Doomsday Seekers

 Nothing good ever happens on patch Tuesday, but nobody expected this. The few who did were called crazy - Luddites, technophobes, dinosaurs, and sometimes boomers. What nobody quite expected was for the end of days to be ushered in like a thief in the night, in digital form. The AIpocalypse came, and people just sort of shrugged, at least until it affected them. Conquest The first horseman hid in plain sight. The AI industry giants loudly declared 'AI is this generation's industrial revolution!' At first, most people shrugged and stuck to their usual routine. This too shall pass, they thought, and went on with their lives. Still, 'early adopters' - Conquest's demonic army - quietly sang AI's praises. Over time, AI was suddenly everywhere, whether asked for or not. Your vending machine developed a personality. Your shopping assistant helped you troubleshoot a Python script. Psychologists were abandoned as LLMs took their place. All those sites the AIs traine...

Every January, people decide who they are going to be. They are going to eat better. Exercise more. Be more organized. Finally deal with that thing they have been ignoring since October. Somewhere in that ritual is a quieter resolution. One that rarely makes it onto a list. Maybe this is the year I finally get a little more prepared. Not because anything is happening. Not because the world is ending next week, darn the luck. Just because it feels like a reasonable year to stop thinking about it abstractly and start thinking about it in concrete terms. The Prepper Resolution Nobody Announces Preparedness rarely starts with dramatic moves. I'll talk about work briefly here and say most experts agree: Stage 1 incident response planning is, well, preparedness. If you guessed that, you deserve an MRE. Or maybe a life straw. It does not begin with bunkers or off-grid fantasies. It usually begins with a vague sense that you should probably have your act together a bit more than you...