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Ask HN: Often do you seriously think about preparing for a doomsday scenario

8 points by frequentnapper ↗ HN
With more and more climate scientists raising the alarm that the world might experience population collapse due to shortage of food/water in 10 or 20 years, and the HN crowd being arguable smarter than average, how often do you think about this and what are your strategies for preparing?

11 comments

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deathgrips
Rule number 1 is don't tell people that you prep. Rule number 2 is don't tell people that you prep.
memexy
Never. I assume we either all make it by helping each other or we don't. So there is no reason to prep. My prepping is looking for ways to create as much progress as possible and doing anything else feels regressive to me.
deathgrips
How will you help other people if the economy breaks down?
memexy
When has the economy ever "broken down"?
sethammons
Great Depression? Every war torn area ever? Shifting markets causing ghost towns? Every large emigration such as the Irish Potato Famine? And then you have “so dysfunctional that it may a well be broken” economies. See life in slums or very poor regions.
[dead] memexy
And yet here we are, living in a world of material excess.
deathgrips
Please go outside and talk to all the homeless people. It doesn't matter to the rest of us how high the GDP is if it's not evenly distributed.
[dead] memexy
During a pandemic, sir, how dare you?!?
sethammons
My goals: completely debt free, land to grow and raise food, months of food and water storage. From there, reduce reliance on stores and services and increase the ability of self-sustainability. This is not doomsday prepping, this is having redundant and back up systems and processes. We are not homesteading or building bunkers, just wanting some redundancy and safety nets. This will help in economic downturns or if we have trouble securing gainful employment. We are only just starting, but it already has helped. We had enough toilet paper on hand despite also having a bidet to more than outlast the great COVID toilet paper shortage of 2020.

For a real doomsday type event, I don’t think hardly anyone outside of high government positions who will be whisked away to underground bunkers with underground farming will have much of a chance.

giantg2
I would love to have land and be less reliant on stores. That would make it more likely I can quit my job. I hate my job.
jarjarbinks455
I personally don't prep for doomsday events. But I think being financially stable, owning a plot of land, etc has advantages. Just normal things stable people tend to do or own.

Many people over extend themselves and will collapse with the economy.