Back in the days of the pre-Y2K "crisis" hype, I lived in Colorado and was young and more impressionable, I started developing a prepper mentality. While I was pretty sure that we'd get through that, it seemed wise to plan for the future.

So, I fell into a group of like-minded people, and joined in conversations about what would be needed to survive in a post-collapse environment. We honed our hunting skills, pre-stocked camping backpacks, and formulated plans to flee into the mountains in case things went south. We also started looking into what it would take to buy a piece of property and build out a bunker, stock it, and prepare for whatever was to come.

My enthusiasm for this individual prepper mentality diminished quite rapidly due to a single conversation. I was in a "seminar" where we were all discussing the advantages/disadvantages of prebuilt bunkers and how to disguise them on the property. During a break, when I asked one of the "consultants" what his plan was. He took me aside, looked around so that nobody would hear him and said something along the lines of: "Kid, don't waste your time with this hiding in a bunker nonsense. Me and my kids and grandkids live up in the mountains and know where a lot of these preppers have their stashes. If things go south, we're just going use our bulldozers and diggers to dig them out and take what they've stored away for us. They won't be able to outlast a group of us."

I looked at him like he was Judas, but he then said. "Don't think I'm the only one in this business who's planning to do this, we'll gladly take their money and build whatever bunker they want, but at the end of the day, if things go to hell, we'll use whatever means we have to survive, and so if that means cracking open these stashes - so be it".

Then he said "the key to survival is being part of a community you can rely on. Ideally, this is your family as they're much less likely to betray you, but a good like-minded church group could also work".

I was a bit stunned by this, but it crystalized in my mind then, that the individual "prepper" was eventually doomed to fail at some point and it was pretty useless to prepare for it.

So, yes, I now agree that the best approach to "prepare" is to work to strengthen your community.

Now, of course, we face great unknowns in how things will turn out in the future. So, living past 100 might be a moot point if society has broken down.

However, the title of the race does have "Transcendence" in there, so it seems a primary motivating factor is to see if you can put yourself into that state of transcendence for the duration.

Personal datapoint: I loaded up Threads when it was announced, and then said "meh" because there wasn't enough content at the time. This post actually reminded me to take a look at it again and now I see much more content, so I'll take a second look at it to see what's there.

Also - Still waiting on my Bluesky invite.

RE: startup failing.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison

Having a startup fail is, in itself, a success. At least you tried and with the failure, you learn things that you can use with the next startup.

Don't give up. There's so much negativity in the news we're not seeing the positive sides of things. Technology is advancing quickly and we're on the verge of a new age. It'd be a shame to not see how it turns out.

(now, I just need Openai to take me off the waitlist for GPT-4)