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How are you planning for a potentially bleaker future?
I think things are going to get a lot worse until they get better (if they do). I’m not talking about US politics (I dont live there), I’m thinking more about climate change: food and water might not be as readily available anymore, never mind other things we take for granted like medicine, transportation, communications, a retirement pension.
It’s hard to articulate but I feel like our future is bleaker than the previous generation’s for the first time in modern history because of factors beyond our control (i.e. neither geopolitical nor economic). Not sure how to prepare for it so I’m wondering how other Tilderinas and Tilderinos deal with it, especially if you have or are planning on having children?
The proportionate response is to:
Do what you can to stay physically healthy (exercise, eat well, get enough sleep)
Do what you can to stay mentally healthy (maintain connections with friends and family, regularly engage in hobbies and things that make you happy, be informed but don't engage with the torrent of FUD being put out daily to capture your attention and clicks)
Put yourself in the best financial situation you can (have an emergency fund, have a plan to fund retirement and your goals in life and regularly contribute towards them)
Global / society scale issues:
so why not focus on the things you can control to make your life happier and more resilient in general?
I'll just add that there is certainly a middle ground between individual-scale and global / society scale, and that is community-scale issues. Volunteering in the community on an issue that is important to you is a great way to stay mentally healthy, form connections that can help weather tough times, while simultaneously helping others (and on this scale, individual contributions can really have an impact).
There is actually a whole spectrum between "individual" and "global", and it is well worth focusing your efforts in exactly that order of importance.
Top priority, as @Well_known_bear writes, make sure you are healthy and fiscally secure (as much as such a thing is feasible these days).
Then, focus on your partner(s), family and close friends. Not just in a "how are you doing" way, but actively discuss your worries and see how much they align with their own concerns. Find actionable common ground, make plans and projects together.
Then, meet your neighbors. Go out of your way to develop friendly, helpful, supportive relationships with the people in your apt building, on your block, etc. Gradually, start talking about the idea of local mutual support structures.
Look for apps/services/groups designed to connect local communities, look for local volunteer and community-planning projects and organizations in your area.
And, you know, etc.
By the time you get to the national/global scale ... well, screw it ... it's out of our hands.
Find your local, supportive, resilient community. If it doesn't exist, build it from scratch (but I bet it's already out there, just waiting for you to notice it).
These changes are usually gradual. They are quick from a historic standpoint, not from a personal one. I'm not saying not to prepare at all, but we'll probably have plenty of time to adjust. Yes, disasters will occur, but the preparation for those will probably be very similar to how people prepare for regular disasters we already face.
In the absolute worst scenarios possible, I don't think we can prepare at all. Not individually, at least.
I’m not convinced they’ll be gradual. I think there is an exponential quality to these things, that feed off one other.
I think that the comments from @lackofaname and @Well_known_bear really pair together to cover making strategic decisions that are within your control or influence while not being hung up on the things outside of your control. I've heard the term "strategic hypocrisy" as a way to describe living your life on the day to day while recognizing that existential issues may be facing humanity. Because terrorizing yourself with things outside of your control doesn't help anyone.
Personally, I've striven to be resilient most of my life, before climate change was a major concern, and just sort of kept up focusing on ways I can hedge, like:
I have a 1-2 million calorie pantry buffer in the form of a dozen plus gamma lid sealed five gallon buckets of staples like flour, grains, oats, corn, beans, rice, sugar, plus shelves of the things needed to cook with those staples like yeast, baking powder, baking soda, vegetable stock base, salt. It's all stuff I use and rotate through, so I don't worry about my emergency buffer going bad. Also, this is to buffer against a natural disaster, not the complete collapse of society, which no feasible amount of pantry can really address long term. Also a store of propane and wood with outdoor stoves.
I'm an avid outdoorsman and have tons of gear including extra water purifiers, stills, and every piece of gear you could need for every terrain or condition, including field medicine from my time as a wilderness EMT and search and rescue. Again, hedging against interruption to society, not its collapse. I've also got a large supply of potassium iodide pills, but that's for a real bad time.
I've trained with firearms and have rifles and shotguns in my gun safe with a cache of sealed ammo. I suppose I'm a live off the wild scenario these would be useful, but realistically it would be too fend off looters.
I stay healthy and active, read news, trends, and forecasts, and generally try and stay ahead of predictable changes and avoid preventable problems like not being for fit enough to travel overland on foot if needed.
Beyond the above, half of which is more like living my outdoor hobby life than preparing, I just do my thing. I do my part, using mass transit, eating vegetarian, avoiding wanton consumption, voting climate, etc. But I don't dwell on the things outside of my control. I do my hobbies, visit family, exercise, work, take vacations, etc. just with a few buffers built into my life, just in case a major event occurs.
Also, it took me decades to piece the above together, so don't take this as a recommendation to rush out and build a bunker. I actually had needs, like rural living, that motivated much of these habits in the beginning.
I removed myself from doomer culture. The real world is not accurately represented by doomers.
It's not as bad as people are making it out to be. It's not good but people need to touch grass.
I started coming to tildes instead of reddit, because there isn't as much Trump spam here.
There seems to be a consensus among climate scientists that we’ve broken the climate and it’s only going to get worse. I don’t think it’s gratuitous doom, it’s people who study this for a living saying it broke. We’re not even pretending it’ll be 1.5C warmer now (2025 is already 1.5C warmer) because we missed that target, we’re talking 2C and preparing for 3C (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_degree_climate_target)
I think in richer countries, there’s a whole lot of difference between “climate gets a lot worse” and “society collapses.” If you have some resources, the consequences of bad weather can be avoided or prepared for. Don’t buy a house in a high fire danger zone or a flood zone, etc.
I find doomer culture tiresome.
We live in the brightest human era yet, brimming with medical and technological wonders and creature comforts. (Mind you, 500 years ago even kings and emperors struggled with painful diseases that today we easily cure, even for the poor.) Global extreme poverty on the verge of being vanquished. We're more educated and peaceful than ever. We're so well fed that one of the most valuable companies in the world — Novo Nordisk — made its fortune in making medication that makes us eat less. Our civilization vibrates with knowledge and art traveling at the speed of light. Scientists and engineers are collaborating across the world. Humanity spent 299,800 years plodding through darkness, and only in the past 200 years have we experienced any semblance of light.
Anyway, everyone is living in the last of days — their own. No matter what unfolds in the distant future, there is nothing after our own deaths, so just chill out and enjoy life.
I agree. I think many people consume too much negative news and coruminate within a self-selected circle of others who do the same. I think people forget that the world has always been in a state of disarray, and want to seek solace in believing their problems are special and no one else in history has had it as hard as they have. 15 years ago the world had an economic meltdown and a recession which lasted several years. 25 years ago the US went to war after having one of the largest terrorist attacks conducted on its soil. Go back to the 80s and violent crime was enormously higher than today with an unfathomable amount of active serial killers. Go back further and people lived in fear every day of nuclear annihilation due to a fued between the two largest world powers.
In regards to climate change specifically, it's something I studied through statistical modelling in grad school. It's real, but the effects are already here. You already see more wildfires and hotter days. There isn't going to be a magical shift in 10 years where the world implodes on itself overnight. It's going to continue to be a gradual progression, just as it has been over the last 10 years. The way you adapt to it is by continuing to do whatever you've already been doing.
In general I find when I go outside people are pretty kind and don't exist in a catatonic state of doom the way I see online. Instead they smile when they receive compliments and are excited to attend raves or meet new people at dinner parties or try out surfing or happy to drive you to the airport or whatever.
For me, I'm more generally trying to set up a safety cushion for a variety of scenarios that could feasibly deteriorate my quality of life. Like, my own (or family's) health declining, economically hard times, that sort of thing. Barring something extreme like disasters (less likely where I am) or resource wars, I think the impacts of climate change will likely be felt through these types of avenues (resources more expensive, weather-related discomfort/health impacts).
I'm lucky to live in a place where it's unlikely there would be outright no fresh water in the future. I've been doing my best to make myself feel more secure within the system I live and within my means. I was able to buy a little house in a walkable area close to some family. I try to stay relatively healthy to reduce the chance of lifestyle diseases. I'm trying to build a financial cushion to help weather hard times. I try to learn to repair things so I might be able to fix items if the only other option were do without. I enjoy learning to grow and sometimes preserve veggies, and have the potential space to put in enough raised planters to seriously supplement my diet if it came to it; it would be work, but I figure if I had the time and not the money, it might help. And at the very least, these are things I generally enjoy and feel in line with my ethos, so there's no harm :)
I think this is the ethos I've been gradually building as well but never really seen articulated or done so myself, so I appreciate the perspective in both these comments.
...i've made my peace with dying alone in a gutter, no legacy in my wake: in the end none of my struggle matters and that won't be my problem anymore...
Don't worry, your legacy will be the same as everyone else's.
Even if humanity does survive, there will come a day when nobody has ever heard of Jesus or Elvis.
hey samesies!
my plan is basically "support as many of my friends as i can for as long as i can and then go die in a ditch somewhere cuz Boy Howdy Am I Tired". its been working out p well so far i think!
I've had a plan to build out a van to live in for a while now and I finally bought one this spring and have been working on it since. My finances are secure for now and if I have to I can live pretty cheaply on the road by staying in parks (while they're still around) and with friends and family. I'll also have the flexibility to move around if disasters or lack of resources become untenable. This wasn't what I thought starting Van Life would be like but I'm glad I already had a plan that will let me adapt to what may come.
I don't know exactly when, but at some point in time, "living in a van down by the river" stopped being an SNL skit, and started to become a viable retirement plan.
It is, at least in significant part, a symptom of the housing non-affordability component of the economy, at least here in the USA. Lack of affordable housing is such a widespread issue that vanlife has become a fairly mainstream economic adaptation.
Even for people who can afford housing, many who are able to at best enjoy or at worst tolerate vanlife are attracted by just how much less expensive life is when you don't have to pay for an apartment or other rental.
I had been planning this for a couple of years so I have almost every detail worked out, but a lot of it is stuff I've never done before so it's been a slow process. I've done some woodworking and working on cars in the past but I've never created a self contained electrical system or plumbing before. Luckily, I'm a visual learner and there's endless resources online for not only Van builds but construction in general.
One of the most intimidating things I had to do recently was cut holes in the side of my brand new Ford Transit for the windows I installed.
If this is something you're interested in, I would recommend starting with FarOutRide's guides to see what's involved. I've used these quite a lot. They are very informative and thorough.
I’m not, really, other than being wary about where we might buy a house. I expect more wildfires.
Personal accountability, rainy day fund and food supply - I'll echo much of what's mentioned here is also on my mind.
One item for me is to ensure that all essential appliances and structural components in my home (it's what I'm calling plumbing, insulation etc) is up to date and ready for a future where labour and materials could be unaffordable or unavailable. I just installed a gas furnace/heat pump combo with the expectation of adding solar when the roof needs replacing.
Along the same lines, I have a mother with an increasingly more chronic disability that's selling her home next year. Canada's housing market is nuts and I'd like to give her the option to live in the suite above a garage we plan on building with the thought that our daughter could live there when she's older if housing remains nuts.
It's hard to plan for something that we've never seen before, and while it's certainly going to get hard, I'd like to believe that the ebb and flow of chaotic times giving way to more stable times is something I'll see a few more times in my lifetime.
I've heard Stephen Pinker called all sorts of things, but (at least in rich, western nations) now is the best time in history to be a human being. If things take a turn for the worse and I have to live like my grandparents, then so be it.
I've done a fair bit - with some things handled better than others, and some things particularly lacking.
u/Well_known_bear gave a nicely succinct set of advice, so I'll try not to re-tread the ground they have already walked.
For me? I've had a 'prepper' mentality for decades, though I've certainly calmed down and matured with it over the years in terms of understanding order of operations (preparing for a vehicle breakdown will be much more probable to be useful than preparing for a giant solar flare, for example).
Financially, I've diversified my income. I do some low-voltage / security systems contract work, but I've largely transitioned myself to running my electronics lab at home and buying/selling high-end lab electronics gear on eBay/Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist. That is working out ok for me. None of what I do for work requires me to spend any significant amount of time interacting with customers in-person, which has been an intentional choice to protect myself and my immune-compromised partner from getting sick (i.e. COVID).
Materially, I have a habit of keeping stock of essentials, largely in the form of a pantry and planning our food situation so that at any point if we need to not go grocery shopping for a few weeks (or can't for insert-reason-here) then we are not just not going to starve, but remain comfortable and still eat healthy. Longer than that does become an issue with things like fresh produce (specific things last longer than others - apples and celery are examples of fresh produce that lasts a reasonably long amount of time). We have one of those water coolers that uses 5-gallon jugs and keep 4 - 6 full jugs on hand at any given time - simple and commonly available way to keep a large stock of drinking water on hand. We also use filter-integrated water pitchers for our drinking water from the tap. I also keep stock of various things like light bulbs, batteries - semi-frequent and infrequent consumable replacement items. Non-perishable household consumables get bought in bulk to keep the need for restock infrequent and reduce overall cost. I keep 2 5-gallon fuel cans full in my van - one with Diesel, one with Gasoline, both so I'm never stuck on the side of the road empty but far more often to help other people out in that situation. Actually quite a lot of side-of-the-road-help vehicle prep kept in my van. That kind of thing gets used and helps improve random people's bad days. Used to be a Paramedic and I make sure we have what we need on hand for common and uncommon medical issues.
Mentally I'm lacking in dealing as well as I would prefer with the world degrading. It's depressing. I'm in the USA and actively watching the infrastructure of our democracy being broken and disassembled. Also the larger issue of Climate Change becoming less 'it will harm us in the years to come' and more 'the future is now, don't go outside without a respirator unless you want to get respiratory issues from the endless Canadian Wildfire smoke'. On that note: I long ago put together a Corsi-Rosenthal Box and it runs in our home 24/7. Put that in during COVID, now it helps filter out the wildfire smoke with the local AQI gets bad. On that note, I actually had 3M half-mask respirators and P100 filter cartridges on hand before COVID started (prepper) and was glad to have them during the year or so when they were unobtainable. Now they are useful for dealing with poor air quality as well (wildfire smoke) when I have to go out.
In terms of security I won't get into too much detail, but I will say that I've had a carry license for... maybe just under 20 years now?
Stuff on my to-do list that is relevant to this discussion: keep up to date with dental work and medical checkups - basically take care of physical maintenance so if such care becomes unavailable for any reason you don't have outstanding or critical heath issues that you look at and go 'I really wish I had taken care of that when I had the chance'. I have a dash-cam and just need to install it. I consider that to be a very good prep.
Be aware of and keep on top of maintenance for things like your HVAC system - with air quality issues and further temperature extremes, it is more important than ever. Cleaning your AC heat exchanger and changing your air filters monthly is low effort / high return. Same for cleaning underneath and in back of your fridge: keep those heat exchangers clean and able to access good airflow and you avoid both costly repair/replacement and having all your food go bad. Clean your dryer lint traps. Basic household maintenance is boring and important. Keep up with vehicle maintenance. Really, anything and everything that goes under the umbrella of 'preventative maintenance' for you and all your stuff is good prepper practice.
I can personally verify this to not be true, at least from a handful of personal datapoints. Yes, for gasoline. With a caveat: use steel NATO/Jerry cans with seals - non-venting. Also be aware you'll need to replace those seals every couple years or so (I have, I've had them go bad and I just keep a 4-pack in the van and more at home, they're cheap). If you are using plastic containers you're venting VOCs and introducing off-gassing / degradation to your fuel. I think the oldest fuel I've put in a vehicle (and it worked) was around the 2-year storage mark.
Other than that? Be a bit less lazy than I have sometimes been about it, and just cycle the fuel into your vehicle every so often when you're at the gas station. Put your gas can into your tank, then refill the can and finish filling your tank from the pump. Keep whatever schedule you like.
If you are considering a larger amount of storage at home, in a garage or whatever, then just tag all your cans (I advise still using 5-gallon cans) with a note with the date they were filled. You can cycle through refreshing them so nothing is more than X months old, whatever amount of age tolerance you want to accept. Why keep with 5-gallon cans? Unless you want to store a really large amount of fuel, no one is going to think you're weird for filling a single gas can at the pump. People will notice and remember if you try to come up and fill a trailer with hundreds of gallons. Things are simpler when you don't give people reason to think you're weird / memorable / someone they're worried they need to call the cops over. Additional note on can storage: put them on some kind of padding, even if just a bit of cardboard. Maintain and periodically inspect that paint coating, it is keeping rust away from your fuel storage. Invest some research time into proper fuel storage precautions. You don't want any prep to outweigh its usefulness with how much of a liability it is.
'Light mounted rec' - if you're in a rural / more spaced out setting, how about dirt bikes? Not terribly expensive, fuel efficient. Not sure on vehicle choice for what you want on 'medium lift', I don't know if that has specific meaning to you, but I'll share that I use a high-roof service van and in terms of storage and transport capability have been very satisfied with it.
To your first sentence: what do you mean when you say 'transport plans' - gear I keep in the vehicle? Something else?
This will of course depend on your personal factors, budget being one of them, but if I remember correctly there is a 4 wheel drive version of the Ford Transit which is a modern high-roof service van. If I were to re-do my choice of vans I'd probably get that one. I suppose it's no issue to go further into what I have, as I've publicly discussed it before - I have a diesel Ram Promaster. When it works I love the thing, but the diesel version is a lemon because of how poorly the emissions system was designed for the diesel for the US market. As far as I know, the Fiat Ducato (same vehicle for EU market) is fine on diesel since it isn't modified from how it was originally engineered.
Anyway, the Promaster has specific issues that are annoying, but for the gas version if you know about them and mitigate them it's a fine vehicle. But yeah, the Transit has a 4WD version. Also a dual rear wheel version if you like, which for rough terrain I guess would be better? More contact area. They also have (I think) reasonable ground clearance and you can put some amount of lift on them if you want. White modern service vans don't really draw the eye like a secondhand NATO truck does, and they have plenty of volume to put stuff in.
These high-roof service vans are also popular choices for vehicle tiny-homes and RV builds, so seeing one with a fair bit of aftermarket work is also not terribly unusual or remarkable.
I like the 'have three to operate one' philosophy. Makes sense and fits well with some of the stuff I already do, but I hadn't heard it put into that specific phrase before. The set of gas/electric/pedal is also a good 'you can always at least use one of them' option set.
And yes, defintely be frugal about what you spend on something like a dirt bike and/or e-bike. You should be able to find mid-range and/or used options for far cheaper than high-end or brand new that will work just fine for your needs. Electric also has the benefit of being quiet, just don't save money on the battery choice. There are certain things not to cheap out on, and given lithium battery fires, e-bike batteries (and their chargers) are very much something to spend research time on - getting the cheapest option can become very, very expensive very suddenly. Don't burn your house down. Better yet, charge it in your (detached) garage so you only burn down your garage - and on that note, also don't burn down your garage.
Also, from the 'grey man' perspective, just make sure you have some at least halfway plausible and socially acceptable reason for having a big service van instead of a small car for if and when someone asks about it. "I have a long drive to get to Costco, so I like to buy in bulk" is not terrible, "I pick up construction materials at Home Depot for work" is probably better if true. Having a true secondary reason that is socially acceptable and boring is much safer and easier for conversation than having to keep track of some cover story.
Hey, no problem.
Not planning on having kids, although they are genuinely a better retirement plan than not having any, if you want to live through the climate apocalypse.
It's genuinely hard to say what to do, as it is changing the climates of lots of places right now. Not much escape. I sort of subscribe now to the idea that climate change is just slow cooking us-- by the time we want to do anything, it will be too late, because we did nothing when we weren't the ones acutely suffering.
I make a lot of "low carbon footprint" lifestyle choices (I don't travel for fun anymore, I live in a city, I rarely buy new clothes, I don't eat animal products), so I feel like I'm doing more or less what I can to prevent it. To survive it, I think my only plan is ensure I'm financially prepared for my home to disappear a few times. Eventually, I probably need to make redundancies for my authentication devices / mechanisms. Homesteading and such is fascinating, but I doubt I could produce enough for myself, so I don't think I'd seriously bother.
I never planned to try to live through the apocalypse, so that plus more 'concrete' issues makes me unable to really muster much care for it. I'm more concerned about, say, being attacked in public transit, getting hit by a car, getting diseases from microplastics or PFAS, losing my job, the economy crashing, etc.
I would half-heartedly (as a non-expert) argue that something like nuclear might have helped, as long as we didn't scale up our consumption to match. We've come far enough that climate change is now also something we should be desperate to solve, leading to measures like injecting particulate into the air to reflect the sun back. So it's simultaneously bleak, yet I assume this is politically easier than say, trying to figure out how to end the Cold War ... or it should be. I think it's also a bit encouraging to see it as we have nothing to lose?
In the short term, I’m setting myself up to be as self sufficient as possible (off grid ready power and water). Mid to long term, I’m trying to get into lines of work that will contribute to addressing the material problems you brought up — mostly, light manufacturing and agriculture.
I figure that one person won’t make a difference, but if we all start pulling in the same direction — while avoiding adding additional burden to systems that are predictably going to start buckling — it might be enough to budge the needle, at least locally.
I'm not, I've just given up. Don't see the point in trying when every single aspect of my existence is going to get worse and worse and worse until I die. If you're motivated to live through the climate apocalypse then that's great but the moment we have to start fighting to secure food and water I'm out, the rest of you can have fun with that.
I am coming from a very US-politics-affected view but yeah, focusing on physical and mental health, reducing my budget as low as comfortably possible, living lighter in general, moving closer to family and out from under a landlord/HOA type situation, widening and deepening my creative endeavors and skillsets, and so on.
That said, like many others here, as things worsen, I am ready to just do what I can to help but ultimately let the ditch take me, whether that's from going down fighting or it just being the time to take an eternal rest
I have two main approaches. First is to have a nice setup with simple creature comforts and a healthy diet so I feel good.
Second is to maintain relationships and not to be swayed into the suspicious mindset the conservative publications are trying to foster in us. Keep asking strangers how they’re doing, be happy as possible and share that with others.
Malthus would like a word with you.