I was looking at that Black Swans thread from a few years back (it was noted above).
It feels like there is a way to mitigate many of the potential issues that lie at humanities doorstep. The easiest would be to learn to be more independent. Have a little bit of land away from the crowds with a well, then install solar power, learn to garden and grow your own food. People vastly underestimate what can be grown on a typical U.S. city home plot. There's a guy from Canada who made a 6 figure income from growing produce on a couple people's unused plots. It was less than one acre total, and then he would go around and sell the produce to local stores (found on YouTube). There are so many simple skills that almost no one understands anymore like foraging - many things which are considered weeds (found everywhere) are edible and very good for you.
Above is somewhat easy, and it's sort of a plan of mine yet to be worked out. The harder part is to be surrounded by a community of people who can be trusted, level headed and self reliant. If things in society were to ever go a bit off the deep-end, which could certainly happen... 25 years ago I never would have expected things to be so unbalanced in my own country. A single person or even a family would easily fall prey to any group of vandals that passed by. In researching Mexico and cartels I found it interesting some Mexican communities have already formed their own militia to protect their own communities because the police and military can't be trusted. This is tied to drugs and cartels which have popped up everywhere.
My guess would be that we see some crazy stuff happening before 2050. High inflation and then a few large natural disasters, so many things could tip the scales and then a period of lawlessness before order is restored. 2 days ago I was reading of a story where a group in Michigan were planning to set off a bomb and kill someone in politics, with the idea that others would join in once they got started. Yesterday: "9 mass shootings happened in America last weekend" There's a lot of unbalanced people and thinking in the world right now and it does not seem to be getting better. To me it looks like we are seeing warning signs.
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