Doomsday planning for less crazy folk - <AUTHOR> http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ <comment><USER4> The major thing overlooked here is mindset. After 14 years in the military and experience with several armed conflicts and humanitarian disasters, I have seen that pretty much all your plans and preparation will go out the window, so you need to learn to move adapt and improvise.

If you're going to survive any contingency scenario you need to be resilient, excruciatingly innovative and mentally tough. Think more like MacGyver and less like Dr Strangelove.

Be minimal, learn how to forage and scavenge, learn how to blend in and get along and take nothing for granted.

The most successful trait I've seen in survivors it's to know when to stay put and when to move. Whether it's hiding from a mob or a bear, or finding a different county or state to go to.

Take risk when necessary but not unnecessarily.

Again, having the right mindset, through intentional training is the key. There are all kinds of survival schools and the best ones will teach you this. I suggest adventure traveling as a start. That means you go someplace with no plans and the most minimal of supplies.

Edit to add: The key problem with most prepper folks and this article is that they take an approach of "alone and unafraid." Things like stocking up for months and having all kinds of weapons. In practice this is just a great way to get your cache raided by a group of scavengers. In reality you need to find or create a small community of survival minded people that can work together successfully over a long period with a variety of skills. As humans we need groups for survival, so the best bet in a crisis is to build a resilient flexible community until things settle down.

<comment> f- [Author here]

The mindset is actually a large component of this guide, and it intentionally delays any discussion of "prepper gear" until it gets through a long laundry list of lifestyle tips and discussing the need to plan ahead, figure out what is likely, what can go wrong, what the decisions points may be, etc. In contrast to most other prepping docs, weapons are literally the last thing discussed, and only in a perfunctory way.

That said, I think that your view of emergency preparedness is far more narrow than what I aimed for in the guide. A significant focus of the doc is dealing with small-scale but common adversities, such as recessions / unemployment, house fires, backed-up sewage, and other "boring" but life-altering contingencies. Basically, the stuff that almost everybody will need to face at some point in their lives.

I'd wager that for 90%+ of the events that a typical person in the US is likely to experience, heading into the woods to forage on berries and hunt wildebeest is not the way to go.

<comment><USER4> I dunno, I re-read the beginning and I didn't see anything about the points I raised. I think your point that overzealous people who as you put it:

 _begin by shopping for ballistic vests and night vision goggles; they would be better served by grabbing a fire extinguisher, some bottled water, and then putting the rest of their money in a rainy-day fund._

is right on point, but IMO that just says - hey don't be insane.

Literally right now, my good friends are being rescued from a rooftop in Houston. No number of bottles of water in their basement or generators are going to help them. They are lucky in that they have some discretionary funds and Flood insurance, but more likely than not (if history repeats itself) they wont get fully paid out for what they lost.

What they should have done is learned when to move or when to stay by: 1. Not buying a house in Houston and then 2. Gotten out well before it was imminent.

Small scale common adversities like you are talking about can get critical really quickly. All those preparations, other than just having savings, is just making you slightly more comfortable and buy you a little bit of time so that you can make a bigger plan. Good, but insufficient and gives you a false sense of security. Again, these are things I've seen over and over.

Planning for the range of disasters from a month of unemployment and TEOTWAWKI is the same basic mental change, not just a full basement and bank account.

<comment><USER5> Is there a middle ground? My kids went as part of a team to help people rebuild after Katrina and one of the folks they met was rebuilding their house but building it as a boat. They had re-done the foundation so that the house rested on it, and its sewer connection was just the house pipe inset into the city pipe (so it could easily lift out). That, 15' of chain to allow the house to float above the foundation and central concrete and iron pillar which was essentially the keel.

I thought of them reading about Harvey and I am wondering if they will show up on the news at some point.

I compared it a bit to my efforts to insure my house remains intact and upright in the event of an earthquake (the 'likely' disaster where I live).

<comment><USER4> There certainly is a middle ground - however why stay in the same place and expect a different future? New Orleans isn't that much more prepared for another flood. Houston re-did the entire bayou system about 5 years ago and yet here we are.

People's aversion to moving, especially after a major disaster, boggles my mind.

<comment><USER6> Well, they really didn't "redo the entire bayou system". They considered alternatives and chose the most politically correct one for the parties involved. They knew it wasn't enough for something like Harvey but they didn't think there would be a Harvey( a supposed "500-year event") anytime soon. Black Swan anyone?

AndrewKemendo says: "People's aversion to moving, especially after a major disaster, boggles my mind."

But where do you go to be safe from disasters?

California - earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, torrential rains, rip currents, and even volcanoes

Gulf Coast - <USER2>

Midwest - <USER3>

etc.

Slate Magazine set out to find where you could live free of potential disasters. See:

"Where To Hide From Mother Nature"

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/200...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/2005/09/where_to_hide_from_mother_nature.html)

Their conclusion:

"Slate's "America's Best Place to Avoid Death Due to Natural Disaster": the area in and around Storrs, Conn., home to the University of Connecticut..."

Read the article to see if you're ready to make the move.

<comment><USER7> > etc.

You can't just name three places in a very large country and then say 'etc'.

There are plenty of places with much lower risks of natural disasters. That's a big part of the reason my family lives in central New York.

<comment><USER8> Upstate New York has some pretty terrible flooding. I don't know where you consider "central New York" (it is -- after all -- a large state). The corridor along I-86 (Elmira, Corning, Hornell, etc), where I lived for a few years, has built up extensive flood controls to prevent future damage. A lesson hard learned from multiple severe floods. Then there was bad flooding just a few years ago in the Mohawk River valley centered around Herkimer.

Probably just the tip of the iceberg in a state that sees a lot of annual rainfall.

<comment><USER7> That's an easily solved problem though... don't buy a house in a floodplain...

I live in the hills southeast of Syracuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been in a number of major natural disasters at this point. Fukushima, Ike, Colorado's 2013 floods. I've also been in two shooting incidents (where fortunately only the shooter was hurt). My point is, I've been lucky so far because none of these posed a major problem for me. I made it out with manageable inconvenience.

However, I can only get lucky like that so many times.

So now I keep the following at home:

* 5 gallons drinking water

* Canned food for a week

* First aid kit

* Matches, lighter, Sterno cans

* Solar USB charger

* Many flashlights with spare batteries, plus a battery-powered lantern

* Hand-crank radio

* Solid liquor collection ;)

* Equipment to make a fresh cup of coffee with no electricity (Sterno, hand-crank coffee grinder, French press)

* A big bucket for, well, sanitation

I've also got my camping supplies, which includes a Coleman stove and a few small propane canisters. Having been in a few floods I will also never live in a ground-floor apartment. I also keep all this stuff boxed up in plastic crates, so if I needed to evacuate I could load up my car with all this gear in about 20 minutes and be on my way. My goal is to be able to survive a week trapped in my apartment with no utilities, or living out of my car for the same amount of time.

I bike to work and in my pannier I keep a Leatherman multitool, pocket knife, latex gloves (mostly for fixing my bike chain, but also useful in other emergencies), 3M N99 mask, flashlight, poncho, a garbage bag and a small thing of duct tape. In most of the kinds of disasters that hit Colorado, I would be able to get home, either walking or by bike. I only live about three miles from work.

<comment><USER10> That will get you thru a week. But a week will get you thru everything but society collapsing, and if it does collapse I am not sure I want to continue.

<comment><USER11> Actually, having toured various places where society has collapsed, it's actually not as bad as people imagine. Some people live their entire lives in collapsed societies. There is sometimes still electricity, food, water, security, and sometimes even phone service, depending. And after many years of study, I'd even say that those "collapsed societies" are actually more like most human communities of the past. It seems to be a kind of natural state of human civilization. We're just living in some damned lucky times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A 10 AM Bay Area earthquake is the highest plausibility * severity event you're likely to experience around here on a day to day basis - leaving some people with a 25 mile commute back to a structure that might or might not be standing, intermittent at best communications, and potentially impassible roads.

IMO if you don't have a case of water, a road map, and a change of walking- around clothes in your car around here, you're asking for smiting. Fortunately that's about $10 in total, and you can drink the water even if there's not an earthquake.

Additionally, near everything that would be handy in case of an earthquake (gloves, pry bar, basic trauma supplies, etc) is useful in case of a car crash, which actually is far more likely.

<comment><USER13> Your comment got me thinking about some form of volunteer force of medics. Imagine if every 20th car that drove by had a government issued medical bag in the trunk and a driver guaranteed to have recent first aid and emergency training. And in return the driver gets some sort of tax break, or an HOV lane free pass, or whatever the appropriate incentive is. Surely some country has tried this out.

<comment><USER14> Aren't first aid kits mandatory in cars in the US and don't you have to get first aid training as part of your driver's licence?

<comment><USER9> No. Even a _driving test_ isn't necessarily required to get a driver's license. I never took one.

<comment><USER15> That depends on your state. I took one for my first license but haven't had a driving test since when I've moved between states. I have had paper and oral exams since then, though. But that only shows I know the laws and rules of traffic, not the ability to drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The 'prepping' phenomenon is an expression of the extreme individualism (or less graciously, ego-centrism) of our time and society. Rather than assuming that society will come together in a crisis and help each other out, we need to become an army-of-one, stocked up for every scenario and armed to the teeth against dangerous others who are undoubtedly coming to take our shit. It's sad.

I honestly think this another example of the huge class divide in America causing such a negative outlook on other people, similar to how slave owners lived in comfort, but also constant paranoia. Perhaps we should work on improving conditions for the bottom of society, so we can have an expectation of helping each other when the shit goes down.

<comment><USER17> What you call "extreme individualism" or "ego-centrism", we used to call "self-reliance".

<comment><USER18> Self-reliance is a myth made by conservatives to justify cutbacks to the poor. Nobody in history has been entirely "self-reliant". Even the pioneers of the Americas had an entire support network in the east and for those that lived around them.

If they didn't, they died.

<comment><USER19> A conspiracy, if you will... :'D

But seriously, you seem to imply it's bad that people plan ahead, for when shit hits the fan, and somehow those people are the bad guys? Maybe that's not what you intended, but it's what you seem to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm an exited valley founder who just launched an emergency preparedness site for the rational crowd: [https://theprepared.com](https://theprepared.com)

Have been prepping in the SF / startup community for almost 10 years and teaching other techies how to prep for a long time, but historically was face to face because of stigma, etc.

We started The Prepared because prepping is very rational and it's gone mainstream enough to have threads like this on HN.

Beginners checklist here: [https://theprepared.com/guides/emergency- preparedness-checkl...](https://theprepared.com/guides/emergency-preparedness- checklist-prepping-beginners/)

Post on reasons why liberals should be preppers: [https://theprepared.com/blog/five-reasons-why-liberals- shoul...](https://theprepared.com/blog/five-reasons-why-liberals-should-be- preppers/)

Happy to help anyone in their journey.

(long time personal HN members but this is a new account)

<comment><USER21> That site seems great but it's still a tough sell when the "welcome to rational prepping" guide includes AI and CRISPR as causes.

<comment><USER22> Why? Elon just said AI is a bigger threat than North Korea.

<comment><USER23> Elon says a lot of things!

<comment><USER24> Maybe he's just talking about _his_ AIs when they're near bright white trucks on sunny days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love this sentence from the piece: "In the 90s, it seemed that you couldn't go wrong by getting into professional journalism, opening a video rental store or an arcade, or selling calculators, encyclopedias, disposable cameras, answering machines, and audio CDs."

<comment><USER26> I mean it's not like all of those people died

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> To me, the #1 marker of "crazy" in disaster preparation is a focus on violence against your fellow civilians, and I'm glad that this guide pushes that out into the far end of unlikely and extreme end of scenarios.

For what this scenario actually looks like, a post on Metafilter about Sarajevo: [http://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep- get...](http://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-getting- worse#2430771)

<comment><USER28> From reading forums the other marker seems to be those 'who know' what they are prepping for e.g a solar flair or nuclear bomb is going to happen. This vs. the attitude disasters can happen and to have general coverage.

And if you look at the history of the world it's reasonable to have some level of prep going. Disasters are low chance but consequences are severe. It's reasonable odds at one point in your life there will be a major disaster. Historically it's unlikely to get through 2 lifetimes without something significant happening. Most people have house/car insurance for these low risk events but feel prepping is unusual. I'd prefer to have some coverage from a low chance but high consequences disaster than have the cost of replacing a car covered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The context sections of this article are super helpful. I've recently become acquainted with this subject matter. Doing a quick audit of my lifestyle I realize how unprepared I actually am. I think this speaks to the safety I've felt growing up.

I've been following this guide: [https://theprepared.com/guides/emergency- preparedness-checkl...](https://theprepared.com/guides/emergency-preparedness- checklist-prepping-beginners/)

I really need to take the time to go through and thoroughly cross-reference these two resources.

</comment><comment><USER30> interesting book that takes a similar angle: 'The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch' [http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/the-book/](http://the- knowledge.org/en-gb/the-book/)

<comment><USER31> Came in here to post the same thing! Read it a few years back and thought it was superb. Found out there were tons of gaps in my knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there a plugin that makes websites like this easier to read on modern devices? The lines of text here are too long for my poor brain to parse but I don't want to have to resize my browser for each badly designed website.

<comment><USER33> I just use a simple bookmarklet that I label 'Make Narrow':

javascript:(function(){var%20b=document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];b.style.maxWidth='50em';b.style.marginLeft='auto';b.style.marginRight='auto';})()

Just manually create a new bookmark and put that as the URL, then when you click it, it runs that snippet and make the body have a max-width of 50em.

<comment><USER34> Ooh handy, thanks. I'll put this alongside the incredibly useful 'Kill Sticky' bookmarklet that kills overlays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > It's not that life-altering disasters are rare: every year we hear about > millions of people displaced by wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or > floods.

Pretty much always in the sames typical places though...

See: 'tornado alley', island nations with tsunami seasons, california wildfires, etc, etc (over a long enough timespan)...

> Heck, not a decade goes by without at least one first-class democracy > lapsing into armed conflict or fiscal disarray.

Ditto

See: countries with a perpetual history of dictators and authoritarianism (although westerners and capitalism/socialism typically receive the blame in popular depictions)

<comment> f- [Author here]

> [...natural disasters...] Pretty much always in the sames typical places > though...

Most people live in "typical places" without realizing it, though. I mean, you know when you're in the tornado valley, but tornado / hurricane risk is relatively high for basically the entire eastern half of the US. And wildfire risk is very significant for the entire western half. Add to this earthquakes, etc, and it turns out that most people live in a place that is likely to experience a major regional disaster every couple decades or so.

Still, the guide is not really about that; or rather, it covers natural disasters to some extent, but it puts a lot more emphasis on personal preparedness - being able to cope with another run-of-the-mill recession, a house fire, and other likely occurrences of this sort. More general preparedness is almost a side effect of that.

> [...economic crises and armed conflicts...] Ditto. See: countries with a > perpetual history of dictators and authoritarianism (although westerners and > capitalism/socialism typically receive the blame in popular depictions)

Well... Greece, Iceland, etc?

<comment><USER27> Greece certainly has a history of political instability ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E2%80%9374) ) but Iceland was a straightforward economic crisis - Kaupthing discovered how profitable leverage was and just kept going because there was nobody to tell them to stop, until the whole thing blew up. I don't remember hearing this translate into political instability, I think Iceland is too small a country for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > first-class democracy lapsing into armed conflict

I can come up with none

> Throughout much of the recorded history, the monetary systems of the western > world employed so-called commodity money, generally settling on coins minted > out of silver or gold.

This is false. Silver and gold coinage was largely restricted to international trade, transactions were mostly done by keeping tabs. Gold and Silver coins developed most likely as you can easily produce them to share the spoils of war with soldiers. The important property of Gold and Silver is that you can easily steal it. See Debt the first 5000 years ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years))

> Biking on public roads? Wear a helmet

Head injuries are way more common in cars than on bicycles. Wearing a helmet while driving a car has a bigger benefit.

</comment><comment><USER37> One that that needs to be emphasized is you only perfect preparation for about 2 weeks of the worst case, after that you need must less.

Lose your job for 6 months, cut your budget and use your emergency savings, but most of your supplies are not used (tap water is still safe to drink).

Complete collapse of civilization? 2 weeks to enough to understand how bad it is - when the power isn't coming back that implies such a reduced population that you don't worry about looting: in fact you should be with the few remaining people looting what there is. Break into WalMart for clothing. If you live in an area where you cannot support yourself farming break into a dealer's safe, get the keys to a new truck, and break into gas stations tanks along the way to fill it up until you get someplace you can survive long term. (the truck will be abandoned once you are there: fuel goes bad quickly).

On those lines, you don't need to move to a rural area and practice survival skills now. All those massive corporate farms: at best they have enough fuel to get in half the harvest so they need your manual labor now. Get out of the city and you will find rural areas with plenty of food in desperate need of labor. Almost nobody knows how to harvest corn by hand. Few people know how to use a horse. they need your help to figure it out. Make yourself more valuable by bringing seeds for vegetables that are not in the fields.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I always feel that part of the reason why disasters hit us so hard is the fact that despite having some built in resilience in the current system we have it's not resilient on the small scale (i.e. the individual). If SHTF as an individual you're boned, but if you're a corporation or some other kind of organization you can weather it. It just seems to me that a whole new way of handling shocks to society needs to account for this fact more so than ever. The attempt by some to abolish the social safety net is just one of many things that our species is doing wrong. We need less efficiency and more redundancy. We need less profitability and more sustainability. Basically, we need to add resilience to the system down to the individual level where it's practical.

</comment><comment><USER38> Less crazy folk? I can't tell you many "less crazy folk" believe the most nutso easily-disprovable bunk on the internet because it reinforces their feelings and beliefs on something... Completely functional people making great money or running successful businesses or raising great kids, just totally believing whatever bunk makes them feel good. It's not about "crazy", it's about people just not being willing to investigate something further than what they believe, and trying to convince them of the "less crazy" way just won't budge them if they don't want to budge.

</comment><comment><USER39> What's the point of living through the zombie apocalypse?

I honestly don't understand any of this stuff vs the normal 3 days of water/food/etc thing. If shit's that bad, we might as well be dead. Why live for The Walking Dead?

<comment><USER40> Like most philosophical questions, there's no one easy answer. Furthermore, there are plenty of sub-zombie-apocalypse situations for which you might again get back to something resembling normal life. Consider for example any of the genocides of the past century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think placing thermonuclear war in the "Zombie Apocalypse" category is probably wrong; it should go into category #2. JFK estimated after the cuban missile crisis that the chances that could have developed into a full-blown nuclear exchange were about 1 in 3. Not terribly long odds. Given the current political situation the probability is much lower- but political situations change, and the weapons are still here. The real risk is impossible to know, but unlike zombies, nuclear weapons are real, and they have been used on civilians once already.

<comment><USER42> It's fair to note it as the most probable of the "Zombie Apocalypse" category, but "impossible" isn't the common theme of that category, it's "civilization ending".

Under all of the scenarios in Problem Space #3, the world is irrevocably changed and there is not necessarily any reason to think it will go back to the way thing are now in the survivors' lifetimes. In the other two problem spaces, you are looking at perhaps-widespread but finite disruptions. Maybe an entire country or region of a large country is hosed for years or decades, but you can either expect things to go back to normal eventually, or you can migrate to somewhere where things are normal. With either a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear one, you don't have that expectation, and whatever you do to prepare for that situation will be largely the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This reads like a practical guide to being an adult. Incredibly valuable.

</comment><comment><USER44> An all out thermonuclear war would be the end of the human race. Thankfully, it won't happen simply because thermonuclear warfare is now obsolete. An all- out electromagnetic nuclear war is its successor, which would only spell the end of our civilization. But chances are we just devolve into civil wars breaking out and a few viruses. Our base case is a 25-33% fall in population in one generation. Bottled water won't help. Large rain water collection systems are a lot more likely to give a survival chance.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it just perception or is 'prepping' becoming mainstreamed?

<comment><USER46> Of course it's becoming mainstream. Quality of life for most people has been declining in America for a while. Trust in our government is at an all-time low. Most people don't have _any_ friends, let alone a sense of community. Much of the country is _still_ recovering from the economic crisis, even though the stock market has fully recovered. An unexpected illness can bankrupt most families in the country. Social mobility is going down every year, and it's basically a requirement to be in the top 20% of performers to be able to live comfortably. Political partisanship is higher than ever. Old forms of media have been recently exposed as rigged and controlled by the rich, and the new forms of media online provide so much input, most people can't emotionally adjust.

With an increasing anxiety on the state of the nation and a decrease in security for most people and their families, it's only natural that prepping would become mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love this article, because in its essence, it does not prepare you for prepping as much as leading a solid life.

It is also one of the first articles about prepping with a positive tone. I personally do some mild prepping (as my mother always did herself). But I don't like to be associated with the "typical" preppers and stay clear of them, because prepping is no lifestyle that leads anywhere. I think prepping should be a side topic - to keep your good life good in case an anomaly happens.

</comment><comment><USER48> Get obese and buy a bunch of electrolytes and water. You'll be good for a whole year without food, provided you keep those electrolytes in check, no problem. #FACT

</comment><comment><USER49> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906232)

</comment><comment><USER50> reminds me of the back-to-the-land movement and the foxfire books. their impetus in the 60s and 70s was a retreat from the complicated, (inter)dependent, technological ecosystem of a modern metropolis; towards a simpler redundancy structured around puritan hard work, self-sufficiency and independence of the farm and barter village. james burke had an excellent tv show in 1978 called "connections" covering science and technology (episode 1 linked). the follow up series in later decades were not as good:

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp)

it began by unwinding civilisation should a critical failure in a complex system lead to catastrophic and cascading collapse; then later trying to understand the connective steps taken from ancient pre-history to then present day.

most well-educated people lack the physical endurance, manual dexterity, strength and mental fortitude to revert back to pre-20th century agrarian survival. as we belong to a society of atomized individual consumers who receive instant gratification from novelty products which require little skill, patience or forethought to use. we depend mostly on mental faculties and the mechanical advantage of machines, with atrophied social and physical abilities. how many jokes, poems, stories or songs do you know? how many hours can you do hard physical labour for? professional sports and fitness industries artificially fill this void.

nobody can sell the things you actually need. the simplest short-term way to survive a disaster is to introduce yourself to your neighbours. depend on each other and share resources, car pool, grow food, recycle rainwater, repair broken things. you now have a backup network to the unavailable local, state, federal and international resources otherwise marshalled to aid you in time of need.

i will conclude my boring cliched opinions with this: i don't believe a disaster you need to prepare for is coming, nor am i convinced any preparation even on a whole city scale would be sufficient. should transportation and grid networks collapse indefinitely, you will likely die. if you live in a place prone to flooding, own a boat. if you live in a place with bush or forest fires, leave you homes when instructed. if you live along earthquake fault lines, avoid old buildings. if you live in a place with high crime, legally carry a weapon to defend yourself.sense became uncommon in a world without commons. if you care for my advice, i suggest you learn play an instrument and develop your singing voice, as the oldest ongoing human activity you are guaranteed job security even during ragnarok.

</comment><comment><USER16> What is the safer place in a 'doomsday' scenario - the city or the country- side?

<comment><USER51> The countryside. It's where the food is. Imagine if all transportation/energy/etc were destroyed. Imagine NYC or LA completely dark and with no food coming in. Millions of people without food, without light, etc within city limits. It would get very dangerous, very quick. Nevermind the garbage piling up, nonexistent sanitation, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Been looking into getting a pocket knife/ multitool, any good options?

<comment><USER53> For multitool you can not go wrong with a leatherman wave. Great warranty too, they'll fix anything you break.

Not big but not really for pocket carry though.

For fixed multiuse blade (think bushcraft, not defense) I don't buy any other than Mora. Really cheap, like 20-30$. I give them as a present to friends when I go for a walk and notice they don't have any. They are made of great steel and keep the edge well. They are great knives with the price of dispossable ones so you are not afraid of actually using them.

I'm kind of afraid of really punishing a $150 knive, so they end as box queens at home..

<comment><USER28> If you not that price sensitive consider Leatherman Charge. Slightly better than the Wave. Its not cheap but they should last a long time. It my go to tool for little fix it jobs around the house. Amazing quality and coverage what you get done with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Pocketed that link under the "Apocalypse" tag. Thanks !

</comment><comment><USER55> anyone have good book recommendations? specifically looking for wilderness survival, first aid, and edible plants (pacific northwest)

<comment><USER20> I carry the SAS pocket guide: [https://goo.gl/hnDJm7](https://goo.gl/hnDJm7)

<comment><USER55> thanks, the 3rd edition is still cheap :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> It's great to see HTTPS being adopted everywhere: even a Polish guy's personal blog on a Christmas Island (.cx) domain is encrypted. That's what I thought until I realized that I was looking at the favicon. He's not using HTTPS. He's using a lock symbol as his favicon and that alone was enough to throw me off.

The browser vendors keep gratuitously changing the shape, color, and position of the lock icon, so a lock symbol anywhere in the browser edges is enough to fool most of us.

</comment><comment><USER57> How about we plan on not having a doomsday in the first place?

Why are nuclear weapons not banned? Chemical/biological weapons are. Let's end nuclear weapons too, and take this world back from the possibility of doomsday.

<comment><USER44> Nuclear power is the root cause of nuclear weapons.

<comment><USER58> Unrecognized irony is the root cause of nuclear weapons -- since what is the point of fighting over oil fields or farmland or other resources with nuclear weapons when you have advanced materials and advanced computing and advanced energy sources that could produce abundance for everyone?</comment></comment></comment>


Timescale Cloud: Multi-cloud, fully-managed time-series in AWS, Azure, and GCP - <AUTHOR> https://blog.timescale.com/blog/fully-managed-time-series-data-service-now-available-in-aws-azure-gcp-75-regions-compare-vs-influxdb-timestream/ <comment><USER2> TimescaleDB is great, not just for timeseries data, but also if you're trying to scale your Postgres database (with some cavaets, obviously.)

One often has a small number of tables, often a single table, with a high write workload. Changing it to a timescale hypertable, provided you can work with the additional restrictions that has, can let you instantly 10X your write throughput (or more with multi-node timescale.) That's a lot cheaper than trying to scale your database write IO by 10x.

I like multi-cloud services like this because it reduces the vendor lock-in that happens with these public clouds.

<comment><USER3> Why wouldn't you use built in partitioning for this?

<comment><USER4> I think its a time/money tradeoff. I recall a comment along those lines (paraphrased) the last time I asked about TimeseriesDB. It's the fundamental calculation of SaaS/Cloud.

<comment><USER3> I don't feel there is a significant time investment with using the builtin way.

Timescale has some neat features for handling time series data, but for just sharding out data for scalability I can't see it offering anything substantial. And in that vein, I feel the marketing is somewhat disingenuous in the performance claims. When comparing to vanilla PostgreSQL it is comparing against a very naive usage pattern. People have been getting the same kinds of performance increases from partitioning out time series data for a loooong time.

<comment><USER5> The advantage on inserts with TimescaleDB is the automation. The built-in way on Postgres still requires a lot of manual maintenance, especially as data patterns change. TimescaleDB adjusts automatically.

(Nothing against Postgres - it just that Postgres needs to design for the general use case, while we can optimize for time-series.)

But TimescaleDB is much more than automatic partitioning. You also get:

* 15x native compression (95%+ storage savings) [0]

* Faster queries for time-series (b/c of our optimizations at the query planning / execution level)

* Automatic data retention policies (for automatically deleting old data) [1]

* Continuous aggregates (real-time materialized views automatically refreshed) [2]

(and lots more)

Happy to answer any more questions!

[0] [https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/compress...](https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/compression)

[1] [https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using-timescaledb/data- ret...](https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using-timescaledb/data-retention)

[2] [https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/continuo...](https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using- timescaledb/continuous-aggregates)

<comment><USER6> > 15x native compression

That is a rather remarkable compression ratio. Do you have a link to technical details? The lightweight compression outlined in the Gorilla TSDB and implemented in Uber's m3db is 11x which I thought was best in class: [https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2270/papers/gorilla.pdf](https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2270/papers/gorilla.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Yep, absolutely.

Here's a blog post outlining our general approach, which applies type-specific compression based on a column's datatype. (While m3db only supports floats, TimescaleDB supports a whole range of 40+ data types.)

[https://blog.timescale.com/blog/building-columnar- compressio...](https://blog.timescale.com/blog/building-columnar-compression- in-a-row-oriented-database/)

For example, by default we employ:

\- Gorilla for floats (+ some optimizations for faster decoding)

\- Delta-of-delta + Simple-8b with run-length encoding compression for timestamps and other integer-like types

\- Whole-row dictionary compression for columns with a few repeating values (+ LZ compression on top)

\- LZ-based array compression for all other types

And the architecture is extensible to support new/updated compression algorithms for different data types. The above are all lossless algorithms; obviously one could drop precision to achieve higher rates.

We also wrote a post describing these various approaches in a bit more detail for folks interested in learning (although a summary compared to the Facebook paper): [https://blog.timescale.com/blog/time-series-compression- algo...](https://blog.timescale.com/blog/time-series-compression-algorithms- explained/)

Obviously, your compression rate depends heavily on workload, but the number 15x comes from _median_ performance that users see in the field against their real databases, not just a synthetic or single workload.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And...if anybody is interested in helping us build the best cloud service for time-series data, we're hiring cloud engineers!

[https://www.timescale.com/careers/4128985002-cloud- engineer](https://www.timescale.com/careers/4128985002-cloud-engineer)

Timescale is a remote-first company with amazing folks all over the world.

We're also actively looking for technical support engineers with strong Postgres backgrounds: [https://www.timescale.com/careers/4615287002-technical- suppo...](https://www.timescale.com/careers/4615287002-technical-support- engineer)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would love to see something like this with pricing that also competed on the lower end with various RDS and Cloud SQL offerings.

Just using Timescale instead of RDS or Cloud SQL PostgreSQL would be a virtual assumption, but with the starting price points so much higher it makes the decision to START with Timescale a lot harder.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Having your lowest tier offering priced at over $500/mo is cost prohibitive in a lot of situations. Even their "dev" tier is $130/mo for a single instance. It would be much nicer if they just let you choose how much storage, CPU, and memory you need rather than only letting you select from a limited set of offerings.

<comment><USER7> The main difference on Timescale Cloud between dev (starting $115) and production is just the resource availability and slightly longer PITR recovery period for non-dev options. Both offer same full TimescaleDB experience, console, ability to upgrade/downgrade, fork your database, etc.

If you do want a lower priced option, we actually recently also released a second managed cloud offering in public preview, Timescale Forge: [https://timescale.com/forge](https://timescale.com/forge).

Timescale Cloud provides great flexibility with multi-cloud and 75+ regions, security conscious options like VPC peering and SOC2/ISO/HIPAA compliance, and a more traditional DBaaS Experience.

Timescale Forge is a innovative platform with capabilities like decoupled compute and storage (so you can select yourself the exact configuration you want, starting at $49/month), instant pause/resume, native support for our Prometheus integration, and more coming...

<comment><USER10> Eek, Forge price starts at $49 but the next tier up is $166, after which it incrementally increases. That's quite a jump. If my budget is in that price range, then such a jump is likely a huge deal for me.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the feedback. I'm curious - what kind of pricing would you expect? Also, is this for an R&D workload, or for something that's already in production?

<comment><USER10> Just something that scales more smoothly. The price difference between the lowest (by price) and next lowest is $117, but the difference between that and the third lowest is only $19. I know that the difference isn't the same (more CPU and RAM, vs only more disk space), but it just seems like a big jump.

I could very much imagine that I might outgrow the $49 option, but not to the point where I'm willing to pay triple that amount.

I'm not necessarily saying you should change it, maybe its just messaging and targetting. I guess on HN you just get a load of us who are interested in using it for smaller projects (where the 49 option might be perfectly fine, of course).

<comment><USER5> Appreciate the feedback - thank you!

<comment><USER10> You're welcome. I've played with the OSS version of TimescaleDB in the past and am a big fan. Keep up the good work. Perhaps in time, I'll be in a position to use it more seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see Timescale Helm charts for Kubernetes: [https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb- kubernetes](https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb-kubernetes). Are you using Kubernetes to host the managed service?

<comment><USER12> I brought Timescale to my current job, and I have to plug their Helm charts. They have made deployment, backup, scaling, and config so easy on k8s for Timescale. Probably the best postgres chart that exists, period. Great work TSDB team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > You can now incrementally scale up or down in the region of your choice, > with CPU options ranging from 2 to 72 CPUs and storage ranging from 20GB to > 10TB

What does that mean? The pricing calculator on [https://www.timescale.com/cloud](https://www.timescale.com/cloud) still has the same predefined storage configurations.

Also, you might want to remove this customer opinion from the post, standard Postgres won't break a sweat at 100M rows:

> We have over 100 million rows of data in development and production, and we > needed a database that could handle this volume

<comment><USER14> That's my quote :) In hindsight I should have said "hundreds of millions"; we're at about a third of a million _sensor packets_ in production, some of which are dozens of rows across several tables.

Yeah, you could absolutely stick this in a vanilla postgres instance, but as a sibling post said, you wouldn't get the same performance on the queries we care most about.

<comment><USER14> oops, a third of a _billion_, not million

<comment><USER5> I was wondering about that ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We've used Timescale at ShiftLeft since before 1.0. Recommend 100%

<comment><USER5> Thank you Vlad for the kind words :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You have one of the smartest and nicest head of Marketing there. I worked with Prashant at AWS (more than 10 years ago!) and have the fondest memories.

Besides this: congrats on the launch. I tried your product a while ago and was impressed. Big cloud providers are the obvious perfect channel for you. Just get ready for some nasty competition from the same guys :)

<comment><USER5> Aw, I agree! Will let Prashant know.

Re: Cloud providers - I also agree, it's a complicated world ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was interested in Timescaledb recently but found the cost to be extremely expensive and you can only get all the good features in their cloud version as PaaS.

I would also suggest looking at Citus for scaling Postgresql. With the Azure reserved discounts, Citus is like less than half the price of Timescaledb. Citus also helps tremendously with multi-tenant scenarios.

Of course, depends on what you are trying to do.

<comment><USER18> I'm curious what you mean by this - the community version has most of the features in it.. and if you are willing to pay for something, you'd an run the enterprise version on-prem.. my experience with that is that it's quite cheap, and you get support as well.

Timescale also has a multi node version now that distributes your data across a cluster sort of like Citus.

<comment><USER17> I want a hosted PaaS solution. I don't want to self host it. That is the pricing I am comparing.

<comment><USER5> Citus and Timescale are apples and oranges.

Citus is just scale-out Postgres. TimescaleDB is Postgres for time-series.

There are a long list of capabilities that we've built for time-series that Citus does not have: native 15x compression, data retention policies, continuous aggregates (real-time materialized views refreshed automatically), interpolation, etc.

Nothing against Citus (we are friends with that team) - but they are designed to solve a different problem than we are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am currently using MongoDB to store Ethereum tick price data. I'd like to switch to Timescale, but wondering if there is a supported Node.js API client?

EDIT: Looks like the documentation recommends using Sequelize ORM.

<comment><USER7> ORMs that work for Postgres should "just work" for TimescaleDB. So while we mention Sequelize in some tutorials, if you have a favorite Node.js API client, you should just go for it.

As aside, you mention enjoy this developer Q&A that a community member published a few days ago that talk about his experience using TimescaleDB to build a crypto trading bot.

[https://blog.timescale.com/blog/how-i-power-a-successful- cry...](https://blog.timescale.com/blog/how-i-power-a-successful-crypto- trading-bot-with-timescaledb/)

Also, an earlier tutorial:

[https://blog.timescale.com/blog/analyzing-bitcoin- ethereum-a...](https://blog.timescale.com/blog/analyzing-bitcoin-ethereum- and-4100-other-cryptocurrencies-using-postgresql-and-timescaledb/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this come pre-configured for high availability (e.g. replication to a standby node)? Given the pricing I would have assumed "yes", but I don't see any mention of it in the blog post?

<comment><USER20> I meant to ask about backup with point-in-time restore too - is that provided out of the box?

<comment><USER7> Yes, there are a number of great options here provided out-of-box:

1\. All plans (including the lowest-cost dev tier) includes PITR recovery out of the box. You can also "fork" any current database to a second instance (e.g., for dev & test), also at any recent point-in-time.

2\. Once you create any instance, you can later create a "read replica" with one click, which creates an asynchronous replica of your primary (e.g., for ad-hoc queries to not interfere with the primary, or to just load-balance reads).

3\. On the HA side, our "pro" plans includes automatic synchronous replication between primary/replica, so that any primary crashes failover without downtime to the replica. You also get DNS-named endpoints for replicas, again for load balancing reads.

<comment><USER20> On the Basic tier, I presume you have to pay for those read-only replicas? Can they be used for automatic failover, or only for scaling reads?

I don't know what VM SKUs you use on Azure, but at a glance it looks like your solution would cost 300-400% the cost of the VM, just for your Basic tier.

As a fan of TimescaleDB, I really _want_ to like this, but I'm just not seeing enough value-add for the price. Maybe I'm missing something, please sell me on the benefits over managing VMs myself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would love to hear from the HN community: what are some of your favorite features in managed database or infra platforms, or what do you wish more platforms offered that are still hard-to-find?

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder, could GNU/Linux change its license (in a substantial way) that would allow it to get revenue from Amazon for deployments like AWS, similar to how it was done by Timescale? Would seem fare to get a good chunk of revenue to Linux development.

p.s.: could Postgres change its license to make Timescale share their revenue? :D

<comment><USER22> Why would they do that. These guys are generating revenue by offering managed service, not by selling opensource software.

<comment><USER23> For the same reasons MongoDB and Redis changed their licenses to avoid AWS et al offering it as a managed service?

<comment><USER22> That's a different story. Aws was competiting for revenue with the developers of MongoDB and Redis' for profit company. Postgres' publisher does not use managed service as a source of income.

<comment><USER23> Of course, but I was just offering a reason for why they would want to do that. It's not as if it's unreasonable if they did that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Men Resist Green Behavior as Un-Manly - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/men-resist-green-behavior-as-un-manly/ <comment><USER2> This has been obvious for a long time, and is probably the exact reason why the green movement has been associated with liberals as well.

Conservatism and masculinity are deeply intertwined (I don't want to say "patriarchy" because I'll offend people) but without a doubt, this past election and the messaging used exposes a deep ideological hang-up in conservatives regarding gender roles and masculinity.

But I've noticed a way to completely and totally side-step this problem.

 _Sustainability_ does not challenge a man's masculinity.

The permaculture movement and similar concepts do not challenge masculinity, either.

I've found that the same conservative men in my life (I'm from Georgia here in the South) who scoff at the 'green', sneer at a local restaurant which offers "recycle and compost, but no trash can" as being effeminate millennial nonsense, can see great conservative value in living a sustainable rural lifestyle. Farming, self-sufficiency, the repair not replace movement, permaculture, all of this can be very palatable or even engaging and exciting to a conservative.

Caveat: This does not work on fundamentalist Christians who believe that God has created the planet for them to use and is handling things top down. I've met a number of Christian conservatives who disagree with green/sustainable on purely religious grounds that God simply wouldn't let things get out of hand.

But sustainable, permanent culture jives with prepper-culture rather deeply, so can be made to seem masculine when the end result is the same: reduce, reuse, recycle. When it becomes less "stop liberal global warming" and more "protect your family by preparing them to sustainably survive for as long as possible" it plays to conservative desires very well.

<comment><USER3> I wish more people acted like you - looking for a compatible frame, rather than getting mad at the other side. For my part I feel there is something about "keep government off my back" that would resonate with "civil liberties".

It's ironic, in a sad way, that the liberal intelligencia, that very group of people who dedicated their lives to studying the use of language, rethorics, logic, psychology, history of philosophy, journalism, could not come together and form a cohesive argument in a way that speaks to the values of their opponents.

<comment><USER4> There is research about reframing arguments for a given topic in terms of values that are highly important to a given political ideology[1]. In short, there are priors of deeply-held values that can reliably predict a political stance. With this you can potentially convince those opposed to an action on grounds of some aspect of it (be it perceived masculinity of actor, or religious reasons) to reconsider the action from a familiar perspective by reframing the argument in terms of the audience's most deeply-respected values (e.g. purity, masculinity, patriotism).

[1] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160425143307.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160425143307.htm)

<comment><USER5> See also Prof Robb Willer, whose research at Stanford shows similar results.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/robb_willer_how_to_have_better_pol...](https://www.ted.com/talks/robb_willer_how_to_have_better_political_conversations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Manipulating men by challenging their masculinity is one of the oldest tricks in the book. The British used it to divide India - the "martial races" were rustic, manly warriors, the "non-martial races" (read: the ones who opposed British imperialism) were effete, urbane bookworms. The Romans and Greeks likely built up stereotypes about archery as unmanly at least in part to encourage their citizens to volunteer for the brutal, thankless job of being infantrymen. One of the ways medieval christian Europe vilified Jewish men was to claim they were so feminine they menstruated monthly, and therefore were inhuman monsters (medieval christian europe was also really sexist, btw).

That environmentalism may accidentally be pressing those same buttons is quite unfortunate, but not unexpected to me. We see things like rolling coal as a deliberate attempt by some men to "combat" what they perceive as non-masculine green living, and there did seem to be an attempt to spin the fracking debate into a gendered issue. Ideally we'd have grown past this as a society, but I guess people are going to be people whatever the age.

I personally have always been pretty comfortable violating gender norms on these types of issues. The idea of not doing things I enjoyed just because it was supposed to be "for girls" always struck me as absurd. Or conversely, doing things I hated (getting dirty, playing football, drinking beer) just because that's what men do and you want to be manly don't you?

<comment><USER7> "Hey bro, let's get dirty bro and shotgun some beers bro."

That is such a weird way for people to think about masculinity.

If masculinity is something that should resist manipulation, then it cannot be defined behaviorally. Such a definition would mean that you _must_ adhere to certain behaviors in order to be described as masculine.

Masculinity for me is attitudinal. Resistance to anxiety. Physical strength. Intelligence. Mastery over emotions. Perseverence. A willingness to fight to the death if necessary to preserve something held inviolable. Circumspectness. The ability to smile and keep moving even when in pain and under pressure. Respect for those who are not strong enough to demand it. Hard work. A desire to improve one's station in life, or that of his children.

I feel that this paints a more dynamic, more useful picture of masculinity than "football, dirt, beer." And I should be explicit: I recognize that some people _do_ see those activities as masculine. I'm not disagreeing at all with your assessment there. I just don't think they capture the essence of masculinity, nor have those things historically been the definition of masculinity throughout human history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "green" behaviors in this study are oddly specific. At least four of the six experiments appear to be heavily biased towards grocery shopping, and one involves contributing to a nonprofit (WTF).

You have to feel a little sorry for the four male authors. They spent countless hours scouring twenty-plus-year-old research to cite sources and claim these articles say that men don't care about the environment. One seventeen-year-old paper is cited as saying that men "leave a smaller carbon footprint," but all it actually suggests is that out of four specific European countries, single-man households in Greece and Sweden use more energy (in statistically significant amounts) than single-women households in those two countries.

In Study 4, I don't see how anyone could draw a "green" association with a lamp, battery, or backpack. All of these products have tradeoffs.

In Study 5, note that the female cohort in declined in "green"-ness for the manly packaging. This suggests to me that the control was probably somewhat feminine, and people are more likely to prefer products that correspond to their gender norms -- whether or not those products have an underlying pro- environmental utility.

> Although only mem [sic] had been recruited to participate in [Study 4], 14 > participants reported their gender as female and were therefore excluded.

WTF kind of methodology is that?

Finally, I note that the archetype of a manly conservationist is strong in the USA. Teddy Roosevelt. John Muir. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ansel Adams. These people did more than carrying a disposable shopping bag to Whole Foods, and selecting the "green" backpack.

<comment><USER8> > In Study 4, I don't see how anyone could draw a "green" association with a > lamp, battery, or backpack. All of these products have tradeoffs.

If one lamp uses a high wattage halogen bulb, for example, and another uses LEDs with equivalent lumens, then it is pretty easy to associate "green" with the later. Similar for a one-use battery vs. a rechargeable battery. Similar for a backpack made out of non-sustainable or non-recyclable materials vs. one made from sustainable and recyclable materials.

It sounds like you might be thinking they were asked to choose between a lamp, battery, or backpack, but as described in the article they were asked to choose a lamp, battery _AND_ backpack, with both green and non-green versions of each of these items available:

article> In one study, we threatened the masculinity of male participants by showing them a pink gift card with a floral design and asking them to imagine using the card to purchase three products (lamp, backpack, and batteries). Compared to men shown a standard gift card, threatened men were more likely to choose the non-green rather than green version of each item

<comment><USER7> Nah. I actually read that part twice because I was so mystified by the absurdity of it.

Light bulbs are not obvious. CFLs are efficient but produced with toxic mercury; LED bulbs are efficient but produced with plastics, semiconductors, and sometimes phosphor; and incandescent bulbs are inefficient but simpler to make, with fewer harmful materials.

If the choice is between a CFL and an incandescent, it's unclear whether the mercury in the CFL is justified by its higher efficiency. LEDs are the most efficient of the three by far, but production and disposal may ultimately be worse for the environment than is the case with incandescents.

I fail to see how any backpack can be a "green" choice. I have an Ortlieb waterproof bag made almost entirely out of synthetic materials. It has lasted more than 10 years. I could have bought one wax-impregnated hemp canvas bag per year instead. However, this bag has through-hiked the Appalachian Trail on a friend's back, ridden through several countries atop my motorcycle, and made its way through many other outdoor situations that would have proven too trying for a "green" bag. Ultimately those outdoor experiences have helped to solidify multiple people's appreciation for nature, probably resulting in a greater net contribution to conservation than a bag made by some hippie somewhere.

For batteries, you would have to consider lifespan, production, disposal, energy density, power density, propensity to leak, etc.

See where I'm coming from? For the reasons I mentioned above, it seems to me that they just took a subjective stance on largely arbitrary shopping choices. Note that they don't go into depth about the structure of their experiments, the isolation of variables (eg, maybe men are more frugal and "green" choices cost more, so how do we control for that) nor about the math behind their analysis, which tells me that they either (A) had some kind of length limit for their publication, or (B) didn't feel those details were flattering.

<comment><USER8> I think you may be overlooking that in general when a consumer is considering whether or not to go for the "green" product, that consumer is probably not considering things like battery power density, or whether or not the mercury in a CFL is worse for the environment than the energy savings benefit the environment.

Most consumers decide if a product is green or not based on whether or not it is marketed as such, plus some common sense. Whether or not that actually works for identifying the greener product is not really relevant to the research in the article. All that matters is that test subjects (presumably average consumers) believe that the choice presented as greener was greener.

> Note that they don't go into depth about the structure of their experiments, > the isolation of variables (eg, maybe men are more frugal and "green" > choices cost more, so how do we control for that) nor about the math behind > their analysis, which tells me that they either (A) had some kind of length > limit for their publication, or (B) didn't feel those details were > flattering.

Or maybe that is in the peer reviewed journal article that the research was published in? The submitted article is in a popular science magazine for the general public, where such details are in general omitted.

The journal article is not in a free journal, but here's a copy Googling turned up: [https://huntsman.usu.edu/directory/documents/BroughEtAl_JCR2...](https://huntsman.usu.edu/directory/documents/BroughEtAl_JCR2016_FINAL_- _Oxford_Press.pdf)

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's so clear that most people are ignorant about what they are buying. I hope we can agree that at least some men are not. In today's world, people are commonly talking about dangerous substances in common products, so I would be surprised if I'm the only one who pays attention. BPA, styrofoam, mercury, artificial preservatives, GMOs, bovine hormones...there are many successful mass market products that are marketed as being free of these.

I also think a lot of what the studies measure, if they measure anything at all, is virtue signaling. A countertheory might be that virtue signaling is a feminine behavior, and that when a man feels emasculated he tends to reject feminine behaviors like buying "green" backpacks (whatever those are).

This is the second time you are insinuating that I either didn't read, or didn't understand, the literature. Not only did I read the article, I also read both versions of the paper and some or all of several of their cited papers. The link you just posted was available in a different comment, and I have access to severak journals through an institutional license.

I would appreciate if you would stop making ad hominem responses. If you have disagree with something I said, tell or show me what and why. Don't assert that I can't read, or that I'm reading the wrong thing. Such assertions are logically useless and they run counter to HN's guidelines (see footer).

If I'm wrong, show me where in the text of the paper you just linked. And if not, accept it: they aren't rigorous in explaining their experiments and their methods for isolating variables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, why was this article flagged? It was #3 on the front page, and now it's gone. I get that it's not the most HN-type article in the world, but neither is the current #3 (Airbus discontinuing a plane if it doesn't land a deal).

Startups that care about marketing of green products, or about marketing in general, might find this discussion to be interesting.

<comment><USER9> Gender-related topics are extremely contentious on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Marketing problem. They're not doing anything wrong by resisting the message; we're not selling the message correctly.

<comment><USER11> Maybe. But people have to want to receive the message, too.

Protecting the environment is liberal and unmanly, unless you're a Republican in a Rocky Mountain state.

Magically, over there environmentalism is a Republican value, too. Funny how Republicans don't worry about liberal and unmanly when an issue hits them, personally.

The problem with so many Republicans is that they can't conceive of being on the other side of the coin until it smacks them over the head.

<comment><USER10> Although Teddy Roosevelt was a Democrat, he remains probably the most "manly" example of environmental conservation. The message is not inherently un- tailorable to the hard-working everyman: we've become reluctant to do so under the pretense that one day, he'll magically stop being something marketing departments secretly despise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a female, I think this article didn't take into consideration that we buy a lot of shit! Clothes, make up, body care items, etc... I swear we produce more trash than men for the sake of vanity!

So yeah, maybe women do recycle more but I think we produce a lot more trash than your average manly man who wears the same shirt 3x a week and doesn't need to apply hand lotions every half hour.

<comment><USER13> The article mentions the larger carbon footprint of men. It is alos mentioned in the study:

> One of the obstacles identified by prior research is that compared to women, > men are less likely to be eco-friendly in their attitudes, choices, and > behaviors (Davidson and Freudenburg 1996; Lee and Holden 1999). Women > display greater concern and willingness to take action to help the > environment, and this effect is robust across age groups and countries > (Cottrell 2003; Dietz, Kalof, and Stern 2002; Levin 1990; Zelezny, Chua, and > Aldrich 2000). In contrast, men litter more (Kallgren, Reno, and Cialdini > 2000), recycle less (Zelezny et al. 2000), have a larger overall carbon > footprint (Reaty and Carlsson-Kanyama 2010), and feel less guilty about > living a nongreen lifestyle (Tiller 2014)

That implies that women's consumption is also either less or has a smaller impact

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's about society. I'm speaking about the majority of western civilization _currently_.

Men seem less concerned with improvements/collateral damage and more concerned with success/creating/succeeding. Women are raised more social and won't throw everyone under the bus to achieve their goals.

What is the first thing a man says to another? "What do you do for a living?" it's about success and ranks.

What's the first thing a woman says? "Hi! Where do you live/Hows your day" It's about community.

Both of these mindsets are firmly ingrained in us from childhood.

<comment><USER15> Be careful about these observations - they got a guy fired from Google. Apparently even if they are factual observations they aren't allowed. Of course Men and Women are different; but admitting so - perhaps as part of a explanation for non-equal outcomes brings trouble.

<comment><USER16> That's not even close to what happened. Neither side did what you said, your post is a complete bold-faced lie.

<comment><USER15> It's how I perceived the things that happened. Perhaps he takes his case to court and we can see what the court says about the ability to fire him over what he said.

Google fired him for making a manifesto about gender differences, political differences and Google's own echo chamber issue. That's not a lie.

<comment><USER16> >Google fired him for making a manifesto about gender differences, political differences and Google's own echo chamber issue. That's not a lie.

Google fired him for creating a PR nightmare because he wrote a shitty manifesto that misrepresented a few cherry-picked Wikipedia articles. Google has been nothing but conservative lately, this whole "They fired him because they're liberal!" thing is absolutely incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most recycling efforts actually waste resources. Whereas it will always be economically wise to recycle aluminum, it is often unwise to recycle paper and it is always a waste of resources to recycle plastic. So why do it? As a practice, it helps indicate membership in a particular community. In that sense, it is like a secular halal/kosher practice:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Islamic_and_Jewi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Islamic_and_Jewish_dietary_laws)

Those are religious practices that help establish the legitimacy of one's belonging. Whereas Christianity is based on faith, Judaism is based on practice, and Islam is a bit of a mix.

What if you are secular but you want to indicate the legitimacy of your belonging to a particular sub-culture? Practices such as recycling are useful in that regard. Note that recycling took off during the 1960s, an era that saw both widespread interest in spiritual matters yet also a turning away from traditional religions.

Although halal/kosher behavior is always certified by men, the actual details of implementing it in a house are often left to women. It is up to Jewish women to make sure that all the food they buy is kosher.

So in that sense, recycling follows an ancient pattern, already set by some of the world's biggest world religions.

</comment><comment><USER18> The underlying paper, as available from the authors: [https://huntsman.usu.edu/directory/documents/BroughEtAl_JCR2...](https://huntsman.usu.edu/directory/documents/BroughEtAl_JCR2016_FINAL_- _Oxford_Press.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> The example that came to mind for me is rolling coal. It's about as flagrantly defiant a rejection of environmentalism as I can think of. I don't doubt that many men view driving hybrid cars or eating less meat as unappealing because they see it as effeminate.

<comment><USER7> What makes you describe rolling coal as masculine, as opposed to just being boorish and stupid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My love of "green living" stems from a love of nature. I've always loved going on walks in the "non developed" places. For one, the air is always fresher. For two, the plants and wildlife are often beautiful. I don't see how being able to appreciate what "is" should make someone less masculine. It's like these people have never met a mountaineer capable of living off the land and his own two hands. Not much could be manlier. (It's also faminine, too, according to the article.) What an utterly silly concept.

Last I knew, survival training was standard in the training of the armed forces across all countries. You're welcome to call the Navy Seals feminine, but I wouldn't.

<comment><USER21> Most of the "green behavior" in the article is more about class signaling than about actually preserving the environment. Recycling[1], bag reuse[2], and similar behaviors in general don't actually make a significant difference. They might even be more hurtful than helpful.

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the- reign-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of- recycling.html?_r=0)

2: [https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/reusable-bags-only- su...](https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/reusable-bags-only-superior-to- plastic-if-you-reuse-them-a-lot/)

<comment><USER22> As for the bags at least, that's absolutely not what that article says.

In fact, that article doesn't take into account the littering of plastic bags. But sure, I'll grant that if you're the type to reuse bags, you probably aren't the type to litter the plastic ones in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It may not be the case for all men but I'd say that the article is accurate when it comes to me.

<comment><USER24> How can taking responsibility for the protection of your surroundings be considered unmanly?

<comment><USER25> Swaggering across the crosswalk, in such a way as to inconvenience others is considered manly. I know, because some random stranger in Cincinnati actually tried to give me lessons on that, specifically with regards to manliness. I hate those idiots.

<comment><USER7> Ah...

 _closes eyes, breathes deeply_

 _inhales smog_

...the nasty 'Nnati.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I observed this unscientifically in the 90s and marketers have known this for equally as long. Surprised it hasn't been studied before now.

I would say it extends to certain types of men equating responsibility with feminism. It was an unfortunate social construct and one that I see fading.

<comment><USER27> I think it also has to do with a certain masculine energy, or exuberance, or desire to act. It's feminine to worry about consequences. It's masculine to damn the torpedoes. There's a real need for action – any action – and that usually means giving little consideration to anything outside the actor himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Compared to men, women litter less, recycle more, and leave a smaller carbon > footprint.

I hope it's true statistically, because I'll call bullshit on that any day.

> men may shun eco-friendly behavior because of what it conveys about their > masculinity

Instead of inventing roundabout descriptions, let's just call them what they are: close minded idiots.

<comment><USER29> I feel like I'm always seeing studies that assert women are somehow "better" than men. Has anyone else noticed this trend?

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-jo-martin/study- companies...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-jo-martin/study-companies- with-stro_b_9079720.html)

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600812/female-coders- are-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600812/female-coders-are-more- competent-than-males-according-to-a-new-study/amp/)

[http://amp.timeinc.net/time/money/4430721/compromise- women-m...](http://amp.timeinc.net/time/money/4430721/compromise-women-men- decision)

[https://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/study-girls-outperform- bo...](https://venturebeat.com/2015/01/27/study-girls-outperform-boys-in-math- and-science-all-over-the-world/amp/)

<comment><USER30> Yes.

I really am puzzled by articles denigrating men. If I were an alien from another planet I would wonder why men even exist if I were to read all such articles (Yes I know men are only good for reproduction).

Sure there are a lot of bad/evil/despicable men out there as there are a lot of women (you can downvote me, but it doesn't change reality). Let's take a recent example, it is a known fact that Trump doesn't respect women that much; yet the reason he won the presidency is perpetuated by the media as, he won because of the disenchanted 'white men'. Excuse me? 42% of women voted for him, this isn't a trivial percentage like a statistical error. Why isn't there any spotlight on this?

This whole men vs women debate is just utter ridiculous (in most respects); call a spade a spade and don't resort to dog whistle tactics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Men who feel secure in their manhood are more comfortable going green.

This is so obvious in retrospect I am ashamed for not noticing it sooner. Men's insecurity about their own masculinity/sexuality causes so many problems it's downright depressing.

</comment><comment><USER32> This article was hilarious. I hope they do the other side next:

"Woman resist entrepreneurial behavior as un-feminist"

</comment><comment><USER33> I've come to the conclusion that our stupid biological impulse to rub our genitals together will be the ultimate limiter on how far our species can go. We're just monkeys wearing pants, desperate to take them off and fling poo, procreate or rip someone's face off.

We need a Brave New World type future where babies are grown in a lab, neutered and handed a month long prescription of soma.

</comment><comment><USER34> Write an article that generalizes male traits to explain a negative like eco- conscious behavior and it's an SA article worthy of front-page HN.

Write an internal letter that generalizes female traits to explain a negative like the lack of female engineers and you get fired from Google.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is now flagged? Is it normal to flag items from Scientific American?

<comment><USER35> I didn't flag it, but I'm not bothered that others did. It's producing some very low-quality discussion from people who very clearly did not read the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So it should probably be titled: "Sexually Insecure Men..."

<comment><USER35> A better summary of the information in the article would be: "Market to your audience."</comment></comment>


Ask PG:  Can I name drop 'Hacker News' on a t-shirt design and sell it? - <AUTHOR>

They say, 'Hacker News Beer Drinking Company"
Long story short...I'm a graphic designer/web guy looking to raise some money for a friend that could use a little financial assistance.
I'm also just starting a t-shirt company and have a design that can be customized with different locations, Jackson Hole Beer Drinking Co., or group names, Hacker News Beer Drinking Co., and sold in their local markets. I also thought Hacker News would be a great place to test the design and the idea.
You can see the design here:
http://bigriverbeerdrinking.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=66#
If this is ok, to test the overall concept I would like to run a teespring campaign.
Full Text On Shirt:
The Best In The West Hacker V2.1 News Beer Drinking Co. Established 2007
Any thoughts?  100% of all sales would be donated to my friend.  I could provide more details if necessary.
Regards, Dave <comment><USER2> What kind of shirts are you printing on? I have more than 100 brand new American Apparel tees left from the T-shirt company I am winding down, Ill let them go for .50c less than wholesale + shipping, if you are interested my email is in my profile.

<comment><USER3> I'm working on a side project in this space and I'm interested to know more about why you're winding down the T-Shirt company. Please drop me a mail

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am no expert. But the orange color, plus the fact that from far away you can only read HACKER NEWS is for me an obvious an obvious link to this website. That being said, I don't know if pg cares about HN being reused.

<comment><AUTHOR> in this case I just thought I should ask first. thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The link does not work

"The website you were trying to reach is temporarily unavailable."

<comment><AUTHOR> site is back up. sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> edit: just fixing weird formatting.</comment>