An essay by Sharon Astyk. — By Sharon Astyk First published on June 22, 2022 So, a really, really important paper came out last week in Science, and it is absolutely fascinating, and also really troubling. I want to spend a few minutes on this, because everyone here needs to know what it implies. The study…

An essay by Sharon Astyk. — By Sharon Astyk First published on June 10, 2022 [ed. note: Just because your predictions aren’t SURPRISING doesn’t mean I LIKE THEM, SHAH-RAHN. — Moriarty] This will be a quick one today (for me — like I ever write anything short,) but I just wanted to give people my general…

An essay by Sharon Astyk — From Shaunta: Read toward the end to see Sharon’s predictions from a year ago — and how spot on they were. By Sharon Astyk Originally published on June 6, 2021 Despite a million novels and movies and tv shows, the reality of an apocalypse for most people is a lot…

An essay by Sharon Astyk — [ed. note: If you’re anything like me, you get tense whenever you see a new essay from Sharon, like, maybe we should rename the blog What Fresh Hell Is Happening Now. But sometimes we get a break. Sometimes, we get a little moment of paradise, like when the heat breaks…

No, it’s not The Second Coming of Covid. But we still need to be careful. — By Sharon Astyk First published on June 1, 2022 How worried should I be about monkeypox? Ok, can we just start by admitting that monkeypox sounds like the punchline to someone’s Dad joke? That it feels hard to take seriously? And that after Covid, it feels harder to worry about…

Or: How I’m preparing for collapse, one week at a time. — Ten years or so ago, Sharon Astyk hosted what she called the Independence Days Challenge. I read about it first in her book, Independence Days. She came up with the idea based on something she read in Carla Emery’s amazing book, The Encyclopedia of Country Living. My family has already…

Preparation is better with community. — The Independence Days Challenge is something that Sharon used to do, a long time ago. I participated then and I’m so excited to participate this year. The act of actually doing something about the scary stuff is cathartic. And necessary. I hope you’ll decide to play along. The concept is…

An essay by Sharon Astyk — Make sure you’ve Part 1 and Part 2. By Sharon Astyk First published on May 27, 2022. Okay, did Sharon just write two FREAKING essays of “we’re fucked” and left us there with no solutions? Hey, that’s not fair, where’s the zero stars button? In a sense, yes, that’s what I did. The old distinction between a problem (which can be solved) and a predicament (which must be endured and mitigated, but is fundamentally insoluble) applies here.

An Essay by Sharon Astyk — By Sharon Astyk First published on May 27, 2022 READ PART ONE HERE. It introduces the “bike on the stairs” metaphor that is important to understanding this essay. Why do I think things are going to get worse in the near term? Well, the first reason is that the general pace of collapse as a phenomenon has been consistently speeding up ALREADY — ie, I think it will happen because it IS happening.