How To
Survive

Gather with 4+ 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 beseiged 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 a gathering 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. With what we have now.

This is where we start today, in communities that share these problems: low food access, expensive prices, housing crises, energy insecurity, unemplyoyment, 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 — after which, more can be laid on top.

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.

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)

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Farms can deliver to our 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. This saves 30-70% off the costs of food.

It also brings fresh and healthy food access into our neighorhoods. The average American house lives more than 2 miles from the nearest grocery store — and many Low Income Low Access areas live much further than that.

With a buying club, you get your eggs, produce, and daily staples in a walk down the street — close enough for a toddler to bring them home, with a wagon of fruits and vegetables behind them.

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.

This is the most economical and resilient way to take care of our biggest need — food, and build on from here. That's why we start here.

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

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There are more ways to use solar than panels tied to the grid or a battery.

And there are a lot of reasons to start using them.

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

They don’t protect us from price increases either. Utilities are offering less for solar payments (like in California and North Carolina) while raising prices, as more electric demand comes on the grid – from data centers, EVs, air conditioning during heatwaves and heating during winter storms.

There are more ways than just solar panels 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 (radiators, central heating, radiant floor heating.) They work without electricity, which means you pay no bills for them and they keep working during outages. They also require 3x less space on rooftops due to increased efficiency, and qualify for federal tax credits.

    ℹ️ Solar thermal heating systems are used from Canada to Denmark to the Mediterranean and Australia, working in cold and warm climates.

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

  3. Non-electrical appliances like tubular skylights (indoor lighting, by bringing outdoor light through the roof) and drying racks don’t require power at all. They work through outages, and you don't pay any bills for them. Tubular skylights also qualify for federal tax credits.

  4. Dedicated battery kits for lights, fans, and charging devices. Some items are best suited for batteries — meaning you won’t pay electric bills for them, and they’ll keep working during outages. By only using batteries for the devices that require them (rather than all home needs), you can invest in smaller-sized systems that save money-up front, and every time you need to replace them.

    ‼️ Avoid lithium-ion battery kits. Other options are more durable and better long-term.

  5. Insulating our homes reduces our 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 and long-lasting 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 homowner 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 refridgerator, 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

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How are we going to pull carbon out of the sky?

Trees, plants, and crops that store carbon — and building with them.

A single duplex made from straw and timber stores 15 tons of carbon. We face a global housing shortage of 36 million homes per year.

By building homes with carbon-storing materials, we can meet global carbon storage goals of 500 million tons per year by 2030 — with houses alone.

And that doesn't get into roads, sidewalks, benches, spaces, facilities, and all of the infrastructure we can build with materials that store carbon — materials we grow in our own communities and regions too.

As we set out on that work, what and where and how are we going to build?

We're going to expand existing housing, with attached ADUs that share walls and the same systems — saving construction costs, and sharing energy and benefits across the whole property.

We're going to do it with CDFIs and non-extractive lenders, to support community ownership with affordable housing prices, managed by trusts and cooperatives.

We're going to think about where we're building and changing weather – e.g. underground units that naturally protect against the heat, where floods are not a risk.

And the homes we live in will be healthier too — with natural materials that humans have always lived with and breathed in, rather than synthetic chemicals and compounds like in many building materials today.

^ When disaster does strike, this will be healthier too — the elements burning or washing away will be natural themselves, and not poison the water or the river like what happened in L.A.

we can meet the Paris requirement of 500 million

By building homes

Increase housing
Healthy homes

Passinve construction
Stores carbon

Workforce development / jobs
Proven and long-lasting 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, 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 converations with funding/financing sources (e.g. CDFIs, 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)

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A single native tree can store 10,000 gallons of stormwater.

We are going to protect our yards, homes, and communities by planting native plants and trees — this will protect us from heat, humidity, and tick populations too.

Prevent floods
Protect against heat

Protect from ticks
Local jobs

Lower humidity
Livelier places

How to Start Today

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)

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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.

Less pick-up/drop-off lines
Benefits for students

Local jobs
Lower cost transportation

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 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 of 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!