Dilbert becomes skeptical of climate change disaster

Yes, my wallet (and yours) is empty, the government has spent it, and wants more 🙂
1 This is global, I have moved now to Myanmar to afford expenses,
2.it certainly is a disaster.
3. It has been seen coming for more than 10 years, however I can’t vouch for the general public Knowledge of anything recently. Stupidity is running rampant!

One example that’s fairly easy:
The morphing of the modern democrat party into the democrat totalitarian party-one that allegedly champions liberty, civil rights and prosperity, but through it’s policies and actions causes the opposite to happen. Saw that coming decades ago and many were warned about it.
Oh, just one more:
President Eisenhower’s second warning in his Farewell Address. He warned, some heeded and some drooled over how that might benefit them ==>CAGW and the CAGW industrial complex.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/ikes-second-warning-hint-it-is-not-the-military-industrial-complex/

WW2, inevitable as a consequence of reparations against Germany following the Great War, and the Depression. Probably a slightly naive or simplistic view, but it works for me.

I have a confirmed prediction of disaster that was almost exactly ten years, although it didn’t generally alarm the public when the prediction was made.
The current economic crisis was predicted with spooky accuracy by many, including in an earlier chapter of the late ’90s book I’m reading, Hidden Agendas by John Pilger. His prediction comes during a criticism of the the Thatcherite/Blairite policies being put in place at the time. (The book takes the position that Blairism was the completion of Thatcherism….. and I agree!)
You could say it’s easy, after the fact, to find those predictions that happened to come true. However that is not what I was looking for; the book is generally extremely prescient and this is just one example that springs to mind.
__________
Rambling now, off topic…
I don’t agree with Pilger on all his political views, (although Blairism IS the completion of Thatcherism), but what I do like is his reporting of facts, on the whole. In other words I’d say the Pilger/Chomsky version of history is essential reading, even if you don’t agree completely with their political views, and even if the menace of religion is conspicuous by its absence from their analysis of all that’s wrong in the world.
I would add that if anyone says Pilger and Chomsky ‘just hate all things Western’, then they can’t have read either very carefully.
__________
That ramble was preemptive of other people’s possible rambles, about the mad ‘leftist’ Pilger. I’d say lefty, myself. Accusing everyone of isms indiscriminately is a bit too Monckton-like for me.

Samurai
I hope you are so wrong, but there are many people who believe this ‘sovereign debt crisis’ or ‘currency war’ or ‘global currency devaluation’ (or whatever it is called now) will end very badly. This is something which troubles me far more than global warming ever has.

A better way to ask the disaster question is limit it to a global natural disaster. Political/economic SNAFUs that make people miserable, but have little affect on most of nature, are SOP..

In response to Dirk H, who noted it was an embarrassment to admit watching Bill Maher. One can always claim necessity, such as stopping at an x-rated video store for directions late at night when other businesses are closed. If one needs to cross a room to get to another location and Bill Maher’s show is on a TV there, it can be excused. However, stopping at the video store or seeing Bill Maher a SECOND time is highly suspect…

“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warming, and it actually happened as predicted?”
The only major disasters I can think of, which could perhaps have been predicted well beforehand, are those caused by dangerous governments, where in all cases such governments were not subject to reform and regulation by the will of the people, however most of these are also not ‘global’ in the usual sense. Nazism in the 1930s, Japanese Nationalism in the 1920s-1930s (and earlier), Collective farming under communism in the 1920s-1930s, the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s, North Korean famine and collectivism since the 1950s, the Great Depression in the 1930s.
It is worth noting that in all cases, except the last-the Great Depression- the following patterns were present:
1. they were very sure of their policies without the data to justify it.
2. an enemy, political adversary, or social practice was present which threatened the very existence of the state/ nation.
3. They were carried out by otherwise ordinary people.
4. They were supported and justified by state learning institutions, including in most cases what would otherwise pass as ‘science’.
5. There was a high degree of silencing, eliminating or excluding dissent.
6. The military played a significant role.
7. They were essentially government driven social disasters, by government-based ideologies. This isn’t to say that disasters cant happen which are not essentially brought about by governments, (the best example perhaps is the Great Depression, which was a failure to regulate the market), but government disasters tend to be more common simply because governments tend to develop resistive ideologies that are less able to respond and be regulated and balanced by the common sense of the people.
The climate change movement has elements of all the above except 6- no military involvement.
Perhaps that’s enough political philosophy for one day, from me anyway.

Iraq war.
Huge demonstrations against, so was seen coming. 100,000+ dead.

thingodonta says:
April 20, 2013 at 5:18 am
“The climate change movement has elements of all the above except 6- no military involvement. ”
The concept is called democide, death by government. Involvement of the military is not important. The military is just one branch of government.

Leo Geiger says:
April 20, 2013 at 5:38 am
“That scenario has played out with fish stocks. The inshore Atlantic cod fisherman knew what was coming, but false arguments about economics won (like large factory trawlers), wiping out what could have been a sustainable fishery”
Really?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/31/walking-the-plank-ton/#comment-445129
“OT – am just reading Vladil Lysenko’s “A Crime Against the World” (1983) – a book by a former Soviet trawler captain which divulged Soviet fisheries policy in the era before the 200-mile EEZs when Russian factory trawlers vacuumed up much of the world’s most valuable fish stocks. He provides a political side that I had never realized: the Soviets overfished not just to meet their own protein needs and because of the system of production targets that was politically dictated in all sectors of the Soviet command economy, but also to actively destroy fish stocks so as to economically damage the industries of capitalist nations. A rivetting read and strongly recommended. “

andrewmharding says:
April 20, 2013 at 2:55 am
“Famine in Africa, which has been an ongoing problem for years, highlighted by Band Aid in the mid-80′s
Overpopulation in China, which has been relieved by by the policy of limiting couples to one child only, but has caused misery to those who want to have more than one child.”
Two examples of democide, death by government, in the case of the Ethiopian communist and “reform”-communist government, the price fixing that prevents farmers from selling surplus on the market, stifling their productivity to subsistence levels.
In the case of China, literal death by government; abortions that even Planned Parenthood would not dare to endorse.

Dodgy Geezer says: April 20, 2013 at 2:14 am
“…Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the world would run out of food as the population grew. Instead, humans improved their farming technology.
Can someone tell him that he’s rediscovered Julian Simon’s work? I know that Simon was brushed out of history by Ehrlich and his crowd, but this is ridiculous…
***********
Yes, AND Norman Borlaug! (Whose Institute is at Texas A & M, naturally!)
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?
Given that if one interprets the term “general public” broadly enough or “global disaster” narrowly enough it will be impossible to satisfy this by definition, since the general public is generally clueless about so very many things that are openly known or predicted/predictable and we’ve NEVER had a truly global disaster predicted or otherwise as they require things like kilometer scale asteroids or Yellowstone eruptions, but if you go with a definition that includes a reasonable subset of the general public (the smarter one) and events that affect directly or indirectly a substantial fraction of the Earth’s population a list might look like:
World War I (post Sedan, the eventual occurrence of WWI was foreseen by and indeed encouraged by a large chunk of both the “general public” and the burgeoning military-industrial complex).
World War II (post Versailles, ditto and then some. Hitler even did the world a favor and wrote a book detailing his plans for disaster. Japan was less obvious to the clueless West, but perfectly obvious in China and the pacific rim countries that it threatened).
Viet Nam (talk about slow moving disasters! Twenty or more years OF disaster, let along ten years of warning. We can’t even FIX certain disasters in ten years). This affected the entire world economy, global patterns of military intervention, kept the cold war on the edge of being hot, and drove barriers between e.g. the United States and many world nations who worried about U.S. and/or Soviet imperialism.
The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming scam. It has all by itself been a global catastrophe, one that is still continuing so that its catastrophic cost continues to mount. The global “bill” is currently at least a few trillion dollars and the perpetuation of global poverty by at least one full generation and rising. A substantial fraction of the general public has “seen the scam coming” for well over a decade — again, it was more or less openly announced back in the 90s that certain powers were “going after carbon dioxide” as soon as they finished forcing us all to stop using Freon in air conditioners because (allegedly) it punched holes in the ozone.
International Drug Laws. Again, a slow catastrophe that one doesn’t have to “see coming” — it has been ongoing for thirty or forty years, it has obvious, simple solutions known perfectly well to a large subset of the human population, it costs hundreds of billions of dollars a year in diverted/wasted resources (enough to qualify as catastrophic over time if not right away) and no, neither human technology nor common sense suffice to fix it.
You will note the common factor in the exceptions above. Human greed and war are often predictable, if one bothers to look, but too many people just don’t give a damn (or the ones who do are the ones who benefit) so the human world is entirely capable of careening into easily avoidable global disasters of its own making. War is almost by definition avoidable and foreseeable, yet we still have war. CAGW and global geopolitical scams are a relatively new invention, preceded only by things like the Cold War — a slow catastrophe that was enormously beneficial to the military-industrial complex and enormously risky and catastrophic to everybody else.
Once the cold war ended, once the prospects for MAJOR wars subsided in the mid-90s, there was a huge incentive for the political and economic interests that control much of the world’s economy to find other avenues for maintaining their control and continuing to funnel unearned income into their pockets and offshore accounts. An ongoing series of MINOR wars have been openly encouraged and manipulated by some, allowed to occur by stupidity and inaction by others, to feed the military-industrial maw its hundred-billion dollar boluses of unearned income. The “war on drugs” sucks up hundreds of billions of dollars globally, potentiates military intervention in sovereign nations other than our own, and gives our police state a “crime” they can choose to enforce or not to extort power and manipulate the political process. CAGW has become an open excuse for picking our pockets almost daily, and don’t make the mistake of thinking that this pocket picking isn’t being done with the open support and monetary encouragement of the very energy industry that it supposedly castigates. Who really benefits from the artificially high prices of electricity, of oil, of coal? Who benefits from carbon trading (or would, if the scam weren’t so transparent that it isn’t working in spite of one of the best marketing efforts in all eternity)?
I’m not a full scale conspiracy theorist — plenty of world catastrophes can be interpreted as stupidity and greed, not intelligent manipulation by Illuminati — but the case to be made for the existence of a firmly entrenched shadow government is compelling. It is largely made up of a mix of organized criminals and the merely greedy — politicians and bankers and industrialists who profit from the system that serves the criminals. Periodically attempts are made to “follow the money” and untangle the morass of money laundering and tax evasion among the very powerful, and the people who do so who aren’t killed, discredited, or otherwise brought to heel before they can do damage bring back reports that outline the true extent of this in our society.
This is probably the biggest “catastrophe” of our time. Our personal freedom and the well-being of the entire world depend on cleaning up the mess left by the drug prohibition and the persistent reign of the military industrial complex and the wealthy non-governments of e.g. the Catholic Church (which has assets that make it the 18th or 19th richest “country” on the planet, in spite of the fact that it isn’t a country and is ruled by a closed conclave of old men). Adams is pretty smart — I’m sure he has seen this coming (or known it was going on) all of his life. Many of us, if not most of us, have. We talk about it. It often directly impacts upon our lives, or shows up in the news.
Can we solve this crisis by direct action and/or technology and planning? No. We don’t even know how to begin.
rgb

I think plenty of people could see the globalization being a disaster for manufacturing jobs and union scale wage.
We were told globalization was to keep the peace. Now US and world military spending is very high, almost back to cold war levels…
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?
Exactly, to the point.
When one takes a look at the examples given:
Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the world would run out of food as the population grew. Instead, humans improved their farming technology.
This was not due to Thomas Malthus prediction and reaction to it. About 15% of our food is coming from improved CO2 atmosphere – estimation that I saw also mentioned by Freeman Dyson. That is food for 1 000 000 000 people out of 7 000 000 000. Not bad for a beggining. Then it was a result of improved farming technologies, and genetics.
The world was supposed to run out of oil by now, but instead we keep finding new ways to extract it from the ground. The United States has unexpectedly become a net provider of energy.
Not a result of a reaction to the oil crisis by any bureaucratic government, not a reaction to the Club of Rome manifest, but a result of free market allowed to perform in some areas. A result of human inventivity as the “Doomslayer” said:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
“Resources come out of people’s minds more than out of the ground or air,” says Simon. “Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths. Human beings create more than they use, on average. It had to be so, or we would be an extinct species.”
The defect of the Malthusian models, superficially plausible but invariably wrong, is that they leave the human mind out of the equation. “These models simply do not comprehend key elements of people – the imaginative and creative.”
As for the future, “This is my long-run forecast in brief,” says Simon. “The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards.
“I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.”

thingodonta says:
April 20, 2013 at 5:18 am

It is worth noting that in all cases, except the last-the Great Depression- the following patterns were present:

You left off that they were all collectivist in some fashion.

(the best example perhaps is the Great Depression, which was a failure to regulate the market)

Um, I suggest you actually spend a bit more time researching the causes of the Great Depression. The government (Fed policy) most certainly was involved, and “the failure to regulate the market” is not often mentioned by sane economists as one of the causes. Similar to the current problems, it was also predicted by several economists. Funny that the guys that always see these things coming tend to be capitalists.

The climate change movement has elements of all the above except 6- no military involvement.

Not that you know about, but rest assured, if the government sees GW as a threat, the military is involved.
Mark

If one considers
    War on the weather Army – “climate” change
    War on Impoverishment (in our back yard) Army – entitlement
then I think
    Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
    Military-Industrial Complex Speech
where the councils of government a
    there is a recurring temptation to feel that some
    spectacular and costly action could become
    the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.
Unfortunately,
    we live in interesting times.

Rising UK excess winter. It has been a disaster and we saw this coming 3 years ago with higher energy prices to tackle global warming climate change. 🙁

Thomas Jefferson on the slow moving disaster of growing government:

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”

John F Kennedy, April 29, 1962, at dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners.

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Here’s an economist that predicted a world financial crisis after 1998. I don’t know if it counts though as it is triggered from Asia.

The Nation – Dec 30, 1997
“Economist predicts global financial crisis”
http://tinyurl.com/c6vqfvm

Sam Adams, July 1776, on the removal of the anti-slavery clause from the Declaration of Independence. These are the backnotes from the Stone and Edwards musical 1776:

But by far the most frustrating reason for deleting a historical fact was that the audiences would never have believed it. The best example of this is John Adams’ reply (it was actually Cousin Sam who said it) to Franklin’s willingness to drop the anti-slavery clause from the Declaration. “Mark me, Franklin,” he now says in Scene 7, “if we give in on this issue, posterity will never forgive us.” But the complete line, spoken in July 1776, was “If we give in on this issue, there will be trouble a hundred years hence; posterity will never forgive us.” And audiences would never forgive us. For who could blame them for believing that the phrase was the author’s invention, stemming from the eternal wisdom of hindsight?

I think posterity forgives them for establishing Independence “under terms more favorable than a more generous God would ever permit.” But Sam Adams was prescient. The Civil War was a disaster he saw coming that we did not avert nor prevent.

“If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them. ”
– Calvin Coolidge

“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?
Yes.
The open borders-pro illegal immigration problem has been looming since at least 1986 when we had the last “permanent fix”. We are in grave danger of a one party system in the US with unknown millions ready to gain citizenship and the vote. Unlike the irrational GOP dreams, those who break the law to get here are not likely to support capitalism and our traditional guarantees of individual liberties and the rule of law. Rather, they are much more likely to vote for the far left and more big government. To make it global, they have the same problem in Europe and it will most likely spread.

Suggest a reading of ” Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds” by McKay, Charles , originally published 1841.
End of the world themes are ever popular.
Substantial Meteor/comet strikes Tungaska 1908, Saudii Arabia 20,000 b.c, Metorite Crater 65,000 B.C. Inevitable but statistically unlikely in our lifetimes
Supervolanoes – Yellowstone quietly bubbling, Tenerife due to drop into the Atlantic Ocean…. some time.
Large scale devasating volcanoes – Krakatoa 1883, Mt Pelee 1902, Satorini c. 2,500.00 B.C. Vesuvius AD 79.
Economic bubbles and every time they say it is a new paradigm and couldn’t possibly happen again
1865, 1908, 1929, 1987 and the best one the 1999 dotcom ( when effectively a company based on a catchy domain name was worth more than a company with real estate, revenue stream and an established product), and the housing crash (sub-prime maket) in 2008. My own quote “Banking is capital, credit and interest. The rest is speculation.”
It may have helped humanity if these intellectual giants of finance has applied their brain power to the duality of quantum physics rather than think up convoluted Ponzi schemes and then promulgated as “Finanical Engineering”/ sarc off

“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?”
the 1st world war (but they wanted it, sadly …)

“Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?”
————
Maybe not the general public but.. When Bush 1 started his Desert Storm war the left went bananas over their inability to stop it.. So they started their own equally important war to save the planet.. A economic civil war with our tax dollars in place of bullets..
Neither side willing to step down lead directly to the 2008 crash.. With more economic disaster to come..
Lets rework our economy (green) while we fight a series of the most expensive wars in the history of mankind.. Like economic disaster wasnt seen looming on the horizon..
I win the contest..

I remember an article from Popular Science magazine in the late 1970s. In the article, climate scientists were warning of “global cooling which would cause untold death and destruction. Now we have had the Al Gore scare-athon for several years. Things tend to work out. Temperatures tend to move toward the mean. And who has become a multimillionaire in the meantime? Mr. Inconvenience himself – Albert “Laughing All the Way to the Bank” Gore.

Well personally I’m perfectly happy to accept (unlike some diehards) that the ozone depletion predicted in 1974 by Molina and Rowland had turned out to be worse than anticipated by the mid 1980s, and that the Montreal Protocol was a reasonable response to the problem.

Rap music. Still here and sounds as good as it ever did.

I’m skeptical of victory unless Dogbert/”The Deputy of Common Sense” is on board. If he is, then not only am I confident of victory, I am confident the alarmists will be mocked mercilessly.

Hurricane Katrina was not a global disaster but it was well known that New Orleans was highly vulnerable and that its levy system was inadequate. And it was also known that the people in charge of the levies and all other aspects of preparedness were both corrupt and incompetent.
Stupidly we have rebuilt New Orleans at huge expense and we probably have not done enough to address the possibility that there will be a repeat of Katrina. Arguably …. it is not possible to do enough to prevent a repeat. It is not particularlty smart to build a city below sea level in a subsidence area, flanked by swamps and the country’s largest river.
This admittedly was not a global disaster but it is a pretty good example of human’s failing to address a known long-term prediction of disaster.

Public education was predicted to become a swollen, incompetent bureaucracy. It did.

I wish that Adams had been more skeptical in the last chapter of his book, Dilbert future. It’s got some bizarre stuff in there.

The global financial and economic collapse that started in 2008 had been predicted for decades, but it still happened, and it’s getting worse.

Yes, Mark. The global financial and economic train wreck was predicted decades in advance by sensible people. The maiden is tied to the tracks. The train’s looming closer and closer. Sadly, no “hero” is able to save her, the time is too short, now.
And, sadly, much like the absurd “climate scientists” with their absurd computer (science) models predicting the end of the world as we know it, so the absurd “economic scientists” with their own models, assure us no train’s looming; it’s all a silly illusion: nothing to see here. …sigh….
….Lady in Red

@Justthinkin on April 20, 2013 at 6:48 pm
“Could you please cite,with links,” and blah blah…
No, I will not.
Do your own homework!
If you are a nuclear but, then you have my pity.

Roger Sowell says:
Roger,
We might call your second comment an argument from authority, but it isn’t. You stated the premise so the burden is on you to provide the proof of how bad those accidents were. If you don’t or won’t then it just becomes the argument of a curmudgeon.
Come on, man. Step up to the plate with some facts so others can take a whack at the piñata.
pbh

David, UK says:
April 20, 2013 at 3:51 am
I don’t think anyone could claim that the general public saw that one coming.
My dad said he listened, as a young man, to Chamberlain’s speech. His dad (my grandfather) said “Oh oh, theres a war coming”.

Aren’t climate disaster predictions supposed to be forecast before the actual disaster event? Which is always followed by we knew that and its happening exactly as we forecast.

Historian says:
April 20, 2013 at 9:13 am
“Some civilizations can survive massive climatic disasters without collapsing. East Rome coped with the catastropies of 535-545,”
yes, but got weakened to the point where the Umayads could conquer most of it some time later.
” and Renaissance Italy thrived in the Little Ice Age. This is a particularly impressive feat, since at the same time the Black Death caused Italian cities population losses of over 50%.”
They had a business model and a rich customer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

SAMURAI says:
April 20, 2013 at 3:52 am
Debt crisis
The simple answer is called DEFAULT. That means people and institutions who lent money won’t get paid. There is such a thing as risk, after all. But the reality is much more complicated.
Then how did this all come about?
Otter says:
April 20, 2013 at 2:50 am
Communism.
Not exactly. There were and are dreamers who believe tales of eternal joy living in the collective. Many have been working madly to craft their dream by trying to simultaneously make the dream real (sharing the wealth) and wrecking the system (destroying the wealth). And what we are getting isn’t even socialism, where the state owns the means of production. It is fascism, where the state orders the private sector to produce what the state requires. Regulations, laws, and taxes produce the benefit on the one hand of crushing competition, and on the other a real treat of having government crush your existing business. These forces drive companies to fall into line and do what government tell them to do.

How do we avoid the true slow disaster of giving up sovereignty and freedom?
Another Adams, Douglas has the answer. Don’t Panic.
When they say we have to do X, we ask why? Some powerful people want to get paid. Forget it. They bet wrong. Baby boomers, you had a great run, but the promises were a lie. Pensions won’t last, and savings will be robbed by inflation. The power-elite created the mess on purpose to trap us.
Banks? Get out now (keep your account, but only maintain a small balance). Pay off your debts, or default and settle. Abandon credit at all costs. Convert cash to real assets, but be careful. Gold? Who is going to trade that? Even silver – $30 of silver per Morgan Dollar. How many can you keep? When they are gone, they’re gone.
Consider creating a business that functions in the underground economy. Cash and barter only. I hope doctors figure that out soon. There is a shadow economy now, and it will likely grow. Of course when it gets big enough, you’ll see government try to crack down hard on it, albeit with difficulty. They’ve already started with food. New laws and regulations technically could ban farmers’ markets, restricting offering any food for sale or even sharing food we produce without testing for pathogens first. You can still grow food in gardens, at least for now. Although, who knows how to grow food anymore? Certainly not the 48 million people with EBT cards (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-11/foodstamp-recipients-hit-record-alongside-record-dow-jones-and-record-debt-20-eligib). A limiting factor will be enforcement. You have to be discovered first. Drones? Expect a few highly publicized scary crack-downs. However, if people demand something, they’ll get it. They probably want food more than their cannabis.
NEVER give up your guns. Hide them, say they were stolen if you have to. Get several thousand rounds of ammunition for each weapon. When the bad times come, what else can you do to protect what you have? Decide what you can defend. Plan. Band together with friends so you can protect each other. (Even though it seems very unlikely now, it could get really bad really fast.)
If the disaster happens
(Five years ago, I never thought it would make sense to actually try to think this through as having any chance at all – it’s still a remote possibility, but the chance is no longer zero).
Scenario A. Massive riots, police can’t handle it, not even National Guard.
That’s why you need your guns. Hope you stashed food somewhere that won’t easily be found or burned. Your biggest problem will be water. Hope you have like-minded friends.
Scenario B. People do panic, and want more government to ‘save’ them. Now a new aggressive system begins to crush the population.
You can’t fight government gone insane. If you get noticed, they will crush you and grind you up. Then do whatever you can to survive. Pretend to go along if you have to. It will take roughly 3 generations for the new system to crash. Do what you need to do for your grandchildren.
Unless the authorities begin rounding up millions of people and killing them (including slowly in gulags), nonviolent resistance is the answer. Think of ways around the system. There is no bureaucracy big enough to monitor and control everyone in every aspect of life. And you might think of subtle ways to disable the system too (incompetence is probably the best). Just don’t get noticed. Work your way up in the system to undermine it.
Scenario C. War. Yikes. No answer for that. It is the typical step taken to distract from national government incompetence. The young people are going to have the worst time of it. It seems unlikely the power elite actually want to destroy the means of production. Government will be allowed to do almost anything to support the war effort, and people will have to ‘sacrifice’. And America will lose (planned ahead of time – why else move manufacturing overseas to support your most likely future enemy). This option may be taken to eliminate the Constitution.
Back to the Debt Crisis.
Are we going to give up our freedom to pay back anyone? Are we going to let politicians sell us out using that excuse? We shouldn’t. Ordinarily, the ballot is the best control over the politician. However, our system is extremely distorted (deliberately) with millions of people dependent on government services. They will vote to support the current regime, because they have no other clear alternative. “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money”, is incorrectly attributed to de Tocqville (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville). The likely original quote may be better,

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.” (ibid., Elmer T. Peterson in The Daily Oklahoman, 9 December 1951)
The size of government must be reduced to the point it no longer competes with the people, or the private sector. If the debt crisis forces a contraction of government, then we should welcome it. On the other hand, the crisis may lead to a loss of freedom, or war. How we deal with the crisis is important. It may require non-democratic methods to preserve our freedom given a majority who will never vote to reduce their “benefits”. Does that mean a second Revolution? A second Civil War? We must do whatever we can to avoid such disasters. An Atlas Shrugged-inspired strike by the producers would be better.
Preferably, there would be a clearly articulated and compelling plan to get us out of our economic troubles. Unfortunately, our best options have been demonized, and these relate to inexpensive reliable energy resources. Climate change is the main tool used to scare the public. Unless the public can understand the stark choices before us, and realize their freedom and possibly their lives depend on getting past their fears of technology, we will be looking at nothing but bad options. That is why fora like WUWT are so important.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.
R.W. Reagan

Leo Geiger says on April 20, 2013 at 5:38 am:
“The question asked about disasters seen coming. That assumes people recognized the problem they faced. If some people claim there isn’t a problem, they have enough influence to prevent anything getting done, but they are wrong and there actually *is* a big problem, does that count as “seen coming”?
That scenario has played out with fish stocks. The inshore Atlantic cod fisherman knew what was coming, but false arguments about economics won (like large factory trawlers), wiping out what could have been a sustainable fishery.”
The most likely cause of the cod fishery collapse was about 6.5 million seals gobbling up about 13 billion pounds of sea food per year. The Europeans started the seal hunt protests because they knew the seals would eventually destroy the fishery and thus keep cheap Canadian fish out of their markets.

they told me that if i voted for Mitt Romney, the economy would tank and the US would be a laughingstock on the world stage.
i voted for hm anyway, and, sure enough, the economy is getting worse, and our foreign policy is idiotic.

Global Warming Alarmism. I saw that coming from about 1985 and I just couldn’t stop it.