"Best Place to Survive Global Collapse?" Topic

According to this article in The Guardian – link – New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society.

Where do you think the best chances would be?

Tasmania here I come.

Just for the sake of argument why not Alaska?

Or any Pacific Island? After all the Pacific Islands survived successfully without contact with the outside world until the 18th Century.

Now that everyone knows about NZ we're doomed. :-) Actually since we don't manufacture Panadol you won't even be able to treat a headache.

I think the general idea is Islands can cut themselves off and insulate themselves from the rest of the worlds societal collapse. Sounds great in theory until you add in raising sea levels…

Abroad.

Mars

etotheipi for the win!

A possible audition for the next Top Gun film in space.

I have to say Tasmania is a wargamers paradise. In my city of Hobart (the capital and biggest city, with 250,000 people) we have 3 game stores (A GW, and games and books and comics store, and a games and cafe establishment), two real hobby stores with model trains, airfix models, etc., and several active wargames clubs.

Combine that with some of the worlds cleanest air, no covid for 450 days, and a higher freedom index than the USA (see Cato freedom index score for Australia). Cost of real estate is an issue though.

I dont understand why the UK is on the list. Overpopulated, having to import food, I would put it as one of the worst places to be!

Agreed Nick. I would take Tassie over England any day. Still fertile, not too over populated, remote enough your not likely to be disturbed after the fall. You could rebuild in relative peace. Would make a good rpg setting really……

NZ for me please :)

Sold, I'll pack my family, figures and guns and then settle in.

I can see how an island is best suited – but you also need a population, agricultural and industrial base that can support survival – so I would rate New Zealand and Tasmania highly; for the UK it could work but it would need some brutal governance and radical restructuring notably in terms of sustainable food chain

The problem with Alaska is the winter – Alaska is heavily dependent on food imports (about 90% as I recall) although the petrochemical side of things is favourable

No place will be safe in a global collapse. We live in an interconnected world. The food on your table comes from far away. We are dependent not only on farmers and ranchers, but food processing plants, distribution centers, shipping and trucking. No amount of personal security, far away location, guns & ammo, gold, etc; will keep you from starvation or running out of essential supplies. No man is an island.

Nick Bowler, why is UK best place to survive a global collapse? Simple given how things are in UK currently, UK is only place on earth where global collapse would seem to be an improvement

NZ. I call dibs of Bilbo's house!

I wouldn't take the Guardian's word for the direction of sunrise. In real life, quite a lot would depend on the cause and nature of the "collapse" and on immediate circumstances difficult if not impossible to anticipate.

A food-exporting area difficult to access would seem to be a logical starting point, but this didn't work out so well for some families moving to the Falklands in the late 1970's. General patterns can often be anticipated. Details not so much.

I vote for heaven since most people will be dying from hunger, war, disease, global disasters and a number of other things.
Heaven sounds more beautiful even as I get older.

I have to say Tasmania is a wargamers paradise. In my city of Hobart (the capital and biggest city, with 250,000 people) we have 3 game stores (A GW, and games and books and comics store, and a games and cafe establishment), two real hobby stores with model trains, airfix models, etc., and several active wargames clubs.

Sounds pleasant, though I would not count on the game stores being able to re-stock easily in the case of a global apocalypse.

Also, there is the slight issue of how the apocalyptic conditions would affect Tasmanian devils… a rampaging horde of those critters would not be a pleasant encounter.

I'm sure the UK was included to help bolster domestic morale – stiff upper lip, and all that, chaps.

I'm sure the UK was included to help bolster domestic morale – stiff upper lip, and all that, chaps.

Well, having the UK citizens stay at home, rather than trying to evacuate to New Zealand, would certainly improve the Kiwis chances of survival…

UK was quite dependent on imported food items already in the 1930's, resulting in introduction of rationing system during WWII (as in many other countries), which lasted well into 1950's.

The UK is ideally placed to survive a worldwide collapse becuase it is an island. For example just imagine there was, let's say, a horrible worldwide Pandemic starting in the far East the UK's borders could easily be closed or heavily policed with testing and quarantine to make sure few if any cases landed in the UK. All we need is a competent and decisive government…

….anyone know if Jacinda Ardern fancies being prime minister of the UK?

In fairness rationing might not be a bad idea for the UK given that in 2020 it was reported the UK population throws away about 18% of it's food. The general poor diet and obesity rampant in the UK might also benefit from smaller amounts of bought food, bolstered by home grown veg, and a few less takeaways.

As for the UK being an island, my understanding is that the English Channel is not particularly deep, and thus in the past (e.g. during last ice age) has occasionally been dry land, allowing various animal species to emigrate from the continent.

So in case of an apocalypse resulting in global cooling and lowering sea levels (as water gets tied up as snow and ice in glaciers), the island policy might became unviable in long term. Furthermore, such global cooling might also negatively affect the growth of crops in Britain. That said, it would still be much preferable to those more northern regions that might end up being covered by a hundred meters high glacier.

True but Doggerland was said to be a land of plenty with fish and wildfowl so more (boggy) land and more food for everyone.

On the other hand if the polar ice caps melt, due to global warming the UK gets a bit smaller but the English channel gets a bit bigger oh and London disappears.

Depends what you mean by "A global collapse". Are we talking something that is a natural occurred incident? (Mega Super volcano, asteroid strike, moon ripping away from earths orbit, etc…) or are we talking something man made, (Nuclear Oblivion, Zombie Apoc, Mutating flesh eating killer virus, etc?), or something extraterrestrial, (Alien attack/invasion)….

Speaking of mega volcanoes, asteroid strikes, earthquakes etc. in case those happen at sea, they can produce as a side effect a tsunami that can be quite devastating for coastal areas.

So if you are going to be bunkering up in an island, consider picking an area that has sufficiently hilly or mountainous regions to limit the effect of the waves. However, the most populated and fertile regions often tend to be in the coastal areas.

Yea, the latter is especially true, given the recent 8.2 quake in Alaska.

Seems it did not produce a cataclysmic tsunami, as feared, but it could have, since there have been large ones before from quakes in Alaska.

Tennessee

I heard NZ has the best trout fishing! l call seconds on Bilbo's house.

Well of course this thread is stirring the pot, but TMP does not disappoint

I wouldn't take the Guardian's word for the direction of sunrise

Hey, don't be so cynical – journalists have to write something – it's not as though there are lots of events going on of world significance at the moment

I vote for heaven

Here I must respectfully disagree. There are lots of people that seriously annoy me that are convinced that's where they are going. I dread to think of spending time in their company

John

Mars is an interesting choice. If they can be truly self-supporting by the time of the general collapse, you could have some interesting scenarios to game out:

Do they take refugee ships from Earth (probably full of billionaires, but also some nice technology and stuff worth having on Mars)? Inspections, boarding actions, maybe ship-to-ship action.

Do Earth forces try to invade Mars and/or settle in an unused part of it? Space battles, boarding actions, etc.

Then we can have skirmishes as the Earthers try to steal things they need to survive.

Been done twice, Oberlindes. When Worlds Collide/After Worlds Collide, and One in 300. Heinlein hints at it a few places. So does Pournelle. But when things really go to pot people don't have the resources and organization for war, and unless you get some very interesting tech, that would also rule out serious numbers of interplanetary refugees. I would expect that sort of tech to postpone the "general collapse" by centuries.

Hmm. Might make a decent backstory to a Barsoomian campaign, though. Imagine a Mars in the process of being terraformed when things go so far wrong at "home" that the colonists have to survive on their own inadequate resources, preserving gizmos they can't manufacture. Any weird animals or humanoids you want were genetically modified for Mars before the Homeworld stopped transmitting.

Global collapse after the giant asteroid hits New Zealand I think is what the UK is counting on.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

jwebster, my consistent failing as an analyst is that I am not cynical enough. But I was thinking of the Guardian's quality of analysis rather than its choice of topic.

NZ probably the best place to be.

BUT… has anyone wondered why the NZ Hobbit population lived in BUNKERS? lol!

r p…
Not Mars, but there was a BBC Sci Fi show a few years back with similar thinking. Afraid I cannot even remember the name… Ah! It was 'Outcasts'! It only lasted one season… maybe the only time in which I agree on a sci fi 'Cancellation'! Terrible writing… with little 'thought' to 'practicalities' on interstellar colonists… a 'kid' DJ with a Vinyl record collection transported to another planet? LOL!
It 'could' have been better… some 'maybe' interesting storylines… but writers couldn't seem to decide on whether it was to be 'Sci Fi', a 'cop show' or a 'soap'… with 'episodes' switching from one to another… just when things would seem to'start to get going'… there was a 'lost kid' episode, or such.Total mess! Pity, really.

JMcCarroll – check out the trout fishing in Tasmania as well!

to Perris0707!

I look around where I live and I see farmland, woods, game, fresh water in springs, streams, and rivers, and I see good people who in general are concerned about each other and ready to lend a hand whenever a hand is needed. So there's food, water, and fuel aplenty— and the faith to sustain us as a community.

So it's sort of dependent on the cause. If it's the Yellowstone Caldera, ain't nobody surviving that, Tennessee, UK or New Zealand. Ditto on a dinosaur killer asteroid, or a nuclear war (well, maybe nobody has target locks on NZ, but I wouldn't bet on it).

If it's an economic collapse because of idiot politicians who think money grows on trees and all you have to do is "print more of it," then, yes, I think Tennessee would be the place to survive it all.

Something that no one here seems to have considered:

How many of us rely on a variety of specialized pharmaceuticals to maintain our life? I know I do, and in a global collapse scenario I have about 6 months to live, with my quality of life steadily getting worse and worse until it's finally over. Why would I want to survive, just to endure that?

Say for a moment that your prescriptions aren't "specialized." They're just run-of-the-mill items; blood pressure pills, anti-cholesterol drugs, insulin, and stuff like that. Where are you going to get them? Wherever you settle isn't going to take kindly to you raiding what pharmacies remain stocked after this collapse. If you think drugs are expensive now, wait until you can't get a regular supply of them anymore.

It doesn't matter how great your survival chances are if you need an outside product (such as maintenance medications) to keep you alive/healthy. As always, it isn't about terrain or weapons; it's about logistics. Said logistical chains will be among the first things to go in a global collapse scenario.

BWW

I wouldn't worry too much about invading hordes of people coming to a self-sustaining island paradise after the collapse. After an initial spurt of hijacked/self-operated (probably "borrowed") travelers, the only likely candidates are people old enough to have a copy of Kon Tiki and The Ra Expeditions on their shelf.

My second choice would be the Republic of Texas. May or may not have the long-term sustainability, but very likely to be able to defend their borders in the 14-60 day timeframe until the raiding parties have died off.

Unless you have your own personal mini-reactor to ensure power; who in ther right mind would go to Iceland?
If there was >>Global Collapse<< that would infer no infrastructure, so you would freeze to death after a week.

Thanks, we may not be perfect, but we are perfectly happy at our level of subsistence.
After all we can keep gaming for years woth all the lead here.
cheers ~d

Isn't Iceland full of hot springs – and thus geothermal power?

+1 USAFPilot

What a goofy-sounding article. But it did remind me of the Gregory Peck movie, "On the Beach".

We live in an interconnected world. The food on your table comes from far away. We are dependent not only on farmers and ranchers, but food processing plants, distribution centers, shipping and trucking. No amount of personal security, far away location, guns & ammo, gold, etc; will keep you from starvation or running out of essential supplies. No man is an island.

Also, the Mennonites, The Society of Friends, many island communities, and … my neighbour growing up was a sustenance farmer. The only thing he relied on the outside world for was selling produce for money so he could pay his taxes. He had to convert cows and geese (etc.) into taxable income equivalent and pay.

No man is an island, but many live in communities.

Just close the blinds, and hide. In a few days, everybody living around you will run off to 'safety', leaving you to paint your minis in peace… ;-)