Polycrisis | Solidarity Prepping: If there is an apocalypse, then do it together

This unique exhibition lives up to the name of the Technical University of Berlin. There's a wind turbine you can build yourself with wooden rotor blades, several tables are filled with suitcases containing mobile water filtration systems, and next to them are tools for the rough work: a gasoline-powered circular saw and a hydraulic spreader. Even a mobile hospital has made it to the first floor of the university's mathematics building. No student final projects are being presented here; the event was hosted by the aid organization Cadus , which is currently working on disaster relief projects in Ukraine and Gaza , among other places, and the General Student Committee (Asta) of the TU Berlin. The first " Soliprepping " congress is taking place on the university premises this Saturday. The motto: "Face crises with solidarity." According to the organizers, 280 people have registered.

And this despite the fact that numerous associations and initiatives ignored the invitation. "The word 'prepping' still seems off-putting," says Anna-Lea Göhl of Cadus, who co-organized the conference. There are many people who have been prepping in solidarity for a long time, but they just don't call it that, says Göhl. "When you hear the word 'prepping', the first thing that comes to mind is the strange people in the bunker – but no one considers that food banks have been supporting people in crisis for decades."

Left-wing and right-wing prepping are, in a sense, opposites: While "survival prepping," which originated in the USA, focuses on individualism – political theorists Emily Ray and Robert Kirsch refer to this as "bunkerization" – solidarity prepping means strength through community. It's no surprise, then, that representatives from Berlin's Prinzessinengarten community garden are also on the podium at the conference. "Repair cafés, open workshops, urban gardening: such projects are also a form of solidarity prepping," says Anuscheh Amir-Khalili. Not only because they involve self-sufficiency, but also because networks of support are created.

Accordingly, "solidarity prepping" places a strong emphasis on communication. How do you stay in touch when the power goes out after a natural disaster? How do you organize yourself when the government cuts off mobile communications? Andreas Steinhauser of the Chaos Computer Club warned at the conference: Russia and its allies are attacking the digital infrastructure from the East, while dependence on US tech companies makes us vulnerable to blackmail attempts from the West; he added that shutting down mobile communications during domestic political tensions, such as in Serbia, Turkey, or Hong Kong, is no longer unthinkable given a further shift to the right in Central and Western Europe.

Liam Hurwitz carries a possible key for emergencies in his trouser pocket. The computer scientist from the University of Bremen pulls out a small device, barely larger than a key ring: a wireless computer based on "Lora" technology. This stands for long-range. With minimal power consumption, the technology enables communication over long distances – albeit only to a limited extent. "A text message is the level we're talking about here," explains Steinhauser. In other words: It's enough for a date; not much more than that.

With Lora, a decentralized "mesh network" can be created, in which each device acts as a receiver, transmitter, and amplifier. The low power consumption allows communication to be maintained with its own power supply. A balcony power plant with storage is therefore also a contribution to solar prepping, says Steinhauser.

In addition to the Lora radio, Steinhauser and Hurwitz offer further tips for emergencies: download offline maps to your phone and, ideally, the entire Wikipedia – without images, this takes up less storage space than ten HD movies. They say we should already try to break away from "Gamma," i.e. , Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta (Instagram, Facebook), Microsoft, and Apple . But how do you convince people of this? Digital freedom is laborious and impractical. Hurwitz knows this from his own experience. In 2019, he went on a "digital diet" and separated himself from "Big Tech." On the panel, he now asks whether such processes could be better undertaken collectively to make them easier. Soliprepping in a nutshell.