"Is It Thunderdome Yet?" A Rolling Looming Apocalypse Thread

Don't worry about guns, worry about water.

this is the best advice i've heard about the future tbh

All collapse scenarios are borderline 'whatever, we're dead anyway' to me, given the nuclear arsenal. If we hit Visigoths sacking Rome levels of collapse and decay, I assume the planet will be obliterated by ICBMs.

no way, i'm confident that every single one of the 10,000+ active nuclear warheads worldwide will be safely disarmed and disposed of in an environmentally friendly way without ever being used, nothing to worry about

eyeroll.jpg

you're rolling your eyes at a guy who has at least 6 months of food (canned, dried, or freeze-dried), about 150 gallons of stored water, plus 6 water filters on hand at all times. We have a cord and a half of wood, a kerosene heater, lots of tents and other camping gear, etc. We have mainly aimed at getting through the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake (predicted at ~9.1 richter) with the minimum achievable travail and dislocation, but we started discussing major societal risks back during Y2K. One irony is that preparing for the earthquake has probably required more planning and expense than our Y2K preparations, which were maybe a third of what we now maintain.

But the idea of "prepping" in the general population is widely contaminated by the belief that it only pertains to the survivalist contingent, the types who wear camouflage to the grocery store. Getting them to a more reasonable sense of the fragility of the consumer machinery that keeps them comfortable, without sounding like a wingnut, is a worthwhile and strategic approach.

I hope to die right away in any kind of major disaster scenario. In the event of a slower, broader societal collapse I hope to go swiftly in an anti-Jewish pogrom and it looks like that's getting going so I really have no incentive to prep for anything.

xp -btw, a fair bit of our supplies are intended for our neighbors, should they need them.

silby, you can't rely on some convenient falling brick or obliging bigot to do a competent job. if you do plan to check out, I suggest you do some research and prepare to do the job yourself, in a pinch.

I’m not planning on it per se I just have no interest in surviving any such thing, too much work

Aimless: you miss the point again, the eyeroll was w/r/t your pedantry as to the proper thread for this discussion.

I also learned a lot during the Y2K dry run, your setup sounds pretty solid, and I agree with your overall take aside from your usual air of detached omniscience.

Perhaps it would be helpful to delineate some preparedness levels:

1. grab-and-go kit or "bugout bag", something you can take with you that's all in a bag or backpack. Food, water purifier, toilet paper, etc.

2. weathering an extended period of supply disruption or power outage, a.k.a. earthquake prep as per Aimless's setup and what I aspire to be prepared for.

3. trying to survive the end times, which as Sanpaku notes probably has more to do with overall water access than anything else.

I'm mainly interested in the first two, the 3rd is largely speculative at this point aside from, like, thinking about where you live and why.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/03/so-much-land-under-so-much-water-extreme-flooding-is-drowning-parts-of-the-midwest

I see these stories (or those about farmers suffering under the trade war) and immediately think, which candidate did they vote for, did their elected reps support disaster relief after Sandy, etc. This political era is costing me my humanity.

Same here. Part of me is glad the people who've helped this all happen are actually starting to feel the consequences, rather than it all happening to Bangladeshis, etc.

https://voiceofaction.org/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/

climate scientists otm

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/07/vietnam-records-highest-ever-temperature-of-441c

we've reached the beginning of Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For The Future cool cool
(I am not as hopeful as KSR about how that turns out)

Yeah iirc he has a lot of faith in India really coming through politically which, lol

https://kval.com/news/offbeat/sriracha-bottles-selling-as-high-as-80-on-ebay-amazon-amid-shortage-crazy-prices-sauce-hot-huy-fong-food-ridiculous-07-13-2023#

that link might seem flippant but imho this is just the tip of the iceberg re: shortages and unavailability

yeah, people who want to sneer at it 'just being sriracha bottles' now will have a rude awakening in a few years

My understanding is they tried to defraud a supplier and that led to their current problems, this isn't a polycrisis story.

Just make your own chili garlic sauce, fresh is best.

I thought I'd read that the sriracha people not only got into a conflict with distributors, but attempted to grow their own supply of peppers and failed, or at least fell short. Anyway, this isn't the first sriracha shortage in the last few years, iirc, and reportedly no other hot sauces or pepper sauces are facing the same supply issues, so I suspect this is indeed something internal.

good to know!

otoh this doesn't sound so great

Tornado damages Pfizer plant in North Carolina, will likely lead to long-term shortages of medicine

Drought affecting Panama Canal threatens 40% of world's cargo ship traffic