[HN Gopher] None of us are truly living off the grid
___________________________________________________________________
None of us are truly living off the grid
Author : Tomte
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-08-25 12:52 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.okdoomer.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.okdoomer.io)
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| This guy really needs to lay off the
|
| Sudden dramatic sentence.
|
| approach to writing articles. It's not as impactful as he thinks,
| and really annoying when it's done every 3 sentences.
|
| tl;dr: any contact with other people and any trading with them
| constitutes "the grid".
| krisoft wrote:
| > He didn't realize his electric can opener wasn't going to work
| until after the power had gone out.
|
| > He was helpless.
|
| Sounds a bit just so? In my arguably not prepared home just in my
| sight line I see 4 different ways to improvise implements to open
| a can if I need to. Not counting the two manual can openers I
| have for just that task.
|
| Can openers were invented way after cans were invented. People
| just used chisels.
|
| If the lack of electricity makes you helpless you were helpless
| even with electricity.
| perrygeo wrote:
| I'm a fan of the Alone series on the History channel. Contestants
| are dropped off in a remote location and have to survive on their
| own with minimal gear. All of them are highly trained in hunting,
| wilderness survival, etc. but only the best (and luckiest) make
| it past two months.
|
| Humans are not meant to live alone. Even a small group could
| divide the labor and survive orders of magnitudes longer than a
| single individual. The most important survival gear is family and
| community.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Agreed it would be way easier to survive as part of a small
| tribe rather than fully alone, but I wouldn't use the TV show
| Alone as proof. They purposely pick some of the least
| hospitable places for life, drop people off at the end of fall
| with no summer to stock up/prepare, contestants have to follow
| all the local regulations around how/what game they hunt, and
| (most importantly) nobody is allowed a gun. Plenty of small-
| time trappers and other pioneers survived on their own during
| the westward expansion!
| zingababba wrote:
| I like that show also. It's interesting how some people seem to
| be able to go into a semi-hibernative, almost meditative state
| and others aren't.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| [flagged]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I think you're getting down-voted because instead of adding
| to the conversation, you took a swipe at an off-topic straw
| man.
| walthamstow wrote:
| You've been downvoted, though not by me, because you
| introduced a petty insult about an unrelated topic. You then
| doubled down with an even pettier edit. It's not rocket
| science mate.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| > You've been downvoted, though not by me, because you
| introduced a petty insult about an unrelated topic.
|
| What's unrelated? Many vegans claim that veganism is the
| natural human diet. That humans originally were vegan but
| became meat eaters. I've come across crazy vegans here who
| spout that nonsense.
|
| > You then doubled down with an even pettier edit. It's not
| rocket science mate.
|
| My guess is only silly vegans would take truth as a petty
| insult.
|
| Also, I really don't care about the downvotes. I know why I
| was downvoted by silly vegans. My edit was a lure more than
| anything. So I can get a big laugh at their expense.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Maybe many vegans claim that, but you can find many of
| any group that claims something because there are many
| people. _Most_ vegans will probably warn you that the
| diet is likely to be nutritionally incomplete and require
| B12 supplementation, for example.
| ForestCritter wrote:
| _me grinning_
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'm another fan!
|
| One of my observations, not sure if an artifact of editing or
| accurate, is how everyone progressively talks about missing
| their families more and more right before they decide to tap
| out.
|
| The winner from last season(?) mostly seemed to win by keeping
| relentlessly positive, whatever happened on a given day,
| thinking of his family fondly, and keeping his mind engaged
| with hobby crafts (i.e. making a fancier X for his shelter).
| bwv848 wrote:
| You do realize that Alone has a lot of limitations, right? The
| show begins at the start of winter. Participants are geofenced,
| and hunting activities must abide by local laws. Not to
| mention, they don't even get to choose their sites, which is
| crucial in a real-life survival situation.
| 1-more wrote:
| The way they handle bears is very limited, for instance.
| Humanity's main defenses against bears have been 1) being in
| groups of more than one person and 2) sometimes you gotta
| kill a bear. In Alone you've got your airhorn and bear mace
| and that's it.
|
| I will say I enjoyed the early episode of one of the seasons
| on Vancouver Island where a cop tapped out within a day or
| two because there were bears. He even said (I'm paraphrasing)
| that he's not used to not being able to shoot them or call
| for help on a radio.
| blfr wrote:
| This is article is wrong on both sides of its reasoning. On one,
| yeah, people built grids and started farming, this is how our
| civilization came around. These people were more numerous and
| more dominant, pushing hunter gatherers out. However, they lived
| _worse_ : they were shorter, worked more, played less, had less
| interesting routines. It is only recently that we matched hunters
| in health. And then almost instantly became massively obese.
|
| On the other, we* are not headed for any widespread climate
| disaster. Yeah, fires, waves of migration, etc, sure. None of
| that will be worse than things we have deliberately caused
| ourselves (like the collapse of Libya and its aftermath). It
| won't even come close to pointless slaughters of first and second
| world war after which our civilization flourished to new heights.
|
| * I mean the first world we.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I really think you need to study more history.... there are
| massive chunks of what was once fertile land in Iraq that will
| never be cultivated again. Humans had settled and cultivated it
| for millennia, but salinization has ruined the dirt.
|
| Humans moved away from there and now depend on other land. It
| was 'easy' back then because the other land was empty. But uh,
| we've ran out of that empty land. As we burn up more land with
| climate disasters, over farming, and land destruction via
| building and run off we aren't getting new land back. These are
| not short term problems like wars. These are problems that last
| at geologic time scales.
| blfr wrote:
| If the climate warms significantly, we are getting millions
| of kilometers of previously unusable taiga in what is now
| largely empty regions of Canada and Russia. And the
| population in most countries is already in decline. We will
| need less food and farming, not more.
|
| The fall of ancient civilizations is always a great story but
| I think we have fundamentally changed when we attained
| systematic knowledge. There will be no great collapse with
| massive loss of capacity because we put our understanding of
| the world and our tech into models and then wrote it all down
| millions of times.
|
| Basically, we know how to build a nuclear reactor, an
| internal combustion engine, and a computer, we will never
| forget it, and therefore can always run an industrial
| civilization.
| saulpw wrote:
| Sorry to say, the ideas in your comment are false. It's
| engineering hubris at its worst.
|
| Primarily, this idea that we've written it all down so
| we'll never forget it, is not true. Advanced technology
| requires industrial infrastructure and gobs of tacit
| knowledge that absolutely can be unlearned at a societal
| level. It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build
| a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a
| microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework
| and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to
| actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a
| lot of the secret sauce again--and that process looks like
| redevelopment, not just filling in some gaps.
|
| And as that development process will require the
| coordination of millions of people to set up and maintain
| the supply chain of materials and logistics, it won't be
| possible in an unstable society that doesn't have the
| natural endowment of cheap energy that we've had for the
| past 100 years.
|
| For one paper that explores this, see "Tacit Knowledge,
| Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons"
| (1995):
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699
| blfr wrote:
| > It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a
| nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a
| microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual
| framework and think you know how to do it, but when it
| comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have
| to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again
|
| This is simply not true. There is no secret in this sauce
| any more. Sure, you would need to relearn how to actually
| do some things, but the recipes are all there, well
| documented. Not quite youtube tutorials but we have
| videos.
|
| This is not a hypothetical. We tested this[1] and it
| matches my expectations (I studied physics).
|
| Esoteric materials, very precise optics, or spare parts
| to f22, things that are made in one or two places, we may
| lose that capacity. But fundamental inventions like
| flight, electricity, radio, fertilization are gonna stay
| with us as long as there's some version of us around.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
| saulpw wrote:
| A "credible design" is not a functional nuclear weapon.
| See again the link to the paper I posted. Any country
| that tries to create a nuclear weapon takes the same
| amount of time (~5 years) to figure it out, and no amount
| of designs or specs or written down information speeds it
| up. Only embedding actual people who have developed their
| tacit knowledge will do so.
|
| But it sounds like we've both made up our minds, and you
| believe in the immortality of information, and I can see
| as evident that knowledge has been lost time and time
| again. We only have to wait awhile to see how it actually
| turns out.
| asimovfan wrote:
| Interesting that you think that, don't you think a domino
| effect is possible regarding climate disaster?
| efields wrote:
| _obviously_ anyone broadcasting their off-grid lifestyle is not
| off-grid. the people that are off-grid do not broadcast their
| off-grid-ness.
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't know, most of the things mentioned in the article seem
| like beginner mistakes that even I, as a casual reader of
| outdoors and prepper sites, already know about.
|
| The reality is probably that in the event of a serious global
| catastrope, the _seriously-prepared_ people will be fine, the
| _sort-of-prepared_ people will be one step ahead of 99% of the
| population, and everyone else will be totally helpless.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >the seriously-prepared people will be fine,
|
| If they have an island they happen to be at.
|
| The problem is now you're dealing with the law of large
| numbers. As an individual your plans are mostly meaningless
| when the catastrophe happens and you're caught on the 405
| unable to escape.
|
| Having a bunker as an individual means nothing if 20 people
| happen to get together and rise up against you.
|
| This is why off the grid doesn't work. When the grid collapses
| everyone that you're not really good friends with is now your
| enemy. To survive you need to have/make new social grids of
| shared defense.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, but the "seriously prepared" people aren't hermit
| preppers, they are the people that have built resilient
| _societies_.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Well that is rather sobering.
|
| It reminds me of Covid and the stockpiling of toiletpaper and
| telling my family how the sewage plants depend on people and
| power to run , wiping your butt is going to be the least of our
| problems if this is the end.
|
| So long and thanks for all the fish :).
| NoraCodes wrote:
| As with all (and especially self-identified) doomer literature,
| this piece stops just before the important realization: you can't
| do it _yourself_ , but you can do it with your _community_.
|
| Our lives are going to get worse. Many people will die. If we
| form sustainable local communities, and build political
| coalitions to lessen the damage going forward, fewer of us will
| die, and our lives will get "less worse".
|
| It's not over until it's over.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Thank you
|
| Build community not bunkers
|
| Only one has the ability to last and be sustainable
| myshpa wrote:
| History is full of communities that were eradicated and
| buried in the ditches meant to protect them.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Typically killed by other communities...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I think you're agreeing but it's unclear
| oniony wrote:
| Except it doesn't stop before that realization, it explicitly
| mentions it in the article.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| It mentions it in one sentence and then caveats it with
| saying oh but they're crazy and irritating. It then moves on
| to talk more about how we're all doomed. It's just
| unnecessarily negative.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| It doesn't. It says that once you've built a proper
| community, you've built "the grid." You're not living "off
| grid." That's like the whole point of the article. You're
| never going to make it _on your own._ Like it or not, _we
| 're all in this together._ And it's pretty clearly aimed at
| the folks that don't think they need anybody else to make
| it.
| mikestew wrote:
| _As with all (and especially self-identified) doomer
| literature, this piece stops just before the important
| realization: you can 't do it yourself, but you can do it with
| your community._
|
| The article mentions it, and it calls "community" a grid. I
| mean, what do we think a "grid" is? A collective effort to more
| efficiently bring $GOOD_STUFF to...you knew it was coming...a
| community of people.
| JR1427 wrote:
| Preppers forget that society preps, too, just not necessarily at
| the individual level. We have warehouses full of extra stock etc,
| and carefully-managed supply chains, and emergency services. This
| is all prepping.
|
| I think preppers should pour their energy in to helping society
| prepare, and not just turn their back on the very reason they
| exist.
|
| p.s. I don't consider taking sensible precautions like having a
| well-stocked medicine cabinet, fuel in the car, and some food in
| the freezer "prepping".
| black6 wrote:
| Only we don't have warehouses full of extra stock and carefully
| managed supply chains. We have just-in-time supply models and
| spreadsheet warriors who have efficiencied surge capacity to
| death.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "We have warehouses full of extra stock etc, and carefully-
| managed supply chains, and emergency services."
|
| Did the Covid pandemic not exist to you?
| pixl97 wrote:
| I too remember people buying 3000 rolls of toilet paper, but
| it turns out at the end of the day I could still wipe my
| butt.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "but it turns out at the end of the day I could still wipe
| my butt."
|
| As long as the important things are taken care of...
| p_j_w wrote:
| Not OP, but this seems like a weird gotcha. It did exist to
| me and I didn't go hungry. Certain luxury items became hard
| to get for a while, but necessities were never a problem.
| JR1427 wrote:
| Also, if civilisation breaks down, I'm not sure I want to be
| around to see the result anyway...
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| it's a false debate, it doesn't matter to be off the grid, what
| matter is minimizing our impact
|
| For example, with my lifestyle without a car, a fridge, A/C, hot
| water, heating, TV, EUR10/mo electricity, without most things
| people have, my footprint is 5% of the average person. If more
| people would go in this direction, it would solve all problems
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Yes, industrial-technological civilization is only possible due
| to cooperation of human beings at a very large scale. If that
| cooperation breaks down, everything goes back to pre-industrial
| technology, at best - and even that required a great deal of
| cooperation, as any examination of pre-industrial agriculture-
| centric society demonstrates. The provision of wood for buildings
| and ships, fabrics for clothing and sails, simple metal
| implements as weapons and farming tools, etc all required social
| cooperation and division of labor, which in turned required legal
| systems to prevent internecine conflicts from constantly breaking
| out. If that in turn fails, we're back to tribal hunter-gatherer
| societies, an unlikely option without a collapse in human
| population to the 10,000 B.C. levels.
|
| This is fairly obvious to anyone who hasn't been completely
| indoctrinated into the myth of individual success based on hard
| work - a myth largely promoted to justify the consolidation of
| wealth and resources into the hands of a small ruling oligarch
| class in the modern world, see for example Margaret Thatcher's
| line 'there is no such thing as society' and so on.
|
| That said, it's possible that modern technological developments
| might be able to create the kind of technology that could allow
| people to survive quite happily with minimal external inputs of
| raw materials, via extensive recycling of finished goods back
| into raw materials, use of incident energy (sunlight and wind),
| but the problem would be creation of the technological tools and
| maintenance of those tools, which would almost certainly require
| high-tech factories operating at scale. If those factories could
| somehow be miniaturized and also be highly adaptable (still in
| the realm of science fiction, no backyard chip foundries at
| present) then concepts like a self-sustaining Martian habitat
| could become more plausible.
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| This is ridiculous for a lot of reasons. I'll try to just point
| out the top one or two in the interest of brevity.
|
| 1. Predicting the long-term future is a bizarre and fruitless
| game. One might even say idiotic. If you're a prepper, and I'm
| not, prepare to live for a month or three. I do. Whatever the
| heck happens, within 90 days there will be some new normal.
| You're not trying to live forever. You're just trying to outlive
| temporary chaos. At that point, you're going to have to reinvent
| some kind of life. Who knows what that will be? Not me. Not this
| guy either.
|
| 2. He mentions wi-fi a lot. Gotta have that internet, gotta have
| that wi-fi, gotta have that bluetooth. I kinda doubt it. Can you
| go a day without internet? How about power? Just turn all of your
| stuff off. Most folks should be able to learn how to live like
| normal humans have for eons. There are various hobbies and
| occupations where you spend a lot of time without power or
| plumbing: scouts, infantry, etc. These people know what it's
| like. There are enough of them that the species itself will do
| just fine no matter what sort of apocalypse you can dream up.
|
| It seems the problem with this essay, like so many pieces of
| media I consume daily, is the desire for _certainty_. Here's
| problem A. Here's exactly what it means, what causes it, and so
| on. And you have to do B to fix it. (Or, in this case, there is
| no B)
|
| Disasters are chaotic and uncertain. Assuming climate disasters,
| moreso. But that both means that things are going to be tougher
| _and_ you can't have-wave your way around predicting how it all
| will turn out. Are many people who think themselves preppers
| disillusioned about their actual skills and their ability to
| adapt? Absolutely! But that's a one sentence essay. What's the
| fun in writing and commenting about that?
|
| Apologies to the author. I believe there is a good one sentence
| thesis in there somewhere. But this sucked. I wish you better in
| the future.
| em-bee wrote:
| if you like to read fiction related to this topic, i can
| recommend the Parable or Earthseed series by Octavia E. Butler,
| in particular the second book ' _Parable of the Talents_ '
|
| it describes a world where the national governments have lost
| control and people are fighting for resources.
|
| it's a rather dystopian view, but it points out that in addition
| to living off the grid, which is difficult enough you will have
| to face others who want what you have.
|
| only law and order and a strong community can protect you from
| that.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| The author (alias: Jessica Wildfire) points out some rookie
| mistakes, like one guy who did not realize his electric can
| opener would not work when the power was out, and was "helpless"
| when the power went out.
|
| I guess he's never opened a can with a bayonet. If you can not
| improvise your way into a tin can with hand tools, you should not
| be allowed to operate a motor vehicle.
|
| These kinds of errors are common to any first attempt.
|
| Here's a challenge for preppers: Pull your circuit breakers
| Saturday morning and turn off the water. See how things go. If
| you make it 3 hours I will be impressed. Then learn, prepare, and
| try it again a month later. When you can make it 24 hours, talk
| to me. Most of my friends were at that level before Y2K.
|
| You can not be prepared for everything, but you can: Learn to
| live without electricity or water for a week or two. * Grow a
| garden. * Move away from masses of unprepared people. * Learn to
| hunt (legally,) and fill your freezer with wild game. * Learn to
| shoot and learn to carry a gun legally where you live. If guns
| are "illegal," get a license. If you refuse to do that, learn to
| carry a knife. If all else fails, learn to carry a stick. Read
| "Stick Combatives" by Massad Ayoob, and practice. Then take a
| fencing class; that will help you with stick fighting. * Learn to
| repair things around your home yourself. * Keep extra food in the
| pantry, keep cases of bottled water. * Prepare go-bags, and test
| them on a camping trip, after you learn to camp. * Earn a Ham
| Radio license and learn to talk to your friends without Internet
| or phones. * Store data in such a way that you only need USB
| power to get access to it. * Rely on your vehicle when the power
| is out. Even the silliest little combustion powered econocar can
| recharge a ton of electronic devices if you have a low battery
| cutoff and devices with the right chargers. Most car chargers
| never get used, so most car chargers you buy will not last more
| than half a charge. * Test your gear. If you have something you
| have not tested, test it or throw it away.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > A while back, a prepper tried to ride out an arctic blast with
| canned food and survival gear. He didn't realize his electric can
| opener wasn't...
|
| Wait... what kind of "prepper" is that ?
| h2odragon wrote:
| > If you think you're going to defect from the social contract
| but still get to enjoy all the benefits of society,
|
| Yeah, you can't do that all by yourself; that's for politicians
| and movie stars and business tycoons.
|
| There _are_ preppers and "self sufficiency" fans who are _not_
| seeking to "defect from the social contract"; apparently that's
| a difficult distinction to make for people taking a quick survey
| of the field.
|
| They're the ones whose advice includes lots of "know your
| neighbors" and "coordinate with your neighborhood".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See
| https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/preparednes...
| terran57 wrote:
| I have a personal story that seems to dovetail with this article.
|
| Back in the days of the pre-Y2K "crisis" hype, I lived in
| Colorado and was young and more impressionable, I started
| developing a prepper mentality. While I was pretty sure that we'd
| get through that, it seemed wise to plan for the future.
|
| So, I fell into a group of like-minded people, and joined in
| conversations about what would be needed to survive in a post-
| collapse environment. We honed our hunting skills, pre-stocked
| camping backpacks, and formulated plans to flee into the
| mountains in case things went south. We also started looking into
| what it would take to buy a piece of property and build out a
| bunker, stock it, and prepare for whatever was to come.
|
| My enthusiasm for this individual prepper mentality diminished
| quite rapidly due to a single conversation. I was in a "seminar"
| where we were all discussing the advantages/disadvantages of
| prebuilt bunkers and how to disguise them on the property. During
| a break, when I asked one of the "consultants" what his plan was.
| He took me aside, looked around so that nobody would hear him and
| said something along the lines of: "Kid, don't waste your time
| with this hiding in a bunker nonsense. Me and my kids and
| grandkids live up in the mountains and know where a lot of these
| preppers have their stashes. If things go south, we're just going
| use our bulldozers and diggers to dig them out and take what
| they've stored away for us. They won't be able to outlast a group
| of us."
|
| I looked at him like he was Judas, but he then said. "Don't think
| I'm the only one in this business who's planning to do this,
| we'll gladly take their money and build whatever bunker they
| want, but at the end of the day, if things go to hell, we'll use
| whatever means we have to survive, and so if that means cracking
| open these stashes - so be it".
|
| Then he said "the key to survival is being part of a community
| you can rely on. Ideally, this is your family as they're much
| less likely to betray you, but a good like-minded church group
| could also work".
|
| I was a bit stunned by this, but it crystalized in my mind then,
| that the individual "prepper" was eventually doomed to fail at
| some point and it was pretty useless to prepare for it.
|
| So, yes, I now agree that the best approach to "prepare" is to
| work to strengthen your community.
| 1-more wrote:
| I'm putting all my chips on the Mormons in the US to make it
| through for exactly this reason. Also because they keep a year
| of shelf stable food around.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yep, as an individual you have to sleep. As an individual you
| get sick. As an individual you have massive gaps in knowledge
| and capability.
|
| Any prepper that is an individual and thinks they have it made
| is just an egotistical disaster in the making.
|
| A few people working together can take any prepper out simply
| by being patient. If the person is in a bunker then you just
| poison the bunker. Otherwise you just wait till they come out
| and pick them off one by one.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I always saw planning for a social collapse as a way to not
| actually resolve issues because you feel helpless.
|
| "people gonna attack us? IM PREPARED!" you are not. You know
| what's better than prepping? Fighting tooth and nail to make sure
| the grid is rock solid and free of corruption. And every day is a
| battle, because there's always a schemer who will try to get in
| and hoard for himself. If preppers got depressed from thinking
| how things are in collapse, and how they need to improve things,
| as a society, in order to improve things for themselves, they'd
| actually maybe act.
|
| I see preppers as poor "throw money at it" rich folks. Rich folks
| don't care if the education system isn't working, they can find a
| private school which costs $100k a month to give their child the
| best education possible. They can get a bunker professionally
| built so if anything happens their thick doors and automated guns
| will take care of any people trying to get in. They can hire a
| chef and have the best food possible in an ideal diet to keep
| them happy, sated, and healthy all their lives while most of us
| have to suffer from over-sugared foods and affordable food being
| incredibly poor in nutrients
|
| Preppers are similar, they don't want to solve societal problems,
| they want to feel like _THEY_ are insulated from societal
| problems because they are "off the grid". But they are not. No
| living up in the mountain is gonna protect you from a bad
| harvest, or from a crop disease, or from a fucking splinter. I
| love something someone said recently "if you're in a zombie
| apocalypse, you won't get to have the cool hair, the cool bat,
| and go smash zombie brains. You'll likely die from diarrhea
| pretty early on."
| marssaxman wrote:
| > Preppers are similar, they don't want to solve societal
| problems
|
| It seems more likely to me that they have a realistic awareness
| of their level of influence over society, which is to say
| effectively none.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If society actually collapses, a lone libertarian in a bunker
| with truckloads of fresh water and food supplies is not going
| to survive. A warlord with as few as 10 guys with guns roving
| the hills will be able to just kill the preppers and take
| whatever they need. They're not going to care that you have the
| deed to your land and you even built a _fence_ around it to
| show everyone you own it.
| gochi wrote:
| It also feeds into this idea that you can prepare for the
| worst, but the human condition when pushed to its limits does
| not abide by rules.
|
| Everyone loves to think about how they'll handle attackers,
| but never spend much time thinking about the lack of sleep
| and how that'll severely impact them. Never how much
| isolation will destroy so much of their mental state.
|
| Popular media influence of lone wolves surviving and other
| such content can really prevent people from being aware of
| the realities of such collapse I suppose!
| ryandrake wrote:
| People watch too many zombie movies where the protagonist
| is this lone, handsome, rugged individualist with a gun
| that has infinite bullets, and every patch of humanity they
| run into are these nice, civilized survivor camps full of
| their church friends. Everyone thinks when society
| collapses, they're gonna be that lone badass. Newsflash:
| You're not going to be that badass. If you can shoot
| straight, you'll be forced to become a soldier-slave in
| some warlord's roving army. If you can't, you'll either be
| killed or become a sex-slave for that roving army. Either
| way, 99.9% of the non-murdered population is going to
| become a slave of some sort if the shit really hits the
| fan.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| I guess it's best to see it as a short term edge rather than
| viable lifestyle.
| predictabl3 wrote:
| I've got a question. What does "Prepperism" look like outside the
| United States where there isn't a sycophantic individualism-at-
| literally-any-cost mentality that underpins every psychotic
| decision we make as a country and as individuals living in it?
| JohnClark1337 wrote:
| [dead]
| runjake wrote:
| This is a terrible take. It sounds like the author is projecting
| their inadequacies.
|
| There are countless examples of people living off the grid, even
| for their entire lives.
|
| _I've_ lived off the grid. It's hard, you're always exhausted
| you're constantly having to work to get food and fire. And if
| you're in the wilderness, you have to do all that while trying
| not to injure yourself because help won't come. This means "going
| around" obstacles instead of trying to negotiate them. Often,
| "going around" means additional miles, which means additional
| calories, which means additional work.
|
| Perhaps they should have made a stronger point about the futility
| of millions of people doing it:
|
| - First, millions of people wouldn't want to do it. They want
| comfort. They want media and social media and consumerism.
|
| - Resources are more scarce, because people must produce them.
|
| - People are soft, used to the comforts that civilization
| provides them.
|
| - People are untrained and often terrified of nature, that very
| thing they are an apart of.
|
| Edit: it seems prudent to point out that normal people get their
| kicks by just going camping. If you are considering going to live
| in the woods, try starting with short, two-day camping trips and
| gradually increase the days so that you can take notes and
| improve your skills and equipment.
| lisper wrote:
| > improve your skills and equipment
|
| This is the thing. If you are using "equipment" then you are
| only off the grid temporarily. Sooner or later all that stuff
| you bought at REI is going to fail. Then what?
| augusto-moura wrote:
| You can live some time without anyone else, but eventually you
| will need to get some help from someone, unless you want to use
| stone axes and split stone knifes for the rest of your life
| (which is possible, don't get me wrong).
|
| But if we are talking about post iron age tech, you eventually
| gonna need to join a production chain of some sort, you can't
| just find bog iron, smelt it and hammer into an axe by
| yourself, while also dealing with other topics. You eventually
| need a community, hence a grid
| RetroTechie wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised about how many people seem to believe
| that societal collapse = go back to 'stone age' overnight.
|
| Yeah sure, if an area turns into a disaster zone, many
| conveniences of modern life (water supply, power grid,
| supermarkets, gas stations, internet) may become unavailable
| for X amount of time.
|
| But all the materials & gear that modern society produced,
| doesn't just disappear. Houses would still be standing, the
| hand tools in your toolbox would still be there & do the same
| they did 20y ago, the groceries in your pantry are still
| there & your clothes would still be hanging in the closet.
| Your smartphone keeps working as long as you have _any_ way
| to charge it.
|
| That 'installed base' of modern stuff can go a long way in
| dealing with challenges as they come. Especially if (for
| example through hiking / camping trips) you have learned to
| get by with limited gear. Eg. a swiss pocket knive serves
| many purposes & lasts for decades.
|
| It's just that many people are NOT prepared for modern
| conveniences falling away for extended time. One example -
| ask 'random' people: "If tap water goes out, how long until
| you run out of drinking water? And what you do if tap water
| wouldn't come back at all?". And be amazed at the answers.
|
| I mean, that's #1 survival material after breathable air. And
| neither difficult or expensive to get a grip on.
|
| What's that saying again? "When supplies break down, a modern
| city is just 3 days away from large scale riots & looting".
|
| If anything, it's people being unprepared or panicing that'll
| get them killed. Not so much whatever disaster that struck
| them.
| runjake wrote:
| I don't want to sound disparaging but I think a lot of the
| criticisms and naysaying comes from people who are naive.
|
| They are used to living within environments with all the
| modern conveniences. They can't imagine anything different,
| when in fact your average farmer and his family have stuff
| like outhouses, manual wells, self-made tools and MacGyver
| fixes and hacks. While they're not "truly" off grid,
| they're effectively partially off grid and would totally do
| fine.
|
| As a white collar knowledge worker I try to soak in their
| blue collar skills and wisdom whenever I can. And in turn
| try to evolve my white collar skills into something that
| would be useful to them (eg being competent with a variety
| of radios and other stuff) if the SHTF.
|
| Conversely, I live 20 minutes outside of town. I work _in_
| town, but just on the edge of town, so I 'll go months
| without having to go into town.
|
| It's weird and neat when I go into "downtown" and I'm
| overwhelmed with the noise and activity and new modernities
| (the latest being these new electric scooters people rent
| and ride around and then just leave wherever. Before that
| was Uber. I knew these existed but it was weird to see them
| in person. Though I've still never used Uber myself.)
| runjake wrote:
| I disagree. If you have the intelligence and desire, you can
| easily gain the required skills, likely in the matter of a
| year if you work hard, to go it alone indefinitely.
|
| I think a lot of people shit on self-sufficiency due to their
| own inadequacies.
|
| It will not be fun. It will not be easy. But it's doable. No,
| you will not be using metal tools or having solar power.
|
| Funny thing about your "you can't just find..." comment
| though: when I went to live in the woods, I went _deep_ ,
| miles from any highway and much farther to any town. And I
| always found signs of civilization in the middle of nowhere
| especially tons of metal scrap and ancient iron and usable
| plastic bottles.
|
| There is enough debris from civilization all over the planet
| for scavenging. It makes things a lot easier but you can get
| by without them.
|
| I even found an intact toilet once, in an area far away from
| even logging roads. My best guess is somebody with an
| aircraft may have wanted to play a daft joke?
|
| The other strange thing were these random staircases in the
| woods in the middle of nowhere...
|
| PS: If anyone reading this is thinking of leaving
| civilization, I suggest you start with short trips beginning
| with a couple days and then gradually working them up to
| longer periods. This will:
|
| 1. Allow you to see if it's really for you or if just doing
| more camping will suffice.
|
| 2. Will show you your skill and equipment discrepancies and
| allow you to correct them before the next trip in a less
| life-threatening manner.
|
| My first trip was an entire month and it was rough.
| jraph wrote:
| Intelligence is not enough, you need crazy luck too.
|
| One day you have a medical emergency and poof, you're gone,
| possibly going through a lot of pain, because of a
| condition that would have been recoverable.
|
| Never went through any emergency myself and largely going
| through life without any drug but looking around me, I
| consider myself crazy lucky.
|
| That's what I would be afraid the most about living off
| grid and the first reason I think it can't last long for
| many (most?). What are your thoughts on this?
| seadan83 wrote:
| Some scenarios are outside of a person's control. A large
| well armed group lay siege and take your stuff. No rain for
| 7 years. A simple scrape or bad water, one season with crop
| failures. These all will kill, regardless of skill.
|
| Personally I would equate this to one of the most
| comforting aspects to believing in God, that it's not just
| some meaningless random luck of the draw but instead there
| was agency somewhere. War stories are often similar, the
| new recruits think that they are special and their skill
| and strength will keep them alive. They then learn it is
| dumb luck who lives and dies, just luck whether that
| bullet, shrapnel, or artillery shell misses you or not
| mapmap wrote:
| Thanks for this. I would like to hear more about the
| mysterious staircases.
| [deleted]
| runjake wrote:
| The last bit about the stairs was a subtle reference to
| some old Reddit creepypasta[1]
|
| But indeed I did find a toilet and several balls (tennis,
| baseball, etc) miles from any road. Presumably tossed
| from aircraft for $reasons.
|
| 1. https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3kd90k/im_a_
| search...
| [deleted]
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Getting iron from the ground and transforming into
| something useful is definitely not something you can do
| alone.
|
| But you are onto something, scrapping things from the
| outskirts of society might be something you would be able
| to do, albeit unless we are talking about total societal
| collapse this would still put you on the production chain,
| on the far end of it, as a scrapper
| eep_social wrote:
| > definitely not something you can do alone
|
| Counter-citation:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dhW4XFGQB4o we could argue
| about how useful the output is but this is a clear
| demonstration that one can, in fact, do it alone.
| runjake wrote:
| Right. But again, you don't need iron tools to survive.
| It just makes thing much easier.
|
| You can certainly live primitively in nature without the
| scraps of civilization. Again, it isn't fun and it will
| be much harder.
|
| Remember, total societal collapse is going to result in
| most, and perhaps the mass majority of humans, dying off.
| If not from the collapse, then from the realities of
| shifting into primitive living unprepared (including but
| not limited to: finding enough calories, disease, famine,
| etc).
|
| If you have kids, like me, you and your family will
| probably be dead. I figure I will be. But my threat
| models are more concerned with pandemics, natural
| disasters, and loss of power/water/gas/law, so I focus on
| those. And yeah, all of those threats have occurred at
| this point (I am in a rural area) :-/
| 303uru wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. Did you head out somewhere
| completely naked without a single item on your person? Because
| if not, you were aided by the grid. Hell, even the shelter,
| clothing, calories, etc... that got you to the place and time
| that you decided to head out came from the grid.
|
| No one is truly living off the grid.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I disagree. Just because you _were_ aided by the grid doesn
| 't mean you _are_ aided by the grid. You can shed all those
| things in a short amount of time, if you have the skill, and
| then you _are_ truly living off the grid.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >No one is truly living off the grid.
|
| This has been my thought as well, but I gotta say... I do
| know of a place where the owner put in absolutely millions
| into an eco lodge and while a "prepper cabin" wasn't his
| goal, it really is a great example of how one could live in a
| degree of comfort off grid. Probably their biggest weakness
| is they rely a lot on their diesel generator. But, they do
| have some solar, they have a good greenhouse, access to
| hunting, a private airfield, access to a river for both
| fishing and water, in an area with mild(ish) winters... so
| guess I'm saying that if you've got absolutely wheelbarrows
| full of cash, it can be done... but that's not the case with
| the vast majority of prepper types I've seen.
| mikestew wrote:
| _But, they do have some solar, they have a good greenhouse,
| access to hunting, a private airfield, access to a river
| for both fishing and water, in an area with mild(ish)
| winters..._
|
| Sounds great, I'll go round up the boys and it'll be ours
| by sundown. I think a lot of the "it can be done"
| commenters didn't read to the end: it can be done when
| you're the only one doing it. Not so much when 8 billion
| people are doing it. See also: roving gangs from any
| Fallout game.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| 'Prepping' is a great way to deal with temporary disruptions. I
| think the author has a really good point that the idea of
| living off grid during a climate disaster is copium. 'Living
| off the land' requires that the land is productive. That's not
| a given in an age where droughts, wildfires, and heat waves are
| striking more often.
| wizofaus wrote:
| More often, yes, but not continuously in any one area. The
| planet is a big place and while I don't doubt a lot more of
| our resources will need to go into dealing with the costs of
| increased natural disasters including reduced capacity to
| produce food, it's hard to see this affecting everywhere all
| at the same time. More likely is that entire areas become
| gradually unable to support a modern economy and comfortable
| lifestyle forcing mass relocations (some of which may well be
| to areas that are currently "underpopulated" due to currently
| inhospitable climates or even reserved wilderness parks
| etc.).
| pixl97 wrote:
| Even this is still a bad take...
|
| There are countless example of individuals doing it, because
| the rest of society is in the business of not caring what they
| are up to.
|
| This paradigm completely fails when if those countless millions
| are _forced_ without the grid. Once this happens those that
| will survive are not the ones that survive off the grid, but
| those that marshal human resources and create a new grid.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Obviously people _can_ live in this way if pressed, but what
| kind of life is it? Humans are social creatures, and we
| strive for more than mere survival.
|
| If our current society somehow "collapses," we will
| immediately form new societies that will work to pick up the
| pieces, and there will be strength in numbers.
|
| It is fundamental to our nature.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > If you are considering going to live in the woods, try
| starting with short, two-day camping trips
|
| And not the "camping" that involves pulling an air-conditioned
| trailer to a paved campsite with power and water, a fire ring,
| and a shower and toilet 50 yards away, and a convenience store
| with ice and beer at the camp entrance.
|
| Real camping is not that fun, unless you're a kid in the boy
| scouts. At least for me. It's hot and sweaty and dirty and
| uncomfortable.
| neilk wrote:
| I'm not sure how many people have truly lived off the grid for
| the past 150 years. It probably numbers in the low thousands
| across the entire planet.
|
| As mentioned in the article, American homesteaders were
| settling into so-called wilderness for $0 but which had been
| cleared of the people already living there. Few homesteaders
| lived more than a day's ride away from a military fort.
|
| Even "mountain men" who rejected colonizer society went into
| the wilds fully equipped with its technology, and would
| frequently cycle out for supplies.
|
| Furthermore, a lot of the land they had occupied was already
| partially cultivated and developed by indigenous tribes. And
| those indigenous tribes were trading with the colonists - and
| they had to, because their traditional ways of life were no
| longer possible, or they had been pushed off the lands where
| they used to live.
|
| Uncontacted indigenous tribes are probably the last ones to
| truly live "off the grid". But, maybe not. They also live in a
| network of shared resources. They rely heavily on a small
| society of a hundred or so people.
|
| The number of single families and individuals who have truly
| "lived off the grid"? Without significant support from larger
| groups, including common defense, trading, scavenging, and
| theft? For their whole lives? And prospered? I would guess
| there has never been anybody who accomplished that, from the
| beginning of time.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| i like some of the message and writing style but hate the
| changing title.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _We don 't think about where we'd go to the bathroom._
|
| It's nice to see an article bring up the shit-management problem.
|
| Too many folks forget about how much they take toilet paper and
| plumbing for granted.
| justrealist wrote:
| I mean people genuinely living off the grid know exactly where
| your shit is going -- into your compost pile. That's how
| subsistence farming has worked for thousands of years.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Lots of rural houses have septic tanks. If you have a large
| tank relative to number of people living there, and the right
| biological additives, you can go without pumping it for 10-25
| years -- in which time, the prepper will have failed in other
| ways.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Prepping is hard. I've had the privledge of having access to
| enough land to theoretically grown enough food for me and my
| family. Howver, it isn't trivial. This year was a prolonged
| winter, which delayed planting. This summer was incredibly hot,
| which has been devasting on our crops. Also... the grashoppers
| this year have been insane, like nothing I've ever seen. If we
| were going at it alone, we might not be making it through the
| next winter. Haha.
| dvh wrote:
| Did you planted potatoes? Wouldn't chicken eat the bugs?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Do you have enough feed for the chickens when the bugs aren't
| around?
|
| Do you have enough chickens to eat the bugs faster than they
| eat your crops?
|
| Do you have enough other food not to have to eat all the
| chickens?
|
| Do you have enough materials to build pens to keep the
| predators from eating all your chickens?
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Haha. Yes, this is it. Our neighbor has chickens and we do
| a swap for vegetables and eggs. We will likely get chickens
| in the future, but like all things there is nuance. Our
| neighbor in particular lost 4 or his 6 hens a couple years
| ago to bald eagles. Turns out chickens don't do well in
| numbers less than 4 (maybe someone can clarify this, as I'm
| ot sure), so they eventually got sick or stressed and died.
|
| But yeah, to the GP point, chickens are actually pretty
| good hunters.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| Chicken also eat the plants. Ducks are better.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Our potatoes did better this year than ever before. We
| planted in bags which was helpful for monitoring water which
| I think helped.
| yencabulator wrote:
| You might enjoy this:
|
| "He's Lived 50 Years Off the Grid in Appalachia"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LEoW81mUXU
|
| (No, he doesn't truly live "off the grid" either, he's clearly
| buying products from a nearby town. Me personally, I define "off
| grid" as just the usual rural "no physical connection", as in
| solar+well+septic, and don't pretend that that's the same as not
| interacting with society.)
| sverona wrote:
| That's the funny thing about life. No one gets out alive.
| Nobody's going to make it. Articles that try to scare me with
| collapse just can't anymore.
|
| (I have made peace with the likely possibility of not making it
| to 50 or having a "normal" death. I was suicidal for so many
| years that it just feels like an old companion.)
| myshpa wrote:
| Do you have children?
| sverona wrote:
| No, and if I'm not already sterile from the HRT, I will be
| after surgery in about a year.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I'm thankful to have access to a cabin that sits on a portion of
| the homestead my grandfather grew up on in what is now just a
| relatively rural area of the great plains in Canada. It's a
| pretty rudimentary cabin by modern standards, on a farmable, but
| not easily mass-farmable sizable hectarage. It has electricity,
| and a septic tank, but we haven't tapped a well, and bring our
| own drinking water, with a future possible rain filtration
| system. There's no wifi, but some spotty cell signal. Very good
| growing soil that doesn't tend to flood so badly, and gravel
| roads. This cabin, and brief camping/hiking trips, are a
| wonderful way to break from the city, but I'd never _trade_ it
| for my rental in the city. I 'll never likely own a home of any
| kind the way things are going, though it's never been on my mind
| until now anyway, and still I wouldn't live out there as my
| primary residence; even with a shower, even with good internet,
| even with a washer and dryer, and I wouldn't do it for the same
| reasons that my grandfather doesn't, some of the same that the
| author mentions. There are no nearby hospitals, there are not
| many nearby people to strike up a conversation with, and it's
| otherwise quite deliberately isolating; an experience that's fine
| for a bit, but only for a bit. Even car-dependent, seemingly
| anti-social suburbanites who hold up in their fenced-in backyards
| behind the McMansion someone built for them on former wetlands
| would eventually go crazy if they didn't have their neighbours
| around to complain about. That amount of time varies from person
| to person, it's easier if your hobbies or work don't seem to
| include any other people, until you want to give your crafts to
| someone, share your work in some way, or enjoy those that others
| have produced. Maybe that time is when you realize it's
| impractical for anyone in your family to visit you, or for you to
| visit them, even infrequently.
| K0balt wrote:
| Well, that's a hot take lol.
|
| I guess the author defines off the grid as totally isolated from
| any kind of community?
|
| Sure, humans survive poorly in very small groups. We are very
| social animals and normally tend to live in groups. We thrive in
| groups.
|
| People need communities. But those communities don't have to be
| cities. And while it is very difficult to be truly independent as
| a community, it is possible and humans have done it well for
| hundreds of thousands of years.
|
| I think the author just doesn't know what the heck he's doing.
| Ignorance will get you killed, and if it doesn't, it'll at least
| keep you chained to misery.
|
| That said... lone wolfing it for 5 years after the fall of
| civilisation? You'll die, for two reasons. First, people need
| communities to thrive. Secondly, if you have the idea of lone
| wolfing the fall of civilisation, you don't know what you need to
| know to survive, much less to thrive.
|
| A community however can survive for hundreds or thousands of
| years. It doesn't have to be a modern city.
| jpadkins wrote:
| [Some of] You are not going to Make It.
|
| I live near the Amish, they are going to make it. Yes life will
| be harder for them, but they are prepared for a breakdown in
| civilization.
|
| As others have pointed out, it may be more difficult for a single
| individual to make it, but a large family or small community has
| a decent shot of survival.
| carlmr wrote:
| Especially a community that is already self-reliant to a large
| extent. Preppers are doing the IT equivalent of making untested
| backups. The backups may work, but since you didn't test it
| they might not work.
|
| Amish are testing their resilience daily.
| francisofascii wrote:
| I fear the Amish would quickly get invaded when food gets
| tight. The Sentinel island people might have a better shot,
| since they are out on an island. Or the groups deep in the
| Amazon jungle.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| I thought the Amish were strictly non-violent? Isn't it one of
| the Christian tenets of "turn the other cheek"?
|
| Their predisposition for non-violence may change when they
| encounter roving gangs of wasteland bandits (from New Jersey)
| venturing about but that's not guaranteed.
| h2odragon wrote:
| > I thought the Amish were strictly non-violent?
|
| They aim for it, certainly. They're quite likely to have good
| relations with their neighbors who are less restrained or
| forgiving, and who value the company of the Amish and other
| neighbors.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Non-violent in context is just not violent by nature.
| Exercising violence in the course of self defense does not
| make one violent by nature. Self preservation is innate in
| both violent and non-violent people.
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| Trinita and Bambino will fix that.
| [deleted]
| jmye wrote:
| "This community of farmers will definitely be fine when their
| farms fail, because they don't rely on technology. Please
| ignore their tools."
|
| Like, there are a whole lot of reasons the article listed for
| why this won't work in the future. You can't just negate them
| because it works _now_.
|
| It's not just a breakdown in civilization - it's a dramatically
| changed and broken planet in this scenario. The Amish will
| starve just as fast as anyone else when crops fail or it
| doesn't rain for years on end.
| jpadkins wrote:
| They use some tools from advanced tech, but already have
| their own blacksmiths and carpenters who make tools for their
| farmers. For the long run, they will have to develop some
| type of mining or smelting operation from scrap metal they
| find (which will probably be abundant for a few decades if
| society really does collapse)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Are the Amish ready and willing to fend off determined
| invaders? How fast can they smelt bullets?
| throwawayx134ax wrote:
| Surprisingly quickly. A shot tower will make
| hundreds/thousands at a time.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Wouldn't the Amish community be considered the "Amish grid". I
| think the point of the article is trying to make is that you
| still need some type of community and a chain of production of
| some sort, someone is the carpenter, another is the smith, etc.
| kbos87 wrote:
| Whenever I see people talk about how they are planning for a
| societal collapse, I get the sense that deep down, a lot of these
| people _want_ to see it happen during their lifetime (or at least
| they think they do.)
|
| If you look for hints about their motivations, it often strikes
| me as a way for people to feel like they have some sense of
| control over their future in a world they are disillusioned with.
| They sleep a little better at night thinking that they are going
| to get the last laugh while the boss that embarrassed them three
| years ago starves somewhere. The whole thing then morphs from
| "I'd better be prepared on the off chance something happens" to
| "I hope I get to show all of them before I die."
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't think it's necessarily that vindictive. Large-scale
| civilization is a very recent thing in human evolutionary terms
| and from a certain angle, a survivalist prepper life in nature
| does have some appeal, even if it's no doubt over-romanticized.
| badwolf wrote:
| anecdotally, every prepper type I personally know falls under
| that category (the petty vindictive hope of everyone else
| getting screwed while they have the last laugh)
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Bit of confirmation bias, no? The other people that have
| prepared don't talk about it because it isn't a big deal to
| them.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Or definitional? A "prepper type", by definition, is one
| that talks about it (a lot).
| keiferski wrote:
| While Reddit is hardly a representative sample, it's not a
| bad example - and there is basically zero vindictive
| content on https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers/
| caeril wrote:
| This happens, yes, But oftentimes preppers start off from
| rational or at least semi-rational bases, but then entrench
| themselves in the psychology you describe due to the sunk-cost
| fallacy.
|
| For example: let's say you bought into Matt Simmons' peak oil
| hypothesis in 2008. The data is there. Hubbert's peak is a real
| phenomenon and mathematically, it _will_ eventually happen. So
| you moved off-grid, spun up a sustainable, regenerative
| ranching effort, and started rolling over long-dated NYMEX
| crude contracts, losing your savings slowly for a decade and a
| half, while tight oil technology expired your options
| worthless, every single month.
|
| Some people might say ok, I was wrong. Shit. Time to get back
| to the real world.
|
| But many more of them will convince themselves no, it's just
| the timing, I was just a little early. See the Bakken and Eagle
| Ford production is already peaking, and the Permian Basin will
| peak in just a couple more years. THEN I'll be right. I have to
| be right. July 2025 will be my swan song. I'm going to go watch
| The Big Short again.
|
| Humans are gonna human. And I suspect you're going to see a LOT
| more of the left-leaning, tech-bro type of this prepper
| emerging due to climate change concerns than you will of the
| traditional Bible-beating Soviet-EMP style of prepper in the
| coming decade.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It will be quite amusing if peak oil comes about because
| demand has fallen rather than supply.
| wizofaus wrote:
| That seems to be almost certain now. I'll admit I'd
| followed the debate fairly closely for a while and was
| convinced by the arguments that an oil supply crunch was
| going to have a fairly dramatic effect on civilisation as
| we knew it. It may still happen, but it seems a fairly
| minor risk compared to many of the others. But I never
| really considered prepping - if some sort of dramatic
| collapse does occur I'd rather just ride it out as best as
| I can with family and friends and local communities going
| through the same thing. I don't expect it to be at all
| pretty but nor do I think it'll be all bad.
| toofy wrote:
| > And I suspect you're going to see a LOT more of the left-
| leaning, tech-bro type of this prepper emerging due to
| climate change concerns...
|
| while i'm sure we'll see an uptick, i don't think we'll see
| anything like we did with the previous batch of paranoid
| types.
|
| the modern left is much more about "we need to rely on and
| help each other" rather than the "im gonna become a
| survivalist and die alone in the woods."
|
| and honestly, anyone who thinks going off alone is somehow
| the intelligent move is fooling themselves and obviously
| hasn't thought it through. we know this. we have thousands of
| years of evidence of this. when we come together we thrive.
| when we go off in the woods to show how "strong-boot-straps"
| we are, we die of an infected toe nail or something equally
| as stupid. that's why every survivalist disaster "expert"
| recommends to prepare for disaster _with your neighbors in
| your town_ to help each other and distribute the load. it's
| not rocket surgery.
|
| again, i'm sure we'll see a slight uptick in every type, but
| nothing like we did in the past, i think we learned too much
| from watching their mistakes. we've seen too many shows and
| videos of people with even strong survival skills be
| absolutely miserable off on in isolation.
| homlihopil wrote:
| I think youre projecting. I think they do it because it's fun.
| A hobby. Just add a challenge to daily life for literally the
| fun of it.
| dudul wrote:
| Laugh all you want, but during the worst months of covid, when
| some items were impossible to find, I was all stocked. And my
| neighbors were very grateful that I was able to help them
| procure some necessary things. Most preppers don't do it to be
| ready for the zombie apocalypse, but just for when the SHTF
| just enough that you can't count on the government showing up
| this very week.
| jraph wrote:
| Many items that went missing did because people stocked out
| of fear they would go missing.
|
| It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I've got a whole hypothesis around this, but without getting
| too political... your statement "a way for people to feel like
| they have some sense of control over their future in a world
| they are disillusioned with" fits really well with the people
| I've met via real estate who are looking for these types of
| properties. At the root, they are scared and this kind of
| lifestyle is a way for them to channel that fear.
|
| Ironically though, every cabin in the woods / prepper camp that
| I've seen as a real estate agent, wouldn't even last someone
| through a winter. Still way too many reliances on the modern
| world. Oh you've got a giant water tank and a well, but the
| pump (or your generator) runs on _gas_? Yeah good luck with
| that. Ok you 've got a year's supply of freeze-dried meals, but
| no greenhouse, no setup for animals, no access to hunting,
| so... how are you going to produce more food? So you've got
| woodpile, but no more trees on your property and your only
| source of heat is a wood stove, so...
|
| It's good to be prepared - earthquakes, tornadoes, and
| certainly fires are going to continue to be a thing. But I feel
| a kind of sadness for a lot of these folks who have survivalist
| fantasies that are a manifestation of their fears.
| [deleted]
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| There's a part of me that feels the urge to prepare for
| disaster. And yet I know it's a reaction to fears I have that
| won't be helped by being prepared. My main concern is that
| one of many possible AGI disasters will come to pass. None of
| them are really solved by prepping. But I can speak to this
| being driven by fear, at least for myself.
|
| To be honest, I have fantasies -- but they are fantasies of a
| simpler life without all the craziness of the world. Or
| rather, if I had to spend all my time getting food and
| staying alive for the next few days, I wouldn't have a lot of
| mental energy to worry about all the ways that things could
| go really badly that I _don 't_ have any control over.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I see what's being described in this thread as at least
| three different things:
|
| 1) Disaster preparedness, like you are describing, as a
| sane and prudent thing for many people and places. Know
| your local conditions and put in place some resources you
| could use if there were a fire / tornado / earthquake
| (whatever your local threat) for some period of time.
|
| 2) Simple living. That is, if there are things you can do
| that make you more self-sufficient and create pleasure,
| then go for it. Many people plant a garden, raise some
| chickens, etc not because they are prepping for the end of
| the world but because they enjoy it.
|
| 3) Actual off-grid preppers - people who for one reason or
| another plan for some time in which they will need to be
| entirely self-sufficient and may even wish to explicitly
| separate themselves from other people (war, zombie
| apocalypse, etc).
|
| I think it's really just this third category that raises
| eyebrows and questions.
| lightbritefight wrote:
| Another layer to this is that even if they have an active
| hobby farm that is self-sustaining, do they have medical
| skills? Can they set a broken leg, deliver a baby, and pull a
| rotted tooth? Do they have the technical skills to maintain
| various equipment, even if its renewable?
|
| The irony for a lot of the prepper community is that the most
| efficient "off grid" social structure is concept that they
| strongly oppose, the commune. A small community working
| together for a common good in a shared space.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The irony for a lot of the prepper community is that the
| most efficient "off grid" social structure is concept that
| they strongly oppose, the commune. A small community
| working together for a common good in a shared space.
|
| I have a feeling that the opposition of preppers to the
| commune is a rather US-American thing. In other countries I
| rather sense that some kind of small commune is at least
| accepted as a necessary evil among preppers to increase the
| chance of success/survival.
| convolvatron wrote:
| as a counter-opinion, to the extent that I think about such
| things - it gives one a sense of agency. Almost certainly a
| false one. But the notion that I could have some control over
| my own life as my trust in the support network around me erodes
| is a small comfort.
| creeble wrote:
| See also: toilet paper shortages at the outbreak of a
| pandemic, etc.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| The toilet paper thing/general hoarding is heavily
| misunderstood.
|
| I was/am a massive covid skeptic. None of the data made
| sense to me, from February into the summer of 2020. Im also
| unvaccinated for covid now.
|
| But when lockdowns were starting... My family bought tons
| of supplies. Amounts you'd call insane or who knows what.
|
| Do you know why I bought a lot of toilet paper and food and
| salt and flour??
|
| In case I was wrong about covid.
|
| If covid turned out to be as bad as the media was talking
| about (videos of Chinese people shaking in the streets,
| newspapers in Italy full of obituaries, morgues full and
| digging mass dirt graves on islands), I wasnt about to go
| back out into ebolla-ville and buy paper to wipe my ass.
|
| Everyone presented it like hoarders were stupid to think
| supply lines in America would break down. That wasn't the
| point.
|
| If covid was actually deadly and easy to transmit, I
| wouldn't want to go into the streets to restock items even
| if they were technically in the stores.
| mikestew wrote:
| _If covid turned out to be as bad as the media..._
|
| And the unwritten point being, if it turned out to be not
| so bad, your worst case is that you have a bunch of
| toilet paper that doesn't have an expiration date (or
| food you were going to eat anyway, or salt and flour that
| keeps for a _long_ time, et al.). COVID skeptic or not,
| it seemed to be the smart hedge.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| Exactly. But the people who stocked up were labeled as
| some kind of idiots and nutjobs that didn't trust the
| system, by the exact people who swore the system was
| correct about the severity of covid.
|
| Call it anti-social if you want, but don't call people
| preparing for health preservation stupid.
| jraph wrote:
| I would not call them stupid, but they massively
| contributed to the shortage.
| scruple wrote:
| We had this tropical storm in SoCal last weekend. It was
| confusing to see people crowing that they didn't suffer any
| damage as some sort of victory in being right (which is also
| confusing, because they were conflating awareness of the storm
| with panic) rather than luck that the storm changed paths, etc.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I try and search my feelings a bit for this sort of thing, and
| what you describe probably does play a bit of a factor - I'd
| say it's more of an "I told you so" feeling.
|
| But the thing is that I am truly worried to my core about
| global warming and I have been for more than a decade at this
| point. This year has brought anomalies that are terrifying and
| I think the majority of people at least now feel that something
| is going wrong. I don't _want_ to see collapse - I like my
| showers and air conditioning as much as anyone. But the way
| things are just looks more and more precarious to me.
| tenpies wrote:
| > global warming
|
| The fun realization for me has been that we're in a no-win
| scenario now. Even if climate change (which has been re-
| defined) is overly-stated, the policies that are being and
| will continue to be enacted as a response to it, guarantee
| immense suffering for billions and a general decline in
| quality of life.
|
| The good news is that you can mitigate for much of the
| consequences by simply not being in the West, ideally in a
| commodity rich country.
| abenga wrote:
| Exactly what has been enacted to reduce anyone's quality of
| life? Electrifying appliances and transport? Most of the
| alternatives are literally strictly better than the fossil
| powered equivalents.
| PeterisP wrote:
| > The good news is that you can mitigate for much of the
| consequences by simply not being in the West, ideally in a
| commodity rich country.
|
| That's interesting, my impression has been entirely the
| opposite, that Global South is going to suffer the worst of
| the consequences; as most parts of the West can afford to
| mitigate the effects with large investments in
| infrastructure and for western countries these consequences
| are outweighed by secondary-order effects i.e. migration
| and conflicts due to the more affected places.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| If we do nothing about climate change the everybody's
| quality of life is going to fall off a cliff. We can fix
| this problem without going back to the dark ages.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Many I know just want to be the last ride. So no regrets. No
| pointing and laughing just 'after me who cares'. Most I heard
| that from are parents.
| dvh wrote:
| They want to live in a world without consequences.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| Wrong. They're planning for when SHTF, which is the ultimate
| consequence to the stupidity they feel is present in modern
| life and government.
| yabbs wrote:
| They want to live in a world with severe consequences.... A
| world to make up for the last 70 years.
| barrysteve wrote:
| Your obversations might be true, the cynical bend is
| offputting.
|
| The problem is living 'off grid' is not new. Monasteries have
| been doing it for a while. Boomers have been doing it for a
| while. The article drives home a sense of hopelessness about
| the whole affair.
|
| If a war ever broke out, I'd much prefer to be living in the
| countryside like a ww2 british mom in a roald dahl novel, than
| sitting next to the local recruitment office and thirsty
| government official making "no, sir" a very difficult
| proposition indeed.
|
| I know ww2 references are basically irrelevant in this day and
| age, but given the articles bleak outlook, it seems that the
| Hope of living offgrid in world war 2 and the infinite
| religious commitment of a Monastery, though difficult, is
| somehow more realistic _and_ a tonal 'step up' from an
| American blogger in 2023.
|
| I don't know how that happened, but here we are.
| dagenleg wrote:
| Would you never consider actually serving in the army, if the
| war breaks out?
| danans wrote:
| > The problem is living 'off grid' is not new. Monasteries
| have been doing it for a while
|
| To the contrary, monasteries were very often at the nexus of
| trade, serving as the middle-men between peasants who
| produced goods and markets in larger cities [1][2].
| Monasteries were on every grid available in their day - road,
| communication, etc. They were even connected to social grids
| to recruit new monks.
|
| 1. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1301/trade-in-
| medieval-...
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yQ0VGuQDo&list=PL5opbjxU
| R5...
| yencabulator wrote:
| Monasteries also had chaplains whose literal job was to
| interconnect with the outside world. A monastery near a
| city could have half a dozen chaplains.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain
| lezojeda wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I rather enjoyed the book Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. It
| considers all these problems in depth through it's narrative.
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