For those who can’t afford bunkers.

Billionaires are building bunkers. What do they know that the “average” person doesn’t? Well, those who pay attention know that multiple Nature tipping points are being either breached, or reached! (The Metacrisis.) Add to that regional conflicts that could go worldwide, and us “average” people may also feel concerned about the near and far-off future.

So, I wrote this book, Future Sustainable Neighborhood, for those who can’t afford to buy islands and build bunkers (me included). Anyway, what’s the use of being a billionaire if there’s no food to buy in the market?

When one writes, immediate distillation occurs as we zoom in on what needs to be said. So, food, shelter, clothing and community, became very central, what I call the basic needs economy. We’re not cave dwellers anymore, so life is much more complicated and I know this list is larger, and that’s in the book too.

I think we’re now clear that governments, ‘leaders,’ the elite and powerful, are not going to build the world we need to thrive. So, it really does have to be ‘bottom’ up – we the people. That’s why I say, ‘neighborhood.” No good me being sustainable and/or self-reliant, when those around me are not.

When the plague of the early 2020s hit, The Pandemic, it meant little to me, except restricting my movements. I didn’t run to the supermarket, I’m an aging boy scout – be prepared! And although the Pandemic became a health problem, it really was born from the indefinite-food-crises we now all live with worldwide. (If you accept that it came from a wild animal in a wet market, and not a lab, which I do.) That hasn’t abated and so expect more zoonotic diseases.

Azby Brown, author of Just Enough, Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan, wrote,

“Sustainable society will come, because the alternative is no society at all. […] However, we have nearly lost the race against time […] our margin for avoiding unpleasantness has largely evaporated.”

We can build this now, while there is still so much abundance. We need a new mind-set also, which I think this website and others like it try to impart to readers. We need to add some reskilling to our toolboxes; this all takes time, and now is that time. It’s actually a great adventure, what else are the baby-boom retirees going to do with their time, along with all the AI and robotic unemployed? Relocalizing food and a relocalized lifestyle consciousness will be key because right now most people in the industrialized countries, are frankly, sitting ducks, when it comes to infrastructure and supply chain disruptions.

Of course, an organic edible gardening lifestyle is at the heart of the sustainable neighborhood – you won’t be worried about the collapsed bridge at the end of town if there’s an earthquake – you’ll be asking, where’s my next meal coming from? and that includes water. It’s virtually impossible to be self-sufficient in urban and suburban situations. I’m urban, yet virtually self-sufficient in vegetables year-round, and with a little more effort, I could supply a good deal of my fruit needs also. John Jeavons, author and researcher, says that 215 square feet (20 meters square) using biointensive methods, can yield enough veg for one person.

We may be very smart creatures, but we are still fundamentally animals in a landscape. If modernism ever de-complexifies, as many think it will, like all civilizations in the past, we would be smart to set in place now the infrastructure, skills and knowledge we’ll need to thrive – together.

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