Book: 20250528 to 20250715, "Emergency" by Neil Strauss

20250528 - pt. 1. Orientation

The political philosopher Francis Fukuyama......in his 1989 essay "The End of History." p29

What a joke.

And with great power comes great fear of losing it. p36

Am I feared of losing, let's say, half of my asset?

20250530 - pt. 2. Five steps

This is how hatred is created: two different groups, each insisting they're on the moral high ground. p53

We need an objective standards to measure it, such as median income.
Rather than illusory justice or morality.

Anything that improve median income, most likely to be right.

"A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished." p62

"It's a false sense of security" p68

The most common mistake, I reckon.

"A lot of people didn't think things would get any worse, " she answered. "And by that point, it was harder for Jews to leave." p71

Wishful thinking. It's like share price. We never know how high or how low it can reach.

Buffer and plan B is always necessary.

How do we know that we should move to other countries?

Is there some general sign?

20250613 - pt. 3. Escape

When you think something will never happen to you, that's usually when it happens. p117

I think there are 1000 things will never happen to me, and then one of them may happen.

Do I have insurance for fires, theft, and illness? No. I only buy insurance for something I cannot afford to lose.

That means, if I am not in Australia, then I will only buy insurance for illness.

How should we protect ourselves against those unexpected catastrophes? Bad things happen quickly.

Maybe, just keep in mind that danger is always around, and we need to be cautious.

How to protect ourselves?

1. Stay in safe place.

Choose the safe place to live, or move to other safe place.

To get another favorable citizenship is not easy.

2. If we can't, then prepare buffers.

When tide is falling, all boats fall with it.

This is generally correct, except for submarines.

If all companies and families have solar panel, home battery, EV, Starlink, etc., it's most likely to be fine to most of catastrophes.

I think more and more countries will follow USA to collect tax from oversea citizens, no matter where they are, and what their income source is.

This is kind of fair. We need to pay for options, even if we don't execute it.

The three flags from Schultz's pamphlet consist of having a second passport, a safe location for your assets in another country, and a legal address ina tax haven. p136

W.G. Hill added two more flags: an additional country as a business base and a number of what he called "playground countries" in which to spend leisure time. p136

The sixth flag: freedom from fear. p137

Safety(also means freedom) VS Opportunity

Maybe we have to choose between safety andopportunity, and we cannot get both.

No fish can survive if the water is too clean.

A healthy system is always a bit chaotic.

Why safety equals to freedom? They both need large government and tons of laws/regulations.

Safety/freedom doesn't guarantee sustainability.

We need to compromise between safety and opportunity, to get sustainability.

No place is safe and no government can guarantee the wellbeing of its citizens. There's only one place to find true safety: from within. p185

This is true to individual, and is also true to a country. Local manufacturing is critical, just like survival skill.

But what's the chance of dying in doomsday comparing to ageing and accidents?

The good thing is that there is no conflict. We don't have to choose which one to avoid. We can avoid both of them by taking actions.

20250630 - pt. 4. Survive

Suzuki DR-Z400SM motorbike(p 223) seems good, but better choice could be EV motorbike. It's quiet and easy to power up in the future.

True endurance, I think, comes from the inside. It comes from motivation and belief in what you're doing. p265

This reminds me of the rat in hopeless water tank. If there is no hope, it drown in 15 minutes. But if it believes it can survive, then it can last 60 hours! (Curt Richter, 1957)

Another good example is about long-term investment. We can do it only if we truely believe that we fully understand it, and the price will go up a lot in the end.

I was able to see the print in detail - even the thin ridges between each toe and the little black dots where each claw had touched the ground. p269

AI robots can see all these, with much higher precision, and much more information that we cannot preceive.

They will be real gods.

The pad lock trick works! p308

Surviving is not enough. We need living.

Cooperation is the key for living, which gives us high productivity.

Large scale disaster is heavy hit only if it break social cooperation.

Maybe the best place for retreat is army. The large scale cooperation is still there after the disaster.

How can we maintain cooperation as normal citizens?

What is the weakest point of our social system?

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Survivalism is fundamentally about buffers and backups.

Agriculture relies on rainfall.
No rainfall? Use the backup plan: river water.
No river water? There's another backup: reservoirs.
No reservoirs? The backup is groundwater.
Then there's seawater desalination, extracting water from the air, and so on.

These buffers and backup plans come with increasingly higher costs.

Modern society must balance production efficiency with backup buffers.
How much cost is worth paying to create backup buffer solutions for extremely low-probability disasters?

For individuals, the same question applies. How much time and cost should we invest in acquiring doomsday survival skills, equipment, supplies, and teams?

P.S.: Elon Musk's doomsday survival strategy is world-renowned: he leverages high technology and scale to make the cost of backup solutions approach that of traditional ones!!

For example:

• The cost of electric vehicles is approaching that of gasoline cars.
• The cost of solar panels and lithium batteries is nearing that of fossil fuel power generation.
• The cost of Starlink communication is close to that of fiber optic and copper cables.
• In the future, the cost of underground tunnels will approach that of highways.

Mars colonization and brain-computer interfaces (Neuralink) are backups for human civilization and individual brains—an entirely different level.

20250715 - pt. 5. Rescue

In a large-scale disaster, it may take three to fourteen days before the system begins working as it's designed to. p361

If the system is large, it must be complicated. That's why everyone in an army needs to take pro-active actions to win the battle, instead of waiting for commends.

The back end of car, bus and train is safer than the front half.

If you're prepared and don't panic, I'd come to realize, most of life's emergencies are merely inconveniences. p412

How to handle emergency? Make ourselves useful to other people.