Historic, recent and contemporary manifestations of future_preparedness and related fields.

• Notes from Joi Ito's Resiliency, Risk, and a Good Compass: Tools for the Coming Chaos
• Taleb's Rules: A number of guidelines to create systems which are less fragile during exposure to black swan events (aka taleb robustness)
• Permaculture Design Principles in pdf

Nista Nas Ne smije Iznenaditi: Živimo kao da će vječno biti mir, a pripremajmo se kao da će sutra rat – Tito

• Nista Nas Ne smije Iznenaditi 'Nothing can surprise us' - cit /country wide catastrophe exercises organised by ONO i DSZ (Opstenarodna odbrana i drustvena samozastita, translation: 'Nation wide defence and social self protection committee') for the military, police, health system, but also civilians (including children) in former Yugoslavia.

• Historic document from 1978: preparing for NNNi by a university: http://orion.fesb.hr/DotNetNuke/Portals/0/docs/Listovi/NNNI_78_ratno_izdanje/FESB_NNNI_78.pdf

• The interesting thing about NNNI was that participants often had nothing in common: small entrepreneurs, CEOs, smugglers, drunks, and others whom we wouldn't see except for the day of the exercise… - Ono sto je u vjezbama Nista nas ne smije iznenaditi bilo zanimljivo jest cinjenica da su sudjelovali ljudi iz nasih mjesnih zajednica koji inace nisu imali nista zajednicko: sitni privatnici, direktori preduzeca, sverceri, pijanci, besposlicari i oni koje nikad ne bismo vidjali osim na dan vjezbe. Svih drugih dana u godini takvi su ostajali zatvoreni izmedju svoja cetiri zida ili su se bavili nekim poslovima o kojima do danas nista nismo saznali.
• http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/115/citanka15.htm

See also: http://lib.fo.am/nnni

The website of BOS/FIB (Brusselse Onafhankelijke Strijdkrachten/ Forces Indépendantes Bruxelloises) creating photographic, fictional war situations if Belgium would engage in a civil war. They proclame to be ready and defend the Brusseleer and Brussels as an independent area with dutch-speaking and french-speaking multicultural ethnicities.

http://www.bosfib.be/home.php

Eucatastrophe is a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien which refers to the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensure that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible doom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucatastrophe

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace…

If we take a step back and more generally consider the issue of partitioned versus connected systems, partitioned systems are more stable, and connected systems are both more vulnerable and have more opportunities for collective action. Vulnerability (fragility) is connectivity without responsiveness. Responsiveness enables connectivity to lead to opportunity. If collective action can be employed to address threats, or to take advantage of opportunities, then the vulnerability can be mitigated and outweighed by the benefits. This is the basic relationship between the idea of sensitivity as we described it and your concept of antifragility. –Yaneer Bar-Yam

Buddhist philosphy and lifestyle have - over the centuries - developed a gentle yet resilient way of approaching uncertainty, discomfort and calamity, as well as exhaltation, happiness and excitement. The basic idea is that we have to be able to live in the present moment, no matter what it brings. It means dropping our expectations, hopes and wishes and be open to what life brings about - whether positive, negative or neutral. We should be able to face whatever situation with compassion and equanimity - qualities that enable us to observe, think and act clearly and effectively, without emotional turmoil. Here are a few buddhist (and related) teachings on how to face uncertainty without fear or aggression:

• Pema Chödrön: A teaching on becoming more comfortable with uncertainty in ourselves and the world, focusing on tonglen en metta meditation practices comfortable_with_uncertainty
• Chögyam Trungpa: A small booklet on the qualities and practices of a 'Shambala warrior' - a person able to face, know and smile at fear, including meditative exercises such as the warrior breath: http://lib.fo.am/smile_at_fear
• Thich Nhat Hanh: A short teaching on the art of flower arranging, or metaphorically the art of creating order and beauty in the chaotic environment around you. http://lib.fo.am/flower_arranging
• Lü Tung-Pin: The classic Taoist teaching on 'turning the light around' and being able to observe the chaotic thoughts and emotions, while resting in awareness: http://lib.fo.am/golden_flower
• Jon Kabat-Zinn: Notes from the audiobook Coming to Our Senses by the foremost mindfulness teacher and psychiatrist Kabat-Zinn, about the value of mindfulness in healing ourselves and the world: http://lib.fo.am/coming_to_our_senses
• Leonard Koren: Wabi-Sabi could be seen as a 'resilient aesthetics' - embracing change and decay as aesthetic qualities: http://lib.fo.am/wabi_sabi
• naikan: An introspective technique in which the practitioner looks at his/her life through relationships with people.

Survivalist Green: notes about how surviving doesn't have to be so bad

“The future is a process, not a theme park.”- Bruce Sterling quoted from: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006811.html

Smart Places and Spatial Interventions http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//004292.html

Critical Design, takes a critical theory based approach to design. Popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby through their firm, Dunne & Raby. Critical design uses designed artifacts as an embodied critique or commentary on consumer culture. Both the designed artifact (and subsequent use) and the process of designing such an artifact causes reflection on existing values, mores, and practices in a culture. A critical design will often challenge its audience's preconceptions and expectations thereby provoking new ways of thinking about the object, its use, and the surrounding environment. Critical Designers generally believe design that provokes, inspires, makes us think, and questions fundamental assumptions can make a valuable contribution to debates about the role technology plays in everyday life.

Speculative, science, design fiction - ways of exploring the probable and improbable futures:

Speculative literature is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to horror to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern myth-making and more.

• http://www.speculativeliterature.org/
• http://www.squidoo.com/speculativefiction
• http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/09/science-fiction-as-foresight.html

Speculative Design for a jesusautobot from Theun Karelse

Some insights from an otherwise quite dreadful reality TV series The Colony about surviving disasters.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/colony/

• Future-making in film & storytelling
• Prototyping techniques and personal fabrication (fabbing)
• World building games and open source world building tools
• Scenaric Thinking, framing and visualizations – open source scenario planning tools, info-vis