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The original was posted on /r/collapse by /u/jonathanfv on 2023-10-07 02:08:43.

Hi everyone. I wanted to share something that I knew for a long time, but that I was reminded of earlier this week. I currently live over 4000 km away from where I was born, where my entire family still lives. I left in 2009, on foot, knowing that I would be gone for years. That year, I thought this might be the last Christmas I would ever spend with my mom, and I was correct, because she died a few years after. This confirmed the distance was real.

Do you know what else might make the distance real? Breakdowns in communication systems. Cessation of civilian airplane flights. Degradation of roads making them impassible. Great reduction in ocean traffic. The apparition of huge areas of land where there is no food and/or no fresh water to drink, and no fuel for vehicles.

All of these things will act as barriers, and those barriers will be very difficult to pass. Attempting to do so will result in many people’s deaths. When collapse is at an advanced enough stage, if you live far from your loved ones, a time might come when you might see them or talk to them for the last time ever, and then you’ll have no idea what happens to them. Even finding them might be difficult. With communications breaking down, even if you make your way across the barriers mentioned above, the people you are looking for might have moved.

Who else here lives very far from their hometown? Is this topic something you have reflected about? If you built a life abroad, are you aware that if things get bad enough in your lifetime, you will either be forced to choose who to have by your side and who to maybe never see ever again, or whatever happens will dictate it for you.

Personally, I’ve been considering living where I’m at for a couple more years, save my money, and maybe move somewhere else again, somewhere more affordable with a different culture. But then, I’d be even further away from my family, and I would be separated from them by more than land, which makes reaching them even less likely should mass transportation collapse. So I’m thinking, maybe I should stay where I’m at.

Edit: I forgot to write it, but distance also brings the question that if many of us will die young from collapse, who will you die next to? Do you ever ask yourself that? If you die from it, who do you last want to see? Tough to decide, huh.