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\"In an age of pandemics, climate change, and political unrest, you don't have to be a prepper to worry about the future or to wonder how you can prepare for it. Many of us conjure up images of a post-apocalyptic world where life is simple, our needs and goals clear. We imagine the desolate, barren world of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, where starting fires, building shelters, and even picking locks are our most valuable skills. But as underwater archeologist, anthropologist, and survival instructor Chris Begley argues in The Next Apocalypse, an apocalyptic disaster will look nothing like our fantasies, and if we want to prepare for it, then we must look to history. Drawing on three decades of archeological and anthropological research on civilizations as diverse as the Maya, the Roman Empire, and the Angor Watt, Begley shows that apocalypses hardly ever result in the disappearance of an entire population. The collapse of the Maya civilization in the thirteenth century is a case in point. Though the Maya left behind a great many vacated cities and complexes, the people survived. In fact, there are still five million Maya alive today. Much as we see with the current immigration crisis in Central America, overpopulation and drought, followed by famine and warfare, drove the Maya away from once-flourishing cities. Such migration is one of the hallmarks of the apocalypse that Begley envisions. He discusses the various scenarios that could lead to mass migration, from climate change and disease to war and political collapse, and how we might prepare for them. Planning for the apocalypse isn't simply about learning how to find food and water or to start a fire. Those skills won't hurt. But first and foremost, we'll need to learn how to navigate the complex social and political dynamics that will inevitably emerge as migration, food shortages, and war bring out our most primal instincts. Rather than viewing people on the move as potential looters and trying to protect our own stockpiles, we'll need to see them as people in need, who might possess skills that are useful to us all. The ultimate test of our survival won't be whether we can adjust to a world without technology or other modern conveniences. It will be how we respond to the loss of culture and sense of common humanity that give our lives purpose and meaning. If we want to survive the apocalypse, then the thing to do isn't to run to our hideouts; it's to rebuild our communal bonds. And that begins with helping others. Combining the experiences, insights, and acumen of an adventurer with the scholarly perspectives of an archeologist and anthropologist, Begley transforms our understanding of the fall of civilizations and challenges us to build a future rooted in empathy, humanity, and a commitment to the common good\"-- Provided by publisher.

This article examines participation in the informal food sector in Chad’s capital city, N’Djamena, by studying the differences between survivalist and opportunistic food vendors. The objective is to determine whether the nuanced approach to participation in the informal food sector proposed by studies conducted in Brazil and India can also be applied to the African context, particularly in N’Djamena, Chad. Using five criteria to differentiate the two groups, four regression models were developed to identify the characteristics most strongly associated with each group. The results show that street food vendors are most likely to be opportunistic and that few vendors are both survivalist and opportunistic. Many similarities were found between the two groups, and both would benefit from a more favourable political environment. The implications of this study are important for street vendors, who face difficult working conditions and social stigma due to their informal work. This study contributes to a better understanding of participation in the informal food sector in Chad and may help guide the development of more equitable and effective policies to support these informal workers.

On average, individuals underestimate their survival chances, which could yield suboptimal long-term decisions. Is the accuracy of individuals' survival beliefs associated with their knowledge of population life expectancy of people of their age and gender? We use the 1995 and 1996 waves of the Dutch DNB Household Survey (DHS) with data on individuals' survival beliefs and their knowledge of population life expectancy, supplemented with death registry data for the years 1995 to 2018. The accuracy of their survival beliefs is measured by comparing these beliefs with (actual) survival during the years after the survey was conducted. We provide prima facie evidence on the association between individuals' knowledge of population life expectancy and the accuracy of their survival beliefs, and quantify this association using mortality risk models that control for socioeconomic status and health-related characteristics. Individuals with only some over- or underestimation of population life expectancy had, on average, about a one-third smaller difference between their survival beliefs and survival rate than those who severely underestimated population life expectancy. In line with this prima facie evidence, we find that, after controlling for socioeconomic and health characteristics, 55-year-old individuals with one-year of better knowledge of population life expectancy underestimated their lifetime with, on average, about 0.3 years less (95% CI: 0.09-0.52).

\"The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the \"Event\": the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters-Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion-QAnon, for example, or meme stocks-reinforce the same destructive order. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created-a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies-and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn't happen in the first place\"-- Provided by publisher.

Abstract This article reconstructs the life history of Korean War prisoner Im Kwan-taek and analyzes his strategy for survival. Im, a North Korean who forces of the United Nations Command (unc) captured, refused repatriation to North Korea and decided to go to a neutral country. After two years in India, he finally settled in Brazil. This study examines his prisoner of war (pow) interrogation reports and the results of two oral history interviews to understand Im's experiences and survival strategies. Born in Ch'ungch'ŏng Province, Im grew up in southern Korea. However, in 1946, he moved to northern Korea with the support of his deceased father's comrades from the anti-Japanese movement in China. With the start of the Korean War on 25 June 1950, Im became an officer in the Korean People's Army (kpa). As a pow, he concealed his identity as much as possible to ensure his survival, and these efforts continued in neutral countries. After the Republic of Korea awarded Im's father the South Korean Patriotic Medal in 2001, his \"secret survivalism\" strategy relaxed and he began organizing communication and networks between surviving former pows.

\"Nico Storm and his father Willem drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in South Africa--and the world, as far as they know--to have survived a devastating virus which has swept through the country. Their world turned upside down, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father's protector, even though he is still only a boy. But Willem Storm, though not a fighter, is both a thinker and a leader, a wise and compassionate man with a vision for a new community that survivors will rebuild from the ruins. And so Amanzi is founded, drawing Storm's 'homeless and tempest-tost'\"-- Provided by publisher.

Visions of postapocalyptic survival abound in contemporary culture. In the Finnish cultural and literary landscape, where such ideas have historically been extremely marginal, narratives of societal collapse have started appearing during the last ten years. This article examines Laura Gustafsson's novel Korpisoturi (Wilderness Warrior, 2016) as a critical assessment of survivalist ideology in contemporary popular culture. By focusing on questions of gender portrayal and environmental ideology, the article suggests that the novel can be approached as a comical deconstruction of a survivalist mind-set and its representation in postapocalyptic fiction. Through its humorous portrayal of a “prepper” protagonist, Wilderness Warrior renegotiates some of the inherent ideological characteristics of apocalyptic utopianism. With its critique of the paradigmatic cultural notions of global ecological catastrophes, the novel also offers a humorous account of the ultimate unnarratability of disaster in the age of the Anthropocene.

\"After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed. In this shattering and iconic American novel, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion, and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions\" -- from publisher's web site.