Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advice for a climate change apocalypse

kentucky.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#11

Post by Beltiras »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #10
Beltiras wrote: post #3

I've thought a bit about this and come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is not to have anything others would want. If you have nothing others want you will not be attacked for it and have to defend yourself. That will get you past the first wave of deaths: holding on to our old way of life thinking 'property' is important. It's best if you can actually walk to an area where there is protection from the…

> not to have anything others would want. Like food or the tools necessary to get food? Kind of hard to survive without that. No, I think the OP is absolutely right. Humans are social animals, and large groups of humans are more powerful than small ones. Those who survive will be those who join the best groups. And the best way to ensure you're in a good group is to use your abilities to shape your group into a good…

This is a good strategy past the first year.

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#13

Post by notthemessiah »

John Baez's blog has a series on how civilizations collapse, first looking at the Anasazi, and then how one might model it using agent-based modeling and also looking at general collapse through differential equations:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/anasazi-amer...

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/anasazi-amer...

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/civilization...

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/civilization...

James Burke is a science historian and BBC documentarian, and in his first episode of "Connections" a series on the nature of innovation, he talks about how fragile our complex infrastructure can be, and, much like this article, how hopeless individualist survival skills would be once we "leave our technological womb".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ

In his later series, After the Warming, a 1988 documentary which imagines what it would look like in 2050 if we failed to act on climate change (in which it predicted refugee crises, wars, hurricanes, mass flooding), and looks back on thousands of years of climate shaping civilizational rise and collapse, from the Ice Age to the Nabataeans to today and beyond. It gets most things scarily right, with the notable exception of failing to see Japanese economic bubble popping in 1991.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa4aWFDCMqQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxJLyPSRusc

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#14

Post by mc32 »

oflannabhra wrote: post #4
Beltiras wrote: post #3

I've thought a bit about this and come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is not to have anything others would want. If you have nothing others want you will not be attacked for it and have to defend yourself. That will get you past the first wave of deaths: holding on to our old way of life thinking 'property' is important. It's best if you can actually walk to an area where there is protection from the…

So basically, don't be a woman?

Id suggest anyone not affiliated to a larger group would be in danger. I agree an outcast solo man might fare slightly better on their own, but in a dynamic enviro with other people a woman might fare slightly better.

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#16

Post by hackerpacksnack »

Beltiras wrote: post #3

I've thought a bit about this and come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is not to have anything others would want. If you have nothing others want you will not be attacked for it and have to defend yourself. That will get you past the first wave of deaths: holding on to our old way of life thinking 'property' is important. It's best if you can actually walk to an area where there is protection from the…

A farming community will only last until someone else establishes martial superiority over it.

The best business is a protection racket. Establish martial superiority before someone else does. You can even offer a nicer protection racket than the others. But you’re gonna need organized firepower if you want to keep any of the wealth you produce in the long term

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#17

Post by whatshisface »

CodeCube wrote: post #5
Beltiras wrote: post #3

I've thought a bit about this and come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is not to have anything others would want. If you have nothing others want you will not be attacked for it and have to defend yourself. That will get you past the first wave of deaths: holding on to our old way of life thinking 'property' is important. It's best if you can actually walk to an area where there is protection from the…

This is why "preppers" make me laugh ... they go out of their way to stockpile these resources (food, guns, survival gear, etc). I don't know about you, but anyone I've ever met with prepper tendencies isn't shy about letting you know about it ... so now they're making it known that in an emergency, they will be the place for the mob to raid

Wouldn't the mob run away after a few people in front got shot? I'm sure there are historical examples for comparison.

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#18

Post by bhauer »

CodeCube wrote: post #5
Beltiras wrote: post #3

I've thought a bit about this and come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is not to have anything others would want. If you have nothing others want you will not be attacked for it and have to defend yourself. That will get you past the first wave of deaths: holding on to our old way of life thinking 'property' is important. It's best if you can actually walk to an area where there is protection from the…

This is why "preppers" make me laugh ... they go out of their way to stockpile these resources (food, guns, survival gear, etc). I don't know about you, but anyone I've ever met with prepper tendencies isn't shy about letting you know about it ... so now they're making it known that in an emergency, they will be the place for the mob to raid

I've met some who are very quiet about it, presumably precisely for that reason. It's no surprise that you don't really hear about the ones who are highly-prepared but don't say much.

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#19

Post by crazydoggers »

While I think the article is a little thin, it does scratch the surface that the hard part of civilization collapse is not about survival, but about how society will need to reorganize itself.

We take for granted at the moment how critical law and law enforcement is for the stability of our society, and the major reduction in violence, civilization has enjoyed. [1]

Evolution has favored an evolutionary stable strategy, basically a Nash equilibrium, between those who would exploit, those that are passive, and those that fight back when exploited. [2] A collapse of civilization would mean that as a society, we’ll have to recover and restore systems that allow us to cooperate and fend off those willing to exploit others for their own gain.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nat...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strate...

Re: Advice for a climate change apocalypse

#20

Post by mieseratte »

CodeCube wrote: post #5
Beltiras wrote: post #3

I've thought a bit about this and come to the conclusion that the best way to survive is not to have anything others would want. If you have nothing others want you will not be attacked for it and have to defend yourself. That will get you past the first wave of deaths: holding on to our old way of life thinking 'property' is important. It's best if you can actually walk to an area where there is protection from the…

This is why "preppers" make me laugh ... they go out of their way to stockpile these resources (food, guns, survival gear, etc). I don't know about you, but anyone I've ever met with prepper tendencies isn't shy about letting you know about it ... so now they're making it known that in an emergency, they will be the place for the mob to raid

> This is why "preppers" make me laugh ...

Well, those are the "annoying vegans" of the prepper world. That or folks using publicity to scare up interest and sell you things here and now.

Any prepper with an actual interest in long-term survival knows the importance of OPSEC.

Post reply on HN