College Course outline for a peak oil class

From the Oil Drum, one of the posters there has been tasked with creating a course for non-science majors. It is an introduction to petroleum scarcity and peak oil.

It might be useful for those of you who wish to dodge the "chicken little" bullet when trying to inform friends of upcoming "problems." It is a gentle introduction without focus on the harsher negative consequences. It uses known-to-be incorrect peak oil numbers for its forecasts, but it is a start. Perhaps printing this material out and asking a friend what they think about it is a way to break through the denial wall.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3562#more

Look what I found!

Wow, look what I found this weekend at the Goodwill in Yuma. It was in an old broken desk in the corner. I bought it for seventy five cents. It is my novel, apparently an old leather bound edition printed in 2128. It took me a few moments to figure out it is from the future. Click on it to get a better look, the little picture doesn't do justice to the old embossed worn leather.

Anyway, this is going to save me a lot of time. I was having to actually make it up before, now I can just transcribe right from the book. Should speed things up considerably.

I took some scans of the title page and saw that it is a direct descendant of one of my characters who printed it. Ain't that crazy? Turns out there was plenty of oil, I was so wrong, but you'll have to wait until I can finish transcribing the book to hear how wrong I was. See there was this white duck who walked up to Ben, Mark and. . . Naw, that would ruin it.

Chapter 4 is now part of the downloadable .pdf file. You will find it in the navigation bar on the right. It is formatted in 12 point Times Roman and wider than the blog. Chapter 5 will not disappoint. Stay tuned.

Quote from Winston Churchill

Whenever I write about about any coming collapse scenario, no matter how obvious, logical or well documented by even national media it might be, I'm greeted by a complete yawn from readers. Here is a quote from Winston Churchill that gives me some comfort, or of course, you were right all along and I'm completely fucking nuts.

Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most
of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if
nothing had happened. - Winston Churchill

That touch a nerve for anyone?

FBR chapter 4, scene 5, end of the chapter 4

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill
Chapter 4 Scene 5.

Mark and Ben were parked back in the under the trees, invisible from above, with a thick second growth fir canopy above them, and slightly uphill from the intersection. They were early by a few minutes for the two hour mandate Ben had given Jacob. He was confident that Jacob would come, but not so sure about Emily.

“We took a chance going through town,” said Ben, trying to be diplomatic. They sat watching the late afternoon sunlight cut cones of light through the trees, illuminating the soft fir needle debris that covered the old logging track. The trees were uniform as Ben looked out through the forest. They would be ready for harvest in about ten years. Ben shook his head to himself, it was very hard to merge what he thought would happen with the flu, and the bucolic scene before him.

“We had to go through Selma to get up here,” said Mark.

“I shouldn't have gone into the cafe, it was stupid, not your fault, but it is difficult to remember that people want me dead.”

“Hell Ben, no one's looking for you with this mess going on. It was important for Darlene to meet you. She needed to see you and decide if she can trust you.”

Ben bristled a bit, “Trust me? Why the fuck does she need to trust me? I didn't ask her one fucking thing, not even to know who she was. You two sprung that on me yourselves!”

Mark slouched against the drivers door. His gimme hat was pulled low on his forehead. He was relaxed.

“Where are we going from here?”

“Where? I don't know about you, Darlene, Jacob or his wife Emily, but I'm going to turn ninety degrees away from civilization, and wait for a vaccine, that's where I'm going.”

Mark nodded laconically, and gazed out at the dusty crossroads in front of them. “Just speaking for yourself, huh? You have been preparing. . .”

“There is no preparation for this,” interrupted Ben. “This strain of bird flu is no longer bird flu, it is person to person now, get it? The 1918 and 1919 flu that killed about fifty million people, this one is much worse, this one has killed more than sixty percent of the people who get it, and in Thailand it is reported to have killed ninety percent of those who got it. No one is prepared for this.”

Mark let Ben run down. The both stared out the window. Ben shifted in his seat.

They watched the dust. Mark rolled down the window a bit to hear approaching vehicles. He hadn't had time yet, or the opportunity to tell Ben about the gangs that Darlene had mentioned. Bad people were taking advantage of a law being stretched very thin. Almost every lawman, state, sheriff, or Fed was trying to control the spread of the disease. Every crisis is an opportunity for those people who live on the illegal fringe.

“Darlene is our connection to people everywhere we might go. She has friends and cells in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California. Darlene knows things that would send many people to jail and worse. She has risked a lot to funnel the hard information about federal logging sales out to all the green groups. The timber industry has had people looking for that leak for a long time. She's not stupid, she understands what this flu is going to do.”

“Well good for her, I for one don't have a fucking clue as to the what this flu will really do.”

“She thinks you do, she thinks you know, and so do I. I've asked her to meet us here at dusk, after you're done with Jacob.”

Ben jerked upright. “Why?”

“Why Jacob and Emily? What are you going to ask him Ben?”

“He's been a friend to me when I was down, I can't let him stay in Grants Pass and deal with what is coming in the next few weeks.”

“Same with Darlene, partner. I only known you for a few months, Ben, but I know that when you don't know, it isn't from lack of information. You think you don't know what to do. I think you do.”

“Mark, I'm not kidding, everything I could read in that short time at the tower, everything indicates a very fast spread. The virus has combined with another human virus, the people studying it new it had to happen. There were over five hundred people who got the bird flu, handling birds, etc. And that virus was deadly to people as well as chickens, but through a little twist, it infects deep in the longs – that is how it is passed from bird to bird, but people didn't get it because the virus couldn't reach the same place in humans. But all these viruses have a trick that viruses do.

When the virus infects a person who already has another flu virus, both genetic codes get mixed up inside infected cells and sometimes they recombine. It is called reassortant combination. That is what happened in 1918 and it is what has happened now. The deadly parts of the bird flu have combined with the easy human to human transmission of a regular cold. It is a new virus.

“But don't the labs have a vaccine for the bird flu already. Thought I read that. Won't we just get inoculated.”

“When it merges with the new virus the old vaccine doesn't work. You have to make a new vaccine starting now. I'm sure the Feds have made that a priority. But it will take a while.”

“How long?” asked Mark.

“Too long. Six months minimum is what I read.”

“Sheeet!”

Ben continued looking off into the distance, trying to make sense of all the information he had read on the net. “Stopping I-5 will not stop the spread of the virus. Did you see the trucks going around down to the coast route, to 101. Blocking Five will do something alright, it will collapse what is left of our economy.”

Ben thought about that for a moment. Why weren't the goons from Homeland security blocking the secondary roads? He had to be careful to accept the idea that it was a decision not to close them. In times of stress and calamity, many things got done and many didn't and during the confusion it was easy to think that someone was orchestrating the choices. Why would the Feds what to collapse the West Coast trade and energy flow from Mexico and Canada? Why would they want the bird flu to spread? He shook his head, the tendrils of that thought didn't do him any good right now.

“Ben, I don't know what is going to happen and I don't have a clue as to your plan. But I'm with you, I'm betting you do have a plan, and no, I'm not fucking Darlene.”

Ben's reply was interrupted by the sound of gravel crunching slowly under tires. Slowly Jacob's vehicle rolled into the intersection and stopped. Jacob got out and shielded his eyes from the bright sun, looking around. Mark's truck was invisible in the shadows uphill under the trees.

Mark said nothing but quietly opened his door and slipped into the trees. Ben watched him go, waited a moment, got out started down the trail to give Jacob and Emily a choice.

end chapter 4

What condition your condition is in

Three ways to understand what condition our condition is in.

Poetic:
In theory they were sound on Expectation,
Had there been situations to be in;
Unluckily they were their situation
W.H. Auden, The Quest


Brilliantly Scientific (from the Oil Drum), excerpted:
In my opinion, the true liquidity problem worldwide is not a lack
of available cash, but declining net oil export capacity. The central
banks can inject all of the financial liquidity into the system that
they want to, but they cannot create BTU's of energy.


Peak Oil and Peak Export scenarios inevitably mean economic
contractions, especially in the US, where the majority of Americans
live off the discretionary income of other Americans. In my opinion,
we are in the early stages of a profound transformation of the US
economy--from one focused on meeting wants to one focused on meeting
needs, where people are once again going to have to become producers
and providers of essential goods and services. The problem is that the
myth of the possibility an infinite rate of increase in the
consumption of a finite energy resource base is going take a long time
to kill.


One thing that I am pretty sure of is that it will be better to be
a net energy and/or food producer rather than a net energy and food
consumer. -excepted from this article - Resurgence of Risk -the Oildrum,
by Jeffrey J. Brown


A third way to understand our condition.

Credit is money that is available to loan to business, you and me. A loan is made from a person or a group to another person or a group in order to allow the creation of something important for the community. People with fixed assets, a rancher in the early west perhaps, needed a feed mill built but the cows wouldn't go to market until fall. He hired a bunch of guys to build it, from the local community usually, but they needed to eat too, so he gave them IOUs in his ranch name, and because he was big ranch, people accepted the IOUs as money. Thus they traded their labor for future payment, and the general store accepted the IOUs for the workers and that is how little banks in the west began.


These loans built granaries, wagons, roads, irrigation, schools, everything that was too big to pay out of pocket. The society benefited from every loan, and the people, ranchers, merchants, laborers all got a tremendous benefit. All of them got the flour mills, blacksmiths, granaries, roads, schools, and barber shops. The profit to the community was the construction of the needed infrastructure. Life was better for all. Profit on money was not the motive, building against entropy was the motive.

Compare that to loans/credit today. Borrowing money against a credit card so that you can go to Cancun, Mexico might be fun for you, but nothing is created. Your promise to pay it back creates the money itself in our system, and your promise is loaned out to others, ten times for every dollar that you owe. Still most often nothing is created of use to the society. So how come we can create money, and fuel the planes fly to Cancun? Who or what is paying for that power to fly the plane, to grow the food, to service your credit card loan?
The oil and natural gas in the earth are paying for it.

Energy. Almost free energy, stored sunlight, liquid gold, Texas Tea - OIL, Natural Gas, Coal. Now oil is more than half gone. The light crude, much more gone than that. We're pumping pretty shitty stuff now. We're injecting nitrogen, hot water, steam, drilling horizontally, and getting oil flavored water in biggest Saudi fields. The last half of oil is much harder to get and not very good stuff. But we can use it. We can't find enough to replace what we are already short. We have a lot left, but our demand for Cancun on the credit card, for every human in developing economies that wants the same middle class life of a wizard - converting stored petrochemicals to money want the lifestyle that you have lived. We don't have enough oil left, and it took extremely unusual conditions to make the oil we have. Most of it was 120 million to 80 million years old. The earth gave us a gift of what appeared to be boundless energy.


So back to how we got here. Oil is a huge part, greed and blindness in the name of profit is another. Just a question to ask yourself, just because we are such and easily confused animals. Did you really think, I mean, by what natural mechanism did you think that the house you owned for the last ten years actually was getting to be worth more and more gold, oil, energy, food? How was it getting bigger, more? Everything in our world obeys the same law of energy - entropy - unless you squeeze in more energy, things go DOWN, get smaller, break, decompose, shift to lower energy states. Your cup of coffee cools off. Have you ever seen it get hotter without adding energy? So what the fuck we we thinking when already built, already decaying houses started to go up in valuation? We didn't think. We just wanted all that money (oil energy). We all wanted to be rich, and re-mortgaging your house, buying a house with nothing down was a path to that humvee, that trip to Cabo, Europe.


The answer is simple, it is not a market question for economists who think only within the bounds of a system that believes that the free energy is forever. The increasing value of your house, which you refinanced was based on pumping out 120 million years of oil from the earth, and based on that energy, loans were made, thus money created, and made available to you so that you could spend it on a new DVD player and wide screen TV, and an IPOD, and twenty cell phones.


All this credit, mortgage seconds, using the fraudulent creation of rising home values has now come home to roost. Not much was added to the infrastructure of sustainable agriculture, home power, clean water, better schools. We have pumped and used over one half of all that beautiful almost free energy, that wonderful sweet Texas tea on schlock that didn't make us so happy anyway. We bought plastic boats and plastic cars. All of which made a quick trip to the landfill, ocean or streams as soon as it broke or no longer pleased us. Broken toys fill landfills and float in a Texas sized island of plastic six pack tops in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.


So when you are discussing the elections, investments, and wondering who is going to "fix" the energy problem, you are sustaining the very illusion that is literally killing us, killing the planet and your children's children's future. Simple enough.


Learn to do something and teach your children so they can have a life. Stop being simple bovine consumers hoping you'll die before it really gets bad, before the bounty runs out. Where the fuck are your guts? Please don't talk to me about Federal elections or comparison shopping for more electronic drek. We could be using what is left of the oil and coal and natural gas to slowly build what the rancher wanted built, a better life of value. We don't have great answers yet, and we have 4.6 billion too many people, too many than the earth can sustain, only the oil made it possible to have so many of us. Oil equals food, less oil, less food, less food . . .

Many people do understand all this. A very tiny fraction accept the consequences of what we have done, and understand the challenges of decreasing energy. People have been talking about the transition to a lower energy future, and the die off (always hushed about that - mustn't scare the sheeple), but the majority of the public really doesn't give a fuck what happens as long as they have and keep and can add to their comfort, material wealth and ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want it.

Of those that have seen the ship of our Empire headed towards these rocks have written, cajoled and entreated. But now most of these planners, military, government, emergency workers, post carbon groups and communities are saying less and less to the mass of the public. It is clear that the public of the Empire is lost in itself, at least many believe so, so your TV and radio will tell you only what you already know, what you want to hear, and about new things to buy, even as the structure of the Empire, the financial structure of the Empire built on ever expanding nearly free energy, collapses.

If you have chosen to look away all this time, to be part of the dreamers and sheep, then you have not read this far in my blog this morning anyway, you turned away yet again. I'm so sorry, but there are too many of us to save. There is no fix in progress, no governemtn intervention. There are just too many of us, and we don't want to hear.

That is the condition our condition is in.

Hi chicklets,
this is really a continuation of scene three, but I thought it would be confusing if I added it to the bottom of the previous posts. So lets call it scene 4.

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill
Chapter 4 Scene 4

Ben shook his head . He just didn't get people, really didn't understand. He made his plans, stuck to them, kept his word, and they did, well they did about whatever random thing they pleased.

The trip through Selma had been somewhat shocking. The town was little more than a bump in the road on the back way to the California coast coming southwest out of Grant's Pass. Today you would have thought it was I-5 itself. Restriction applying to I-5 were not in force here, and people were using the secondary roads to go to the coast and then north and south.

A very slow way to move but the roads were too numerous to block all of them thought Ben, at least so far.

When they passed through town, Mark stopped at the cafe, with Ben protesting the whole way. They sat at the counter and Mark motioned Darlene over and introduced her to Ben.

Mark and his cheap floozies, thought Ben. But he was polite. She was everything Mark said he liked. She looked easy, slightly ditzy and not very sophisticated. No way around it, she looked cheap. He tried not to judge his friend for that, but . . . of course he did.

She said “pleasedtomeetya” smiled and suggested they take their coffees around back to the picnic area in at the rear of the building and she would she would join them in a minute. The diner was packed and she motioned to the table waitress that she was going for a smoke.

“Now!” came the incredulous reply from the other waitress?
Darlene tossed her platinum do back, but of course it didn't toss, being pretty much one piece from the hair spray. “Honey how often do I get two good looking guys who want to go on break with me,” she said, with a throaty laugh. Some of the truckers laughed with her.

“Just take a minute,” Darlene said as she shepherded Ben and Mark out the rear entrance.

Ben was mortified, blushing as they exited the building. Was this low profile like he told Mark. Was Mark fucking insane?

They sat at the table, Darlene waiting for Mark to speak.

“Ben, Darlene's not what she appears.”

“Yes I am silly, I'm a hot woman, looking at mid age with no intention of dying without enjoying myself to the fullest.”

“Maybe all that,” said Mark smiling, but she is also the head of the group called Earth First.”

Ben shook his head. “The radical tree huggers that you hate?”

“Radical yes, tree hugger yes, but whatever she is, she's the most trusted person in the green movement in southern Oregon.”

“Stop honey, you'll make me blush,” said Darlene batting her eyelashes at Mark.

Mark continued. “She has been keeping records of log counts, truck numbers, companies involved and even some of the illegal dumpers. I've done some odd jobs for them. She has the information and the ear of every trucker that passes through here. I'd trust her with my life.”

Darlene tapped the ash off the cigarette she held and watched Ben. Ben stared at both of them.

#

Mark had been very cautious driving to the tower, stopping to look at tire tracks and intersections. There was no active logging going on, and now with the bird flu road closures, it might be a while before there ever was again. Still it was a rare sunny late afternoon when they arrived at the fire lookout tower.

Ben carried the laptop up and one of the cell phones and phone cards Mark had purchased at a DariMart. Signal strength was good and Ben spent twenty minutes activating the phone and card.

“Barone Pipe . . .”

“Shut up.” Ben interrupted.

“Ben, holy fuck – is that you Ben” Jacob exclaimed, “you're alive?”

“Don't speak, just listen,” Ben hissed.

“Write this down.” Ben gave Jacob the GPS coordinates from an intersection of a logging road a mile away. “You need to be there in two hours. Bring Emily.”

“What is this all about Ben? Emily's out shopping, I don't know. . .” Jacob halted realizing the connection was dead. Ben was alive? That's impossible he thought. Two hours, what was Ben thinking. God it was good to hear his voice. Bring Emily, does he think I can make her go anywhere?

Jacob was still in Grant's Pass. After the incident with Homeland Security, he had limped home, explaining to Emily that he had been mugged in town. Emily had stared at him, disbelieving and said, “You better not lose this contract Jacob.”

She had turned on her heel and slammed the thin door to the bedroom in the Provost.

Jacob had showered and used butterfly bandages to hold his split check together. His nose was swollen and yellow and it hurt like hell. He had pulled some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, eying the Tylenol Three with codeine that sat next to it. He had taken three of the ibuprofen and put the Tylenol Three back. It was Emily's prescription and she was pretty touchy about things like that.

As Jacob sat with the cell phone still cradled in his hand, he thought about the call from Ben. Emily opened the door and entered carrying several shopping bags from a candle and gift shop on the road over to Ashland.

“Those assholes wouldn't me on to I-5 Jacob. I had to go back and around the back roads. When is this going to stop. They were so rude, I have the worst headache. Would you be a dear and get me some of my pills?”

Jacob thought for a moment. He had known Ben for a long time before the pipeline business. Ben was serious. He needed to get there.

“Yes dear,” Jacob said has he flipped open the computer and brought up his DeLorme mapping program. “Right away.”

As he walked to the bathroom to get Emily's pills, he said, “Oh, you won't believe it, Ben called.”

“So?”

“Remember I told you I thought he was dead, his trailer blew up?”

“Honey this really hurts, get the pills please, you can tell me about Ben later,” said Emily rubbing her temple and sorting out her purchases on hassock.

Jacob returned and handed the two Tylenol Three to Emily. She looked up to say thank you, but stopped. “God your nose looks worse than yesterday.”

“Sorry dear. Anyway I need to go meet Ben, it seems he has some money for us,” lied Jacob.

Emily looked up, the pills still in her hand. “I'd better come with you honey, you know how you are about money.” With that Emily put the pills down, her headache forgotten, and grabbed her coat from the chair. “Let's go.”

#

FBR chapter 4, scene 3

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill
Chapter 4 Scene 3

“Piece of pie, darling,” asked the waitress, her Bunn coffee pot held aloft in preparation for a refill.

Mark gestured to the cup and nodded. He gave the thin, platinum haired waitress a smile.

“No pie Darlene, too early for pie isn't it?”

“Honey, it's never too early for pie.” said Darlene, the coffee pot poised in one hand, and leaned in to Mark. “I say if it tastes good, eat it, right?”

Mark laughed and slapped his thigh. He was at the lunch counter in a small diner in Selma. He had been coming here each morning while Ben recovered to sit at the counter and listen to the truckers who had their coffee and flirted with Darlene.

Ben had been slowly growing in strength, but he refused to use the cell phone from the little cabin. GPS chip he said. He suggested Mark take the truck just the few miles to the nearest diner each day and get updates on the I-5 closure and rumors of flu outbreaks across the country.

Darlene walked away, her hips flipping her apron just a bit. Mark and the man on the next stool watched appreciatively as she moved down the counter, laughing, flirting with the truckers, all the while refilling their cups without without spilling a drop.

“Ain't she a pistol?”

“She's the only reason I stop here.” said Mark.

“Orson, Orson Wells out of Salt Lake, “ said the trucker offering Mark his hand.

“Jim,” said Mark, shaking the big trucker's hand.

“How's travel, you able to keep a schedule?”

“Ain't that all fucked to hell.” said Orson.

“Last three days been a nightmare. Not so bad going east and west, but up and down I-5 just started moving again yesterday.”

“I thought it was closed completely because of the bird bug thing?”

“They opened it to trucks the night before last. No cars, no private vehicles, just trucks, cops, and emergency vehicles.”

“Fuck, I can't imagine you guys doing that, aren't you afraid of catching this thing?”

“Well,” said Orson, leaning down to whisper, “I should say I'm not afraid of anything. I got my Louisville slugger in the cab and a Blackhawk 44 Magnum revolver out of sight. The truth is I was scared as a pussy when they opened the road. Sure I'd get it.” Orson stopped to sip the coffee and watch Darlene work back down the counter. Darlene glanced at Mark now and then.

“She's got your number boy, better watch out!” laughed Orson quietly.

“Bullshit, I think she's after you Orson,” elbowing him in the ribs a bit. “But you're doing it, even being a little nervous about it?”

“The feds got a system going before they let us get back on the road. We can't use the rest areas. We can't get out of the truck except to take a leak as long as we're on I-5, and that we have to do along the road. When we get to a delivery point we can unlock the load but can't talk to anyone, then right back in the cab. Same with loading up. We don't see a human during the whole process, arrange everything by CB on channel 10 as we get to the loading docks. Caused some problems, mostly delays, but we are getting through.

“They don't care what we do when we are off of I-5.”

“Wow, you can't even stop for water?”

“Hell, we can't even get out of the truck at a truck stop to fill our tanks. You've got to stay in the cab, windows rolled up.”

“They say when this will be over?”

“They keep saying next week, but buddy, I think it is just started. It ain't just Five, now 80, 10 and 8 are all doing it. It is certainly going to fuck up the fresh vegetables,” he said laughing.

Mark started to get up, and Darlene came right over with his bill. She slipped it his plate and winked at him. Mark watched her, she was about thirty five, and despite too much makeup, too tired eyes, and that platinum hair piled high, there was a certain heat.

Mark took the bill from the counter and found a note scribbled on a bit of ripped napkin. He read it quickly as he stood.

“Break in 10 minutes, sure you don't want some pie?”

Mark sat back down. “Darlene,” called Mark with a smile, “I think I'll take you up on that pie.”

Orson smiled in the way of new friends met, just passing. “Always room for pie.”

#

A light rain overnight had smoothed the dirt roads leading to Mark's camp. He was an hour late and knew that Ben would be nervous. But he had learned how FEMA was controlling traffic on I-5. That was what Ben was most concerned about. Despite the time Mark stopped at every intersection as he worked through the southern Oregon forest. Selma was only a few miles from the camp, and a few miles from Grant's Pass, but once he was in the woods, there was almost no one.

Mark had learned from an old Fish and Game guy how you catch poachers in the woods. You don't chase, you don't have to listen, you just go to the intersections and scrape the gravel with your foot. You do that at about six in the evening, you come back a few hours later and if there are tire tracks going in but not out, you wait. You stop everyone leaving. You can even nap while you're waiting.

Mark was using that technique now to see if anyone was coming near the camp. As he squatted in the intersection about a mile from the camp, he saw the same set of tracks from yesterday, taking the other fork. Yesterday these same tracks had been down where he left Six Mile road. Now they were here, higher up the Illinois river. Much closer. While he couldn't be sure, the width of the track and the general pattern of the tread was the same as he saw near Ben's burnt trailer the night Global had tried to kill Ben.

Mark stood, dusting off his jeans, rocked his gimme cap back on his head, laughed as he thought of what a good time a guy could have on a ten minute break, then returned to the sobering thought, that despite the bird flu crisis, someone was still interested in Ben.

#

Mark returned to find an empty cabin. He had pulled the truck up close, got out, anxious to tell Ben what he had found. He found the stove still warm, but the bed rolls, sleeping bags where gone.

“We need to get moving.” said Ben behind him.

Mark turned. He had heard Ben's footsteps approaching. “You're feeling better.” A statement not a question.

“Yea. I went out walking for a bit, no sweats this time. I did hear a car, and caught a glimpse of it. It was Global. What the fuck is it with these guys?”

“I saw the tire tracks, thought maybe it was them. What do we do?”

“I've cleared the cabin out and stored the sleeping bags and kitchen items up under the pine deadfall up the mountain.

Mark nodded. He knew the fallen pine that Ben was talking about. Firs have very little root ball so when they are blown over they leave a small hole. Pines when they go over, are better rooted and usually break if the the wind is that bad. But sometimes when the ground is really soft, they'll pull up and out, leaving a hell of a hole. This one, the one Ben referred to, was on a step part of the hillside above the cabin. When it had fallen it had fallen downslope and left almost a cave under the uphill side.

“It's dry and I bundled everything with that plastic sheathing you had.”

Mark waited patiently. Ben was pacing, thinking, talking to himself, but his color was better. Mark relaxed a little. Between Darlene and Ben's returning health, things were feeling pretty good!

Truth be known, though Mark, I don't really give a shit about I-5 and hope they never open it back up.

Mark knew that Ben was really upset over his friends still in the city, and even Jacob, but he didn't quite understand that. From Ben's description, somehow Jacob was involved. Mark realized that he and Ben were different, maybe Mark didn't have the right piece in him, that piece that drove Ben, a concern for everyone. He wasn't sure if it was his lack or Ben's. Still, from the short few months he had known him, Mark realized that Ben was often thinking quite a bit farther ahead. Maybe he just needs a little Darlene break time to relax him a bit, thought Mark. He smiled to himself.

“We can come back to the cabin as a center, at least until we get everyone grouped with us.” said Ben, walking about gesturing, looking down. “But what we need right now is to get your computer connected and cell phone. We can't do that from here for obvious reasons. Did you have another camp farther up towards Coos Bay?”

Mark thought about that, and there was a small lean-to he had constructed but it was down in the creek bottom and it was even farther from the cell towers that covered I-5.

“Yea, but wrong side off the mountains, no cell signal.” Mark thought a bit. “You know they don't man the fire towers anymore?”

“Budget cuts and satellites.” replied Ben. “That and the policy to let burns go now. Country can't afford the money to save the timber, and the forest seems better off for it anyway.”

Mark wasn't sure of all of that argument. “The firetowers are still there, and there is one west of Grants Pass, north of the Rogue that can see I-5. I bet we can get signal there.”

Ben thought of that for a moment. Each time they logged into the cellular network they would be leaving a foot print. Of course it was Mark's footprint and not Ben's. Ben could use the prepaid phones for cell contact, using a different one each time, but Mark's laptop connected using the Rev B EVDO from Verizon, and that was specific to that card and that account. He would have to be quick, specific, and ready. “Ok, how far?”

“About an hour. Let's put this place back the way we found it, and sweep the yard. That will make it time for lunch when we go through Selma. Since you're feeling better, maybe you'd like some pie?”

Ben looked up. What the fuck was Mark thinking about, lunch, now? Friends all have their heads up their ass in Eugene and Seattle, they maybe just had time to get them out before the bird flu locked everything down tight, and Mark is thinking about lunch, about pie? Fuck.

#

Our changing world

We are such a successful animal. Yet we have no evolutionary off button. I'll post Cherfurka's comments from a blog he participates in - below if you want more depth. We evolved to expand, use resources, reproduce and acquire more for ours - our family, our children, our tribe, our region. More, more, more. No off switch.

In requiem, perhaps we might say that we are damn creative inhabitants of this beautiful planet, and we never met a predator that we couldn't outwit. We are the beautiful, natural outcome of what we had to be to survive. However we are hitting the wall. I've been saying it for three years. I called the housing bubble, peak oil (Bush talked about peak oil yesterday!), and the beginning of the inflation/deflation destruction of jobs, suburbia, and the automobile. But others called that long before me. How odd how few people listen to simple logic, but if you read Chefurka below you'll see that the brain up top does not really call the shots. We are the scorpion, it is our nature.

You've heard this, but just in case you have not. A turtle and a scorpion are on one side of a river and both wish to get to the other side. The turtle prepares to swim but the scorpion interrupts and asks to cross on his back. The turtle says, but you will sting me and kill me. The scorpion replies - logically - no I won't for I would drown too. So the turtle agrees and they head off with the turtle swimming and the scorpion riding high and dry on his the top of his shell.

Half way across the scorpion stings the turtle in the back of the head. The turtle cries, oh my, why did you do that, now we both will die? The scorpion shrugs - in a scorpion shrugging way - and says, what do you expect, I'm a scorpion.

We are the scorpion. The planet is the turtle. We have too many people, resources are dwindling and that is the scorpions poison to capitalism. There must always be more resources, more buyers, more labor and expanding markets. We have peaked oil, buyers are finally understanding the coming collapse of the financial markets and they are not buying. Businesses are seeing the writing on the wall of the future and are cutting back. Everyone is doing the tighten up. Meanwhile the 6.5 billion of us continue to increase. Why, because it is our nature.

Doomy gloomy gus, why does he write this? To wake you the fuck up. While we can't save the current system, I and others believe that we can give a cockroach competition. In the die off, we will loose 5 billion people or more, and that will straggle out over 70 years or so, however we will not all die.

Today, right now, forget about society, philosophy, your beliefs, your religion, who is running for president, and shrink. Shrink your expenses faster than your neighbors. Shrink your desire for the effluent affluence of society. Start a garden. While you have dollars convert them into stable assets. Do it before all your neighbors (hurry, they started, those of the middle class who will survive, doing it a decade ago). Do you have family, friends, loved ones with varying skills and assets? Weld them into a single group. Create a tribe of mutual support. These are your advantages over your neighbor. Make no mistake, in the competition for dwindling resources, water, oil, gas, air, fertilizer, safety, every person outside your tribe is your competition.

Don't think that wealth without power will survive long. Every person in this matrix of our capitalistic society is caught in their own fragile niche. The one who has wealth in the bank, the market, bonds, treasury notes, they are also at risk for asset loss. These are not real assets but paper backed by the desire of others to buy them at a specific price. These wealthier folks often are less capable of surviving individually, but they too have the same option as you, the formation of tribe, plus they can convert their paper assets to real assets that will survive the dollar destruction that comes.

So chickies, see to yourselves, see to your family, see to your tribe. Perhaps you might be one of the lines that persists through the next seventy years. I know, there will be a huge measure of luck that preparation will not help. But you know, shrinking down, preparation, they are also elements of your evolutionary survival. Peoples who gathered grain gathered enough for winter, or they died. Built into the scorpion part of you is an unmitigated bastard (modern sheeply view) of enormous self preservation. I suggest, that the next six months will be a time of enormous jerking strains and starts that will rip the fabric of this society. Too many parts of the perfect storm abound, and no matter who gets elected you're not going to find enough oil, natural gas or Tesla mystical energy from the Van Allen belts to stop what is already running downhill. Stop arguing, shut off your TV, and start shrinking. Get rid of stupid unsupportable non-asset assets, and shrink into the self reliant yet interconnected tribe who will go forward through this mess as participants, not victims in what comes. No one is going to get through easy, but many will not get through at all.

If indeed we are the scorpion, make peace with that, and use your scorpion powers to help you and your tribe survive. All bow to Bernake, for he and his are pallbearers to capitalism's last gasp. Fuck.

Below is a snippet from Chefurka's post:

"When most people look around the world today they see a set of problems. they see energy/technology problems. They see ecological/environmental problems. They see economic problems. If they are slightly deeper thinkers, they may see population problems. I believe they
are all suffering from vision problems.

What most people see as "technological problems" are more correctly seen as the set of symptoms of the real underlying problem, symptoms that are that are manifesting themselves in the technological arena.

In the same sense, what people are interpreting as "ecological problems" are the set of symptoms that are manifesting in the world's ecology. And what people are interpreting as "economic problems" are merely the set of symptoms that are manifesting in the world's economy.

The underlying problem is the same in all three cases. *Humanity is an overly successful species with no effective predators, the ability to manipulate its environment on a planetary scale, and the perception that it is apart from that environment.*

I actually disagree with the spreading perception that the core environmental problem is human population growth. I used to think it was, but I now think population growth is just another symptom of the problem stated above. You can prove this to yourself with a simple thought
experiment. Imagine that we stabilized our population tomorrow, at our current 6.6 billion people. Would that fix the problems of resource depletion, ecological devastation and the economic instability caused by our insistence on continual material growth? I maintain it wouldn't, because those problems are still worsening where populations have already
stabilized, or are even in outright decline.

Addressing any one of the problems areas - energy/technological, ecological, economic or population - would still leave us with problems in the other three. We can (and will) tinker around in each of these areas, because that's our Buddha-nature - human beings are innate tinkerers. We will do things to ease the situation in each of those symptom domains. But
none of that tinkering addresses the fundamental problem, which I describe as follows:

*Humanity appears to have evolved without a crucial internal self-restraint mechanism. That happened because, like every other species, those restraints were readily available within the environment - mainly resource scarcity, predation and disease. Because those external restraints were available, selection didn't endow us with internal restraints because they weren't needed. In fact, during our early time as a species, an internal self-restraint mechanism acting in addition to the external restraints would have been counter-productive, and would have been actively selected out of our makeup.

However, as we developed the intellectual ability to circumvent those external restraints - through extinguishing all large predators, and developing agriculture, mining and medicine - we outfoxed ourselves. Because in the absence of either internal or external restraints we are left with no effective way to reign in our genetic urge for expansion. All that remains
is our intellectual capacity to foresee outcomes and to regulate our behaviour through reason. As far as I can tell, reason is not a strong enough counterbalance to our innate behavioural tendencies. The evidence of this is no further away than the $2500 Tata.*

So I hold out no hope whatever that our tinkering will solve the "real" dilemma of humanity. We are behaving exactly as our evolution intended, and its unlikely that we will stop. What we need to do is to figure out ways in which our feeble reason can create the conditions for the continued survival of our species and perhaps some of our civilization, despite both our unconstrained, innate urge to grow and our glorious but tragic ability to reason. These are the aspects of our nature that are at the root of all our troubles, and we will need to be enormously cunning to outmaneuver them.

Paul Chefurka

Gifts to give yourself

Rick and I have been carrying on a bit of a conversation on the push and pull effect of a depression versus inflation. No, don't worry not going to talk about that, but something in that conversation made me pen a reply that I think is germane to all of us. Here's that reply

We can't control the lumbering speeding giant, Empire, but we do have control over our expenses. If we make fun that which costs nothing, we cut the society's control arms off where they fit around our throats. That is, that we are taught that good things must be bought and that no money is bad, in fact that you fun-ability correlates to your income. Actually I'm finding the very most precious things, fun things, at least to me, are things I've made, stories I've told, thoughts I've shared. What I buy is often feels a hollow dissatisfying fraud in comparison.

Find a series of free doings that make you feel great. Dance, learn to play an instrument, paint pictures, write a novel, build an atlatl, learn to throw it in your front yard and scare your neighbors. Raise rabbits on scraps and grass and clippings and give them to your dogs as toys. Hike the Pacific Crest trail. Fish for carp and bluegills instead of steelhead and trout. Raise tilapia in your bathtub. Make illegal wine and hard alcohol in the garage and give it to the neighbors.
All the really fun things are nearly free. The useless evil is the time we spend "normal" which is a narcotic meant to put us to sleep for the hours we're not plugged into the worker drone matrix in service to the 2% of the very wealthy. You know, TV, movies, advertisements, alternate realities, all shaping us to be good worker drones. No wonder people die when they retire, most have never had a life anyway.
Boogie to the beat of the collapse!

Perfect Positional Summary

We've all been bad, really really bad, and if we don't get it soon, others will help us understand in unpleasant ways. Because of our bad behavior and the sins of our forebearers, we all have a detention assignment. Your assignment takes ten minutes. GO HERE. The link is only good for 7 days, grasshopper.

FBR chapter 4 scene 2

HI chicklets, suns out, wrote this scene just now - going out to work on the bow - it gets nocks today and gets it's first ride on the tillering stick. Doesn't that sound bad?
mcnalan

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill
Chapter 4 Scene 2

Patricia drummed her fingers on her desk, staring absently at the nearly bare office. She sat behind a scarred gray desk, two drawers lower right, two lower left, and a center thin drawer for all the office sundries required by office dwellers. Patricia's drawers were empty, no sundries, no pens, no paper clips. No pictures adorned the walls, save one. Hers was a small office in Washington DC, near the capital building. Homeland security had grew enormously after the financial collapse of 2008. Chasing terrorists had given way, in part, to securing the resources that the country needed to run.

Her laptop was in the center of the desk. She never used the local wireless network within the building for the same reason that there was nothing in her small office besides one picture, her father. Patricia used a encrypted Verizon service that had priority for high speed access through any cell tower. Her account level would even bump phone calls off the tower if it were busy, and she was running an encryption level that only the NSA snoops would be able to break, and even then, only with great determination. So she assumed they read everything on her laptop all the time.

She continued to wait for the call to be completed. There was moments of completely dead air as the signal sought a working line for Global security. She looked at her father's stern countenance on the wall. Stern, and yes, he believed in discipline but he had a special love for his daughter. Her mother had never understood that. Patricia, if she thought about it at all, thought her mother was something of a fool. Her father expected a lot and was quick to discipline. Her mother had not understood that his discipline was followed by expressions of love that made Patricia strong, sure and full. Most visitors to her office found the single small picture in a simple frame intimidating. Good, thought Patricia.

“Yo.”

“Finally. You understand the west coast problem?”

“Which one?” chucked Arthur. “You have so many.”

“So many opportunities for a bright boy,” she responded.

“Indeed, many. What do you want Patricia?” said Arthur, a bit curtly.

“No names. I want what I have always wanted, to do my job, and keep America from crumbling into anarchy. Call me back in ten minutes at this number, wait.”

Patricia reached into her cordura pocked bag and pulled out a disposable cell phone with card. She rattled off the number.

“Got it.”

“Yes sir, mam.”

Patricia clicked her phone shut. Arthur represented the peak of a security organization that while private, looked more and more like the old KGB that her father had talked about. It was not just a contracting company, it had become involved in policy, and Arthur had the ear of people higher than her in the political world. However, his attitude grated on her. There would come a time when she would deal with him. The thought made her squirm in her seat, clenching her thighs together. She tried to concentrate on the opportunities this bird flu breakout presented. Homeland Security had been planning for the bird flu outbreak. Christ thought Patricia, it was inevitable given the vast repository of the deadly virus. It was found on every continent by 2010, and it needed only one small recombination or one small mutation to set it loose. Apparently now it was.

Patricia checked the hall and returned to her desk. After the exchange with Arthur and thinking about her father she felt a pressure. She didn't do it often but she needed it now. She locked her door and pulled the blind down over the glass. She brought her bag up to the desktop, pushing the computer out of the way. She found the little leather pouch in a small side pocket. It was just an inch by an inch and one half, and she carefully folded the flap back exposing the obsidian small point beneath. She pulled it carefully from the leather, away that it's edges were so sharp that they were used in heart surgery. No scalpel was as sharp as this. She wiggled her hips as she pulled down her slacks, just enough. She could feel the moist heat, the pressure. She rocked to the left exposing the inside of her left thigh. Her hand shaking and her breath coming in short pants, she slowly made a small incision, about two inches long, parallel to the other faint scars found there. The beads of blood welled in the cut, the edges of the incision so perfect that the blood vessels seemed to need time to realize they were cut. She wiped her right index finger along the cut and brought the blood up to her lips. She stopped and stared at it as she thought "See daddy, see how good I am?"

She brought the blood to her lips and tasted it, quivering. Then she moved her hand lower, frantically, finally shuddering, and then relaxed.

#

Mark stopped at the door of the small cabin and peered in at the rough bed he had made for Ben. It was two days since they arrived. Ben had fallen into a troubled sleep on the leaf bags that mark had filled and tied for him, covered by Mark's sleeping bag. He had not really woken since then, but was running a burning hot fever.

Mark stood and watched Ben slowly moving his arms and legs as if running. Mark was comfortable here in this wet damp world of south western Oregon, in fact, Mark could say he was happy about anywhere except where there were too many people. That was a lot of places unfortunately. Everything made sense here in woods. Life flowed in streams that you could feel, animals moved, plants thrived and the falling water collected down the drainages washing the hillsides. The doug fir glistened when the light was bright enough to penetrate. It was peace. Mark knew that he and Ben were very different, but both sought the same thing, quiet peace in which to live. But he also knew that they had very different ways to achieve that. Ben looked to the outside world now, ever since that time with Bea, and looked to control how the world whipped him about as he held onto the tail. Mark avoided the world, the tail and had created a way of moving as a contractor, and sometimes a subcontractor to another subcontractor that simply allowed the world to forget all about him. Mark's needs were simply in the physical world, but like Ben, he also missed the odd emotional context that women brought him. He would never tell another guy, but the thing he like most was to lay with a woman after sex and talk about softball, past games, past glories. Mark didn't think too much about that, except to know not to talk too much about it. Ben was one of the few people he did share that with.

Mark realized as did many others that for some accident of psychology, whatever Ben's wound was, and Mark thought that wound came long before his affair with Bea, that wounded him and yet made him easy to talk to. At the most basic level, in a one to one conversation you realized two things about Ben. First he was needy and talked too much, much too much. The second thing, after you had that first figured out was that he was brilliant, inductive and fearless in following what he believed. Mark needed Ben's brilliance because he simply did not know what to do, except to lay low. Yet before he fell ill, Ben had been saying they should contact people, and he was urgent about it.

Mark shook his head. Ben had been under a lot of stress in the last two days. He needed to get him up and running now. While Ben was unconscious mark had repaired the old narrow cook stove that had fallen over in the corner. He used river rock to form a base for it. The legs had been broken off by vandals at some point, and a hole had been broken through the cast iron of the right side. Mark found the pieces and used clay from the stream bank to fashion a mud glue to put the stove back together. He found some old corrugated iron roofing crumpled down the hill from the cabin, and beat it somewhat straight, rolled it and fastened it together with strands of rusted fence wire. He ran that up through the roof, filled the rusted bottom of the stove with more clay and some crushed rock from the logging road. All that remained was to bring some dry fire and dried sap in and within minutes he had the cabin heated up.

He boiled water from the stream in an old coffee can that he found among the other trash that people had dumped, and had purified enough water to keep dripping it in Ben's mouth.

That done mark had left early in the morning while Ben seemed quieter, though still very hot. The previous afternoon at dusk Mark had set rabbit snares and he collected two good rabbits who had been caught, dispatching one that was still alive with a quick rock to the brain. He was careful not to waste the head though.

He had returned to the cabin and made a broth of the rabbit brains and the stomach contents of the rabbits. he didn't use any part of the intestines, but was careful to check the liver for white cysts. The rabbits where clean, no tulmeria.

The boiled broth contained fat from the brains and the partially digested greens and grains the rabbit had eaten. The boiling water killed the stomach bacteria and was already partially digested. Mark understood, without thinking much about it, that Ben needed food that was available without a great deal effort on the part of his body.

He had been slow dripping the cooled soup into Ben whenever he was awake enough to swallow.

Ben stirred, kicking off the covers. He was cooler to the touch now thought Mark as he felt Ben's forehead.

Ben stirred awake slowly. He looked around blinking the crust from his eyes. he could see that it was daylight but the dreams that had been torturing him seemed to have gone on for days.

“How long,” he croaked, swallowed and started again. “How long have I been here?

“It was two days ago when you fell asleep.” said Mark.

“Shit!” said Ben and tried to rise, only to find himself dizzy. He lay back quickly, puzzled at the plastic garbage bags filled with leaves that were supporting him. he fingered them and smiled.

“Nice bed. Wish I could say I enjoyed it. With that Ben got slowly up to a sitting position.

“Sorry to conk out on you.”

“Didn't much matter. I didn't know what to do after getting here anyway. I've been listening to the local radio, your shortwave, and the CB every hour or so. This bird flu thing is bad here and people are doing weird things because of it. Not only I-5 has been cut but the towns on the coast have pretty much barricaded themselves and Gold Beach seems to have blown up a hanging area and cut off route 101 altogether.” Mark waved his hands, not sure of what to say.

“What about the rest of the world?” Ben asked. Over the next half hour Mark filled him in on the snatches of conversation from the CB and on commercial shortwave broadcasts from China and Russia.

Ben had been able to get outside to use the cabin's makeshift outhouse, and had come back to fall into a more normal sleep that lasted about two hours. When he awoke he was aware that he was really hungry.

The smell of roasting rabbit, wild garlic and onion filled the cabin. As he cleaned the last bone he thought that it was about the best meal he could remember.

He talked for hours that night with Mark. Ben was aware that the country and the world were changed now, like cultural earthquake. The damage was ongoing and would never be fully reported. People would continue as long as they could as if things were going to get back to normal, help would come, the rule of law restored, just like after the financial collapse in 2008. Ben knew that this was different. He needed Mark to have time to get used to what they could expect now, and what they would have to be willing to do if they wanted themselves and the people close to them to survive.

It was a difficult conversation. Mark was not into what if, but rather worked on the here and now, the what is. Ben lived farther out in front. Slowly Mark understood that many people were going to die and that he had skills that Ben needed right now. Yet in a way Mark was a creature of the woods more than of this culture, Ben understood that. He also knew that Mark would have difficulty killing first. This was going to be very hard. The survivors of this collapse would be those that could step aside from the Walmart culture and the controls that society builds in every one of use that it can reach. Every story, every song, every TV show, every movie, every sermon, every advertisement reinforces the herd and civilizes us to coexist without killing each other. Now that civilization was breaking down and the very conditioning that made him a good coworker, helpful neighbor, a helping hand in the community was exactly the wrong thing to do. Ben knew the only real directive in the short term was to survive for at least nine months in any way that he and his close people must. That was the minimum time to a vaccine, if the society held together long enough to produce and distribute vaccine. The reports that Mark heard were not encouraging.

FBR chapter 4 scene 1

Hi from the sunny skies of Q! Here's the beginning of chapter 4. Enjoy!

Foreign Body Reaction, Alan McNeill
Chapter 4 Scene 1

Despite that rough road and old truck, Ben startled awake when the truck stopped. He had fallen asleep against the passenger door. He tried to stretch out the cramp in his neck but it wouldn't let go.

“More coffee?” said Mark pointed at the thermos jammed between them.

“No thanks. Is this your current camp?”

“I set it up for the couple of days I would be down here. The contract had me going to the high point between here and Malin on the Connector next week, didn't want to get too settled.”

Ben just nodded as he got out of the truck.
“My stuff in the tool box?”

“Yea.” Mark pulled the keys from the ignition and opened up the diamond plate aluminum tool box that spanned the front of the truck bed. He climbed up and handed Ben down everything he had collected as he had followed Ben's trail.

Ben was relieved to see that his PVC cache tube was there along with some clothing and tools that Mark had salvaged from the burnt trailer.

Mark's camp was nearly invisible, even when Ben stood at the truck and looked right at it. They were on the west side of a small hill. Ben could here a stream gurgling further down the hillside in the brush. There was a weathered logging shack that probably had been thrown together before the turn of the previous century that was nearly obscured by the blackberries that had taken advantage of the small clearing. The berries covered the leaning cabin. The grayed and weathered wood of the door was invisible in the shadow of the hillside to their right.

Ben noted that mark must have evicted the mice, skunks, and porcupines that lived here undisturbed, as he had swept out the place, covered the floor with the plastic paper that covered lumber trucks in the Pacific Northwest. He had put his mat on the floor, and his sleeping back hung from the rafters. Despite being able to see sky through the roof, the floor and the interior was dry.

“You really fixed up the place.”

Mark didn't bother to answer.

Ben knew that it would be harder to try and pry information from Mark about what was going on than to just try and find out. While Mark was sure that Global Security was out of the picture now with bigger fish to fry, Ben was not so sure. The oil the fuel storage that he had not told Mark about represented an enormous store of wealth today. But, Mark might be right, if this was as bad as Ben suspected, if FEMA had closed I-5, using Willits as a pretext, then this was very very bad. Maybe bad enough to make Global forget all about him.

Mark had several milk jugs of water along the wall. Ben's thirst seemed unquenchable since the fire, and as Ben unpacked his cache, he sipped the clean cold creek water. Even the slight taste of iodine from the disinfectant didn't erase the simple pleasure of drinking.

Ben unrolled the cache plastic after getting it back out of the tube. Quickly he put back on the belt and two of the Smith and Wesson. He placed the third pistol that had originally been in the truck on Mark's sleeping pad just as Mark walked back in.

“You think we're going to be shooting a lot of people?”

“I don't know about you, but I can still feel the Global chief's pistol pressed against my head. I think it will be a while before I don't carry a pistol.”

“Might get you into more trouble than you want.”

“Might save your ass too. I put the third one on your mat. It's loaded. You decide for you, I'm not selling guns or shooting people. I just want a choice.”

Mark picked up the S&W 9mm and dropped the clip out, pulled the receiver back and ejected the cartridge that had been loaded into the