[HN Gopher] Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)
Author : seancolsen
Score : 215 points
Date : 2022-02-25 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
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| boredumb wrote:
| Cash on hand, a gun with ammunition, canned food, and bottled
| water.
| irrational wrote:
| What use is cash in the case of a true catastrophe? And I don't
| see the benefit of having a gun with or without ammunition. I
| would never ever be willing to shoot another person (or even an
| animal), even to protect myself or mine. I'd rather we are
| raped, tortured, and killed than harm another person.
| bluGill wrote:
| While I understand non-violent, sometimes violence is the
| worst of your bad choices. I have no plan on shooting another
| human, but I need to reserve that right because there are
| people who will shoot me (Russia if you are in Ukraine)
| [deleted]
| hef19898 wrote:
| Unless you are an active combatant in a war, or civil war,
| that's usually not your problem.
| bluGill wrote:
| I plan to keep out of war. However those live in Ukraine
| a week ago you have no choice in the matter - I cannot
| ignore the possibility that the same might happen to me
| (though it does seem like a remote chance)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yep, we are all (in certaim age groups and qualification
| levels) one general mobilization away from being meat for
| the meat grinder. The basic "this dangerous end of rifle,
| point at enemy, pull there" training will be provided in
| those cases so.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > What use is cash in the case of a true catastrophe?
|
| Not much long term in a civilizational collapse, but even
| then it might still be useful before everyone realizes what's
| going on.
|
| > And I don't see the benefit of having a gun with or without
| ammunition. I would never ever be willing to shoot another
| person (or even an animal), even to protect myself or mine.
| I'd rather we are raped, tortured, and killed than harm
| another person.
|
| I think that's probably an unusually high level of commitment
| to nonviolence.
|
| It's also creates moral dilemmas: allowing someone to be
| "raped, tortured, and killed" by others is harming that
| person. All your principle may mean in practice is the
| innocent are the ones harmed and the guilty are left
| unharmed.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>I'd rather we are raped, tortured, and killed than harm
| another person.
|
| What a truly bizarre statement, and I seriously doubt you
| mean it.
| darkarmani wrote:
| Did you notice the poster's name?
| graphpercolator wrote:
| Honestly, I think if you had resources you would eventually
| run into someone who would use violence to take those
| resources and the last line in your post is exactly what
| would happen.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's an interesting take. Do you have any personal
| experience with those types of victimization and their
| impacts? You also say "we". Do the other members of the group
| share the same position?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| If you live in a more rural area, a gun with ammunition can
| be a viable source of food. The shelf life of ammunition is a
| squishy subject, but with good storage it's reasonable to
| expect it to last on the order of a human lifespan.
|
| Absent a complete ecosystem breakdown, game feeds itself.
| Obviously if too many people are hunting, there's the risk of
| killing off all of the game. Which is another excellent
| reason that is would be a strategy better suited to a less
| populated area.
|
| It's hard to imagine a more efficient way (measured in money
| and space required) to supply food for potentially decades.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Defending against real harm is reasonable. Just don't be pro-
| active about it.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Cash on hand is important for basic trade. There are plenty
| boring examples of extended power outages where people fall
| back on cash for buying groceries and such.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Cash on hand, a gun with ammunition, canned food, and
| bottled water._
|
| Contrary to popular opinion, people generally pull together in
| disasters rather than society falling apart. Good book on what
| happened in various situations ( 1917 explosion that tore up
| Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11,
| and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans)
|
| * http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/a-paradise-built-in-hell/
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6444492-a-paradise-
| built...
|
| It's an area / sub-field of study:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_disaster
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Disasters, yes, not collapse.
| graphpercolator wrote:
| Totally agree. Nuclear war is something completely
| different. There is nothing to come back to.
|
| Resource scarcity would turn things violent really quickly
| for the survivors.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Ever seen _Threads_ (1984) though? Or for something less
| outright depressing, perhaps the first few episodes of James
| Burke 's _Connections_?
|
| Both make it clear that should something cataclysmic befall
| us all we'd be faced with the near-impossible problem of
| restarting agriculture. Modern, surplus-generating,
| agriculture isn't possible without modern society, starting
| with the basics like fuel and fertilizers (and everything
| else that's connected: the rule of law, supply chains,
| logistics, PhD-level domain knowledge and expertise, and so
| on). Those who survive "the event" would be forced into a
| life of sustenance farming for generations - and while you
| might think some semblance of modern civilization could be
| reestablished within a few years, consider that if everyone
| is sustenance farming for themselves, that leaves almost no-
| one left to do the actual reconstruction work, and that
| includes rebuilding fertilizer plants, fuel refineries, oil
| extraction, and agricultural machinery production.
|
| Without anything close to today's industrialization and
| automation being restored within a few years (hint: very
| unlikely) it only gets worse: our modern society depends on
| an educated workforce. Under a "everyone sustenance farms for
| themselves"-scenario that means there's no-one to
| sufficiently educate the tens of millions of school and
| university-age people, assuming those kids aren't press-
| ganged into farming for their local district before they can
| even read or write, so with that outlook what hope is there
| to rebuild and operate oil refineries from scratch?
|
| And "rebuild from scratch" is the word. While Russia might
| no-longer have enough strategic warheads to completely
| obliterate the northern hemisphere (at least for now), I'd
| bet a week's worth of my future postwar turnip ration that
| Russia has all of North America's oil refineries and related
| infrastructure marked as primary-targets, such is total war -
| so in the aftermath it definitely wouldn't be as simple as
| reconnecting some broken pipework and wiring-up a generator:
| the entire gulf-coast's set of oil refineries would be
| obliterated.
|
| So, yes, you're not wrong: we will all band together, but
| I'll add that we'll band-together for a _world of suck_ for
| 10-20 years before we mostly succumb to then-untreatable
| cancers, and our offspring will grow up as illiterate and
| uneducated serfs.
|
| I must say, relocating to Chile or New Zealand is looking
| very attractive right now...
| stinkytaco wrote:
| This assumes a rapid, catastrophic collapse, which seems
| unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. More likely are localized
| disasters and gradual, sometimes imperceptible decline.
| These things have trickle-down impacts (migration, food
| shortages, etc) but are generally unlikely to trigger full
| on survival scenarios for most people. This isn't to say
| our industrialized food chain isn't problematic, it
| certainly is, but a gun is less likely to aid most people
| in day to day survival.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > This assumes a rapid, catastrophic collapse, which
| seems unlikely.
|
| The _Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists_ recently set the
| Doomsday clock to 100s to midnight.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| OK? But I'm not sure of your point. The Bulletin of the
| Atomic Scientists doesn't know much more than the rest of
| us do about this. Anyone can tell you there's lots of
| nuclear weapons and that using them would lead to a
| massive social collapse. But a nuke hasn't been deployed
| in anger for nearly 80 years. In that time there's been
| countless natural disasters, pandemics, conflicts and
| social upheavals. I know what I'm planning for.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| We also haven't had a proper pandemic for a century, and
| then we had one. Nukes aren't something you can do much
| about, but excluding then entirely from one's disaster
| planning feels like a mistake.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| > We also haven't had a proper pandemic for a century,
| and then we had one.
|
| I disagree. COVID-19 has certainly been the widest scales
| pandemic, but in addition to high profile localized
| pandemics (Ebola and Zika), we've had several smaller
| serious outbreaks (H1N1 killed between 200,000 and
| 500,000 people worldwide, and also overwhelmingly
| impacted younger people).
|
| > Nukes aren't something you can do much about, but
| excluding then entirely from one's disaster planning
| feels like a mistake.
|
| Nor would I suggest you should exclude it. But as the
| parent comment stated, the real problem in such as
| situation is social (restarting industrial systems),
| which isn't really something I can prepare for.
| hef19898 wrote:
| If you don't have to worry about hingry predators, large ones
| like bears or wolves, tigers and lions, I think an axe and a
| saw for fire and construction wood is a better alternative than
| a gun.
|
| EDIT: Hunting, a gun can be used for hunting. If you know how
| to, if you don't it's still pretty useless.
| Tepix wrote:
| For me, planning for a five day power outage in the winter seems
| like it's something that takes only a limited amount of effort
| and resources and could come in very handy indeed. Make sure you
| have enough water (and a way to make it potable), heat, food,
| light, 1st aid and communications.
|
| Going all in and getting a year of supplies seems excessive.
|
| As always, YMMV :-)
|
| PS: In Germany, the BMI (interior ministry) publishes a free
| guide for preparedness at
| https://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/themen/bevoelkerungsschutz/zivil-...
| They recommend a 10 day food and water supply.
| Melio wrote:
| This also reduces the first respond burden.
|
| After that a lot of people would dye sooner than later.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > the BMI (interior ministry)
|
| Remember that these are the guys who coordinated the Corona and
| Ahrtal responses, and understand that if they say 10 days is
| enough, it is prudent to plan for 30 days upwards.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| For heat in northern climates, unfortunately there's only so
| much you can do (outside of a backup generator with a big
| propane tank). A wood stove/fireplace can keep you comfortable
| but you'll still probably end up with frozen/broken pipes.
|
| But I agree with your basic point. Early on in the pandemic
| there were people stocking up on 6 months of rice/pasta/etc. In
| cities. You basically plan for relatively short outages or you
| plan for civilizational collapse which probably involves
| getting out of cities and preparing for people trying to take
| stuff from you.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you keep the pipes running, they might not freeze. It's
| also usually not too difficult to drain the majority of the
| pipes depending on the plumbing design.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you have forced hot water heating, it's more difficult.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Isn't there a way to have some antifreeze additives in
| pipes where a pipe freeze is actually a realistic
| scenario?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Isolated pipes, preferably in door, and your good to go.
| Isolations also helps to limit heat loss, so generaly a
| good idea.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can absolutely winterize a house. My dad did it in
| Maine for a number of years when he was leaving the house
| for the winter. But as I recall it was something of an
| operation to both winterize it and dewinterize it--which
| he called a plumber in for.
|
| One of the problems with winter power outages is that
| even if you're prepared to winterize everything by
| yourself, you probably don't know that it's going to be
| an extended outage (which is generally rare) so it
| doesn't make sense to immediately take drastic steps.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not really. It's more difficult to refill them and get
| all the air out than to drain them.
| prescriptivist wrote:
| For the most intense emergency situations: If you take up
| wilderness camping (hiking, floating, snow travel based) you
| accrue the kinds of equipment that can carry you through most
| realistic emergency situations. But, more importantly, you learn
| to use and maintain that gear to keep you hydrated, fed and warm.
| Beyond that it's a matter of knowing where to collect water and
| having or finding enough calories.
|
| The skills and equipment acquired in this pursuit of fun is far
| more practical than watching youtube doomsday preppers tie 30
| different knots for tarps or ordering a barrel of MREs.
| hef19898 wrote:
| But is it _tactical_?
| throw0101a wrote:
| Some decent guides from government:
|
| * https://www.ready.gov
|
| * https://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-en.aspx
|
| To start: have an emergency fund for 3-6 months' worth of
| expenses, be able to cook/eat/drink/clean/toilet and heat your
| abode for 3 days in case the power goes out.
|
| Then prepare for 7d, 14, one month, etc: stop when you think you
| have "enough". Some will feel comfortable for more time and some
| less. One piece of advice I heard: make sure you have enough food
| in your pantry to survive to cover two pay cycles in case there's
| a hiccup with pay roll. Having your emergency fund at a second
| bank in case your primary one has (e.g., IT) issues.
|
| Perhaps have a bag of necessities (clothes, toiletries) in case
| you have to evacuate your abode quickly.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ot's funny how close you automatically get there if your
| favoured vacation style is camping. Even during those periods
| when you don't prepare for a trip.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| > _In the US in the 90s, your lifetime likelihood of
| victimization was estimated to be around 80%; the odds of
| suffering criminal injury hovered at 40%._
|
| Any source? These figures seem absurdly high, and I say that as a
| former resident of NYC in the 90s.
| sushibowl wrote:
| I found a 1987 report from the bureau of justice statistics:
| https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/lifetime-likelihood...
|
| Uses data from approximately the 1975-1985 period, so not about
| the 90s.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Any source? These figures seem absurdly high, and I say
| that as a former resident of NYC in the 90s.
|
| > Uses data from approximately the 1975-1985 period, so not
| about the 90s.
|
| Also, wasn't violent crime notoriously high during that
| period? For instance, my understanding was Times Square used
| to be gritty and a little dangerous, then Giuliani turned it
| into a Disneyland in the 90s.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know how actively dangerous Times Square was but
| for it and 42nd Street "gritty" is a pretty good
| description. You see remnants of it at e.g. the Port
| Authority, aka one of the world's worst bus stations. Being
| there late at night was... interesting (as I once was). For
| a lot of people who knew NYC in that era, the
| "Disneyfication" isn't the worst thing that could have
| happened.
| decafninja wrote:
| My dad commuted to his office somewhere in Midtown
| Manhattan in the 1980s. One day I was rummaging through
| his briefcase and found a steel baton. I asked him what
| it was for and he said it was to protect himself from the
| bad guys.
|
| As a kid I distinctly remember being somewhat afraid
| whenever my family had reason to go into NYC from our
| home in NJ.
|
| I know he's controversial, but that fear subsided at some
| point during Guiliani's term. Yes I know today he seems
| to have become a total crazy loon, but I highly respected
| him as mayor for making large swathes of NYC feel safer.
| And yes, I know some people loathe him even for his
| tenureship as mayor.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was visiting NYC a fair bit in the late 80s-00s and
| even worked there for a summer. But, while my friends
| there would roll their eyes a bit at "the proctor's"
| recorded messages in taxi cabs about buckling your
| seatbelt and things like that, in general they seemed to
| mostly think that Disneyfication was better than what
| preceded it. While I'm sure things were never as bad as
| they were in my younger imagination, there were a lot of
| places I would not have been comfortable walking,
| especially at night.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I decided to run a binomial on it, because these sort of things
| can be quite counter-intuitive, and I was also curious! My only
| assumption was a lifetime of 80 years. And it turns out the
| magic rate to get a 40% criminal injury expectation (over a
| lifetime of 80 years) is if you're in an area with a violent
| crime rate of at least 6.4 crimes per 1000 people per year.
|
| The FBI gives [1] a national violent crime rate (in 2019) of
| 366.7 per 100,000, so 3.7 per 1000. However, in the 90s the
| violent crime rate peaked at 7.6 per 1000 [2] and wouldn't fall
| below 6.4 until 1996. So the conclusion is that his numbers
| seem pretty much spot on.
|
| Of course it's also somewhat misleading in another way though.
| Violent crime is not normally distributed and influenced
| heavily by demographics and location. Detroit has an aggravated
| assault rate (which is just one component of the criminal
| injury rate) of 15.2 per 1000 people, while Irvine, California
| has a rate of 0.2 per 1000 people. It's one of the many cases
| where the average doesn't really tell you anything at all about
| your own chances for an outcome.
|
| [1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
|
| [2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-
| violent-...
| giantg2 wrote:
| The 80% lifetime chance of being a victim of a crime sounds
| about right. How many people can say they've never had some
| sort of property stolen?
|
| The 40% lifetime injury chance sounds a little high. I wouldn't
| be surprised if it was around 25% though. Obviously this is all
| anecdotal.
| peckrob wrote:
| The thing is, you don't have to be a Doomsday Prepper to just be
| prepared. It's about mitigating the risk of the disasters you are
| _likely_ to face in your locality.
|
| I lived through the 2011 Super Outbreak [0]. Following the
| tornadoes, we had no actual damage (and most places didn't,
| tornadoes are pretty localized disasters, even in big outbreaks),
| but we had no power for about eight days because the tornadoes
| tore up all the transmission lines that feed the town.
|
| The biggest lessons I took from that were:
|
| 1. Have enough supplies on hand for the duration of the event. I
| now keep 10 days of food and water for everyone in the family.
| It's not a lot and it won't win awards - mostly shelf-stable
| canned goods and bottled water that gets rotated out regularly -
| but it will keep us fed and watered. Things like toilet paper, a
| hatchet, matches, a first aid kit, etc. All in my "tornado box."
|
| 2. Keep enough cash on hand to last you 10 days with minimal
| spending. At one point during the outages that followed the Super
| Outbreak, we went to a pharmacy to pick up some supplies.
| Obviously with no power it was cash only. They were "ringing" up
| by writing things down on paper and manually tallying up with a
| pocket calculator. We were able to get some essentials using the
| cash my wife and I had in our wallets, but we were fortunate
| because we usually don't carry cash. I now keep $500 in cash in a
| safe in the house.
|
| 3. Keep at least a half tank of gas in both our vehicles.
| Basically enough to get us a few hours away from town. These days
| if I know we're going to have a big storm I top off. That's
| enough to get us to our family that lives a couple hours away,
| should we need to bail.
|
| 4. Have a crisis communications plan. When the power went out,
| initially the cell network stayed up in a degraded form on backup
| generators. But when those ran out, we lost cell coverage. On the
| third day I drove about 45 minutes down the highway to where I
| could get a cell signal and let everyone know we were fine. My
| Mom was so freaked out that she couldn't reach us after the
| tornadoes happened that she almost drove over to look for us.
| Now, they know to wait 48 hours before worrying.
|
| Now, it's easy to say "that was a unique event." And you would be
| right. The 2011 Super Outbreak was a "once in a generation"
| event. But I have lived through so many rare events in my life so
| far that it makes sense to be prepared for another one.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak
| germinalphrase wrote:
| re: communications - in the events that cellphone and internet
| infrastructure fails, what are the viable alternatives? Are
| landlines intrinsically more robust (or they share the internet
| fiber)? Shortwave seems obvious, but there's an obvious
| education/investment/network barrier (no one I would want to
| communicate with is a HAM).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Satellite phones or BGAN.
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, the plan could be as simple as telling loved ones that
| you'll aim to get a message to them within 3 days, and they
| shouldn't panic if they haven't heard from you after 2 days.
| rsync wrote:
| WRT fuel, it is logistically difficult to keep gasoline fresh
| and rotated.
|
| BUT, if you don't mind paying $20 per gallon, you can buy a 5
| gallon sealed can of stabilized, pre mixed, chainsaw gas.
|
| It is 50:1 and 94 octane - and it is absolutely safe and
| reasonable to run in any car (or generator, etc.) - it will
| likely be the nicest gas that engine will ever consume.
|
| You can store and use it for _years_.
|
| Also, you can just use it for chainsaws.
|
| EDIT: This is the brand I use:
|
| https://vpracingfuels.com/product/501-premixed-small-engine-...
|
| "Remains stable 2 years in the tank and 5 years in the sealed
| container"
| d23 wrote:
| > Putting somewhere around 30-40% of your emergency stash into
| the stock market may be a good call.
|
| > The fundamental rule is to not be greedy: within the scope of
| this guide, your goal should be to preserve capital, not to take
| wild risks. It's best to pick about 10-20 boring companies that
| seem to be valued fairly, that are free of crippling debt, and
| that have robust prospects for the coming years.
|
| > It is worth noting that many personal finance experts advise
| against hand-picking your investments. Instead, they advocate a
| process known as "indexing": buying into an investment vehicle
| comprising hundreds of stocks, structured to represent the stock
| market as a whole. The proponents of indexing have a point: most
| people who try to pick individual winners in the stock market
| usually fare no better than an index fund. But in the context of
| prepping, I think this is advice is flawed. To remain calm in
| tumultuous times, it is important to maintain a firm grasp of the
| merits of your investments. One can convincingly reason about the
| financial condition, the valuation, or the long-term prospects of
| a paper mill; the same can't be said of an S&P 500 index fund -
| which, among other things, contains the shares of about a hundred
| global financial conglomerates.
|
| Oh come on. He's advocating putting 40% of your emergency fund
| into the stock of a handful of companies. This is hard to take
| seriously.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I also disagree with his take here, but I think there is some
| merit to the advice of "understand what you've invested in".
|
| It's fairly hard to personally evaluate companies in a fund -
| it is somewhat easier to evaluate a single company (or even 10
| single companies).
|
| If I assume he means "~40% of non-retirement emergency funds" I
| can let this skate by.
|
| ---
|
| I also think there's some risk to index funds precisely
| _because_ they appear like such low-risk investments. If the
| majority of investments are in index funds, I suspect there are
| systemic risks that we just don 't understand very well yet,
| because the vehicle is so young. Whether that's low liquidity,
| poor capital allocation, fraud, etc - it's hard to say exactly
| what risks come with that market structure, since we have no
| real history to look at.
|
| (side note - I'm about 80% invested in index funds... so
| certainly don't read this as me recommending against them)
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems like Berkshire Hathaway would be as hard to evaluate
| as an index fund. For example, do you understand or even know
| the other companies they are invested in? At the same time,
| they are probably more diversified than most mutual funds.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Sure - if you pick an investing conglomerate like
| berkshire, evaluation is still hard.
|
| It's less difficult (although still not a breeze) for
| companies like Tyson, John Deere, Cargill, etc. If you pick
| a major manufacturing company near you, that's producing
| non-luxury goods or essential goods, you can expect to have
| a reasonable idea of how they'll hold their value in
| adverse market conditions.
|
| I want to be really clear - I'm assuming ALL of the advice
| in this article is "disaster planning" advice. It's not
| going to maximize returns, but it can give you ownership of
| an asset that is likely to survive things like rapid
| inflation, or other unexpected series of events.
|
| Maximizing returns is often counter to this idea - because
| it almost always implies taking on additional risk, which
| is not ideal for disaster scenarios.
| orangepurple wrote:
| "(...) putting the rest of their money in a rainy-day fund (...)"
|
| What do we do when we are outcast from the financial system or it
| ceases to function?
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Buy a house, whenever possible and reasonable.
| Friday_ wrote:
| I liked the book from lcamtuf "Silence on the Wire" , I used to
| read what this guy writes. But then as i recall he started to
| work for google. Probably helped there with browser security and
| user tracking.
|
| He wrote some good open source tools thou.
| jcims wrote:
| Pretty weak rationale to dismiss (?) someone who's contributed
| quite a lot to the world over the past ~20 years.
| csee wrote:
| How many people would an all out nuclear war kill?
| jordanpg wrote:
| Of course, there is a non-trivial cost to spending time dealing
| with this stuff, particularly the less likely outcomes.
|
| As with any risk assessment, one has to judge the probability of
| certain events and act accordingly.
|
| The thing that bugs me about this culture -- and I don't include
| the author of this piece, who sounds imminently rational and
| level-headed -- is that a lot of people in this space seem to
| want these outcomes. In some extreme cases, they relish it or see
| it as a forgone or morally good outcome.
|
| We should be putting most of our energy into avoiding
| catastrophic scenarios, and making these outcomes less and less
| feasible. But I fear that it is increasingly difficult for people
| across the political spectrum and below a certain socio-economic
| line to not be extremely cynical about society, and therefore the
| future. The result is "prepping" getting more attention than
| building a better world.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I've noticed (from an external point of view) that 1/ many
| people use it for some kind of escaping (myself somewhat
| included) 2/ Fantasize about being the hero of a post-
| apocalyptic novelbut IRL
| irrational wrote:
| But, many of the catastrophic scenarios are nature-made instead
| of man-made. I'm not aware of any way to avoid volcanoes,
| earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, drought,
| etc. unless you are suggesting that everyone move to someplace
| where none of these things can exist.
| dmje wrote:
| You put that beautifully - it really is the case that "normal"
| preppers seem to be totally relishing becoming the next Mad Max
| hero, roaming the wilderness with their stash of weaponry...
|
| What's really great about this piece apart from the fact it
| isn't this ^ is that it is beautifully written...
| hef19898 wrote:
| I always wonder how many of those preppers have the actual
| skil, and yes gear, to roam the country side for long.
| Orientation, navigation, endurance, you name it. I'll take
| any long distance hiker for tjose scenarios than some wpuld
| be prepper siting on a stash of gear that would need a small
| truck to haul around.
| teddyh wrote:
| Yup. Also people who write things like CollapseOS, and many HAM
| radio people. They fantasize about being relevant and
| important, and their hobby is a way to indulge in those
| fantasies. No wonder they secretly want the worst to come to
| pass - it's the actual point of it all.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| That's why I can't spend time on places like the Collapse
| subreddit. There are many people that fetishize the idea. This
| clouds their judgment and predictive power, and you see so many
| poor predictions of outcomes of world events there.
| cosgrove wrote:
| As someone who has never had to truly live through a disaster
| (knock on wood), I found this story to be compelling in thinking
| about disaster planning:
| http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs/klessons/index.html
|
| _> On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina became the largest
| natural disaster in United States history. After the levees
| failed, it became the largest man-made disaster in United States
| history. This blog is a chronicle of what happened to myself and
| my family during those events. It is also a documentation of
| lessons learned from a survival and recovery viewpoint._
|
| I think it delivers a lot more backstory on what happens when you
| _don 't_ prepare for something, which you don't get simply
| reading a how-to list.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The author seems to be missing some important developments:
| Written by lcamtuf@coredump.cx, Dec 2015, minor updates Jul 2021.
|
| ... Pandemic. It's been a while since the
| highly developed world experienced a devastating outbreak, but it
| may be premature to flat out dismiss the risk. In 1918, an
| unusual strain of flu managed to kill 75 million people. Few
| years later, a mysterious sleeping sickness - probably also of
| viral origin - swept the globe, crippling millions, some for
| life. We aren't necessarily better prepared for similar events
| today.
| ziggus wrote:
| Darn it, I thought this was going to be about IT backup and
| recovery strategies, which is much more relevant to me than
| whatever this nonsense is.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The book Eternity by Greg Bear had an interesting take on this.
| In that book (spoiler) there is an exchange of nuclear weapons
| between the U.S. and Russia, which devastates the surface of the
| Earth.
|
| But many people survive, and a society quickly develops post-war.
| But it is dominated not by those who were most individually
| prepared, but by those who contributed the most to their
| neighbors and communities.
|
| There is some overlap of course; some preppers have a lot to give
| and do so. But the ones who isolate in compounds with their hoard
| for too long emerge into the new society to be met with scorn, or
| even outright violence in some cases.
|
| I had not thought about it that way but it kind of makes sense.
| It's easy to like someone who is helping you. And shared hardship
| can bond a group of people.
|
| It's a great book, in addition to this aspect (which is a
| somewhat minor part of it).
| CPLX wrote:
| Since we are talking about books I'd like to add "The Road" by
| Cormac McCarthy to the reading list. It's almost unimaginably
| bleak but just completely incredible.
| [deleted]
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I just read Parable of the Sower by Butler and it's also very
| relevant I think.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Enjoyed this comment. Vibes with an essay by Cory Doctorow
| about needing a "bug in bag" not a "bug out bag", to run
| towards community to help versus running to the mountains, as
| you need collective action to survive.
|
| https://boingboing.net/2015/12/21/a-survivalist-on-why-you-s...
|
| https://boingboing.net/2008/07/13/postapocalypse-witho.html
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's how the Japanese do it.
|
| If you have noticed, they do a really good job of responding
| to disasters. In fact, one of the funniest aspects, is that
| the _Yakuza_ (Japanese mobsters) often are the first ones on
| the scene, and seem to take pleasure at beating the
| government response.
|
| I suspect that part of the reason is that organized crime
| tends to have an incredibly robust infrastructure, hardened
| against unpredictable stressors.
|
| Personally, I have no intentions of living in the type of
| feudal/fascist society that most preppers seem to yearn for.
|
| BTDT.
|
| I (legitimately) would rather croak.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Yakuza (Japanese mobsters) often are the first ones on
| the scene, and seem to take pleasure at beating the
| government response.
|
| That's what mobs do. If you take the protection out of a
| protection racket, you end with an empty organization and
| people asking why they should pay you if they'll get beaten
| either way.
| skylanh wrote:
| (Speaking totally out of turn and without any sort of
| knowledge of the situation)
|
| The rapid response of the Yakuza may simply be
| opportunistic and predatory.
|
| Food, clothes, shelter, help to save precious heirlooms,
| those are all inflexible needs.
|
| Borrowing on "social credit" on inflexible needs can be
| exploitatively steep later.
|
| In the Yakuza-as-"helpers" model, they're taking advantage
| of chaos and economics theories.
|
| I think you can see what is really happening if we switch
| out "Yakuza" with any outlaw criminal organization in the
| States like as in "During the floods of '22, I got help to
| save my photos of my great grandparents from the
| Gambino's...", or "During the hurricane and disasters of
| '22, I needed antibiotics for my daughter, the Hell's
| Angel's helped me..."
| Teever wrote:
| I'm not too versed in the subject but I have a feeling
| that in disaster scenarios it's better to take the Ronald
| McDonald House charity model than the payday loans model
| for organized crime.
|
| People don't forget when you take advantage of them when
| down and they'll be loathe to do business with you in the
| future when they're not.
|
| It's a PR move.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| And you think the government is doing it out of
| transcendant charity?
| tetsusaiga wrote:
| My knowledge of the Yakuza is limited to a single ~1-hour
| interview with a former member...
|
| But that said, hearing it from the source has made me
| inclined to believe the more charitable interpretation.
|
| I found the interview for anyone who is especially
| interested:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVmt80EXNGI
|
| Obviously this is not some sort of definitive source, but
| he goes into "What is the real Yakuza vs. that which we
| see in pop culture" very quickly, which is sort of the
| heart of this idea.
|
| Note: The guys runs an anime channel, but it's a very
| serious interview all the same.
| uxp100 wrote:
| I don't think there is a clean distinction between a
| fuedal/fascist society, and one where organized crime,
| historically often tied to ultranationalist far right
| parties, leads the response in crises. That is what I'd
| expect in a fascist society, an active para-government
| organization tied to particular politicians and parties.
|
| (That being said, I don't really think the Yakuza even
| meets this romanticized vision that is pretty much fascism.
| There is more fiction presenting them as cruel but
| competent organization builders, and less presenting them
| as violent meth addicts.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| These were two different things.
|
| In the kind of world that preppers dream of, they are the
| "rulers," because they hoarded the goods, and have the
| weapons.
|
| What would _actually_ happen, if someone spent more than
| thirty seconds, thinking it through, is that a few
| badasses (probably organized crime), would take the stash
| and the weapons, and kill the preppers, if they even
| hinted at a fight. This is what already happens, in areas
| where the rule of law deteriorates.
|
| In countries with strong social infrastructure, we are
| more likely to see people helping each other, as opposed
| to themselves.
|
| BTW: Japan doesn't have much of a meth problem. You can
| buy damn good speed, OTC. I think that the Philippines
| have a pretty bad meth problem.
| User23 wrote:
| I heard once that the Yakuza are actually in the phone book
| in Japan. Can anyone confirm?
| grp000 wrote:
| I heard that Yakuza have business fronts that are open
| secrets. If that's the case, then they probably are.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I think there's value in borrowing a bit from various
| cultures. American individualism has a role in creating a
| strong sense of self and instilling confidence (but take it
| too far and you get the examples enumerated here about
| isolationist preppers), while Japan and Europe have strong
| sense of community (leaning more towards Europe due to
| Japan's culture causing a bit of oppression around
| individual identity in deference to the whole) and
| coalescing around shared struggle and overcoming that
| struggle.
|
| There is a reason they break you down and build you back up
| as a team in military bootcamp.
| buginabag wrote:
| In and of itself, the "bug out bag" doesn't necessarily imply
| running off to the wilderness but the fact that you might
| have to abandon your residence due damage (fire, quake-
| related structural damage, advancing enemy force).
|
| If you have a bug-in bag you ought to have a bug-out bag for
| the simple fact that "Shit Happens."
| dTal wrote:
| Doctorow also wrote a story titled "Masque of the Red Death"
| (yes, like the Poe story) which directly depicts the fate of
| an isolationist bunker in a post-apocalyptic scenario.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Good story. It is collected in _Radicalized_ (ISBN
| 978-1-78954-494-7) which contains four of his novellas
| (including this one) about dystopian futures. I can
| recommend it.
| tetris11 wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_332
| hbarka wrote:
| "If you want to go fast go alone; if you want to go far go
| together."
| Melio wrote:
| There was a Simpsons episode were they had a bunker but not for
| enough people.
|
| Flanders had not enough space and was left outside. Then
| everyine started to emerge from the bunker.
|
| People who think they want to survive an apocalypse so badly
| that they romantify a bunker live might not have thought
| through it deep enough.
|
| I want to be protected from a fallout so I can move out of my
| region after the fallout but that means survival of a few days
| not month or years. And I definitely don't care much for lifing
| on a totally destroyed planet.
| dTal wrote:
| The joke was that it was Flanders' bunker.
| exhilaration wrote:
| The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LSIsy6YEXQ
| jhpaul wrote:
| Que Sera Sera
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >But many people survive, and a society quickly develops post-
| war. But it is dominated not by those who were most
| individually prepared, but by those who contributed the most to
| their neighbors and communities.
|
| This is exactly what all the "prepper" survival types don't
| seem to understand. In a nuclear apocalypse, your supply stores
| will be nothing but a resource cache for roaming bands of
| killers. And your supply of 50 guns with ammunition will just
| be an extra fun treat for them. The only way to survive is
| alliances, trade, and mutual defense. Life will revert to
| feudalism very quickly.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| I don't think feudalism is the correct term here, that was a
| very specific system where hereditary lords provided military
| aid to a king in exchange for the land which the serfs
| belonging to the lords worked. That seems closer to what you
| imagine prepper survival types want with the gun nuts lording
| over everyone else.
|
| I don't believe most preppers think or act the way you
| imagine. The gun crazy redneck with a bunker is a trope from
| movies and reality TV.
| rvense wrote:
| Here in Denmark, it's impossible to get more than maybe ten
| kilometers from a settlement of 500+ people.
|
| I am, by local standards, comparatively out in the sticks, but
| I'm still no more than a few hours walk from a city of a
| 100,000. Even if something happened that wiped out 90% of them,
| that's still a lot of people who are likely to walk by here and
| want my food.
|
| Prepping for just myself would be a solipsistic fantasy.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Self-preparedness and self-reliance is not mutually exclusive
| with community.
|
| A community whose members are all self-prepared and self-
| reliant is a stronger community.
|
| In the disaster preparedness books I have read being the "lone
| wolf" was never advocated and was actively discouraged.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| i've sometimes thought i should accumulate a small stockpile of
| salt. to paraphrase umberto eco in "the mysterious flame of
| queen loana"
|
| > without salt nothing tastes like nothing
|
| seems plausible i could gather enough to share without too much
| trouble. now i'm thinking of it, msg would be another good one.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Yes. I am unfortunately not a doctor, but seeing a few up
| close, I think that knowing how to treat injuries and diseases
| will be much more useful, than any amount of guns, ammo, and
| food.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Directly followed by the ability to repair, and build, stuff.
| From tools to machines and infrastructure.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think survivalism can get a little bit solipsistic.
| Realistically, once you've survived whatever made society
| collapse to begin with your continued existence will depend
| very much on how much practical help you can give a community
| rather than abstract things like money or pre-collapse social
| status. We're social creatures to the bone, it'll likely be the
| most effective co-operators who will ultimately win out in a
| post-apocalyptic society rather than the most violent or the
| most self-sufficient.
|
| I think of 'prepping' more as about acquiring useful practical
| skills you can offer the community in a post-apocalyptic
| society than storing tons of tinned tomatoes in a bunker.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I've always thought the way to prepare for / survive such
| hardships is to have a strong community, not some elaborate
| individualistic prepper bunker scenario.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| What good is your strong economy if one weak link in its
| supply chain just ceases?
| bluGill wrote:
| Even if you are a prepper, there is always the risk that you
| aren't able to get home. Maybe you are on a trip across the
| ocean, maybe you died in the initial attack. As such you
| should tell your friends who might be able to get to your
| bunker how to get in without you. Maybe you save a friend
| even if you can't save yourself.
|
| Also it is easy to have enough food to last for a year or
| two, but what after that? It is a lot easier to survive if
| you have a village with you. A village protects against
| loneliness/depression. A village planting fields makes it
| more likely not all of them fail (rain/hail is often unevenly
| distributed even across a small village). A village makes it
| more likely that useful skills survive - medical doctors
| (even without modern infrastructure they can still do a lot),
| various trades can often figure out useful things (if there
| are enough engineers and some sort of easy power source you
| might even be able to get an electric grid for your village).
| With enough people it is more likely someone actually knows
| enough about gardening to help you grow food.
| jerf wrote:
| A "strong community" full of people with no resources isn't
| going to work so well, though.
|
| Best way to get into that "small community" is to have
| something to offer. Of course, it may not be a "bunker", but
| if _all_ you 're bringing to your "strong community" is
| another mouth to feed and some free time, don't expect the
| community to celebrate your arrival.
|
| Indeed, they may not even let you in. It would be a time of
| strong communities, yes, but not the "let's all hold hands
| and sing kumbaya in our glorious unity"-style strong
| communities. It's going to be working hard together to
| survive. Those who don't have something to contribute aren't
| going to find themselves very welcome.
|
| Basically, what I'm saying is, don't think "oh, I'll just
| have a _strong community_ to fall back on so I don 't need to
| do any prep". Especially if you're not already in one! If
| nothing else, prep today as your contribution to that strong
| community tomorrow.
|
| (And I mean "prep" as the document does, sensible precautions
| to increase your robustness and decrease your reliance on
| resources that will be stretched thin in event of
| catastrophe, things that might actually happen, not
| necessarily piling 4 years of food into a bunker. Considering
| one of the "things that will never happen" just happened you
| have a more clear view than ever of what sort of things might
| go wrong, and, well, even if the virus is basically done
| there's plenty of reasons to believe the consequences of it
| are not.)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This is a much more practical and realistic prepping guide than
| what a lot of self-labeled preppers tend to practice.
|
| Suggestions such as getting in shape and building good
| relationships with your neighbors are great suggestions for both
| good times and disasters. It's also easy to map these suggestions
| to recent disasters and see how people who practiced them would
| be (or were) better off.
|
| There's a weird element to the prepper community that leans
| toward a sort of role-play: Some get into prepping because they
| imagine it will be something like a heroic disaster movie, where
| they're going to need a lot of guns and ammunition and a lot of
| expensive technology gear. Maybe fun to buy and collect, but most
| of those things are useless in real-world situations where people
| really need shelter, food, water, and support of the community.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It is worth noting that even the worst disaster in human
| history, while sometimes toppling empires, failed to really
| destroy communities within less than a couple of generations.
| And after more than one generation a community changed, or
| migrated, more than it was destroyed.
|
| The plague didn't do it Europe. All the earth quakes and other
| natural disasters didn't do it long term (immediate effects are
| catastrphic so). Famines come close, and even then communities
| rebuild and survive. I have yet to see a real world example of
| a Walking Dead like scenario. The dinosaurs and the asteroid
| maybe, but those dinosaurs left so little documebtation, it's a
| shame.
| seanhunter wrote:
| If you want to learn how to do disaster planning as an
| organisation, a really good example to follow is Waffle House,
| who take it extremely seriously.
| https://disasterphilanthropy.org/blog/preparedness/disaster-...
| chasd00 wrote:
| I bet a good thing to know is all the Waffle House locations
| within a 100 mile radius.
| verisimi wrote:
| First line, from 2015.
|
| "In the public consciousness, its portrayals have all the makings
| of a doomsday cult: a tribe of unkempt misfits who hoard gold
| bullion, study herbalism, and preach about the imminent collapse
| of our society."
|
| Well, that hasn't aged well...
| goodpoint wrote:
| > a tribe of unkempt misfits
|
| If anything, it's an accurate description of preppers. Together
| with the unsustainable individualism.
| playpause wrote:
| Why?
| verisimi wrote:
| Do you think that society is more coherent now, after the
| past 2 years? Are things improving or are the wheels coming
| off? The Canadian government was freezing people's bank
| accounts like they are North Korea, and most cheer this on?
| With Russia going to war? Etc etc.
|
| If you had bought gold 7 years ago, you would have doubled
| its value.
| jcims wrote:
| Re-read the first four words. This is a description of the
| _public perception_ , and it was spot on then and is
| largely still true now. (Add in some racist/white
| nationalist overtones, they seem to have been layered into
| the persona as well)
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > If you had bought gold 7 years ago, you would have
| doubled its value.
|
| Over five years VTI is up 77% vs gold at 54%. VTI is up
| over 100% since Jan 2015. GLD is only up 45%.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Turn off the news and step outside to interact with real
| people. The situation is much nicer when you're not letting
| a 24/7 stream of news and hot takes teleport your attention
| to whatever the worst event in the entire world happens to
| be at the current moment.
|
| > If you had bought gold 7 years ago, you would have
| doubled its value.
|
| And you would have made the wrong investment choice,
| because the stock market outperformed gold.
|
| Gold has a reputation as a great inflation hedge but it
| hasn't really lived up to that reputation at all in recent
| history.
| verisimi wrote:
| > Turn off the news and step outside to interact with
| real people. The situation is much nicer when you're not
| letting a 24/7 stream of news and hot takes teleport your
| attention to whatever the worst event in the entire world
| happens to be at the current moment.
|
| I go outside a lot. I don't watch the news, I watch
| people. Have you seen people in the past 2 years? Do you
| think they are acting normally? Were they always insane?
|
| Do you also think that there is a planned reset going on?
| One that involves us moving to technocracy? With govcoins
| (aka UBI), bio-medical-security-id, energy rationing,
| etc.
|
| Does the stock market meaningfully relate to reality?
| Does crypto? Did you know that Western governments have
| the ability to seize people's wealth from their banks,
| like in Canada?
|
| My view is that the preppers sounded crazy then to me,
| but sound a lot less now. I reckon in 5 years time, they
| will appear to be modern sages.
| Havoc wrote:
| The most likely one is missing I think - full collapse of the
| financial systems globally.
|
| Everything is interconnected and incredibly fragile and
| correlated.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I was thinking about this earlier. To me a high priority would be
| movement, be able to get out of the disaster zone and be able to
| move to safer locations.
| notakio wrote:
| One aspect that the article does not cover enough is the
| importance of training. Whether that's medical training, self-
| defense training, survival training or general preparedness
| training, training is what makes gear/supplies useful. Far too
| many people will purchase x, y, and z in order to be "prepared",
| but if you can't properly apply that tourniquet you bought a
| dozen of, then it is useless, and so are you in the event of an
| emergency.
|
| Circa 2006 or so, I decided to start spending my free/vacation
| time on training across a wide spectrum of skills. My motto:
| "Always become more deadly, or harder to kill." I've learned how
| to do a lot of things that I will very likely never have to do,
| but if I do, I hope that I am more prepared than I would be
| without the training. As with any training, the skills are
| generally perishable, so you have to work to maintain competency,
| but, personally, I'd rather spend my time learning important
| things than wasting it on the bread and circuses provided as
| "mass entertainment".
| hef19898 wrote:
| Why not training in stuff like gardening (the food stuff
| variety), repair, house building, emergency medical care? Even
| in pre-feudal societies there was only so much need for
| "warriors".
| buginabag wrote:
| > Even in pre-feudal societies there was only so much need
| for "warriors".
|
| No the user you've replied to, but it's not "either or" that
| you (might) imply. I would also like to emphasize, pre-Feudal
| society was as it was due to pre-Fedual technology. The AR-15
| and Glock 19 aren't going to disappear with the COVID-23
| epidemic or the nuclear flash.
|
| One can learn basic marksmanship fairly well at a local
| shooting range, but something like Close-Quarters Battle or
| other necessary-but-uncommon (to civilians) training will
| require some amount of professional training. How effectively
| can you clear a room with a pistol or rifle (solo,
| partnered)? Are you aware of the effects of glass (home,
| auto) on a round?
|
| Best not to learn these things the hard way.
|
| Let us not forgot, in the original iteration of the American
| Republic, we (able-bodied men, at least) were all the
| militia. Even in this ideal "community sticks together"
| outcome in a SHTF world, you need to have some competencies
| in shooting.
|
| To contrast, one can more casually learn primitive cooking or
| home gardening... at home. I, personally, practice martial
| arts... that's the gist of my daily fitness training.
|
| Though I very much agree, the medical training is one you're
| going to want to go to a professional for and should not be
| forgotten amongst the High-Speed Low-Drag oper9r culture that
| co-travels in survivalist circles.
| hef19898 wrote:
| This focus on _combat for survival_ thing is so American.
| In Civil War combatants are quickly trained by warlords,
| and quite expendable. No amout of training will allow a
| single person to survive alone. In case of warfare, there
| are armies.
|
| For all other circumstances, combat skills are negligable.
| Repair, food "gathering" and medical skills are so much
| more important. Followed by organising people and stuff.
| notakio wrote:
| "Combat skills" include medical skills, communications
| skills, planning, coordination, and effective teamwork
| skills. None of the training I've ever been involved with
| has been focused on turning a single person into Rambo,
| but more along the lines of turning 4 or 12 people into
| an effective team, able to accomplish specific tasks
| under decent amounts of stress.
| strken wrote:
| These are also the skills you'd learn in e.g. a volunteer
| firefighting brigade or search and rescue team, you'd
| just be applying them to the task of putting out fires
| and finding lost tourists rather than killing a building
| full of people.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Honest question, did you receive this training in a
| military or disaster relieve organisation? If so, good!
|
| You forgot one, very relevant, support skill (since we
| include a lot of enabling skills now it seems):
| logistics.
| notakio wrote:
| Training is training, and it's all beneficial. And a good
| portion of my training has been in trauma care, medical
| response, and techniques. It resulted in my getting my EMT
| license, though I never used it. It all falls under "harder
| to kill".
| hef19898 wrote:
| So you have some basic medical yraining, but no experience.
| Skills deteriorate when not used in real life.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I linked the Sarajevo Survival Guide in another thread (about
| refugees) today, but it's again relevant. One of the things
| it points out is that a "disaster" isn't always an all or
| nothing deal. In many likely scenarios (including the siege
| of Sarajevo), skills like carpentry, mechanics and ham radio
| operators were in high demand.
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