Disaster is coming, and the solution to healing is community not chaos
Like it or not, disaster is coming.There will be a hurricane, earthquake, fire, flood, pandemic, storm, or maybe even war, perhaps sooner rather than later.
How should you prepare? Some Americans, across the political spectrum, are buying guns and practicing military tactics that they expect to need if society collapses.But civilization doesn’t have to end for help to arrive dangerously slowly.In the United States, cuts to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds are leaving states scrambling.
New York alone lost hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent floods in areas affected by Hurricanes Sandy and Ida.Meanwhile, the European Union recently urged its citizens to stockpile 72 hours’ worth of food, water, medications, and other essential supplies to ensure “self-sufficiency” after a crisis.But the best thing you can do to prepare for disaster doesn’t require any special training or purchases.It doesn’t even require thinking about disaster.
The best thing you can do is to get to know your neighbors.Collaboration and cooperation, not isolation and exclusion, are the skills we need to make it through the days, months, or years after a world-altering catastrophe.Decades of post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows have scared us into thinking that no one can be trusted during an apocalypse.
The end of the world is full of violence, and every person or family must be ready to defend themselves against strangers and outsiders.But equating disaster preparedness merely with arming yourself makes us believe survival is a zero-sum game and encourages us to act accordingly — and adversarially.That inevitably introduces unnecessary levels of fear, danger, and death to an already challenging situation.In reality, the community is the best defense against the apocalypse.
What’s more, disasters can actually help create the community we need to rebuild and recover.Humans have known that community is the key to survival for thousands of years. Arc...