Thread by @AlexSteffen

This new piece has gotten more reads in its first day than anything else I've written since this newsletter launched.

Here's what you need to know.

(Thread)

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/ruggedize-yo…

“When it comes to the planetary crisis, the most important question you can ask yourself is 'Where?'”

That's because climate chaos and ecological collapse are hitting differently in different places, and some places are better positioned to weather the storm than others.

"We must begin by understanding the nature of the crisis."

We've entered a crisis so large and complex that it is no longer an issue, but an era. It is a discontinuity with everything we're used to thinking of as normal.

Most of us are still catching up.
alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet…

In this era of crisis, where you live will be a better predictor of the prospects you and your family have than any other factor.

Some places are brittle. That is, the tolerances for which they are built — the conditions they need to function — are more and more likely to be overrun. They are at real risk for catastrophic failure.

You don't want to live in a brittle place.

treehugger.com/climate-change…

In fact, you don't even want to be in a region where many places and systems are brittle, if you can avoid it.

(There are more of those regions than is comfortable to contemplate... and the hotter it gets, the more places will be baked into brittleness.)

Geographical advantages — e.g., generally cooler temperatures, less exposure to drought, less risk of flooding — are hugely important.

But even where the odds are decent, we're going to need to ruggedize on a huge scale.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/ruggedization

Ruggedization centers on "designing responses that can mobilize the resources needed for rapid, large-scale change by making those approaches powerful opportunities rather than just protective investments."

Personal ruggedization is the process of choosing your circumstances and setting up your life in such a way that rapid change becomes a chance to do better, to find long-term security and ways to succeed in the service of your purpose.

Of course, if you're wealthy enough, you don't have to seek out a good place to land and work with others to ruggedize it.

You can just buy yourself a luxury survival compound.

They don't come cheap—you have to have a net worth in the tens of millions to even buy into the game.

The reality is that most of us are not in this position.

Indeed, hundreds of millions of people lack the resources needed to ruggedize their lives much at all, even as they are the most vulnerable to ecological chaos.

This is a transapocalyptic world.
alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-transapo…

For a huge number of people, moving away from danger and towards stability is the only realistic strategy they have.

https://twitter.com/AlexSteffen/status/1286367698448867329

The problem is, we face a massive ruggedization bottleneck.

There are far too few places being ruggedized for the number of people who need (and, in my opinion, deserve) safer places to live.

Many poor people face barriers of distance and borders closed to newcomers.

"You cannot save yourself by moving if the place you need to move to won’t let you in."

But borders are not the only boundaries.

For a huge number of people in the wealthier parts of the world, it's the cost of living (especially housing) that excludes them from safer places.

Access to well-prepared places is often limited to the already well-off.

That's in part because well-off people are recognizing that the combination of lower disaster risks, good urban form and infrastructure, and wealthy neighbors is the closest thing most countries have to future-ready places to live... and they'll pay a premium to own there.

If you can afford to buy into a community like that, it might be smart to do so.

But competing for a limited and unprecedentedly costly supply of chances to live in that kind of place is not a realistic strategy for even a lot of successful people.

Most of us need to look for different kinds of opportunity. But time is running short. Big money is on its way.

My next letter will explore some of the strategies available to people who live in the wealthy world, have some means, but are not rich as they seek a place to ruggedize their lives.

You can get my letters for free by signing up here.

If you want to support the work, and get access to my podcast with its deeper explorations of these topics, you can become a supporter of the project for as little as $15 a month.

Good luck out there!

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