Daily Archives: September 11, 2015

Be prepared … follow this guide and you could be the last one standing when it all goes really, really wrong (Image: S. Parsons/PA)

Is it time to join the climate change preppers?

Energy and Climate Change, Opinion, Prepping and Collapse

(A tonque-in-cheek article from February 2014)

The floods and storms that have wreaked havoc across Britain this winter could be just the beginning, and now a growing number of people are making preparations for the end of the modern world. Here’s what you’ll need to do to stand a chance.

We are getting close to what might be called The Noah Scenario. Last month was the wettest January in Britain since records began in 1767. So far this month has been no different, and the Met Office expects the wind and rain to continue until March. Climate change may be a gradual process, but people who live on the Somerset Levels or the banks of the Thames are getting a very sudden education in the value of arks.

Be prepared … follow this guide and you could be the last one standing when it all goes really, really wrong (Image: S. Parsons/PA)
Be prepared … follow this guide and you could be the last one standing when it all goes really, really wrong (Image: S. Parsons/PA)

It’s unlikely that these floods will be the last such catastrophe, or the worst. Climate scientists expect bigger and more frequent extreme weather events throughout the coming century – not just wind and rain, but droughts as well. Nor is weather the only danger: pandemic flu, nuclear weapons, antibiotic resistance, environmental catastrophe and chronic food shortages could also offer dire threats to civilisation as we know it. You might not want to panic just yet, but you might decide that it is time to join the “preppers” – people who are secretly preparing to abandon modern life when the apocalypse, in whatever form, does arrive.

When do I abandon my home?

When you have no choice. When soldiers are on your street, your neighbours have begun to steal from you and plague-sufferers are camped in your drive – or perhaps slightly before all that. Preppers have a catch-all term for this moment: the SHTF scenario, in reference to the day when the Shit finally does Hit The Fan.

“It would be the last resort for me,” says Steve, a 57-year-old prepper from Essex, who runs ukpreppersguide.co.uk. “Some people seem to think it’s the first thing to do. The moment something happens, they grab their rucksack and off they go and live in the wild – but if you’ve ever tried that, it really isn’t easy. Where I am at the moment, I probably have enough provisions to survive for about nine months. That doesn’t include going out and getting your own food.”

When the moment comes, however, you may not have much warning, so it is important to keep what preppers call a “bug-out bag” ready at all times. Ideally, you’d leave at night, when you won’t be followed.

“The idea behind leaving your home is to get away from danger,” Steve explains, “which means getting away from everybody and going under the radar, off-grid, so you can’t be found – then just survive for however long is needed before you can come back to civilisation.”

Read more: The Guardian

See also: What Should I Stockpile For The Apocalypse?, Bug Out Bag List and Survival Fishing: How to Catch Fish When SHTF

Severe Flooding, Against a Background of Wind Turbines: November 2012, Tyringham, Bucks. (Image: T. Larkum)

Climate Change Nightmares – The Point of No Return

Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and Comment

The worst predicted impacts of climate change are starting to happen — and much faster than climate scientists expected

Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.

Severe Flooding, Against a Background of Wind Turbines: November 2012, Tyringham, Bucks. (Image: T. Larkum)
Severe Flooding, Against a Background of Wind Turbines (Image: T. Larkum)

On July 20th, James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who brought climate change to the public’s attention in the summer of 1988, issued a bombshell: He and a team of climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback mechanism off the coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065. The authors included this chilling warning: If emissions aren’t cut,

“We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.”

Read more: Rolling Stone