When the power fails, our politics fail with it. I look at why we cling to the illusion of safety and why your neighbor is your best survival strategy.
When the Lights Go Out
There is a specific kind of silence that falls over a house when the power grid fails in winter. It feels heavy. I remember sitting in that silence, watching my breath condense in the living room air, realizing how quickly my ‘modern’ life had collapsed into a pioneer struggle for warmth. The storm currently battering the U.S. is creating millions of these moments right now. It is a jarring reminder that for all our apps and algorithms, we are biological entities susceptible to the cold. As Albert Camus noted in his exploration of human fragility:
There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
– Albert Camus, The Plague
We are surprised because we have been trained to believe that comfort is our birthright, not a temporary victory against entropy.
The Sedation of Denial
Why do we refuse to prepare? I think it’s because preparation requires admitting that the system might fail. We prefer the comforting lie. We listen to politicians who tell us that climate change is a hoax or that we can drill our way to safety, because those lies allow us to sleep at night. But nature does not negotiate with our delusions. The ice does not care about your voting record. By denying the changing reality of our environment, we rob ourselves of the urgency needed to adapt. We become spectators in our own demise, waiting for a rescue that might not come. The storm does not care about your politics; it only cares about your preparation. We are suffering from what Simone Weil called the ‘sickness of uprootedness’—we are disconnected from the physical reality of the earth under our feet.
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Building the Lifeboat
So, what do we do when the forecast turns dark? We stop looking up for salvation and start looking sideways. We build resilience at the scale of the household and the street. This isn’t about becoming a ‘doomsday prepper’ in a bunker; it’s about becoming a ‘Third Citizen’—someone who understands that the state is overextended and that duty falls to us. Check on the elderly neighbor. Insulate your home. Diversify your heat sources. These are small acts, but they are acts of rebellion against the fragility of the system. As the stoic philosopher Seneca reminded us:
It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.
– Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
The thaw will come, eventually. But the next freeze is already on the way. Let’s be ready.
That shift from vertical dependence to horizontal resilience is the core insight here. Most people still think disaster prep is about stockpiling MREs, but the real gap is social infrastructure. I noticed during a power outage last winter that the houses with generators became de facto hubs, not becasue they were preppers but because they knew their neighbors first.