How To
Survive

Gather with 3+ people, and go through this page together.

Electric cars are not going to save us. As the West surges toward electric cars, here's where the old gas cars go | CNN
  1. When gas cars are sold for EVs, the gas cars don't stop — they're re-sold and continue polluting. (CNN)
  2. EVs and heavy gas cars produce tire dust, spreading toxic microplastics (known as “this generation’s DDT”). This produces 2000x more toxic particles compared to car exhaust. (Yale 360, Washington Post, The Guardian)
  3. Car tire-driven rubber extraction has become one of the leading causes of deforestation in forests across the world.(Yale 360)
  4. Deep sea mining for battery materials is accelerating, with dangerous mining practices elsewhere as well — climate wildlife refuges, deserts that store as much carbon as rainforests, and conflict areas besieged by extraction. (Bloomberg, New York Times, Scientific American)
  5. Lithium is a scarce resource. 1 battery for a small electric car (e.g. Chevy Bolt, sold for $30,000) could instead be used for 130 electric bikes (sold for $250,000). 1 battery for an electric pick-up or Hummer (sold for $80,000) could instead be used for 380 electric bikes (sold for $760,000). Using these materials in better ways creates more jobs and revenue, and saves consumers on the costs of car ownership and maintenance — $10,000 per year. (AAA)
Solar as usual is not going to save us.
  1. Solar panels don’t protect buildings from outages if they’re tied to the grid.
  2. As more of the grid electrifies, utilities charge higher rates for electricity and pay less for solar production — as they’ve done in California and North Carolina. (Utility Dive, Cal Matters, Canary)
  3. As more electrical demand comes on the grid, utilities pay for grid repairs and modernization, which comes out of public pockets or rate increases.
  4. As demand increases, so do outages (air conditioners during heatwaves, heaters during cold snaps). Utilities will pick and choose which communities keep power. Wealthy communities will keep it, at-risk communities won't.
  5. Batteries don't last forever. The higher your electricity demand, on a house with all-electric systems, the higher up-front investment and replacement cost for battery systems (every 10-15 years.)

What are the solutions? How can we survive?

This is an initiative to answer that question. What we can do to survive the crises (food prices, housing crises, energy prices, extreme weather, heatwaves, floods) and build a better world.

This is where we start today, in communities that share these problems: low food access, expensive prices, housing crises, energy insecurity, unemployment, hazardous buildings, declining industries, unwalkable sprawl, plastic pandemics, and temperature rise and natural disasters.

This is how to survive today — and build a better world.

Note: These solutions are foundational. They are the ground floor of meeting our needs — and more can go on top.

Stay in touch (or say hello)

Endorsers and Partners

Want to add your organization?

How to Survive is behind this project. If you would like to support us, you can make a tax-deductible donation, or reach out to [email protected]. We are eligible for 501(c)(3) grants and sponsorships, and interested in partnering with organizations on content.

1. Food delivered to neighborhoods — 2. Resilient and Affordable Solar — 3. Housing that Stores Carbon — 4. Flood Prevention with Native Trees — 5. Bike Buses to School

How are we going to lower food prices?

Cut tire pollution?

Expand food access?

Make walkable neighborhoods?

Support farms?

Avoid deep sea mining?

Get to know our neighbors?

Food delivered to neighborhoods ("Buying Clubs")

💠 Cut emissions 5-15% 🥦 Lower food costs 30-70% 📍 Fresh food into neighborhoods ⏱️ 1 week to deploy
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Images: Ryan Kuonen (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Farms can deliver to neighborhoods the same way they deliver to stores. This is called a buying club.

A neighborhood orders bulk/wholesale directly from a producer, getting food at the same prices stores do — saving 30-70% off grocery prices. (Imagine: pasture-raised eggs for $4 / dozen 👀)

This also brings fresh and healthy food into our neighborhoods. The typical home is more than 2 miles from the nearest grocery store — and for many, it's much further than that.

With a buying club, you get your eggs, produce, and daily staples in a walk down the street.

This is also one of the fastest ways to decarbonize. We can't transform our transportation systems overnight — but in a week, we can change how we get our food, and achieve the same benefits.

Expand food access
Lower food costs up to 70%

Cut emissions up to 15%
Build connections with neighbors

Retail Stores → Housing
Lower Tire Pollution

Support Farmers
Resilient Food Systems

How to Start Today

Follow these steps in your group
  1. Think about what food you want, that you can't get affordably today. Eggs? Fresh produce? Healthy staples?
  2. Find a farm that offers those items and delivers wholesale to your area. Call/email to get their wholesale price list.
  3. Think about a drop-off/pick-up location for food from the farm. This can be a driveway, a garage, a park, a shady yard, or another space in the community — suitable for a dozen boxes of food, and 10-30 people coming by for pick-up.
  4. Take the farm's wholesale price list and make an order form (example) to share with community members, friends, neighbors, family who will join the order.
  5. Once you get enough orders to meet the farm's wholesale delivery minimum, submit the order to the farm and choose a day when they'll deliver and people will pick-up.
  6. Meet on delivery day as people pick-up their food and pay for what they ordered
  7. Make it a standing order with the farm, and repeat weekly or as needed

How are we going to get lower electricity prices?

Lower gas bills?

Keep the power on during outages?

Cut emissions at home?

Avoid deep sea mining?

Build energy knowledge and jobs at home?

Resilient and Affordable Solar (Not Just Electric)

💠 Cut household emissions ⚡ Eliminate electricity bills 📍 Build local energy resilience ⏱️ Available immediately
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Images: Chris Olszewski (CC BY-SA 4.0), Noya Fields (CC BY-SA 4.0), Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), Living Energy Lights

Solar panels don't protect us from outages if they're tied to the grid.

They don’t protect us from price increases either — like in California and North Carolina.

There are more ways than just solar on the grid to get resilient and affordable energy, however.

  1. Solar thermal heating allows us to capture heat directly from the sun, for heating water and buildings. They work without electricity, so you pay no bills for them, and they keep working during outages. They also require 3x less rooftop space.

    ℹ️ Solar thermal heating systems are used from Canada to Denmark to the Mediterranean and Australia, and quality for federal tax credits.

  2. Direct solar appliances like DC refrigerators, solar attic vent fans, and water pumps can run off direct connections to solar panels (DC power) — without grid connections or battery storage. This lowers electric bills, and keeps systems working when you need them.

  3. Non-electrical appliances like tubular skylights (bring outdoor sunlight in through the ceiling) and drying racks don’t require power at all. They work through outages, and you'll never pay a bill for them.

  4. Dedicated battery kits for lights, fans, and charging devices. Some items are best suited for batteries — meaning no electric bills, and they’ll keep working during outages. By only using batteries for the devices that require them, you can invest in smaller-sized systems that save money-up front and every time you need to replace them long term.

    ‼️ Avoid lithium-ion battery kits. Other options are more durable and stable.

  5. Insulating homes reduces electricity bills and vulnerability during outages. When insulating with natural materials, like strawbale and hemp, these homes are healthier to live in too.
Eliminates energy bills
Keep power during outages

Cut household emissions
Less rooftop space required

Domestic manufacturing
Build local energy knowledge

Workforce development / jobs
Proven industries

How to Start Today

Follow these steps in your group
  1. Think about your goals for energy in your community. Lowering bills? Resilience during outages? Places to sit under the lights or charge phones? Community fridges? Heating or cooling centers? Wi-Fi?
  2. Look at a map of your area and mark the places that could be useful. Is there a business, house of faith, library, apartment building, or home that would be willing to install a backup battery kit (lights, phones, fans) and a direct solar fridge, that people could use during outages? Is there a homeowner or vacant property that could be up to convert their home into a resilient home?
  3. In the places you identified, think about what you want:
    • DC Battery + direct solar kit to power phones, lights, fans? ($400)
    • Chest fridge + direct solar kit to store food and medicine? ($1200)
    • DC water pump + direct solar kit to keep access to water? ($300)
    • Solar hot water panels + tank to keep access to hot water? ($2700 new / $300 DIY)
    • Solar electric oven + direct solar kit (like a slow cooker/crockpot) to keep oven access? ($600)
    • Other necessities?

    It's important to have DC appliances that can run direct solar, so you can connect the appliance directly to a solar panel without other wiring. (A solar panel on a balcony, directly powering a refrigerator or a battery kit for phones/lights inside.) If the power ever goes out, those systems will keep working when you need them.

With as little as a $400 battery kit that comes with chargers and lights you can string up, you can turn a space in a community into a mini resilience center. You can layer on a community refrigerator, a solar electric oven, a hot water system or a water pump, all for less than $3000 — and find community funds or raise directly from community members to make it happen.

How are we going to solve the housing crisis?

Store carbon?

Lower temperature rise?

Build healthier homes?

Rebuild after disasters?

Create jobs?

Make regional supply chains and industries?

Housing and Infrastructure that Stores Carbon

💠 Store carbon emissions 🌳 Healthy to live in 🛠️ Create local economies 📍 Community owned ⏱️ Available immediately
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Images: Brett and Sue Coulstock (CC BY-ND 2.0), UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering (CC 3.0), Brett and Sue Coulstock (CC BY-ND 2.0), David Baillot, University of California San Diego

By building homes with carbon-storing materials, we can meet the housing crisis and global carbon storage goals (500 million tons per year by 2030.)

These homes are healthier too — with natural materials that humans have always lived with, rather than synthetic chemicals and compounds like in many building materials today.

(They're healthier during disasters as well — the building parts will naturally decompose, unlike typical homes that all apart leech synthetic toxins into the water and land.)

We can make these homes by expanding existing housing, with attached ADUs — saving construction costs, and sharing energy and benefits across the whole property.

We can finance them with community banks and non-extractive lenders, to support community ownership with affordable housing prices, managed by trusts and cooperatives.

And we can create regional jobs and industries for natural building materials, as our communities have always used.

Increase housing
Healthy homes

Passive construction
Stores carbon

Workforce development / jobs
Grow healthy industries

How to Start Today

Follow these steps in your group
  1. Think about your housing priorities in your area. Lower rent? Aging in place? Healthier homes? Cooperative housing?
  2. Look at a map of your area and mark possibilities that could help meet your needs. This could include:
    • Vacant properties or buildings
    • Properties for sale/auction at reasonable prices
    • Property owners that could be up to sell at reasonable prices or partner on projects
    • Properties eligible for ADUs (e.g. new housing unit on the property — a basement unit, an attached unit, a detached unit)
  3. Think about local stakeholders that could support this work with funding, expertise, non-extractive financing, and advice. Share your priorities and visions with them and talk about what could be possible.
  4. Explore the possibilities to see if any are realistic.
  5. If you find possibilities, start conversations with funding/financing sources (e.g. community banks, green banks, land trusts, public agencies) to explore them further.
  6. When exploring this work, incorporate healthy + natural building materials into your plans — for structure and framing (e.g. timber, hempcrete), insulation (hemp, strawbale), finishing (lime plaster) — making your new homes healthy to live in, and storing carbon as well.

How are we going to prevent floods?

Deal with rising heat?

Protect against ticks and invasive insects?

Pollinate our food?

Create local jobs?

Flood Prevention with Native Trees

💠 Store carbon emissions 🌊 Prevent floods 🌺 Support biodiversity ⚒️ Local work ⏱️ Available immediately
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Images: Guzzardo Partnership (CC BY-SA 4.0), Katherine Wagner-Reiss (CC BY-SA 4.0), Mauro Halpern (CC 2.0), Tdorante10 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

We can protect our yards, homes, and communities by planting native plants and trees — which can store up to 10,000 gallons of stormwater in their roots.

These plants and trees will protect us from heat, humidity, and ticks too.

Prevent floods
Protect against heat

Protect from ticks
Local jobs

Lower humidity
Livelier places

How to Start Today

Follow these steps in your group

Go to a native plant nursery on the map below, say you want native plants and trees in your yard and community, and start getting involved in existing efforts.

With your group, you can also map areas in your neighborhood that could be useful for trees — to lower flooding, to provide shade in urban heat islands, and to make more green spaces.

‼️ Consider trees that will grow up to roof height to provide shade for homes/buildings, while allowing sunlight for solar thermal heating and direct solar appliances on the roof.


How are we going to lower gas costs?

Cut local pollution?

Improve performance in school?

Bring people together?

Create healthier communities?

Lower school drop-off lines?

Bike Buses to School

💠 Cut emissions 🌳 Cut air pollution 🍎 Energize students 📍 Community led ⏱️ Available immediately
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Images: BikePortland (CC 2.0), Wikimedia Commons (CC 2.0), BikePortland (CC 2.0), Oregon Department of Transportation (CC 2.0)

Riding, walking, and rolling to school is one of the healthiest ways for students to start their day.

But in many parts of the country, roads aren't safe enough for kids to ride to school.

Enter the Bike Bus:

A group of students riding a designated safer route to school, in a larger group on the roads, with chaperones for safety and help — who can make rides to school possible almost anywhere.

Bikes Buses are growing rapidly around the world — from Barcelona to India, to Australia and Indonesia, to all across the U.S.

In communities where the school pick-up line is overwhelming, and where we can all start learning to survive in better ways, bike buses are one of the best ways to start.

Lower gas costs
Benefits for students

Local jobs
Fewer pick-up/drop-off lines

Cuts emissions
Cleans air

How to Start Today

Follow these steps in your group
  1. Look at a map of your community, where people live, and how kids get to and from school.
  2. Are there any routes that could be safe for a group of students, led by chaperones at the front and back, to ride to/from school in the morning and afternoon? The route should stop at different locations along the way where students can join the bus and drop-off in the afternoon, like a normal bus route.
    Segments of routes can include:
    • Roads with low traffic, where a group could safely ride together in the street (with chaperones at front and back)
    • Protected bike lane routes
    • Bike trails that aren't on roads
    • Sidewalks for small stretches, if there isn't much foot traffic
  3. Make a bike bus route with what you've identified, that passes by student homes and neighborhoods to allow them to join the bus and get off after school, and allows the group of chaperones and students to ride safely to/from school together.
  4. Take a test ride on your route to see how it feels and if there's anything you would change. Get a sense of timing for the route and for each stop, so you can add times to the bike bus stops for when people should be at the meeting point and ready to join (like a bus pick-up schedule.)
  5. With the route and timetable you've identified, can you find chaperones in the community to lead a morning or afternoon shift for the bike bus? (In some school districts, this work can be paid!)
  6. With a group of chaperones and a safe route that you've practiced to/from school, can you find an initial group of students willing to join the bus — and tell their friends about it?
  7. Start the bike bus! You may start with just a single time, or once a week, or make it more regular depending on schedules. Safe riding — and enjoy!

How are we going to win these policies?

Get resilient solar support from governments?

Subsidize supply chains for natural material buildings?

Get funding for bike bus chaperones?

Move subsidies to these areas?

Support the initiatives we need to survive?

Community-Chosen Candidates

🌆 Large scale 💲 State support 📍 Community led 🔗 Dual power ⏱️ Can begin now
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Images: How to Survive

Most representatives don't represent us.

But what if we chose the politicians? As in, we chose the people running for office in the first place — from our communities, schools, businesses, neighborhoods?

Not career politicians or party-backed candidates. Not even well-meaning self-nominated candidates.

We mean candidates chosen directly by their communities, to represent them and be accountable to them in office.

Not candidates coming to communities to win votes — candidates coming from communities, after the community already voted for them.

Feels different?

Accountable candidates
Stronger primaries

Increase turnout
Build community

Strengthen positions
Real representation

How to Start Today

Follow these steps in your group
  1. With an election upcoming, ask neighbors and community members if they'd nominate anyone from their community to run for office and represent the community's interests.
    • For larger races, such as state-wide or Congressional districts, ask for nominees from people across the jurisdiction.
  2. Collect the list of nominated candidates.
  3. Hold a vote among participants and nominators, to determine who the community wants to run as a candidate. (Use ranked-choice voting)
  4. Ask the top-voted candidate if they would be willing to run for office — with a base of support in the community behind them already.
    • If the top-voted candidate isn't willing to run, ask the 2nd-place candidate, then the 3rd-place candidate, and so on...
  5. With a candidate chosen by community members to run for office, help that candidate collect signatures and meet filing requirements by the deadline.
  6. Support the community's chosen candidate in the primary and/or election, get them in office, and keep them accountable to the community's priorities!

To be continued ...