by making peace with death
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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First thing to understand is global collapse isn't an event. It's a slow process that unfolds over years, or more likely, decades. We are already seeing it happening, but since it's not like the movies most of us don't recognize it.
The second thing is that baring some major instant catastrophe you aren't going to see hordes of displaced people fighting for your potatoes. It takes real desperation to pack a bag, leave all the rest of your things, leave your home, and walk far away hoping it'll be better somewhere else. Even now people stay in some of the most dangerous and unhospitable places.
So, odds are you'll have time to set up a garden, set up a rainwater collection system, maybe get some solar panels. Whatever you want to do to prepare for what you expect is coming, you can probably do it. One guiding principle in this is try to minimize your external dependencies. If you can feed yourself and live comfortably without a big shopping trip every week you are doing better than most. Independence from utilities is more difficult, but doable if you want to put the effort and money into it. Another principle is learn useful skills. Learn how to build things, fix things, buildings, cars, electric motors, etc. Most people jump to protecting yourself from bandits. Do you live in a high-crime area? If so maybe move. If not, take some reasonable self-defense precautions. You aren't going to fight off an army or even a coordinated gang, so just don't worry about it too much. Basically, live in an area where you get along with your neighbors and you help each other out. Bonus points if they are self-sufficient too.
I mean, you can't predict what's going to happen, so just try to insulate yourself from whatever system shocks might appear. You'll need to adapt as the years go by and things get worse. Good luck. :-)
I don't. I'm not egotistical enough to think the world will collapse or that if it did I'd have any ability to survive it.
If there is a mass die off then I'm dying too.
You don't have to be egotistical to think it will collapse. Just follow the data.
Thinking you'll survive though, I agree with you. We're both headed for the burn pits.
what data is that? the data that shows human civilization has grown and expanded almost non-stop for the past 10,000 years? despite all the setbacks it has had?
By living my best life now while I can.
Collapse, a world war, apocalypse etc? Fuck that I'm out.
Exactly. I'm spending within my means but buying what I want because why wait? Take the trip now, buy the thing now, because you probably won't be able to in a few years.
Yes, 100%. When I opened an investment account, I explained to our financial planner that I was going through the motions doing what I know I'm supposed to as a responsible adult. But I absolutely don't expect humanity not to destroy itself before the point in my life where I'm supposed to reap that reward.
Hence, I spend more than is probably advisable on things like going to shows, travel, special events, etc. I wanna enjoy as much as possible before it all burns down, cause that's exactly what's gonna happen. And I plan on checking out early if things get bad enough, but that'll be a while yet.
Don't stop with that. I'm early 40s, number of people I know have been diagnosed with fucked up things like cancers.
Happily every after retirements are not in everyone's future. Live while you can.
Post angsty shit on the internet.
you can also lecture people on the internet how superior you are for doing so and how inferior they are for not upvoting your content.
Establish or joing mutual aid networks and learn practical skills like gardening, sewing, or mechanics. Ideally don't live in a city (assuming total trade collapse)
Know your neighbors, befriend your neighbors, when the collapse happens you'll need food in your gardens sure, but you'll need your neighbors to think you're more than a spare pantry when their food gets low, even better if you like each other enough to form a real community thats more defendable and resilient than any single household could be
Ive heard through other people that have gone through a governmental and economic collapse that our superpower as people is in our ability to make connections. And our local community is how they were able to survive in trying times. Getting to know your neighbors, your community can help out when going to barter and trade.
Im thinking starting a community garden or joining one might be a good start. I know im part of a local makerspace so we can repair and augment our tools. Worst case, I find out im not very good at a thing (like Crochet, im terrible) but best case you can contribute back.
I hope nothing bad will happen, but ive already been through a couple of economic downturns, a pandemic, a huge fire/drought and other such events. Yet I am still here. And so is my community. Because we helped each other.
Yeah, this is pretty much the only way to survive. Gardening alone isn't really enough to feed yourself, especially without the help of modern petrochemical derived fertilizers and pesticide.
It really takes a community to grow enough food that you won't be starving in the off-season. I have a fairly substantial organic garden and I wouldn't really want to rely on it alone. Ive had too many seasons where a blight or bug just rips through them.
I once had a huge amount of green beans just all die at the same time because some kind of blight/disease ripped through them. After a couple of years of good harvests + compost.
Yeah, it is always the most frustrating feeling just seeing weeks of work go down the drain. Two years ago we had a really wet spring and then a really dry summer, somehow the combo made the grasshoppers go crazy. They ate my whole garden in like two days, made me feel like I was in the dust bowl.
There's a reason humans started to live in larger settlements once we started agriculture. That shit takes a village to maintain and harvest.
Being there for your neighbours and building community is also a great way to reduce dependence on billionaires
Been learning to garden for a few years. This year I'm focusing on perennials, specifically heirloom species that were staple food crops prior to the modern industrial era.
Turns out pretty much every non native plant in North America is a food crop. These plants often have superiour nutritional content as well as being more drought resistant, hardy, and ecologically sustainable.
A few to google.
Bambara 'Beans' - West African Staple for 300 years. All 9 amino acids. Bio available B12. Grows like legumes. Nitrogen fixer
Bamboo - Edible varieties have lots of fiber and potassium, some protein and low fat.
Old King Henry - Edible shoots like asparagus, edible leaves like spinach, edible grainlike seeds similar to quinoa
Skirret - clumping root vegetable that looks like carrots. Has higher carb density than carrots.
Comfrey - Top Tier mulch/fertilizer.
Clover - Edible nitrogen fixer
Dandelions - Edible nitrogen fixer
Cat Tails - Indigenous, all parts are edible, winter survival crop.
Ashitaba - apparently this plant has insane nutritional benefits for the body and originates from an Okinawan island with the longes average lifspan in the world.
Truthfully? You can’t.
I always see some truly naive optimism in threads like these. Global collapse means shipping is dead, which means every city is in a state of famine.
Pick your closest city, split the population in 4 for each cardinal direction and run some rough estimates on how many will be walking near your door. That's ignoring all the people in your own town that don't have gardens.
I know I have close to a million people coming my way, and someone's going to kill me for my little dozen potatoes. You can't fight off that many people with a handful of neighbors. It also takes a shit load of gardening to keep a family of 4 alive.
If your plan doesn't involve getting the fuck out of dodge and having a cache of food somewhere remote (with a cottage or small cabin if you live in a winter region), it will fail.
If you can’t do the long term stuff others have been mentioning here is a bit more short term stuff:
- Make sure you have bottled water. Ideally a few weeks worth per person in your household. Remember that cooking uses water too.
- Medication for as long a period as you can reasonably cover for the people in your household
- potassium iodine tablets to protect the thyroid in case of nuclear fallout
- Canned food
- remember your pets need stuff too if you have them
- in case there is an infant involved baby formula, diapers and other baby needs
More long term:
- look into MeshCore or meshtastic for communication
- radio with a hand crank + spare batteries
- medkit with bandages, tourniquet, etc. Also learn how to use it.
- we have 3 ways of heating our house: fireplace, electric and gas. I’m sure that won’t be possible for everyone but the point is diversification where possible.
Gardening, getting solar panels and a well is the regular way to handle a crisis.
You can download a lot of data - like Wikipedia, getting books to live on, get a novie collection going, get a sewing machine and good thread also. Global collapse can be just a blink or go mad max. That case guns also.
I don't believe it will be that bad, but the signs for sure sow a lot of upcoming troubles.
Forgot to mention: look up Food Forrest layouts for your climate.
You can have some chickens also. If you don't want to eat them for meat eggs are still important source of protein.
What kind of collapse?
Global. Sorry, I'll redo the post now.
It's still too broad to really answer in my opinion. One type of global collapse could be nuclear war or war in general that just erases most of humanity. In that situation you'd probably have to move somewhere where not a lot of people live today or you would die fighting in the war anyway. Another collapse could be systemical collapse. In that case you should probably rather build a community that you can rely on when shit hits the fan.
In general it's probably good to have skills for how to get food, how to get energy to run appliances and machines as well as knowing how to deal with the environment that you live in.
Accept that death is a natural part of life and hope you are gone before shit really gets worse
I mean I'm barely alive with depression... guess I'll just die and hope to get reincarnated to a better world next time (if there even is such a thing as "next time")
Buy seeds for staple crops and learn basic farming techniques. You just need a handful of potatoes to make a lot more potatoes, and humans can subsist on potatoes almost indefinitely.
Although you can survive (just about) in the short to medium term on exclusively potatoes (if you have both white and sweet varieties) as they contain all your essential amino acids, you're going to develop some serious vitamin deficiencies and you're also considerably more likely to develop diabetes.
You also need quite a lot of potatoes, which needs quite a lot of space, and good storage as you'll only get a few crops in a season and they deplete the soil quite quickly so without the ability to rotate crops (which takes much, much more land) or some other way to reintroduce nutrients to the soil your yields will collapse after a year or two.
You assume people know what you mean. I think you cannot just say „collapse“ without stating what exactly is collapsing and how. That would obviously change the direction of preparation. I’m not prepping but I’m electricity independent and i plan to use meshtastic because I think it’s fun. At least that would help in case of a communication network collapse. Not that I care about that.