How I Learned to Stop Worrying and "Love" The Collapse

It was quite a week.

Not because the stock market crashed. Not because I watched another video predicting the collapse of our food system. Not because more articles predicted 2-3C of global warming by the 2050s or sooner. Not because meteorologists and climate scientists have said we're heading into an El Nino that will shatter yet more global temperature records, overheat the oceans, roast our cities, and unleash powerful storms across the planet. Not because some agency released more documents confirming what we already knew, or at least suspected, about the most powerful people on earth.

All of this has happened, but that doesn't make a week special anymore. That's just the background against which our lives play out now. We're not ignoring that. We're just used to it, and while that deserves commentary, it's just the truth. Our brains register the depth and scope of the danger, but our nervous systems no longer react quite the same. It reminds me of the time, back in 2023, when a tornado was literally churning through my neighborhood, the local weather forecasters all panicked and screaming prayers to each other on live television, and I was just in that moment.

So, why was it a big week?

This week, I finished a big section of my illustrated survival guide. I started my electrical wiring course. I caught up with some old friends. The friends who previously fell silent about the climate crisis? They're talking about trying to develop some community resilience. More of their friends are doing something new.

They're starting to homestead...

Not out in the country...

Where they are.

I've figured out how to talk about collapse without talking about collapse. I'm not talking about famines and pandemics. I'm talking about figuring out how to do things. I'm talking about growing food. I'm talking about installing solar panels or natural gas generators or transfer switches. I'm talking about avoiding illness.

Something struck me the other day.

I'm not mourning my old future anymore. I'm not mourning the career I gave up. I'm not mourning the loss of old routines and comforts.

I don't have time or space for it anymore.

My life is filled with new purpose, and it has been for a while. Recently, I've just been letting it rise to the top. More of us are learning:

There's a future for us. It doesn't look like the one we were promised, but that's the one we've got. Every minute we spend wallowing in our doom is a minute we spend not living that future, not getting ready for it, not adapting.

Maybe some people will call this giving up, but here's the thing. You can't change a system if you're dead. You have to stay alive. Some of us are going to have to build the systems and networks we want to see.

When we build it, they will come.

I'm living in two realities now. On the one hand, I'm starting to sketch out a little bit of the community I'd like to live in. On the other, I'm still a bit of a lone wolf. I'm not going to make myself completely vulnerable. I'm not going to share everything. That's how we have to live now. We have to be of both minds.

My friends and family react very differently to the version of me that's talking about growing food and building solar cookers. They don't need to hear me explain the reasons why I'm doing it, because they know. These days, I don't have to warn them about anything. They've already seen it happen.

I don't have to explain to my in-laws why I'm prepping. They lived through the worst of Hurricane Helene. They get it. More and more, people are seeing. It might be late, but then again, it's never too late, until you're dead.

We're not going to stop the collapse, and maybe we shouldn't even try. This corrupt system has to end. And it will end. It's already ending. Either way you slice it, this thing won't last. It would take a generation to change all this, but in a generation, it's not going to exist anymore anyway. As one of my readers said, our job is now to make a soft landing for as many people as we can. It's to make it through the collapse, and to try our best to preserve something that might make it through the end of this century.

Over the last few years, we've seen a number of posts and articles talking about how nothing feels normal anymore, or how much we miss the twenty teens. Those emotions have swept over me, too, but I'm sooo over them.

I've been over them for longer than I realized.

I don't miss the feelings from those old, feel-good, Hamilton-era movies and TV shows. I don't miss those Tony Stark vibes. I don't miss the old comfort of Netflix and chill after a long week at work. There's a lot I don't miss about that decade.

It's clear now.

All that comfort, that sense of security, that sense of hope that our world leaders would figure out our problems... All those commercials, all that PR from the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Bill Gates... All that nonsense about hustling your way to a better life. It was all predicated on lies. The entire time, these people were flying private jets from one ranch or private island to another, committing unspeakable crimes, hurting innocent people, even killing them with impunity.

If you never believed any of this, you're all that much better off. Me? I'm not sure I ever believed it, but I also remember just existing in that bubble, thinking that I could change the world in my thankless role as a teacher. Then I realized that even the system of higher education that I was participating in was rotten to the core.

It might not feel "good" to live in this new reality, but it doesn't feel strange anymore. I find myself yearning for that sense of "normal" less and less.

Honestly, I feel more like I did in my 20s. Back then, I lived on the edge. Life didn't feel safe. It felt dangerous. It was full of uncertainty.

But it was honest.

I'll take it.

Here's the guide. For the next few weeks, you're going to see some more "under construction" pages and a few formatting glitches here and there. That's because we're getting close to another major milestone.

Survival Illustrated is a reader-supported project. It also receives funding from organizations like the Alfred Kobacker and Elizabeth Trimbach Fund, which focuses on individuals driving meaningful change.