Preparing for crises doesn’t have to be a lonely thing. I have found that it makes preparation less stressful to compare my notes with those of others.
This post contains notes on my timing and preparation requirements for the four global crises most humans are facing now: Pandemic, Civil Unrest, Climate Change, and Economic Turmoil. I have considered preparation from today through the end of 2021. I also added a brief history of my countries situation at the bottom, which I hope is as interesting to read as it was cathartic to write.
TL;DR: I added several reminder events, gathered from the notes herein, to a google calendar. It’s just a half dozen reminders to discuss the relevant issues over the next six weeks. You can read that calendar or add it to your calendar if you want. (ical format link here). Doing that was actually the most cathartic part of this process.
Even if you don’t prepare at all, in times of crisis it is worth discussing the crises with those you love, and those who are well prepared. You are effectively evaluating the purchase of global crisis insurance, which can be quite boring alone, but quite cathartic with friends.
The COVID 19 Pandemic:
Timing:
Scientists predict that we will have a tough winter 2020 in much of the world— things may get worse before they get better — normalizing to typical flu-season-like levels in summer 2021. Obviously, there will be a huge geographical disparity in how serious this crisis is over the next year.
You already know how to prepare for this, but here’s what I am doing:
Preparation:
- Don’t go it alone — get connected with your local community emergency response team — ask your fire or police department how, or, if you can’t do that, check the FEMA site.
- Of course, follow the basic rules of pandemic protocol, and, for those in the hardest hit countries, be prepared to shelter in place as needed straight through summer 2021 — this should be routine for most humans on earth by now.
- Pressure government(s) to behave responsibly — locally to globally.
Economic Recession/Depression:
Timing:
Discussions on this topic eventually debate the US dollars status as a reserve currency and overall economic activity. Personally, I think we will see significant economic decline for three or more years (qualifying as a depression). (Caveat: I’m no economist — I am influenced by popular economists like Mark Blyth and Ray Dalio).
As the current economic depression deepens, a few milestones are likely:
Mass evictions (90% chance in most locales) — follow your local government policies on evictions. For me, I have to understand my federal, state, county, and city policies. Federal ban theoretically lasts through the elections — December 31. Depending on the locale, this could be further out — could be curtailed somewhat partway through — but I believe this is ultimately coming.
Housing market crashes (80% chance in most locales) — I think this pretty much has to happen, and for my locale we are seeing pockets crash right now, as people shift accommodations away from crisis areas. This should soon be followed by the rest of the nation (in many cases closely coinciding with mass evictions). Shelter always has value, but as an investment, owning more than one piece of real estate means you are in for a long, crazy ride.
Demand-Side Deflation (70% chance) — Currently central banks are dealing with this by printing money at record levels, and distributing a small fraction of it to the poor. In my opinion, this is highly likely to fail in the present implementation, leading to deflation in the short term — probably starts Q4 2020 but won’t last terribly long. This is easy to google — people preparing for both demand-side and technological deflation are writing books.
Hyper-Inflation (30% chance in the US at least)— Due to record money supply (in the hands of the wealthiest) and combined with technological deflation and new payment options, we can expect quantitative easing to create hyperinflation in many currencies at some point in the medium term— my target for USD hyperinflation is Q3 2021. The inflation could be fairly serious (might push interest rates to 70s levels) or devastating. I put us at 30% likely to experience the devastating variety.
Preparation:
- Create an alternative payment nest egg.
- Start making money creating value that is really needed in a prolonged depression.
Most of these issues are relatively easy to think through — we’ve lived through them before. Preparing for mass evictions, housing price crashes, and demand-side deflation are things each family will have to navigate based on their capabilities and resources. I have to admit I am not an expert in navigating them.
If you asked me, though, I would recommend, if you can, to hold on to at least one months worth of cash in your local currency and reduce your exposure to real estate ASAP. Very few people in the US can hold even one months expenses in cash, however.
Hyperinflation is the big threat for most people. To buy insurance against hyperinflation, build an alternative payment nest egg ASAP.
In my humble opinion, a good alternative payment nest egg that could sustain one person for a while with a roof and food in most parts of the US, should hyperinflation set in, might include gold, silver, bitcoin, and ether in equal parts. If you can hold one months worth of expenses in USD terms of each, then that is ideal. This is a nice diverse nest egg that can be rebalanced once in a while in terms of purchasing power.
To obtain that particular nest egg, first, go to coinbase.com or some exchange you like better, and buy the bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). Then find a registered retailer of precious metals bought from your federal governments mint, and obtain the coins.
Of course, you will ultimately have to learn how to store and use alternative forms of payment. I recommend carrying some cryptocurrency (maybe 1/4 of your total) on your cell phone for that purpose, and leaving the rest on exchanges. It is common to store precious metals in a hidden safe that is small enough to take with you should you need to leave home with it.
My best thinking to prepare for a long term depression would be to consider what resources are essential to most people, and try to find employment in the production and delivery of those services or goods. I like indoor farming, but you might prefer accounting. I think you should get that done by the end of Q2 2021.
Political Radicalization, Civil Unrest, and War:
O.k. this is the crazy one. Low chance of pretty drastically horrible stuff, but someone has to say it.
Timing:
Civil Unrest (Q3 2020 — Q1 2021–90% chance).
It is conventional to assume we will see a spike in civil unrest right around the US presidential election in November (but the election chaos will last straight through January 2021). The stakes are as high as they get— if the current regime survives in the US — all of the other three crises will be amplified to the detriment of all life on earth. Unfortunately, that seems likely.
Civil War (Q1 2021 — Unknown date — 10% chance).
There, I said it. I hate to have to consider this, but it’s something that needs to be considered at this point, and not just in the US. I added a few notes at the end of this post for people who are not familiar with US politics. 90% likely that this will not happen! But you still might want to prepare.
Global War (Q4 2021 — Unknown date — 1% chance — but my friends all say better than 50/50).
I know! How can I even be so alarmist as to think of this! The problem is that if you have a civil war in the US, that is the ideal time to both fight over the spoils, and for bad actors of all kinds to express their ambition. 99% likely that this will not happen! But you still might want to prepare.
Preparation:
This is largely US-focused because that’s what I have to think about.
- In the US, vote immediately by mail if you have not already.
- In the US, unless you are (laudably) peacefully protecting democracy with your life, stay away from areas of civil unrest Nov 2020 through Jan 2021.
- Support those who peacefully advocate for election security and governance-by-the-people for the rest of your life.
- In the case of war— be prepared to move you and your family within an hour or so to a sparsely populated area where fighting is unlikely to occur. You would want, at least, good shoes, blankets, water, go-bags, currency, medication, and copies of your ID.
I’ll place a note of optimism in that dark forest: If fascists/autocrats take over a country, all is not necessarily lost — it could take years for the takeover to run it’s course, and in that time, opportunities to stay safe and help reverse the process will be present for many, if not most. This is a qualified note, of course — there is only a chance that democracy will course correct — the slow grind to total autocracy that we are on is the default course.
Climate Change:
Timing:
Food insecurity: Farmers all know that outdoor farming is becoming less reliable on average. The jetstream is increasingly abnormal, so food shortages should kick in worldwide as outdoor farming fails more often. Timing depends on locale, but my best guess is that very few people will not be affected by this, at the least in terms of higher food prices, within 12 months.
Fire, Flood and Storms: By rapidly moving greenhouse gases and water vapor into the atmosphere, what were the 100 year storm, fire, and flood of the previous generation are already the 1 year storm, fire and flood in many places. Expect fires, floods and storms of epic proportions immediately — based on seasonality. The southern hemisphere seems to be lagging the northern hemisphere a bit in this regard, on average.
Sea Level Rise: This seems likely to accelerate vastly more rapidly than the last IPCC report suggests. There are so many feedback loops accelerating ice melt on earth that although someone could probably put all of those factors together, I can’t any longer. All I can say is expect to be surprised by the rapidity.
Preparation:
- Ideally, arrange to be with the people whose company you enjoy, and who can, as a group, handle a lot of hard work — for the rest of your life.
- Plan to move (Most people can’t do this — see the preceding point!)— away from the coast and areas where fires, storms, and floods are a significant threat today, and towards areas that are not too densely populated, where you can find community, and be near sources of food and water.
- Support climate activism and fight organizations that support greenhouse gas emissions. If you want to consider actual solutions to global warming, I wrote a post on that here.
- Store the amount of food and water that your government recommends. At least a couple weeks worth to deal with possible supply disruptions.
- Again, get in touch with your local community emergency response groups — you can learn from them and help one another in case of an emergency.
Addendum: For those who have not been following US politics:
The short version of the story of US politics (I am so obviously not a historian) is that we started with a system of government that had a few interesting features:
- Yet another attempt to share resources based on the individual interests of a regional populace.
- Corporations strictly prohibited.
- Reasonable protections against subversion by foreign interests.
Over the last 200 years, corporations and then foreign and domestic mob interests took over.
It got ugly when corporations took over — inequality and corruption skyrocketed in tandem, opening us up to subversion by foreign interests. Still, that’s nothing compared to what is happening now that foreign interests are dominant— people in other regions don’t have to live through anything that happens here. Foreign interests who want to extract resources are most successful when the ability of the country to fight is completely crushed — every institution is being ripped apart.
How did we get here? Well, corporations, initially prohibited, became a states rights issue in 1819, then became legal-super-beings by inheriting the rights of people in 1886, and in 2010 completed their takeover with the citizens united case. Some history of that is here. It was an interesting viral exploit carried out through state courts, that infected the entire country.
Foreign interests came to be dominant in 2016. They used active measures to take over across 50 years, funneling money into GOP campaigns (the GOP is our right-wing party in a two-party system) — that is all pretty well documented. That was a straight-up trojan attack using the legal-super-beings.
Foreign powers have also created a decent number of right-wing terrorists who were brainwashed by casting a wide net. They could have targeted any group, but they saw the vulnerabilities of and advantages in targeting the far right, and found success there.They probably have thousands of agents in the US to project manage their mob of poorly educated, brainwashed far-right terrorists. This was a more traditional, more subtle, psychological attack on the most vulnerable minds in the country — it was helped by the existence of new technical tools available for attacking minds, like facebook, which is still largely unregulated.
They now control-by-proxy the executive branch, a large part of congress, and good bit of the judicial branch of the US federal government. Today they simply hand playbooks for destroying the country to the executive branch and the executive branch follows them.
So, why might voting the mob out not-work? Well… Voting is not a thing when enough chaos is allowed that burning the infrastructure of democracy is a thing .
The least effort involved in completing their takeover will be to simply start physically burning down the remaining infrastructure of democracy starting this November — including post offices, voting places, etc. That will trigger the 12th amendment (or something similar) and the chaos that the mobsters thrive on will be enhanced. No voting required.
There are various strategies that could involve more effort — i.e. start a major war and declare martial law. That might not be what the mob wants, but it’s a last ditch fix to prevent voting. Honestly, I don’t think anyone knows what they will try. Confidence interval on any one guess is a mile high.
Even though some voting will happen, and some votes will get counted, the non-violent tactics used in 2016 are more effective today:
- 11 year olds hack our voting machines for fun.
- Russia targets all 50 states during elections — succeeding in at least 39 that we know of in 2016 — which the RNC denies but all intelligence agencies confirm — that’s before US intelligence agencies were gutted.
- The RNC interferes with voting at the polls with zero repercussions — and now they have way more power to do so — including hundreds of new wacko judges to rule that it’s o.k.
- Many states could not manage voting operations even in 2106. And some have always suppressed minority votes.
This time around, most of us have to vote by mail, and those votes will be selectively discarded by the obvious criminal that Trump put in charge of the post office.
Just relying on those non-violent advantages should be enough to win. But, in the dark calculus of the mob, why risk it? Given that jail time or worse is the consequence of Trump losing for Trump and the many other US traitors and foreign mobsters orchestrating this coup, even a global war is a no-brainer to prevent fair voting.
That recounts my best understanding of the political situation. The political lesson from the American Experiment for me is that only a governance system that can adapt to threats to its core mission can survive for long.
Where do we go from here?:
It could be that we need to educate everyone we participate in governance with, and make suretheir basic needs are met — that should pretty obviously increase the overall decision-making ability of the group.
It seems so simple that fair governance works best when a minimum standard of living is met for all — but lets step through it just in case anyone reading this is unconvinced:
We cannot share resources for long without fair governance and we cannot live in the long run without sharing resources. Sharing requires the ability to think long term, and the ability to think long term requires a minimum standard of living. Those so selfish that they will take extra resources before the minimum standard of living is met by all do not meet the minimum standard of behaviour in a system of fair governance.
The basic requirement of citizens of a fair government in which all may participate is, therefore, not simple self-interest. The requirement is duty to one another, and to uphold such systems as provide for that duty to be met. Treat one another as you would be treated — the golden rule, truly understood and implemented by all, is the minimum — a high bar, but achievable in most cases.
Our top priority in governance must be to establish and protect checks and balances that reduce corruption of duty to one another, and in-fact, incentivize those who would otherwise fail to meet the minimum bar of selflessness that society can tolerate. After those fall, foreign influence is on the heels of domestic, and will channel it’s way through the corruption of domestic agents, simply consuming all of the natural and human resources.
In the US our constitution and our system of laws is supposed to satisfy that top priority, among other things. But…it moves slowly…
Elements too greedy to fit into a fair governance system are always finding increasing sophisticated ways to replace the intuitive duty to one another (that they have been programmed with throughout evolution) — with fear — creating brainwashed paranoids. This means that although we can set a high bar of duty to others, some portion of brainwashed paranoids may not always be able to meet it.
The systems of incentives required for the survival of a species of free humans is an area of active research, obviously — but if research cannot both outpace IRL experimentation in governance, and be validated and implemented faster than IRL fair governance is required to move, then we can’t plug the holes in fair governance before they are exploited, and we are lost to autocracy.
Crises are races — we must pick up the pace in this governance crisis, if we are to win.
Addenda to the Addendum: How did that US thing work out?
I’ll be adding notes here as the US struggles to survive it’s various crises. Most recent first:
Update Jan 6, 2020:
Well, that Civil Unrest thing is happening, but it is highly ineffectual so far. Armed white supremacists did, sort-of, take over the capital buildings for a few hours, egged on and supported by the outgoing members of the republican party. It was an embarrassing attempt at a coup, if that is all — as disorganized, undisciplined, and corrupt as the outgoing administration itself. Violence is scattered — mostly we see terrorism by armed militia and white supremacists.
The project managers of this effort are, thankfully, missing. The military could not be engaged by Trump and his handlers, and so far, foreign agents appear to be out of the spotlight, working on other things, like cyber attacks.
Update Nov 10, 2020:
The US is in uncharted territory — it’s touch and go.
Here is a fantastic article in the New Yorker about how the behavior of Trump and the Republican Party fits the profile of a force devolving a democracy into an autocracy. Must read. The TL;DR of that article is that, historically, autocratic takeovers of democracies play out very much like we are seeing right now — the presumptive dictator often needs multiple political wins to irreversibly corrupt and weaken democratic institutions to the point where a dictatorship is unstoppable. This pass weakened the US tremendously, and it will be very hard to reverse prior to pass number 2. It’s a little more complicated than that to implement, but the US fits a pattern and is on a trajectory.
On a somewhat optimistic note, I have hope that the flurry of firings and replacements at the pentagon this week are aimed primarily at helping Putin gain ground internationally, and not aimed at reinforcing police with active duty military to control the US populace. It supports the gambit for Trump to leave office, maybe get a pardon, some stock in Rosneft, some book deals, and some perks from other dictators by accommodating their requests for him while he was president. A popular alternative reasoning for the firings is that we are going to see tanks in the streets in the US in January.
Optimism:
The numbers in this post may belie my optimistic nature, but I will always hold out hope that this region of 350 million people and countless natural wonders will thrive under a fair and just governance system.
