I don't know about you, but my community came together in those moments. When TP was hard to buy, we shared among ourselves. When members in our community discovered they had issues that prevented them from taking the vaccine safely, we went back to masking when meeting to keep them safe. And so on and so on.

I think maybe you're thinking of a different definition of "community connections" than the parent poster. It's not _literally everyone around you,_ but the people around you that you trust and support and who will support you. Get as many of those as you can, as high quality as you can.

It's beneficial even if the world _doesn't_ go to shit, too! =)

That was actually more of a demonstration of the utter lack of community in our society, among other things.

That's the point. In many respects, community life is just a polite facade.

I think both sides of this thread agree that most of us (in the US at least) don’t have a robust community in the “community resilience” sense.

The only disagreement I think is in the definition of community. We could either say that community is just, like, our extended circle of acquaintances; we’ve all got one and it isn’t very robust against disasters. Or we could say that a resilient community is some deeper thing on which people can lean in a disaster, but which needs to be carefully tended to, and most of us lack.

The latter is, I think, what the original poster meant.

Yes, that was what I was going for. If you consider your community to be only the likeminded, cooperative people you know and associate with and rely on for help, then of course "your community" is great. I was talking about the greater community: the full population of your town, neighborhood and/or surrounding neighborhoods, and I'd estimate (depending on where in the country) a good 50% showed their counterproductive, selfish, belligerent side during COVID. Since we collectively haven't learned anything from our mistakes, I would expect the same behavior during the next disaster.

I think it is not just a matter of what you consider your community. The comment was suggesting building that community of reliable and likeminded people. It takes work, it is part of the “prep.” I certainly haven’t done it. But of course the suggestion must be to build the good type of community.

I see. I thought you were refuting the advice that having community is a major factor in resiliency - you were actually saying, "lol good luck having community in the modern world." Which... yeah : /

that's the parents point though

Maybe that is what you get when you replace social obligation with money and apps. That kind of existence was common in America and increased during covid. And it is a terrible model for situations where people actually need each other in a reciprocal way.

In a real disaster, there won’t be any buying or selling

I didn't have either of those issues in my community, I'm sorry yours had those issues. In ours we formed bubbles, shared food, cooked meals together, and played an absolutely stunning volume of retro multiplayer games. Covid was awful but I think I'll always fondly remember some of those nights.

this

I lived in a small condo complex during the early pandemic (~30 units, around 100 people total including kids) and COVID brought everyone together -- people sharing food/supplies (even elusive toilet paper), offering to make grocery runs for those that can't go themselves, one lady sewed enough homemade masks for everyone using her curtains.

I'd rarely met the neighbors before then, but COVID really brought everyone together.

Though I lived in a pretty liberal and well educated area, not many anti-vaxxers around where I lived.

I don't think anyone's denying that American society doesn't create strong communities, I think they are advocating to work towards creating one around you.