Practical Doomsday

What Hacker News says

1. tuatoruAug 2026
   Things can still go wrong locally, for you and yours.

   I recommend "Practical Doomsday" by Michal Zalewski. [1] It's useful as a set of topic reviews and checklists if nothing else.

   1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BKKQN4Y/

   thread
2. reducesufferingJul 2024
   Anyone who dismisses disaster preparedness as something only requiring "focus on community" sorely needs a read of HN's Zalewski/lcamtuf's Practical Doomsday book[0]. It is ironic that should some type of Hurricane Katrina situation befall their neighborhood, they'll be the first in line begging their "doomer prepper" neighbors for their 50gal drum of water and bowl of rice after the first few days.

   It's also bewildering that software engineers who spend their 9-5 trying to imagine and calculate likelihood of the possible faults and risk in their computer systems fail to extrapolate that to any real world problems, but I guess the human experience of "never happened to me yet, not a problem" is stronger.

   [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1718502125/

   Show morethread
3. alxjsnJan 2024
   I highly recommend the book Practical Doomsday: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

   It was originally a long-form blog post by Michal Zalewski and he turned into a book with even more content.

   thread
4. wffurrFeb 2022
   Practical Doomsday, the book form of this post from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733, goes into exactly some of those kinds of considerations.

   https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

   Probably significantly more relevant for most people than the OP book.

   thread
5. mutant_glofishAug 2023
   There's a whole subculture called survivalism (or prepping) [1] dedicated to that kind of thing. You may want to look that up.

   You also may be interested in the article "Doomsday planning for less crazy folk". [2] It has been previously discussed on HN [3], and it's also been expanded into a book titled "Practical Doomsday". [4]

   I'm personally advocating for tighter border controls. It has the immediate effect of helping with stagnating real wages, and might also help with the contingent problem of climate migrants.

   [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism

   [2]: https://archive.is/iuL1A

   [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15110850

   [4]: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

   Show morethread