3 Cats Stalking

"Was a Time When" Available as Printed Book

My new book is now available as a printed book at CreateSpace.com or Amazon.com. It also got a great review by Crash_Watcher.

Now it is on to the book launch business.

sam

"Was a Time When" Published on Kindle, Dec 27, 2011

It's done, or at least the Kindle part is done. I published my new book last night as a Kindle book. It is available at Amazon for $3.98 and ready for immediate download.

The paper copy book will be available around mid-January.

I am very interested in getting some professional reviews of the book. If you have a blog where you discuss books or the fate of the world in the next 75 years, let me know your background and how to reach you and I will send you a review copy, either a .pdf or a paper copy (when available), free of charge.

For your information, here is my product description.

This tale began in 2006 as the autobiography of my fictional great-grandson, Sam, yet-to-be-born in 2015.

Sam would live through the greatest cultural transition ever experienced by the human race. I encased his memoirs in a short story telling of an expedition of Neu-human archeologists from a thousand years in the future, 3100 A.D., who return to the Pacific Coast searching for their roots. They find Sam's recorded life story and hear a first-hand account of the “Great Collapse” of human society as they had come to call it.

Sam Hardy's life begins at the peak of the tremendous spurt of technology and social advance in the second decade of the 21st century, powered by what many still thought at the time would be an infinite supply of energy and a stable world of commerce and trade. Sam writes the history of humanity's course through the transitions that result from expected natural disasters, resource depletion, climate change, over-population, and economic and cultural failure as his family and tribe struggle to learn to live in a new world of limited resources and crashing dreams.

There are many possible worlds our progeny could face, but in my mind the world described here unfortunately seems to be one of the more probable. My goal is to tell of some of the changes that can be expected as our society searches for its future, and as those technologies and resources on which our civilization depend fall away.

This is a tale of retrospection, as seen through the eyes of someone who lives through it and remembers that there Was a Time When things were so different. And yet, in Sam's final words, there is still hope:

“So this is goodbye. Maybe I have been wrong in my pessimism and damnation of humanity, and there really is a future for mankind on this planet. At least I have joined a group that is beginning the steps to future recovery. God willing, I will have the chance to watch that future blossom. I pray this band I join will build the roots of a better civilization than what my peers built for the last one.”

I will be discussing the book and offering ideas on other options and how to cope with the future at www.WasATimeWhen.com. Come by for a visit.

Earthquakes -- still a possibility

Ten years ago I was very interested in earthquakes and wrote a couple of novels about what it would be like when the New Madrid once again fractures. I have just put those novels into Kindle format and they are available at kdp.amazon.com. The following is the press release I sent out about this 200th anniversary of the big event in 1811.

 

200 Years Ago a Great Earthquake Killed Up to 20% of the Population Around New Madrid, Missouri - What If That Earthquake Happened Today?

Sam Penny's Novels, Memphis 7.9 (Revised), and Broken River

(now available on Kindle) describe what would happen

in a repeat of that same event today.

200 years ago, on December 16, 1811, the first of four in a series of great earthquakes stuck the New Madrid Seismic Zone under the Mississippi River, wrecking havoc over 650,000 square miles in what is now the central United States, shaking the foundations of cities from Toronto, Ontario to Boston, Massachusetts to Charleston, South Carolina.

In 2002 and 2005 Sam Penny published two novels, “Memphis 7.9 (Revised)” and “Broken River,” which described a scenario of the conditions that represented his best estimates of what the world in the affected area would be like should a similar seismic event occur today on the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Both of these books are available through [url:http://amazon.com]Amazon.com[/url]. Penny has just published Kindle versions of the books as well.

Back in 1811 over the next two months another three gigantic earthquakes struck the New Madrid Seismic Zone under what was then the western edge of our country – what now is the center of the United States of America. The first event is estimated to have been a 7.9 magnitude event focused near what is known today as the bottom of the Missouri boot-heel. A second earthquake the same size happened six hours later thirty miles north under New Madrid, Missouri.

The third earthquake on January 23, 1812 was of smaller intensity, but it was followed on February 7, 1812 by the largest event on the thrust zone, again under the shattered village of New Madrid. Aftershocks continued to shake the region for the next five years.

The 1810 census reported the population of the affected region to be about 5,000, plus as many as 20,000 slaves. This covered the cities along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, including Louisville, New Madrid, and down to Memphis. That census did not even consider the sizable Native American Indian population in the area.

Some estimates suggest that as much as 20% of the total population was killed as a result of the seismic activity and pestilence that followed. It was a small number back then, but today over 32 million people live in the threatened region; 20% would be 6.4 million.

Both of Penny's books received Honorable Mention at the MidSouthCon Science Fiction Fair and are noted for their detailed descriptions of the effects of seismic shaking along the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

Penny says, “My books are based upon analytical studies of what the new world will be like in Memphis and along the Mississippi River when such a seismic event takes place. It is not a matter of IF, but of WHEN.” The USGS estimates that in the next 50 years there is a a 25 to 40 percent chance of a magnitude 6 or larger earthquake, including a 7 to 10 percent chance of another series like that of 1811 and 1812.

The books consider both the immediate dynamic impacts of the strong seismic events that will happen in the region, as well as the effects upon society as the infrastructure of civilization falls apart around the area.

“I am pleased with the response of some who live along the New Madrid Seismic Zone in their preparations for an obvious event in their future,” Penny says, “but I am still concerned with the lack of preparation in the overall region for what could be their fate in the not too distant future.”

Penny's books are available at Amazon.com and at www.prudentrver.com. The Kindle versions of the book are available exclusively at kdp.Amazon.com.

My Daughter Asked, "Peak Oil ... NOT?"

My daughter sent along a link to an article by Raymond Learsley at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/extra-extra-wsj-and-nytim_b_975406.html and asked me to comment on it. My reaction follows:

Deb,

The original proposition of "peak oil" began with a model of how the production rate of oil from a "typical" oil field varied over time. The oil field would produce more and more as more wells were drilled until it reached a point at which the rate of production began to fall for various geological reasons: dropping pressures, depleted formations, water intrusion, etc. The point in time at which the peak rate occurred was called Peak Oil. M. King Hubbert in 1956 proposed a mathematical model (the logistics model) to describe this behavior.

King and others proposed that the rate of production of a related group of oil fields would exhibit the same sort of behavior, and King showed that the Texas fields did indeed follow that pattern. Others showed that the North Sea fields and some of the MidEast fields followed the pattern. Still other said the oil production rate for all the world's oil fields would follow this pattern. This meant that at some time in the future, the rate of production for the entire globe would fall back to zero.

There were strong arguments that this would not occur because of the discovery of new fields and advances in technology would make up the difference. The view that the supply of oil could at some time in the future go down was discounted because a majority of those the oil patch felt that advances would happen faster than increases in the demand for oil.

In 1972 the book "Limits to Growth" was published. It described a model in which a rapidly growing population with a finite supply of resources showed that growth could not be sustained forever, and at some time in the 21st century society would collapse and the population would diminish to match the resources available. I actually worked with the World3 model during the early 70s when I was teaching System Simulation Techniques at UC Extension to see how the predictions came about.

Reaction to this book was very strong, and mainstream economics theory refused to accept that this possible course of history could matter. In 2002 a review of the original book with reality found that the results of the 1972 study were still on track. I believe that part of this has come from the recognition that Peak Oil is indeed a factor to be considered in the near future of our world.

Which brings us to today. The arguments about growth and peak oil are becoming louder and louder. And they are becoming more important and potentially earth-shaking.

Today the mainstream of economics is based upon Keynesian theory that has as one of its basic tenants the belief that growth can always happen. Holding up that belief is the belief that there is an infinite supply of resources. It is this theory that leads to the need to save the banks and provide stimuli to our economy. Those that argue against this plan also believe in the infinite supply of resources, and they say to let the market control everything, it will all work out.

Both are wrong. Resources are not infinite, and one of the first commodities that is showing this limitation is fossil fuel. There has indeed been a peak in the rate of production of oil, and that peak is reflected in the increased price for fuel. It will only get worse as there are more and more people in the world and more of them want to live like we do here in the USA. But to admit that peak oil exists means you must accept the fact that growth cannot continue for the whole world forever. That is why Learsley yells and screams and Yergin publishes his academic patter trying to convince everyone that everything is okay. The article referenced is pure, unadulterated propaganda, because if they do not beat down those who say there is a problem, someone may say something needs to be done about it, and the solutions are not nice.

Peak Oil ... YES, and that is only the beginning.

love, Dad

sam, the Prudent RVer

NYC - Predictions

Back to one of the three cats - the climate. We are watching Hurricane Irene barrell toward New England, and some are saying it could be bad. There seem to be an amazing number of people out there who are surprised that a hurricane could threaten New York and its surroundings. There are a few that are saying they have been trying to tell people for years that there is a risk from weather such as this, but not one really wanted to listen. And definitely too many are concerned about the profits next quarter to do any mitigation for the possibility.

Count me as one of the cassandras. My daughter is reviewing my latest book (Was A Time When) and she might have noticed on page 6 of Chapter 15 entitled June, 2024 A.D., Adolescence the following bite of Sam telling of what he remembers from when he was eleven years old:

An amazing number of people in 2026 still denied that our society had a problem with energy or weather or the economy. The world kept changing around them, and they just didn't know how to handle it. It took little effort on my part to make a fortune on their stupidity. I started small with my gaming profits, and before long built that stash into a pretty good bankroll, in the millions. I moved most of the money to off-shore accounts just to be safe.

At the end of August in 2026, Hurricane Gracie hit New York City. She came toward land as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of just under 150 miles per hour, but she hit Manhattan as a Category 5. I remember how Mom, Dad, and I sat glued to the TV throughout the night watching the satellite images as the hurricane’s eye wound its way up the coast of New Jersey across Long Beach, then veered into the Lower Bay just south of New York City. Early in the morning it punched north into the Upper Bay and continued up the west side of the Hudson River. I can still remember TV pictures of the Statue of Liberty inside the eye standing so peaceful in the sunrise.

The storm surge up the East River measured thirty-five feet. Water poured from the river onto the surrounding countryside. Long Island disappeared under water, and over half of New Jersey flooded. When the storm ended over they reported fifty-three thousand people dead or missing, and authorities estimated over two trillion dollars in damage. I heard that the storm left more than eight million homeless, and the damage reached far north past Albany.

The hurricane destroyed the island of Manhattan. They never found the money to pump out the subways.

Losing the financial center of the country – and maybe of the world – broke the back of the US financial structure. China and Saudi Arabia moved out of dollars, and the world stopped denominating oil in dollars. They required gold or grain or some other solid commodity to complete any transaction..

Financially, being one of the lucky ones, I moved all my funds out of New York to Lisbon and Sydney the year before. I put most of my cash into gold equivalents. With things so unstable I started another gold fund in Johannesburg, managed it over the Internet, and learned basic commodities trading first hand.

My International funds continued to do well by any measure, and I possessed a good supply of Chinese Yuan and gold stashed away in a Singapore bank built high above the bay. Rising sea-levels would not catch me.

Just wanted you to know I wrote this excerpt over five years ago, only a year after Katrina visited New Orleans. So the current story in the news is not all that new. It will be interesting to see how close I come in my prediction -- okay, I am off by 15 years and the intensity is down, but that is because of the limitation placed on the timing of my story. What will be the impact on New York City? We will know in a few days.

Oh yes, Irene is only a Cat 2 at this time and will probably fall to Cat 1 before land-fall. But things like this do happen, even though the full effects of climate change are not yet upon us.

sam

Things are getting worse

As I watch this crazy world turn around me, I wonder just what I should be worrying about now.

The markets are acting crazy, but I am invested in gold so things have been going well for me. My friends have bank stocks, and they are leaning over and vomiting with the results they are seeing.

The weather has moderated, but only for a time. We keep waiting for some hurricane to form in the Caribeanne and rush toward somewhere along our Gulf Coast line.

The politicians are showing signs of senility and random thought, more than my friends in this retirement community where I live. I wonder if anyone is at the helm to lead us.

The banks in Europe are about to crumble, and they will drag down the banks in the US. But all the banks have dropped in "stock value" by over 90% in the past five years, so does it matter. Apple is now worth more than the top 32 banks in Europe. You could buy the whole lot for about $340B.

At this rate we do not need to hold our breath waiting for the 3 cats to come along. We will be long gone before they get here.

sam

Nature Doing Its Part On The Mississippi River

The human race is responsible for its effects on the earth, but sometimes Nature takes a strong hand in changing our future.

The lower Mississippi River from the confluence with the Ohio is no long a natural river. It is a manmade water channel. There are levees and dams and control structures to make it go where we want it to go. One of the results is that the elevation of the bottom of the river has risen, almost to the point where the river is running down the top of a long hill from Caruthersville to the Gulf of Mexico.

With the massive floods now flowing down the river, no place is more critical than the place where the Mississippi wants to change its channel over to that of the Atchafalaya River a few miles above Baton Rouge. The Army Corps of Engineers have been fighting with the River at that point and built the Old River Control Structure in the 1960s. Then it built other dams to help control the flow to help the original structure. It was tested in 1973, but the upcoming test will be much more this weekend.

There is an excellent discussion of the Old River Control Structure on the Mississippi River at Jeff Master's blog in Weather Underground. I recommend you take the time to go read it

Back in 2004-5 when I was doing the final research on my novel Broken River, Alice and I drove up and down the river and over the Old River Control Structure itself (it carries the highway). We looked over the different structures the Corps of Engineers had built and read a lot of the material that was available at that time. The bit about how closely the structure came to failing in 1973 was well documented. It was because the Mississippi River had gouged out a huge hole over 100 feet deep right in front of the structure and was eroding away the sand and mud leading up to the floodgates, sort of like teeth losing the gum and bones that hold them in place.

We drove downriver following the Atchafalaya to see the alternate/preferred water-path to the Gulf of Mexico. The little towns below the structure on the Atchafalaya River were sleepy little communities, and there were orchards and fields all around. Lots of horses as I remember. The channel of the Atchafalaya itself was only about 100 yards wide. The levees were huge, especially when you saw them from behind. On the other side the Mississippi River is over a mile wide in low water season.

There is a scene in Broken River about a school bus taking kids on an outing and parked in the parking lot next to the sound end of the Old River Control Structure when the earthquake starts to shake the levees. The Mississippi is at flood stage, though I did not have it as high as it is now. But that shaking made muck and quicksand out of the levees and the underpinnings of the Structure. The pressure of the water simply moved the huge dam aside like a large door. The kids were alright, but marooned on an island surrounded by the River.

I have this niggling fear of what could happen if the earthquake of 200 years ago happened now as I described in my novels. My books would become instant best sellers, but the price to the country would be ruinous. But this could happen without an earthquake. We live in a dangerous time.

USA to See Japanese Debris in Next Three Years

One of the effects of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami is a vast field of debris floating across the Pacific Ocean. Within three years it will be hitting the western USA and Canadian coast. The debris field contains parts of houses, eighteen-wheelers, whole boats, and even body parts.

Members of the U.S. Navy's 7th fleet, who spotted the extraordinary floating rubbish, say they have never seen anything like it and are warning the debris now poses a threat to shipping traffic.

Go to the article "Cars, whole houses and even severed feet in shoes: The vast field of debris from Japan earthquake and tsunami that's floating towards U.S. West Coast" at the Daily Mail Online for the full story. Some of the pictures are truly awesome. Maps project where the debris will be in one year and in three years.

This story is a forecast of the near future. It is a situation that will affect the USA. How should we prepare?

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer

The Biggest Cat-Fight Yet

In my last post I bemoaned the fact that the Nature Cat was rearing her head with the awesome earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Now we are watching the Nuclear Cat come into the fray. It has become the biggest cat-fight yet.

I am not sure our society will survive this cat-fight very well. In fact, I expect this month to be remembered as the worst month in the history of the earth, until an even worse month comes along.

Folks, things are very rapidly going from bad to worse, even faster than our governments and other agencies can respond. It is time to start preparing, but I don't yet understand how to prepare myself.

We have a nuclear catastrophe in Japan, and it may spread radiation at some level around the globe. While that contamination will be a problem, I believe the impact of the catastrophe will be felt in the economic arena even worse. As a result of the economic fallout, people will starve or die of thirst or be caught up in riots and revolutions.

The earthquake and tsunami were terrible, and some are estimating that nearly half a million may have perished in the natural disaster. But that was a localized occurance. Pity the poor who live there now, for they are without power and food and water. But they are a small portion of the population of Japan, a miniscule fraction of the population of the earth.

But our society has been built on more and more complexity and now runs on the principal that all parts must work, and work right. When major supply lines go down, other operations stop. The Chevy truck plant in Louisiana shut down because they cannot get a component from Japan because the electrical power supply there is not sufficient to keep industry going. That is just a start. More will come, and at some point society will realize they are screwed, and then they will panic. I can only guess how bad the results may be. They will not be nice.

I will try to focus in future posts on what to do now, how to survive, how to build an attitude that you can live with. For now, I want to curl up in my hole and sleep, maybe for 20 years or more.

sam

 

May 16, 2008 - 3 Cats News This Week

Here are some of this week's more interesting articles:

At the beginning of the week AP wrote that a U.S. Energy Department Report says wind can produce a fifth of United States' electricity needs by 2030. That is about the same share of electricity produced today by nuclear power. But the report cautioned that its findings were not meant to predict that such growth would, in fact, be achieved, but only that it is technically possible.

From yahoo.com on May 12 is the report that High fuel prices curtail RV trips – just a little. There will be some sacrifices for the retirees: perhaps fewer meals out, maybe working a part-time job. But they can't imagine giving up the RV lifestyle: a sense of freedom and adventure mixed with close friendships developed over years of traveling around the country. They don't plan to turn in their wheeled home for a condo.

At AutoExpress.co.uk on May 14 is the warning that Biofuel bacteria wrecks engines. Many filling station tanks are rife with bacteria, and when they come into contact with the vegetable or wheat-based bio-diesel fuel, the result can be oil clots, which clog up engines.

James Randerson reports on May 15, 2008 at  guardian.co.uk: Expert warns climate change will lead to 'barbarisation'. Mohan Munasinghe, vice-president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a lecture at Cambridge University presented a dystopic possible future world in which social problems are made much worse by the environmental consequences of rising greenhouse gas emissions. "Climate change is, or could be, the additional factor which will exacerbate the existing problems of poverty, environmental degradation, social polarization and terrorism and it could lead to a very chaotic situation," he said. The scenario, which he termed "barbarisation" is already beginning to happen. "Fortress world is a situation where the rich live in enclaves, protected, and the poor live outside in unsustainable conditions."

Tom Whipple in the Falls Church News-Press on May 16 writes: The Peak Oil Crisis: Diesel. "The evidence is mounting that the U.S. might just encounter the first real crisis of the oil depletion age before the year is out." The prices for distillates (diesel and heating oil) have been climbing recently, almost as if leading the price of crude (and by association, gasoline) higher. And China is beginning to import more diesel to generate electricity for their earthquake-torn counties. Look for things to get tighter (high prices and local shortages) in the US in the coming months.

And finally, a couple of recent thought-provoking articles about population overshoot -- a subject of taboo, shame, and neglect.

In J. Kenneth Smail's blog, Culture Change, is the article Confronting the inevitable: Population reduction, voluntary and otherwise. He points out that it has become increasingly apparent over the past half-century that there is a growing tension between two seemingly irreconcilable trends. On one hand, moderate to conservative demographic projections indicate that global human numbers will almost certainly reach 8 to 9 billion by mid-21st century, only two generations from the present. On the other, prudent and increasingly reliable scientific estimates suggest that the Earth's long-term sustainable human carrying capacity, at what might be defined as an “adequate” to “moderately comfortable” developed-world standard of living, may not be much greater than 2 to 3 billion. It may in fact be considerably less, perhaps in the 1 to 2 billion range, particularly if the normative life-style (level of consumption) aspired to is anywhere close to that currently characterizing the United States. This is a dichotomy that must be faced.

On May 1 Andrew Revking of the NY Times commented on comments from Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, C.I.A. Chief Lists Population as a Top Concern, where he described three troublesome trends that distinguish this century from the last, and the exploding populations of poor places topped his list. This is how our government is viewing the situation.