Michal Zalewski - Practical Doomsday: A Users Guide to the End of the World

This isnt my first book, but its by far my most unusual. For one, I dont fit the typical profile for the disaster preparedness genre. Im not a grizzled ex-military survivalist, nor a peddler of gold bullion, nor a doomsday prognosticator convinced that the world around us is going to hell. Nothing of the sort: Im an unassuming, city-raised computer nerd.

In a way, the book in front of you is simply a product of circumstance. I grew up in communist Poland, a once-proud nation razed to the ground in the final days of World War II, then subjugated by Stalin and unceremoniously subsumed into the Soviet Bloc. I remember childhood tales of distant relatives vanishing without a trace, and I recall long lines and ration cards for basic necessities like sugar and soap. Later, when I came to the United States, I lived through the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, and then through the housing crisis of 2007 to 2009. I watched friends go from earning cozy six-figure salaries to having their cars and homes repossessed. I kept telling myself this would never happen to meall the way until, through a stroke of bad luck, I almost ended up on the street.

In the end, my fascination with emergency preparedness isnt rooted in a mean militaristic streak or a bleak outlook on life; it stems from a simple realization that disasters arent rare today, just as they werent rare in days gone by. We all have friends or relatives who have experienced financial hardships or had to escape wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or floodsbut we invariably imagine ourselves safe from such calamities. Moments later, we open history books and read about thousands of years of brutal conflict, conquest, plague, and war, with only fleeting decades of prosperity and calm in between. We know about all this, and yet we convince ourselves that nothing of the sort could ever happen againnot here, not now, not to us.

Still, the goal of this book isnt to convince you that the end is nigh and let that thought consume your life. On the contrary, I want to reclaim the concept of prepping from the hands of the bunker-dwelling prophets of doom. Prepping shouldnt be about expecting the apocalypse; it should be about enjoying life to the fullest without having to worry about whats in the news. Such is the power of having a solid and well-reasoned backup plan.

Another way in which this book differs from others is that from the beginning of the project, I wanted to teach a thought process, rather than write down a rigid set of axioms, a list of investments to make, or a collection of items to buy. We all come from different backgrounds and have different life goals; it follows that theres no one solution that fits all. The future is unknowable too, so not every approach that sounds good on paper is guaranteed to pay off down the line. The ability to reason through unforeseen problems can be worth more than even the most remarkable stash of survival gear.

Ultimately, my goal is to equip readers with a healthy mix of data, opinions, and interesting anecdotes. Far from being gospel, the book is merely a starting point for you to conduct your own personally relevant research. This, in turn, should help you make your own decisions that not only prepare you for potential adversities that might await in your lifebut more important, help you sleep well at night when everybody else is worried sick.

Part I
Thinking About Risk

Learning from the past, reasoning about the future, and making sense of predictions in an ever-changing world

A Method to the Madness

We seem to be wired to think about risk in a particular way: we instinctively zero in on dangers that are unusual or immediate, while paying much less attention to hazards that unfold more slowly or in a more familiar way.