Heck, we've got places like that all over the US now. It's all relative. It becomes more widespread in a region as the govt becomes more despotic I suppose.

I'm glad we've finally let these types of discussions become part of the forum...I tried putting these issues on the table more than a year ago but got quashed by the higher-ups...maybe Blast has more pull because he has more posts...either way, well done...let's keep the talk rolling...these are scary times. Like it or not, this is political talk. It needs to be discussed, here in this forum. We have to stop turning our backs on the fact that politics and economics are the BIGGEST reason we prepare for the worst.

WHOA! Major misinterpetation of why I started this thread. This is not the place to get into political discussions. I linked to those sites so people could learn about what life might become if the economy complete craters. I wouldn't have thought about how the roads fall apart without money to repair them or how one needs to spend money immediately when inflation sky rockets. Those links were posted strictly to help fellow members survive, not to start a politcal discussion.

Thanks for listening.
-Blast

Dude, looking like Yoda doesn't make you Yoda. Though Yo-Duh comes close.

-Blast, who is really just here for the chicks.

Some good thoughts and good points all around.

Just to clarify, I'm not advocating giving up things, I'm stating that we already have given up things in order to live in a civilised world. It is inevitable in a modern society that individuals have to give up certain things in order for the larger group to survive. To think otherwise is simply fantasy. Even the toughest cowboys in the mythical old west went to town on occasion.

In the most basic sense we give up freedoms every day, we give up the freedom to drive as fast as we wish, to take whatever we wish, to do whatever we wish all the time.

I think that what we should be worried about is the giving up of the more important freedoms that we have, the freedom from want, the freedom from hunger, the freedom to choose our own leaders, etc. Those freedoms are worth fighting for, the idea that we can all do as we please and live as we please in the midst of others is a fantasy, not sustainable in this world.

As for my own neighborhood all thinking alike, not a chance of that happening, and we don't have to all think alike in order to survive together. Nor do the residents of a city, town, county, state or country. What we do have to be willing to do is compromise our desires with those around us and recognise that their idea of freedom is just as viable as our own, even if we disagree with them. That and figure out how to live with one another without killing each other...;^)

And as for the notion that it's too late to think about things like countries banding together, one need look no further than the former Soviet Union to see that wholesale change can and does happen on a global scale quite regularly. And yes, I understand that they did the reverse of banding together, my point is that until it happened, very few people would have publically stated that such a thing could ever happen. Things are gonna change eventually, the notion that a country can consume the quantities of the world's resources on a scale that the U.S. does with no intervention from other nations is simply unsustainable.

John E