Keeping necessary materials and short-term inputs stored locally, to avoid exposure to supply chains or service outages.
Build and use applications that don’t rely on always-on internet.
Download files, including music and videos, whenever possible, in addition to any cloud storage.
Locate resource sources and/or stored reserves close to you in physical space. Keep reserves of key materials, and of tradable resources.
Gather capital that cannot be confiscated or lost, especially human capital.
Avoid debt, especially debt that is not carefully bounded, is high interest or that could potentially balloon in size.
Stress test to trigger failure modes, so you know where those modes are, and also so you know what the consequences of failure are in context (and to remind yourself that they’re not so bad).
Avoid or minimize prioritizing tasks by urgency or deadline when possible.
Avoid priortizing tasks by value beyond a certain threshold, so long as you are confident that you have sufficient resources to complete all tasks above that threshold.
Don’t entirely hold off on engaging in high-value places even if you would prefer a higher-quality response. (e.g. the problem where you don’t respond to an email because it deserves a good response, so it never gets one at all).
(This seems fun and useful, these were my first brainstorms)
Digging deeper on any of these can also be interesting. For instance:
Keeping necessary materials and short-term inputs stored locally, to avoid exposure to supply chains or service outages.
“Locally” can mean a few things:
Physically proximate
Available without relying on a given form of transportation
Available without relying on a given legal method of transfer or control
Making your production process more general and less dependent on your specific supply chain can be a good substitute here too. If I only know one recipe for bread, and it involves using a new packet of yeast each time, I might stockpile yeast. But if I have more general knowledge, I can substitute into creating my own sourdough starter, or making sodabread, or obtaining yeast via a different method (e.g. friends, offering to buy from bakeries), or making a conventional-yeast starter once I notice a supply disruption. Of course, then I’m still assuming a water source and a heat source and flour and probably salt. But, many of those can be handled multiple ways too.
There’s definitely a lot of meat to dig into. Your mention of legal reminds me that having backups for when legal options fail, or the law is actively turned against you (for any reason) are also important.
What would you do if all of your accounts are frozen and you can’t use any credit cards or other electronic sources of money? This could happen due to something like identity theft, so it’s not even assuming legal trouble, let alone legal trouble you deserve.
What would you do if you needed to be off the grid entirely?
And the central point Benquo points to here, I think, is that in order to have security mindset your models must be made of gears. If your system does things you don’t understand, there’s no way to fix them when they break, or find workarounds to broken parts. If I’m going to need bread, ordinary paranoia might be having extra supplies or places to buy. To be secure, I’ll need to know how to find additional places to buy, and/or what makes bread making work, and so forth. The more specific or black box my plans are, the less chance I have to adapt to change, even non-hostile change.
Keeping necessary materials and short-term inputs stored locally, to avoid exposure to supply chains or service outages.
Build and use applications that don’t rely on always-on internet.
Download files, including music and videos, whenever possible, in addition to any cloud storage.
Locate resource sources and/or stored reserves close to you in physical space. Keep reserves of key materials, and of tradable resources.
Gather capital that cannot be confiscated or lost, especially human capital.
Avoid debt, especially debt that is not carefully bounded, is high interest or that could potentially balloon in size.
Stress test to trigger failure modes, so you know where those modes are, and also so you know what the consequences of failure are in context (and to remind yourself that they’re not so bad).
Avoid or minimize prioritizing tasks by urgency or deadline when possible.
Avoid priortizing tasks by value beyond a certain threshold, so long as you are confident that you have sufficient resources to complete all tasks above that threshold.
Don’t entirely hold off on engaging in high-value places even if you would prefer a higher-quality response. (e.g. the problem where you don’t respond to an email because it deserves a good response, so it never gets one at all).
(This seems fun and useful, these were my first brainstorms)
Digging deeper on any of these can also be interesting. For instance:
“Locally” can mean a few things:
Physically proximate
Available without relying on a given form of transportation
Available without relying on a given legal method of transfer or control
Making your production process more general and less dependent on your specific supply chain can be a good substitute here too. If I only know one recipe for bread, and it involves using a new packet of yeast each time, I might stockpile yeast. But if I have more general knowledge, I can substitute into creating my own sourdough starter, or making sodabread, or obtaining yeast via a different method (e.g. friends, offering to buy from bakeries), or making a conventional-yeast starter once I notice a supply disruption. Of course, then I’m still assuming a water source and a heat source and flour and probably salt. But, many of those can be handled multiple ways too.
There’s definitely a lot of meat to dig into. Your mention of legal reminds me that having backups for when legal options fail, or the law is actively turned against you (for any reason) are also important.
What would you do if all of your accounts are frozen and you can’t use any credit cards or other electronic sources of money? This could happen due to something like identity theft, so it’s not even assuming legal trouble, let alone legal trouble you deserve.
What would you do if you needed to be off the grid entirely?
And the central point Benquo points to here, I think, is that in order to have security mindset your models must be made of gears. If your system does things you don’t understand, there’s no way to fix them when they break, or find workarounds to broken parts. If I’m going to need bread, ordinary paranoia might be having extra supplies or places to buy. To be secure, I’ll need to know how to find additional places to buy, and/or what makes bread making work, and so forth. The more specific or black box my plans are, the less chance I have to adapt to change, even non-hostile change.