I fear that nuclear war could be happening soon…
Global tensions seem to be rising, and superpowers are allowed to be more and more reckless. It feels like the third world war is imminent, a nuclear war which would end everything.
I am so scared… I am so paralyzed to do anything now. Am I overreacting? Also, what should I be doing?
Get involved and build resilience in your local community. It’s super beneficial for your mental health, social health and you can do something tangible that does make a difference. This resilience will help build and maintain and more importantly sustain the structural and social support for things like general strikes. It’s quite literally grounding in practice and people always need to eat. It’s a place to meet people that also care.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240105073255/https://effectiveactivist.com/zine/
It is only in the oppressor’s benefit to do otherwise. Remember these are the same people causing both issues.
Edit: Also check out !zines@slrpnk.net for inspiration. :)
Great advice
We all need each other. ❤️
More in the same vein:
Their linked guide is a great summary. The archive.org link above is partially a workbook to help people figure out where to start with these things too with considering personal abilities and needs… There are so many options!! !citizenscience@mander.xyz too, is a form of praxis through the building of public knowledge, skills and to help inform policy. No matter what happens, there’s always something to do.
Step 0:
Take 3, intentional, deep breaths.
Inhale for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, slowly exhale for 5 seconds.
Do three of em.
Step 1:
Accept that one day, maybe soon, maybe in the fairly distant future:
You Will Die.
No avoiding it. None of us make it out of here alive.
… really try to actually come to grips with that.
There’s no reward or punishment at the end, its not a judged competition… it just stops, everything goes away, and you go away.
Game over.
Its not fair or unfair. It just is.
Step 2:
Understand that while you are amongst the realm of the living, some things are within your control and others are not, and precisely which things land in which of those categories could change a good deal depending on who exactly you are, what you do or don’t have access to, where exactly you are, etc.
Maybe it makes sense for you to try and build up a bit of an emergency food and water supply, a method of generating power, staying warm or cool, etc, in case shit hits the fan.
Maybe it makes more sense to establish some kind of bug out plan and procedure.
Maybe, it just makes the most sense to just accept that if you’re in a very important / very dense area…well, one day, you might just evaporate.
Unfortunately, withot knowing more about you and your situation, I can’t really say which three of those is the framework of a better approach, or if something entirely different would make more sense.
But for any of those… don’t kick yourself for … things you didn’t do or prepare for in the past, don’t expect to be able to suddenly just ‘solve’ this ‘problem.’
Beyond being terrible for your mental health and just aggrevating the panic spiral, trying to do those things is ineffective, not productive at even attempting to ‘solve’ the ‘problem’.
Break it down into bite sized chunks that are manageable, that each, on their own, put you in a generally better position than not doing them.
Don’t dive headfirst with crazy expensive shit, start with the basics, as if you were preparing for a 3 day emergency from like a tornado or flood or local/regional grid failure or earthquake or hurricane.
Yeah, nukes and war don’t play by all the same rules as those, but a lot of the basics are the same.
Basic food and water supply, basic medkit, flashlight, hand crankable emergency radio, thermal/moon blanket, solid set of clothes, two sets of undies and socks, decent backpack, decent multipurpose knife, probably some all purpose gloves, solid shoes, solid all purpose coat that you can either open up and air out, or stuff more layers underneath to stay warm… some means of starting a fire…
… these days probably a battery bank/solar charger for a phone… if you’re a lady or gonna be with one or some: tampons…
… make sure you’ve got important ids and documents somewhere secure and ready to go, if you need to go…
… definitely doesn’t hurt to have a couple hundred in cash, smallest bills as you can, just in case some electronic payment system goes down and you need to pay for something.
Pretty much most of that shit can fit into a normal backpack, and if you can put that together, you’re doing way better than being totally and completely unprepared.
Think about it this way, if nuclear war does happen then you ain’t gonna have much time to worry about it.
This article may help: https://positivepsychology.com/circles-of-influence/
And a graphic that sums it up:
I’m just another internet rando, but looking at the same events everyone else is, I do think the masses will turn this around through solidarity. I believe: It will be before any nukes are used. It will be after long lasting climate change. But it will prevent the downfall of humanity. There will be human and natural healing. Most people will be okay.
What do I have power over to make this happen? Mostly numerous, small, interpersonal interactions.
Well said. Focus on what you can influence and realize most things are outside of your control.
Control the controllable. This axiom also applies to most things in life.
The billionaires don’t want all-out nuclear war, what they want is world domination by a few, over a literal slave class mix of humans and robots.
However, in case of imminent attack in an outbreak of a nuclear WWIII, the best plan is to drive toward the biggest city in your region, or stay put if you currently live in a big city.
I’ll take instant vaporization over whatever the survivors are going to need to deal with in the aftermath.
Come visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, At least you’ll learn what happens…
Except you really don’t. Hiroshima was a tiny bomb compared to what’s currently aimed at you.
A thermonuclear missile can start a fire storm, that’s a fire that creates it’s own weather patterns. This fire storm will be the size of a US state. From a single missile.
Each state has dozens of missiles aimed at it, just waiting for the launch order.
The same sort of devastation will hit all of Europe, Russia, China, and basically the entire northern hemisphere.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in a hardened bunker either, because you’ll just cook alive inside. That’s if your bunker survives at all, because there’s no bunker on earth that can survive a direct hit. Not under the White House, not NORAD, not even most deep mines.
And since every single nuclear power is “launch on warning”, we’re likely fucked. At any time, we are less than 30 minutes from complete extinction.
But since there’s literally nothing we can do about it, I just don’t think about it.
Give away everything you own. Get 3 part time minimum wage jobs. You will then be excited for your pain to end.
Buy potassium iodide tablets. If it happens and it’s too close, you won’t even know. If it isn’t too close, take the pills and become a wasteland raider.
Otherwise just live your life because nothing you do really matters concerning nuclear war. That’s like worrying about an asteroid impact.
Iodide only protects from iodine isotopes.
Frankly it doesn’t matter because if you’re close enough to need anti radiation meds, the lack of food, water, power, and shelter will be a much more pressing issue. The gist of my comment was supposed to be “go buy these pills for peace of mind because that’s about the only ‘preperation’ you can do for nuclear war. Really you should just relax and live your life”.
I’d never actually watched this before but the advice is perfectly reasonable. They’re talking about if you’re on the periphery of the impact zone to protect against flying debris such as glass mostly, and secondarily against some hot winds. Obviously there are many situations where you’re fucked no matter what, but if you do survive you don’t want a bunch of neck or torso lacerations from flying glass on top of everything else.
Touch some grass, go to therapy and stop watching the news.
The only thing you can do is move away from a major city. and after that you can’t do shit. So don’t worry about it. it’s fine
check out that movie Dead Man’s letters. it’s really good.
I got you read https://goodgoodgood.co/ 2 articles on Hope:
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New study finds hope key to a meaningful life
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Hopeful people live better lives (14 year study)
Hope that tomorrow will be better than today and to do today with action solo and with others via collaboration, coordination, logistics, and short-term & long-term thinking to get to that tomorrow.
Read up on the many many benefits for Hope and same for benefits of gratitude, chosen family, friends, & community. All 5 have massively helped my mental health. Overtime as you keep building them up it will help you too. Try to do the same for others when you are able to in near future once you have yourself setup for all those
Read books, videos, etc about each of those things and with each one pause whenever you feel like it and do whatever it says to make it part of your life. Dont chase any of it embrace all of it as now. You are hopeful and grateful right now. You have others no matter what from those and up to internationally with real allies of the people
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Most countries have some kind of “disaster preparedness” suggestions, be they for earthquakes, floods, tornados, WMDs, etc. A lot of these suggestions overlap: have a stock of food, know where important documents are, think about where you’d shelter, etc.
There will probably not be an extinction-level event. But at some point in your life you may experience an emergency where you need a stock of food, to know where your documents are, to have a place to shelter, etc. So maybe it’d help you out to make plans for what you’d do in case of a general emergency/disaster.
Here are a couple useful documents that were made in the US:
Wish I could upvote this five times.
OP, you have an emergency management agency of some kind for your area. They will have all kinds of info on how to prepare for any disaster (and they even know what kinds of disasters are most likely to affect your area).
If you’re in the US, try Google county name and emergency management agency or state name emergency management agency. Follow their socials! Check out their webpages! And please please sign up for whatever alerting/notification system they use to update residents on ongoing/evolving events.
The best way to cope with the news is to ignore it. There is no reason to read about and obsess over things you have no power to change. Focus on your own life and the people around you, learn mindfulness and deeply ponder the structure of trees, the intricate shapes of the clouds, whatever nature is around you, and breathe.
yeh I’ve been doing just this a lot as of late… and Lemmy tell ya, there’s a lot of natural beauty in his world, from clouds to the fractal shapes of plant life (ferns esp). best not to worry about impending doom and things you cannot change.
