Resilience

We’ve just had our first real wet-season rain, foreshadowing the approaching cyclone season. It’s a reminder that our weather is getting less predictable and more dangerous to ourselves and our cities.

We can’t do much about that, although we should still do what we can, but at least we can cultivate a more resilient lifestyle. This is not about going into full ‘prepper’ mode, with a bunker in the back yard and a tinfoil hat, but about making minor and generally painless adjustments to how we go about our daily lives.

Some of them look quite old-fashioned but there’s a reason for that.

Our proverbs and wisdom sayings were hammered out over centuries in societies never far from danger or hunger, in a world which was largely hostile to our wellbeing. The last 70 years have been exceptionally kind to us, at least here in Australia, so two generations of us have grown up without needing to remember them. That time may be passing.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Around the house
  • Extreme weather is only going to increase, so make (and keep) your home as weather-proof as you can. That includes trimming/removing trees before cyclone season (in the tropics) or winter (down south).
  • Temperatures are going to keep rising, so improved insulation will be a good investment, repaid in comfort and reduced cooling costs. Maybe a reflective coating on your roof, too?
  • Standalone power is insurance against mains power interruptions. Consider an EV with V2L capacity, or a power supply, or a battery hooked up to your rooftop solar and able to run when the grid is down.
  • Food security: Grow (some of) your own fruit and vegies. Keep food cupboards reasonably full.
  • Workshop: Maintain your handyman skills and make sure you have the tools and spares you might need – plumbing, light globes, ladders, chainsaw, etc.

Look after your tools and your tools will look after you.

Community-building
  • Know your neighbours: wave hello, street parties, vegie swaps …
  • Support and join op-shops, food banks; men’s sheds, CWA, school tuckshops, Landcare, Meals on Wheels …
  • Buy local, and preferably from local businesses. If you have to shop at Collies or Bunworks, shop in person, not online, to employ real people who live in your community and aren’t underpaid, casualised teenagers working in horrid conditions in a warehouse.
  • Online, cross-post items from one social media group to another to make group members aware of related groups.

Stronger together!

Tech
  • Don’t rely on a single provider for communications. One mobile service plus one fixed is good, or two mobile services. Know how to create a data hotspot.
  • Don’t rely completely on the internet (mobile or fixed) for transactions.
  • Have cash and use it often, even when you don’t need to, to encourage retailers to keep accepting it.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

More about why we need resilience

4 thoughts on “Resilience”

  1. A similar post by an American contributor to one of my favourite online forums (see, e.g., How can I decarbonise my life?) is worth adding here. I have edited it for length and clarity, and I thank its anonymous author.

    I work in risk management. When we evaluate the vulnerabilities of a system we look at both likelihood and impact. The impact of civilizational collapse is well known, and scenarios have been extensively gamed for years.
    Some measure of collapse is baked in, given the environmental extremes we are already experiencing. What has changed in recent years is that the likelihood of collapse has risen with global interconnection. The fragility of our supply chains is well known, e.g., the world’s reliance on Taiwanese chip foundries could lead to economic collapse. Without chips, as we saw during the pandemic lockdowns, cars don’t get built and datacenters grind to a halt.
    Given rising likelihood, it is prudent to explore what we can do personally to reduce impact. Most of these things are simple: growing some measure of one’s food locally, preparing for supply chain interruption by reducing reliance on foreign products, and building relationships in one’s own local community. These things are good for us even if we avoid the worst impacts. Better to be prepared than surprised.
    Live in a city? Guerilla gardening, particularly if organized at the community level, is one viable option. The motive is not to supply all of one’s food, but to supplement one’s diet with fresh produce that one might otherwise not be able to afford and to build personal and community resilience. There is no downside to producing one’s own food or getting directly engaged with its producers.

  4. Not just wild weather, not just Australia…

    The woman in charge of crisis management for the European Commission, Hadja Lahbib, has advised the European Union’s (EU) 450 million residents to pack a 72-hour survival bag, as the bloc braces for threats “more complex than ever”. Last month, Ms Lahbib announced a new EU Preparedness Strategy with dozens of action points, including setting up a crisis coordination hub and instructing all residents to pack emergency kits with enough food and supplies to see them through the first three days of an emergency. … Lucy Easthope, a professor risk and hazard at the University of Durham, says the EU’s plan is borrowed directly from Australia, and the experiences of those living in regional communities prone to bushfires or flooding. “The 72-hours idea, which we’ve seen in this EU announcement, has a long history of being used in Australia for things like bad weather preparedness strategies,” she said.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-16/europeans-told-to-pack-survival-kits-for-72-hours/105176232

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