9 Comforting Truths About Collapse I've Learned This Decade

I love this kind of story:

Growing up, Alan Urban experienced prepping firsthand. His parents believed Y2K was going to trigger the end of the world. They sold their home and moved to the country, where they started homesteading and stockpiling supplies. Of course, the world took warnings seriously back then. They managed to avoid disaster, and the end of the world never came—at least that time.

Like Alan, my upbringing influenced my orientation to doom. I was the family Cassandra, the one who always knew when something awful was going to happen, and nobody ever listened to me. The awful thing always happened, sending us to the ER in the middle of the night or bringing patrol cars to our house, where I watched police drag my mom away in handcuffs. For me, my world did end. It ended over and over again, and I had to build a new one.

Oh, poor me. Boohoo.

Anyway…

A few years ago, articles with headlines trumpeting “hard truths” dominated the internet. But you know what? I’m tired of all that. Nobody who claims to have a bag of hard truths seems to know jack about the world. All too often, they’re just making stuff up that sounds good, or encoding their own biases, prejudices, and privileges into timeless laws to shove down our throats. I’ve never found the truth all that hard. I find comfort in plain truths. I love the moment when you’re trying to understand something about the world, or yourself, and you read the right article or that light bulb goes off in your head and you finally get it.

Hence the title.

I’m taking some time to write down my collapse truths so far. After you read, I’d definitely like to hear some of yours.

Unfortunately, Y2K has gone down in history as an example of undue panic and overreaction. We’ve seen similar examples of this trend, when society avoids a disaster and then learns to regret it, rather than celebrate preparedness. There’s a term for this, and I guess it’s my first truth.

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