I've been thinking about how the younger people in my family will do in the future. For many of us, the "starving zombie hordes" will come in the form of financially panicked family members looking to us for help.
Most of the younger folks in my family have cast their lot with the suburban buildout economy, finding jobs in real estate, construction, home improvement and finance. What else were they to do? Those were the jobs that were available to them. We've cautioned them about excessive debt and speculation. That's about all we can do for them right now.
One nephew is outstandingly well prepared. Although he makes his living working in a family construction business, his real love is small scale ranching. However, from watching him grow up, I see that's not something you can just start doing on a moment's notice. You have to live that life a long time before you can make it work.
A son has seen his best opportunity in the military. After serving five years in military intelligence, he's now in his last year of college. He's intensely aware of the tsunami of challenges headed our way. He thinks community college is the best choice for as much as they offer. In senior college he's chosen to study classics. I think that's a very good choice for a military officer. He's able to see the parallels between our current situation and what's happened to great civilizations of the past and he can outline our options and the possible consequences. It's of some interest to me that shortly after he became aware of peak oil and worldwide financial instability, he sold his truck and became a very strong transportational bicyclist.
You might consider buying a tract of land, either by yourself or with a joint venture group, for an organic farm. When family members come looking for help, I would point them toward the farm.
As I outlined in the essay, this also makes sense for unemployed college graduates.
I like the ELP idea.
However, I think that Kunstler's general distaste for suburbia has prejudiced his thinking on how it will fare in a post peak economy.
I don't see an abandoned suburbia all.
Instead, I see a repeat of depression era adaptations in the form of boarding houses. Instead of one small nuclear family per house, there will be a dozen or more occupants per house.
I also see the currently wasteful lawns and landscaped 'common spaces', the swimming pools, the community buildings, and the water-privileged marinas morphing right along with the neighborhoods into community- maintained goat /sheep grazing, chicken and rabbit coops, vegetable and fruit farming, conservative water collection and sewage systems, mule and wagon housing, and fishing and even boat transportation of resident workers and tradable goods.
Suburban HOA's will become de facto governmental organizations focused on neighborhood security and group survival rather than focusing on conformity to visual esthetics to maintain high individual property values. For good or ill, the concept of private property rights will be obliterated by the need for group survival.
I see HOA's detemining which homes the banks may take back and which homes will become boarding houses based on how much is still owed on each house or even how much more energy efficient a house is than other houses. The higher indebted mortgagees will be left to abandon their homes to the banks [ie not permitted to bring in boarders if they want to share the community food, security etc] and the lower indebted mortgagees will likewise be told to accept those neighbors [and others] as boarders. They might even re-write real estate/ bank loan contracts so that the ownership of the newly formed boarding houses is shared by how much each tenant has contributed to the mortgage rather than keeping strictly landlord tenant subcontract relationships between neighbors.
That way everyone still has a place to live, the banks don't shut down whole neighborhoods, and the HOA maintains the numbers of residents needed to protect the neighborhood from outside raiders, and to harvest the food, and to trade goods, and to maintain a survivable community. I see multiple regional HOA's joining together as a small localized barter economy.
So tough times and some vacant houses here and there. But not largely vacant swaths of suburbia.
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