A lot of prepper content seems to wrongly focus on grand sudden events-Hollywood-style collapses of society or environment. The reality, from the fall of Rome to Lebanon this century, is that collapse is usually a slow crumbling where the things people rely on become less and less reliable.
A useful intuition pump is to do your threat modelling with two likely events that, if they happened separately, would only be inconveniences, but together pose a serious threat.
For example:
- Your kid is away at summer camp and there’s a gasoline supply shock.
- A storm washes out your road and your dad gets readmitted to the hospital.
- There’s a wildfire and your car battery is dead.
What are the two most likely inconveniences given your loved ones and where you live?
They published another version with a longer list of authors. They published this one under three authors since that’s the maximum number you can split a Nobel prize between. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the real deal, but it means that the researchers sure think it is.