Thinking about the future is hard. Sometimes because it is difficult to forecast, and other times because it inspires existential dread. If you’re not up for some of the latter, feel free to Abandon Post!

On Reddit I have subscribed to r/Collapse and r/PrepperIntel. I am not a prepper or doomer, per se, but I do find it useful to have an increased awareness of potential hazards. For example, I have rebuffed all casual suggestions that we move to Florida. Besides the fact that it’s Florida, climate change is going to hit there especially hard between extreme weather events and salt water intruding up through the limestone into the aquafers. A sea wall ain’t going to do shit about that. And while it’s possible that I won’t live to see that level of disaster occur – I will be around retirement age at 2050 – why would I want to set down roots somewhere where my son will have to sell the family house to Aquaman?

Then you have the other side of the (Bit)coin with Mark Zuckerberg steering Facebook into spending $10 billion this year on metaverse and VR. Regardless of how you feel about any of those nouns, it’s amusing to see such a commitment towards something entirely dependent on, well, non-collapse scenarios. Europe is going to have a tough time heating homes this winter, but sure, let’s pour some R&D money into beaming ads directly into peoples’ eyeballs. Perhaps Zuckerberg is a fan of Ready Player One? Or perhaps he just wants something to help pass the time in his climate bunker.

OK, maybe I’m further along the doomer scale than I thought.

It’s hard to be optimistic in the current, ahem, climate anyway. We’re days away from a Supreme Court judgment on whether and how the Environmental Protection Agency is able to tackle climate change at all. Within the next two years, we could theocratically theoretically be under conservative rule just in time for them to try tax breaks or repealing healthcare to refill Lake Mead before the Hoover Dam goes offline. Almost makes you want that Great Salt Lake bomb to go off sooner than later, eh?

Also, don’t move to Utah. Or any previously-desert State. That desert is coming back.

It’s reasonable to ask the follow-up question of “WTF, mate?” There’s no particularly satisfying answer. Maybe we get a fusion energy breakthrough that allows us to power through some massive carbon geoengineering moonshot. Maybe they find Hillary’s emails on Hunter’s laptop and it’s revealed the leftist climate agenda purpose is to sell Priuses, and there’s nothing at all to worry about having CO2 at 421ppm like it was back in the Pliocene era, 4 million years and 25m+ higher ocean levels ago. Or maybe, I dunno, the sun stops shining so bright and we can just continue doing whatever we want.

For what it’s worth, I largely continue to behave as though there is a future out there that isn’t too unpleasant. What else can you do, right? As an Absurdist though, it makes me laugh a bit when Todd Howard starts talking about upcoming Bethesda games. Starfield is in 2023, then it is pre-production Elder Scrolls 6, and then Fallout 5 after that. Where does that put a Fallout 5 release, mid-2035?

Something tells me that we may not need Metaverse goggles for that one.