This sort of feels like a stupid question.
I have a small food supply that could last a few weeks if needed…
but I do not have solar powered power banks, tents, gas masks, and things of that nature…
There’s been a lot of really impressive hacking lately… Could things like power grids and banks be hacked, creating chaos, and as a result I actually should be prepping this way? (Edited for clarity: my concern is especially about hacking damage to the US power grid, where I am, or other infrastructure, not about being personally hacked. As of this edit, no one has responded to whether that specifically is a realistic or unrealistic concern.)
I’m a pretty poor person. Buying some extra food is easy, buying solar panels and a portable power bank for hundreds costs a lot more. I already have an emergency radio.
More than that, as someone who is often poor, I may end up needing to move due to rent increases. I often think about the physical weight of anything I am buying, because I don’t drive and weight means moving or shipping costs.
With the FAA grounding thing, my initial reaction is “They are all morons, they can’t listen to advice, and so they pushed some AI slop to production because they are egomaniacs too stupid to listen to IT, or they have created a culture in which IT knows if they say something they will get fired, or IT is so exhausted from their stupidity they just do what they are told and don’t care.” But I’m actually not sure if that’s true.
Russians and other smart hackers probably knew those updates were being pushed. What if they have used that as an opportunity for hacking and confusion?
Should I actually be prepping right now out of fear of hackers?
You’re not paranoid or wrong to prep for anything that is unexpected. Life is anything but linear.
If you hear or see of any security breaches, just look over your accounts and do a widespread change of whatever preferences needed to make yourself secure. It’s no different than stockpiling what’s needed for events where you’re cut off from resources for extended periods of time.
I’m not saying hackers deserve NO worry at all, but on the list of things that will inevitably end civilization, they’re probably not that high on the list.
I’m a pretty poor person. Buying some extra food is easy, buying solar panels and a portable power bank for hundreds costs a lot more. I already have an emergency radio.
Solve problems that are more likely/urgent before worrying about the ones that are less so. In other words, get financially stable in your normal life before you spend money on prepper stuff.
(That’s not to say you shouldn’t get solar panels, but that if you do it should be because it saves money on your power bill, not just for emergency use. And it also has to come only after you’ve already done everything else that has a higher or more immediate return, such as paying off high-interest debt.)
You should have been worried about hackers a long time ago, but it’s a bit late for that now. Yes, you should be ready. Don’t bother stockpiling, unless you own your own house it’s not going to help much. Same with solar panels. Keep a bug-out bag if you need to leave in a hurry. Learn to forage, garden if you have the space, try to figure out how you would live if you had to spend 3 months or so without modern conveniences like gas and electricity, and practice doing things for yourself.
Most importantly, build a community. On our own humans are the most pathetic animals of our size on Earth. We’re really not good at anything. In groups however, we are utterly incredible. Grow a circle of people you trust and can count on.and prepare together. Share resources and skills and best practices.organize ways to communicate, gather, and organize if there’s an emergency.build skills that compliment each other to compensate for individual weaknesses.
This guy gets it. People didn’t survive the great depression because they had self-sufficient 10-year supply bunkers. People survived the great depression because they had communities. Together, we survive. Alone, we are doomed. Notice how all the technology they build and tell us is supposed to “connect” us only manages to divide us and make us feel lonely. It’s probably not an accident. Organize. Meet your neighbors, your local shopkeepers, attend community events. Be part of something. It doesn’t have to be transactional. You don’t have to devote your life to it. But get to know the people around you, and support them if you can, because someday your life might depend on it.
Yes, but no need to be extreme about it. Are you familiar with local plants you can forage? If things get real rough, that’s important knowledge to have, and it’s low cost and low risk to check out some books from the local library and go on some hikes. Do you know how to store food without refrigeration, like dehydrating, canning and fermenting? Learning to make jerky or sauerkraut is fun and easy, and you’ll end up saving money rather than spending extra to prep. Plug-in solar and batteries might make sense at some
point, but when it’s comfortable for your finances, and when you can get a setup going where you use it daily to charge your devices and reduce your electricity costs. The world probably won’t end tomorrow, but it might end someday, so put a little time and money into being prepared each week or month or whatever, and focus mostly on things that will help you even if hackers don’t destroy everything.I’ve got a box full of dry beans and bags of rice. Planning to add a butane stove so I can actually cook it if I lose power.
Pro tip: keep those in metal or glass containers, so rodents can’t get to them.
Is this general emergency prep (like there are hurricanes or tornadoes in your area) or more than that?
Just general prep. My big concern is an extended power outage, but it’s likely I could have at least a few hours of electricity to cook my beans a day too cook my beans and my crockpot with five cups of dry beans needs about 15 minutes to start to boil which is all the heat it needs to eventually be cooked in a few hours.
My apartment also has electric heat, so I my survival here is probably untenable in the cold.
My apartment also has electric heat, so I my survival here is probably untenable in the cold.
Unless it gets extremely cold where you live, you can probably make do for quite a while by just dressing warmly and using lots of blankets. However, if it’s getting below freezing inside, you (or your apartment manager) will want to shut the water off and drain the pipes to prevent bursting and leaks, so then you’re dealing with a lack of water, which then causes issues for hydration and sanitation.
Why would you need gas masks? What analysis demonstrates there’s a risk that such things would address?
Respond to clear risks that have strong analytical backing and urgency. Don’t let your own fear drive decisions.
For example, when driving I don’t worry about a large truck 2 miles ahead of me, but rather the vehicles close to me, and I keep an eye on vehicles a little farther ahead and behind me.
I do try to keep vehicles filled, but that’s as much for convenience and risk aversion: I’ve had to do a longer drive at the drop of a hat, and sit in traffic for bad weather or accidents.
So the power bank is what I am thinking of buying, which is between 100-800 dollars. The gas mask is more of an emergency item that I wish I had just in case, but doubt I would need.
Listen to username1
I think what most people misunderstand is that we’re always “smoothing the curves”. Under usual circumstances those curves are daily or weekly curves. Under atypical circumstances those curves become unpredictable or larger/longer.
So smooth the curves that you can in a reasonable way.
Nothing wrong with prepping. Even the government says to have a 72 hour kit.
As for prepping specifically for being hacked - have good backups of any data you can’t be without. Keep your devices updated. Use 2fa where ever you can as well as strong unique passwords.
I’m not seeing a situation were being hacked would require a tent or gas mask.
An argument could be made for a solar panel and a power bank (assuming you can place it and your power bank in direct sunlight for 8 hours).
I’m not seeing a situation were being hacked would require a tent or gas mask.
But if the chemical plant near you gets hacked, then you might be grateful to have a gas mask…
But that kind of thing is highly dependent on location and your own personal risk profile. Personally, I do have gas masks for me and my girlfriend (old Polish military surplus that’s compatible with NATO filters, only about $30 each), but those are much more likely to be used for rioting/protesting than for emergency preparedness. Immunity to teargas and pepper spray sure is nice…
(Though, actually, I did use it once in an emergency. A small kitchen fire started while we were on a walk. Put it out pretty easily with a fire extinguisher when we came back, but it was a pretty nasty smoky fire and filled the house with toxic-smelling smoke. We had two cats inside that I wanted to rescue, so I put on my gas mask to help find them. Once I found the gas mask and got it on, it was so much easier to see and breathe in the smoke. Which was good. One cat was quick and easy to find – came right to me. But the other cat had hidden in a pile of stuff in a corner and took quite a bit of effort to find – she was lethargic and weak when I finally found her, obviously suffering badly from smoke inhalation, but she recovered within a few minutes once I brought her outside into fresh air. For a couple days after that, we left all the windows open and lived in a travel trailer in the back yard instead, the cats as well. After that, the smell of smoke mostly cleared out, and we could move back in. I guess an RV in the back yard is also nice to have for emergency preparedness – it’s kind of an entire backup house when you need one.)
I’m from Ukraine. We have electricity for 5-7 hours per day. Sometimes blackouts last for a few days. No, we’re still humans. Life is going on like normal. Just extremely uncomfortable.
You’re overreacting.
Do y’all have like hoard a bunch of powerbanks to keep devices charged? Do y’all have generator / portable power station?
Just curious
Some do. Most don’t. These things are expensive (fuel is ridiculously expensive) and most Ukrainians are dirt poor. War, obviously, only worsened the situation.
I got myself a PSU for cameras and such that provides me with a 12V line. I have light at least. Some have more cool devices with inverter to 220V, others have nothing at all.
Oh since we’re on the topic of Ukraine, I heard that theres a often cell outage too? Is that so? And how popular is Mestashtic there from what you know? Is there like a surge in Meshtastic usage after the invasion began? (Cuz that’s what I heard online about Meshtashtic)
(And if not do you plan on getting one in the future? (these can go for as low as sub-$50 USD btw))
Cell grid is more or less stable. Meshtastick is peer-2-peer radio? I heard about it, but never heard about its usage here in Ukraine. I am too poor to spend money on such things. It won’t work unless we have millions of users, which we don’t have.
I’m so sorry you are in that situation.
Life is going on like normal, just extremely uncomfortable.
So well put. So many people need to hear this.
Look into low-income supported therapy.
There’s a lot going on here.
I’ve had terrible experiences with mental health professionals and would never see any mental health professional again, under any voluntary circumstances, and hate them all.
Hey, full disclosure I’m a mental health provider so you are wholly in the right to question the position I stand on this but for that it’s worth, I’m in the field because I had very similar feelings to you and fell validated by letting my experiences help others.
There’s a lot in this post that is an accurate read but I do genuinely want to emphasize that the past 15 years has seen a lot of these things become the albatross of this field as it shifts culturally towards doing better. My company for instance is the government approved mental health provider for one of the most populated counties in the state and it’s not even remotely capable of medicating people, let alone giving shock therapy. The best we can do is med management which involves interviewing you once every 3 months and getting refills ordered for you.
More importantly, they provide a lot of services that aren’t Therapy and that’s what I really want to point you towards. Personally, I do parent peer support. My job is to visit other parents of children with behavioral and mental health issues and just encourage them to fo the best. I joke that I’m something between a well meaning neighbor and a state appointed friend.
I really think you would benefit from some genuine peer support. I’m going to be frank, some of what you’re saying is pushing the crazy line and while I’m not one to judge I think your focus could really use an outside perspective and some human contact. I want to emphasize that I’m not calling you crazy, our infrastructure is held together by zip ties and bent clothes hangers, a stiff breeze can probably knock out the power grid where you are, because it literally does every June around here. That said, a bunker full of canned beans and 9mm isn’t going to improve that.
Get yourself a camping stove or a propane grill, learn a few good recipes for rice and beans, but fumpingball your money into solar and generators isn’t going to get you anything but less money. The banks getting hacked would only be possible if the wealthy didn’t need them to control the masses and the tiny cabal of wealthy pedophile psychopaths already run the world. Prepping for an apocalypse isn’t going to give you the security you’re looking for.
For what it’s worth, I take that control back in my life by deciding how I engage with the culture I have grown to resent. I make as much as I can and when I can’t I try to learn how before I go buy it. Turns out nice furniture is a lot cheaper when you build it yourself.
My company for instance is the government approved mental health provider for one of the most populated counties in the state and it’s not even remotely capable of medicating people, let alone giving shock therapy.
You evil lying manipulative fucker. You know damn well that if YOUR company can’t force medications and shock therapy, you can do a wellness check that will often lead to a situation in which medication is can either be involuntarily administered or involuntary patients who refuse medications can be threatened with prorogued holds. Also, in locked facilities, it is typical to abuse patients who don’t have access to information and say “You can either let us do ECT and you can leave in 2 weeks, or you may need to stay in here a few months.” Doctors in such facilities also regularly lie about the extent of the memory loss caused by ECT, saying it typically comes back and is temporary when many patient reports say it as permanent damage. The fucking arrogance! The lobotomy won the Nobel Prize because of hubris from pseudoscientific avaricious pigs who made inconvenient people into imbeciles and the attitude still carries on, doesn’t it?
I’m going to be frank, some of what you’re saying is pushing the crazy line and while I’m not one to judge I think your focus could really use an outside perspective and some human contact.
Suck my balls you asshole. There was literally just a hack at Microsoft, there have been hacks of refrigerators cooling stored food in Europe, and I was inquiring as to whether it made sense to spend limited funds on a small portable power device. Rot in hell you smug condescending shithead.
Bruh. You really need some mental care if this is representative of your inner workings. The person above is giving you some great advice, but you think they are some evil demonspawn, lmao.
But sure, go ahead and buy a gas stove and some cans, that is definitely going to fix you right up
Fuck you. I literally said “I’ve had terrible experiences with mental health professionals and would never see any mental health professional again, under any voluntary circumstances, and hate them all.”
How is that not a clear unequivocal boundary? And this mental health asshole responded, when I just said I hate mental health professionals, and says, without having examined me, based on a fucking internet post, that I am “pushing the crazy line” because I don’t like mental health professionals and think they are exploitative. On a fucking post where I am asking about whether I should get a fucking battery backup in case of a multi-day power outage…
So yes, when people violate my clear express boundaries that are unambiguously articulated, I am not happy about it. Fuck you for saying buying cans will fix me sarcastically when I have admitted to being somewhat poor and am trying to take emergency preparation seriously. You’re a shitty mean person. I have every right to be validly angry when I clearly write I don’t like mental health professionals and would never engage with them and then three people respond and say “Well clearly that means you need mental health care.”
Me: I have questions about emergency preparedness and am poor.
Asshole on the Internet: Bro you just need therapy.
Me: I don’t like mental health professionals and think they often drug poor people and don’t really understand how drugs are often used to mask societal dysfunction. I would never again voluntarily see a mental health professional.
Multiple Assholes on the Internet: Fuck your boundary, you must be crazy and delusional and paranoid and need mental health services.
Me: Wow, you’re actual assholes and am upset, I clearly said I don’t want that, I genuinely think the mental health field lacks a solid intellectual foundation and often engages in corruption. Here are some examples.
You: Bruh, this is bad, clearly you need mental health services. Your poor person cans and poor person gas stove and emergency preparation are pointless.
" i hate all people doing this one profession because i had a bad experience" is simply not a valid position for a sane adult to have, period.
throwing slurs around and suggesting the person is evil and whatnot is also not very hinged, on response. I understand you had a bad experience and i am not saying you need to be sent to the looney bin. But your weird blanket hatred of any mental health worker is literally just evidence that you need one, if only to fix what the first one apparently broke.
That being said, i am also a mental health patient, and and while i didnt have the best experiences myself it did get me back on solid ground.
What youre saying is the equivalent of getting mugged by foreigners and then blanket hating anyone with a tan.
You can see a therapist without seeing a psychiatrist…
Just tell them you’re not interested in medication. You seem very unregulated. I am poor. Negative money. I see a therapist, and it’s been very helpful. You’re making a great deal of leaps in logic based on anecdotes and personal biases and ascribing them to a well tested and researched field of medicine. You’re not just wrong, you’re letting yourself spiral into paranoia instead of getting help.
You’re building up an entire field into this absolute monster when it’s generally so benign. You’re only at risk of institutionalization if you are an imminent risk to your own life or others, and if that is the case, you need the help. Our carceral mental health system is pretty shit, but it’s better than dying. Again, therapists don’t typically prescribe medications. Psychiatrists do. Go see a mental health counselor or a licensed therapist, not a psychiatrist, and you’re in no risk of “big pharma drugs” being pushed on you.
Mental healthcare is not psuedoscience. It’s well tested and proven. Everything you’re jumping to in your third paragraph is just delusion. It’s just talking to someone, dude. Like. Just talking. You talk through your problems with someone that is trained to help you process them. You don’t need to take any medication if you don’t want to, and your therapist typically can’t prescribe those anyways. If you have a chronic deficiency, medication might help, but you can’t be forced to take it.
Fuck you. I hate mental health professionals, I am asking a question about whether I should buy a solar backup that costs a few hundred dollars, you do not know me. Fuck you for saying I am paranoid for considering a fucking backup power device amidst recent groccery store hackings in Europe when there is a war in Europe and the US is currently at war.
Leaps of logic? The mental health field got a Nobel Prize for removing parts of people’s brain and still use that abomination of pseudoscience, the DSM that has delineations more arbitrary than a roulette wheel. Has the APA as a profession ever apologized to the mental health patient community for lobotomies? The APA started in the 1800s and lobotomies started in the 1930s. There has been no public apology on icepick brain removal referrals because mental health professionals are all shit. Have the heirs of greedy doctors who got rich off of removing brains compensated the families or heirs of patients who were duped?
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is literally based on Greek mythology. How is that not psuedoscience? Please, tell me the rational scientific logic behind their main diagnostic book using Greek myths as a part of the diagnostic descriptive history and nomenclature?
Does Physics have categories of forces based on Hera? Does Math include categories based on a likeness to Zeus? The field is not a real science, the intellectual foundations are based on Freud, a cokehead, making shit up, and yes, there are some experiments that are not psuedoscience but much of the work is based on dollars that promote corporate products. There are metastudies now showing SSRIs barely do better than a placebo. Mental health care is fucking pseudoscience because it mixes real data with bullshit and then when the truth comes out later, there is no apology, just a published article and on to the next snake oil. You are delusional for thinking that somehow getting a crock pot and mixing in pseudoscience, corporate interests, and science gives mental health some sort of intellectual legitimacy.
Therapists can absolutely do wellfare checks to get patients they think are difficult locked up in involuntary care. Do not act like there is this brick wall in between the greedy fraudulent fraternal disciplines. They are two heads of the same snake.
Engaging with this is unproductive, but a few points:
- You are being paranoid, objectively. That paranoia may be justified (or in this case, not really), but it does exist, otherwise this post wouldn’t
- And we used to think the Earth is a few thousand years old, and we used to think certain races are superior, and we used to think the cosmos orbited the Earth, among other things. Science learns over time. The specific case you’ve brought up, split brain research, though highly unethical by today’s standards, taught us so much about the human brain, as well as the removal of the hippocampus in patient H.B. You’re right, these were unethical, but the results aren’t pseudoscience. Again, science develops, and it’s why lobotomies and removing the entire corpus callosum or hippocampus are illegal today
- You treat the fields of mental health medicine as a universal monolith, not a bunch of independent doctors
- Narcissism is named after Narcissus. It is not based on the myth. It’s a well established and proven condition (my own grandmother has it). They aren’t diagnosing based on Greek myths, they’re diagnosing based on patterns of behavior. Why are you so worked up about narcissism? Narcissists clearly exist, and they need help. Anyone that has known a narcissist will tell you that. You could have picked an actually dubious diagnosis, not one that many, many people struggle with.
- Modern mental health treatments since the cognitive revolution and then later humanism/positive psychology have been evidence based and improved over time. If something is shown to not work or not be based on evidence, it’s discarded, just like every other field of science.
- Your last point, while technically true, is so vanishingly unlikely as to be worthless to bring up. No, they can’t, that’s malpractice, and is grounds for a rather lucrative lawsuit. If someone is locked up, it is because they demonstrated a serious risk to themselves or others. I have told my therapist I was feeling suicidal more than once without being committed. My close friend was committed, and it was because she had formulated a plan and prepared the materials to kill herself.
There is no snake, it’s just doctors trying to help people. Just as within any profession, there is a minority of money-grubbing assholes. Just read their reviews! It isn’t that hard.
My pet theory? You’re upset that you were diagnosed with something (potentially the narcissism you bizarrely ranged against), and have decided to blame the entire mental health profession instead of trying to improve yourself. It clearly works, if you just look at the numbers.
Me in response to mental health suggestion: “My boundary is I don’t like mental health and wouldn’t want even free services because I’ve had bad experiences.”
Assholes on Lemmy: “Your boundaries mean nothing to me: you need to see mental health professionals and the fact that you don’t want that means you’re objectively paranoid, delusional, and a diagnosed narcissist.”
In physics, things like fundamental forces were experimentally determined. In math, things like primes and number theory were studied because it helped us understand numbers more.
In the mental health field, humans were classified into “what most rich white men find bothersome” and they literally used a Greek myth to classify people. Maybe your grandmother had trauma, maybe she was neurodivergent, or maybe she had unmet emotional and sexual needs and couldn’t articulate and became annoying as a result. Yes, using a Greek myth for the basis of part of a taxonomy on how to classify “disruptive” people is completely unscientific.
I do not think that taking a group of people and going “these people sort of resemble a Greek myth” is helpful or intellectually rigorous. There is no brain science behind the classification. Additionally, the artificial construct between “Personality” disorders versus other mental illness is bizarre logic based on religious superstition; everything takes place in the brain. It’s not like depression takes place in the brain but personality comes from the soul and they are different. Everything “human” is determined by biochemical physical process.
You paid someone a lot of money to talk with you. When someone sees a therapist, you pay them money, and they will in turn classify the people you don’t like as narcissists. After a certain amount of money, they classify YOU as an empath. That’s how the con works.
I’ve never been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and diagnosis is not why I am upset. I genuinely think the mental health field is incredibly exploitative of vulnerable people. The fact that you’re an apologist for removing people’s fucking brains while glossing over the fact that mental health professionals are still unethically misinforming vulnerable people of the risks of ECT proves your lack of insight into the fact that this is still a field that regularly engages in corrupt unethical behavior. I am upset right now because I clearly set a boundary and that boundary was I don’t like the mental health field and am not interested in that and I’ve now received multiple responses on how that means I need mental health.
And yes, I do believe the entire field is a fucking monolith of shit.
