I checked the planet was still turning.
last edited: 6/18/07 1:03:06 PM”

“ROTFLMAO....Lets See ..September 9, 1999...end of computer systems as we know it...then the world exploded on December 31, 1999....LOL

Here is my solution if you just have to believe the worst.

Go to the garage and ductape some vacuum cleaner hose to the exaust pipe to run it into the car. Get in the car with your favorite beverage and start the engine.....

I am sure we will always have the pessimists in our ranks...me I personally enjoy each day I live. I work in a job that will most likely cause me to die early from the contaminants I inhale, the sudden rush of adrenaline lousy sleep etc all add up to take 15 to 20 years off your life...but you know. I love what I do. If the world ends tomorrow I will go out knowing I had a good run. I made a difference in my life and in the end thats all we really can ask for.”

“Today is a good day to die, but I expect to be snowshoeing in the Adirondacks with Gremlin aboot thirty years from now and passin' some good scotch aroond.

If I die in an avalanche zone
Thaw my arse out and ship it on home
Turn me into ashes please
Scatter me about in the tall spruce trees”

“Most doom sayers have predicted some kind of doom short of the end of the world.”

“Maybe the world has already ended and we are living in the after image of our consciousness.”

“It must be the end is near, dog-lovers are being persecuted.”

“Religion has nothing to do with it.
spirit coyote
12:03:57 PM
6/18/07

Hmmm... I need to respectfully disagree. The pessimism and fear I hear expressed elsewhere (i.e.. not on this forum per se) seems to be based on one basic position: Those who have rejected the Christan world view without replacing it with some other faith system.

The apocalypse is a Judaic/Christian construct. It is not really found in other faith systems. Those who have rejected the Judaic/Christian faith system and not found a replacement are left with extreme uncertainty and insecurity.

Native American worship has an end time scenario which offers hope in the world after destruction.

Islam offers an ideal of what comes next.

Devout Secular Humanism recognizes the randomness of existence and is equally at ease with the randomness of its demise.

The Eastern faiths have beliefs that explain and acknowledge the process of death and destruction of the human condition.

There are other nature based faiths which have insights and observations regarding the current events and affairs which explain what is happening in non-apocalyptic terms.

If you have rejected the Judaic/Christian faith and still fear the apocalypse then you have not rejected the beliefs. Simply chosen to pretend to ignore them. If you have rejected them and replaced them with some other faith system, then look to your replacement for explanation and preparations.”

“What was this thread about again?
Oh yeah, the end of the world and those who have predicted it are still at a 0% correct average.
last edited: 6/18/07 1:48:49 PM”

“Does making fun of hysterical people count as "persecution"?”

“No I think it is listed as "An Acceptable Hobby."

LOL..>Like the Dihydrogen Monoxide threat...its all what you put into it.”

“Making fun of hysterical people is nt what I would call persecution. But there is religious persecution of all kinds going on all over the world. I would not want to minimize that fact. As far as Christian persecution as such, that is hardly anything new.”

“So HPM - Are you saying that everyone sticks precisely to thread topic and the topic matters more than the words in the post?

If that were ever the case on trail talk, it would truly be a sign of the end times.”