Escaping the Global Industrial Death Cult

A Guide for Living and Resisting in the Liminal Era

We are in the in-between. One foot in the disintegrating world of asphalt and fossil fuels, the other searching for solid ground in a culture not yet born. The dominant society that drills, devours, and denies shows signs of dying, but is still on a killing spree. It kills forests, rivers, cultures, languages, bodies, and dreams. It is a death cult dressed in the robes of progress and reason, and it has brought us to the brink of ecological collapse and spiritual disintegration.

Industrial civilization, supercharged by neoliberal capitalism, is anti-life. It cannot be reformed because its foundations are built on extraction, domination, and control. To make matters worse, neoliberalism has been consolidating wealth and power, gutting public life, and rendering the natural world a commodity for my entire lifetime.

No doubt you are here reading this because you see the myths for the controlling lies they are. So how do you escape the cult? You want to run, but is there anywhere to go? Anywhere to hide?

Unfortunately it’s practically everywhere. Millions remain caught in the trance, clinging to jobs that kill their spirits or tech that anesthetizes their grief. They are taught to fear the collapse of the empire as an end to life, when it is clearly the opposite.

To be in the liminal is to know the horror that what is being lost ecologically is devastating. Yet you may not know what to do next. If you are looking for a glimpse of another way, thank you. Don’t give up.

The place we begin is with Indigenous knowledge systems rooted in reciprocity; communities practicing mutual aid and land defense; and individuals learning to listen again to wind, soil, and memory.

This liminal space is not passive. Perhaps we could say it is our rite of passage. For those of us who reject the death cult and its myths… let us look upon this rite as a sacred journey of creating a culture that serves life, not capital. A culture our descendants can be proud of, and proud of us for taking the first steps to create.

*Author’s Note: Not everyone reading will believe there is a beyond collapse. Some view the ecological tragedies as unrecoverable, particularly for humans. Even if you are in that camp, we have whatever time we have left. That is not for us to decide. Either way, we can choose how to live in that time. We can choose to participate in a cultural being of meaning, mutual aid and defiance for however long we live. We resist not because we know we will win, but because it is the right thing to do.

First Steps To Escaping The Cult

This liminal space is just the beginning, but it is perhaps the most difficult. There’s no spiritual and cultural “infrastructure” if you will. No support systems. No escape plan. We have to plan and make them ourselves.

On top of that, there’s a major sense of urgency. The death cult is relentlessly murdering the planet. Consequently the moment demands action. What we do now, amidst collapse, sets the foundation for what might come after.

Lest we forget, our goal is not about salvaging the old system. That can’t be done. It’s about severing ourselves from it. Let’s start there.

1. Psychological Liberation

The first terrain of resistance is our own minds. Capitalism and industrialism do not merely control landscapes, they colonize consciousness. They teach us to see the world as dead matter, to equate value with productivity, to treat relationships as transactions. They make us forget how to feel, how to grieve, how to listen.

To begin the escape, we must unlearn the myths. Obedience is not virtue. Consumption does not bring fulfillment. Our culture isn’t superior. We are not separate from the Earth.

This deprogramming requires grief. It requires rage. It requires sitting with the pain of what has been lost and the horror of what continues. But it also opens the door to remembering our bodies, our ancestors, landcestors, the more-than-human voices all around us. The work of liberation begins when we reclaim the sacredness of our rage, the fire of our refusal, and the memory of our place within the web of life.

Learn the geology, watersheds, flora and fauna. Know them better than you know ad jingles and branding, or trivia about Friends.

Learn about the history of the people who lived where you live. Learn from their wisdom. Remember atrocities, erasure and displacement.

Learn how the land has been changed by industrial civilization.

2. Reclaim Autonomy and Locality

The global system has made us dependent on machines, corporations, and distant bureaucracies for the basics of life. This is strategic. Dependency ensures obedience.

We must reverse this process.

Begin where you are:

• Grow food, however you can, whether on windowsills, in yards, in community gardens or even guerrilla gardening.

• Learn to harvest rain, build soil, mend clothes, and preserve food.

• Reduce reliance on fossil fuels, not as purity politics but as strategic withdrawal. Ride a bike and walk more.

• Form relationships rooted in trust and reciprocity.

Every act of reclamation of food, water, shelter, or community is a blow against the death cult. The goal is not self-sufficiency in the neoliberal sense, but interdependence rooted in place. It is capacity building away from the empire.

What it isn’t and shouldn’t be is virtue signaling. It shouldn’t be content for a lifestyle influencer. If done with this in mind, what these acts can be is some of the most disobedient, subversive acts of resistance. And you can start doing them today.

3. Cultivate a Culture of Resistance

Let’s say what needs saying. Those in power don’t want this new culture. Their wealth and power are dependent on the current system of coercion. Acting to create a new culture can draw the ire of those in power and even those around us.

Building community is probably the hardest part of this part of this journey. Community has been eroded for decades, if not longer, in this culture.

You’ll have to begin somewhere. That’s going to be condition based. My advice is to meet people where they are. They may not be ready to start an anarchical commune. You may not be ready for that either. Focus on whatever actions that will help you build networks of meaning, support, and defiance.

I started a hiking club where the focus is on carrying weight in our backpacks as we walk in natural spaces. We chat and tell stories about our experiences with the land and what’s happening to it.

Some will be way beyond this point of community building. Others will be new to this. It doesn’t matter. We are all on the journey. What’s important is taking action where you are.

Let’s consider action in a taxonomy. I find this chart to be an enormous help in identifying this taxonomy.

As you can see, much of what we’ve discussed so far falls under acts of omission and commission. Some of it is noncooperation, and some of it is capacity building.

• Start or support free community fridges, free stores, and bake sales to redistribute food and supplies.

• Join or form mutual aid networks: cook meals, provide childcare, share transportation, fundraise for neighbors.

• Launch skill-sharing projects: tool libraries, repair cafés, clothing mending circles, and bike repair collectives.

• Support harm-reduction initiatives: distribute clean air filters, offer overdose prevention training, or host community pop-up clinics.

• Facilitate political education: host book clubs, teach-ins, film nights, and study groups focused on land, labor, and liberation.

• Organize rent strikes or support tenant unions.

• Offer emotional care: start listening circles, grief groups, or healing justice practices rooted in communal support.

When we move over to actions of commission, we see some above ground (usually legal) actions, both direct and indirect. Like writing on Substack. Or attending a protest. Engaging in land restoration projects and environmental protection.

Among the confrontational actions are also undergound activities as well as legal above ground activities.

• Sabotage systems that harm your landbase.

• Protect those who resist—legally, physically, emotionally.

With that in mind… let’s remember this is about survival. It is about fidelity to the Earth. Both aboveground and underground tactics are necessary in this struggle. Not everyone can do everything, but everyone can do something.

Incrementalism isn’t going to save us. Reform isn’t our rapture. We cannot negotiate with those who destroy the Earth. We have to stop them. This is perhaps our largest hurdle in this delicate stage of coming home.

We owe our lives to this beautiful sacred planet we live on. We wouldn’t exist without her verdant ecosystems. We owe her our allegiance and protection. It’s important to come at that with love. Any of us would risk our lives to protect a loved one, especially a child, from abuse and harm at the hands of another. We’d step in. And that’s what we must ask of ourselves now, for Earth.

Beyond The Beginning

We have no crystal balls. We cannot know what will be. Que sera sera. But we can begin with the end in mind. With a vision.

This post is not the whole blueprint. It’s the beginning of a long crossing from the ruins of a culture that feeds on death toward something rooted in life. The immediate steps of unlearning the myths, reclaiming our autonomy, and building mutual aid not only help us live more meaningful lives, but help us build capacity to survive without empire. They are the early gestures of a new way of being.

Beyond these first acts lies deeper work.

We must build on these initial acts and create communities that can endure in the form of decentralized, self-sustaining collectives grounded in mutual aid, ecological restoration, and anti-authoritarian values. These will draw from the deep wells of Indigenous knowledge, permaculture, and ancestral technologies of care.

We will need to dismantle what harms… pipelines that strangle rivers, surveillance tech that polices our breath, corporate farms that poison the soil. This means defending land defenders. It means disrupting the infrastructure of extraction wherever it cuts across life.

And further still on the other side of collapse, we must plant something that can grow.

A culture where the Earth is teacher and kin, not resource. A cosmology not of dominance and endless growth, but of limits, reciprocity, and reverence. We will need stories that do not lie. Stories that tell us we belong, that we are not alone, that our hands were made for more than keyboards and control panels.

But that’s the long path.

Right now, we begin. We step out of paralysis. We refuse to comply. We feed each other. We gather. We remember. And in doing so, we lay the first stones of the bridge that will carry us across the abyss.

The rest will come. But only if we walk.