Greetings!
My name is Alan Urban, and I’m the creator of this website. I’m also the creator of Urban Survival Site and Homestead Survival Site.
When I made those sites, I never imagined that one day I’d be writing about the collapse of civilization. As a prepper, I knew it was a possibility, but I didn’t think it was inevitable. Then in 2020, I realized that not only is collapse inevitable, it will almost certainly happen in my lifetime. In fact, I believe it’s already begun.
People often ask what I mean by “collapse.” I like to use a definition I read in the book, How Everything Can Collapse. It says, “A collapse is the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision.”
In other words, life as you know it is coming to an end. Basic utilities like water and power will become unreliable or unavailable. Stores that sell food and clothing will be half empty or closed. Most jobs in the first world will become obsolete, and people will spend their time gardening, raising livestock, making things from scratch, and scavenging for supplies.
How do I know this? I explain it all in my article, 10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse, but the short version is this:
Humans have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet. As a result, we are running out of crucial resources like fossil fuels, rare-earth minerals, sand, fertilizer, topsoil, and even water.
Meanwhile, climate change is getting worse at an exponential rate, causing record-breaking disasters and making huge swaths of the planet uninhabitable. Biodiversity loss is also accelerating, leading to the collapse of food webs around the world.
Before long, there will be tens of millions of migrants from the global South, and the tension and chaos they will cause, combined with the race to secure dwindling resources, will lead to multiple conflicts and possibly even World War III.
When I created Urban Survival Site back in 2010, I did it as a response to living through hurricane Katrina and the 2008 financial crisis. I wanted to be prepared for natural disasters and the possibility of another great depression. And since I was already making a living as an internet marketer, I figured I may as well start a new site and write about what I was learning.
I wanted to move to the countryside, but because of my wife’s job, I had no choice but to live in the city. So I decided to create a site for other preppers in the same predicament. Ever since then, that site has been all about how to survive in the city during a disaster.
In 2015, Urban Survival Site took off, and I started spending most of my working hours on it. A few years later, I created Homestead Survival Site for people living in rural areas. To help fill these sites with content, I hired several experienced preppers and homesteaders to write articles for me.
At the start of 2020, I didn’t know what to do next. I thought about writing and selling ebooks, but that’s what most survival bloggers do. I also thought about starting a new site, but about what?
The answer came in 2020. When the coronavirus pandemic began, I became a news junkie. I started learning about diseases, natural disasters, geopolitics, and much more. Soon, I discovered a subreddit called r/collapse. That’s when everything changed.
I should warn you that most of the commenters in r/collapse are very negative. Some of them talk as if we’ll all be dead in a few years, but short of nuclear war, that is not going to happen. However, the moderators do a fantastic job, and almost all of the posts are about legitimate news stories or peer-reviewed studies.
I went straight down the rabbit hole and starting watching lectures by scientists and experts like Chris Martenson, James Hansen, Joseph Tainter, Nate Hagens, and William Rees. I read books like Overshoot, The Sixth Extinction, The End of Ice, Limits to Growth, and The Uninhabitable Earth. And I watched documentaries like Planet of the Humans, Surviving Progress, and Once You Know.
What I came to realize is that civilization is inherently unsustainable. In order to grow, it requires importing resources and exporting waste. And to solve its problems, it has to become more and more complex, which requires more and more energy. But when land and resources (especially energy) are limited, this cannot continue forever.
Throughout history, every civilization has grown slowly and collapsed quickly (this is called the Seneca curve). As they become more complex, they also become more fragile. After two or three centuries, they become so precarious that their problems push them over the edge. Problems like droughts, floods, pandemics, and deforestation (which means no more trees for firewood and construction).
Usually, most of the people die and the survivors scatter. Eventually, a new society forms in a new area where the environment hasn’t been exploited yet.
But today, starting a new civilization in a new area is no longer an option as this is the first global civilization. When this civilization collapses, there will be nowhere left to go because we have already exploited nearly every corner of the planet. It’s all downhill from here.
Realizing this left me feeling terrified and depressed. I was fully prepared to survive a temporary disaster or even a long-term disaster like an economic depression, but I was not prepared for the end of civilization. Even now, I don’t know that it’s possible to be fully prepared for the end of the world.
All I can do is gather supplies, learn skills, make connections, prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. But even if civilization ends, it doesn’t necessarily mean humans will go extinct. There is a good chance that humans will survive and even thrive in parts of of the world closer to the poles.
So, I’ve made it my goal to warn and help as many people as possible. I believe the more people realize what’s happening and start preparing for it, the easier it will be to transition to a world without electricity, running water, and other modern comforts we take for granted.
So on this website, we will publish articles about why collapse is coming, how to prepare for it, and how to survive it. All of the information will be completely free. However, I will use ads and affiliate links to monetize this site as I still need to make a living and continue preparing for the future.
If you would like to learn more about collapse, check out our resources page for a huge list of books, articles, videos, and more. If you would like to learn more about survival, check out our free books page for a list of over 400 PDFs and documents. If you’re feeling anxious about all this, please visit our support page for advice on how to handle your emotions.
Thanks for reading.
