I live in apartments currently. I used to live in a house. Long story. For our first three years here, I fought the management about a community garden. Can we have one? No. Why? Round and round.
This year, I stopped fighting. I took my small garden tools from another life, a life past that has yet left relics remaining in my current life. I dug in the bare and barren patches. Neighbors stared. Management staff stared. No one said anything. Some grounds crew pulled up some of my plants. Another neighbor said he knew the guys and would talk to them. I haven’t lost any plants since.
My plants grow poorly this year. The soil is hard and poor. But I can already see the difference my work is making. I could wish I started years ago. But there’s no time for that. So, instead, I tend my little garden I’m not allowed to have and I build relationships with the people who saw me stop asking for permission and start doing.
Your headline definitely caught my attention, so I was happy to see that it didn’t mean you were giving up, but it didn’t bring me comfort either. I admit I’ve been complacent given my location in the PNW where our residential water and electricity has been relatively abundant, and I’ve been extremely thankful. But I’ve continued to follow you knowing that I would need to eventually face reality. I have been heartbroken to read about what you have been going through. I didn’t expect for the trigger here to be completely different—AI consumption. I am downloading your doc now. Thank you for taking the time to make it and be available to us for free.
Yeah, "comfort" isn't exactly the right word. :) But I have to say it's not entirely unpleasant to move entirely out of the anticipatory dread into the "dealing with it" phase, although we would all still prefer to have none of it. I wanted the title to catch people's attention, because the shift feels really important. I'm going to be providing more details soon on rain catchment, because a battery pump with in-line filters should work well once we get it all set up and running. That's been the goal this week.
I'm 78. I've been watching "whatever is clearly happening" for the past 26 years as an expat involved in himanitarian workin 3rd world country 1. It's been so terrifying and dismaying that my dwindling number of U.S contacts are unaware that any changes are even now taking place. I'm glad to be hearing you all think about this. "Whatever it is" has already crossed many tipping points. I struggle to know how to deal with their talking about preventing what has already happened. I'm glad to hear about how you all are experienc8ngbth8s. Yes, it's so important that I not panic. . '
I pulled up everything and moved from the high desert to the PNW because we are in it… I didn’t wait to prep. It’s going to hit here too, Portland will become equivalent to Sacramento.
Collapse is not theoretical any longer. Or maybe it's just getting more widely distributed? At any rate, I'm glad the suspense is over. - All those "odd" things I've been doing and saying since the 1970's (moving to a small island in Cascadia, building a modest home, repairing old vehicles, zero debt, seed saving, deep pantry, self-reliance, living beneath our means, maintaining friendships with competent neighbors, etc.) are looking like I wasn't so crazy after all now that the general perception has finally caught up to what some of us saw as obvious 50 years ago!
I disagree. They have been in a state of cognitive dissonance, and others have finally been starting to see what they have been seeing. Surely you’ve been in that situation before?
What a lovely piece of writing! Thank you! It's great to re-realise that we have the opportunity to learn how to cope as we encounter the various challenges that come along. I don’t think we've acted as a whole because problems don't involve us personally. It's when the wheat burns, or the suburb floods, or one's child dies from the heat, that we wake-up. We now live with it. I haven't faced any problems yet, but I have the chance to check on my pumps!
Holy crap that is intense and 100. Its messed. I'm in a dense urban environment and I don't have a tight community and I know how at risk I am. I am really trying hard to take the next baby steps but it is hard. I feel like I'm admitting to something that know, but I'm hiding from.
On the bombing, yeah. There's no way it resolved in a peaceful reasonable way. We're living in a time of crisis that is being intentionally made worse and it feels as though there is nothing to do but brace for the collision. Thanks for your writing, it helps.
Interesting you mention this. Today a random dude called at my house and offered to buy a water butt I have out front! No way. Not like he couldn't get one down town though.
I have seen it coming for decades. Life got harder after 1987. I couldn't provide insurance for my family anymore and had to be resourceful to provide meals. But things were still sort of normal. In 2004 I had clawed my way up and had a nice home, two cars, and ate out once a week. Good life. But that Christmas I witnessed THE thing that told me it was all over, that the feeling I had for years about massive change ahead and the need to prepare was over and some new reality was now here. I had heard the climate scientists telling us we had a decade to alter our way of living, then it was too late. I stood in a foot of snow on Christmas Eve in 2004, and it was gloriously Norman Rockwell... for a few minutes. Then I got nauseated. It doesn't snow where I lived. Never. It was like having walked into the Twilight Zone and I knew with certainty that something horrible was happening, that all the predictions about climate change were not a hoax. And that other very bad things were coming. I told my son that he and his generation would have to face massive socio economic and life changes, that climate, politics, economics, etc would change everything, that catastrophe was impending. I'm sure he thought I was insane.
In 2006 the economic crash began in various locations. The crash wasn't sudden. Regions felt it before the full bore in 2008. I lost my home, as did scads of others in 2006.
By 2008 I experienced the first time mass closure and firing of an entire staff. Corporate people suddenly showed up, told us the facility was closed- right then- and told us all to exit the building.
I saw lots of other businesses shuttered after that. And most folk I knew suffered job loss and dramatic life changes. Folk over 50 never recovered. Many of us found ourselves going to churches for food, lost everything. Many became homeless or marginally homeless.
We are now in the time I could foresee in 2004. And "prepping" doesn't mean what it did 50 years ago. Now it means mentally adjusting to basic survival mode, able to respond to sudden disaster, accepting that nothing is permanent nor can it be expected to remain stable. Everything is shifting.
It isn't "The End", or some apocalypse. The sky isn't going to open up and Jesus jump through with millions of armed harpies and kill the evil people we hate, and the evangelical klansmen aren't going to be raptured up while witnessing the horror below.
It is, like periods of history before, a time of change. Everything is changing. All the prepping in the world is and will be useless- from rooms full of guns and ammo to the billions of dollars hoarded by the Epstein Class. Those bunkers and bomb shelters are just curiousities and possibly burial chambers for the once wealthy. And those statues and 10 commandments posted on public buildings will come down.
Migration will occur as it has for 100,000 years or more as those border walls are torn down.
It is what happens every so often, and the way new cultures, religions, social systems, and human behavior are birthed. Eventually it may lead to a better life for most.
But in the long interval between now and then prepping means "adapt or die."
In the end you don't need a bunker, a bug out bag, a gun or anything else we have been told we need by marketers, politicians, teachers, or preachers.
All anyone NEEDS is a spot to rest/sleep on, a bowl of something to eat, and a jug of water. Evérything else is just junk, anchors, extra weight to carry. And those three things are for TODAY. Forget the future, the past, or what some book says and adapt, improvise, survive TODAY. Getting that firmly in mind, accepting that, is what “ prepping" is.
My first wife and I moved to a hut in the Hawaii jungles in 1978, anticipating collapse. Ten years later I came back out, had a thirty year career as a masonry contractor, and now live on two acres with my current wife, solar pv and hot water on the roof, another solar setup with batteries in my shop, and we just installed a 10k gallon backup water tank for if/when county water fails. We have fruit trees, gardens full of perennial veggies, and good relationships with competent friends. So minor short to medium glitches won’t bother us much. However we are under no illusions about the big fails: if the barges stop coming, most people—likely including us—will not survive. Meanwhile we are living our lives, enjoying our days and each other and our gardens and our pets and our friends. World wide weirdness is happening but it doesn’t have to erode our equanimity. Thanks for your article. I appreciate your clarity😎
Having grown up rural and poor, it doesn't feel weird or bad to return to that life. In a weird way, it's like coming home. We've been playing around with an industrial dehumidifier and seeing how much we can get from that for plants/ grey water usage. It's too smelly to drink, even after multiple rounds of filtration.
We're in a similar situation. So far the test results are coming back normal but I just don't like the smell, and intuition matters. We just ordered a full lab test, so at least I'll be able to say what metals are in there.
Jessica, you are a seer and a leader, even though you don’t mean to be. I have been following your essays. Thank you for sharing with us what has been your journey, now our journeys too. It’s really great to present from you. Thank you!
💯 we are actually using resources now we set aside for emergencies. Because what is happening on many fronts are actual emergencies. We are full blown canning gardening and even fishing. We still have income, we still shop but we are ready if that changes. We are in it, now.
I feel you. We moved to the shores of the Great Lakes, acres of fertile land, a big ass greenhouse, spring fed 24/7 ponds, a deep well at the convergence of two hydrological systems, heirloom seed banks, freeze dryer and spare parts, solar and mechanical pumps, medications and antibiotics, EMT training and clinical herbalism degrees, metal casting and blacksmithing, etc. Then we both unclenched for the first time in over a decade. We saw it coming, we quietly covered every base we could, and now we just live in it. It’s actually kind of beautiful, really- we don’t need anything and when you don’t need what Authority provides, they have no hold on you.
I live in apartments currently. I used to live in a house. Long story. For our first three years here, I fought the management about a community garden. Can we have one? No. Why? Round and round.
This year, I stopped fighting. I took my small garden tools from another life, a life past that has yet left relics remaining in my current life. I dug in the bare and barren patches. Neighbors stared. Management staff stared. No one said anything. Some grounds crew pulled up some of my plants. Another neighbor said he knew the guys and would talk to them. I haven’t lost any plants since.
My plants grow poorly this year. The soil is hard and poor. But I can already see the difference my work is making. I could wish I started years ago. But there’s no time for that. So, instead, I tend my little garden I’m not allowed to have and I build relationships with the people who saw me stop asking for permission and start doing.
Way to go! As you know, sometimes you have to push your way through.
Your headline definitely caught my attention, so I was happy to see that it didn’t mean you were giving up, but it didn’t bring me comfort either. I admit I’ve been complacent given my location in the PNW where our residential water and electricity has been relatively abundant, and I’ve been extremely thankful. But I’ve continued to follow you knowing that I would need to eventually face reality. I have been heartbroken to read about what you have been going through. I didn’t expect for the trigger here to be completely different—AI consumption. I am downloading your doc now. Thank you for taking the time to make it and be available to us for free.
Yeah, "comfort" isn't exactly the right word. :) But I have to say it's not entirely unpleasant to move entirely out of the anticipatory dread into the "dealing with it" phase, although we would all still prefer to have none of it. I wanted the title to catch people's attention, because the shift feels really important. I'm going to be providing more details soon on rain catchment, because a battery pump with in-line filters should work well once we get it all set up and running. That's been the goal this week.
I'm 78. I've been watching "whatever is clearly happening" for the past 26 years as an expat involved in himanitarian workin 3rd world country 1. It's been so terrifying and dismaying that my dwindling number of U.S contacts are unaware that any changes are even now taking place. I'm glad to be hearing you all think about this. "Whatever it is" has already crossed many tipping points. I struggle to know how to deal with their talking about preventing what has already happened. I'm glad to hear about how you all are experienc8ngbth8s. Yes, it's so important that I not panic. . '
I pulled up everything and moved from the high desert to the PNW because we are in it… I didn’t wait to prep. It’s going to hit here too, Portland will become equivalent to Sacramento.
We all must live together. With your patience, forgiveness, grace and humanity, others are learning from you.
Well done, my friend.
Collapse is not theoretical any longer. Or maybe it's just getting more widely distributed? At any rate, I'm glad the suspense is over. - All those "odd" things I've been doing and saying since the 1970's (moving to a small island in Cascadia, building a modest home, repairing old vehicles, zero debt, seed saving, deep pantry, self-reliance, living beneath our means, maintaining friendships with competent neighbors, etc.) are looking like I wasn't so crazy after all now that the general perception has finally caught up to what some of us saw as obvious 50 years ago!
First you worry about falling. Then you are falling and worry about landing. You land, look around. Ok, get on with it. Odd sort of relief.
I disagree. They have been in a state of cognitive dissonance, and others have finally been starting to see what they have been seeing. Surely you’ve been in that situation before?
What a lovely piece of writing! Thank you! It's great to re-realise that we have the opportunity to learn how to cope as we encounter the various challenges that come along. I don’t think we've acted as a whole because problems don't involve us personally. It's when the wheat burns, or the suburb floods, or one's child dies from the heat, that we wake-up. We now live with it. I haven't faced any problems yet, but I have the chance to check on my pumps!
Enjoy life!
It feels like the only way forward!
Holy crap that is intense and 100. Its messed. I'm in a dense urban environment and I don't have a tight community and I know how at risk I am. I am really trying hard to take the next baby steps but it is hard. I feel like I'm admitting to something that know, but I'm hiding from.
On the bombing, yeah. There's no way it resolved in a peaceful reasonable way. We're living in a time of crisis that is being intentionally made worse and it feels as though there is nothing to do but brace for the collision. Thanks for your writing, it helps.
Some of us saw the collapse in 1987, and have been trying to survive it ever since. We're not preppers, we're survivalists. There is a difference.
I am both.
Interesting you mention this. Today a random dude called at my house and offered to buy a water butt I have out front! No way. Not like he couldn't get one down town though.
That's certainly one way to get a barrel, I guess. :)
I have seen it coming for decades. Life got harder after 1987. I couldn't provide insurance for my family anymore and had to be resourceful to provide meals. But things were still sort of normal. In 2004 I had clawed my way up and had a nice home, two cars, and ate out once a week. Good life. But that Christmas I witnessed THE thing that told me it was all over, that the feeling I had for years about massive change ahead and the need to prepare was over and some new reality was now here. I had heard the climate scientists telling us we had a decade to alter our way of living, then it was too late. I stood in a foot of snow on Christmas Eve in 2004, and it was gloriously Norman Rockwell... for a few minutes. Then I got nauseated. It doesn't snow where I lived. Never. It was like having walked into the Twilight Zone and I knew with certainty that something horrible was happening, that all the predictions about climate change were not a hoax. And that other very bad things were coming. I told my son that he and his generation would have to face massive socio economic and life changes, that climate, politics, economics, etc would change everything, that catastrophe was impending. I'm sure he thought I was insane.
In 2006 the economic crash began in various locations. The crash wasn't sudden. Regions felt it before the full bore in 2008. I lost my home, as did scads of others in 2006.
By 2008 I experienced the first time mass closure and firing of an entire staff. Corporate people suddenly showed up, told us the facility was closed- right then- and told us all to exit the building.
I saw lots of other businesses shuttered after that. And most folk I knew suffered job loss and dramatic life changes. Folk over 50 never recovered. Many of us found ourselves going to churches for food, lost everything. Many became homeless or marginally homeless.
We are now in the time I could foresee in 2004. And "prepping" doesn't mean what it did 50 years ago. Now it means mentally adjusting to basic survival mode, able to respond to sudden disaster, accepting that nothing is permanent nor can it be expected to remain stable. Everything is shifting.
It isn't "The End", or some apocalypse. The sky isn't going to open up and Jesus jump through with millions of armed harpies and kill the evil people we hate, and the evangelical klansmen aren't going to be raptured up while witnessing the horror below.
It is, like periods of history before, a time of change. Everything is changing. All the prepping in the world is and will be useless- from rooms full of guns and ammo to the billions of dollars hoarded by the Epstein Class. Those bunkers and bomb shelters are just curiousities and possibly burial chambers for the once wealthy. And those statues and 10 commandments posted on public buildings will come down.
Migration will occur as it has for 100,000 years or more as those border walls are torn down.
It is what happens every so often, and the way new cultures, religions, social systems, and human behavior are birthed. Eventually it may lead to a better life for most.
But in the long interval between now and then prepping means "adapt or die."
In the end you don't need a bunker, a bug out bag, a gun or anything else we have been told we need by marketers, politicians, teachers, or preachers.
All anyone NEEDS is a spot to rest/sleep on, a bowl of something to eat, and a jug of water. Evérything else is just junk, anchors, extra weight to carry. And those three things are for TODAY. Forget the future, the past, or what some book says and adapt, improvise, survive TODAY. Getting that firmly in mind, accepting that, is what “ prepping" is.
My first wife and I moved to a hut in the Hawaii jungles in 1978, anticipating collapse. Ten years later I came back out, had a thirty year career as a masonry contractor, and now live on two acres with my current wife, solar pv and hot water on the roof, another solar setup with batteries in my shop, and we just installed a 10k gallon backup water tank for if/when county water fails. We have fruit trees, gardens full of perennial veggies, and good relationships with competent friends. So minor short to medium glitches won’t bother us much. However we are under no illusions about the big fails: if the barges stop coming, most people—likely including us—will not survive. Meanwhile we are living our lives, enjoying our days and each other and our gardens and our pets and our friends. World wide weirdness is happening but it doesn’t have to erode our equanimity. Thanks for your article. I appreciate your clarity😎
Having grown up rural and poor, it doesn't feel weird or bad to return to that life. In a weird way, it's like coming home. We've been playing around with an industrial dehumidifier and seeing how much we can get from that for plants/ grey water usage. It's too smelly to drink, even after multiple rounds of filtration.
We're in a similar situation. So far the test results are coming back normal but I just don't like the smell, and intuition matters. We just ordered a full lab test, so at least I'll be able to say what metals are in there.
We beat the rush and collapsed 15 years ago. Nothing bothers us now
Never used to worry about ticks. Now I do a tick check every time I go into the garden.
Jessica, you are a seer and a leader, even though you don’t mean to be. I have been following your essays. Thank you for sharing with us what has been your journey, now our journeys too. It’s really great to present from you. Thank you!
💯 we are actually using resources now we set aside for emergencies. Because what is happening on many fronts are actual emergencies. We are full blown canning gardening and even fishing. We still have income, we still shop but we are ready if that changes. We are in it, now.
I feel you. We moved to the shores of the Great Lakes, acres of fertile land, a big ass greenhouse, spring fed 24/7 ponds, a deep well at the convergence of two hydrological systems, heirloom seed banks, freeze dryer and spare parts, solar and mechanical pumps, medications and antibiotics, EMT training and clinical herbalism degrees, metal casting and blacksmithing, etc. Then we both unclenched for the first time in over a decade. We saw it coming, we quietly covered every base we could, and now we just live in it. It’s actually kind of beautiful, really- we don’t need anything and when you don’t need what Authority provides, they have no hold on you.