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341 sats \ 3 replies \ @om 21 May 2024 \ on: The Sovereign Neighborhood DIY

https://freedomcells.org builds sort of in this direction

Observations on that folk:

  • there's an extreme amount of woo among back-to-the-landers, Derrick Broze's focus on meditation doesn't help
  • back-to-the-landers are usually not libertarians in any sence of the word I recognize, they just define liberty as living in a village
  • back-to-the-landers usually extremely underestimate the amount of effort and land necessary to produce enough food to feed themselves (even "underestimate" is too flattering a description - usually when asked to give an estimate they just make incoherent noises often involving the word "permaculture" but never producing any numbers)

My thoughts on tech which is extremely important:

  • batteries: lithium is too expensive, once iron-air is widely available it would be a life saver
  • fertilizers: Haber-Bosch process is too energy-expensive and therefore too centralized, if companies like Nitricity perfect the plasma arc process it would be another life saver
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @machuPikacchu OP 22 May 2024

As for the batteries, an alternative solution for small scale could be pumped storage hydroelectricity [1]. This wouldn't work for most applications but could still perhaps power small electronics if needed.

For fertilizer the community could still purchase that from larger markets. I'm out of my depth here, but could chickens and goats help with fertilizer? Composting? Permaculture? (jk!)

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @om 22 May 2024

For small electronics, little lithium accus work just fine.
Here, I got a cheap 10000 mAh accu from a supermarket = 10 Ah at 3.3 V (even though its nominal output is 5V, they're rated at internal voltage to scam customers) so 33Wh, converting from hours to seconds we get 336060 Wsec = 118800 J. That would be equivalent to raising 1 cubic meter of water about 118800 / 9.8 / 1000 = 12.1 meters. And that is why pumped-storage isn't used at small scale.

Fertilizer became a critical bottleneck during the height of recent inflation. You can still buy it, sure. You'd need a lot of chickens to fertilize with their poop alone...

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @machuPikacchu OP 22 May 2024

The goal of this project wouldn't necessarily be as extreme as the back-to-the-landers. Ideally it would be small communities that produce a significant portion of their food and energy so that they have more control over what's important to them.

Another angle: in the US there have been lots of attacks on the grid in various cities. And a lot of our food goes to a handful of grocers in each city. This can be a vulnerability during crazy times and if each neighborhood had some level of independence from the larger region we'd be more secure.

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