Ignore The Doomsday Slop. Embrace The Mess.

An honest post about survival plans.

Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash

Someone recently told me:

You’ve got it all figured out. You have a left brain. You can do physics and engineering. Your ideas look so impressive, but they intimidate me. I can’t do any of that. I keep failing. Maybe I should give up. Maybe I’m just going to starve.

It’s funny, because that’s how I often feel when I read posts or watch videos from preppers and homesteaders further along than me.

I’ve got a few things to say about all this.

Let’s face an uncomfortable truth, shall we?

All of our prepping and homesteading plans amount to squat if we don’t have regular, reliable access to clean water for drinking and growing food. It’s also not going to matter much if we have no way to dispose of our pee and poop. I’m sorry if this sounds blunt or negative, but it’s reality.

I like reality.

We’ve been struggling with these fundamental problems for years, and they’re exactly the kind of problems swept under the rug by all the doomsday slop out there that presents perfectly organized root cellars, workshops full of clean tools, and blossoming food gardens. I’m not saying this to discourage anyone. We’re very much on the suburban homesteading bandwagon, growing food, composting kitchen scraps, and developing DIY plans for emergencies and disasters. But we have limited resources, and we have to manage our priorities. We still wouldn’t last a month on what we manage to grow, and that’s reality.

Like I said, I like reality.

For us, solving the water problem is a priority. It goes on the top of the list. Because we don’t want to invest huge amounts of time and money, only to wind up in a drought so bad we can’t even run a drip irrigation system. Given that the UN has officially declared a water bankruptcy, given that many parts of the world are now living through their worst droughts in history, given that our leaders are doing almost nothing about it, given the growing threat of data centers, it feels like a logical place to put our efforts. Water first.

I’ve grown increasingly fatigued with the doomsday slop that’s been taking over the internet, promising easy solutions wrapped in fear. So I’m going to tell everyone what has actually worked for us—and what hasn’t.

I think there’s a lot of untapped value in talking about what doesn’t work. We should be doing it more often.

Let’s go.

What hasn’t worked: dew harvesting

After months of trying to make it work, I’m finally pivoting away from dew harvesting. Not because I failed. Because I finally succeeded.

We found the right material. We ironed out the science. We built a prototype that reliably catches dew every night. So, what’s the problem? This: By the time we scaled up our concept and ran the math, it was going to cost thousands of dollars. It was going to take up 500-800 square feet… to collect a few gallons of dew, on an average night. If we had the budget, if we had the space, we could do it. But we don’t have either. So, when you see those doomsday slop videos promising dew harvesting at pennies on the dollar, don’t listen to them.

It’s mostly hype.

You need to know this so you don’t spend countless hours trying to make it work and then judging yourself. Physics doesn’t answer to our whims.

It only answers to itself.

Moving on…

What works: rain harvesting

Rain harvesters can actually help you in a drought.

We think of droughts as periods with no rain. But that’s wrong. Here’s what actually happens during a drought: Warmer air holds more moisture, and the “rain” gets trapped in the atmosphere. You go long periods without rain, and then it dumps down on you in violent storms. The parched ground can’t absorb the water, so it runs off. The problem compounds, and that’s why it takes so long to recover.

Rain harvesting helps with that.

When you harvest rain, you store some of the water that would normally run off. You’re not hoarding water. Plenty of it still reaches reservoirs and aquifers. Meanwhile, you’re watering crops and keeping the soil healthy. So, it’s actually a good idea to build one if you can.

Here’s the problems:

You need a very specific kind of roof to eliminate contaminants and toxins if you plan to use harvested rain for growing food and drinking. I’ve covered that in our illustrated guide. Most of us don’t have these roofs.

Further research has shown that you can use a shingled roof to some extent, but you have to be extremely careful filtering your water, and that’s the hard part. We looked into in-line hose filters as a solution, but they only work with city water pressure. They won’t work with gravity-fed systems. We’re currently looking into the feasibility of rigging other types of gravity-fed water filters to a barrel or IBC tote, but it’s slow going. Sometimes, we find something and…

It’s out of stock.

So.

We’ve troubleshooted and come up with alternatives, but none of them are foolproof. None of them work 100 percent of the time. None of them completely eliminates the risks of contaminated water.

But we’re working on it.

That’s the point.

What works: an atmospheric water generator

We’ve been running a commercial atmospheric water generator for about a year now. It’s an H2O Machine from here. It really does generate several gallons of drinkable water a day. We tested the water, and it’s safe.

You can search online and find a few different brands. I can’t speak to all the different models, but they all use the same tech and draw about the same amount of power. Paired with a beefy solar backup system, you’ve at least got water to sustain a small group over a long period of time.

Upsides: You’re not storing hundreds of gallons of water. You’re not managing complicated harvesting and storage systems. You plug it up. You follow the instructions, and you have water.

Downsides: Ours takes 72 hours to cycle when you first turn it on. So, you can’t just mothball it and then roll it out for emergencies. You turn it on, and leave it on. Fortunately, it’s a lot like an appliance. It’s not consuming huge amounts of power when it’s not actively generating water.

We use just enough water to cycle through the tank once a week. This keeps it in good working condition and prevents anything from growing in stagnant water or ruining the filters. For us, this makes the most sense.

It’s not going to water your garden.

If you’re going to spend thousands of dollars, this feels like a better investment than building a dew catcher. Sure, the dew catcher doesn’t use any electricity. But at 800 square feet for a few gallons, the AWG wins.

So, that’s our solution.

What works: A Dehumidifier

There’s a lot of debate about the utility of a dehumidifier. Some say that’s what an atmospheric water generator is, a glorified dehumidifier.

We tried a new dehumidifier. We tested the water, and it was clean. But we’re going to do a more extensive test before recommending that. For the money and space, it’s vastly more efficient than anything else.

A solid water filter like Boroux or GSR’s Guardian, or Grayl, will reduce the risk of metal contamination. These companies have said that while it technically works, they can’t recommend it as anything other than a last resort.

Yes, it requires power.

It’s risky.

What works: composting toilet

Some people are so sure they’ll always have a working toilet. Well, maybe. Then again, there’s no harm in having a backup. You don’t want to wait until there’s actually a problem before coming up with a solution.

So, we adapted a cheap, portable composting toilet design for a long-term emergency situation. It works. Here’s the design.

We’re still fine-tuning aspects of it.

But it works.

Ignore the doomsday slop

Here’s one of the most important things I’ve learned over the last few years, trying to prep for various disasters and emergencies.

Ignore the doomsday slop.

Doomsday slop promises dew harvesting for pennies on the dollar. It shows you a root cellar full of vegetables while downplaying or completely hiding all the time and money invested in building the thing. It willfully overlooks how most of our systems still rely on some kind of functional grid and a network of supply chains while touting itself as “self-reliant.” It pushes batteries and generators that cost thousands of dollars. It ignores all the backend deals these influencers use to get their stuff for free, because their job is to market it to you, regardless of whether it really works, regardless of whether you actually need it.

In the real world, prepping is hard. Homesteading is hard. Survival is hard. You have to budget your resources. You have to drive to the hardware store and get the stuff. You have to endure the trial and error.

You have to do it when you’re tired.

You have to expect failure.

You have to keep going.

Sometimes, it feels like the homesteaders and market gardeners look down on the rest of us who don’t already have 20 acres and a greenhouse. It’s a little irritating when they go on and on about how “anyone can do it,” because when we try and then fail, it makes us feel like losers. It feels a little condescending when they lead us to believe composting kitchen scraps will save humanity. Look, we’re composting the kitchen scraps. We’ve done it for years now.

But:

If someone built their homestead 20 years ago, they were doing it in a vastly different landscape. Land was cheaper. Materials were cheaper. Your money went further. You could hold down a simple job to supplement your garden hustle. In most places, you had a reliable grid to fall back on when your crops failed or something broke. In fact, many of the original homesteaders actually worked seasonal jobs for part of the year to pay for their supplies. Nobody tells you that.

We’re dealing with a completely different picture. We’re trying to build in an era defined by resource scarcity, buckling supply chains, unprecedented political instability, endless war, historic inequality, and endless inflation. No, it was never easy. But it’s harder than ever now. I can’t tell you how many times, just over the last couple of weeks, I’ve sighed when something I needed was out of stock or on back order—or it cost double what it would have just a few years ago.

It’s really, really frustrating.

This doesn’t mean we give up. But I think it’s important to be honest about the challenges and obstacles we face now.

That’s why I’m trying to be honest about my trials and failures. My warka tower failed. My next design worked, but it’s not scalable. Fortunately, I’ve already got plans to repurpose all the parts. I’m moving on to the next idea. We’ve got a couple of things in place that work, and it’s better than nothing.

It’s important to talk about the failures along with the successes. To me, that’s encouraging. Not the doomsday slop where everyone pretends they’ve already got it figured out and everything works the first time.

In the real world, sometimes you come up with the perfect idea, but it costs too much to make or it takes up too much space. The materials you need are out of stock. Or a tariff has made them expensive overnight.

That’s prepping in the real world.

It’s messy.

I love it.