An episode of 80s sitcom Family Ties had one of its insufferable telegenic offspring eerily anticipating today’s Thunberg Jugend. Youngest child, Jennifer Keaton, jumps on the green-left doom-scenario of the day, nuclear winter, and writes an apocalyptic essay that sends her teacher screaming to a remote “island with sheep”.
You guessed it: New Zealand.
The green-left don’t really “do” nuclear winter any more, though. It’s the apocalypse equivalent of the safari suit or velvet loon pants. Climate change is where it’s at, Boomer.
But New Zealand remains a favoured bolt-hole for the doom-addicted green-left.
If you have ever considered your zombie apocalypse survival plan, you’ve almost certainly concluded that the best place to be to survive the end-of-the-world event is somewhere isolated, and preferably surrounded by water. As it turns out, science agrees with you — it’s just that the event threatening our survival isn’t a zombie takeover; it’s climate change.
Anyone who actually claims that climate change is “threatening our survival” can instantly be dismissed from the adult conversation. Nowhere in the serious scientific literature is such a ridiculous claim ever made. In fact, even the IPCC’s most scaremongering scenarios tacitly anticipate humans flourishing and multiplying as far as into the future the climate models can supposedly see.
But this nonsense does get something right: isolated places surrounded by water have superb natural advantages when it comes to events sweeping the larger world. From climate change to pandemics.
Islands and other sparsely populated, remote locations are the best places to post up for the end times[…]
According to researchers, New Zealand, specifically, is the best location to live in as climate change rears its ugly head. It’s an unsurprising choice, as the country checks a lot of boxes for survivalists: It’s a remote island with vast, largely untouched landscapes that, in a survival scenario, amount to untapped resources. And it seems there’s some agreement about New Zealand’s merits when it comes to potential global societal collapse[…]
If New Zealand starts to fill up before you get there, the second-best spot, per the report, is just a short swim over in Tasmania, a small Australian island.
By just the merest coincidence, New Zealand and Tasmania have both been largely untouched by the Wuhan virus pandemic.
Anyone who wants to attribute New Zealand’s luck to some magical quality of its prime minister must likewise admit that Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein is nothing short of a demigod among politicians: Tasmania’s infections and deaths, both in whole numbers and per capita, are the merest fraction of New Zealand’s.
Or perhaps Tasmania and New Zealand remaining serene and untouched by world-shaking events has everything to do with geography and less with – indeed, in spite of – their leaders.
The other nations ranked highest for “survivability” are, notably, also islands. Iceland leads the laggards, being, like Tasmania and New Zealand, remote and low-populated (although even more in-bred, and with fewer sheep to turn to on lonely nights).
New Zealand has long lurked at the fringes of the Western conscience as “Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart”. Tasmania, when the rest of the world has even heard of it, has held a similar fascination for the elites. Charles Darwin dropped in, and it was of course a jumping-off point for the famous Antarctic explorers. Even diva Sarah Bernhardt visited the remote Tasmanian west coast. When Hollywood execs wanted an obscure, exotic point of origin as a cover story for Merle Oberon’s déclassé background, they put about the lie that she was born in Tasmania.
Tasmania claimed the silver medal in the survival Olympics thanks to its thriving agricultural infrastructure, which is built to sustain if everything goes to shit. That said, it’s a small island that likely can’t support a huge population uptick, so don’t expect to be greeted like a hero when you show up as the world is ending.
Tasmanians are already pretty antsy about the recent influx of people fleeing Covid-restricted Mainland states. I’m not so sure that Kiwis are likewise going to remain too sanguine about global elites treating the Shaky Isles as their personal bolt-hole.
Silicon Valley billionaires have been eyeing the island for years as a potential outpost in case things go to hell. According to a report from The Guardian, people like Peter Thiel and several cryptocurrency millionaires have already started buying up property and building bunkers in the country. It’s something to keep in mind if you move to New Zealand: Sure, you might survive climate change, but think of who your neighbors would be.
Mic
Yeah… I think I’d rather take my chances with climate change, thanks.
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