The End of Prepping: When Does Collapse Become Impossible to Survive?

Science has answers.

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

Prepping has gone mainstream.

It feels like everyone’s into prepping now, and I get it. Prepping is good for you. It’s even better to prep for others—whether it’s a community or just your family. But part of prepping means answering an essential question.

When does prepping end?

In my book, prepping means a lot more than just gathering supplies and packing a bugout bag. It means more than growing your own food or learning how to use a police scanner. It means more than rain harvesters and dew catchers. All of this falls into the category of necessary and beneficial.

It’s still not sufficient.

It’s not enough.

So, I’m prefacing this article. I’m into prepping. But if you’re going to prep, you also need a clear head about the future. That means reading the grimmest climate studies and understanding the future.

I mean really understanding it.

Over the last few years, more climate scientists and more studies have made it clear that we’re going to see 2C or even 3C of global warming by the 2050s. The original climate models we were fed ten or 20 years ago were overly optimistic and wildly inaccurate. In fact, according to one model, my daughter could see 4C of warming on this planet before she’s old enough to retire (by today’s standards). And yet, it’s still hard to envision.

It’s still fuzzy.

It’s rare to find someone willing to paint a vivid portrait of the future. So, I’ve spent some time going back over books, articles, and documentaries to piece together something concrete. For example, Mark Lynas does a pretty great job in Our Final Warning. In fact, he lays out what to expect at each stage from one degree of warming up to six. I’m thinking of this not as a catalogue of doom, but a mental exercise. I think it’s better for our mental health to drill down into the details so we know what to expect.

We need to know, so we can do more than just prepare our homesteads and communities. We need to prepare our minds.

Here’s my best shot so far.

We’re going to skip past 1-2C and dive straight into a 3C world, one that humans have never experienced. By most measures, we’re already living in a 1-2C world. That means most of us now deal with a constant, perennial threat of storms, floods, blizzards, fires, heat waves, droughts, disease, and shortages. Our governments are yanking up the social safety nets and leaving us to fend for ourselves. We can probably survive a 2C world by planning and forming teams wherever we can. But what happens after that?

What happens above 2C?

What happens in a 2-3C world?

We could hit 3C of warming by the 2050s or sooner. We’ll probably hit 2.5C in the mid-2040s, and it’s all going to get significantly worse.

Archaeological evidence tells us this world, last seen 4 million years ago, made the Arctic region so temperate that the very first beavers, rabbits, bears, and deer thrived a thousand miles above the current treeline on Ellesmere Island, at the northernmost edge of Canada, just west of Greenland. Back then, it was a cool breezy 57 degrees Fahrenheit during growing season.

So if you’re looking for collapse real estate…

Four million years ago, during the Pliocene, there was basically no Antarctic Ice Sheet. There was no ice on Greenland.

To put things into perspective:

As scientists estimate in 3 Degrees More, “we have probably already added enough CO2 to the atmosphere to prevent the next ice age, which would otherwise be due in 50,000 years.” At 3C, “the natural ice age cycles of the next half million years will probably not occur.” Dangerous heat waves will begin in May and last through September. (We’re already seeing it.) These heat waves will start to exhaust our power grids by the 2040s, if not sooner. One 2023 study predicted that a grid outage in a city like Phoenix would mean “more than 50 percent of the total urban population” would require emergency medical care. Even cities like Atlanta could see at least 3 percent of their residents hospitalized.

In a 3C world, a billion people around the planet “would be exposed to temperatures that exceed the workability threshold, where it becomes impossible to safely work outside artificially cooled environments, even in the shade.”

That’s right, a billion people.

Large parts of Africa and the Middle East will become uninhabitable. Nobody will be able to grow food or raise livestock there, or even tend their crops because of the extreme heat. Large parts of the U.S. and Europe will look and feel more like Central America, North Africa, and the Middle East. As I recently wrote, the odds of another Dust Bowl become virtually locked in, not just for the plains but for half the country, and it’s likely that the Dust Bowl conditions would become permanent. That means a 40-50 percent drop in crop production.

As for floods, a 3C world would mean quadruple what we’ve seen over the last decade, causing 10 times more damage and killing 20,000 people a year, with hundreds of thousands more left homeless.

A 3C world sees the collapse of the insurance industry.

It’s a certainty.

As Lynas says, “Researchers now suggest that we’ll be back in the Pliocene as soon as 2030 with current emission trends.” Here’s where he hits the nail on the head: “Forget survivalist fantasies. Nowhere will be safe—countries that still grow enough food might find themselves ruled by latter-day eco-fascists, as unscrupulous politicians stir up hate and division in order to cement their power behind rigidly policed national boundaries.” Whew, boy.

As Lynas so aptly predicted, our leaders have already started to respond by cutting international aid, fighting over borders, and hoarding resources from their own citizens. The recent budget turmoil, with hundreds of billions in expected cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, exemplifies a government that plans to pour every penny into tech and military spending. They’re gearing up to try and annex Canada and Greenland, while culling their “weak.”

Don’t forget diseases. Between pandemics, super bugs, and weakened immune systems… we’ll have our hands full.

Going to the hospital?

Enjoy the wait.

At 3C, the average American will be living in conditions they’ve written off as “the third world.” We’re only pushing 2C now, and look around. We got there so much faster than even the doomiest of us predicted.

So, that’s the 2040s.

What happens in a 3-4C world?

A 4C world doesn’t result in human extinction, according to Lynas. But it turns ordinary conveniences like air conditioning, appliances, and running water into luxuries. We’re in Soylent Green territory here.

(You should watch it…)

The problems that sheltered suburban Americans could once ignore will become theirs to deal with. The rest of the world, those still alive, will feel no sympathy. We’re talking about the Dust Bowl and Great Depression becoming everpresent realities, with no light at the end of the tunnel.

The elite will still be partying.

They might also find the support and resources to begin geoengineering the atmosphere, without any approval or mandate from world governments. One startup called Make Sunsets has already started "launching balloons filled with sulfur dioxide (SO2) seeking to geoengineer the planet and generate cooling credits to sell." Mexico has banned them, and the EPA has finally started to demand answers. Honestly, nobody really knows what geoengineering via sulfur dioxide would do. But we can count on unregulated tech firms trying to do it, and making tons of money in the process.

Cities like New York will see deadly heat for 50 days a year, and places like Jakarta will see deadly heat every single day. That's when large parts of the world, basically anywhere within the 30-degree latitude line of the equator, become truly uninhabitable, and the refugee problem really hits. It will be so hot that mosquitoes migrate north, bringing malaria and dengue and yellow fever with them. Cases of mosquito-borne illness are already increasing in North America. By the late 2050s and 60s, they’ll pose steady threats.

At 4C, megafires start.

As for hurricanes, we start seeing our first genuine Category 6 storms and “monster typhoons.” Meteorologists will have no choice but to expand their rating system to accommodate these giants. As for crop failures, not only do you see them on a more regular basis, they start edging up to 80 percent drops in production. Dust Bowl years become the new normal.

What a time…

What happens in a 4-5C world?

You could still probably prep your way through a 3-4C world with some luck, although you face higher odds of death by fascist idiots. In the worlds above 3C, the real threats don't come your neighbors. They come from corrupt governments and local authorities getting in your way and commandeering your stuff. At 4-5C, it’s pretty much game over.

In the 2070s and 2080s, we cross 4C and start heading toward 5C. Babies born this decade will be hitting middle age.

Here’s when you can kiss global industrial civilization goodbye. Studies reviewed by Lynas tend to agree that crop failure becomes so overwhelming that most countries stop trading food. Governments, already in tatters, fall apart completely. Say goodbye to presidents.

Say hello to warlords.

About half the world’s population faces malnutrition and starvation—a conservative estimate. On every continent, the highlands and mountaintops become the only place where you might grow food, the only place to stay cool enough to survive.

As Lynas writes,

At five degrees we are seeing humanity clinging on in only small refuges, surrounded on all sides by spreading deserts, forests in flame and rising seas. We have lost nine-tenths of our habitable planetary space… The rest of our planet is a silent cemetery, suitable for the dead but no longer with much to offer the living.

So, that’s it.

We don’t prep our way through a 5C world. Unless we can hide in the mountains, we won’t be growing much of anything. We won’t be going to stores. We won’t be sustaining communities. We don’t come back from this. Rainforests shift to the Arctic, assuming anything can adapt fast enough to survive.

That’s a big if.

What happens in a 5-6C world?

It’s plausible. It could happen. We could break 5-6C by the end of the century. If that happens, almost nothing survives. It would threaten to kill the planet’s ability to sustain most kinds of life, and it would take a million years to start recovering. We could very well turn this place into Mars.

Elon Musk wouldn’t have to go anywhere.

He could just stay put.

Wouldn't you rather know?

They say ignorance is bliss.

I disagree.

Ignorance isn't bliss. It's anxiety. It's dread. It's sleepless nights. It's knowing that something awful is coming and not knowing what. It's trying to get straight answers and, instead, only hearing condescending lies that don't do anything but make you regret asking questions in the first place.

Ignorance is lonely.

So, I feel better knowing this timeline. It's not written in stone. Human behavior could accelerate the clock even more. Our leaders could respond with more poor decisions, making life even more difficult. Tipping points and disasters will hit some of us even harder and faster. It’s hard to know for sure. What we do know is that the climate models that had us on track for 1.5-2C by the 2050s, with plenty of time to screw around, have gone up in smoke. We’re now in the business of finding out just how wrong they were.

We’re not talking about these scenarios to wallow in doom. For practical planning, and our mental health, I think it’s important to have an accurate grasp of where the world is heading so we can brace for it. Whether you send your kids to college, whether you even have kids, how you prepare, whether you prepare, it all depends on clarity. You can’t make good decisions unless you have some grasp of the future, even if it’s going to be a really awful one.

None of this means we should give up. Like John Barry says near the end of his masterful history of the 1918 pandemic, none of us should try to tell each other what to do, what to think, or how to feel about looming doom before we tell the truth. Nobody should try to influence your mindset or decisions before they tell you what's going on. The truth has to come first.

This is the truth.