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Comment by markx2 | Hacker News Reader

The late great Irish comedian Dave Allen had a sketch on his TV show in the late 70's/early 80's.

IIRC: He is shown in a dimly lit bunker fiddling with his radio, hearing static but other sounds. Screen fades. Comes back and he has stubble, scene repeats but there is more static. Screen fades. In the last scene he has a full beard and only static comes from the radio. You see him climbing out of his bunker to a scene of nuclear devastation - and he starts shouting "We won! We won!"

For these people who want to save themselves, what on earth do they expect to find after 'the event'? How will they fuel their planes, spend their money, how will they have a future?

I'm not saying that your average prepper is wrong, far from it, but the people in this article are on a very different level.

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> For these people who want to save themselves, what on earth do they expect to find after 'the event'? How will they fuel their planes, spend their money, how will they have a future?

I'm not part of the club or have anything prepped but I'm guessing being alive is more than enough of a reason.

Personally if it came down to having a 100% chance of death on the spot or a 100% chance of surviving but then life being drastically different where money is valueless I'd choose survival in that world every time. Even if it meant having a high chance of suffering 40-50 years in the future from radiation exposure.

Consciousness/existence is the only valuable thing, in the face of losing it.

I can't believe all the comments are talking about "who will run their farm" and "what will they do with no jet fuel."

Everyone is so used to insulting wealthy people, they're grasping at straws here.

This seems so massively self-centered to me. There is plenty of value to be found in the idea of sacrificing oneself for others or a greater cause.

If you think your death is the worst thing that could happen to you, you're not thinking big enough.

I think giving your life for something else is the only altruistic act.

But in general, I think there are almost zero situations where my death is worth more to others than my continued life. I don't live in a movie plot.

And what do you perceive the cause would be here, or that any sacrifice was achieve?

When World War 1 was happening, it was being actively deemed "The War To End All Wars." What could possibly be more noble? Of course in the end it not only failed to end war but set directly the stage for far deadlier conflicts shortly to come. It's all just so often utterly bizarre when you look at the big picture. A Bosnian Serb assassinates an Austro-Hungarian royal, and the next thing you know Brits and Germans are killing each other over it? Commoners nobly dying for noble's ignoble causes.

And now, over a 100 years later, the same underlying issues that led to the initial assassination still exist.

I, for one, will set about hunting the rich in their little bunkers for loot and sport.

I would without a second thought chose death, provided that my whole family does as well (i.e. nobody is left behind).

Death is just this: death. A blank and it is over.

This compared to barely survive in a world of desolation without any hope of improvement, the choice is crystal clear to me.

If for some reason I survived I wild like to make sure I have quick and painless means to commit suicide.

And those of us that go on, salute you! For reducing the load on necessary resources, and clearing the board for people ready to work for a future.

It always felt to me that this post nuclear war sounds like choosing to be tortured until you die vs just dying on the spot.

We are talking about full on nuclear annihilation.

Its not 40-50 years of suffering, it sounds like generations of suffering, early struggles not to starve to death (if you are not a remote farmer or remote isolated community with farmers - tough luck scavenging vs hordes of other survivors).

Soon if you managed to be part of community that managed so far, you will be faced with other communities. Fighting over resources or farmland, resources are scares human lives are not. Eventually everything will fall under tyrannical local warlords, who will be constantly fighting too.

Daily fighting for resources, no medications or people who can heal you. Stupid cuts can become lethal, huge number of birthing deaths as c-section is quite common (google says 31.8%) so on and on

The lone survivor rebuilding nation is a romantic view, but I think realistically staying alive will be a grim premise that I'd rather skip.

Would you still be ok going through above scenario?

The scenario you paint could easily describe most of human history and even describes some places in the world today.

That you are here to write this suggests that a long chain of people found something worth living for even in such environments.

Well yes and no, I think in my scenario people would fall to strange quasi bronze age era with modern equipment but no means to produce anything but basic primitive tools (only some would have capabilities/knowledge to produce tech)

So first gen survivors would remember the good times.

There is a difference between 'you were born and live your whole live in a 13th century hovel' vs 'you were eating pizza a year ago watchin Netflix and now you live in 13th century hovel for the rest of your life'.

I have never done heroin but I have a friend that did and stopped. Our experiences are vastly different, even though we are both not on heroin.

> Would you still be ok going through above scenario?

Yep 100%, I would take uncertain life vs certain death in the above scenario. If you truly believe this is your one shot at life then giving that up isn't an option.

My choice? Ground zero, if you please.

This is a very biased western perspective - it assumes total nuclear destruction of all cities on Earth. That's not a realistic scenario.

Many unaffiliated countries would not be nuked at all.

Most ultra-rich people looking to survive nuclear war or a climate crisis, are locating their refuge in parts of the world that are agriculturally self-sufficient, and militarily unaffiliated, and physically far from the war and any fallout.

the only place that is going to be physically far from any fallout is going to be off-planet. Wind & rain go everywhere.

The dose makes the poison.

Most of the fallout will all nearby. I'd try to avoid contamination a few weeks because the radioactive Iodine has a half life of 8 days. Everything else decays too fast or too slow. (I'm not sure how difficult is to get some Iodine pills, just in case. They are quite small.)

Also, "nuclear winter" will be not as hard as the initial models estimate. I hope we don't try anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...

Some are considering putting an equivalent amount of particulates in air to reduce global temperatures...

You mean New Zealand , Fiji and other pacific islands where Larry Page, Peter Thiel and every billionaire now has citizenship or property ?

This. I get a similar feeling when the very people who got nearly mad when they were unable to go to the barber for a few weeks due to an global pandemic suddenly call for a civil war. It is just very clear that they completely lack the imagination how it would actually feel to have the gas running out, no food in the stores and everything you worked for threatened (not to speak of your bare life). In that situation you can prep all you want, but what if your wisdom teeth start acting up? What if you suddenly require medication, that you cannot even know of, because you decided fighting alone is better than actually getting to know the people in your community?

The thing with prepping is that the energy you put into one-upping your neighbours should maybe just be put into fizing the issues you might be bracing against.

There are really several levels of concern as far as I can tell.

1. Temporary disruptions (short term)

2. Temporary disruptions (drawn out)

3. The World Has Changed

1 is really about everyone hoarding TP, "the wheat runs out" between $whenever and the next harvest, etc. It's annoying, but nobody really dies. Just a lot of discomfort.

2 is more when you have to do a cold start of a national grid after a REAL blackout. No electricity for weeks or months. Maybe some deaths, but in the end society basically stays running even though a big thing happens.

3 is a nuclear war, an air-transmissible disease with a 30% fatality rate, etc. The event will eventually end but the world has definitely changed.

Lots of people are prepared for 1, and "the preppers" that folks like to make fun of are in pretty good shape for 2. Almost nobody is prepared for 3 and to try and be prepared for it in a way other than building a self-sustaining community seems like a fool's errand.

The history of man is famines. Mass starvation deaths. We live in an era of unprecedented abundance. For now. The next famine will happen and like every long delayed event will be much worse than the last one thanks to collective loss of planning for now to weather it during the long summer of plenty. The alternative is famine has been solved forever…this seems very unlikely.

Considering the that the average weight loss of a morbidly obese person that stops eating any food for months is 0.7 pounds per day, I'm sure many Americans can survive months without calories.

Ad 3: knowing your neighbours and having a good judgement of their special skills and knowledge (and being on good terms with them) is not an fools errand, but something that might help you with all 3 points and maybe even in your daily life.

There's a good chance than almost nobody in the city knows how to farm in scale.

As an aside, I'd say shows like "The Walking Dead" do preppers a disservice in that its not realistic. I don't mean the zombies - obviously those aren't realistic - but its unrealistic how the actors stay healthy & beautiful while living in such desperate conditions, without sanitation or routine health care.

(OTOH the world that awaits them on recovery will be a paradise! Why? Because zombies represent infinite clean energy. Just put a bunch of zombies on a big mouse run with some bait to motivate them to walk, and boom they can turn a crank indefinitely without any other input, like food.)

True. One thing TWD didn't show was the massive scale of death from drinking non-potable water. That would have killed more people than the zombies.

Rare for any post-apocalyptic setting to accurately depict the shelf-life of gasoline. Despite its whole "WE are the walking dead" schtick the cast seems to mostly prefer cruising around in trucks and RVs even several seasons in.

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/how-long-does-gasoline-last...

Same. This misunderstanding of gas (and batteries) is prevalent in all post-apocolyptic fiction.

Speaking personally, I would watch a more realistic apocalypse scenario where people had to relearn/reinvent older ways of doing things in the ruins of modern civilization, like how to ride/tame/breed/maintain horses for everyday use, how to heat/cook/survive at scale without electricity, running water, or fossil fuels. It's not just the technical challenge of it, but the emotional challenge, the humility required to "go backward", that would make interesting drama.

One show that was unfortunately canceled too soon and looked like it was putting a more realistic spin on the whole "end of the world" trope was "Jericho". It was quite slow and the characters spent a lot of time trying to figure out stuff like how to heat their house, how to make sure they'll have food in the next few weeks, etc. Maybe that's why it didn't work.

I recall actually seeing something like that on that old "Last Man on Earth" sitcom. One episode revolves around the stored petrol having gone off so they start trying to install solar kit.

I think it's like panic buying of toilet paper: you do it because it makes you feel you have some control over your future, not because it makes sense/would work out in practice.

> The thing with prepping is that the energy you put into one-upping your neighbours should maybe just be put into fixing the issues you might be bracing against.

If anything, the past few years have shown me how pretty much impossible it is to fix things. A pandemic exposing people's willful ignorance and callousness towards their own neighbors, multiple flood/drought/fuel/shipping crises exposing just how fragile our standard of living and infrastructure can be (at least in the first world, it's been more obvious in the third world for a while), and any proposed technological fixes for environmental catastrophe still requiring a ton of resources that the world doesn't have to implement it at the scale necessary.

Meanwhile each country is at each other's throats more than ever before, sparked by Russia's invasion (but it was really there before, just exacerbated). Feels like we just reverted about 20 years there, I hadn't had to worry about nuclear annihilation since high school, and now that's at least somewhat on the table again, great. Love to know how I'm supposed to 'fix' that.

If Dennis Rodman feels it's not safe taking a trip to Russia to be our ambassador, I don't think that makes my chances any better!

I'm not bunker prepping or anything, just making sure the pantry stays stocked and learning some practical, non-technical skills, and I'm likely pretty screwed if SHTF for several reasons, but any time I try to think of directing my energy towards 'fixing' things, I'm pretty much just left with a helpless feeling after trying to think of things to do (beyond just donating some money to a few causes, like the recent floods in Pakistan... but that's not fixing anything, just a drop in the bucket to help alleviate one of endless catastrophes that are happening and will keep getting worse over the next few decades).

The looming sense of existential dread is real. I only hope that the end is swift and painless for most.

Also, the first thing folks who learn to survive in the world after “the event” will probably do will be to raid these bunkers or just pour cement down the chutes / roll a big rock in front of the door. The leaders that led us to this point should not be the leaders in the world after it.

Those leaders will be enjoying retirement in South America.

Why are you assuming they are the same people?

Another assumption: why do you think the people involved are the ones concerned with one-upping their neighbors? And one can both work to fix societal problems and prepare for a worst case scenario.

> What if you suddenly require medication

Or how about people who already require medication? With type 1 diabetes, I'd die horribly within a week without a steady supply of insulin - possibly as little as 2 days. The "let's disrupt society and have a civil war because -tyranny-!!" folks don't seem particularly concerned about issues like that.

What do you think would be the minimal requirement to trigger social collapse? I'd claim it's much less than nuclear annihilation. We live in a deeply interdependent society with a society that demands excesses of consumption. Like the article mentions, one possible cause of social collapse could be something as innocuous as a solar storm. Or maybe there might be no cause at all.

The Great Depression is interesting in that there was no external physical mechanism of the sort of famine, plague, or war behind it. It was driven entirely by economics. One day everybody is doing everything as they do and society is moving along fine. The next day, society is collapsing. And today we live in a more interdependent society with greater consumption and lower self sufficiency. The impact would be greater; the original wasn't exactly a walk in the park.

So ultimately I don't really see the end of society as being the same as doomsday. It's likely to just be a liminal phase. And the optimist in me would like to imagine that at the end of the tunnel, we might even be able to come out as a much better people. It seems we, both as individuals and as societies, only seem to learn by sticking our finger in the fire. But at least once we do, we tend to learn not to do it again.

I read somewhere that we are three meals away from civil chaos.

We are a very fragile civilization.

In the past (up to say the 18th century) the main that was a contagious disease, or a very harsh winter. Other than that people were basically self-sustaining.

Today the smallest glitch in electricity, gas, water, banking, ... means immediate chaos.

For these people who want to save themselves, what on earth do they expect to find after 'the event'?

I can't answer all your questions but this specific one I can answer for myself. I am not wealthy but if I can survive a major event then I have a chance to see what is on the other side of it. It might not be as bad as some imagine. If it turns out to be as bad as any of the apocalyptic movies that portray a post-nuclear fallout wasteland then I can always nitrogen tank/cyanide pill my way out of it on my own terms.

how will they have a future?

Some won't. Some might. Those with the will to fight and survive might struggle for some time and those willing to struggle might have a chance. I am willing to take that chance. I am aware of the struggles I will face. The freeze dried food and water tanks will only last for so long. I will have to either build a functional underground greenhouse using solar that rogue people might try to steal or an above ground greenhouse. Maybe I can save a few chickens in the bunker accepting ventilation becomes more important.

That assumes mutually-assured destruction. The way to win a nuclear war is with a surprise attack that takes out the opponent's nuclear capabilities, then demand their surrender.

Bell pointed out that while the United States has always had the "technical capability" to implement a policy of launch on warning, it has chosen not to do so. "Our policy is to confirm that we are under nuclear attack with actual detonations before retaliating," he said.

Robert Bell, senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-11/news/clinton-issues-...

I think this was probably more true in the past than present. US nuclear targets for the Soviet Union were declassified some time back [1]. And the Soviet targets probably looked pretty similar. And like you proposed the top priority was indeed for air superiority, because that's primarily how nuclear weapons were deployed. But ICBMs changed the game. In modern times our nuclear silos are intentionally spread out far and wide, not only in America but the entire world, and specifically designed to withstand a nuclear strike. This is without even mentioning the weapons deployed on mobile platforms such as ships or submarines.

Nuclear war in modern times is going to go for the second tier of targets: industry/economic, civilian population, and medical resources. A bomb detonated around a nuclear silo in the middle of nowhere would most likely have next to no impact on the US. A bomb detonated in the economic center of New York or California would have an unimaginable impact. The scary thing about this sort of stuff is that a "small" blast could easily have the exact opposite effect, and create a rally around the flag effect such as 9/11. And everybody knows this. So should this ever happen, the attacker is going to make sure to leave more than just a mark.

[1] - https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear...

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