One of the stereotypical inhabitants of cartoons is the man, usually sporting a long beard and wearing a robe, holding a sign that says “THE END IS NEAR.” People have been preaching that the end of the world is approaching, that we are in the “end times,” for centuries. One prophet after another has announced that he (in a few cases she) has correctly calculated when Doomsday will come – and been proven wrong.
These days, though, the end of the world, or at least of civilization and society as we know it, could in fact be on the horizon – and it is entirely human-made. As climate change worsens due to human action – and inaction – and the threat of nuclear war haunts us once again, suddenly apocalypse again darkens our future. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has put the hands of the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been. That’s 1 minute 40 seconds. The closest they ever put the clock’s hands during the Cold War was two minutes. The primary reason for placing the hands so close is our apparent inability to come to terms with climate change. Hoi polloi holler for our governments to do something, but the jingle-jingle of donations from PACs that serve corporate fat cats ring louder in the ears of U.S. congress people than the voices of those they presume to represent.
A disturbing article suggests that it may be too late to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Even if tomorrow we replaced every gas-burning vehicle with one that ran on electricity generated by 100% renewable sources, even if we shut down every coal and natural gas plant and got all our energy needs from solar panels and wind turbines and unicorn farts, even if we completely cut beef out of our diets, that rocket has launched. All we can do is delay the inevitable and prepare for the butt-kicking Nature is going to give us.
I still hold out a modest hope that we will avoid the worst effects of climate change; however, we must accept that bad times are ahead. Even if the worst-case scenario does not come to pass, we still face rising sea levels, droughts, crop failures, mass migrations, more wildfires and storms, possibly more pandemics as exhausted and hungry refugees become unwitting Typhoid Marys for emerging diseases. Nations and peoples may go to war over increasingly scarce resources, and these wars will be exceptionally bloody because people will be battling over the essentials of life. Fighting for a leader or ideology is one thing, but fighting so your family can eat is another entirely.
We must prepare for the worst, just as we lock our houses, don seatbelts, and put important documents in safe deposit boxes. The Internet abounds with advice about how to survive the collapse of civilization, not all of it good. Preppers are not necessarily as paranoid as you may think. We all need to do some serious thinking about what we will do when the feces hits the fan. Whom can you trust, where can you go? Will you try to hold out in your city or town, or “head for the hills”? What skills do you have that will be useful after everything crashes?
One thing you can do is build a Knowledge Ark, which I discussed in a previous essay. I have been trying to drum up interest in Knowledge Arks for years, but so far my seed has failed to find the good soil that will yield up tenfold and more; it all seems to land among the thorns. Maybe as people wake up to the fact that our society is in a truly precarious position, and that the collapses of civilization could all too easily go from science fiction to cold hard fact, they will develop more interest in saving what we can.
Climate change coupled with our feeble responses to it, the threat of global war, emerging diseases – our current world faces a number of existential threats. So, what can we do? Hope for the best while leaning on our governments to get off their duffs and take the necessary measures, which, as time goes by, become by necessity increasingly drastic. Prepare for the worst so, if civilization does come crashing down, we can survive and rebuild. Humans are as a whole tough critters, and tough times never last but tough people do.
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