Storage

There are a number of reasons why to consider the long term storage of food.

Climate change is bringing variability into food prices. An example is the price of bananas post hurricane Yasi in Australia. Prices went from $2 per kg to $14 per kg within a very short time frame. Naturally people will change their buying preference away from bananas to a substitute product. However, there are more and more of these extreme variations, with less and less choice. As the environment becomes more hostile, it makes sense to store food when there is a surplus.

There will be more extreme events that leave your household isolated. These could be as a result of flooding, fires, riots, heat events or storms.

This is not only about food, but also water.

The main techniques for long term storage or food are salting, drying and bottling. Obviously the existing information for these techniques is extensive and I would suggest referring to Wikipedia for the different methods according to food types.

Plans need to be made for water storage for both heat events and drinking. Long term water storage is going to require low tech purification. There are references online for various techniques depending on your situation.

What I will focus on is events I can foresee and possible methods to cope. I would appreciate any input.

Extreme events

One factor that has been hypothesized for the loss of Scott's party to the South Pole was the lack of effective calorie allocations.

From here.
The number of calories burned at rest is called the basal metabolic rate, and it’s a measure of how much energy your body uses just to keep all of your complex bodily functions up and running and in check (i.e. your body temperature regulated, your heart beating, your brain humming, and so on).

How many Calories do I Burn doing Nothing? 
Here’s the formula to find your resting metabolic rate:

For Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)
For Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)


There are various threats depending on where in the world you are. I am going to try and cover a few.

Disease

During an outbreak of disease the best option is to stay put. Depending on the circumstances authorities will contain it, but there is a period of extreme risk. Some parts of the world, and depending on the degree of migration, containment may be difficult. An example might be Southern Europe and the influx of illegal immigrants and the threat that poses with Ebola.

A store of food and water is going to be vital to holding out.

Nuclear winter

Cold war is over, so the nuclear threat is gone? Nuclear pollution is why you should still care.

Is it reasonable to assume that one would be able to stay in a restful state for months on end? During a nuclear winter scenario, there simply may be no choice.

The following images are from some soviet work to determine the effects of a nuclear winter.

The estimated time frame would be 1 - 2 years, but that is dependent on models that have never been tested. In addition, the models were done without consideration to climate change. Finally, the models failed in estimating the impact from fires during the Kuwait war. So, basically nobody knows.

Being totally sedentary for an extended period of time would create other health problems. However, using metabolic reducing techniques discussed elsewhere would result in lower calorie requirements.

Anyway you look at it, it is a significant amount of food to store.

Nuclear pollution

There are 400+ nuclear reactors in operation. Those need constant monitoring and maintenance. 

When climate change hits hard and our infrastructure starts to decay, these will begin to fail. Decommissioning a nuclear reactor takes years. There are many that like Fukishima that are positioned by the ocean, unless completely decommissioned safely they will eventually flood. That will release radioactive material into the ocean. Given the other issues, there can be no long term survival of the ocean, as we know it. However, what will be terminal for mankind is if they go into meltdown. That will pollute the atmosphere. 

The are sheep in Wales, 26 years after Chenobyl that are still being affected by the fallout. (thanks for the heads up ulvfugl)

The only way for these reactors to avoid meltdown is to make sure that civilization's infrastructure survives. The reactors have a backup generator, but that is not enough for what we are facing. Sustaining the infrastructure requires energy, and lots of it, always on demand. 

The changes that will have to be made to survive heat events will require the ability to build new types of housing, and logistics. The logistics chain needs to be electrified, as fossil fuels are unsustainable. That requires a significant power source, much greater than is currently available.

Renewables are a great option, but the generation variability makes providing a constant load difficult. The ability to generate nationwide logistics chains using renewable electricity is unlikely in the near future. We haven't even achieved that using coal. Hydrogen would require a complete overall of our infrastructure. Electrifying the train network nationally could be done with minimal changes to the existing system.
In addition, we do not have a long time-frame in which to implement this.

The only source that is capable of doing a high constant load is Thorium. Thorium requires constant bombardment in order for it to react, so it cannot create its own chain reaction. Should the power station fail, it cannot go into meltdown. In the event of a terrorist attack or missile strike on the reactor, spilled fuel would only create a contamination zone in the immediate surroundings of the reactor.

When thorium is irradiated, or exposed to radiation to prepare it for use as a fuel in nuclear reactions, the process forms small amounts of uranium-232. That highly radioactive isotope makes any handling of the fuel outside of a large reactor or reprocessing facility incredibly dangerous. The lethal gamma rays uranium-232 emits make any would-be bomb-maker think twice before trying to steal thorium. (link)

There is the issue that with a small tweak in the processing chain you can make atomic grade material. If an element known as protactinium-233 is extracted from thorium early in the irradiation process, no uranium-232 will form. Instead, the separated protactinium-233 will decay into high purity uranium-233, which can be used in nuclear weapons. (link) This maybe a situation we just have to accept. We are already in a mutually assured destruction scenario.

As climate change will continue unabated, we must ensure that the energy infrastructure remains functional. We cannot rely on fossil fuels for the reasons mentioned elsewhere. Where possible we should use renewables, with the excess stored as hydrogen. Where that is not possible due to fluctuations we need to build Liquid Flouride Thorium processing plants as close to the legacy reactors as possible. There is now a revitalization of older technology called Transatomic  that can generate power from nuclear waste, though it faces hurdles coming online. That way the infrastructure can be reused, and process of decommissioning can continue without interruption.

I am not confident that this will occur in the time-frame left to us. 

So what is expected when there are failures that result in atmospheric pollution? It depends on the wind. The following is a general pattern.

Which basically results in the following;

The point of this is that the wind disperses the radioactive material and the atmosphere clears radioactive contamination via rain. Unfortunately the areas under that rain can be severely contaminated. For example, as a result of a surface burst of a 15 Mt thermonuclear device at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954, a roughly cigar-shaped area of the Pacific extending over 500 km downwind and varying in width to a maximum of 100 km was severely contaminated. Snow and rain, especially if they come from considerable heights, will accelerate local fallout. 

Another variable in the process is that air circulation appears to be slowing down. (link) From the article "By the end of the century, more than half of the world’s population will be exposed to increasingly stagnant atmospheric conditions, with the tropics and subtropics bearing the brunt of the poor air quality." Stagnant air at the tropics would mean more opportunity for the nuclear pollutants to be cleared from the atmosphere by precipitation. So whatever the N. Hemisphere does to itself does not automatically translate into the same effect in the south.

It needs to be pointed out that a nuclear detonation is significantly different to a reactor meltdown. A meltdown can continue for days or weeks. High altitude points in Wales were contaminated from Chernobyl (1,697 miles). However, that does not indicate fatal contamination.
This is from the Worldwide Health Organization in regards to Chernobyl (link)

UNSCEAR reports that the average natural background radiation dose to human beings worldwide is about 2.4 mSv2 each year, but this varies typically over the range 1-10 mSv. However, for a limited number of people living in known high background radiation areas of the world, doses can exceed 20 mSv per year. There is no evidence to indicate this poses a health risk.

So what was the result of Chernobyl?

Population (years exposed)	Number	Average total in 20 years (mSv)1
Liquidators (1986–1987) (high exposed)	240 000	>100
Evacuees (1986)	116 000	>33
Residents SCZs (>555 kBq/m2)(1986–2005)	270 000	>50
Residents low contam. (37 kBq/m2) (1986–2005)	5 000 000	10–20
Natural background	2.4 mSv/year (typical range 1–10, max >20)	48
Approximate typical doses from medical x-ray exposures per procedure:
Whole body CT scan	12 mSv
Mammogram	0.13 mSv
Chest x-ray	0.08 mSv
[1] These doses are additional to those from natural background radiation.

While the effective doses of most of the residents of the contaminated areas are low, for many people, doses to the thyroid gland were large from ingestion of milk contaminated with radioactive iodine. Individual thyroid doses ranged from a few tens of mGy to several tens of Gy.

You can read the page for the resulting medical conditions from the link. None of which I would wish on my kids.  It is expected that the increase in thyroid cancer incidence due to the Chernobyl accident will continue for many more years, although the long-term increase is difficult to quantify precisely.

So what conclusions can be made? It depends on the current weather patterns. A nuclear meltdown should force migration, however Chernobyl demonstrated that a lot of people will not move, simply because they have nowhere to go. The current Chernobyl exclusion zone covers an area of approximately 2,600 km²(1,000 sq mi). It doesn't stop there though, forest fires have been shown to release the radioactive elements back into the atmosphere.

Should simultaneous meltdowns occur due to climate change adversely affecting the local infrastructure, then the southern hemisphere will fare better. The Hadley cells would encourage high altitude contamination to go north. The equatorial patterns would delay the movement towards the south. Any delay is positive as it offers the potential for rain to flush it out of the atmosphere (and into the ocean). An estimate would be 1 to 6 months for contamination to reach the southern hemisphere, very dependent on where it started.

Again, if we take the scenario of a nuclear war. Depending on the ferocity, the result of which could actually be a nuclear winter. This is the subject of much debate, but the theory is massive city fire storms would result in smoke being lifted into the stratosphere, shielding the Earth from the sun's warmth. From a recent study;

After the Indian-Pakistani nuclear exchange…

• Five megatons of black carbon enter the atmosphere immediately. Black carbon comes from burned stuff and it absorbs heat from the sun before it can reach the Earth. Some black carbon does eventually falls back to Earth in rain.
• After one year, the average surface temperature of the Earth falls by 1.1 kelvin, or about two degrees Fahrenheit. After five years, the Earth is, on average, three degrees colder than it used to be. Twenty years on, our home planet warms again to about one degree cooler than the average before the nuclear war.
• Earth's falling temperatures reduces the amount of rain the planet receives. Year five after the war, Earth will have 9 percent less rain than usual. Year 26 after the war, Earth gets 4.5 percent less rain than before the war.
• In years 2-6 after the war, the frost-free growing season for crops is shortened by 10 to 40 days, depending on the region.
• Chemical reactions in the atmosphere eat away Earth's ozone layer, which protects Earth's inhabitants from ultraviolet radiation. In the five years after the war, the ozone is 20 to 25 percent thinner, on average. Ten years on, the ozone layer has recovered so that it's now 8 percent thinner.
• The decreased UV protection may lead to more sunburns and skin cancers in people, as well asreduced plant growth and destabilized DNA in crops such as corn.
• In a separate study, published in 2013, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War estimated 2 billion people would starve in the wake of a 100-A-bomb war.

The effect would be plummeting temperatures reminiscent of what happened after Krakatoa, and probably on a larger scale. It would theoretically wipe out the harvests. This is another strong point in favour of growing hydroponically, even if it is outside. The plants could be covered with tunnels. The radiation (from whatever source) must not get into the nutrients. In addition, it has been demonstrated that plants are more responsive to the temperature of the soil rather than the atmosphere. That does leave the door open to heating the nutrients.

Should the harvest be lost, the only option then is whatever has been dried or bottled from the previous harvest, or can be grown indoors under low light. It would seem then that a significant storage program is required.

The single lifetime human dose should be 500 mSv (0.71 uSv/hour) to the maximum of 4000 mSv (5.7 uSv/hour).

Extinction

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I don't accept that humanity has to face extinction. We can get to the moon, we can live on the space station, we can plan to live on Mars, but we can't survive this? But, before anyone pulls out the flame thrower, let me state I do understand the issues and I understand that they are vast. I also understand that a great deal, perhaps the majority of us will not survive.

However, I believe it will mostly be because we sat around wailing about our fate. We need to start preparing.

The way I see it (a brief summary);

Heat - Because of heat stress certain regions of the world will be deadly in certain seasons. The rest will be hard in summer.

Oxygen - Some areas will become borderline oxygen deficient. (See Oxygen on the preppingForExile site)

Ocean - Oxygen Minimum Zones will be greatly expanded. Bacteria, toxic algae and bacteria will dominate

Economic collapse - Personal and National debt levels are unsustainable.

Environmental dangers, increasing fires, floods and stronger storms

Migration - Huge numbers of people will be migrating

Peak Oil - The carbon economy will collapse

Logistics - Logistics is the arteries of modern society, enough said.

Driven by oil prices and environmental damage food prices will go through the roof

Wars - There will be WWIII as predicted.

etc ( you know all this stuff )

OK, it is bad. But fatal? Yes, to the world as we know it. I am not pretending that we can keep civilization as we know it.

There is an essay on this site with an allegory of a butterfly. I am going to steal it. The cocoon is the situation post-crash. Those that have prepared could well emerge as a whole new entity. A type of society that has never existed in the history of man. This is no fairy tale where you turn the page and there's the happy ending. To me evolution is a fact, and it is going to be harsh. If we are prepared, we are going to evolve, if we are unprepared, we may well devolve or simply cease to exist.

We like to blame the government, but the sad reality is that our governments are a reflection of dominate selfish genes. It has to be, we keep doing this to ourselves all through history. But for once in humanities existence, there is a chance those genes will not survive the tribulation.

To collectively survive, we would have to;

Co-operate instead of compete.

Become indispensable while society crumbles around us.

Protect, without aggression

Share instead of hoard

Learn and retain huge amounts of information

Exist for long periods of time in stasis in order to reduce heat stress

Reduce body mass, over generations we may have to get to the size of Homo Flores

Be willing to eat differently

At times be nocturnal

If necessary, live underground.

And we may have to do it for hundreds to thousands of years.

There are obviously many many obstacles, far too many to be covered in this comment. I am trying to cover them on my blog. But it all comes down to connected communities. If they fail, we do not have the practical skills to survive in a hostile world on our own. Frankly, who would want to?

Suppose, just for a moment that a rapid melt of the Greenland ice sheet caused the thermohaline circulation to stop. Or that whatever caused the Younger Dryas asserted itself again. Or that once the migration chaos had subsided, that communities could move to the polar regions?

I would say to Mr. McPherson (and others like him) that they have a huge responsibility on their shoulders. If there is the smallest grain of hope for our survival, and they can accurately foresee the coming storm, then they have a responsibility to ensure that we are not only warned, but also prepared. No-one in all of human history from Lao Tzu to Einstein ever carried such a weight.

Personally, I do not believe we have to fund trillion dollar underground cities powered by Thorium. What we need is small inter-connected, Kibbutz style, communities all over the world. If we try and do this on our own we are done for.

Community living

It would seem that the issues to face are all environmental and technical. Actually the biggest may be psychological and physiological.

Extroverts vs Introverts

Assume a situation where you are cooped up for 6 months, isolated, confined, working at night, and sleeping during the day. It would be like space travel.

The report finds that people of chatty nature, seeing as they would likely be more extroverted, would be deemed more disturbing and demanding of attention and not be suitable candidates for a job that entails confined and secluded environments over a long duration.

The study, conducted by researchers at DePaul University in Chicago, found that a person that is always willing to talk could actually become irritating to other crew members on a lengthy space mission.

"You're talking about a very tiny vehicle, where people are in very isolated, very confined spaces," explained Suzanne Bell an associate professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago and lead researcher on the study. "Extroverts have a little bit of a tough time in that situation."(link)

Extend this to years at a time and you can see why the problems of personal relationships were such a big issue in the biosphere project.

Diet

A vegetarian diet will build a more cohesive community. Why? Because it lowers testosterone (link).

The research advances the argument that human society progressed when people began being kinder to each other, which requires that a smaller amount of testosterone be in action.

According to Duke anthropologist Steven Churchill, rounder heads and smaller brows can be linked to testosterone levels impacting the skeleton.

Read more: http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/low-testosterone-levels-led-to-less-head-clubbing-and-more-art-technology/#ixzz39JVHP4K9

“If prehistoric people began living closer together and passing down new technologies, they’d have to be tolerant of each other. The key to our success is the ability to cooperate and get along and learn from one another,” said Robert Cieri (lead author)

If that is true, then I find it disturbing that there are news titles such as;

Record Number Of Men Seeking Treatment For Low Testosterone Levels

As the world lurches towards a crunch this is the worst possible time that men should be trying to build testosterone levels. The last bastion of hope is in co-operation.

“If prehistoric people began living closer together and passing down new technologies, they’d have to be tolerant of each other,” Cieri posited. “The key to our success is the ability to cooperate and get along and learn from one another.”

They will be living close together, but they won't be tolerant.

Biogas

Natural gas

The traditional benefits of biogas are primarily local. By producing biogas you reduce the load requirement on the total grid. It has a huge impact. The first village in the world to be energy self-sufficient did it by biogas;
http://www.abc.net.au/.../german-village-first-to.../5879360
But China is taking this to a whole new level and their 2020 goal is 30GW
http://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S1364032113002591That is the equivalent of 10% of the world's ENTIRE nuclear energy. They have been doing this since at least the days of Chairman Mao.

Biogas processing is a obvious energy source. Large animals are unlikely to survive a WBGT heat event. However, small animals produce waste as well, Azolla is an abundant source, and then of course there is human waste. Here is a brilliantly simple natural gas generator that can run off human waste (link). 



I like the use of the header tank for pressure. The only design change I would make would be to the Anaerobic digester to include a waste pipe.
Now the waste can flow to an aerobic digester with an air stone to create an excellent fertilizer. Could the slurry output also be used as vegetable garden fertilizer? Apparently, if the temperature is maintained high enough. http://grandpappy.org/gcompost.htm, http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/human-waste-zmgz11zrog.aspx#axzz32JEGwsgX
Otherwise, a more involved design would be to boil the waste in a pressure cooker prior to it moving to the aerobic digester. The methane could be used to power the boiler.

A few other designs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLm8o5tlJpg (See comment about how to prevent blow-back).
http://www.instructables.com/id/Biogas-at-home-Cheap-and-Easy/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bio-gas-plant-using-kitchen-waste/?ALLSTEPS
http://www.instructables.com/id/Cash-from-Trash-Make-your-very-own-electricity/
http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/biogas-generator-zm0z14aszrob.aspx?SlideShow=5 (design includes a heater)

This has been done on a large scale in China since the 60s. Need to have temperatures over 10C for it to work. Needs to be cleaned:
Bio gas is approximately 60% methane and 40% co2 and traces of H2S (I guess you already know that). First, you might want to get rid of H2S as it will be corrosive - running the gas through iron shavings should do the trick. 
I have solved some of that by taking a piece of 2"PVC tube and filling it with industrial steel wool. By passing the gas through that, most of the elements corrosive to steel and iron attach to the steel wool. In addition, we pass the gas through a similar filter of aluminum filings. Thirdly, it passes through a solution of Limewater to remove the CO2. We will be changing this to (i think?) MEA as it is easier to remove the CO2 from MEA than limewater. We may put a further filter to remove the moisture from the gas as well.
Full discussion here:
http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/14709
The output needs to be pressurized and stored. One way to build a compressor is to modify a tyre inflator:
http://www.instructables.com/id/convert-a-tire-inflator-type-air-compressor-into-a/?ALLSTEPS
The output can then go into a an upside barrel (a) within another larger one (b). A valve from the top of (a) would allow all the air out. A feed inline would pump methane in and the water would be forced out. An outline from the top would have pressurized methane.

Hydrogen

There are really 2 topics here. The first is the use of hydrogen in a small community. The second is the use of it in the broader economic society.

Local use

Hydrogen does not have to be pressurized for storage. That is a requirement for efficient shipping. I am not talking about shipping it, but rather using it locally. There are many low tech solutions for local storage of methane and hydrogen, have a look on the instructables site. There are some very clever people there.
One I particularly like is the equivalent of a weighted upside down bucket in water. There is an inline with a check valve, the outline runs through a little tank to eliminate flashback. When you want to use it you simply open a valve on the outline and apply pressure.

In saying that there are a lot of other precautions that need to be dealt with. Like with methane digesters it would probably be recommended that the storage be buried and removed from dwellings. But they are not deal breakers by any means.

Use in society

Hydrogen can be produced using diverse, domestic resources including fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal (with carbon sequestration); nuclear; biomass; and other renewable energy technologies, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro-electric power.

The overall challenge to hydrogen production is cost reduction. For cost-competitive transportation, a key driver for energy independence, hydrogen must be comparable to conventional fuels and technologies on a per-mile basis in order to succeed in the commercial marketplace. 
(http://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production)

Given the pending energy crisis, market forces could well move us in a direction that makes hydrogen comparable to conventional fuels. The problem is that it is unlikely that the market forces will be gradual. If there is a sudden upswing in the cost of fuel due to issues in the middle east, then it is impossible that hydrogen production will come online quick enough to be affordable to the average person.

Electrolysis

In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a method of using a direct electric current (DC) to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction. (link)

oxyhydrogen generator

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Oxygen-and-Hydrogen-from-Water-Using-Electrolysis

Create hydrogen

http://www.instructables.com/id/Hoffman-Apparatus-for-pure-hydrogen-gas/

Developments

http://www.ibtimes.com/producing-hydrogen-backyard-could-be-possible-scientist-307822

Commercial options
At $34k it's a bit pricey
http://www.victorygasworks.com/

Home made hydrogen generation
http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/1322

The future of hydrogen transport might be closer than we think.
Honda has begun work on a smaller solar hydrogen station prototype intended for use as a home refueling appliance. Capable of an overnight refill of fuel cell electric vehicles it is designed to be a single, integrated unit that will fit in the user's garage. 
http://www.gizmag.com/honda-solar-hydrogen-fuel-cell-refueller-electric-vehicle/14049/

Energy

We take energy for granted. The possibility of going without it would be terrifying! Not because you can't simply turn on a light, the problems are vast.

Let's start with a brief review of the energy situation.
World wide peak oil begins 2015 - 2016. The new US Tight Oil Production has delayed it, but the problem still exists. Peak oil means the costs of extracting it start to significantly affect the ability to get to the oil. It will not be a sudden plunge, but rather a gradual bumpy decline.

Fossil fuels

Petrol in Australia is a major problem, Australia keeps a 90 day supply. It relies on the logistics pipeline to keep us going. This is common policy now around the world. But sources are running dry. Australia is outsourcing its oil refining to overseas, by the end of the decade it is estimated that there will be no more refineries in Australia at all.

According to a report by the Global Sustainability Institute, England will be completely reliant on imports of oil, coal and gas within 5 years. England is hoping for a fracking boom and for increased imports from the US. France has less than a year for oil, coal and gas. Germany has less than a year of oil. 

No one is stating that a year from now Germany will be out of oil. It will just become reliant on imports. The supply line will keep things humming along. Therein lies the rub. Where does the supply line come from and where does it run through? Firstly, where does it come from? Here courtesy of Wikipedia is the makeup

Country	Region	Joined OPEC[30]	Population (July 2012)[31]	Area (km²)[32]	Production (bbl/day)
Ecuador	South America	2007[A 1]	15,223,680	283,560	485,700 (30th)
Qatar	Middle East	1961	1,951,591	11,437	1,213,000 (21st)
Angola	Africa	2007	18,056,072	1,246,700	1,948,000 (17th)
Algeria	Africa	1969	37,367,226	2,381,740	2,125,000 (16th)
Libya	Africa	1962	5,613,380	1,759,540	2,210,000 (15th)
Nigeria	Africa	1971	170,123,740	923,768	2,211,000 (14th)
Venezuela	South America	1960[A 2]	28,047,938	912,050	2,472,000 (11th)
Kuwait	Middle East	1960[A 2]	2,646,314	17,820	2,494,000 (10th)
United Arab Emirates	Middle East	1967	5,314,317	83,600	2,798,000 (8th)
Iraq	Middle East	1960[A 2]	31,129,225	437,072	3,200,000 (12th)
Iran	Middle East	1960[A 2]	78,868,711	1,648,000	4,172,000 (4th)
Saudi Arabia	Middle East	1960[A 2]	26,534,504	2,149,690	8,800,000 (2nd)
Total			369,368,429	11,854,977 km²	33,327,700 bbl/day

Notice that over 1/2 of the production is coming from the Middle East. It appears the Middle East is fracturing, and fast. It's driven by ideologies in the Muslim world, Sunni vs Shia. However, this maybe a simplistic view. As usual money trumps religion. The powers in control of Saudi Arabia and Iran will be happy playing chess with the lives of the people. But all out war is unlikely. The increasing power of Iran is recognized by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have pushed against Iran (in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq) and failed to get leverage.

They used the current instability, as opportunists, but they didn't start it. The problems in the middle east started with climate change. Drought forced the Arab spring, but the management void left by petty dictators is quickly being filled with ideology. But, as often with ideology, different views emerge. These views compete, often violently. That has been seen with the Syrian rebels fighting each other. The Saudis could not pick a winner in that environment without a possible risk to themselves.

If the extremists control the pipelines then the west is at ransom, but the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia aren't going to let that happen. Because it will mean they lose revenue, and possibly their own heads. So I think it is unlikely that the extremists will ever gain the upper hand. At this time the Saudis have just positioned 30,000 army personnel at the border with Iraq. It is obvious the Saudis are not funding ISIS. We now have Iran, US and Russia sending weapons to Iraq to battle ISIS. However bright their flame went it is about to get snuffed out.

Having a common enemy, in ISIS, may actually bring Iran and the Saudis closer. It will be interesting to see how they reconcile things so that the common people also see a common enemy. A common enemy has been used time and time again throughout history to make people forget their differences. It doesn't bode well for Israel.

We are becoming more and more reliant on a product created in a war zone. Governments need stable supply channels, that is why we are in the Middle East, and why we will go back there. In the future, it may well be that the survival of our modern civilization may be dictated by the requests of those who control the energy pipeline. I won't spell it out, I hope I am wrong.

Had we done the Christian act with 9/11, and turned the other cheek, whilst at the same time bolstering defenses, it is a very reasonable assumption that we would not be in this mess. If we were to replace our dependence on fossil fuels, in particular oil, we would take away their power base. If they chose to decimate themselves, then that is their decision, it need not involve the west. Now, the situation is dragging the world into a major conflict on the scale of a world war. 

Given the state of the environment, and the situation within the middle east, the only reason the west can possibly be continuing this insanity is the obsession with money. Governments realize the problem but the tragedy of the commons is not factored into the price of our energy. We need to look to achieve energy independence through other means.

Supply lines

At present it is difficult to imagine a supply line without diesel. This is because there simply is not the infrastructure to supply electricity at the demand level that logistics requires. The longer we do not address this fundamental problem, the greater the problems of the middle east will become. The more ghg we produce the more droughts there will be and the more extreme the political forces that come into power.

As has been seen in Afghanistan supply routes are fickle things. It would be accurately argued that Pakistan and Afghanistan are not representative of world trade routes. I am just using them as an example of what it can be like in a conflict area. Humanity has a history of instability. Right now we have some dangerous squabbling going on between powerful neighbors. During wartime sea routes are adversely affected, any blip in the supply line would have major repercussions.

Here's an example;
"Gas futures climbed by up to 10% in early trading, while the benchmark price for oil rose by more than 2%.
Traders are worried about the stability of supplies from Russia, which provides a quarter of Europe's natural gas, half of it through Ukraine."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26418664

10% jump because they were worried about a quarter of the supply.

There is a bright side, we don't have to worry about being invaded. They could just turn off the spigot wait a while and arrive to a red carpet reception.

We need to plan on fuel shortages, there is simply a lack of international foresight on the issue. That means, until alternate sources are established, you will need a way to store fuel. Another option is to ensure that you are self-sufficient for long enough for other fossil fuel supply chains to be established. How long would that take? That would depend on the circumstances, but after a disruption, it would almost be certain that fuel prices would drop, but never return to normal.

Power outages and heat events

There will be a significant heat event coupled with power outages, and there will be spikes in oil prices. At that time all the arguments against Hydrogen production or Thorium nuclear reactors should be forgotten. They should be building them as fast as they can, particularly in a stable geological area like Australia. The problem is that they probably won't. Public ignorance against Thorium and Hydrogen, and political shortsightedness, will mean we continue to rely on coal. This will further exacerbate the environmental problem and we will continue to send our children to fight in useless conflicts

The variability of wind, solar and wave generators make stabilizing an electrical network difficult. Biogas is a great option that simply does not get mentioned enough. However, the scale of the requirement for an electrical grid capable of moving freight, is in excess of anything that traditional renewable sources can generate. Thorium is a safe alternative however, people are focused on disasters that were caused by outdated sources and technologies. Hydrogen is another option that needs more research.

Currently we have done little that will make a significant difference. So now, the trick is going to be to survive the heat events. As society's systems breakdown, one can make the assumption that being located near a power plant is essential. That is because economic centers will have a chance of rebuilding past the initial panic, if they are located close to a power source.

Remote communities will have a very difficult time. So people will rush to the locations that have power. It is easy to imagine a day when malls charge for entry, and when they are expanded to offer apartments at premium rental rates.

Cities will survive in some form. The wealthy will buy the power that will allow them to dig down to escape the heat. They will get their way regardless of the price. By having robust power supply to the cities will mean that city space will be at a premium and so not be the best place to grow food. Anything external to the city will be hostile, so food prices will go through the roof.

Anybody who is capable of existing outside the urban centers, but producing food for them, will be successful. The use of the word successful is to mean the community will flourish. The predominant trend here is indoor farming, there are a lot of innovations going on. There is however a drawback, they require electrical power.

Making your own energy through;
Biogas
Hydrogen