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Survival Learnings From A California Fire Evacuee
Survival Learnings From A California Fire Evacuee
They universally apply to any unexpected emergency
As I type this, there are over 16 large wildfires currently burning across northern and southern California. Hundreds of thousands of residents have been displaced. Millions are without power.
My hometown of Sebastopol, CA underwent mandatory evacuation at 4am Saturday night. I jumped into the car, along with our life essentials and our pets, joining the 200,000 souls displaced from Sonoma County this weekend.
Even though I write about preparedness for a living, fleeing your home in the dead of night with a raging inferno clearly visible on the horizon drives home certain lessons more effectively than any other means.
I’d like to share those learnings with you, as they’re true for any sort of emergency: natural (fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, blizzard, etc), financial (market crash, currency crisis) or social (revolution, civil unrest, etc).
And I’d like you to be as prepared as possible should one of those happen to you, which is statistically likely.
Your survival, and that of your loved ones, may depend on it.
No Plan Survives First Contact With Reality
As mentioned, I’ve spent years advising readers on the importance of preparation. Emergency preparedness is Step Zero of the guide I’ve written on resilient living — literally the first chapter.
So, yes, I had a pre-designed bug-out plan in place when the evacuation warning was issued. My wife and I had long ago made lists of the essentials we’d take with us if forced to flee on short notice (the Santa Rosa fires of 2017 had reinforced the wisdom of this). Everything on these lists was in an easy to grab location.
The only problem was, we were 300 miles away.
Reality Rule #1: You Will Be Caught By Surprise
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The Looming Energy Shock
Carlos E. Santa Maria/Shutterstock
The Looming Energy Shock
Due to a massive reduction in capital spending in the global oil business over 2014-2016 and continuing into 2017, the world will soon find less oil coming out of the ground beginning somewhere between 2018-2020.
Because oil is the lifeblood of today’s economy, if there’s less oil to go around, price shocks are inevitable. It’s very likely we’ll see prices climb back over $100 per barrel. Possibly well over.
The only way to avoid such a supply driven price-shock is if the world economy collapses first, dragging demand downwards.
Not exactly a great “solution” to hope for.
Pick Your Poison
This is why our view is that either
- the world economy outgrows available oil somewhere in the 2018 – 2020 timeframe, or
- the world economy collapses first, thus pushing off an oil price shock by a few years (or longer, given the severity of the collapse)
If (1) happens, the resulting oil price spike will kneecap a world economy already weighted down by the highest levels of debt ever recorded, currently totaling some 327% of GDP:
(Source)
Remember, in 2008, oil spiked to $147 a barrel. The rest is history — a massive credit crisis ensued. While there was a mountain of dodgy debt centered around subprime loans in the US, what brought Greece to its knees wasn’t US housing debt, but its own unsustainable pile of debt coupled to a 100% dependence on imported oil — which, figuratively and literally, broke the bank.
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How Much Higher Can The U.S. Dollar Go?
How Much Higher Can The U.S. Dollar Go?
megainarmy/Shutterstock
Let’s start our examination of the U.S. dollar (USD) by recalling the chart from my August 2014 essay, Why the Dollar Could Strengthen—A Lot. At that point, the USD had moved modestly off its lows, and had yet to challenge long-term resistance around 80.
Here’s the same chart of the Real Trade-Weighted U.S. Dollar Index now:
The USD broke out of its multi-year downtrend and soared above 100. Needless to say, the USD did in fact strengthen a lot. After that initial leg up, the dollar has remained in a consolidation range for much of 2015. Though it recently broke out of a wedge/triangle formation to the upside, it’s not yet clear if this is a definitive move higher or more consolidation.
Is the Dollar Rally Done?
So is the dollar rally done, or could it move higher?
The long-term chart above (Real Trade-Weighted U.S. Dollar Index) offers some clues.
Our first observation is that trends in the USD tend to last for some time, so if this rally follows the pattern of previous rallies, it’s unlikely to have run its course in one year.
Secondly, previous rallies paused for a multi-month consolidation period before launching upward for the second leg of the long-term rally.
Thirdly, the USD rose sharply to previous peaks and then round-tripped back to the 80 level.
This raises the question: How high could the dollar rise in this rally?
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