What is the The Post-Oil Survival Guide?

The age of petroleum is haltingly coming to an end. Some say it started in 2007, some say it will come in 15 years. But the end of cheap and plentiful oil will certainly arrive. What does that mean for city dwellers? Imagine no gasoline to truck in foods from Canadian farms or from across the border. No cheap plastic products shipped in from other countries. No fuel to get from one end of the city to the other, by car or transit. What if water stops running in our pipes and electricity gets rationed to a minimum, or is blacked out for good?

The inevitable future for urban citizens entails producing and preserving our own food, heating our homes with wood-burning stoves using renewable materials, and converting single family homes into multiple family dwellings as we empty apartment buildings and highrises. Building outhouses and composting toilets, making our own natural remedies, and reusing all materials and waste available, will be among the many skills we will need to become a resilient society.

This guide is a detailed, comprehensive manual for converting cities into self-reliant, sustainable communities. Here, instructions are for Toronto (Canada) but can be applied to any city with a temperate climate. Read on, and prepare yourselves with information and skills that are on the brink of extinction, as we ourselves may be, without adapting quickly, wisely, and sustainably.

Start reading from the beginning...

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NB: No information provided here is a replacement for professional advice. No individual can survive without being part of a community comprised of knowledgeable people making social connections with each other. The best information comes from education and experience.

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Wiki, anyone?
If anyone is interested in turning the content of this guide into a Wiki, or knows of one in existence that we can add to, please let me know! The more voices that contribute to a guide of this nature, the better the information.

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For links and reading recommendations,
see the REFERENCES section of this site.

14 comments:

The Unusual Farmchick said...

I would like to ask your permission to copy some of your posts to include in my "urban garden kits, that i am handing out next Spring. I call it my "Project seed domino" and your site goes hand in hand with what I would like to go along with the kits.(I discuss this on my blog.
Please feel free to contact me via my blog. I look forward to your respnse,
~Tammie

Unknown said...

Danelions are easily grown and are edible. Cattails, a common plant in swampy/marshy areas are aslo edible, although you need to boil them for a while.

Frank said...

I have always been interested in "Post Oil", but when you add in the aspects of prepardness and self reliance, it gets really good.
Keep adding to this. I think you have great potential. Check out my blog too.

Hamilton 350 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Herr Jones said...

Great site, many overlook "post-oil" and think that obama is going to take them to a mass jail instead. WROL

Paul said...

Hello Claudia Dávila,

I am very interested in receiving an electronic copy of this survival guide. The purpose would be to print so I can read it. Do you think you could help facilitate this?

Thank you

Paul said...

Hello Claudia Dávila,

Wondering if you could help me find an electronic copy of the guide you have published. This material is amazing and is a passion of mine as well.

Thank you

obywan said...

You should watch the documentary Garbage Warrior on Youtube. You can also watch Earthship Seminar Part 1 and Part 2 there. The website is earthship(dot)com

obywan said...

You should watch the documentary Garbage Warrior on Youtube. You can also watch Earthship Seminar Part 1 and Part 2 there. The website is earthship(dot)com

Unknown said...

Please. Would love to have an entire copy of your writings here to read. My family and I are just getting started. We live on 72 acres and would love to learn how to best use it. Thank you ever so much for your time in putting this all down in print. My e mail: amyneiter@yahoo.com
Again; Thank you very much.
Amy Neiter
Mauckport Indiana USA

Unknown said...

Sorry. The child I am signed in under is my daughter. She is the one in the picture and the one who pointed me to your post. I say sorry cause she has such a goofy picture of herself on this acct.

Unknown said...


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Rick D said...

I also have a blog addressing this issue. I have been trying to calculate when we will fall off the back side of the Hubbert curve and how to turn society and humanity back on after the shock. My best guess is that we will run out of oil some time around 2035. It is impossible to accurately predict this point due to OPEC routinely "recalculating" their reserves every year but based on their historic production (world consumption) they should be running out pretty soon. The remaining scraps with smaller and ever-more difficult oil will run out pretty quickly and then we're done. Resources like this one need to be printed and practiced now while we have some room to adjust. Very good work on your part.