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Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

213 points by f- 11y ago

DanBlake 11y ago
I run a site that deals with alot of these people. I look at it like a risk vs reward. I think for the vast amount of calamity's that could happen, you only need to 'survive' for about 6 months before things would stabilize. If after 6 months you are still in trouble, chances are you are not going to particularly enjoy life moving forward anyways. So with those thoughts, it almost seems prudent to just buy 1k in freeze dried food ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES-RESERVE-10-CANS-CASES-FREEZE-DRIED-SURVIVAL-/231806997821 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES-R...? ) which can last you a year if needed. The only other things you really need is water (tons of purification options out there). The next steps are protection and information. You can get a firearm for about 500$ with ample ammo and a world radio with a solar charger for 100$.
- f- 11y ago
  The page talks about it a bit, but in an attempt to differentiate itself from the usual, mildly paranoid "prepper" content, it does its best not to get hung up on more outlandish scenarios, such as fighting off zombies and surviving for months without water and food. I basically tried to approach it from the perspective of threat modeling / risk management for real life; and by that metric, incidents such as losing a job are far more likely than a zombie apocalypse. I have seen far too many people in the Silicon Valley discover that the hard way :-(
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    Prepping is a hobby and its supposed to be fun. Fantasizing about fighting zombies, or dropping everything(mundane life/boring job), grabbing your SHTF bag and adventuring into the mountains is fun. It is a modern version of D&D/Larp.
  - hanniabu 11y ago
    I feel a lot of people want to prep, but there's a social stigma around preppers as they're usually associated with conspiracy followers (the crazy type) and therefore use zombies as a way to lighten the tone and make it more socially acceptable. You're now prepping for a cool zombie fighting apocalypse instead of some scenario such as martial law or natural disaster, which people tend to think you mean some Day After Tomorrow event rather than realistic event like flodoing/earthquake that could lead to mass power outages and spread of resource thievery/violence/gangs.
    - chiph 11y ago
      It doesn't even have to be zombies. If you live in an area of the country with foreseeable natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes even), it makes sense to have at least some shelf-stable food and bottled water in the house. Enough to get you through a couple of weeks. Extra credit for installing off-grid solar, and a water reclamation system that can be used for showers and toilet flushing. Both of which also have benefits during everyday life. Story time: After Hurricane Fran came through Raleigh, I was driving on I-440 and was passing a long line of cars driving really slowly. When I get to the head of it, it turns out they were all following a Triangle Ice truck to it's next stop, so they could load up their coolers and preserve the contents of their refrigerators (the power still being out in parts of the city).
      - hanniabu 11y ago
        A lot of people have a more ignorant outlook. In the winter I always keep some water, body warmers, salt, blanket, and some other basic supplies(utility knife, lighter, whistle, flashlight, etc) in the trunk of my car because a group of friend and I tend to go hiking in the back country a lot with little to no cell service and sometimes it can snow out of nowhere. This is some basic covering your own ass stuff, but I'm look at like I'm crazy. If the car gets breaks down or it starts snowing when we're a few hours out and come back to a snowed in car or icy steep roads, I'd rather have everything I need to either hang in the car and wait it out until the next day or make a few mile hike to a house we saw down the mountain or access road.
    - 11y ago
  - hanniabu 11y ago
    In reference to the zombies... I'll come back and post the link if I can find the reference, but apparently real life zombies are somewhat possible. A few years back (2008ish?), I read an article about a German scientist that was able to alter rabies so that humans don't die when they get it. The resulting claim was that they would become super aggressive and attack others, similar to rabid animals, and would create a zombie-like virus. Granted you won't see humans walking around with half their limbs off after dying, but I thought it was interesting how the claim was that it could essentially create a World War Z type of scenario. Now idk how much of this is true, but I'm almost certain I read it on phys.org, which if I did, would lead me to believe that it's a valid article. I'll see if I can find the link tomorrow.
    - hanniabu 11y ago
      Getting a lot of hate for this comment... Couldn't find the article I read, could very well be that it wasn't on phys.org and was just a bullshit article. However, here is an article where scientists mention that it could be possible to one day exist: www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112964783/zombie-virus-could-be-reality-exclusive-100213/
    - Merad 11y ago
      A long term World War Z or The Walking Dead scenario just can't happen without the sci-fi "undead" component. A "rage virus" producing effects like in World War Z would probably devastate society, but within a week or so most of the infected would be so weak from hunger that they were not a significant threat, and a few weeks after that they'd all be dead from some combination of starvation/dehydration/exposure.
      - soylentcola 11y ago
        Yeah, that's the bit where I always have to remind myself that it's meant to be "hand waved" away in those stories. I watch The Walking Dead and start rambling about how they started off talking about some virus/agent that kills the brain and "restarts" just the drive to eat and kill. Even so, without the fantasy aspects, there's just no way that a living body (regardless of how crazed or hijacked by a pathogen) would still be able to move around after the organs are damaged or deprived of blood. The closest thing to a zombie outbreak would be some sort of plague like rabies or encephalitis that makes you lose your mind and then kills you. If it was virulent enough and hard enough to treat you'd end up with huge disruptions but more like any other massive pandemic. The whole bit about victims somehow sticking around for months or years, waiting to infect more people is just impossible as far as I can tell.
  - Nexxxeh 11y ago
    Zombies are used in the survivalist/prepper community as a euphemism for people looking to take your stuff. Because describing how to defend your home against humans can be legally risky, and off-putting. With the exception of the actually crazy, people aren't actually talking about zombies. It also injects a degree of humour.
    - f- 11y ago
      Sure, and I'm using "space zombies" humorously, to broadly refer to all sorts of apocalyptic / TEOTWAWKI scenarios that many hardcore preppers are preoccupied with. Most prepper guides devote a lot of time to societal collapse, complete self-sufficiency, urban combat, and wilderness survival topics, while dedicating much less attention to more pragmatic risks that one can prepare for without making profound lifestyle changes or buying a farm.
      - LoSboccacc 11y ago
        buying a farm is a huge huge risk tho, isn't it? in a scenario where society truly collapse, at least, it makes you a prime target. I'd like the other approach more: secret stash, going dark for a year, wait for tribes to stabilize the territory they control, emerge with some useful skill and bargain access/protection of a well armed/established tribe.
        maxerickson 11y ago
        You could barter out access to land in exchange for mutual defense. Any sort of real collapse is going to be accompanied by a lack of diesel and there aren't a whole lot of draft animals around, so farming is probably going to involve quite a lot of human labor.
        dkersten 11y ago
        If I were to prepare for an apocalypse scenario, I would hoard bottled water, canned food, ammunition, and fuel. Roughly prioritised in that order. Possibly also batteries. I feel like these are the things that will become scarce and valuable. Or at least help survival (food/water + ammunition). This makes them useful to me and also useful for bartering. Of course, my stash needs to be safe both from the apocalypse scenario itself (will it still be in usable condition after a nuclear explosion, for example?) and from other survivors. It also needs to be somewhere I can actually get to it (safely). This, coupled with the fact that I would need large enough quantities of these items makes it rather difficult. But, regardless, that is my I haven't done anything about it and likely never will plan to survive the apocalypse.
- XorNot 11y ago
  This still falls foul of the simple numbers problem: there's going to be more people without then with, that's why its a disaster in the first place. Now, humans are social animals - we naturally form groups. And the group which will have the most necessity is anyone without sufficient immediate resources. And who has the most resources? Why, the guy with 6 months of food rations. 6 months of food rations will feed him for 6 months, or my group of 30 for 6 days - which gives us say, 10 days to find more. The real question in that scenario then, is how stupid is the guy with 6 months of supplies planning to be about distribution? A much better risk-mitigation plan is this: either die preventing the catastrophe, or prevent it.
  - forrestthewoods 11y ago
    How do I prevent the Cascadia earthquake?
    - XorNot 11y ago
      Vote for earthquake preparedness programs, neighborhood initiatives, plan for an actual realistic disaster like that and not some absurd "everyone for themselves" survival scenario? You achieve a lot more campaigning for community preparedness then stockpiling beans. Make more friends too.
      - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
        Absolutely the most insightful comment this side of Texas. And applicable to disaster preparedness and terrorist actions and banking failures
- ars 11y ago
  If you are looking for freeze dried food then http://shop.honeyville.com/ http://shop.honeyville.com/ is a good place to buy. They also sell bulk quantities of food ingredients that are otherwise pretty expensive to buy.
mitchtbaum 11y ago
> But the universe is a harsh mistress, and there is only so much faith we should be putting in good fortune, in benevolent governments, or in the wonders of modern technology. So, always have a backup plan. Has Nature been unfaithful to us?(!!) A mother must discipline her children. As far as I've seen, she does it out of love, even when it hurts. She simply wants her children to grow up, far beyond what limits and mistakes they currently make, preferably before getting burned. --- Thanks for this great post.. For more reliable lifestyle info, you can find a treasure trove at http://survivalistboards.com http://survivalistboards.com , and if you just want to kick back and listen to some great dialogues before stepping up: http://thesurvivalpodcast.com http://thesurvivalpodcast.com , James Wesley Rawles, Cody Lundin, Marjory Wildcraft, peakmoment, wildernessoutfitters, wranglerstar, ferfal, INETeconomics, ...
Outdoorsman 11y ago
The author touches on a lot of important points, without going overboard, and the article is worth reviewing as a list of things to consider if the SHTF, for whatever reason... Tailoring a "plan" to fit your individual circumstances is probably the key take-away... Putting yourself in a position to provide the big four--water, food, shelter, and security--for a month for yourself and those dear to you is not incredibly expensive or time consuming....
- deleted 11y ago
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xirdstl 11y ago
> Insolvency. If a person over the age of 40 tells you that they have never lost a job, they are pretty lucky (or lying). I know a lot of lucky people then. It's absolutely smart to be prepared in the case you lose your job, but is it really that rare to make it 40+ without getting fired or laid off?
- Rantenki 11y ago
  For this audience? Yes. Startups have finite lifespans, and even when they succeed they are likely to go through a period of upheaval which could involve job instability. I've been laid off several times in the last 20 years, always due to either the company running out of runway, or being pivoted out of a job.
  - xirdstl 11y ago
    For the audience of Hacker News? Maybe. "Less crazy folk" encompasses a much wider group, though, I'd wager.
    - ekianjo 11y ago
      And I'd add that not everyone reading Hacker News is working at a startup either. There's a bunch of folks from large, stable companies checking HN as well.
ekianjo 11y ago
> Global thermonuclear war (Alas Babylon, Mad Max, Fallout), Pretty poor choice of references here. In terms of movies, "The Day After" is the most viewed movie of all time, and certainly one of the best references for the impact of Global Thermonuclear war and what happens next on an individual level if you even make it. Mad Max is a fiction as best that has about nothing to do with thermonuclear war (it just serves as a background to start the story, but you can't see any of its consequences). A little shocked the author did not mention it at all.
- madengr 11y ago
  Threads was much better, and far more depressing, than The Day After.
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    For reasons I still don't fully understand our science teacher showed us that film when I was about fifteen, and some of the scenes in it still haunt me. I slightly blame it for my fascination with post-apocalyptica (and if that's not a word, it should be). This was in the late nineties, so long after the world was expecting nuclear war at any moment, so I have no idea why she showed it - parts of it she refused to watch, so I assume it wasn't just that she wasn't aware quite his brutal it is.
    - camperman 11y ago
      The calm official-sounding voiceover in Threads is the worst part of it all I reckon. It just gives it the feel of a documentary which makes it even scarier.
      - madengr 11y ago
        Appears to be on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8197B8DEF93FC7D9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8197B8DEF93FC7D9
- deleted 11y ago
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Adlai 11y ago
No mention of Bitcoin? Oh right, the experiment failed. Too bad, too bad.
dalke 11y ago
Why didn't any of the planning include participation in emergency preparedness organizations, or funding watchdog organizations to make sure that services are mismanaging their resources (e.g, Pro Publica and NPR's exposes on the American Red Cross, at http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disaster http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disas... and https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-... ). The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government. It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home". Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems. In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful. On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events. Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had? When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution? BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts. What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes or http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.
hackercomplex 11y ago
I'll just leave this here.. http://www.freightfarms.com/ http://www.freightfarms.com/ it's an example of how the startup ecosystem is attempting to disrupt some of the areas of concern that fuel the 'survival culture'. here's another example: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn-gotham-greens-turns-rooftops-into-urban-farms/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn-gotham-gr... I personally can't wait to see this urban agriculture technology arrive in every city coast to coast, so that collectively we aren't so dependent on "just in time shipping" grocery store infrastructure. I do think that this day is on the horizon, but until then I personally try not to think of people as 'crazy' when they feel the need to get their beans, bullets, and band-aids squared away.
- f- 11y ago
  Oh, I don't think that trying to prepare for historically plausible contingencies is crazy - quite the opposite - but it's definitely easy to approach it in a haphazard, disorganized, or wasteful way. The Bay Area culture definitely has a distinct aura of invincibility to it, though; we have many young folks, including immigrants with no familial safety nets and a messy legal status, living paycheck to paycheck while working in a very volatile industry on exorbitant salaries. And all that next door to an active seismic fault =) Elsewhere, especially in rural America, the prepper culture seems a lot stronger, perhaps owing to the echoes of the Cold War. It always shocked me that the movement is virtually non-existent in Europe (where I grew up); if you look at their history, they certainly have more to worry about.
  - hackercomplex 11y ago
    I wonder though, do we really have a "prepper culture", or is that phrase merely a rebranding, of traditional (pre WWII) American farm/household values ? For example when I talk to my 80 year old grandmother about what it was like growing up 20 miles outside of a major American metro, she speaks about canning, maintaining a very large pantry, community agriculture, raising animals, making their own clothing, hunting deer and preserving the meat long term, making their own bullets, etc. My suspicion is that what you're observing in rural america is merely a continuation of the ordinary way of life that has always existed here. What I suspect is that over decades PR firms and major brands have executed a rebranding of the old ways, attempting to recast it as 'paranoia culture' or some form of political radicalism. Their campaign likely involves emphasizing the small paranoid faction of this much larger culture on their TV shows and pop media. I hope that doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory, because that's not at all what I mean, it's just an effective marketing technique. After all families who are oriented towards saving for a rainy day don't come into the grocery stores to buy the expensive pre-packaged foodstuffs which drive all the margins. Therefor in order to increase shareholder value you have to find ways to break down the traditional values (and way of life) so that it can be replaced with predictable consumer behaviors and 'brand loyalty'. My point is that the reason why you don't see this in europe isn't because the behaviors are different but merely because the advertising techniques are different in America so the lexicon is different. All of this is starting to change though. A new culture is forming thanks the Internet, and people are starting to care again, about issues like community agriculture. You can start to see it being recognized (in satire) even on the major TV networks. Their airwaves are starting to be jammed by our Internet meme culture, and as a consequence people are beginning to care, again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWQE4ZpMWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWQE4ZpMWI YES IT'S LOCAL GODDAMNIT
jcrawfordor 11y ago
There are a number of 'official' resources on this as well, including a variety of publications of FEMA and ARC, e.g.: http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4440181_Food_and_Water-English.revised_7-09.pdf http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4... It's useful to peruse publications of these agencies in depth in order to understand what the government and NGOs plan to do in the case of major disasters - when you're planning for scenarios that don't involve the government turning on you, you should understand what these organizations will and will not be able to do for you. Hint: while they will try very hard, do not count on government or NGOs coming in with plenty of supplies particularly quickly. ARC emphasizes being prepared for 72 hours without aid, and I think this is a lowest-common-denominator strategy. It will take longer when there is serious infrastructure damage, even assuming that everything goes to plan. One of my major concerns with the prepper community though is that they frequently overemphasize your own property. The most common type of disaster to affect people, by a huge margin, is home fire. The most likely disaster to happen to you is your house burning down. So while stocking supplies in your house is a great idea, do not take it too far: be sure that you absolutely minimize irreplaceable items in your home. If your house burns down, have a plan for where you will go for temporary housing, make sure that you will be able to access money for food (don't keep it all under your mattress!), etc. Have a longer-term plan for smooth economic recovery. Important documents like deeds and titles are almost certainly safer in a bank vault than in your own home because of the careful fireproofing of these vaults. Anything of that sort that you keep in your home should be kept in some sort of fire safe (which should be watertight as well), but be aware that a cheap First Alert fire box will only be rated for less than one hour of exposure and probably won't last that long. You need to spend a lot of money for something with good fire durability.
- f- 11y ago
  Yup. In fact, the guide talks about home fires as one of the most significant dangers (right after going insolvent or getting hurt); and cites the 72 hour figure. It also highlights that some of the prepper ideas, such as stockpiling gasoline, actually make you less safe.
beachstartup 11y ago
back in the early 90s, they used to teach this stuff in schools here in california (earthquake prep). it wasn't crazy at all, it was widely accepted that you should have supplies for up to a week at home. i remember homework assignments in elementary school related to this. SF and LA were hit hard in 80s/90s by big earthquakes - that actually happened. i grew up less than 20 miles from northridge - i remember eating granola bars and boiling water after the northridge quake. this shit actually happened to me; i ate actual fucking granola bars that we kept in actual ziploc bags because our electricity actually didn't work and the stores were actually closed. we surely wouldn't have starved, but they sure did come in handy when you're hungry right after a huge earthquake. do you want to beg your neighbors for a snack? since that era we've had 2 genuine city-level SHTF situations (LA riots and Katrina, more if you count 9/11 and lesser storm systems) and for some reason preparedness has become less of a concern. 20 years pass and people just forget. memories are short. not mine. i know multiple people who had to defend their lives and livelihoods with guns. real, normal people who now work in tech like you and me, who had to stand on roof tops with guns, in the middle of LA. right next to downtown. imagine this happening in midtown manhattan, or market street in sf. it's sheer madness, and it actually happened. and i'm sure anyone in the other LA (louisiana) can tell the same kinds of stories. and where were the cops? that's right - nowhere to be found when the shit hits the fan. it can, and will, happen again. i think as you get older you start to realize just how tenuous civilized society really is and how quickly it can revert to an animalistic shitstorm. i keep several jerry cans of water and canned/dried food in my place, and am capable of defending myself. people think i'm crazy when i tell them i have this stuff. i think you're crazy if you don't. i know exactly what it's like to be woken up violently in the middle of the night and find that everything around you has gone straight to hell. http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-The-Northridge-Earthquake-240665071.html http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-The-Northri... 6:50 a.m.: Hundreds of gas main and water main breaks reported. Parts of LA and Ventura counties are without running water or gas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs
jqm 11y ago
Between Christmas and New Year a massive surprise blizzard hit the area I live in. We were on vacation and got home a few days later. We couldn't get back into town for 2 days because the roads were closed (snow in infrequent enough here the city and county don't have snow plow equipment). The neighbors called (they are in their late 70s). Half a mile down a dirt road they hadn't been able to get out for 3 days and were getting a little scared. We picked up a few groceries (the store shelves were pretty empty as trucks hadn't been able to get into town) and parked on the highway and hiked them in. Then it was hike half a mile through deep snow to the car parked on the highway for the next two days until the county managed to get the dirt road to our houses cleared. Very revealing experience. It's not a good idea to imagine technology or society is going to solve all problems in a timely manner. When things go bad on a massive scale, especially when it's unexpected, you are on very often on your own for a bit even in this day and age. It's a good idea to be at least mildly prepared.
sgt101 11y ago
The best thing about the apocalypse that I have read is Justin Cronin's "The Passage" - book one of a trilogy, I'm a little way into book 2 "The Twelve". Although, if The Passage were to happen all your preparations would be for naught!
timdeneau 11y ago
We come with pretty good default settings. Keep in shape, learn basic survival skills suitable to your climate, and keep a small kit of portable tools. If anything catastrophic happens, enable hunter-gatherer mode and start migrating. Our species did this for 95% of its existence, you’ll be fine.
- adrianN 11y ago
  For 95% percent of our existence, population density was waay lower than now. If shit hits the fan in a populated area, and no outside help can get in, people starve.
sirsar 11y ago
> Since the amount needed is directly proportional to how much you currently make, it makes relatively little difference if your household brings in $70k or $140k a year. I have to take issue with this. If your salary doubles, your needs do not double along with it. $100K is right around the 80th percentile of US household income. That means 80% of households (~250 million people) in the US are living on less than that. Maybe you can too, despite your paycheck being higher. And if your household's take-home pay suddenly increases from $70k to $140k, see if you can fight the urge to follow that increase with your spending habits. Keep the old car, pay off your debts, and save for a rainy day (layoff, medical emergency, etc). It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible.
- f- 11y ago
  The subsequent paragraphs address that, I think. It does not have to be this way, but the reality is that most people spend as much as they earn. You know, anecdotally, I talked to people in the Bay Area who claim that they couldn't really save any money even if they wanted to, because they were only making $120k a year. But I don't think it's a US-only phenomenon; it certainly happens in Europe, too. I suspect it comes down to a belief that a raise entitles you to a better life, right now: so you go out and buy more expensive groceries, get a nicer car, etc. I was actually raised in a fairly poor family and it's a habit I picked up very early on; took me a fair amount of work to overcome this.
  - lfowles 11y ago
    > It does not have to be this way, but the reality is that most people spend as much as they earn. The trick here is to make savings part of the spending (or in other words.. "budgeting").
- aianus 11y ago
  > It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible. If you're an average American who works 50h a week, 50 weeks out of the year, wouldn't you want to feel compensated for that? And not in green paper IOUs but in goods and services? Beyond having a rainy day fund and moderate retirement fund I don't really see the point in saving. You can't take it with you...
unoti 11y ago
I've done three things for emergency preparedness that are actually quite fun and I'd recommend to anyone: 1) Become a certified emergency medical responder. It's a one semester course you can take at your local community college. It's the first step to becoming an EMT if you want to keep going. You learn things including CPR, wound management, dealing with broken bones, heart attacks, car accidents, transporting patients, even emergency childbirth. I enjoyed the class immensely. Now I'm a lot less afraid of medical disasters because I have a plan and an impressive first aid kit, and I know how to use it. 2. Become an amature radio operator. As a technologist, it's fun to get in touch with my roots using older technology. I've been working on being able to operate using battery and solar panels, which has been a blast to learn about and experiment with. I can also operate portably while camping, bouncing waves off the atmosphere and back either towards the horizon to talk thousands of miles away, or straight up towards space and reflecting off the atmosphere back down to talk within a 300 mile range (this is called NVIS). Learning and practicing these skills is awesome fun. 3. Camping, and having the food water and equipment in hand to camp for several days. We have a few 7 gallon water tanks we use for camping which we keep full, in addition to our always evolving camping supplies. We take frequent camping trips. Doing these things is educational, challenging, enriching and fun! I encourage everyone to do it. It's also worth noting that you can get a ham radio for $40 that's higher power and will work at longer range than the FRS/GMRS radios. The FCC limits FRS radios to half a watt, and ham radios don't have that limit.
- linuxguy2 11y ago
  Do you have any specific suggestions for a radio like you describe?
  - CompuHacker 11y ago
    BaoFeng UV-5R and its newer variants.
  - deleted 11y ago
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zrail 11y ago
It's interesting that the author doesn't talk about insurance in the money sections much. I find I sleep a lot better at night knowing that if we do have a fire, or crash a car, or have a major health situation, or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us, we have adequate downside protection.
- yodsanklai 11y ago
  > or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us first world problems :)
ismail 11y ago
Hey, can anyone point to any resources related to hyper inflation/economic crisis? Think zimbabwe or greece
arca_vorago 11y ago
I grew up in the rocky mountians, and even though the snows have been less so, it was the sort of place my grandpa tells stories of blizzards 8ft deep that would get people trapped in for weeks. The number one thing you want is water or a way to get water. Number two is food or ways to get food. Number three is heating/shelter. You get those three things and learn how to get them (hunting, fishing, foraging, etc) and youll be just fine. As for food, to give us a comfortable buffer, we had an entire wall dedicated to 5 gallon buckets of freeze dried stuffs like egg, milk, beans, rice, basics such as that. Water is best to have you own independent well, and a filtration device for us while foraging and a bigger one for local high volume water if there is no well. These basics are what anyone preparing for almost any disaster or emergency should do.
lmm 11y ago
> Pepper spray. An excellent, temporarily incapacitating weapon - very difficult to resist and capable of buying you just enough time to escape. Works quickly and reliably at distances up to perhaps 10 feet; can also stop some animal attacks. Usually not heavily regulated, making it easy to obtain and carry even in places that frown upon other forms of armed self-defense. This is not good advice everywhere. Here in the UK pepper spray is regulated by the same law as firearms.
- mycroft-holmes 11y ago
  Is there any right to self-defense in the UK?
  - lmm 11y ago
    IANAL, but my brief understanding is: you may only use force to defend yourself against force, and you may only use lethal force to defend yourself against lethal force. Self-defense is a valid defense against certain crimes (which I understand is not quite the same thing as being a right, though I can't say I really see the difference); there is no "castle doctrine". When the famous Tony Martin case happened (a farmer shot and killed some burglars (few people have guns in the UK, but farmers are an exception, and relatively commonly own (licensed) shotguns on the grounds of needing to shoot vermin)), I remember a local police officer's comment being "if they were shot in the front he'll get off, but if they were shot in the back he's going to jail".
    - f- 11y ago
      I think this is pretty similar to the rest of the western world, and certainly to the legal frameworks in much of the US. The interpretation is probably very different, though. So is the legality of carrying weapons in anticipation of an assault...
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    You're allowed to defend yourself. You're not allowed to wander around carrying weapons.
jerf 11y ago
I really don't have time to make this, but I am going to make a wish and hope either someone else runs with it, or points me to it. I'd love to have a subscription service where I put in $X/month, lets me select from a few priorities and maybe check off things I already have, and start shipping sensible supplies to me on a schedule. (I googled around and saw http://www.myapocabox.com/ http://www.myapocabox.com/ , but to my mind that's more parlor trick or even just something you sorta do for fun if you're in that culture. I'm talking something more like where you put in $X/month, and unless you say you already have one, it starts you off with basic first aid, moves to other basics, maybe throws some long-term food supplies in after a few months, etc. Something meant just to make you robust against reasonable disasters moreso than something to help you recarve civilization out of the nearest copse of trees.) It's important and useful to be robust against real issues like power loss for a week (it's happened) or other such basics, but it's hard to keep a list yourself and expensive enough if you try to prep for it all at once that it inhibits doing it.
- jmnicolas 11y ago
  So you're not in the camp of 'the government will help me' but you're in the camp 'a private company will help me' ? Only you can know what supplies and know-how you will need for the specific disaster scenarios that you might encounter. I'm sure you don't need more than 2 hours to make a plan and one hour a month after that to buy the things you would need. If you care enough you should be able to find the time.
  - jerf 11y ago
    Don't recall saying anything about government or private companies. A bit strange to claim how only an individual can know what they need on an article about what people need. And I explicitly meant more prep than I can indeed do in 2 hours or with a month's discretionary income, not to mention the possibility of helping others do it. I can see you're really chomping at the bit to attack, attack, attack somebody, but why don't you go find a better target? Or, failing that, stop jamming words in my mouth and then attacking those?
    - 11y ago
jmnicolas 11y ago
What's funny for a foreigner like me is that the "preparedness scene" seems to exhibit a lot of American cliches : - it's never reasonable : you prepare for the end of the world or a "multi generational collapse" not "just" a "little" earthquake or a flood - you need a Hollywood budget : a well stocked retreat that will allow you to "survive" without changing any of your habits - guns, lots of guns : I remember someone recommending having 10'000 (yes, ten thousand) ammo for each semi-auto carbine you had (no less than 2 per member of your family of course, not including handguns, knives, handgrenades etc) - fatality is never an option : end of the world, multi generational collapse ? So what ? You just need to store more food, dig deeper for your bunker, and buy more guns (of course ;-) In fact I believe it's the first time I read something reasonable about preparedness in English !
jonstokes 11y ago
I've been following the prepping scene for a while, and in a professional capacity since I started AllOutdoor.com as a side project for some friends. We figured out really quickly that preppers were a massive audience for outdoors content, so the site skews that way. (FWIW I keep a few weeks' supply of food for my family on-hand, but I'm not interested in prepping for anything bigger. More here: http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday-prepper/ http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday-prepper/) What is interesting to me is the degree to which collapse has gone mainstream. At this point I've seen prepping go from something that you didn't want anyone (including your spouse) to know you were into, to something that is the topic of serious, non-snarky discussion (with 165 points!) here at Hacker News. I predict that at some point in the next 18 months or so, we'll see an article in The New Yorker about prepping that takes it seriously. Once the New York media scene is able to talk about it openly, it will have moved out of the realm of "crazypants stuff that we don't talk about here, except to snark at it" and then it will be time to go all-in on the stock market because we will have reached Peak Doom. Anyway, I just skimmed the linked article but it seems like a very good intro. About the only thing I quibble with (so far) is the faint whiff of goldbuggery in the financial section.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
I wonder if anyone's written a guide for surviving a not-too-long term emergency for residents of a large city. Everyone basically agrees that the best thing to do in case of a large-scale emergency is to leave the city - but my wife and I aren't prepared for camping, and we're definitely not prepared to walk out of Manhattan with five million other people into Jersey. Where's the guide for what to do in case of a solar storm that knocks out the power grid for a month when you're a resident of Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles?
- lfowles 11y ago
  Sounds like you're at the mercy of government emergency planning at that point. (Not saying that it's a bad thing, but as you and the other reply say, it's not practical for millions to "bug out" to Jersey.)
- cloakandswagger 11y ago
  I'd question the presumption that any calamity requires city dwellers to "bug out". Doing so means you'll be part of a massive hoard of scared and desperate people, and you can only carry so many supplies. Worth consideration is staying put, fortifying your apartment or house and working with neighbors as the situation calms down.
- amk_ 11y ago
  This is general advice for earthquakes and other disasters: - As soon possible, gather fresh water. Drain the pipes in sinks and showerheads; if you don't have enough containers, fill up the bathtub. - Have non-perishable food on hand (cans mostly). Mind the expiration date. - Have a deadbolt (if you are worried about your neighbors). - Invest in a good first aid kit and learn how to use it. They sell larger ones designed to live in your car or home (not the portable, throw-in-backpack kind).
m00n 11y ago
I noticed some strange behaviour on that website: When I mouse-select text sometimes a word later in the same line would begin to wiggle around. For example in the paragraph 'Gadget Upgrades'. A short google search brought up nothing. Any clues?

213 points by f- 11y ago

I run a site that deals with alot of these people. I look at it like a risk vs reward. I think for the vast amount of calamity's that could happen, you only need to 'survive' for about 6 months before things would stabilize. If after 6 months you are still in trouble, chances are you are not going to particularly enjoy life moving forward anyways. So with those thoughts, it almost seems prudent to just buy 1k in freeze dried food ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES-RESERVE-10-CANS-CASES-FREEZE-DRIED-SURVIVAL-/231806997821 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES-R...? ) which can last you a year if needed. The only other things you really need is water (tons of purification options out there). The next steps are protection and information. You can get a firearm for about 500$ with ample ammo and a world radio with a solar charger for 100$.

f- 11y ago
The page talks about it a bit, but in an attempt to differentiate itself from the usual, mildly paranoid "prepper" content, it does its best not to get hung up on more outlandish scenarios, such as fighting off zombies and surviving for months without water and food. I basically tried to approach it from the perspective of threat modeling / risk management for real life; and by that metric, incidents such as losing a job are far more likely than a zombie apocalypse. I have seen far too many people in the Silicon Valley discover that the hard way :-(
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  Prepping is a hobby and its supposed to be fun. Fantasizing about fighting zombies, or dropping everything(mundane life/boring job), grabbing your SHTF bag and adventuring into the mountains is fun. It is a modern version of D&D/Larp.
- hanniabu 11y ago
  I feel a lot of people want to prep, but there's a social stigma around preppers as they're usually associated with conspiracy followers (the crazy type) and therefore use zombies as a way to lighten the tone and make it more socially acceptable. You're now prepping for a cool zombie fighting apocalypse instead of some scenario such as martial law or natural disaster, which people tend to think you mean some Day After Tomorrow event rather than realistic event like flodoing/earthquake that could lead to mass power outages and spread of resource thievery/violence/gangs.
  - chiph 11y ago
    It doesn't even have to be zombies. If you live in an area of the country with foreseeable natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes even), it makes sense to have at least some shelf-stable food and bottled water in the house. Enough to get you through a couple of weeks. Extra credit for installing off-grid solar, and a water reclamation system that can be used for showers and toilet flushing. Both of which also have benefits during everyday life. Story time: After Hurricane Fran came through Raleigh, I was driving on I-440 and was passing a long line of cars driving really slowly. When I get to the head of it, it turns out they were all following a Triangle Ice truck to it's next stop, so they could load up their coolers and preserve the contents of their refrigerators (the power still being out in parts of the city).
    - hanniabu 11y ago
      A lot of people have a more ignorant outlook. In the winter I always keep some water, body warmers, salt, blanket, and some other basic supplies(utility knife, lighter, whistle, flashlight, etc) in the trunk of my car because a group of friend and I tend to go hiking in the back country a lot with little to no cell service and sometimes it can snow out of nowhere. This is some basic covering your own ass stuff, but I'm look at like I'm crazy. If the car gets breaks down or it starts snowing when we're a few hours out and come back to a snowed in car or icy steep roads, I'd rather have everything I need to either hang in the car and wait it out until the next day or make a few mile hike to a house we saw down the mountain or access road.
  - 11y ago
- hanniabu 11y ago
  In reference to the zombies... I'll come back and post the link if I can find the reference, but apparently real life zombies are somewhat possible. A few years back (2008ish?), I read an article about a German scientist that was able to alter rabies so that humans don't die when they get it. The resulting claim was that they would become super aggressive and attack others, similar to rabid animals, and would create a zombie-like virus. Granted you won't see humans walking around with half their limbs off after dying, but I thought it was interesting how the claim was that it could essentially create a World War Z type of scenario. Now idk how much of this is true, but I'm almost certain I read it on phys.org, which if I did, would lead me to believe that it's a valid article. I'll see if I can find the link tomorrow.
  - hanniabu 11y ago
    Getting a lot of hate for this comment... Couldn't find the article I read, could very well be that it wasn't on phys.org and was just a bullshit article. However, here is an article where scientists mention that it could be possible to one day exist: www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112964783/zombie-virus-could-be-reality-exclusive-100213/
  - Merad 11y ago
    A long term World War Z or The Walking Dead scenario just can't happen without the sci-fi "undead" component. A "rage virus" producing effects like in World War Z would probably devastate society, but within a week or so most of the infected would be so weak from hunger that they were not a significant threat, and a few weeks after that they'd all be dead from some combination of starvation/dehydration/exposure.
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      Yeah, that's the bit where I always have to remind myself that it's meant to be "hand waved" away in those stories. I watch The Walking Dead and start rambling about how they started off talking about some virus/agent that kills the brain and "restarts" just the drive to eat and kill. Even so, without the fantasy aspects, there's just no way that a living body (regardless of how crazed or hijacked by a pathogen) would still be able to move around after the organs are damaged or deprived of blood. The closest thing to a zombie outbreak would be some sort of plague like rabies or encephalitis that makes you lose your mind and then kills you. If it was virulent enough and hard enough to treat you'd end up with huge disruptions but more like any other massive pandemic. The whole bit about victims somehow sticking around for months or years, waiting to infect more people is just impossible as far as I can tell.
- Nexxxeh 11y ago
  Zombies are used in the survivalist/prepper community as a euphemism for people looking to take your stuff. Because describing how to defend your home against humans can be legally risky, and off-putting. With the exception of the actually crazy, people aren't actually talking about zombies. It also injects a degree of humour.
  - f- 11y ago
    Sure, and I'm using "space zombies" humorously, to broadly refer to all sorts of apocalyptic / TEOTWAWKI scenarios that many hardcore preppers are preoccupied with. Most prepper guides devote a lot of time to societal collapse, complete self-sufficiency, urban combat, and wilderness survival topics, while dedicating much less attention to more pragmatic risks that one can prepare for without making profound lifestyle changes or buying a farm.
    - LoSboccacc 11y ago
      buying a farm is a huge huge risk tho, isn't it? in a scenario where society truly collapse, at least, it makes you a prime target. I'd like the other approach more: secret stash, going dark for a year, wait for tribes to stabilize the territory they control, emerge with some useful skill and bargain access/protection of a well armed/established tribe.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        You could barter out access to land in exchange for mutual defense. Any sort of real collapse is going to be accompanied by a lack of diesel and there aren't a whole lot of draft animals around, so farming is probably going to involve quite a lot of human labor.
        dkersten 11y ago
        If I were to prepare for an apocalypse scenario, I would hoard bottled water, canned food, ammunition, and fuel. Roughly prioritised in that order. Possibly also batteries. I feel like these are the things that will become scarce and valuable. Or at least help survival (food/water + ammunition). This makes them useful to me and also useful for bartering. Of course, my stash needs to be safe both from the apocalypse scenario itself (will it still be in usable condition after a nuclear explosion, for example?) and from other survivors. It also needs to be somewhere I can actually get to it (safely). This, coupled with the fact that I would need large enough quantities of these items makes it rather difficult. But, regardless, that is my I haven't done anything about it and likely never will plan to survive the apocalypse.
XorNot 11y ago
This still falls foul of the simple numbers problem: there's going to be more people without then with, that's why its a disaster in the first place. Now, humans are social animals - we naturally form groups. And the group which will have the most necessity is anyone without sufficient immediate resources. And who has the most resources? Why, the guy with 6 months of food rations. 6 months of food rations will feed him for 6 months, or my group of 30 for 6 days - which gives us say, 10 days to find more. The real question in that scenario then, is how stupid is the guy with 6 months of supplies planning to be about distribution? A much better risk-mitigation plan is this: either die preventing the catastrophe, or prevent it.
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  How do I prevent the Cascadia earthquake?
  - XorNot 11y ago
    Vote for earthquake preparedness programs, neighborhood initiatives, plan for an actual realistic disaster like that and not some absurd "everyone for themselves" survival scenario? You achieve a lot more campaigning for community preparedness then stockpiling beans. Make more friends too.
    - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
      Absolutely the most insightful comment this side of Texas. And applicable to disaster preparedness and terrorist actions and banking failures
ars 11y ago
If you are looking for freeze dried food then http://shop.honeyville.com/ http://shop.honeyville.com/ is a good place to buy. They also sell bulk quantities of food ingredients that are otherwise pretty expensive to buy.

mitchtbaum 11y ago

> But the universe is a harsh mistress, and there is only so much faith we should be putting in good fortune, in benevolent governments, or in the wonders of modern technology. So, always have a backup plan. Has Nature been unfaithful to us?(!!) A mother must discipline her children. As far as I've seen, she does it out of love, even when it hurts. She simply wants her children to grow up, far beyond what limits and mistakes they currently make, preferably before getting burned. --- Thanks for this great post.. For more reliable lifestyle info, you can find a treasure trove at http://survivalistboards.com http://survivalistboards.com , and if you just want to kick back and listen to some great dialogues before stepping up: http://thesurvivalpodcast.com http://thesurvivalpodcast.com , James Wesley Rawles, Cody Lundin, Marjory Wildcraft, peakmoment, wildernessoutfitters, wranglerstar, ferfal, INETeconomics, ...

Outdoorsman 11y ago

The author touches on a lot of important points, without going overboard, and the article is worth reviewing as a list of things to consider if the SHTF, for whatever reason... Tailoring a "plan" to fit your individual circumstances is probably the key take-away... Putting yourself in a position to provide the big four--water, food, shelter, and security--for a month for yourself and those dear to you is not incredibly expensive or time consuming....

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xirdstl 11y ago

> Insolvency. If a person over the age of 40 tells you that they have never lost a job, they are pretty lucky (or lying). I know a lot of lucky people then. It's absolutely smart to be prepared in the case you lose your job, but is it really that rare to make it 40+ without getting fired or laid off?

Rantenki 11y ago
For this audience? Yes. Startups have finite lifespans, and even when they succeed they are likely to go through a period of upheaval which could involve job instability. I've been laid off several times in the last 20 years, always due to either the company running out of runway, or being pivoted out of a job.
- xirdstl 11y ago
  For the audience of Hacker News? Maybe. "Less crazy folk" encompasses a much wider group, though, I'd wager.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    And I'd add that not everyone reading Hacker News is working at a startup either. There's a bunch of folks from large, stable companies checking HN as well.

ekianjo 11y ago

> Global thermonuclear war (Alas Babylon, Mad Max, Fallout), Pretty poor choice of references here. In terms of movies, "The Day After" is the most viewed movie of all time, and certainly one of the best references for the impact of Global Thermonuclear war and what happens next on an individual level if you even make it. Mad Max is a fiction as best that has about nothing to do with thermonuclear war (it just serves as a background to start the story, but you can't see any of its consequences). A little shocked the author did not mention it at all.

madengr 11y ago
Threads was much better, and far more depressing, than The Day After.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  For reasons I still don't fully understand our science teacher showed us that film when I was about fifteen, and some of the scenes in it still haunt me. I slightly blame it for my fascination with post-apocalyptica (and if that's not a word, it should be). This was in the late nineties, so long after the world was expecting nuclear war at any moment, so I have no idea why she showed it - parts of it she refused to watch, so I assume it wasn't just that she wasn't aware quite his brutal it is.
  - camperman 11y ago
    The calm official-sounding voiceover in Threads is the worst part of it all I reckon. It just gives it the feel of a documentary which makes it even scarier.
    - madengr 11y ago
      Appears to be on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8197B8DEF93FC7D9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8197B8DEF93FC7D9
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Adlai 11y ago

No mention of Bitcoin? Oh right, the experiment failed. Too bad, too bad.

dalke 11y ago

Why didn't any of the planning include participation in emergency preparedness organizations, or funding watchdog organizations to make sure that services are mismanaging their resources (e.g, Pro Publica and NPR's exposes on the American Red Cross, at http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disaster http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disas... and https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-... ). The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government. It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home". Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems. In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful. On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events. Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had? When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution? BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts. What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes or http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.

hackercomplex 11y ago

I'll just leave this here.. http://www.freightfarms.com/ http://www.freightfarms.com/ it's an example of how the startup ecosystem is attempting to disrupt some of the areas of concern that fuel the 'survival culture'. here's another example: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn-gotham-greens-turns-rooftops-into-urban-farms/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn-gotham-gr... I personally can't wait to see this urban agriculture technology arrive in every city coast to coast, so that collectively we aren't so dependent on "just in time shipping" grocery store infrastructure. I do think that this day is on the horizon, but until then I personally try not to think of people as 'crazy' when they feel the need to get their beans, bullets, and band-aids squared away.

f- 11y ago
Oh, I don't think that trying to prepare for historically plausible contingencies is crazy - quite the opposite - but it's definitely easy to approach it in a haphazard, disorganized, or wasteful way. The Bay Area culture definitely has a distinct aura of invincibility to it, though; we have many young folks, including immigrants with no familial safety nets and a messy legal status, living paycheck to paycheck while working in a very volatile industry on exorbitant salaries. And all that next door to an active seismic fault =) Elsewhere, especially in rural America, the prepper culture seems a lot stronger, perhaps owing to the echoes of the Cold War. It always shocked me that the movement is virtually non-existent in Europe (where I grew up); if you look at their history, they certainly have more to worry about.
- hackercomplex 11y ago
  I wonder though, do we really have a "prepper culture", or is that phrase merely a rebranding, of traditional (pre WWII) American farm/household values ? For example when I talk to my 80 year old grandmother about what it was like growing up 20 miles outside of a major American metro, she speaks about canning, maintaining a very large pantry, community agriculture, raising animals, making their own clothing, hunting deer and preserving the meat long term, making their own bullets, etc. My suspicion is that what you're observing in rural america is merely a continuation of the ordinary way of life that has always existed here. What I suspect is that over decades PR firms and major brands have executed a rebranding of the old ways, attempting to recast it as 'paranoia culture' or some form of political radicalism. Their campaign likely involves emphasizing the small paranoid faction of this much larger culture on their TV shows and pop media. I hope that doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory, because that's not at all what I mean, it's just an effective marketing technique. After all families who are oriented towards saving for a rainy day don't come into the grocery stores to buy the expensive pre-packaged foodstuffs which drive all the margins. Therefor in order to increase shareholder value you have to find ways to break down the traditional values (and way of life) so that it can be replaced with predictable consumer behaviors and 'brand loyalty'. My point is that the reason why you don't see this in europe isn't because the behaviors are different but merely because the advertising techniques are different in America so the lexicon is different. All of this is starting to change though. A new culture is forming thanks the Internet, and people are starting to care again, about issues like community agriculture. You can start to see it being recognized (in satire) even on the major TV networks. Their airwaves are starting to be jammed by our Internet meme culture, and as a consequence people are beginning to care, again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWQE4ZpMWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWQE4ZpMWI YES IT'S LOCAL GODDAMNIT

jcrawfordor 11y ago

There are a number of 'official' resources on this as well, including a variety of publications of FEMA and ARC, e.g.: http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4440181_Food_and_Water-English.revised_7-09.pdf http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4... It's useful to peruse publications of these agencies in depth in order to understand what the government and NGOs plan to do in the case of major disasters - when you're planning for scenarios that don't involve the government turning on you, you should understand what these organizations will and will not be able to do for you. Hint: while they will try very hard, do not count on government or NGOs coming in with plenty of supplies particularly quickly. ARC emphasizes being prepared for 72 hours without aid, and I think this is a lowest-common-denominator strategy. It will take longer when there is serious infrastructure damage, even assuming that everything goes to plan. One of my major concerns with the prepper community though is that they frequently overemphasize your own property. The most common type of disaster to affect people, by a huge margin, is home fire. The most likely disaster to happen to you is your house burning down. So while stocking supplies in your house is a great idea, do not take it too far: be sure that you absolutely minimize irreplaceable items in your home. If your house burns down, have a plan for where you will go for temporary housing, make sure that you will be able to access money for food (don't keep it all under your mattress!), etc. Have a longer-term plan for smooth economic recovery. Important documents like deeds and titles are almost certainly safer in a bank vault than in your own home because of the careful fireproofing of these vaults. Anything of that sort that you keep in your home should be kept in some sort of fire safe (which should be watertight as well), but be aware that a cheap First Alert fire box will only be rated for less than one hour of exposure and probably won't last that long. You need to spend a lot of money for something with good fire durability.

f- 11y ago
Yup. In fact, the guide talks about home fires as one of the most significant dangers (right after going insolvent or getting hurt); and cites the 72 hour figure. It also highlights that some of the prepper ideas, such as stockpiling gasoline, actually make you less safe.

beachstartup 11y ago

back in the early 90s, they used to teach this stuff in schools here in california (earthquake prep). it wasn't crazy at all, it was widely accepted that you should have supplies for up to a week at home. i remember homework assignments in elementary school related to this. SF and LA were hit hard in 80s/90s by big earthquakes - that actually happened. i grew up less than 20 miles from northridge - i remember eating granola bars and boiling water after the northridge quake. this shit actually happened to me; i ate actual fucking granola bars that we kept in actual ziploc bags because our electricity actually didn't work and the stores were actually closed. we surely wouldn't have starved, but they sure did come in handy when you're hungry right after a huge earthquake. do you want to beg your neighbors for a snack? since that era we've had 2 genuine city-level SHTF situations (LA riots and Katrina, more if you count 9/11 and lesser storm systems) and for some reason preparedness has become less of a concern. 20 years pass and people just forget. memories are short. not mine. i know multiple people who had to defend their lives and livelihoods with guns. real, normal people who now work in tech like you and me, who had to stand on roof tops with guns, in the middle of LA. right next to downtown. imagine this happening in midtown manhattan, or market street in sf. it's sheer madness, and it actually happened. and i'm sure anyone in the other LA (louisiana) can tell the same kinds of stories. and where were the cops? that's right - nowhere to be found when the shit hits the fan. it can, and will, happen again. i think as you get older you start to realize just how tenuous civilized society really is and how quickly it can revert to an animalistic shitstorm. i keep several jerry cans of water and canned/dried food in my place, and am capable of defending myself. people think i'm crazy when i tell them i have this stuff. i think you're crazy if you don't. i know exactly what it's like to be woken up violently in the middle of the night and find that everything around you has gone straight to hell. http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-The-Northridge-Earthquake-240665071.html http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-The-Northri... 6:50 a.m.: Hundreds of gas main and water main breaks reported. Parts of LA and Ventura counties are without running water or gas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs

jqm 11y ago

Between Christmas and New Year a massive surprise blizzard hit the area I live in. We were on vacation and got home a few days later. We couldn't get back into town for 2 days because the roads were closed (snow in infrequent enough here the city and county don't have snow plow equipment). The neighbors called (they are in their late 70s). Half a mile down a dirt road they hadn't been able to get out for 3 days and were getting a little scared. We picked up a few groceries (the store shelves were pretty empty as trucks hadn't been able to get into town) and parked on the highway and hiked them in. Then it was hike half a mile through deep snow to the car parked on the highway for the next two days until the county managed to get the dirt road to our houses cleared. Very revealing experience. It's not a good idea to imagine technology or society is going to solve all problems in a timely manner. When things go bad on a massive scale, especially when it's unexpected, you are on very often on your own for a bit even in this day and age. It's a good idea to be at least mildly prepared.

sgt101 11y ago

The best thing about the apocalypse that I have read is Justin Cronin's "The Passage" - book one of a trilogy, I'm a little way into book 2 "The Twelve". Although, if The Passage were to happen all your preparations would be for naught!

timdeneau 11y ago

We come with pretty good default settings. Keep in shape, learn basic survival skills suitable to your climate, and keep a small kit of portable tools. If anything catastrophic happens, enable hunter-gatherer mode and start migrating. Our species did this for 95% of its existence, you’ll be fine.

adrianN 11y ago
For 95% percent of our existence, population density was waay lower than now. If shit hits the fan in a populated area, and no outside help can get in, people starve.

sirsar 11y ago

> Since the amount needed is directly proportional to how much you currently make, it makes relatively little difference if your household brings in $70k or $140k a year. I have to take issue with this. If your salary doubles, your needs do not double along with it. $100K is right around the 80th percentile of US household income. That means 80% of households (~250 million people) in the US are living on less than that. Maybe you can too, despite your paycheck being higher. And if your household's take-home pay suddenly increases from $70k to $140k, see if you can fight the urge to follow that increase with your spending habits. Keep the old car, pay off your debts, and save for a rainy day (layoff, medical emergency, etc). It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible.

f- 11y ago
The subsequent paragraphs address that, I think. It does not have to be this way, but the reality is that most people spend as much as they earn. You know, anecdotally, I talked to people in the Bay Area who claim that they couldn't really save any money even if they wanted to, because they were only making $120k a year. But I don't think it's a US-only phenomenon; it certainly happens in Europe, too. I suspect it comes down to a belief that a raise entitles you to a better life, right now: so you go out and buy more expensive groceries, get a nicer car, etc. I was actually raised in a fairly poor family and it's a habit I picked up very early on; took me a fair amount of work to overcome this.
- lfowles 11y ago
  > It does not have to be this way, but the reality is that most people spend as much as they earn. The trick here is to make savings part of the spending (or in other words.. "budgeting").
aianus 11y ago
> It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible. If you're an average American who works 50h a week, 50 weeks out of the year, wouldn't you want to feel compensated for that? And not in green paper IOUs but in goods and services? Beyond having a rainy day fund and moderate retirement fund I don't really see the point in saving. You can't take it with you...

unoti 11y ago

I've done three things for emergency preparedness that are actually quite fun and I'd recommend to anyone: 1) Become a certified emergency medical responder. It's a one semester course you can take at your local community college. It's the first step to becoming an EMT if you want to keep going. You learn things including CPR, wound management, dealing with broken bones, heart attacks, car accidents, transporting patients, even emergency childbirth. I enjoyed the class immensely. Now I'm a lot less afraid of medical disasters because I have a plan and an impressive first aid kit, and I know how to use it. 2. Become an amature radio operator. As a technologist, it's fun to get in touch with my roots using older technology. I've been working on being able to operate using battery and solar panels, which has been a blast to learn about and experiment with. I can also operate portably while camping, bouncing waves off the atmosphere and back either towards the horizon to talk thousands of miles away, or straight up towards space and reflecting off the atmosphere back down to talk within a 300 mile range (this is called NVIS). Learning and practicing these skills is awesome fun. 3. Camping, and having the food water and equipment in hand to camp for several days. We have a few 7 gallon water tanks we use for camping which we keep full, in addition to our always evolving camping supplies. We take frequent camping trips. Doing these things is educational, challenging, enriching and fun! I encourage everyone to do it. It's also worth noting that you can get a ham radio for $40 that's higher power and will work at longer range than the FRS/GMRS radios. The FCC limits FRS radios to half a watt, and ham radios don't have that limit.

linuxguy2 11y ago
Do you have any specific suggestions for a radio like you describe?
- CompuHacker 11y ago
  BaoFeng UV-5R and its newer variants.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

zrail 11y ago

It's interesting that the author doesn't talk about insurance in the money sections much. I find I sleep a lot better at night knowing that if we do have a fire, or crash a car, or have a major health situation, or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us, we have adequate downside protection.

yodsanklai 11y ago
> or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us first world problems :)

ismail 11y ago

Hey, can anyone point to any resources related to hyper inflation/economic crisis? Think zimbabwe or greece

arca_vorago 11y ago

I grew up in the rocky mountians, and even though the snows have been less so, it was the sort of place my grandpa tells stories of blizzards 8ft deep that would get people trapped in for weeks. The number one thing you want is water or a way to get water. Number two is food or ways to get food. Number three is heating/shelter. You get those three things and learn how to get them (hunting, fishing, foraging, etc) and youll be just fine. As for food, to give us a comfortable buffer, we had an entire wall dedicated to 5 gallon buckets of freeze dried stuffs like egg, milk, beans, rice, basics such as that. Water is best to have you own independent well, and a filtration device for us while foraging and a bigger one for local high volume water if there is no well. These basics are what anyone preparing for almost any disaster or emergency should do.

lmm 11y ago

> Pepper spray. An excellent, temporarily incapacitating weapon - very difficult to resist and capable of buying you just enough time to escape. Works quickly and reliably at distances up to perhaps 10 feet; can also stop some animal attacks. Usually not heavily regulated, making it easy to obtain and carry even in places that frown upon other forms of armed self-defense. This is not good advice everywhere. Here in the UK pepper spray is regulated by the same law as firearms.

mycroft-holmes 11y ago
Is there any right to self-defense in the UK?
- lmm 11y ago
  IANAL, but my brief understanding is: you may only use force to defend yourself against force, and you may only use lethal force to defend yourself against lethal force. Self-defense is a valid defense against certain crimes (which I understand is not quite the same thing as being a right, though I can't say I really see the difference); there is no "castle doctrine". When the famous Tony Martin case happened (a farmer shot and killed some burglars (few people have guns in the UK, but farmers are an exception, and relatively commonly own (licensed) shotguns on the grounds of needing to shoot vermin)), I remember a local police officer's comment being "if they were shot in the front he'll get off, but if they were shot in the back he's going to jail".
  - f- 11y ago
    I think this is pretty similar to the rest of the western world, and certainly to the legal frameworks in much of the US. The interpretation is probably very different, though. So is the legality of carrying weapons in anticipation of an assault...
- EliRivers 11y ago
  You're allowed to defend yourself. You're not allowed to wander around carrying weapons.

jerf 11y ago

I really don't have time to make this, but I am going to make a wish and hope either someone else runs with it, or points me to it. I'd love to have a subscription service where I put in $X/month, lets me select from a few priorities and maybe check off things I already have, and start shipping sensible supplies to me on a schedule. (I googled around and saw http://www.myapocabox.com/ http://www.myapocabox.com/ , but to my mind that's more parlor trick or even just something you sorta do for fun if you're in that culture. I'm talking something more like where you put in $X/month, and unless you say you already have one, it starts you off with basic first aid, moves to other basics, maybe throws some long-term food supplies in after a few months, etc. Something meant just to make you robust against reasonable disasters moreso than something to help you recarve civilization out of the nearest copse of trees.) It's important and useful to be robust against real issues like power loss for a week (it's happened) or other such basics, but it's hard to keep a list yourself and expensive enough if you try to prep for it all at once that it inhibits doing it.

jmnicolas 11y ago
So you're not in the camp of 'the government will help me' but you're in the camp 'a private company will help me' ? Only you can know what supplies and know-how you will need for the specific disaster scenarios that you might encounter. I'm sure you don't need more than 2 hours to make a plan and one hour a month after that to buy the things you would need. If you care enough you should be able to find the time.
- jerf 11y ago
  Don't recall saying anything about government or private companies. A bit strange to claim how only an individual can know what they need on an article about what people need. And I explicitly meant more prep than I can indeed do in 2 hours or with a month's discretionary income, not to mention the possibility of helping others do it. I can see you're really chomping at the bit to attack, attack, attack somebody, but why don't you go find a better target? Or, failing that, stop jamming words in my mouth and then attacking those?
  - 11y ago

jmnicolas 11y ago

What's funny for a foreigner like me is that the "preparedness scene" seems to exhibit a lot of American cliches : - it's never reasonable : you prepare for the end of the world or a "multi generational collapse" not "just" a "little" earthquake or a flood - you need a Hollywood budget : a well stocked retreat that will allow you to "survive" without changing any of your habits - guns, lots of guns : I remember someone recommending having 10'000 (yes, ten thousand) ammo for each semi-auto carbine you had (no less than 2 per member of your family of course, not including handguns, knives, handgrenades etc) - fatality is never an option : end of the world, multi generational collapse ? So what ? You just need to store more food, dig deeper for your bunker, and buy more guns (of course ;-) In fact I believe it's the first time I read something reasonable about preparedness in English !

jonstokes 11y ago

I've been following the prepping scene for a while, and in a professional capacity since I started AllOutdoor.com as a side project for some friends. We figured out really quickly that preppers were a massive audience for outdoors content, so the site skews that way. (FWIW I keep a few weeks' supply of food for my family on-hand, but I'm not interested in prepping for anything bigger. More here: http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday-prepper/ http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday-prepper/) What is interesting to me is the degree to which collapse has gone mainstream. At this point I've seen prepping go from something that you didn't want anyone (including your spouse) to know you were into, to something that is the topic of serious, non-snarky discussion (with 165 points!) here at Hacker News. I predict that at some point in the next 18 months or so, we'll see an article in The New Yorker about prepping that takes it seriously. Once the New York media scene is able to talk about it openly, it will have moved out of the realm of "crazypants stuff that we don't talk about here, except to snark at it" and then it will be time to go all-in on the stock market because we will have reached Peak Doom. Anyway, I just skimmed the linked article but it seems like a very good intro. About the only thing I quibble with (so far) is the faint whiff of goldbuggery in the financial section.

pavel_lishin 11y ago

I wonder if anyone's written a guide for surviving a not-too-long term emergency for residents of a large city. Everyone basically agrees that the best thing to do in case of a large-scale emergency is to leave the city - but my wife and I aren't prepared for camping, and we're definitely not prepared to walk out of Manhattan with five million other people into Jersey. Where's the guide for what to do in case of a solar storm that knocks out the power grid for a month when you're a resident of Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles?

lfowles 11y ago
Sounds like you're at the mercy of government emergency planning at that point. (Not saying that it's a bad thing, but as you and the other reply say, it's not practical for millions to "bug out" to Jersey.)
cloakandswagger 11y ago
I'd question the presumption that any calamity requires city dwellers to "bug out". Doing so means you'll be part of a massive hoard of scared and desperate people, and you can only carry so many supplies. Worth consideration is staying put, fortifying your apartment or house and working with neighbors as the situation calms down.
amk_ 11y ago
This is general advice for earthquakes and other disasters: - As soon possible, gather fresh water. Drain the pipes in sinks and showerheads; if you don't have enough containers, fill up the bathtub. - Have non-perishable food on hand (cans mostly). Mind the expiration date. - Have a deadbolt (if you are worried about your neighbors). - Invest in a good first aid kit and learn how to use it. They sell larger ones designed to live in your car or home (not the portable, throw-in-backpack kind).

m00n 11y ago

I noticed some strange behaviour on that website: When I mouse-select text sometimes a word later in the same line would begin to wiggle around. For example in the paragraph 'Gadget Upgrades'. A short google search brought up nothing. Any clues?