Burying gasoline in the backyard, storing food

[kernull]

I was thinking if it would be a good idea to buy 10 tons of gasoline, an aproximate of what I would use in 5 years and bury it in the backtyard. In 5 years prices are going to be 5 times or more, so you just unburry it for personal use or sell to your friends. And it would be safe under the ground. You just need a plastic bottle for 20 liters or so to store it, and today it doesnt cost much. + some time to burry it. You may hire a tractor to make the holes so you don't dig much. And in 5 years or so, it would be like a currency, even better than gold. What do you guys think? I think there is a risk is if everybody switches to natural gas, the gasoline will be abandoned, but I doubt it will happend soon. At least you have for your own driving in town.

[wren]

Although I don't know the details, gasoline degrades fairly rapidly over time. Storing for much more than 12-18 months might be problematic.

[kernull]

Although I don't know the details, gasoline degrades fairly rapidly over time. Storing for much more than 12-18 months might be problematic.

 

good point, just confirmed that you can store up to 18 months and you have to use stabilizer.

[kernull]

well if not gas, maybe food can be stored longer

found that there are food packages selling that can last up to 25 years:

http://www.nitro-pak.com/index.php?cPath=147

[malco]

Discussions like this remind me why gold is really such useful stuff. Ten tonnes of petrol requires a tank that would be a drum 2m across and 4m long. I think you might have quite a time burying it, and a few folk might notice what you were up to. I'd have thought diesel would be a better bet for stability, or even bottles of Calor Gas.

 

Calor Gas would be a good bet against gas shortages. People will naturally strip the camping shops bare. Then you just sell your stock at grossly inflated prices.

 

In contrast, 10 tonnes of petrol at today's pump price costs £15,000 in round figures. That value of gold is 30 ozs of gold, which you could easily carry on your back pocket or hide in a packet of cigars. There is a fair bet that gold will stay par with oil - it generally follows a steady long term ratio of about 7 barrels per ounce (it is still a little below average at present, despite the bull). So to save yourself the hassle, I'd get the gold and just put aside an emergency standby of say two barrels of diesel and get yourself a nice diesel hatchback for 70mpg cruising. Even in a prolonged period of shortage, you'll have a range of 6 or 7000 miles, easily enough for a couple of years if you are frugal.

 

Similar comments aply to food stuffs, the problem is their value-density is low. OK if you have space aplenty but most of us do not. Plus, rats don't eat gold.

[wren]

well if not gas, maybe food can be stored longer

found that there are food packages selling that can last up to 25 years:

http://www.nitro-pak.com/index.php?cPath=147

I just recently decided to start stockpiling food which can be stored long-term. Dried and tinned stuff.

 

This is in case supply disruptions ever occur. I've decided a minimum of 6-months calories worth of food is sensible. With any luck it won't be needed.

[wren]

Discussions like this remind me why gold is really such useful stuff. Ten tonnes of petrol requires a tank that would be a drum 2m across and 4m long. I think you might have quite a time burying it, and a few folk might notice what you were up to. I'd have thought diesel would be a better bet for stability, or even bottles of Calor Gas.

My worries about future energy supplies are part of the reason I became a gold bug. I see gold and silver as convenient proxies for energy, considering that mining requires a lot of energy.

 

If anybody has info on the energy required for gold or silver mining, I would be very interested.

 

[TinBrick]

What do you guys think?

 

Since you ask, this is completely bonkers! Ten tonnes of petrol is roughly 13,600 litres or just under 3,000 gallons.

 

The fire, explosion and pollution risks invloved in DIY underground storage of this quantity of petrol shouldn't need elaboration. It would also be illegal (in the UK) to store more than 15 litres without a licence.

 

If you're serious about this, as malco has already pointed out, diesel would be a lot safer and doesn't require a licence.

[kernull]

If you're serious about this, as malco has already pointed out, diesel would be a lot safer and doesn't require a licence.

 

don't worry, I live in Mexico, and here there is NO LAWS! Believe me. They exist only in paper.

p.s.

I am serious, don't think something can happen to gasoline 1m under ground.

 

 

[kernull]

I just recently decided to start stockpiling food which can be stored long-term. Dried and tinned stuff.

 

This is in case supply disruptions ever occur. I've decided a minimum of 6-months calories worth of food is sensible. With any luck it won't be needed.

 

me too, I have 100 cans of tuna with expiration date of 2013, 100 liters of juice with expiration date year from now, 20 kg of sugar with expiration date 2012, amounts of every thing I periodically use for like 2 years: toilet paper, soap, shaving cream, ... around 50 different type of products and I keep buying every time oil increases in pirce. Will stop after having reserves for 10 years at least. The only thing is difficult is with food, it expires. I am still researching on this topic.

There is a lot of really really bad articles about peak oil, though it is sometimes exaggerated, it is like the end of the world as we know it.

check this: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

[wren]

There is a lot of really really bad articles about peak oil, though it is sometimes exaggerated, it is like the end of the world as we know it.

Peak oil has been a major interest of mine for several years. There are signs of bad stress in the global economy with bad news coming out every month and it seems to be getting steadily worse in the last few months.

 

Time for me to get serious about stocking up on lots of essentials.

[gwizzie]

Petrol cars can be run on thinners

If you lived near a farm you could always fill a diesel car with "cherry"

Not that i advocate such behavior....but when the going gets tough, the tough get fraudulent

[TinBrick]

don't worry, I live in Mexico, and here there is NO LAWS! Believe me. They exist only in paper.

p.s.

I am serious, don't think something can happen to gasoline 1m under ground.

 

OK, so there is no legal risk for you, but the safety risk is still enormous. Diesel is a lot safer and has a longer storage life. Why would you not consider changing to a diesel vehicle, which will also give you greater fuel economy?

[kernull]

OK, so there is no legal risk for you, but the safety risk is still enormous. Diesel is a lot safer and has a longer storage life. Why would you not consider changing to a diesel vehicle, which will also give you greater fuel economy?

 

diesel is excelent idea!

but, I just thought of a danger , the thunder could blow it all. gotta think something

yes gold or silver is good for wealth storage, but I think energy will outperform precious metals in price, you can live without gold, but you can't live without energy or food. In really bad times, like war for example, gold have been decreased in value. Think of this, with a lot of people hungry, who is going to buy it ? I hold physical silver, but I am wondering, will the demand for precious metals be high when massive famine begins? However if you hold energy, you can swap it for food. During 2nd world war , in Petersburg Russia, people were giving their gold rings for bread. Later in 80s , in the same Russia, you could swap a bottle of vodka for whatever you needed, that was non-oficial the currency. Whom will I sell my silver when 50% of population will be looking to feed theirselves? I am not saying we are going to have wars, but we are not far from similar scenario in a peacefull environment. So as see people screaming about oil prices and nobody screams about gold (only India), all this tells me energy is a more valuable thing.

p.s.

we still have gasoline prices of 80 cents a liter in Mexico, but this is not going to stay for long

[TinBrick]

yes gold or silver is good for wealth storage, but I think energy will outperform precious metals in price, you can live without gold, but you can't live without energy or food.

 

You're quite right - you can't eat gold!

 

Reminds me of a scene in Cormac McCarthy's last book, The Road. The plot involves a father and son making an arduous trek across a post-apocalyptic United States, where survivors have been reduced to cannibalism. The pair stumble across a cache of food and supplies stored by some survivalist before the bombs dropped. Among the stores is a "double handful of kruggerrands", which are quickly tossed aside in preference for something useful or edible.

[drbubb]

Filming of 'The Road' leads to Pittsburgh

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

"I'd rather be here than Philadelphia"

Viggo Mortensen will star with Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Kodi Smit-McPhee in "The Road," which will be filmed in Pittsburgh.Apocalypse, here we come.

 

Pittsburgh has landed "The Road," a big-screen adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy best-seller of the same name that will star Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and a young Australian actor named Kodi Smit-McPhee.

 

 

2929 Entertainment, which is producing the movie, and the Pittsburgh Film Office yesterday confirmed rumors "The Road" will shoot in Southwestern Pennsylvania for eight weeks starting in late February to take advantage of the cold and snow. The film also will spend a week in Louisiana and a week in Oregon.

 

The movie is budgeted at under $30 million and will feature 15 or so speaking roles along with background players. It is set to arrive in theaters at the end of the year.

 

Marc Butan, president of 2929 Productions, said yesterday that the film will follow the book closely, opening in a post-apocalyptic world and using flashbacks to illuminate the characters.

 

He said the production looked at states with tax incentive programs and the director did a tour of Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Connecticut -- "all the places that have the really aggressive incentive programs."

 

"What we found was Pennsylvania, and the Pittsburgh area in particular, offered the most diverse set of looks," Butan said. It's a road movie, with characters walking for days on end, and filming will take place in suburban areas along with coal mines, forests and an unused freeway a couple of hours away.

 

"We're going to be working in and around the city. We're able to accomplish a lot of different looks."

 

"The Road" was given the stamp of approval by both the Pulitzer Prize selection committee and Oprah Winfrey, who made it a book club selection. It's from the novelist whose "No Country for Old Men" has been turned into one of the most acclaimed films of 2007.

 

By most accounts, it's a depressing but haunting story of a father and son in a post-apocalyptic America. A catastrophe has ruined the land, killed millions and left the survivors to scavenge for food and shelter, cope with a steady fall of ash and -- more alarmingly -- try to avoid cannibals.

 

/more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08016/849427-42.stm

[Mabon]

Peak oil has been a major interest of mine for several years. There are signs of bad stress in the global economy with bad news coming out every month and it seems to be getting steadily worse in the last few months.

 

Time for me to get serious about stocking up on lots of essentials.

 

Time to get serious about learning how to protect yourself, if we think that 'we' are going down that road.....

 

Reminds of that Stockbroker quote from the 70s when the entire economic system in the Uk looked like it was about to collapse 'Stock up on dried food and shotgun cartridges'....

 

[drbubb]

"The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

 

THE ROAD

By Cormac McCarthy.

241 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24

 

This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone. Mr. McCarthy has summoned his fiercest visions to invoke the devastation. He gives voice to the unspeakable in a terse cautionary tale that is too potent to be numbing, despite the stupefying ravages it describes. Mr. McCarthy brings an almost biblical fury as he bears witness to sights man was never meant to see.

 

Keeping memory alive is difficult, since the past grows increasingly remote. It is as if these lonely characters are experiencing “the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.” The past has become like a place inhabited by the newly blind, all of it slowly slipping away. As for looking toward the future, “there is no later,” the book says starkly. “This is later.”

 

/more: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/books/25masl.html

[wren]

In the short and medium term it might be more like the non-fiction book "The Road" by Jack London. It describes his life as a hobo travelling across the USA and Canada when he was a teenager. On line here: http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/TheRoad/

 

A great non-fiction book by him, "The People of the Abyss", decribes his experiences living homeless in East London in 1902. Online here: http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

 

Chapters 14 and 15 surprised me. He goes down to Kent hop picking and stays with an old couple in Maidstone, my old home town.

[microbe]

Surprised no-one has mentioned drinking water.

 

The Grangemouth dispute threatens considerable disruption to UK fuel supplies, the temporary closure of much of North Sea oil production, and has contributed to oil prices reaching record highs on the world markets. ....

 

Ineos’ has emerged in only a decade as one of the world’s leading petro-chemical producers. ... In 2001, Ineos’ took over a chlorine plant at Runcorn, England, which produces 80 percent of the UK’s chlorine requirement. The company immediately threatened to sack 3,000 workers ...

 

No chlorine and you will be using all that stored gasoline to boil your water...

[TinBrick]

"The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

 

It is a great book, though definitely not light entertainment. Don't read it late at night unless you want to wake up screaming from the ensuing nightmare!

 

What I had difficulty with, though, is the picture McCarthy draws of the post-catastrophe world. There is no life, plant or animal, except the surviving humans. The events of the main plot are set in a period about eight to ten years after the catastrophe. McCarthy deliberately doesn't explicitly explain the nature of the catastrophe - it remains unclear whether it was, say, a full-scale nuclear war, or perhaps a natural event like an extinction-level asteroid impact. I couldn't and still can't envisage what type of event would kill all flora and fauna without exception, barring some humans. If it was that bad, we'd be gone too. From that point of view, I had trouble suspending disbelief enough to get fully into the story.

 

Coming back to Ker's original post, an event which would make it useful to have five years' supply of motor fuel buried in your back garden is not implausible. However, you could devote a huge amount of time and money to preparing for it. There may be some risks which it's simply too costly or not possible to insure against . . .

[drbubb]

It is a great book, though definitely not light entertainment. Don't read it late at night unless you want to wake up screaming from the ensuing nightmare!

 

What I had difficulty with, though, is the picture McCarthy draws of the post-catastrophe world. There is no life, plant or animal, except the surviving humans. The events of the main plot are set in a period about eight to ten years after the catastrophe. McCarthy deliberately doesn't explicitly explain the nature of the catastrophe - it remains unclear whether it was, say, a full-scale nuclear war, or perhaps a natural event like an extinction-level asteroid impact. I couldn't and still can't envisage what type of event would kill all flora and fauna without exception, barring some humans. If it was that bad, we'd be gone too. From that point of view, I had trouble suspending disbelief enough to get fully into the story.

 

Coming back to Ker's original post, an event which would make it useful to have five years' supply of motor fuel buried in your back garden is not implausible. However, you could devote a huge amount of time and money to preparing for it. There may be some risks which it's simply too costly or not possible to insure against . . .

 

I'm eager to see the movie, and will try to find a copy of the book when I get to London next month.

 

I agree that it makes little sense NOW to prepare for a full-blown collapse of civilisation.

But ponder a financial meltdown, and considering what steps can be taken now is another matter.

 

My simple way of doing this, is to organise my life and living arrangements so it will still make sense

if Oil hits $200 or $250. I am very glad that I dont need a car to get around, for example.

 

I am now beginning to think "what next"? When oil hits $200 or more, whats the next big picture target

to think about, and around which to orient my mid-term planning?

 

 

 

[kernull]

I just found out that pure alcohol (ethyl acohol) can be stored for many years without degrading, but it has lower energy density compared to gasoline and you can use it to cookg or heat water , but not for car usage definitely. Still researching on storage issues but looks like good option for rainy days.

neither diesel, kerosene and whatever derivative of petrol exist, are not good for long storage.

[wren]

I just found out that pure alcohol (ethyl acohol) can be stored for many years without degrading, but it has lower energy density compared to gasoline and you can use it to cookg or heat water , but not for car usage definitely. Still researching on storage issues but looks like good option for rainy days.

neither diesel, kerosene and whatever derivative of petrol exist, are not good for long storage.

In a good airtight container high percentage (99%+, so-called absolute) ethanol (ethyl alcohol) will keep near enough forever. Cleaning alcohol (like 95%) will be good for cleaning or burning. But don't drink it ever; the impurities are nasty and some carcinogenic.

 

[kernull]

In a good airtight container high percentage (99%+, so-called absolute) ethanol (ethyl alcohol) will keep near enough forever. Cleaning alcohol (like 95%) will be good for cleaning or burning. But don't drink it ever; the impurities are nasty and some carcinogenic.

ok, will not.

 

btw, here is an alcohol stove, for those who wish to hoard alcohol for food preparation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywacnPUH66I...feature=related