"The 100-Year Toaster" (Ch. 8)

Energy is the ‘new money.’ If you went looking for a ‘new kind of magic’ it would be hard to beat energy.  Almost doesn’t matter where it comes from, either.

You see, when  you invest in “energy” you are investing in a physical good that can make fertilizer, drive cars, power boasts and planes and a whole lot more of that boring daily stuff called ‘life.’  As such, it makes a hell of a lot more sense that investing in a ‘secret number’ with limited fungibility now and absolutely worthless without a grid being up and networks that function.

Energy can ensure water is pumped and available.  Even keep reverse-osmosis plants going as they extract fresh from saltwater.  It can put food on the table, gives rise to industry plus much more.

The problem is we are not keeping up with the raw economics of this ‘new money’ in a sustainable fashion.  So when the musical chairs music ends, millions may have nowhere to sit, let alone eat.  Can’s sayt we haven’t mentioned it, though.

Our quest for quality in our future continues today along this track after we power through some headlines and run through our usual electrifying charts…

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22 thoughts on “"The 100-Year Toaster" (Ch. 8)”

  1. The grid is like skydiving. The parachute will probably open, but a single failure is catastrophic.

    Plan accordingly. Have a backup. Have a plan C.

    The grid will probably be okay, but a failure will be catastrophic. 90% of the population would die within 90 days of a national or regional hard grid down. This is why some people obsess about it.

    Plan accordingly.

    • CPA…. I’ve read the reports and a great deal of the theories..
      But my personal thought is that it would take a great deal longer than 90 days.
      Just like the Mayan calendar predicted changes..everyone assumed that the changes would be quick .
      What isn’t included in the theories and studies is resilience.
      And perseverance of the human will.
      We can see evidence of that with our worlds currant events.
      We have a group of puppeteers literally blasting the crap out of areas on our globe trying to obtain control,wealth,raw resources, etc. And people with little more than pitch forks and rakes making a stand..
      An EMP would be in my way of understanding more of a cascade event. With the worst affects happening at the epicenter. ( which is why I think smaller solar farms and wind is better.. solar arrays at the furthest point and work back to the powerplants.. but hey who am I. just some poor dweeb that likes to read and peek out of his box) we also have resources..
      Where the real damage would happen is after a period of time. What resources we have would eventually give out. since we have outsourced our industry and dumbed down our youth we would not be able to replace or repair what we use. Virtually putting us back to the time of noah.
      But I seriously doubt an EMP would be a sudden event. Imagine a tree falling.. or our dollar bill.. it’s a tree ..we know the dollar is shot.. print print print yet it didn’t just crash it to is way beyond the tipping point and will continue to do the slow motion fall..

      • I would to side with Looking out of the box with his assessment. The time-line for a major grid-down situation is debatable, and it depends on, again, where and how many are affected, and for how long. The most technology dependent regions will be hit hardest, earliest. I would expect the most dire predictions to come into play from six months out, when no crops are being planted or harvested, and anything on four legs (and possibly two) is being butchered. Many authors speculate that population decline would eventually stabilize somewhere between 1750 and 1850 levels within the first year. I think that is optimistic for the more industrialized and populated nations.

      • I’m thinking most people who avoided a firefight and got out of Dodge within the first few days would make it at least 5 months. Their problem would be they’d band together in groups too-large to survive, and overeat whatever’s available, then starve.

        The American Indian typically moved in groups of 5-17, even as war parties. They’d separate toward different intermediate waypoints, then converge, days or weeks later, on a single campsite, located somewhere near their objective. This way they could “live off the land” and not overeat their surroundings. They also fought using advanced guerrilla tactics that would’ve made Napoleon or Sun Tzu proud. “Indian-fighters” like General Crook were successful because they accepted and utilized the knowledge that the Apache, Kiowa, Crow, and Iroquois (and a thousand tribes in-between) used these habits and tactics, and Crook adopted the same habits and tactics to fight them. “West Pointers” like Colonel Custer had ego issues, and refused to believe “naked savages” could know or utilize military tactics, advanced or otherwise — most generally to their cost.

        The stereotypical Indian was the most-efficient primitive inhabitant of North America. He replaced the prior inhabitants through genocide and assimilation. We supplanted him because of our societal efficiency, but it was an industrial/mechanical efficiency, not a strictly human one based on adaptation to, and utilization of native resource.

        In a post-apocalyptic World, a not-hunkered-down and agriculturally self-supporting band of nomadic ex-urbanites could only survive as long as they adopted the ways of the American Indian — ways with which none are likely to be familiar, and which were learned over many generations of trial and error (i.e. “success and death…”)

        My best guess is the majority of the “die-off” would occur at between 5-8 months post EMP, and it would not be pretty…

        BTW LOOB, an EMP is instantaneous, and line of sight. In case of a HEMP, it matters little whether the atom bomb is 200km, or 350km up. The effects are the same as flipping a switch — it’s that quick, and utterly unspectacular. I shouldn’t think anyone would actually panic until about day-3. Most people have had their phone, computer, X-Box, etc. crap out, and most have had their water go away at one time or another. Those are just “irritations.” It would take a while for it to sink in, and (formerly) “wired” brains to go from p!ssed to scared…

  2. Law of the Conservation of Energy – see BTC’s

    FAITH – wishing the almighty dollar was backstopped by Silver..no too rare, Gold -nope.

    FAITH and CREDIT ??? in what AOC, BernDog, Crying Chucky, Nasty Nancy & Pencil Neck Schiffty, the FED?

    Just bendova, the aforementioned Globalists/Obamanistas need $$ for MS-13 “employees payroll”, The Internal Rape Service IS HAPPY to take your hard earned $$ from you.. FORCIBLY

    – just think how many more Christians and Mooslims we can slaughter in the ME, not to mention all the Un borns soon to brutally slaughtered with of Ur tax $$.

    • Don’t you ever wonder who is behind the slaughtering of the Christians in the Middle East? I mean millions have been killed and displaced in the Middle East in the last 20 years, but nary a peep! But one slap of paint (labeled nazi) on a mosque or a temple, or a synagogue, and one hears about it for DAYS. WHY do the Christians get slaughtered but the MSM in ALL NATO Countries is ALL IN ON THE GENOCIDE IN THE MIDDLE EAST? Why do we never talk about the WW1 HOLOCAUST in Russia but give it a sweet name like the BOLSHEVIK revolution (Russian Social Democratic Party which was RENAMED the Communist Party!) Why would Russia want to kill 100 million of their own CHRISTIAN people???? I smell a rat, and that RAT is HERE in the USA; don’t you know that we all want to kill each other in order to bring SOCIALISM STYLE LAW AND ORDER TO THE USA?

      • Hmm.. deep thoughts..

        Christianity in many countries leaves a sour image in peoples minds..
        We in the name of christ launch massive attacks against peoples homes and communities.war has always been a rape pillage and plunder event to gain control. read the stories of the crusades.
        In many countries they live the law world by word..we here pick and choose and even though its changing we still value life..
        Images of the bolsheviks marching into a village with dead babies speared on their bayonets to strike fear and gain control is a harsh image to comprehend. Yet it’s a reality of war . No more devastating as an image of a baby gasping for breath because of a gas attack.

        We dont hear of many of the atrocities usually to gain sentiment towards a movement.

  3. You are looking at energy and Bitcoin in all the wrong ways…and let’s forget about fossil fuels for a while. The future of our economy and the job growth will come with a huge paradigm shift into alternative energy.

    According to NextWeb, What needs to be realised is that the advent of Bitcoin is effectively driving the decentralization of energy production, which is one of the most important trends in human history.

    Having energy “stored” in the form of cryptocurrency offsets the costs involved of developing those solutions – especially now that we know that lots of renewable energy goes to waste. The Bitcoin mining industry actually contributes to the development of alternative energy solutions through the conversion of surplus energy into a valuable commodity, simply by making use of the electricity produced.

    By the way…I invested in Bitcoin less than a month ago…not enough, but happy with the returns and it is up over 40%…almost touching $13,000…from the low 7,000’s just a few weeks ago. With ROI like that…And the way blockchain can help with energy efficiency…seems to me it’s a win win for everyone.

    • Bitcoin dropped $1500. in a very short period of time today. I wonder what became of all that stored value ? Maybe it was vaporized by the unlimited surplus hot air energy contained in less than convincing viral endorsements.

  4. Energy is available in relative abundance. The chore is to concentrate it to some level of usefulness and either use it immediately or store it. A somewhat loose definition of fuel would be “stored energy” High grade fuels store lots of energy within a small volume and weight. The best ones are relatively safe and don’t require excessively complex machinery to use them to do useful work.

    I would argue that high grade fuels can function as money, but energy itself is a lot less so, since it needs to be used or stored at some cost to the customer. Therefore, energy is less liquid(punny?) and has much less value than a high grade fuel.

    A fully charged battery could arguably be described as fuel in a container. The containment and storage over time cheaply and in a small, light footprint is the biggest constraint today for the further development of solar. That, and of course, the PTB desire to limit disruptive technologies.

  5. George, you’re not yet finished with this toaster book, and I already have a strong suggestion for your next one. I’d suggest you consider writing one with a title like “The Best Little Book About Management”.

    People skills today are all over the place from none to highly effective, and to my knowledge, there’s no easy way to learn the art of hiring, employing, motivating, overseeing, crisis management, regulators, outliers, paying, and firing or laying off employees. There are lots of words on the subject, but few to no real actionable recipes. This has been weighing on my mind since I rarely hire anyone for anything and am at a point where I have bigger ideas than I can(or want to) implement by myself alone. There’s one level of difficulty with the first employee and a whole new level of difficulty once you have your first supervisory(non-relative) employee under you. It’s not just about span of control and depth of control. It’s about keeping people honest, on task, dealing with the paperwork(ugh), communication in ways that are unambiguous, effective and legal, and finally being able to secure a profit that actually justifies all that work. I’d be talking not just about employees, but contractors too, both for a business and personally. Ideally the book would address first time employers and have value for those who’ve learned something in the school of hard knocks.

    An ideal business would seem to have a trusted(and verifiable) general manager who would handle everything once you’ve structured things correctly, but getting there doesn’t (yet) sound like fun at all. Some people(Elon Musk,etc.) seem to enjoy the limelight and others(me) would rather avoid it. Structuring and maintaining effective multiple levels of management is a high level people art that’s not generally recognized by that term.

    Does this book idea make sense? Is it something you’d want to do?

    • No, although there were a number of dieseiheads at TDIClub who were familiar (and some trying to locate) them, 10-13 years ago, and number of discussion threads. IIRC clones were being made in India at that time, but I don’t recall the verdict on either similarity or reliability.

      I’ve toyed with the idea of using either a spiral pump or a water screw to elevate water to a tower, but have prototyped neither, yet…

  6. I am feeling pretty contented tonight.. a beautiful evening and no bugs for a change..they’ve been so bad it’s been driving me crazy. I actually had to buy two bottles of pop and dump it out..just to get the bottles..

  7. Checkout Surplus energy economics blog by tim morgan and find out we are on skid row to planet of the apes.Find out eroei is down inevitable unless we find fusion energy real fast.

    • TS…no worries..
      Theres plenty of energy all around us..
      Many are being withheld . The fear of an energy deficient future is only to keep the public afraid and control so they can make random price increases.
      Then lost technology (that aren’t lost just hidden from view) and
      renewable resources. Energy is probably the most abundant resources around.

  8. This is “energy as wealth” simply beating the dead horse of the past to have something to write about, or as I say it, moving into the future using the rear view mirror.

    The dependence on contemporary forms of energy is what is destroying the physical world, and keeps those who suppress zero point or over unity energy in power, something you complain about on a daily basis. The cost of over unity energy approaches zero.

    I suggest you start researching these alternatives, starting with John Bedini who not only invented over unity devices and scaled them up, but researched earlier suppressed devices AND ACTUALLY RECREATED 19 of them before he died. He created a device that continued to run for 2 years and had it under his workbench.

    Then go to the Keshe foundation for the latest discoveries.

    Scientists will not investigate the Keshe devices, because they have to be used for a period of time before their maximum production is reached. This puts any respectable scientist into cognitive dissonance, they simply cannot see it because they don’t believe it.

    There appears to be an organic or conscious aspect to this alternative energy. Keeley, another inventor, created a device. One day his assistant said, I understand this, let me start the device today. Keeley said OK, the assistant started the device, but it produced no energy. As the assistant tinkered with it trying to get it to work, Keeley put his hand on the assistant’s shoulder and the device started working.

    One caution though, if you replicate these devices, they give off a unique electronic signature when they are running. The earth is being monitored for these signatures, and if you create one somebody will show up to see what you are doing.

    • Since I don’t see you in the subscriber database, you’ve likely made a woeful assumption (wrong) about the article (one chapter of a book on the quest for quality) written on the subscriber side…Did you actually read it?

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