That said, I strongly believe that the panic felt in some corners specifically about climate change is laughably overstated compared to what its nearly imperceptible impact on peoples' lives will actually be. The current climate change predictions are as accurate as the decades worth of other failed environmental predictions I lived through.
Live Life. Find love. Make babies. Make money. Touch grass. Make art. Don't sacrifice your life to even more induced fear.
The predictions would ideally fail, and that's because people take them seriously. It's fine for you to not take action, as long as someone does.
Singapore props up the land around their area to prevent rising sea levels. Not everyone can do this. Indonesia chooses to migrate their capital city away from Jakarta. It affects some professions - fossil fuels companies will have to become energy companies.
As long as the larger organizations consider it a priority, I think we'll be fine. But in many places, they do not, and that's where we have to take action. Like someone said on a meteor thread, if a meteor was going to hit Houston, most people will just ignore the warning.
The reason it was a crisis was because of overcrowded hospitals. Even with the lockdowns, we had critically ill people being treated on the floor. There's death counts and there were people who would have just died if they weren't put to sleep.
The places that spent the least were likely the areas that didn't have old people or had a good density of health services to people.
I'm surprised this isn't just a straightforward analogy; I thought everyone lost plenty of friends and family to COVID. Statista puts the death toll at 6.8 million even with the measures we had in place.
Like the fire on Maui, you need to be prepared and pay more for the metal roof, backup power and keep growth away from your house. That’s how you prepare for climate change there. In Florida you hurricane proof your house and make sure your builder doesn’t cheat you. In Arizona you might need to store water during the dry season. In California you generate your own power for brownouts. Every Region has a different threat from climate change that you can buy your way out of it just costs more than some people will be able to afford
You also may be interested in the article "Doomsday planning for less crazy folk". [2] It has been previously discussed on HN [3], and it's also been expanded into a book titled "Practical Doomsday". [4]
I'm personally advocating for tighter border controls. It has the immediate effect of helping with stagnating real wages, and might also help with the contingent problem of climate migrants.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism
- I built a pantry and stocked it with foods for storage. Beans and cheerios and powdered milk, etc. It turns out that in addition to these, I eat perishable foods, so I routinely had to go to the grocery store anyway. And while I was there, I bought regular milk, because eww.
- I bought a bunch of 5-gallon carboys and filled them up with water in case, y'know, the apocalypse. Never had a water problem (thankfully).
- I stocked up on bleach, masks, and other PPE. And of course it turned out the bleach wasn't super useful because the virus spread mainly through the air. The masks were the only effective prep I made, but then I felt extremely bad about hoarding them from healthcare workers and old people and ended up giving them away.
My point is, there's a wide range of scenarios between public health crisis and full-blown Mad Max. Not preparing for a specific one of these is preparing for none of them, and preparing for a specific one is not preparing for all the others.
These are coincidentally the same areas that get flooded every other year. Some are very developed areas. The city council gets blamed for flash floods. But I don't expect a bunch of bureaucrats to be able to fight off Mr Nimbus.
So when we bought a house, we made sure to avoid these areas. I don't think we're the only ones. The areas on higher ground were more expensive, even the less developed ones. I expect land prices to shoot up over the next 50 years as people get displaced from major cities.
It focuses on DIY, low-tech sustainability stuff at the household/neighborhood/village level. It's not really a prepper site, more of a bunch of "why not" projects that can help improve local sustainability, resilience, and community -- worth doing even if the world doesn't go to shit.
Some of it (like photovoltaics, aka solar power) depend on industrialized processes and electronics, while others like rocket stoves, rainwater catchment, sand filters for water cleaning, and passive cooling/heating just need basic everyday materials.
But it's also in line with a general direction my life is going: become more self-reliant, moving away from big masses of people, enjoying life @ a slower pace, reduce environmental footprint, etc. Like:
-Obtain materials & practice with collecting rainwater as drinking water.
-Keep at least several weeks (drinking/cooking) water & a month or more food stored. No special 'prepper' items, just the food you normally buy. And in my case, not using fridge/freezer for that.
-Same for fuel.
-Solar panel (some power generation for any type of off-grid situation). Plus batteries (~800 Wh here) for storing that energy. Smaller batteries (AA, 18650 etc) for things like flashlights or a portable radio: all rechargeable.
Don't count on running all your appliances (unless your whole roof is covered in solar panels). But when AC goes out, having some power for low power devices (eg. phone, flashlights, portable radio) is very very much better than having no way to power those.
-Some gear for low(er) power computing. Probably not a big concern if things get really bad. But useful in any off-grid situation.
-Keep some cash on hand @ all times.
Basically I'm not too scared about Mad Max scenarios. More like making sure I'm ahead of the curve when riots break out, or supply chains break down. When other people would be looting supermarkets for stuff like bottled water, batteries or toilet paper, being able to hang back & sit it out for a month or more, gives a lot of peace of mind. That in itself is worth the prep work.
So (imho) you shouldn't prepare for specific scenario's. Just make sure you have basics like water, food, fuel & (a bit of) power covered for a while when supplies of those break down. Tailored to your situation. A few weeks is a lot of 'lead time' to make other arrangements. And avoids having to fight people over last items on store shelves.
Other things to keep in mind: cooking, temporary shelter (tent, car, boat, ..), transport, sanitation, medicines / first aid kit, hand tools to build/mod/improvise stuff.
Should things get even worse: I have grown my own food @ various times. That's not rocket science.