Community-based prepping

Is the future going to look like it does at the present? Or might there be unexpected challenges? The answer is that challenges are likely and if not now, then soon. The real question becomes how we will respond to that disruption and achieve sustainable positive outcomes as a result.

- Martin Oliver

Society is always at risk of experiencing substantial disruption from external factors, as COVID-19 demonstrated. There are several ways in which disruption could come about: 

• Economic collapse, with a recent relatively mild example being the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

• Environmental collapse from the breaching of some of the Stockholm Resilience Centre's nine planetary boundaries, one of which is climate change.

• A localised natural disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake, flood or bushfire.

• High-tech threats such as cyber-attacks.

• Less obviously, the breaching of a tipping point through ever-increasing inequality, technological over-complexity or diminishing energy return on investment (the "net energy cliff").

Disruption, or less confrontingly "change", is inevitable. The question is how we cope with it, and community-based approaches can be both palatable and effective.