Shit happens. That’s well-established. So here’s the question: is one morally obliged to prepare for shit to happen, in order to mitigate the shit? I’m not thrilled by the notion of moral obligations, but a lot of people are — and I think that generally held morals do indicate an obligation to prepare for the shit to hit the fan.

Let’s take, as an example, last year’s Vancouver windstorms. A lot of people lost power and (municipal) water for up to a week. So here’s the example questions: First, can you survive for a week without power or water, in the middle of winter? Second, should you be expected to be able to do so?

I submit that the answer to the second question is “yes”.

I’ll start with fundamental social bonds. I’ll presume that each of my readers loves, and is loved, by someone, be it friends, family, pets, or s/h/itself. If you die, you hurt your loved ones. (I surely don’t want any of my friends or family to die, and I presume they feel the same way.) It’s not reasonable to expect to be able to live without water for a week. Do the math. If you love people who love you, I think you’re obliged to take at least basic, reasonable steps to make sure that you don’t die a stupid, preventable death. Steps like storing a few days’ worth of food, water, heat, and light.

That, in itself, ought to be enough for the vast majority of people (and by construction, no-one gives a shit about the people it doesn’t cover). There are, however, more reasons to take a few small steps to prepare for disaster.

One of the things that “can’t happen here”, but did nevertheless, last year was widespread panic-buying (mostly of bottled water) and the inevitable violence over who gets the last flat of Evian. Here’s the problem: n people need water, but the stores only have enough water for m < n people. (Violence ensues.) The government tells people “Oh, you can drink tap water, you just need to boil it first” — but the power’s out, so people without (for example) camping stoves can’t actually boil water.

Now, every person who has stockpiled a week’s worth of water can use it to support themselves and their loved ones (see above). But more than that, every person with a stockpile of water is one fewer person fighting for that last flat of bottled water. Once m = n in our (admittedly simplified) scenario above, nobody has to fight over water: everyone who hasn’t prepared ahead of time can get the stuff they need. (Therefore, fewer fistfights, fewer people going home empty-handed.)

The more people prepare for the shit to hit the fan, the fewer people come home empty-handed if and when the shit does hit the fan. On a more personal level, if you, dear reader, stock up on “beans, batteries, and band-aids” ahead of time, you’ll leave enough inventory on store shelves for some other needy person to buy what they need in a panic at the last minute. If you think you have an obligation to help J. Random Unprepared Asshole out there… well, that translates into an immediate obligation to prepare for disaster ahead of time. (If not, you’re probably self-interested — enlightened or otherwise — in which case see “don’t get yourself dead”, above.)

Note that by buying your supplies before the shit hits the fan, you aren’t taking food out of the mouths of those who aren’t as prepared as you are: the inventory you buy will be replaced (supply and demand: it works, bitches). In fact, if enoug people keep buying staples (by which I mean necessary goods, like pork and rice, not little metal brackets), it may convince the inventory mavens to supply more staples, and there will be more staples for people who need them when the SHTF.

So now we have a purely self-interested reason to prepare for the shit to hit the fan (not getting dead/not hurting loved ones by getting dead) and a more broadly social reason to prepare (leaving more last-minute emergency supplies for others). But let’s suppose you’re a Che Guevara tee-shirt-wearing asshole socialist, and you only care about other people in the most abstract possible way. (We’ll suppose that, despite your tee-shirt, you aren’t actually a Stalinist or a Maoist, and you do actually care about other people, even if you do so only in the abstract.) Well, that’s also easy to accommodate.

Basically, the more staples you have, the more staples you can afford to give away. (Charity; remember that? Charity is like taxes, only no-one’s forcing you to pay up at gunpoint.) If you’re a good socialist of not entirely negligible means (and that encompasses every socialist I’ve ever met, including — and especially — myself eight years ago) you have an obligation to your fellow huddled masses to buy some extra beans, batteries, and band-aids, and give to each according to his needs.

Let’s go further. Suppose you don’t have quite enough income to buy extra stuff (and let’s forget the Lexus in your driveway for the moment — that’s, like, totally different!). By stocking up just enough to take care of yourself and your immediate family, you leave more charity for others. This is basically the same argument as “buy your goods before the shit hits the fan” above, only without relying upon that filthy mechanism of (shudder!) free-market capitalism.

With these three principles in mind:

1. Not hurting your loved ones by getting stupidly dead
2. Leaving supply for others by stocking up ahead of time
3. Stocking sufficient goods to give some away in charity

I can’t quite see how anyone who has thought about the issue and consciously refuses to prepare for the shit to hit the fan ahead of time is not an asshole.