Thanks for all this. Can confirm and add a bit here. When we lived through Andrew, we lost water AND electric for over a month – in the summer. Have basic preps, but if you’re inland, at least 10 miles from the coast, have ways to: – stay cool (battery fans, portable ice maker that can be hooked to a generator (ice is incredible for cooling anyone vulnerable). Learn about passive cooling and DON’T use a swamp cooler in humid climates – ever.  – keep mosquitoes at bay as they increase in intensity some weeks after the storm (have mosquito nets for beds, mosquito spray and perimeter mosquito treatments on hand). Bugs of all kinds are more common afterwards.  – cut and collect branches at your level (if you’ve never used a chainsaw or tree pole, this is NOT the time to learn, barter resources with a neighbor who can cut them before the city/state can take care of downed trees) – redundant cooking opportunities (you could be without power for weeks or even months, have different ways to warm up food, which is great for moral, especially if you have children or elderly with you). – extra medicines/appropriate antibiotics (even in our low hit area in North Central FL, it has been harder to book appointments for medical care since people from around the coasts are coming further inland for treatments while their doctor’s offices are indefinitely closed). – extra supplies to board up a broken window or tarp your home until the claims adjuster can finally get to your house – have mold and emergency moisture specialists’ numbers on hand in case. It’s likely your insurance company will have it’s own companies it prefers to work with, so call your insurance and learn more prior to the storm. As well, let your insurance companies know of any major home improvements BEFORE the storm comes. For instance, we put a metal roof on our home and hardened the roof trusses, so we let our insurance know prior to the storm to create fewer questions and issues if we need to file a claim down the line. Also, have the number of several tree companies on hand. Even if your house is completely fine, you are likely to have a lot of downed branches and trees even if you’re deep inland and don’t even see a CAT 1. Or your neighbor might. – if you want flood insurance, do so at LEAST 40 days prior to hurricane season. It takes 30 days for coverage, but can take longer if there are any issues. 

Unfortunately, Berkey does not do a thorough enough of a job filtering PFAS despite their website’s claims. Third-party testing has proven otherwise.  For more information on how to prevent PFASs in your home, diet, water, and land, view information at the EWG.org (water filters, food, products) and Mamavation.com (products, food, water filters).

You’re absolutely right, Joker. Things are far more nuanced than I listed them. The same with the other examples I gave. Unfortunately, there’s not enough time in the day with said tiny human running around, so I gave the very clipped version of events. Thank you for pointing out the nuances.  Our family is healing from civil unrest in our former country. Our family is also mixed: Romanian/Hungarian/Russian. Those kind of experiences haunt you always, so I hear you. 

“How to be a friend at a distance” if a friendship has gone bad. A good reminder during uncivil times. 

This: “Being prepared for civil unrest is about building a better intelligence network and lowering my attack surface.” Came to agree on this point. We’re still newish to our area and without having built up some social capital locally, I would have no idea half of what happens since local news is so underfunded.  Our family reads global papers from all over if only to compare and contrast how things are framed within and without the U.S. Foreign press always has interesting takes, though I am less inclined to follow individual journalists.  My greatest concern of all is how to bring people back to the center from all walks of life rather than horse shoe extremism on either end. 

Yeah, I think about this as a I tuck my toddler in and think some more whenever I watch people slow down in their cars passing in our neighborhood.  In the U.S., at least, I’m concerned about political purges at every level imaginable and neighbor-on-neighbor violence.  I’ve considered changing party affiliation to independent if only to scrub traces of our beliefs so we don’t get targeted. In Florida, voter registration is public information, which undermines privacy, IMO. Not to scare the hell out of you, but this is what happened to our family necessitating asylum in the U.S. – my mother was dragged out of our home when I was 3 years old and disappeared for a month as political retribution. She’s ok, but when people think it can’t happen in North America, I have to disagree and send academic info on similar events here. 

Good question that merits more attention as people play toy soldier and storm places of worship, federal and national buildings, etc. – armed and dangerous. Wikipedia reflects crowd-sourced data that is not checked by experts or academics, although a small handful of editors have either of those backgrounds, so Wiki is not a strong source of information. It’s an ok starting point. Check Academia.edu for open source articles and Google Scholar for more on the issue if that’s your thing.  I’m trained as an academic and have survived “civil unrest” under communist regimes that our family fled and civil unrest in Los Angeles. Civil unrest is not necessarily tied to protests, peaceful or otherwise, but to the growing collapse of perceived democracy and civil rights. Without getting into a political discussion about the various perceptions of unrest, typically civil unrest occurs as a response to failing democratic institutions. For example, the IRA rose in North Ireland only after the Catholics, the majority of whom were centrist, welcomed the British thinking they would come rescue the Catholics from the Protestants, who were opening fire on Catholics. Instead, the British beat up the Catholics, which radicalized them and forced the center to move to one extreme, so the Catholics supported the IRA, even though they didn’t like it. In the 1960s to the 1980s, the “years of lead” in Italy saw rising violence and bombings in response to rising far-right politics that took hold in Italy as a back lash to 25 years of unresolved political scars after 20 years of fascism. “Unrest” looked like car bombings, street on street random violence, pulling people out of their homes, not like window smashing and chaos agents after protests. Similarly, in the U.S. during the 1890s, some white nationalists felt displaced by rising black wealth, so they dragged black people out of their homes, as well as their allies, and “took over” the town and people’s homes. America has a particular history of civil unrest that is not usually taught in school – and very dangerous.  Barbara F. Walters, an academic from UCSD, who wrote “How Civil Wars Start,” outlines the the various factors that lead to “civil unrest” which is related to civil war. Civil war is harder to define as a term. But, at least in North America, civil unrest could look like people bombing a school board meeting, dragging people out of their houses based on their voter’s registration (something far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and Patriots have proposed on the internet), storming state houses, book bans, unqualified parents checking teacher’s teaching plans (Florida), etc. Things like collapsing bodily autonomy can lead to wider unrest. When women couldn’t secure bread for their families during the late 1700s in France, women stormed the Bastille – largely considered the trigger shot that began the complex mechanisms leading to the French Revolution. As previously reasonable people grow more afraid, they may grow more extreme in their response by adopting extremists views.  Another academic whose work you might find interesting on this topic is Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in fascism and authoritarianism.  While both academics offer more leftists solutions to issues inherent within questions of civil unrest and war, both outline what leads to unrest and what to look for. I can tell you I see a lot of the same mistakes being made all over again at both the federal and state levels in the U.S. Canada isn’t far behind, and there is a possibility that as climate change gets worse, the U.S. could invade our northern neighbor on false grounds as a way to steal resources.  I say all this and prepping for civil unrest is not a major prep for our family beyond measures that make sense anywhere: basic home security, fence, beam lights, bags in multiple locations, etc. If it’s coming, you’ll see it coming a few days or hours in advance. When we lived in Los Angeles, I remember riots shutting down the main street near our home a block away, but never entering residential areas like everyone assumed. We bugged in and were fine. A bunch of chaos agents descending into the city from surrounding areas breaking and stealing from stores. It will look differently in more rural areas, although civil unrest in a lot of histories are preceded by purity tests, political extremism, and unchecked branches of gov’t growing too powerful and overwhelming centrists’ ability or willingness to address them in realtime. Expect more unrest as climate change, which is beyond debate here, will overwhelm society’s ability to adapt. 

Great list! Hard core agree about anything wool and solid digital hygiene. I just built my own VPN and started using TOR for specific searches.  Just a heads up, the Thinx period underwear are soaked with PFASs, which increase risk of reproductive cancers. No amount of washing will take it out of the fabric. The EWG.org and Mamavation.com have a breakdown of which period under wear is safest and works. Trying to spread the gospel of PFAS-free living, which is even in organic food (untested water in the irrigation systems). 

Very sorry to hear about your growing season. Yes, very much the same in North Central Florida, our crops are smaller. Grow seasons have shifted/are shifting earlier and dramatically. More heat tolerant varieties, better drip irrigation, mulching will all help, but only for a while. I’ve given up on growing a handful of foods here. In another five years, I’m not sure what we’ll be able to grow here.  I am a refugee studies researcher with a concentration in climate change, and everything I’ve read suggests that the lower Southeast will be uninhabitable in a few short decades. Climatologists are worried that they’re seeing their predictions come true decades earlier. The Pentagon, in 2019, said it is likely to collapse by 2039 because it will not be able to keep up with climate change risk multipliers, even most bases in the U.S. are in low-lying areas.  One solution is to grow more rugged, biodiverse varieties of food as food production collapses in real time. Grow hydroponically or in grow houses. Grow amaranth, certain varieties of beans. All very expensive to do.  I’m 37 with a toddler. 

Hi Tim, I want to preface all of this by saying that I am not a financial advisor (not worth hiring) or a fiduciary (worth hiring). If you look into the FIRE community, which is a type of financial planning movement (like Money Moustache), you’ll find a lot of information there on both passive income streams and investing. Remember that no one has all the answers, not even the Fed or the World Bank. That said, you can get passive income from investments, products you sell, etc.  You’re never too young to invest. College students can do so with even just $20-50 a month. Vanguard makes it nice and easy to do so. Don’t expect huge returns, nothing is a quick fix. At your age, invest and don’t touch except to recalibrate your investments as necessary. For instance, don’t put everything in stocks or crypto. Putting all of your eggs in one basket makes it more likely that you could lose everything. Diversifying is best: bonds, previous metals, etc.  This particular market cycle is unlike any other in recorded global history. Currently, i-bonds are performing better at about a 9% return (limited at 10k) and hard assets (real estate, metals, energy, food companies, grain, water, etc.). Besides real estate, there’s also jewelry (diamonds, etc.), art, collectibles, etc. that you can invest in and can be considered hard assets. That said, actual food is great to buy and store provided you have the room and won’t be mobile anytime soon. For example, I starting upping our storage of grain, pasta and bread (in the freezer) since things have risen 30%+. I freeze bottles of OJ because my family consumes it on occasion and it’s almost $8 with citrus collapsing.  In college, creating passive income is a major challenge – unless you can create a small side business that you run and which requires you hire people. I had a cleaning side hustle in college with some girlfriends, and I received a 10% cut of every place they cleaned since I provided the client and vacuum cleaner. I always had girls work in pairs because it can be scary being young, female and entering people’s homes alone without knowing who you’ll find there.  Investing and entrepreneurship will help support passive income streams, but I recommend researching here deeply before putting your eggs anywhere. At your age, passive income streams are more limited until you gain some skills or larger piles of cash to invest.  Hope this helps some. 

I’ve been thinking about this even more now that I have a child to raise. I used to be a professor and we discussed this often, too.  Invest in skills over things. You would be surprised to find how mobile humanity has been during the course of our entire existence until a few hundred years ago. Mobility will be key in the migratory future we all face.  Best thing is to learn how to do a job/career remotely. If you can take your job with you where ever you may need to flee, then you have an uninterrupted income stream (provided you don’t lose your job). Find a field you can work in remotely. Points for entrepreneurship that requires online sales (items held off site at a 3rd location) for passive income. And any other forms of passive income (returns on investments). Let me know if you need more brainstorming on this subject – I work remotely now after leaving academia. Also, keep up job skills that you can trade in lieu of a remote position or complementing one. For instance, being a contractor, plumber, fix solar panels, etc. So, if the internet goes down temporarily or permanently, you can still “make a living.”  One thing is for certain: the global GDP with contract dramatically and permanently. Money can become devalued over night (Germany WWI, Venezuela, Lebanon, etc.) or you may be forced to flee and leave everything behind – whether you want to or not. Better inflation bet for the future: invest in real estate in potential climate havens rather than the coasts, SE or the Midwest. Who cares how much gold you have if you can’t access it where it’s held because the vault is closed permanently? 

This is something we’ve been considering for many years now. From extensive research, here are some top things individuals can do: 1. Eat less meat. When you do, make sure it comes from a regenerative farm, which enriches soil against climate change impacts. No one is trying to replace your burger, but make better choices. No big farm meat, like Tyson or Perdue. It’s also filled with PFASs and other chemicals. 2. Eat more vegetables. It also supports your health. 3. Farm/grow food regeneratively. 4. Become a producer, not a consumer. Produce whatever you can. Reuse what you can’t. 5. Don’t have a large brood of kids, adopt if that’s your dream. Besides their carbon footprint, who wants to watch their kids die? Kids rarely follow in their parents’ line of thinking, no matter your beliefs, so they are more at risk of getting separated and being unprepared. 6. Go off-grid. Besides the added benefit of increasing your family’s resiliency, doing so uses far less energy and footprint than other approaches. 7. Go electric. Gas blowers and gas equipment may perform better now, but expect 1) skyrocketing fuel prices, 2) massive pollution. Did you know gas blowers pollute as much as several dozen cars idling? Also, if you want, drive an electric vehicle, but know that your food sources are the single most effective thing you can do to impact climate change mitigation. 8. Make your house as sustainable as possible using green materials. Retrofit rather than build new. Construction is exploding climate change impacts. 9.. Practice mental resiliency. The world is going to fall apart in ways we can only imagine. You’re going to need to find the will within yourself to keep living not only for those who depend on you, but also for the future of humanity.*** This won’t reduce your climate change impact, but it will help over all.  10. LOBBY YOUR POLITICIANS and major companies!

I appreciate this post. Too many think an AR or AK will help them. Learn the guns you have better. Don’t rest on your laurels. Be able to assemble them in the dark. Practice often at ranges, etc. Civilians are a danger to themselves. No matter how great of a shot you are, without tactical, military training, an AR won’t keep you safe and is a liability. Said as someone with family members who are officers in the military. 

I’m so sorry for your family’s loss. Thank you for this reminder.  I can’t second this enough: my BIL died two and a half years ago at age 30. He had no estate plan given his age. Who thinks their estate will be difficult if they don’t have much? Probate just finished and the state/lawyers got much of whatever. It was very difficult to help my parents-in-law with this while the family was in a state of shock and I was pregnant.  And please, for the love of all that is good, leave the master password for your password manager (or etc.) with a lawyer or spouse so that loved ones can access your digital life. It’s not easy or always possible to get into password protected computers or phones. My BIL had a “plan” on his computer – which we couldn’t access. I leave written and digital files (encrypted) in the event I pass on my computer (to which my husband and mother have the password). If you don’t feel comfortable doing so now, leave the password(s) with a lawyer. 

Glad I could be of support in any way! 

I hear you about low-tech! The option you posted was very interesting, great for large items if you have some power.  How long you agitate depends on 1) how large the item is, 2) how dirty, 3) if it’s been spot treated. I spot treat everything (except silk or wool) with Charlie’s Soap stain treatment (Dr. Bonner’s has excellent guidance on using Sal Suds or Dr. Bronner’s castile soap for this, also) if the stain is bad enough.  When hand-washing, I frequently check the item to see if the stain is lift, but pre-treating the fabric is key to getting even heavy stains out.  I typically do this work in the bath tub (less to lift). If you’re preserving water, a bucket works great, too. Or even a deep (disinfected) kitchen sink. If laundering sheets and other items that become very heavy with water, I recommend washing in a large basin outside rather than a bucket. You’ll encounter a lot of dripping when transferring the item to the clothes line through the house. You then want to leave the garment or textile enough room to get deeply wet and then create friction in the water. There are special soaps (usually British or German, some Italian) that you can use for hand-washing. I just use Molly’s Suds. A powder works better rather than a liquid soap because most liquid soaps weigh the fabric down and don’t rinse out as easily. I recommend a buddy if you need to wring out sheets or blankets unless you’ve got wicked upper body strength.  Hanging wash on a laundry line helps to disinfect fabric. The sun burns off many kinds of bacteria and viruses. Solar power has lots of positives 🙂 

More like this low-tech, low-energy option. You still need to put some upper strength into it, but you don’t have to rely on anything but yourself and a simple tool. The agitator you posted looks great, but I’ve not tested it. I’ve used the above link (that looks like it increased in price since I bought one) for years during hurricane season when we had boil warnings and no power. 

Molly’s Suds works well for sink / tub washing. We used to do something similar during communism when the power and water were shut off the majority of the day. Sheets are the hardest, but using an in-tub agitator for less than $15 cuts the time in half. 

This is what happened for my family. Twice. Once during WWII and it saved our family from the Holocaust. The second time when my mother and I fled during Communism in former Eastern Europe.  Always have a valid passport and documents. Have good friends in several countries. Even better if they’re the kinds of friends you can depend on to sponsor your asylum case if needed. And it goes both ways. Be that kind of friend.  When we fled, we didn’t know when we’d get the call that our window to go was open. The call came and our bags and papers were ready. Everything sold and our feet out the door. And be prepared for the trauma that follows – leaving a homeland, a country, a place can tear you into two, into before and after. Be prepared that you may never return to your homeland and it will only continue in an imagined, more idealized space.  There are too many valid reasons why people need flee to ignore it could happen to them. Everything boomerangs. 

One of the best places to exchange foreign currency is at your regular bank – provided they work internationally. All the big banks like Bank of America, Chase, etc. offer this to it’s clients. USAA doesn’t really have brick and mortars, but you can still get some albeit at a higher rate. You can also put in an order for foreign currency with your bank online. I do this whenever I work abroad. Exchange rates at most other places are terrible.