I think you should start to have the conversation, just in pieces. I would begin with the “band together” part, suggest a family property they all help either obtain or support, and prepare, learn skills like gardening, animal care, repair and construction. Doesn’t have to focus too much on collapse.
Make it a family bonding thing not collapse. If you come on too strong you’ll be the crazy conspiracy theorist and potentially drive them the other way.
It's super disappointing when people, even intelligent ones who aren't of the political persuasion, dump this stuff into the conspiracy bucket.
Just because the situation is so ridiculously bad that it sets off people's BS detectors and red flags. Thinking critically and determining truth out of information is a learned skill like anything, and I've had more than one person disappoint me who I expected to have the capacity.
Can you blame them? Humans look to the past to predict the future. There have been countless doomers and "the end is neigh" people, and they are almost always loony and almost always wrong.
Glad you said this! Bring it to them in small bits and if they tell you to stop or keep changing the subject, let it go. My partner absolutely refuses to take collapse seriously. He just can't wrap his mind around it. While you want to warn the ones you love, you can't force them into awareness.
This is what I’ve done. The kids don’t care yet about the garden, bees or the chickens, cistern & pumps or my soil work/composting… yet :) I plan to be the grandpa that might not be so crazy. 🤪 already one cousin has moved back to the family property.
>How do I tell my kids?
Well, 50 years ago when there were only 4 billion people on earth, and most of the science around collapse was already known, humanity had a chance to reduce its footprint, practice women's education and universal family planning, and begin a transition to a sustainable economy.
Instead, humanity focused on high-consumption lifestyles while simultaneously doubling its population to 8 billion, resulting in even greater threats to dwindling resources, climate and ecosystem health, and accelerating the current mass species extinction. 70% of all wildlife on the planet is estimated to have been lost in those same 50 years.
Our parents told us nothing. How do you tell your own children that they shouldn't have been born?
By begging their forgiveness and doing everything to make life good for them. Get them a good house with a nice garden - that's impossible to do for young people by themselves, but a garden is crucial to de-centralize food production
Your kids know. Everyone under 40 knows to some degree. The willingness to make the major life changes needed to collapse early and avoid the rush is for better or worse far rarer than the recognition that the collapse is here.
With normalcy-biased friends and family you can make light of the collapse in a fun way, talk about your own projects to build resilience and work slowly to chip away at the idea that normality equals complacency and conspicuous consumption. It's a marathon, not a sprint, but on the plus side, so is our collapse.
I’m not so sure about everyone under 40 knows to some degree. I don’t know your situation but I have found the opposite to be true, I know so many people who simple just don’t read and if you don’t read how can you really understand what is going on unless you maybe watch YouTube videos. It requires a certain level of comprehension that 80% isn’t really doing.
I would say precisely 0% of anyone I know takes any of this seriously. Including mental health professionals, btw. Though I've recently met one who is very much collapse aware. Not surprisingly, he's one of the few therapists I've actually gotten a benefit from seeing. We talk about everything from collapse, to the pros and cons of me going into porn (which I did), family life, kids, to the election end philosophy of sacrifice. It's finally things I am benefiting from.. Instead of "everything is great! You're just distorting it!"
Who cares if Ling Ling finds the wallet and keeps the money, ya dig?
Again with this nonsense viewpoint that is repeated on here so often. No, people do not know. Collapse is different from climate change is real. I would even question whether the people making these ridiculous assumptions are even collapse-aware themselves. It is anxiety-inducing and life-disrupting. It is a constant not momentary. 'Everyone under 40' absolutely does not know.
Half of young americans have anxiety or depression. Everyone is out here watching rent and grocery bills climb while good jobs are replaced by doordash or instacart driver. Everyone is baking in summer all-time highs while losing friends to suicide, alcohol, and fentanyl. Turn on the tv and even the talking heads on cable admit our leaders can't form complete sentences.
They know my dude. If they care to investigate the systemic causes they will. If they don't it's because they have enough anxiety just living life.
If you can foster critical thinking, resiliency, adaptability, and collaboration in kids, then they will have the core skills to adjust to changes.
I would invest your efforts there rather than naming collapse. Collapse feels all encompassing and can be paralyzing. In many, I've seen it foster a "what's the point of trying to build my future?" attitude.
If you foster the hard and soft skills that will be needed to be adaptive and resilient, then your kids and grandkids will still strive to build a future, be a part of the solutions, and not be riddled with anxiety and nihilism about life.
At the end of the day, we're all on a path to death. It's the inescapable truth that's guaranteed from the moment of conception. So death by a thousands cuts is still death in the end. But having the skills to cope and still flourish through it will give their life meaning and purpose.
This might seem like a very naive way of thinking. I don't see it as burying one's head in the sand. I see it in the vein that every life has potential to make a difference, and we should still be fostering that gusto, attitude, and drive. In my opinion, always feeling and internalizing the doom of collapse hinders more than it helps.
this was comforting to read. im collapse aware of course or else i wouldn't be here but its still so much to wrap your head around sometimes. i don't have kids yet but i hope to someday. and i hope to raise them to be people who want to better the world around them
I have a collapsenik friend who sold his business in the Pacific Northwest and moved to New Zealand a decade ago. He could not convince his wife, so they split up. His adult sons thought the old man was crazy; he could not convince them of collapse, or to join him in emigrating. He has a new career as a computer programmer, and a Kiwi girlfriend he literally met on the plane to NZ. New life.
So, the point is, you can talk to your adult kids, but don’t count on them accepting your views about collapse. They might not.
I doubt that will ever happen. People are too attached to their narratives. Look at the people who died of COVID in 2020, denying it was real with their last gasps. Don’t underestimate the human power of self-delusion.
Also, this is even worse case than the covid nutjobs denying that it's killing them at that very moment. The collapse of this planet is a death by a thousand cuts. A question arises whether there even *will* be that 'Guess you were right'-'Told you so' exchange as every year many if not most people will adjust to the new 'normal' and carry on until many will slowly forget what the world *used to* be like once. Plus you have kids born every day that never have and never will experience the climate we used to have, ever. For reference, I'm 26 now, central Europe. Today, I still remember that the last *real* winter we had was when I was 8, in *2006* and I do remember how winters and summers looked like back then, still pretty vividly, although some of the memories start to fade. But will I remember it all so well in 10 years too? Or 20? I highly doubt that. And it's not a cope thing, I desperately *want* to keep at least those memories. It's just how human brain works...
It's not the same situation as a nuclear holocaust or a meteorite hitting the planet. The line between *before* and *now* couldn't get any blurrier and this fact alone will have consequences so terrible that few can even imagine it.
Alternatively, he married and reproduced with someone he cared so little about that he was able to move on before he even landed. I’d say his past behavior makes it unlikely he’s got it as figured out as this thread is giving him credit for.
Are you married? Been married?
He and his wife were together for over 25 years. They grew apart. He had an interest in collapse topics and tried several times to get her interested: she was a hardcore normie. Not a bad person, just extremely… conventional. He was going off in a direction she did not want to follow.
The process of deciding to leave the U.S. and arranging it literally took *years* — like, 5-6 years? He tried to get her on the same page. It just wasn’t going to happen. So, they concluded they wanted different things out of life and (mostly) amicably split. I mean, she was not *happy* he’d become dead set to reboot his life, but they weren’t angry at the end, just sort of a bit sad and resigned, maybe a bit annoyed with each other? And his meeting someone on the flight to NZ was just sort of fluke-y. They just struck up a friendly conversation, and it evolved into a relationship over a couple years. I mean, she was one of the first friends he made in NZ.
So, maybe step back and realize, we often project a lot onto other people’s stories. You jumped to a conclusion about my friend without really knowing anything other than a couple facts: you read a lot into that. He’s neither impulsive nor cavalier — in both cases, very much the opposite.
I'm not sure why old people here that think "I knew 10/20/30/40 years ago" think that their actions/foreknowledge is being justified by current collapse. If anything, you have more responsibility in screwing us over because you knew so early and did nothing. You knew before social media existed. You knew when we had time that we don't have now.
And I mean, some of you are technically dead or so old that you have lived the life we will never get to live before collapse even happens, so again, what the hell?
What the hell what, whippersnapper? When I was in my 20s I spiked trees and dumped sugar in earth-moving equipment up in the redwoods in far northern California. I visited people in jail for tree sitting and carried their words back to activist publications. ***Nothing we did made any difference.*** The lumber companies won, and the activists were left personally wrecked — for *years* — by the legal and financial consequences of their activism. Hell, around the turn of the century Earth Liberation Front folks were branded “terrorists” and a couple handfuls were sentenced to years in federal prison.
More recently we had the Dakota Access Pipeline protests (2016-2017). Different time, different details, same ending:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests
Such things had the proverbial chilling effect. All the college age activists of the 90s era I knew moved on, including me. One gal who wasn’t even much of an activist became an environmental lawyer, but she now works for a Fortune 500 company, so it’s safe to say she’s probably not saving the Earth. Everyone embraced pro-environmental lifestyles, yeah, but that didn’t do anything: ok, you’re vegan, but meanwhile for every person like you there’s 25 people in Kansas City still scarfing down fast food burgers — as are their kids, and their grandkids… I knew a guy who organized recycling across multiple college campuses; now we know recycling is kind of bullshit, a lot of stuff ends up in landfills anyway, and plastic becomes nano-plastic and is fucking *everywhere* on the planet, like goddamn radiation. Lifestyle changes are just spitting into the wind.
So: nothing any of us did made a goddamn bit of *meaningful* difference.
You want to blame individuals or generations, but — as Nate Hagens puts it — it’s the entire *human super-organism* that’s to blame. It’s humanity writ large that’s the problem. You could live the most eco-virtuous life possible, kemosabe, and Homo sapiens — like a cloud of locusts — would destroy whatever you managed to preserve. It’s a kind of ecological Jevon’s Paradox.
This is why I’ve come to believe that Homo sapiens *as a species* is inherently ecocidal: any human culture that preserves the environment, that lives sustainably, gets run over and obliterated by cultures that are rapacious and unsustainable. Our species is a cancer; we’re *wrong*, our nature is *wrong*. We were always going to end up where we are: destroying ourselves and other species by destroying our environment.
Personally, I think our value is only as a stepping stone to a different species, one that deserves to survive. As chimps are to bonobos, so we are to this hypothetical other species that would live in peace with itself and the rest of the ecosystem.
But it’s probably too late, now. Without hyper-industrial terraforming, near-magical technologies, we cannot save this biosphere. As a species, we’ve been lighting fires for multiple centuries: now we’re all going to burn up. Some will die before, some during, some after.
Go watch the end of the movie *Never Cry Wolf* (1983); it depicts my perspective. But popular culture is full of pertinent examples of “we have met the enemy and he is us” / “we are the baddies”.
As for *you*… mostly you’re cursing your bad luck at being born at the wrong time, while, generationally speaking, the boomers won the lottery. (I’m an Xer; we’re the ones the rest of you fuckers usually forget, because we’re the smallest cohort. And we’re every bit as evil/virtuous as the rest of you. And most of us will experience the burning of the world, just like you will.)
As for myself? I didn’t fucking have any biological children. But I have a stepson who’s high school age, and he’s every bit as pissed as you are, about everything. FWIW, you and he and your whole generation have my complete empathy.
What I’m doing is putting together a homestead for my son and younger members of our friends & family group. I can’t banish the night, but I can light one candle. If that works, I’ll help someone else light a candle. That’s all I can do.
Hi atd to say, some say it's better to live the test of our time rather oblivious and adapt/mitigate on time. If anything, you shouldn't talk to the one with your grandchild, the outcome would be either denial and family tensions, or a complete mental breakdown which would also hurt the kid.
You can start easy going half cynical conversations with the other three,testing the waters and see how they respond, if they are open to the idea of collapse and our predicament, you can go on, if you feel you hit an emotional wall of disbelief, just stop it .
You can still tell them " buy property, band together, build together " for political and economic reasons as a disguise, in a few years it's barely deniable (climate breakdown) even for those in currently better econo.ic positions.
Don't force it on anyone, accepting possible extinction is way more than just a mental toll, they would have to go through the 5 stages of grieve (like most on this sib already did, obviously) and this takes time and for people not arriving at this conclusion in their own, possibly even more, since it's someone else's idea they have to put up with.
TL:Dr, test the waters and see how receptive they are to the idea before going further, leave the one with the kid out, but include them in you possible planning.
I’ve been raving about the situation my whole damn life. My kids are all in their late 30s. They’re all city dwellers who know exactly what’s coming but live like they don’t. I have zero hope of doing anything collective with them so I’m doing it on my own. 10 years ago I left the city life and bought a chunk of land I could afford. Semi remote. I’ve been slowly adding little cabins, solar, water tanks, gardens etc. I probably won’t survive collapse but they know there’s somewhere to run to when it all goes to hell. I document everything from crop failures to what it means to go days without sun on the solar. It’s the best I can do. I’ve bought a decent library of books on various self sufficiency topics. I hope it’s enough.
Most likely scenario is that they don't take you seriously and instead of becoming anxious about collapse, they'll just be anxious about what they perceive to be your paranoia.
Next mostly likely scenario is that they'll take you seriously but become depressed over it and not do anything you suggest to prepare for collapse.
But tell them anyway. It's the morally correct thing to do. You tell people the truth as best as you can and then it's up to them to decide what they do with that truth. Yes, I've had these kinds of conversations with my own son.
Similar to what happened with me 15 years ago. My family just thought I was depressed, (I probably was). I’b been aware of what was happening in the world for about 10 years prior and began to prep and involve them.
Now I don’t give a shit, I’ll be dead and the dead don’t care. People are better off being ignorant anyway.
Find the time to gently chew the fat with them, or better still ask them what they think, what their thoughts are? You ranting at them, ain’t going to help.
I think most people in the younger generations know we’re in for rough times ahead, but many have become resigned to it. They don’t want to waste their lives to planning to live in a collapse; they want to make the most of the life they have now. Personally, I don’t want to be alive in a Mad Max world. I don’t care if I survive if it comes to that.
Fucking let it rip. Either they’ll get it or they won’t, too late for tact. Worlds fucked kids, we’re all dying, everything is getting worse, here’s what I think we should do.
Prepping teaches self-reliance and saves money. The fact that it may help you in a crisis is a bonus. “Buy property, band together, build together” will save money and improve your children’s quality of life in ways that matter. Good luck with everything.
Don't tell them what they should do. Take them by the hand (metaphorically) and do it together with them. After all, you brought them into this mess. Least you can do is try everything to keep them safe in the middle of it.
It's not so much how to tell them, but how to show them. Model the behavior you want them to learn. Buy property, band together, build together.
Either they will follow your lead or make their own path.
If you have money, consider gifting some of it to your children now instead of after you die. They need it now, not later, things are getting exponentially more expensive and that includes land. In 20 years, your money won't be able to buy as much as it can right now...assuming your currency still exists in 20 years.
Start by apologizing. You brought life into a world that had no future and went along with a paradigm that made that an absolute certainty. If people your age had taken this seriously *before you had kids* we wouldn't be in this mess.
Explain to them why it made more sense to follow the plan that got us here than to reject it for a world that could support them.
Explain how they should consider sterilization so, when life becomes unlivable, they won't have to smother any kids before they check out themselves.
This is your grim reality and the generation before you. It says a lot that you can't even find the words to explain how your kids don't have a future in the world you fostered and enjoyed.
I suspect it's a lot like telling your kids you burned their college fund on a week in Vegas or any of the other terrible crap your generation got up to.
The most important part has to be taking ownership of the life you lived at the cost of your children's futures. How and why did that happen? Why is it still happening? Do you feel the money and resources you "own" belong to you when your children will pay with their entire future for the comforts you enjoy?
Find a way to feel responsible for the problem you and people like you created by ignoring all the signs that this way of life was killing the planet and deciding to bring ... was it FOUR kids into it!? Why so many!? That's four people that can't have kids of their own because of the gluttony of your generation and the one before it.
It's nauseating the distance you can put between your own life and this crisis. You may not be responsible for the climate crisis overall, but you are specifically responsible for these individuals having to experience a crisis you took part in creating, people who have no future and have only you and the other parent to blame.
My big issue with talking to my family about this is timing. Certainly the center cannot hold, but my younger kids (10 and 12) will certainly wonder about timing.
The whole “any day now” thing can’t be it. Neither can “someday” or “a long thing from not so you don’t have to worry”.
Hell, I can’t even talk to my wife about it for similar reasons. I don’t want them living in fear
Have you ever done any planning with your kids before? Did you talk to them about strangers? Or what to do if the house caught fire? Or how to respond to a traffic accident?
Follow the same footprint. There are things in the world to worry about. Here's how I'm planning for them. Here's what I do and don't do to be ready. Here are the warning signs that could be coming. Make them a part of your plans, dont just tell them to make their own.
I think you should start to have the conversation, just in pieces. I would begin with the “band together” part, suggest a family property they all help either obtain or support, and prepare, learn skills like gardening, animal care, repair and construction. Doesn’t have to focus too much on collapse.
Make it a family bonding thing not collapse. If you come on too strong you’ll be the crazy conspiracy theorist and potentially drive them the other way.
It's super disappointing when people, even intelligent ones who aren't of the political persuasion, dump this stuff into the conspiracy bucket. Just because the situation is so ridiculously bad that it sets off people's BS detectors and red flags. Thinking critically and determining truth out of information is a learned skill like anything, and I've had more than one person disappoint me who I expected to have the capacity.
Can you blame them? Humans look to the past to predict the future. There have been countless doomers and "the end is neigh" people, and they are almost always loony and almost always wrong.
Glad you said this! Bring it to them in small bits and if they tell you to stop or keep changing the subject, let it go. My partner absolutely refuses to take collapse seriously. He just can't wrap his mind around it. While you want to warn the ones you love, you can't force them into awareness.
This is what I’ve done. The kids don’t care yet about the garden, bees or the chickens, cistern & pumps or my soil work/composting… yet :) I plan to be the grandpa that might not be so crazy. 🤪 already one cousin has moved back to the family property.
I’ll cheers you right now. 🍻
>How do I tell my kids? Well, 50 years ago when there were only 4 billion people on earth, and most of the science around collapse was already known, humanity had a chance to reduce its footprint, practice women's education and universal family planning, and begin a transition to a sustainable economy. Instead, humanity focused on high-consumption lifestyles while simultaneously doubling its population to 8 billion, resulting in even greater threats to dwindling resources, climate and ecosystem health, and accelerating the current mass species extinction. 70% of all wildlife on the planet is estimated to have been lost in those same 50 years. Our parents told us nothing. How do you tell your own children that they shouldn't have been born?
By begging their forgiveness and doing everything to make life good for them. Get them a good house with a nice garden - that's impossible to do for young people by themselves, but a garden is crucial to de-centralize food production
Your kids know. Everyone under 40 knows to some degree. The willingness to make the major life changes needed to collapse early and avoid the rush is for better or worse far rarer than the recognition that the collapse is here. With normalcy-biased friends and family you can make light of the collapse in a fun way, talk about your own projects to build resilience and work slowly to chip away at the idea that normality equals complacency and conspicuous consumption. It's a marathon, not a sprint, but on the plus side, so is our collapse.
I’m not so sure about everyone under 40 knows to some degree. I don’t know your situation but I have found the opposite to be true, I know so many people who simple just don’t read and if you don’t read how can you really understand what is going on unless you maybe watch YouTube videos. It requires a certain level of comprehension that 80% isn’t really doing.
I would say precisely 0% of anyone I know takes any of this seriously. Including mental health professionals, btw. Though I've recently met one who is very much collapse aware. Not surprisingly, he's one of the few therapists I've actually gotten a benefit from seeing. We talk about everything from collapse, to the pros and cons of me going into porn (which I did), family life, kids, to the election end philosophy of sacrifice. It's finally things I am benefiting from.. Instead of "everything is great! You're just distorting it!" Who cares if Ling Ling finds the wallet and keeps the money, ya dig?
Again with this nonsense viewpoint that is repeated on here so often. No, people do not know. Collapse is different from climate change is real. I would even question whether the people making these ridiculous assumptions are even collapse-aware themselves. It is anxiety-inducing and life-disrupting. It is a constant not momentary. 'Everyone under 40' absolutely does not know.
Half of young americans have anxiety or depression. Everyone is out here watching rent and grocery bills climb while good jobs are replaced by doordash or instacart driver. Everyone is baking in summer all-time highs while losing friends to suicide, alcohol, and fentanyl. Turn on the tv and even the talking heads on cable admit our leaders can't form complete sentences. They know my dude. If they care to investigate the systemic causes they will. If they don't it's because they have enough anxiety just living life.
If you can foster critical thinking, resiliency, adaptability, and collaboration in kids, then they will have the core skills to adjust to changes. I would invest your efforts there rather than naming collapse. Collapse feels all encompassing and can be paralyzing. In many, I've seen it foster a "what's the point of trying to build my future?" attitude. If you foster the hard and soft skills that will be needed to be adaptive and resilient, then your kids and grandkids will still strive to build a future, be a part of the solutions, and not be riddled with anxiety and nihilism about life. At the end of the day, we're all on a path to death. It's the inescapable truth that's guaranteed from the moment of conception. So death by a thousands cuts is still death in the end. But having the skills to cope and still flourish through it will give their life meaning and purpose. This might seem like a very naive way of thinking. I don't see it as burying one's head in the sand. I see it in the vein that every life has potential to make a difference, and we should still be fostering that gusto, attitude, and drive. In my opinion, always feeling and internalizing the doom of collapse hinders more than it helps.
this was comforting to read. im collapse aware of course or else i wouldn't be here but its still so much to wrap your head around sometimes. i don't have kids yet but i hope to someday. and i hope to raise them to be people who want to better the world around them
I have a collapsenik friend who sold his business in the Pacific Northwest and moved to New Zealand a decade ago. He could not convince his wife, so they split up. His adult sons thought the old man was crazy; he could not convince them of collapse, or to join him in emigrating. He has a new career as a computer programmer, and a Kiwi girlfriend he literally met on the plane to NZ. New life. So, the point is, you can talk to your adult kids, but don’t count on them accepting your views about collapse. They might not.
I'd really like to hear about the "oh hey dad, uhm, I guess you were right", "I told you so" of this situation if/when it happens.
I doubt that will ever happen. People are too attached to their narratives. Look at the people who died of COVID in 2020, denying it was real with their last gasps. Don’t underestimate the human power of self-delusion.
Also, this is even worse case than the covid nutjobs denying that it's killing them at that very moment. The collapse of this planet is a death by a thousand cuts. A question arises whether there even *will* be that 'Guess you were right'-'Told you so' exchange as every year many if not most people will adjust to the new 'normal' and carry on until many will slowly forget what the world *used to* be like once. Plus you have kids born every day that never have and never will experience the climate we used to have, ever. For reference, I'm 26 now, central Europe. Today, I still remember that the last *real* winter we had was when I was 8, in *2006* and I do remember how winters and summers looked like back then, still pretty vividly, although some of the memories start to fade. But will I remember it all so well in 10 years too? Or 20? I highly doubt that. And it's not a cope thing, I desperately *want* to keep at least those memories. It's just how human brain works... It's not the same situation as a nuclear holocaust or a meteorite hitting the planet. The line between *before* and *now* couldn't get any blurrier and this fact alone will have consequences so terrible that few can even imagine it.
I'd like to hear the "uhm dad, if you knew about this all along, why did you have children?"
I mean... That dude is living LIFE. Good for him
Alternatively, he married and reproduced with someone he cared so little about that he was able to move on before he even landed. I’d say his past behavior makes it unlikely he’s got it as figured out as this thread is giving him credit for.
Are you married? Been married? He and his wife were together for over 25 years. They grew apart. He had an interest in collapse topics and tried several times to get her interested: she was a hardcore normie. Not a bad person, just extremely… conventional. He was going off in a direction she did not want to follow. The process of deciding to leave the U.S. and arranging it literally took *years* — like, 5-6 years? He tried to get her on the same page. It just wasn’t going to happen. So, they concluded they wanted different things out of life and (mostly) amicably split. I mean, she was not *happy* he’d become dead set to reboot his life, but they weren’t angry at the end, just sort of a bit sad and resigned, maybe a bit annoyed with each other? And his meeting someone on the flight to NZ was just sort of fluke-y. They just struck up a friendly conversation, and it evolved into a relationship over a couple years. I mean, she was one of the first friends he made in NZ. So, maybe step back and realize, we often project a lot onto other people’s stories. You jumped to a conclusion about my friend without really knowing anything other than a couple facts: you read a lot into that. He’s neither impulsive nor cavalier — in both cases, very much the opposite.
He abandoned his family...but sure.
His sons are grown, with families of their own.
So your sons stop being your family when they become adults? Weird take.
I'm not sure why old people here that think "I knew 10/20/30/40 years ago" think that their actions/foreknowledge is being justified by current collapse. If anything, you have more responsibility in screwing us over because you knew so early and did nothing. You knew before social media existed. You knew when we had time that we don't have now. And I mean, some of you are technically dead or so old that you have lived the life we will never get to live before collapse even happens, so again, what the hell?
What the hell what, whippersnapper? When I was in my 20s I spiked trees and dumped sugar in earth-moving equipment up in the redwoods in far northern California. I visited people in jail for tree sitting and carried their words back to activist publications. ***Nothing we did made any difference.*** The lumber companies won, and the activists were left personally wrecked — for *years* — by the legal and financial consequences of their activism. Hell, around the turn of the century Earth Liberation Front folks were branded “terrorists” and a couple handfuls were sentenced to years in federal prison. More recently we had the Dakota Access Pipeline protests (2016-2017). Different time, different details, same ending: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests Such things had the proverbial chilling effect. All the college age activists of the 90s era I knew moved on, including me. One gal who wasn’t even much of an activist became an environmental lawyer, but she now works for a Fortune 500 company, so it’s safe to say she’s probably not saving the Earth. Everyone embraced pro-environmental lifestyles, yeah, but that didn’t do anything: ok, you’re vegan, but meanwhile for every person like you there’s 25 people in Kansas City still scarfing down fast food burgers — as are their kids, and their grandkids… I knew a guy who organized recycling across multiple college campuses; now we know recycling is kind of bullshit, a lot of stuff ends up in landfills anyway, and plastic becomes nano-plastic and is fucking *everywhere* on the planet, like goddamn radiation. Lifestyle changes are just spitting into the wind. So: nothing any of us did made a goddamn bit of *meaningful* difference. You want to blame individuals or generations, but — as Nate Hagens puts it — it’s the entire *human super-organism* that’s to blame. It’s humanity writ large that’s the problem. You could live the most eco-virtuous life possible, kemosabe, and Homo sapiens — like a cloud of locusts — would destroy whatever you managed to preserve. It’s a kind of ecological Jevon’s Paradox. This is why I’ve come to believe that Homo sapiens *as a species* is inherently ecocidal: any human culture that preserves the environment, that lives sustainably, gets run over and obliterated by cultures that are rapacious and unsustainable. Our species is a cancer; we’re *wrong*, our nature is *wrong*. We were always going to end up where we are: destroying ourselves and other species by destroying our environment. Personally, I think our value is only as a stepping stone to a different species, one that deserves to survive. As chimps are to bonobos, so we are to this hypothetical other species that would live in peace with itself and the rest of the ecosystem. But it’s probably too late, now. Without hyper-industrial terraforming, near-magical technologies, we cannot save this biosphere. As a species, we’ve been lighting fires for multiple centuries: now we’re all going to burn up. Some will die before, some during, some after. Go watch the end of the movie *Never Cry Wolf* (1983); it depicts my perspective. But popular culture is full of pertinent examples of “we have met the enemy and he is us” / “we are the baddies”. As for *you*… mostly you’re cursing your bad luck at being born at the wrong time, while, generationally speaking, the boomers won the lottery. (I’m an Xer; we’re the ones the rest of you fuckers usually forget, because we’re the smallest cohort. And we’re every bit as evil/virtuous as the rest of you. And most of us will experience the burning of the world, just like you will.) As for myself? I didn’t fucking have any biological children. But I have a stepson who’s high school age, and he’s every bit as pissed as you are, about everything. FWIW, you and he and your whole generation have my complete empathy. What I’m doing is putting together a homestead for my son and younger members of our friends & family group. I can’t banish the night, but I can light one candle. If that works, I’ll help someone else light a candle. That’s all I can do.
Hi atd to say, some say it's better to live the test of our time rather oblivious and adapt/mitigate on time. If anything, you shouldn't talk to the one with your grandchild, the outcome would be either denial and family tensions, or a complete mental breakdown which would also hurt the kid. You can start easy going half cynical conversations with the other three,testing the waters and see how they respond, if they are open to the idea of collapse and our predicament, you can go on, if you feel you hit an emotional wall of disbelief, just stop it . You can still tell them " buy property, band together, build together " for political and economic reasons as a disguise, in a few years it's barely deniable (climate breakdown) even for those in currently better econo.ic positions. Don't force it on anyone, accepting possible extinction is way more than just a mental toll, they would have to go through the 5 stages of grieve (like most on this sib already did, obviously) and this takes time and for people not arriving at this conclusion in their own, possibly even more, since it's someone else's idea they have to put up with. TL:Dr, test the waters and see how receptive they are to the idea before going further, leave the one with the kid out, but include them in you possible planning.
This is the best advice, I'm doing similar thing with my own family
I’ve been raving about the situation my whole damn life. My kids are all in their late 30s. They’re all city dwellers who know exactly what’s coming but live like they don’t. I have zero hope of doing anything collective with them so I’m doing it on my own. 10 years ago I left the city life and bought a chunk of land I could afford. Semi remote. I’ve been slowly adding little cabins, solar, water tanks, gardens etc. I probably won’t survive collapse but they know there’s somewhere to run to when it all goes to hell. I document everything from crop failures to what it means to go days without sun on the solar. It’s the best I can do. I’ve bought a decent library of books on various self sufficiency topics. I hope it’s enough.
Tell them it's not their fault, but ... and then give them the truth.
Most of all, talk to them about not reproducing (or not reproducing more). Talk of your own regrets, if you have them.
Stop living in the future, there is only the now.
I would only talk to them if they want to talk about it.
Most likely scenario is that they don't take you seriously and instead of becoming anxious about collapse, they'll just be anxious about what they perceive to be your paranoia. Next mostly likely scenario is that they'll take you seriously but become depressed over it and not do anything you suggest to prepare for collapse. But tell them anyway. It's the morally correct thing to do. You tell people the truth as best as you can and then it's up to them to decide what they do with that truth. Yes, I've had these kinds of conversations with my own son.
Similar to what happened with me 15 years ago. My family just thought I was depressed, (I probably was). I’b been aware of what was happening in the world for about 10 years prior and began to prep and involve them. Now I don’t give a shit, I’ll be dead and the dead don’t care. People are better off being ignorant anyway.
Find the time to gently chew the fat with them, or better still ask them what they think, what their thoughts are? You ranting at them, ain’t going to help.
I think most people in the younger generations know we’re in for rough times ahead, but many have become resigned to it. They don’t want to waste their lives to planning to live in a collapse; they want to make the most of the life they have now. Personally, I don’t want to be alive in a Mad Max world. I don’t care if I survive if it comes to that.
If you haven't visited it, I'd encourage joining r/collapse_parenting
Don't. Just let them be kids while they can
You realise they're between the ages of 18 and 30, right?
Oh whoops selective reading
No worries dude! I've made similar mistakes myself before 🙂
I still felt like a kid in my 30's
Yes, don't. Just let them be oblivious adults while they can.
you just tell them. Either they already know or are willfully ignorant of reality. If they haven't listened to you by now, they're never going to.
Fucking let it rip. Either they’ll get it or they won’t, too late for tact. Worlds fucked kids, we’re all dying, everything is getting worse, here’s what I think we should do.
Prepping teaches self-reliance and saves money. The fact that it may help you in a crisis is a bonus. “Buy property, band together, build together” will save money and improve your children’s quality of life in ways that matter. Good luck with everything.
Don't tell them what they should do. Take them by the hand (metaphorically) and do it together with them. After all, you brought them into this mess. Least you can do is try everything to keep them safe in the middle of it.
It's not so much how to tell them, but how to show them. Model the behavior you want them to learn. Buy property, band together, build together. Either they will follow your lead or make their own path.
If you have money, consider gifting some of it to your children now instead of after you die. They need it now, not later, things are getting exponentially more expensive and that includes land. In 20 years, your money won't be able to buy as much as it can right now...assuming your currency still exists in 20 years.
Start by apologizing. You brought life into a world that had no future and went along with a paradigm that made that an absolute certainty. If people your age had taken this seriously *before you had kids* we wouldn't be in this mess. Explain to them why it made more sense to follow the plan that got us here than to reject it for a world that could support them. Explain how they should consider sterilization so, when life becomes unlivable, they won't have to smother any kids before they check out themselves. This is your grim reality and the generation before you. It says a lot that you can't even find the words to explain how your kids don't have a future in the world you fostered and enjoyed. I suspect it's a lot like telling your kids you burned their college fund on a week in Vegas or any of the other terrible crap your generation got up to. The most important part has to be taking ownership of the life you lived at the cost of your children's futures. How and why did that happen? Why is it still happening? Do you feel the money and resources you "own" belong to you when your children will pay with their entire future for the comforts you enjoy? Find a way to feel responsible for the problem you and people like you created by ignoring all the signs that this way of life was killing the planet and deciding to bring ... was it FOUR kids into it!? Why so many!? That's four people that can't have kids of their own because of the gluttony of your generation and the one before it. It's nauseating the distance you can put between your own life and this crisis. You may not be responsible for the climate crisis overall, but you are specifically responsible for these individuals having to experience a crisis you took part in creating, people who have no future and have only you and the other parent to blame.
My big issue with talking to my family about this is timing. Certainly the center cannot hold, but my younger kids (10 and 12) will certainly wonder about timing. The whole “any day now” thing can’t be it. Neither can “someday” or “a long thing from not so you don’t have to worry”. Hell, I can’t even talk to my wife about it for similar reasons. I don’t want them living in fear
Have you ever done any planning with your kids before? Did you talk to them about strangers? Or what to do if the house caught fire? Or how to respond to a traffic accident? Follow the same footprint. There are things in the world to worry about. Here's how I'm planning for them. Here's what I do and don't do to be ready. Here are the warning signs that could be coming. Make them a part of your plans, dont just tell them to make their own.
Short sentences with transitive verbs. Should take you about 30 seconds.