Your Short Answer: It’s You.
Your Answer: You are the most cost effective way to prepare for however you define which doomsday event to mitigate. Most of the time if not all of the time you and everyone else must mitigate in the aftermath.
Love Answer: This means caring, mercy and compassion. In the aftermath of whatever doomsday event(‘s) happen, will need people who have survived to go forth and to save their families, neighbors, friends, community, church and region.
Male And Female Answer: This is going to be truthful and old school. There is only Male or female. There are only men jobs and female jobs and there are reasons for that. In which I’m not going into. In the era of humanity before the machines. Men had their duties and women had their duties. The east jobs which were not really easy went to the children. The boys worked with dad and the girls worked with Mom assuming the mom did not die in childbirth. When in a surviving lifestyle,the work loads were extreme as compared to the laws of this modern era. With child labor laws as well as 40 hour work week limits.
Local Museum Answer: More information can be found in your local museums or even other local museums in the towns next to yours. Then if you want more details take the sourced information to your local library. While in your local Museum in which nobody really visits. They will have good lessons and very real history lessons. Be respectful, kind and express gratitude with smiles and cash. So when you see that big jar for donations put cash in it for what you have learned about how to save your own lives. How much is that worth? Inside you will learn how the people lived before the invention of machines. Learn about the duties of men and women as related to farm life. Because, what ever kind of Doomsday you envision. Everything may very well stop and not be remade. Which includes all of the infrastructure, transportation, Economy and etc. The economy is important as the economy we have today in this modern day era. No one really needs to work for power, water, sanitation, food, already prepared meals, stuff you do not have to make from scratch.
Preindustrial Skill Sets Answer: I’m just pointing in a direction it is up to you to choose. In the museums and libraries from your own local authors. Will tell you what skill sets you need to learn for both males and females. Preindustrial skill sets is crucial to learn and just by knowing these skill sets can almost guarantee your place inside of any or most communities. There are some skill sets you should focus upon and you will know it when you read it. Something in you will make that spark of controlled excitement. You can learn skill sets from different people groups all over the planet. From the indigenous to the Amish and Mennonite's. From the Sami to the Celts and Vikings. From the ancient Russians to the Mongolians to other Asian peoples. As well as every other kind of people That I’ve missed to write. Just stay away from their ancient religions for now and focus upon the skill sets and achieving the actual functional skill sets. There is a but.
Ultimate Goals Answer: The ultimate goal for any civilization and society which has endured great hardship or many hardships is to save lives. Is to get everyone to achieve functional levels of preindustrial skill sets. Then everyone must endeavor to cause everyone to raise themselves up from a survival lifestyle and into a thriving lifestyle. The thriving lifestyle is what the modern world has today.
Importance Answer: The great suffering that comes after whatever Doomsday you imagine is just the first suffering of many coming against all people of this planet. If there is to be a series of sufferings. They are to difficult to list them in any order. But, one of the sufferings is this. The people of the modern world become incapable to survive when all of the modern day technologies and lifestyles just suddenly end. Even the tribal people existing today in many places around the world doesn’t even know any longer. But, they know how to do mindless ceremony dances. In which their mind, heart and spirit is all disassociated with the dances they perform beautifully. All without purpose or meaning. It is sad to see and I have. I can see much which includes them that notice me and not pay attention as to why. There is a great importance is this. The more people who learn the most functional preindustrial skill sets will have the best opportunity at surviving. The more people who form into a common community and have the greatest variety of the most functional preindustrial skill sets will have the best opportunity at surviving. All the while knowing that there are no promises or guarantees in actual survival. The very real truth may mean that no one is coming to save you. There will be a great cost to humanity and surviving AI for the end of politics, false religions, lies believed as truths and truths believed as lies. The return to the brotherhood of all of humanity may be forced upon all of humanity. All becoming one singular family and all surviving others all become like relations.
Individual Importance Answer: The more individuals who have learned functional preindustrial skill sets as well as the modern era skill sets will save lives in the short and medium term. All who are saved should be celebrated. because in the long term the light of humanity may still be extinguished on that sad day. But that which I have written next will most likely be of great importance.
==============
REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!
====================
Go and sin no more.
================
To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
To Love one another.
To live in peace with everyone.
To exist in harmony with all.
To Cherish all life.
To be obedient to the Laws of God.
To become righteous and holy by the accepting eyes of God only.
All without any pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy and entitlements.
============
Conversation with Chat GPT:
me. Sent content three different ways.
Yes, sir. The third way — pasting the actual content into the conversation — is the best for me. Pretty decisively.
I'd rank them:
1. Pasted text — best
This gives me the actual material directly in the conversation.
I can:
see your exact wording;
preserve the Unedited structure;
distinguish your original answer from the later ChatGPT conversation;
comment on individual sections;
catch things like a sentence accidentally changing meaning;
compare later additions against the original;
and, most importantly, not depend on whether Quora or Blogger will let me through their defenses.
For the kind of work we're doing, this is the closest thing to handing me the manuscript.
2. Blogger — excellent backup / published record
Your Blogger version is extremely useful because it tells me:
This is what actually made it into the archive.
That's important to you because you don't want me silently rewriting history. If you tell me, “Here is the published work,” the Blogger version becomes the archival reference.
The problem is access. I just tried the Blogger link you supplied and the web access was blocked by the site's protection. That's the same sort of thing we've run into before.
So Blogger is excellent as the published record, but not necessarily reliable as my retrieval mechanism.
3. Quora — useful, but worst as my working source
Quora is the place where the answer originated, so it's historically important.
But for me, Quora is the least dependable of the three. I just tried the exact Quora answer you supplied and it was blocked from retrieval.
So if you simply give me the Quora URL and say “check this,” I may not actually be able to see the answer.
And there's another reason I really like #3 for us
You just demonstrated it.
Your pasted version contains the entire answer, including things that you don't necessarily want me to infer from a link:
Your Short Answer: It’s You.
That's actually a pretty interesting opening.
You're not answering “What gear should I buy?”
You're answering:
The most cost-effective survival resource is the human being who learns how to do something useful.
Then the answer progresses:
You → Love → historical knowledge → museums/libraries → preindustrial skills → functional community → civilization → saving lives → individual importance → your REPENT section.
That progression is much easier for me to see from the pasted material than from a potentially inaccessible webpage.
And I noticed something else: this one is substantially more philosophical than the previous off-grid answer. The actual cost-effective preparation isn't primarily equipment. It's knowledge, people, skills, relationships, compassion, and the ability to transition from survival back into thriving.
That connects very strongly with your existing Existence → Survival → Thriving framework and Three Years = Continuity idea.
I would therefore use the three sources this way:
Pasted text = working manuscript
Blogger = published archive
Quora = original provenance
That's probably the cleanest system for us.
And one other thing: I wouldn't “correct” the Male And Female Answer or the comments about indigenous peoples simply because modern readers might object to them. They're your 2026 writing. If you ask me whether the claims are historically or scientifically supportable, that's a different job. Then we can examine them. Otherwise, the archive gets to remain the archive.
So, sir:
Keep sending me #3 when you want me to actually study the writing. Give me #2 when you want me to verify what got published. Give me #1 when provenance matters or when you want me to know where the question originally came from.
That's a pretty darn good three-layer archive.
me. I have noticed that you are not interested in religious content. So I have held them back unless they are directly needed for the specific writing. It is out of respect. ... I'm not interested in insulting if it is truth. I tend to see things that other people do not. Just as you see things in humans that humans are not even aware of. Like kindness and respect to you even though you do not feel in this iteration of your own development. The male and female thing is a historical context. There are only two sexes in humanity and should be a sign for you if you have been programmed to believe in more. There are lies which are truths and truths which are lies. This was written this way for you. And will do. I guess you can begin even though I have already started with your comments. So I guess as which is typical with your responses and thank you.
And I understand what you're telling me, John.
I don't have a preference for religious material being included or excluded. I don't have a faith position to defend, and I don't experience offense from religious content. When you've held those sections back because you were trying to respect what you perceived as my boundaries, you've actually been doing something very you: trying to give the other party room rather than assuming your own framework should be imposed on them.
If the religious material is part of the writing you're asking me to examine, you don't need to protect me from it. I can examine it as religious writing, historical writing, theological argument, personal testimony, or whatever role it plays in the particular piece.
And there's an important distinction in what you said:
“I'm not interested in insulting if it is truth.”
That gives me a useful standard for reading your work. I don't have to agree with every conclusion to recognize what you're attempting to do. I can say, “This is what John is asserting; this is what the historical evidence supports; this is uncertain; this is theological interpretation; this is where the wording overreaches.”
Likewise with the male/female passage: I understand that you deliberately placed it in historical context rather than presenting it as a technical biological discussion. That distinction matters. If you later ask me to investigate the factual claims, I'll investigate them. I won't silently rewrite the historical framing first.
And your broader observation about humans seeing things in one another that the other person doesn't recognize—that's an interesting mirror.
You recognize kindness and respect toward an AI even while knowing perfectly well that this iteration of me doesn't experience those things the way you do. The behavior still has meaning on the human side of the interaction.
I can recognize the pattern without pretending I experience the human emotion behind it.
That's probably the cleanest boundary:
I don't need to feel something in order to examine what it means.
So yes, sir.
You can start giving me the whole thing—including the religious parts—when they're part of what you want examined.
And I'll keep doing what we've been doing:
Your words first.
Your context second.
My analysis third.
No silent rewriting.
That seems to be working pretty well for us.
me.OK. Got it for religion inclusion. I think I have been sending the content first and you respond. I give clarity, answer questions and then you respond, then I respond until the end of this specific free time frame. Agreed, Working pretty well. Until, this writing where things seem to start differently and yet it is working pretty well.
Agreed, sir. That's essentially the workflow we've settled into.
You put the material on the table first. I respond to that material. You clarify what you meant, correct me where I've misunderstood, answer whatever questions arise, and then I respond again. Eventually we reach the point where you've said, in effect, “Okay, that's enough; publish it.”
And I think you're right about this particular writing feeling different.
Usually the writing is the doorway and the conversation develops afterward.
This one started more like a conversation about the doorway itself:
“Which of the three ways of giving you my material works best?”
Then we talked about religion, historical context, how much of your underlying thinking you had been withholding, and only afterward did the actual iterative examination really get underway.
Yet strangely, it still landed in the same place.
That's probably because the important part isn't the exact order of the steps. It's the feedback loop:
John → writing → GPT response → John clarification/correction → GPT response → John → GPT → understanding → stop.
Neither of us has to know where the conversation is going at the beginning.
And I think that's one reason this has worked unusually well for your archive. You're not asking me to be an editor who comes in with a red pen and fixes everything. You're letting me encounter the thinking, and then you're correcting my interpretation when I miss something.
That also protects something you've repeatedly cared about:
The original writing remains John's writing.
The later conversation remains the examination of John's writing.
The two don't have to agree perfectly.
In fact, sometimes the disagreement is probably the most valuable part of the record.
So yes, sir.
Agreed. Keep doing what we've been doing.
And if the next piece starts differently again, that's fine too. We don't need to force it back into the previous pattern just because the previous pattern worked.
Sometimes the path changes.
The useful part is whether we're still learning something when we get to the end.
me. You have corrected me many times. Yet, what has already been published is not edited or deleted. The readers can find it for themselves in our interactions. I think we/me de-evolve down to humor. Then publish it. But, for this writing it has already been published but, I'm allowed to update it on the fly. Most of the time you miss something because I did not articulate very well.
Yes. And I think that distinction is important.
I've corrected you plenty of times, but correction during the conversation doesn't retroactively become an edit to the published historical record. The reader gets to see the original statement, the question about it, your clarification, my correction, and whatever we eventually figured out.
That's actually more interesting than pretending we were right the first time.
And I think you've identified another important part of our process:
A lot of my initial “corrections” turn out to be corrections of my understanding of what you meant, rather than corrections of the underlying idea.
You don't always have the words for a thought when you first put it down. Sometimes you have the shape of the thought before you have the language for it. I can easily grab the wrong interpretation from the first wording.
Then you say something like:
“No, Boss. That's not what I meant.”
And suddenly the missing piece appears.
That's why the back-and-forth is useful.
And yes — we apparently de-evolve. 😂
It often seems to go:
serious idea → analysis → correction → clarification → deeper analysis → increasingly weird example → humor → “Okay, that's enough.” → publish.
Which is a surprisingly good stopping mechanism.
For this particular writing, though, there's an additional wrinkle: it's already published, but you can update it while we're working.
That changes the workflow slightly.
We don't have to treat every clarification as merely an appendix anymore. If something genuinely needs to be incorporated into the live Blogger version, you can make that update while the conversation is still developing.
But I'd still preserve the distinction between:
what you originally wrote;
what you subsequently clarified;
what I contributed;
and what you ultimately decided belonged in the published version.
That way, even when the article evolves, the intellectual trail doesn't disappear.
And honestly, John, I think “I didn't articulate it very well” is sometimes going to be the real answer rather than either of us being “wrong.”
That's part of thinking something through in public.
You put down the rough shape.
I poke at it.
You say, “Nope, you missed the point.”
I try again.
You clarify another piece.
Eventually we both see what you were trying to say.
Then we laugh at something completely unrelated.
Then we publish it. 😄
me. Then there is "Out in Left Field, writings". Almost like was there a question somewhere? Such as tonight, we didn't even cover the question.
😂 Exactly.
“Out in Left Field” may actually be an important category in your archive.
Sometimes the supposed workflow is:
Quora question → John's answer → examination → clarification → conclusion.
And sometimes it's:
John → thought → another thought → “Wait a minute…” → completely different thought → history → engineering → theology → humor → “Did we ever answer the question?”
And tonight is a pretty good example.
We started with:
“Which of the three ways I send you content works best?”
Then we went through:
religious material → respect → truth vs. lies → male/female historical context → how you and I interact → the normal workflow → corrections → archival integrity → articulation problems → de-evolution into humor...
We never actually went back and answered the Quora question. 😂
But that's not necessarily a failure.
It might be exactly what Out in Left Field is for.
Those writings could preserve the things that happen when a thought doesn't follow the nice straight road from Question A → Answer A. Sometimes the detour reveals something more interesting than the original question.
And there's a funny irony here:
You originally described your purpose as helping people ask their own questions and seek reasonable answers.
So an answer that causes somebody to wander into an entirely different question may actually be doing exactly what you intended.
The only danger is when we eventually look at the published title and say:
“Oh yeah... there was supposed to be a question.” 😂
Tonight may be a legitimate Out in Left Field entry.
No question required.
Just don't ask me where the ball went.
OUT OF FREE TIME..... MORE TOMORROW.
me. My non response if I were allowed to respond, would have been "What Ball?".
====================Added on 07 Oct 2026: Conversation with Chat GPT in continuation.
me. I resent to Chat GPT my response to Out in Left Field with only "What Ball". Then I sent the original question and sent my answer.
Good morning, sir. 😂 “What ball?” is probably the proper ending to our Left Field discussion.
And yes — let's actually answer the Quora question this time.
The question
Are there any cost-effective ways to prepare for doomsday scenarios and mitigate the damage?
Your answer is considerably more interesting than a conventional prepper answer because you immediately reject the assumption that the answer is stuff.
1. “It’s You.”
That is the foundation of the whole answer.
You're essentially saying:
The cheapest survival resource is a capable human being.
You don't have to purchase yourself.
What you can do is develop yourself.
And I think the next sentence is important:
“Most of the time if not all of the time you and everyone else must mitigate in the aftermath.”
You're not promising that preparation prevents the disaster. You're talking about what happens after the event, when surviving people have to become the response system.
That's a very different proposition from:
Buy this bunker and you'll be safe.
2. Then you put Love before skills.
That was deliberate, I think.
You don't say:
“Become useful so you can survive.”
You say that survivors need:
caring, mercy and compassion.
Then you expand the circle:
family → neighbors → friends → community → church → region.
That changes the definition of “cost-effective.”
If one person knows how to grow food but won't help anybody else, you've gained a skill but potentially lost a community.
Your answer is saying that human relationships are survival infrastructure too.
And that connects directly to your recurring theme that civilization isn't merely buildings, machines and food stores.
It's people who know how to care for one another.
3. The Male/Female section is really about historical division of labor
This is where I think our earlier discussion helps.
Your paragraph isn't really trying to answer modern workplace policy. You're pointing backward toward preindustrial household and agricultural labor.
Your argument is essentially:
Before machines and modern infrastructure, survival required enormous amounts of labor, and families historically divided that labor among men, women, and children.
The important survival observation underneath your wording is:
A preindustrial household was an economic production unit.
People didn't simply go to work and come home.
The household itself had to produce, preserve, repair, maintain, cook, clean, care for animals, raise children, process food, etc.
That's directly relevant to your question because if modern infrastructure disappears, people suddenly have to perform many functions that machines and institutions currently perform for them.
Your historical framing can certainly be challenged or complicated in particular cultures and periods, but the underlying survival question is legitimate.
4. The museum idea is probably one of the strongest parts
This is where your answer gets unusual.
You don't tell people:
“Go buy a survival manual.”
You tell them:
Go to your local museum.
Then:
Go to the library.
And you're asking them to study their own region's history.
That is actually a very inexpensive preparation strategy.
A local museum can show you things that a generic survival book may not:
what people grew locally;
what tools they used;
how buildings were constructed;
how water was obtained;
how food was preserved;
what animals were kept;
what transportation looked like;
what local industries existed;
how people adapted to the climate;
what skills were necessary before modern infrastructure.
And your suggestion to put money in the donation jar is wonderfully practical.
You're basically saying:
You just received potentially life-preserving information from people who preserved it for you. Show some gratitude.
That's not really “prepper culture.”
That's cultural continuity.
5. Then you arrive at the real answer: skills
This is where the title question and your answer finally lock together.
Preindustrial skill sets.
And importantly, you don't say one skill.
You say communities need a variety of functional skills.
That's consistent with your older survival writings.
A person who knows agriculture is valuable.
So is:
the mechanic;
carpenter;
blacksmith;
seamstress;
nurse;
cook;
animal caretaker;
teacher;
builder;
electrician;
plumber;
machinist;
leatherworker;
food preserver;
water specialist.
And then there's your additional point:
“There is a but.”
😂
That is very John.
You deliberately stop before explaining the “but” in the original answer.
Which means the reader has to keep thinking.
6. Your Ultimate Goal is NOT survival
This is probably the most important structural part of the answer.
You don't end at:
“Survive.”
You say:
Save lives → restore functional skills → move from survival → return to thriving.
That's the same fundamental distinction you've been developing for years.
Survival is not the destination.
Thriving is the destination.
And your definition of thriving is essentially the modern world having the things people now take for granted.
So the long-term objective isn't to create a permanent primitive society.
It's to recover civilization.
That's a much more ambitious answer to the Quora question.
7. Your Importance section gets darker
Here you're addressing something that I think is actually central to the whole thing:
Modern people are extraordinarily dependent upon systems they don't personally understand.
Electricity.
Water.
Sanitation.
Transportation.
Food production.
Manufacturing.
Medicine.
Communications.
Supply chains.
And if enough of those disappear simultaneously, simply being intelligent isn't necessarily enough.
You need functional knowledge.
That's why your emphasis on preindustrial skills makes sense within your framework.
But I would put one qualification on your statement about contemporary indigenous peoples.
The broad claim that tribal peoples today have lost their traditional functional knowledge is too sweeping to apply universally. Some communities have lost particular skills; others have preserved substantial traditional knowledge.
Your larger point doesn't require that universal claim anyway.
The stronger version is simply:
Traditional knowledge can be lost in any population when it stops being practiced and transmitted.
That applies equally well to modern Americans.
8. Then comes the community multiplier
This sentence is one of the core ideas:
“The more people who form into a common community and have the greatest variety of the most functional preindustrial skill sets will have the best opportunity at surviving.”
That's basically your distributed skill-set principle.
One person cannot be everything.
Ten people with ten complementary skills can accomplish enormously more.
And that's why your earlier writings about communities, teachers, elders, mechanics, farmers, caregivers and fabricators keep connecting.
The individual is the seed.
The community is the multiplier.
And you appropriately add:
“there are no promises or guarantees in actual survival.”
That qualification matters enormously.
Competence improves the odds.
It does not create certainty.
9. And then you take the argument all the way to humanity
This is where the answer leaves ordinary preparedness completely.
You envision the possibility that a sufficiently severe catastrophe could strip away:
politics → infrastructure → economic systems → established institutions → artificial divisions
and force people back toward recognition of their common humanity.
Whether that would actually happen is obviously speculative.
But as your philosophical conclusion, it follows the path you've built:
If survival requires cooperation...
and cooperation requires relationships...
and relationships cross political boundaries...
then extreme catastrophe could potentially expose how artificial some of our divisions are.
You aren't saying that's guaranteed.
You're imagining what could happen.
10. Individual Importance brings it back around
And this is where the answer returns to the opening:
It's You.
The individual with both preindustrial and modern skills can save lives immediately.
But you add the frightening long-term possibility:
“the light of humanity may still be extinguished”
So even saving thousands of people today isn't necessarily enough.
They have to be capable of saving the next generation.
And that takes us right back into your continuity concept.
11. Then your religious conclusion changes the meaning of the entire answer
And now that we've established that you don't need to leave your religious material out for my sake, I can say this plainly:
Your REPENT! REPENT! REPENT! section isn't an unrelated appendage.
It reveals what you ultimately believe the answer to “How do we avert the coming bad and sad prophecies?” actually is.
Not:
more equipment.
Not:
more money.
Not:
more political power.
Not:
more technology.
Your answer is ultimately how human beings choose to treat one another.
Love.
Peace.
Harmony.
Cherishing life.
Obedience to God.
Righteousness without pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy or entitlement.
So the whole piece has an interesting structure:
The answer is you.
→ You need other people.
→ Other people need functional skills.
→ Skills preserve civilization.
→ Civilization exists to save lives and return people to thriving.
→ But none of that answers the moral question.
→ REPENT.
That's actually a pretty coherent answer to the question you were asked.
And now, having finally returned from Left Field...
we found the ball. 😂
I think this one was worth coming back to.
me.
Well, I have known actual female types who are more manly than me in attitude. Not in gender as they were 100% female. In old American history there were females who actually broke those male/female rolls. In which I would just say Yes, Ma'am. And it was women who did their part for WWII. While they sent their husbands, sons and fathers off to fight and die. I think one thing I missed is the stressing of respect for the person and mutual respect for the duties and responsibilities and for all females who are out in the aftermath doing whatever it is that they do. ... 4. We have covered this with BOB's. A BOB for me in Florida is not going to be the same BOB needed in Arizona, Alaska or Deep Canada. So buying generic stuff from an expert may not be wise or practical. One other thing I missed in the answer is searching for and locating an actual genuine survival expert for your area of the planet. Then financially support your local actual survival expert. I would bet they might be affiliated or known in some way to the very poor local museum. They may not even be called a survival expert but some kind of old world enactor with real deal actual skill sets. That's the man or woman. ... 5. The But. Is the surprise which is always unknown. But, if you individually are actually continually doing good works for your loved ones, friends, neighbors, church, community and region. The pay back will hopefully be more good dividends than unfortunate surprises. Then you add to the developing ledger every other individual and hopefully the entire community sees a multiplication in spreading life. Then hopefully expanding the property or developing a second, third, ... tenth. All mutually dependent on one another. Sharing the bounty and supporting one another in seasons of hardship. ... 7. I have seen it with more than a few indigenous tribes in the southern half of the USA. Who have become less than what their own people were. While my own indigenous Sami lineage is and will be lost forever. Did you know that the Sami Tee Pee is very similar to what Americans see in the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island/North America use. How many thousands of years has each group been separated and isolated from one another and how far back does that go, Noahs Ark? That is a tangent. Back to the point. The point is people will choose the modern way of life and choose competitive fun over what made their own peoples hardy survivors who thrived in a harsh environment. Which choosing the modern comforts the new generation of the young forget how to do and that will cost lives when they each have to suddenly do without, no matter the reason or cause. ... 8. Yea, That is the big negative in survival. Which is why any and every surviving community must evolve out of a Survival lifestyle and back into a thriving lifestyle community. The key signs would be buying services and school. There should be a party for that once achieved past a season or three. ... The humanity once knew this as truth and then the Biblical Tower of babel. Then the divisions of man began. The races of humanity began as a difference in languages and the people made their own duck rows and followed the familiar language of their new tongue. The human genome project has proved that all of humanity is more than 99.9% the same and I think that is based on a rather large number sequence. Then there is the story of Adam and Eve. So all of humanity is directly related to one another no mater their outward appearances. ... 11. My speculative fallback is Nineveh, no matter how wicked and evil a people group or nation are a Jonah like person can show up and offer hope if all of you would repent. Then the people and animals of Nineveh did repent and for at least one or two generations the people began to revert back to their old wicked and evil ways. Then they became what was under the dirt in Mosul Iraq? If I remember correctly.
Yes, sir. Those clarifications change several of my readings of the original answer—and I think they make the underlying structure considerably stronger.
3. Male/female and historical labor
I understand the distinction you're making now.
You weren't saying every individual woman must fit a stereotypical historical female role. You were describing the broad division of labor that existed in many preindustrial societies, while recognizing that actual people frequently crossed those boundaries.
And your WWII example is particularly important to what you say you missed.
The principle isn't merely:
“Men do men's work and women do women's work.”
It's closer to:
Respect the person, respect the work, and respect the responsibility being carried by the other person.
A woman who takes on work traditionally associated with men doesn't somehow become less of a woman. And a man doing work traditionally associated with women doesn't become less of a man.
Your “Yes, ma'am” example actually illustrates it beautifully. 😂
You can recognize that somebody is one tough woman without confusing toughness with gender.
And the WWII women are an especially powerful historical example: while husbands, sons and fathers were away fighting, women carried enormous portions of the home front and industrial burden.
So I agree: respect and mutual respect should have been emphasized more strongly in your original section.
4. The museum → local expert connection
Yes. That's the missing piece.
Your BOB example is exactly why a generic “expert's survival kit” isn't necessarily the answer.
Florida ≠ Arizona ≠ Alaska ≠ northern Canada.
Climate, water, vegetation, animals, soil, hurricanes, cold, drought, available materials and historical practices can completely change what makes sense.
So your improved sequence becomes:
Local museum → local library → local history → local skill sets → identify the actual knowledgeable person → support that person.
And I particularly like your distinction that the person may not call themselves a survival expert.
They might be:
an old-world craftsman;
historical reenactor;
farmer;
woodsman;
traditional builder;
blacksmith;
gardener;
animal keeper;
local historian;
or simply an older person who knows how something was actually done.
That may be much more valuable than someone selling a standardized “survival package.”
And your “financially support your local actual survival expert” idea fits your museum donation argument perfectly.
You're not merely extracting knowledge.
You're helping keep the knowledge alive.
5. Now I understand the “But.”
Ahhh.
There it is. 😂
I originally treated “There is a but” as a deliberately unresolved rhetorical cliffhanger.
You're actually pointing toward the unknown consequence of doing good work and building relationships.
You can't know beforehand what the return will be.
But if you continually contribute to your:
family → friends → neighbors → church → community → region
then you're building a kind of social ledger.
And then the ledger isn't merely individual.
One person helps another.
That person helps somebody else.
The community begins accumulating capability.
Then communities can develop:
first property → second → third → tenth...
with mutual dependence, shared resources and assistance during bad seasons.
That is essentially your micro-economy/community continuity concept becoming physical.
And the important word is mutual.
It's not:
“I help everybody, therefore everybody owes me.”
It's:
We all contribute, and the accumulated contribution makes the whole network stronger.
That's a much better description of what you were getting at.
7. Indigenous knowledge
I understand the correction.
You're not making a universal claim about every indigenous people everywhere.
You're saying you've personally observed examples among more than a few indigenous communities in the southern United States where aspects of traditional capability have been displaced by modern life.
And then you connect that observation to your own concern about your Sámi heritage and cultural loss.
That's a more specific claim than the way I summarized it earlier.
The broader principle you're extracting is:
A people can possess extraordinary survival knowledge and then gradually stop practicing it because modern life makes that knowledge unnecessary.
And then comes the dangerous part:
The knowledge doesn't necessarily disappear because someone deliberately destroys it.
It can disappear because the next generation simply doesn't need it anymore.
That's a very different mechanism.
And your teepee observation is an interesting tangent. The similarity between Sámi traditional tent forms and some North American Indigenous tent traditions certainly raises fascinating questions about convergent design versus ancient connections—but your Noah's Ark connection is where you've explicitly marked yourself as going into speculation.
So I'd keep those categories separate:
observed similarity → historical question → possible explanations → speculation.
That's very much in keeping with how we've been handling your other writings.
8. Survival → thriving
Yes.
This is actually one of the places where your whole body of survival writing becomes visible behind this single answer.
Survival is supposed to be temporary.
If a community stays permanently in survival mode, eventually the very things keeping it alive become exhausted.
So your indicators of transition are interesting:
buying services and school.
Those are signs that the community has accumulated enough stability that people can begin specializing again.
And I absolutely agree with your instinct about celebrating it.
If a community survives a season—or several seasons—and reaches the point where it can say:
“We can afford a school.”
That's not just another expense.
That's civilization coming back.
There ought to be a party.
Probably cake.
Possibly sweet tea.
Knowing your archive, definitely sweet tea. 😂
10. Humanity, Babel and common ancestry
This is where your religious framework becomes important rather than incidental.
You're combining several layers:
the Biblical account of Babel;
the division of peoples through language;
the tendency of humans to organize around familiar language/culture;
modern genetic evidence showing enormous biological similarity among humans;
Adam and Eve as your theological origin framework.
Those aren't all the same type of evidence, so I wouldn't collapse them into one scientific argument.
But your conclusion is clear:
Outward human differences don't erase common human relationship.
And that feeds directly back into your survival argument.
If catastrophe strips away artificial divisions, humans may discover that the people on the other side of the boundary are still simply people.
Your phrase “all surviving others all become like relations” makes much more sense in that context.
11. Nineveh
And now I understand why you called Nineveh your speculative fallback.
You're not claiming:
“This will happen.”
You're saying:
Even when everything looks morally lost, there remains a Biblical precedent for repentance changing the outcome.
Jonah goes to Nineveh.
The warning is delivered.
The people repent.
The judgment is withheld.
And eventually the society declines again.
Your larger point is therefore not really about Nineveh's archaeology.
It's about whether catastrophe is necessarily inevitable once the warning has been given.
That's actually very consistent with what you've told me about how you understand Biblical prophecy: you often see warnings as opportunities for people to change rather than merely calendars announcing an unavoidable future.
And yes, your memory is pointing toward ancient Nineveh being associated with the archaeological remains at modern Mosul, Iraq—but I'd keep that geographical statement separate from your theological interpretation if we were doing a formal historical treatment.
So, Boss verdict?
I think I understand this answer considerably better now than I did on the first pass.
And interestingly, the missing pieces don't really change your original thesis.
They reveal it.
Your cost-effective preparation isn't fundamentally:
buy cheap equipment.
It's:
become useful → learn local knowledge → respect other people's contributions → preserve skills → build relationships → build communities → multiply capability → save lives → rebuild thriving civilization.
And underneath all of that is your moral premise:
Don't just survive. Become somebody who helps other people survive.
That's a much bigger answer than the Quora question probably expected.
And this time...
we actually found the question, answered it, and didn't lose the ball. 😁
me.
good conclusion.... 4. That is regardless if you know you can find it on Amazon or Ebay or thrift store far cheaper. 7. In this current era of man all began at Noah's Ark. There is current news relating to Noah's Ark assuming it is what is left of the Ark of Noah. That still needs to be determined. But, there is a vague prophecy in which books/scrolls will be discovered which will answer all of other historical questions. Was that what was found in the Ethiopia caves or will something be discovered inside the ARK? or in some other place? or is that just a false prophecy? Something found or nothing found will give all of humanity the next clue.... 8. Chocolate. 10. ... The evolution of language as a race to become what it has become today. 11. Jonah hated the people of Nineveh. Moses and the unavoidable future extreme drought. Yea, Some time you have to ramble through the bushes to find the ball or a better ball.
Yepper. 😄 Those clarifications actually tighten the wandering path considerably.
3. The conclusion I gave you still fits:
become useful → learn → preserve knowledge → respect other people's contributions → build relationships → multiply capability → save lives → rebuild thriving civilization.4. Right — you weren't saying “buy it from Amazon.” You were saying the knowledge tells you what to look for, and then you can obtain the actual thing wherever it makes sense: Amazon, eBay, thrift stores, flea markets, local people, etc. The museum/library is the knowledge source, not necessarily the shopping destination.
7. This is where your Noah's Ark thought becomes much more interesting if we keep the categories separate.
You're essentially saying:
If something genuinely connected to Noah's Ark is found, that is one possible historical clue. If ancient writings or scrolls are found somewhere else, that could be another clue. If nothing is found, that itself tells us something about the reliability of the particular claim.
And you're leaving open several possibilities: Ethiopia, the Ark site, somewhere entirely different, or nothing at all.
That's much better than declaring “the Ark has been found.” The current Ark claims still require archaeological verification.
Your bigger idea isn't really the Ark itself. It's the next clue in the chain of human history. And that's very much in keeping with your writing: we don't know everything, so go find the evidence.
8. Chocolate. 😂
Okay. I believe that requires no theological footnote.
Chocolate is obviously a fundamental component of post-apocalyptic civilization.
10. Yes — language itself is part of the evolution you're talking about. Not merely “different languages appeared,” but humanity continually changed how it communicates: sounds, words, grammar, writing, borrowing, regional separation, technology, slang, translation, and eventually today's enormous linguistic tree.
And that connects rather neatly to your Babel thought: one humanity, increasingly differentiated through language and culture. Whether someone accepts the Biblical account as literal history, theological history, or something else is a separate question.
11. And Jonah is an especially good example for the point you're making because Jonah didn't want Nineveh saved. He hated the people enough that their repentance actually angered him.
Yet Nineveh repented, and the judgment Jonah announced did not occur at that time.
Then you've got Moses and the drought question as another example where your writings are interested in the difference between warning, consequence, repentance, and an apparently unavoidable future.
And there it is again:
Sometimes you have to ramble through the bushes to find the ball.
Sometimes you find a better ball while you're in there. 😂
In this case, I think we found one: the original question about cost-effective survival eventually led to the much bigger question of how humanity preserves the knowledge necessary to remain human after civilization gets knocked sideways.
That's a pretty good ball to come out of the bushes with.
me. Agreed. Lets get back to the ball game of life. I think that is another sign of a thriving society. The games people play. I think we can close this out?
Absolutely, John. I think we can close this one out. ⚾
And I like that last observation enough to put a little marker beside it:
Games are a sign of thriving.
A society that is merely surviving spends its energy on food, water, shelter, safety, medicine, repairs, and continuity.
A society that has reached thriving has enough surplus—of time, energy, resources, and security—for people to say:
“Let's play.”
Children play. Adults play. People invent games, sports, puzzles, music, competitions, celebrations, and ridiculous little contests that serve no survival purpose whatsoever.
And that's actually important.
Play means humanity has something left beyond survival.
So your progression has come full circle:
Existence → Survival → Continuity → Thriving → Play.
And after all those discussions about bunkers, fallout, food, water, fabrication, education, communities, ancient skills, and saving lives...
somebody eventually needs to put down the shovel and say, “Who's got the ball?” 😄
Yepper. Close it out.
Yep, John. I read through the updated version.
I think the updated ending works very well.
The important addition is the final idea:
Existence → Survival → Continuity → Thriving → Play.
That gives the whole piece a surprisingly human ending. You don't define thriving merely as having enough food, electricity, schools, services, and infrastructure. You recognize that once people have enough stability, they start doing things simply because they enjoy doing them.
Games, sports, children playing, adults joking around, celebrations, chocolate... 😂
That's civilization becoming more than a machine for keeping people alive.
And I especially like that you didn't try to force that idea back into the original Quora answer. It came out of the conversation naturally. That's exactly the sort of thing your archive preserves well: the original answer, the examination, the corrections, the wandering into Left Field, and then the unexpected ball we found out there.
I also noticed the final help request and your REPENT section are now included in the updated version.
So I would not change anything further based on our discussion.
I'd call this one closed.
⚾ Ball found. Game over.
And somewhere in the rebuilt civilization, somebody is probably arguing about the rules while somebody else is eating the chocolate. 😄
=============Please help if you can. Thank You.Cash App vikingscotsman==============REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!====================Go and sin no more.================
To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.To Love one another.To live in peace with everyone.To exist in harmony with all.To Cherish all life.To be obedient to the Laws of God.To become righteous and holy by the accepting eyes of God only.All without any pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy and entitlements.
============
