The first 6 months: a growing season, health, trade and winter shelter

Plan calories first (grain, potatoes, beans, roots), compost and rotate, preserve the harvest at once, stack firewood for the whole winter, keep a medical log, and trade fairly with neighbouring groups.

Part of Day Zero, the plan for an AI-related crisis that gets out of control. Why it exists. General information, not medical advice: how these guides are reviewed.

By month two the stored food starts running out. Months 2 to 6 decide whether the group feeds itself through the next winter.

Food: one real growing season

• Plan calories first: potatoes, wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize, beans, squash, root vegetables. Greens give vitamins but not enough energy.
• Rule of thumb: a person needs roughly 2,000 to 2,500 kcal a day. One adult needs the produce of about 500 to 1,000 m² of well-managed intensive beds with grain or potatoes as the base, much more with dry-land grain. Start with beds you can manage; expand each season.
• Compost everything. Rotate crops. Mulch to hold water. Save seed from your best plants every year.
• Keep chickens, rabbits or goats only if you can feed them without taking food from people.
• Preserve the harvest the day it comes: drying racks, salt, smoking, root cellar, jars sealed with salt or vinegar. See food and agriculture.
• Seeds you save from open-pollinated varieties grow true; seeds from hybrids do not. See what to store.

Health

• Keep a medical log: who has what, doses, expiry. Plan for childbirth, broken bones, dental pain and chronic illness: these are the things that go wrong.
• Vaccination, antibiotics, insulin and dialysis cannot be replaced: use stock carefully for the people who need them most, and plan for the day it ends.
• Practice hygiene as culture: washing hands, safe cooking, clean water. It saves more lives than any medicine you hold.

Shelter and energy

• Stock firewood for the full winter before autumn. Insulate and repair.
• Small solar panels with a battery run lights, a radio and a reader (see reader power). A water wheel or wind pump is a project, not a task for week one.

Skills and tools

• Learn and teach: basic carpentry, sewing, leatherwork, pottery, simple blacksmithing, soap, rope, brick or cob building. Each one makes the group less dependent on dwindling salvage.
• Children and teenagers learn alongside: reading, mathematics, practical work. Education is part of survival, not a luxury.

Trade, other groups and travel

• Make contact with neighbouring groups. Agree on peaceful trade and information sharing: water sources, disease, hazards, seeds, skills.
• Take care with strangers: meet in the open, keep weapons out of sight but ready, never walk alone. Be fair; reputation lasts longer than any stock.
• A market day with simple barter (labour, tools, seed, food, cloth) rebuilds trust and gets scarce skills moving.

Check at six months

1. A first harvest in, stored, and enough planned to last the winter.
2. Fuel stacked, shelter sound.
3. Everyone's health known; medicine rationed on a plan.
4. Tools repaired; at least two people for every key skill.
5. Neighbours known, and a way to warn each other.

Next: the first year.