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If most goons are about 40 years old now, we will probably live to the year 2050. Some of us have children who might even make it to the year 2100. Life Circa 2050 Will Be Bad. Really Bad. This thread isn't a "how to become a self-sufficient prepper", this isn't also "how can I reduce emissions to help fight climate change". This thread is to think of ideas for cost effective ways to insulate your house from the heat or how to save rain water to use on a home garden. Its impossible to tell exactly how climate change is going to affect a given area, but we know some generalities, its going to get hot. My household is almost exactly at the average for household income in my area, so I don't have unlimited resources to buy a 4000 square foot underground bunker on a 100 acre farm. To fight the inner doomer in my head I day dream, with the limited resources at my disposal, what reasonable/practical things can I do today to make life in 2050 more comfortable/livable. What have I missed? What are better choices we can make. Looking to minimize discomfort. Cost effective things you can do today that will help in the year 2050. Catagories to think about
*food *water *shelter - storms, heat, shade *security *employment *power/electricity *education - self-reliant, repairability *entertainment *self heath/misc *multiple generations living together? 1. Location Don't live too close to the ocean, but don't life too far inland. Ocean levels will rise and with the addition of storms, you don't want to live <100 ft (might even need to make it +200ft) above current sea level. But here on the west coast, moving from a coastal city to just 30 minutes inland can make a +10-15°F difference. Just 20-30 miles inland can change the temperature from 70-75 to 85-90°. If you aren't able to work from home, this category also effects employment possibilities. You will want to live close enough to commute to employment. For example, I live less than an hour from San Francisco, but moving four hours north along the coast would mean cooler weather and more rain, but the selection of jobs drops off a cliff. Possibly move to a place with cheaper land to live off land combined with remote work? Portugal is popular, but just judging from the past few year's heat waves, what areas would be a better choice? 2. Food Not sure how much you can plan for food security 30+ years into the future. I look at what previous generations did during WWII. Victory gardens, you can't reasonably grow 100% of your own food, but you can make sure you won't suffer from nutrient deficiencies. If you own your home you can plant fruit trees, start gardening, learn how to compost. Growing enough leafy green vegetables to feed a small family only takes maybe 400 sqft. An established lemon tree gives you 100+ fruit a year. Trees can take a few years to establish and grow, the sooner you are able to plant it, the better. Raise chickens for eggs? Rabbits for meat? 3. Water Rainwater capture. This is something I feel like I shoud invest in now. Make sure to check your local laws, some areas its illegal to have your gutters funnel into a water tank. 5.5' diameter, 13 feet tall can fit 2000 gallons: https://www.plastic-mart.com/product/3602/2000-gallon-water-tank-chemtainer-tc2000iw Collecting rainwater for human consumption is beyond this thread, but having a few thousand gallons on hand for your garden during a drought is something I think would be a good use of money. What type of pipe should I use to send the water from my gutters to the tank? PVC, SDR sewer pipe, corrugated solid pipe? Which kind would resist UV the best? Last the longest, best value? 4. Shelter For most people shelter means a house. I have also considered buying some acres in a remote area and setting up a yurt.  https://www.yurts.com/galleries/30-yurts/ There are many options for semi-permanent housing, but I feel we should focus on how to reinforce a standard house that has already been built. To better prepare for heat, I recently learned about "radiant barrier" that should be installed in your house's attic along with your standard insulation, but I don't know anyone who has done this. https://atticfoil.com/ Just staple this thick foil and it reflects the sun's heat, significantly reducing the temperature in your house. Other brands are available in your local big box store. Planting large shade trees to the south-west (?) of your house to help reduce the heat in the summer. Best is a tree that drops its leaves for wintertime (deciduous trees), just make sure their roots won't damage the house's foundation. These need to be planted well in advance, as the trees need time to grow to maturity. Double or triple pane windows. From the 1970's book: Usborne Book of the Future   5. Security Camera flood lights, get friendly with your neighbors, large breed dog, fencing, bars over your windows, parking a car in garage/behind fence Strong doors, propertly installed screws 6. Education learn how to repair what you already own, learn how to DIY - carpentry - electronics - plumbing 7. Power/Electricity Solar panels, wind turbines? Lower power heat pump tech Solar water heating, running black hose in circles on your roof heats the water inside, to then use for showers. Backup battery Fozzy The Bear fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Sep 10, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 00:09
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reserved TL;DR Climate, gardening, fruit trees, water storage tank, house insulation, solar panels, heat pump, metal/tile roof, plant a large tree to the south of your house for shade in 20+ years, security bars in windows, large dog, become friendly with your neighbors, learn how to repair what you already own, learn how to DIY - carpentry - electronics - plumbing, books - DVDs & music saved to a computer, try to stay healthy & excersise, Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes for air filter smoke growing sunflowers for biodiesel electric bike? Fozzy The Bear fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 00:10
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i think one of the most important things one can do, and you do mention it, is to become better friends with ones neighbors. things like growing food, generating your own electricity, security, etc. we are all going to vary a lot in our abilities and means to get that poo poo together. it's when people join together as communities that all of these things become a lot more realistically doable.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:22
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I looked into it a bit and living in the PNW and have an emergency kit under the threat of a massive earthquake. I have a bag with important documents, my passport, a few hundred in $20s, a multitool, first aid kit, some cans of food/water, small radio, etc. I agree about the neighbor thing. People tend to come together in moments of emergency as demonstrated all throughout history. Most don't have the option to do much more. People living in suburbs with limited lot size, renting apartments, or living in cities. Just don't live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Oe6YK0DgE
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Jul 6, 2023 06:02
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Great video, I wish I could find something that in-depth for the whole world.
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Jul 7, 2023 21:30
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I can't even tell if this is satire or real, but uuh - LARPing as a homesteader/doomsday prepper can be a nice hobby for sure. Just buy a cabin and learn to hunt, then you can plan the world ending for whatever X reason and also enjoy a nice vacation.
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Jul 11, 2023 15:39
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Dante posted:I can't even tell if this is satire or real, but uuh - LARPing as a homesteader/doomsday prepper can be a nice hobby for sure. Just buy a cabin and learn to hunt, then you can plan the world ending for whatever X reason and also enjoy a nice vacation. I'm serious posting, I thought I typed out that this isn't prepping. If you think using new insulation technology, or saving rainwater is doomsday prepping.... idk man... go back to the tv show threads. Fozzy The Bear posted:This thread isn't a "how to become a self-sufficient prepper", this isn't also "how can I reduce emissions to help fight climate change". This thread is to think of ideas for cost effective ways to insulate your house from the heat or how to save rain water to use on a home garden. If you own a house, how can you better prepare it for climate change? I think that is a reasonable ask/tell. As one of the examples I listed "radiant barrier". I had no idea about this product a year ago. For $200 worth of material, it makes a HUGE difference keeping a house cool. There are so many products like that, cost effective things, that a typical home owner just doesn't know about, or doesn't realize how inexpensive a product might be. I need to add in the OP about indoor hydroponics/aquaponics for those who live in a condo/apartment. I don't know much about that, but I bet you can grow a decent amount of vegetables in an unused room/balcony. Fozzy The Bear fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 19:05
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I wanted to plant a shade tree in my backyard, but gently caress being a doomsday prepper, I'll just go play more video games.
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Jul 11, 2023 20:02
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Fozzy The Bear posted:I wanted to plant a shade tree in my backyard, but gently caress being a doomsday prepper, I'll just go play more video games. Prep for the Doomsday by playing Fallout 3 op, hope this helps
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Jul 21, 2023 01:19
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I live in an apartment and the most I got is that I can grow some peppers and tomatoes or something and I'm gonna be resentful about homeowners moving to my little mountain city and making me rent for the rest of my life lol. E: My area is in the middle of an intense heatwave right now and I'm just super bitter atm. The opening post has interesting ideas Blue Labrador fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Jul 27, 2023 |
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Jul 27, 2023 02:35
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Blue Labrador posted:I live in an apartment and the most I got is that I can grow some peppers and tomatoes or something and I'm gonna be resentful about homeowners moving to my little mountain city and making me rent for the rest of my life lol. Its tough renting an apartment. Do you have a window that gets sunlight? I thought this was a cool idea. Run a window AC unit directly from solar panels, not even plugged into the grid. When the sun shines it turns on, when the sun goes down it stops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whi-KyvTiN4 e: Its an interesting concept I hadn't thought of before. Adding solar run appliances to your house, without paying the $20,000+ to add solar to your whole house. Allows you to keep the costs lower, as you do the installation yourself. You don't necessarily need full house solar. Just run AC, or maybe use the solar panels to run your work computer during the day, and run on laptop batteries in the evenings before you go to bed. Possibly even hook up beefier solar panels to a EcoFlow type battery/inverter unit. That could probably let you use a microwave, nighttime lights, mini refrigerator? Fozzy The Bear fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 21:28
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Hi, OP. We've been doing this for the last 10+ years. Not prepping for doomsday, but, like, prepping for hotter temperatures, less electrical grid stability, sporadic supply-chain breakdowns, and other stuff that's actually happening now but people would have thought we were crazy to worry about in 2013, if we'd made a thread about it then. The main home changes we've made were to install solar panels, get off natural gas (1 year before the price of gas went through the roof in our state, yay timing), put in air conditioning, install better windows... It's not crazy stuff, most of it was either a smart upgrade at the time, or wound up being a smart thing to do a couple years later. Unfortunately, though, there's just no telling if this town is even going to be here 10 years from now. All the preparation in the world won't matter at all if we stop getting water, or if the trucks bringing food to the store stop coming anywhere nearby, or if local employers shut their doors, or if there's a severed fiber optic uplink that there's no money to fix. The poster who suggested making friends with your neighbors, that's probably your best bet at this point. I've been trying to stay ahead of things because it's my hobby, but at the end of the day, I'm just screwing around with technology toward a specific (forecasted) goal. People, generally, are going to have to figure out new ways to do stuff, and being pals with your community means you'll be working together on these solutions, instead of you being that crazy hoarder guy in the zombie movie who loses everything when a bunch of raiders (ie a community) kill him for it. Maybe look into becoming active with your local government. Help your community plan for what's clearly coming. Serve on a board or commission, and try to navigate the politics of keeping a bunch of primates focused on a task. Or just be a voice at the meetings, so the people who are in those decision making positions don't feel like there's no support for them doing the things that need to be done. It's not easy work, you won't get any cool gadgets or greywater systems out of it, but it's very much what humanity needs most right now. cruft fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 03:17
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honestly i think a lot of the prep we need to do is less "doomer survivalist bunker" stuff and more simple things that lots of people used to do all the time, like growing vegetables so that a community isn't automatically destroyed just because trucks stop bringing food to stores i travel all the time and am constantly dismayed to find myself in places where there are crops being grown at large scale and there is good soil and water and resources but you go into most stores and every bit of food you see in there was trucked in from several hundred miles away and most of it is wrapped in plastic. ive heard stories of people in the suburbs who own houses getting in trouble with homeowners associations or their neighbors for growing food in their yard instead of grass, because it "lowers property values" or some poo poo (does it even?). something about our relationship to food, where food comes from and what its supposed to look like, has become utterly hosed. and part of surviving is going to involve breaking and rebuilding that system, imo. i think i mentioned above im not a homeowner i live in an apartment building and have a shared balcony where i can grow a few things. but there is shared space in the building that gets good sunlight and is currently used for nothing other than a few decorative plants. in buildings without other outdoor space, rooftops have a lot of potential. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 17:49
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cruft posted:The poster who suggested making friends with your neighbors, that's probably your best bet at this point. I've been trying to stay ahead of things because it's my hobby, but at the end of the day, I'm just screwing around with technology toward a specific (forecasted) goal. People, generally, are going to have to figure out new ways to do stuff, and being pals with your community means you'll be working together on these solutions, instead of you being that crazy hoarder guy in the zombie movie who loses everything when a bunch of raiders (ie a community) kill him for it. Earwicker posted:honestly i think a lot of the prep we need to do is less "doomer survivalist bunker" stuff and more simple things that lots of people used to do all the time, like growing vegetables so that a community isn't automatically destroyed just because trucks stop bringing food to stores just wanting to highlight how well these two posts dovetail together if you do them both at once - by getting active in your community and local politics, you can sway your neighbors/HOAs/local cultures to be more friendly towards stuff like victory gardens and growing your own produce as well as being an advocate for you and your family. it's all about figuring out ways to solve multiple problems at once without generating many more in the process.
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Aug 23, 2023 21:53
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Great posts! I appreciate the added perspectives.
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Aug 26, 2023 22:50
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I like how this article is so liberal brained it speaks of whole civilizations collapsing yet there is still an "international community" forging a "world order" like it's 1950.
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Aug 30, 2023 17:57
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dervival posted:just wanting to highlight how well these two posts dovetail together if you do them both at once - by getting active in your community and local politics, you can sway your neighbors/HOAs/local cultures to be more friendly towards stuff like victory gardens and growing your own produce as well as being an advocate for you and your family. it's all about figuring out ways to solve multiple problems at once without generating many more in the process. I'm so on board with growing your own food, and I'm lucky to live in an area where there seems to be a fair number of people doing the same. Apps like NextDoor here are great for making connections and sharing resources and knowledge, e.g. I was having a low success rate grafting avocados and met up with someone who not only showed me how he does it but gave me a tree that's been producing great the last two years. I'm still a beginner at gardening but things like peas, string beans, cherry tomatoes etc are so easy to grow in containers, and this year I finally figured out how to get the ph right for blueberries and they absolutely exploded. My experience is more on the building side, and I've helped people make raised garden beds, set up simple water collection systems etc, mostly using free stuff off Craigslist and Buy Nothing groups. Redwood is amazing- running old fence boards through a planer often results in boards that literally look like fresh redwood. We throw so much usable material into landfills it's absurd. I'm a big fan of bartering as well. Taking money out of the equation creates a whole other vibe.
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Sep 7, 2023 19:01
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socketwrencher posted:Apps like NextDoor here are great for making connections and sharing resources and knowledge Great post! Is Nextdoor a worth while app? I always heard bad things about it. How did you find the Buy Nothing groups? How did you make the contacts that are willing to barter?
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Sep 10, 2023 23:19
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Great post! NextDoor in my area is great for a few things (like asking for small favors) and terrible imo for the rest (especially anything political). Buy Nothing is big on Facebook here, there are other groups/organizations around too. The free section of Craigslist and NextDoor can be really good as well. Bartering is mostly with neighbors and people I run across on jobs, and I've also made connections in the course of giving away or picking up free stuff- people who are inclined to make the effort to donate before dumping stuff, or seek donations before buying stuff, tend to have more in common regarding how to live on earth than just the buy nothing mindset.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:46
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Fozzy The Bear posted:Is Nextdoor a worth while app? I always heard bad things about it.
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Sep 12, 2023 12:57
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Thanks for reassuring me that the assumptions behind my decision to avoid were correct.
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Sep 12, 2023 14:05
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the only useful thing ive ever seen on nextdoor is every once in a while someone sells or gives away audio equipment or some decent looking furniture i live in an area with a very high volume of both coyotes and helicopters and nextdoor seems to mainly be a place for people who are perpetually mystified and alarmed by these things
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Sep 13, 2023 17:51
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I was under the impression that a BOE and systems collapse, combined with the exponential acceleration, will extinguish 80% of all life. Turns out I was prepping the wrong way aparently.
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Oct 8, 2023 10:23
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VplDyln posted:I was under the impression that a BOE and systems collapse, combined with the exponential acceleration, will extinguish 80% of all life. even if that is true its not going to happen in one instant. it's reasonable to discuss methods of survival and helping each other to whatever extent is possible in the coming poo poo while we are still alive.
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Oct 9, 2023 20:49
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cruft posted:
please do this we need more "for the love of god, build the loving infrastructure to climate-prepare our community while we still can" and less "uh a handful of loud hecklers are mad at shade and have ecological amnesia, so we should delay the project for another year of community engagement"
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Oct 14, 2023 21:39
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Just stumbled on this thread again, and I have a hot new take on the subject line (not the thread content). The way you stop being a doomer and love climate change is to take the long view. If humanity is going to become a multi-planet species, we need to learn how to live on planets that are not as hospitable to life. The assumption always seems to be that we'll learn this by funding expensive as hell missions to weird planets and science it up, but that's going to take forever and cost too much. The easier way for us to learn how to live on lovely planets is to do it right here at home. This is how humanity does stuff: we crap things up until we have to deal with it. It's how we learned about coal pollution; CFCs; farming; electrical power line safety... so much innovation is just us throwing human meat into the grinder until we figure out how to not get ground up as much. This is the same thing, and the way you love it is by convincing yourself that the other side of the pile of bodies is our (possibly lovely, possibly way better than anything else, nobody knows) planet's brand of life spreading out into the galaxy. Hope This Helps, Have A Nice Day - cruft
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Jan 16, 2024 19:01
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cruft posted:This is how humanity does stuff: we crap things up until we have to deal with it. It's how we learned about coal pollution; CFCs; farming; electrical power line safety... so much innovation is just us throwing human meat into the grinder until we figure out how to not get ground up as much. every one of the issues you mention is still actively loving us up in various ways and we have not learned how to deal with any of them properly. like farming is the earliest and most basic of the things you mention but we still live in a world where our food distribution system actively works against a lot of people and large numbers of people starve or go malnourished quote:the way you love it is by convincing yourself that the other side of the pile of bodies is our (possibly lovely, possibly way better than anything else, nobody knows) planet's brand of life spreading out into the galaxy. i've been reading an interesting scifi series lately where an overall global conflict among humanity several centuries from now comes down to a choice between two "branches" one is the branch you describe, exploration of the galaxy and spread of the species via trial and error. this branch involves - as you mention - a lot of death. and a lot of distance and separation and the pain involved in exploration. the other branch is focusing all human resources on the quest for achieving immortality here on earth. curing the diseases that plague us and learning how to keep a planet and its people in balance, a way of life that is healthy for all the life here, before we think about setting foot on any other planet. but of course this approach involves putting all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak.
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Jan 16, 2024 19:45
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e: I'm just gonna let that first post stand, although since I already made a follow-up, I'll just say that I agree with what Earwicker said 
cruft fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 19:59
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cruft posted:Like, we know what to do about food distribution, pollution, etc. We figured that out. Whether we care enough to actually do it is another matter. We don't yet know what to do about climate change, but once we do, we'll understand how to change a planet's climate intentionally, after having accidentally discovered that we could. i think learning to care enough - collectively, not just some of us - is a big part of the "figuring it out" that we haven't done yet, and it's a part that we're going to have to figure out if we're going to last long to spread anywhere, otherwise the coming food crisis and its resultant conflicts and/or the poisoning/cooking of the planet will wipe us out long before we get anywhere else
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Jan 16, 2024 20:07
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Yeah, I'm a lifelong space head. JWST and the Vera Rubin telescope and Artemis quite literally gives me will to live. But lol at any mission proposal past like 2040. They're not going to happen. Nobody is going to be funding these things while we're in resource wars and global food shortages are affecting even the US. Humanity frankly will not survive to 2124 in numbers to do any space programs. Also we have no where close to jump to that's habitable. If you have to dome up to live, you need a species sized supply chain to support you pretty much forever, and you'll never be able to scale the colony up comfortably, and not every rocky body has every element needed to make things. If Earth becomes turbogigafucked and humanity becomes extinct here, a Mars colony is a lifeboat for another few decades until entropy does its thing there too. FTL is not going to happen society or no society, and so far, even if we felt like doing it the slow way there's still no where to go, we haven't found anything close to Earth-like let alone within double digit light years. It's Earth or bust.
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Jan 16, 2024 20:23
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skooma512 posted:Yeah, I'm a lifelong space head. JWST and the Vera Rubin telescope and Artemis quite literally gives me will to live. well we could always build a big antenna and point it at the sun and use it as a big transmitter to send a message to the rest of the universe that we've hosed our little rock up and could use a bit of help
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Jan 16, 2024 20:54
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Earwicker posted:well we could always build a big antenna and point it at the sun and use it as a big transmitter to send a message to the rest of the universe that we've hosed our little rock up and could use a bit of help 600 years later, the reply will be "sucks bro". 2000 years later one of their ships finally show up and has some cool strata to dig through.
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Jan 16, 2024 20:58
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skooma512 posted:It's Earth or bust.  pinning your hopes on lifting 1.2 trillion pounds of human out of Earth's gravity well is folly, to say nothing of the food and water and seeds and soil microbes and insects and clothing and uncle Phil's medicine required to get them all to Mars.But if you want to love climate change, I'm still going to recommend viewing it as a necessary but painful step to becoming a multi-planetary species.
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Jan 16, 2024 22:13
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cruft posted:But if you want to love climate change, I'm still going to recommend viewing it as a necessary but painful step to becoming a multi-planetary species. even if this were true, it's not going to happen during the lifetime of anyone reading this
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Jan 17, 2024 00:00
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Earwicker posted:even if this were true, it's not going to happen during the lifetime of anyone reading this That means you can't prove me wrong! Ha! I love climate change so much right now!
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Jan 17, 2024 00:25
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cruft posted:hot new take on the subject line (not the thread content). Was Kubrick's point that the apocalypse is a nazi's wet dream? i.e. an opportunity to hand pick the entire human genetic stock, as well as the government. Or was he saying no matter what your values, the apocalypse has opportunities for you? Can climate change lend urgency to a space program? Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. With the abbreviated time scale, humans don't get a seat on the ark, sorry. Learn to love your tardigrade directed pansperm
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Jan 17, 2024 21:05
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I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the way to survive something like climate catastrophe is to be rich. It's a nice fantasy to think that you will be doing lots more DIY projects but in reality probably not. Want to garden? Not if you don't have land you won't. How do you get land? Money. Want to live in a remote cabin in order to withdraw from global conflict? You know what you'll need. In lieu of completely destroying and replacing the current economic system which I don't forecast happening the best thing you can possibly do is to just make as much money as you can until whatever climate problems are happening no longer apply to you.
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Feb 15, 2024 00:12
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My plan is just to die before things get really bad.
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Mar 15, 2024 07:23
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The Lone Badger posted:My plan is just to die before things get really bad. Just don't buy a house on the coast and you'll be fine. You'll probably be fine even if you do, but your insurance rates might go up a lot. Grow chili on your balcony because its fun and tasty, not because of doomerism!
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Mar 16, 2024 12:00
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The Lone Badger posted:My plan is just to die before things get really bad.
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