You Can't Outrun Collapse

You're not that fast.

Photo by Isaac Wendland on Unsplash

There are lots of articles, books, and websites devoted to helping you get ready for, what we all know now, is the inevitable collapse of the environment and society.

The issue I am seeing is that in all the preparing we’re doing and learning about, there is not a lot of time devoted to the psychological aspects of extended periods without the comforts of industrial civilization.

In the early days of the ongoing pandemic, we were asked to stay home, maybe sit on the couch, maybe spend some extra time with the kids, and in the relatively short amount of time that this went on, people started freaking out. No comfort was denied, no one really went hungry, no one was too cold or too hot, we merely had to stay home to protect ourselves and our families from a virus that was, and is, killing people. Not a big ask really, but it drove us off the edge.

The moment we had an opportunity, we conveniently forgot that the virus never went away, and we ran, as quickly as possible, back to the world that existed prior to this unwelcome incursion on our freedom and ability to go shopping.

What is coming is going to be that, on steroids, and no amount of prepping is going to be sufficient for our fragile, little snowflake selves to deal with it.

If you can think back on the timeline of the lockdowns you may remember once people got over the “this is kind of fun” stage the reality kicked in and, out of our minds we went Luke Skywalker.

Now imagine that stretched out to months, and then years of deprivation and you get an idea of how hard this is going to be.

No amount of beans and rice can prepare you for how annoying the people in your life can get after you’ve exhausted all the entertainment options, and topics of discussion.

You can, of course, throw yourself into the day to day tasks of staying alive for a while longer, you can begin to live like your great grandparents lived, toiling from dawn to dusk to keep food on the table and a shelter, but that too is going to get old.

We, in the Western world have lived too long in comfort, we’ve lived too long having our needs met by others, and it’s all going to go away and I’m convinced that, if the Covid lockdowns are any indication we are not going to make it.

It takes years to develop the skill, the endurance, and the resilience to be able to survive in the world that’s coming, and who of us is psychologically prepared to handle that?

The world at large is saying to us what Jason Bourne said to the people who were chasing him, “There is no measure to how hard, and how fast I’ll bring this fight to your door.”

Something you might want to keep in mind.

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