In the waning days of the American empire, we find ourselves mired in political crisis, with our foreign policy coming under sharp criticism and our economy in steep decline. These trends mirror the experience of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Reinventing Collapse examines the circumstances of the demise of the Soviet superpower and offers clear insights into how we might prepare for coming events.
Rather than focusing on doom and gloom, Reinventing Collapse suggests that there is room for optimism if we focus our efforts on personal and cultural transformation. With characteristic dry humor, Dmitry Orlov identifies three progressive stages of response to the looming crisis:
Mitigation-alleviating the impact of the coming upheaval
Adaptation-adjusting to the reality of changed conditions
Opportunity-flourishing after the collapse
He argues that by examining maladaptive parts of our common cultural baggage, we can survive, thrive, and discover more meaningful and fulfilling lives, in spite of steadily deteriorating circumstances.
This challenging yet inspiring work is a must-read for anyone concerned about energy, geopolitics, international relations, and life in a post-Peak Oil world.
Dmitry Orlov was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United States at the age of twelve. He was an eyewitness to the Soviet collapse over several extended visits to his Russian homeland between the late eighties and mid-nineties. He is an engineer and a leading Peak Oil theorist whose writing is featured on such sites as www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net and www.powerswitch.org.uk.
Reinventing Collapse: Laugh Till it Hurts Well, first of all, it's funny. Really. I don't mean it's filled with jokes, but Dmitry Orlov has a very humorous and biting style. This humorous approach serves two important purposes:
1. It makes the book enjoyable to read. 2. It helps the reader develop a certain healthy detachment from the subject matter. If you can see the humor in the situation, it can lessen the melodrama of the Cold War in the past, and the collapse of both the Soviet Union (past) and its mirror twin the United States (very current).
Orlov observes that the citizens of both the U.S. and the S.U. were targets of marketing campaigns that successfully developed intense brand loyalty. In each country, it was forbidden (either legally or through intense peer pressure) to advocate for the other brand. The U.S. was for capitalists (Yes, we're #1), and the S.U. for communists (Da, we're #1), and never the twain shall meet.
Those benighted residents of countries other than the US and the SU were often forced to choose sides; particularly in the smaller countries when well-armed and well-funded sales reps showed up to make them a deal they couldn't refuse.
Orlov's demonstration in the first part of the book of the similarities between the two countries helps further this detachment, just as he does later in the book with his description of the differences between both empires. What is perhaps most interesting and intriguing is his pointing out that although they appear to be mirror opposites, things are not that simple. Each contains yin-yang-like the opposite of itself, so that the Soviet Empire had a strong entrepreneurial nature (which manifests most obviously through the huge black market), and the American Empire has a strong communal nature, which manifests through community groups and the high-level support of charitable organizations. Orlov even states that Americans make better communists than the Russians, because they are much more willing to live communally.
For the American reader, however, it is the differences in preparedness for collapse that are most important. It's not that the Russians intentionally prepared; it's that their society's condition inadvertently prepared them. The collectivization of agriculture changed, as Orlov says, Russia from Europe's bread basket to Europe's basket case. It was a massive failure. So Russians started their own kitchen and neighborhood gardens which eventually, although only 10% of agricultural land, were estimated to produce a staggering 90% of the country's agricultural products.
Housing was another issue. The Soviet Union's housing program was as bad as its agricultural program. There was always a major housing shortage, and families were required to live in crowded conditions in ugly concrete housing monstrosities. And yet...everyone was housed and the state owned the buildings. When the collapse came, everyone was still housed, because there were no bankers to foreclose on their homes.
Transportation was another important issue. The Soviet Union never dismantled its passenger rail system, as the U.S. began doing in the 1950s when the interstate highway system was being built. So intercity travel remained as good (and as uncomfortable in many cases) as ever. Within the cities, housing was built by the state only where public transportation was available. Few people could afford (and even fewer needed) automobiles. When the crash came, transportation continued as before. Buses, trolleys, trams, subways continued to move residents throughout their cities.
In many smaller cities and most towns in the U.S., public transportation is poor at best, and transportation to outlying suburbs is nonexistent. A huge percentage of Americans are dependent on their personal cars for transportation. When the collapse comes and gasoline is prohibitively expensive (if even available), the choice will no longer be food or fuel. Except...millions of Americans need fuel to get to, or earn the money to pay for, food.
The book is filled with useful information, but I think the most important is the need for "social capital". This is the good will and trust built up among people over time as a result of frequent social and cooperative contact. Orlov describes how the people in Russia who got by best were those who networked with friends and neighbors, giving when they had something, receiving when they didn't. This seemed to be even more essential than the barter system, which was also very important and heavily used.
I've already given several copies of this book to friends. I think it's an excellent manual filled with useful tips, and even more importantly, a guide to the psychological and emotional attitudes that will be necessary to survive in much of the world as we all encounter the tribulations of Peak Oil and Economic Collapse.
Mick Winter (www.DryDipstick.com) is the author of Peak Oil Prep: Prepare for Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Collapse
Overall Spot ON Observations Orlov provided those who will listen with a grain of salt because he even insists that the reader take his ideas as the framework and not the blueprint for the collapse-a guide for the dark immediate future. Neither he nor anyone else knows exactly the detailed way the collapse will occur. This book is amazing in the way it cuts to the bone of the cultural and philosophical underpinnings that blind most of us. His speculation on the future fallout is instructive but sometimes a tad hyperbolic in my opinion. I could be wrong and I know that all the horrors he proposed as possible scenarios are realistic. I am a pragmatist but one who thinks it won't be as awful. Don't get me wrong. I am planning on getting property I can secure and sustain myself and some close friends!
That said the collapse of America is inevitable, imminent and there are certain systematic failures he discusses that everyone needs to understand even better than him (that is quite a learning curve to take on) in order to survive and adapt. Good luck and read it.
You must make his understanding your own to your immediate circumstances and start now. That is why you must know this better than him. Your future depends on it.
This is one book that could save or rather salvage your future.
Surpringly Enjoyable - and funny! Perhaps it is just me but the author seemed to have a great blend of humor combined with dire forecasting ability merged throughout the book. Contrary to most Doom and Gloom books, this didn't have that feeling of overwhelming hysteria but rather a calm "matter of fact" attitude about it which I found enjoyable.
I purchased the book after hearing the author during an interview so may have been partially influenced by that - however, the overall tone of the book still sets it apart from most. Personally, I enjoy the opportunity to compare and contrast the current financial, political and social status of the USA versus other nations so particularly found it enjoyable to read the perspective of someone familiar with both.
Although I may not share the authors total outlook, the book is well worth the time to read in its own right. Entertaining, informative and different from the "run of the mill".
Bottom line - buy it you'll like it.
I felt a chill going down my back! Being just a normal guy, but having been to neighboring Ukraine 4 times since 2002, I can say that I can validate Orlov's observations and his conclusions what will happen to the USA when collapse occurs. The people in Ukraine live like it is 1940, and their self sufficiency reminded me of making lye soap in a huge black kettle with my grandmother on my grandparents' farm in Texas. Almost nothing was bought by them other than salt, coffee, and spices, and always in bulk containers, and then carefully stored in a cellar. They raised all their meats, most of it then smoked for easier storage, and then stored in deep ceramic crocks with a lard seal. Firewood collection for the home was at least a two week event. Air Conditioning? Could not afford it. A good milk cow was golden...take very good care of her.
Orlov's book and my visits to Ukraine have allowed me to see how vulnerable we in the USA are, and that there are worse things than being stupid...that is...thinking you are smart when you really are stupid. Makes for an even further humiliating and decisive fall with fewer coping mechanisms with which to survive. The visits and this book made the unthinkable not only plausible, but a likely event. I wish to thank Orlov for his writing as I systematically prepare for the barter economy.
Laughing All the Way to the Brink This is a truly funny book about the collapse of a major empire. That would seem impossible, except it's true.
Orlov describes exactly what it's like when the wheels stop turning inside a huge country, something most Americans probably thought very little about when we "won" the Cold War. He was quite young at the time, which probably explains why this little book has a droll, light-hearted tone. It was probably wasn't all that amusing for those who were over 60 and watched the meaning of their entire adult lives circling the drain, but if you plan to survive a major collapse, a sense of humor is clearly one of the better things to have.
That thought alone is worth the price of admission because there are indeed chilling parallels, quite visible among the quips, between the USA today and the USSR then. Military overreach, crushing debt, corrupt and atherosclerotic leadership....surely it couldn't happen here? Oh, wait...
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