How to Consume Your Daily Gloom with a Grain of Salt and a Dash of Diogenes

My fellow doom scrollers, let us begin by acknowledging our addiction to the end of days.

Barely an hour goes by without yet another blog, essay, or opinion piece describing in impressive and incisive detail why our environment, our culture, our form of government, our freedom, our planet — if not life itself — are finished. If you’re like me, you read them all. Better to be prepared for doomsday than not, I say.

Yet for all my grim determination to stay informed, I’ve no idea how to organize myself for what might come. Do I flee for the hills and, if so, should I take a tent? Do I build a fallout shelter? Should I hide cash under the mattress or maybe stash the sterling silver I inherited and never use? Should I stockpile water, pasta, and cans of tuna? Should I buy property in another country? Should I dare to go sky diving or paragliding for the hell of it because, anyway you cut it, I’ll be either imprisoned, broke, starved, or just plain dead before my time?

The list of questions is endless. The doom authors rarely provide any answers. That’s not their job and in describing the climate collapse, economic misery, and mass extinctions ahead or already under way, they often do so persuasively.