“Do you know when my favorite part of the day is?” my father asked me.
“No, when?” I replied.
“Going to sleep. Because at least then, the madness stops for a little while.”
When I tell people I spent my childhood escaping civilization because my dad believed the world was going to end, they sometimes respond with, “He might be right.”
I wince, because I’ve seen what fear of The End does to a life. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Before my time, my father was an engineer, then had a successful career in sales. He retired at 36 and began living The Life: nice house in California, beautiful wife, cute son, and all the time in the world to enjoy them. He was an avid cyclist, hiker, and passionate environmentalist.
And then he started listening to Alex Jones. He became convinced that They had a plan to kill us all.
Then I was born. His second son. Now he had two boys whom he loved more than anything in the world.
His concern for the safety of his family lit a fire beneath him that was never extinguished. He would do anything to keep us safe, and he made sure we knew that he was the only one who could.
Somewhere along the way, protection became indistinguishable from vigilance. Love became synonymous with constant alertness. To enjoy life was to be careless.
He didn’t just believe the world was dangerous. He believed that staying afraid was the same thing as staying faithful to the people he loved.
That impulse, born from love, consumed everything.
When I was six weeks old, we moved to the mountains to prepare for Y2K. When the world continued in the new millennium, new catalysts of the apocalypse emerged.
9/11, the Financial Crisis, COVID. It never ended. Existential threats were an everyday reality.
In “preparing” for them, we never lived in one place for more than a few years. My father was so consumed by alternative news cycles that he forgot to be a father.
His daily life became waking up, making a bowl of granola, then scrolling through his list of Truth Sources for hours, trying to “put the puzzle pieces together.”
I struggled to care about mundane goals like getting good grades. How could I, when our very lives were at stake?
I didn’t understand the extent of what my father believed, but I figured that he couldn’t be wrong about something he spent so much time learning about, so I went along for the ride.
His desperation peaked in the decision to buy and repair a 30-year old sailboat that our family of four would live on in the South Pacific. I was 15 and a sophomore in high school when my brother and I joined him for its maiden voyage over winter break.
We escaped the collapsing developed world under the cover of night from the Florida Keys with the compass set for Panama. I remember lying awake in the hull on our first night, docked in Havana, afraid.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t know if I would make it home alive. I saw a desperate man willing to do anything to keep his sons safe. And I began to doubt he could actually save us.
Every break in the boat fractured my view of him a little more. By the time I watched him frantically drill bolts into the hull to keep the boat in one piece as we crossed the Gulf, something had cracked.
It would take seven more years before I finally walked away, but the first seed of doubt had been planted.
Over those years, his obsession only deepened. One by one, he lost the people who mattered most: his friends, siblings, and wife. All while insisting that he would be proven right, that we would come crawling back when it all came true.
By then, I was no longer a child trying to understand his fears. I was an adult trying to build a life.
I had started a business and secured real clients. I was trying to follow his advice of being your own boss.
I wanted him to see that. To be proud of me.
Instead, he dismissed it. Businesses wouldn’t exist much longer, he said. Money would soon be worthless and there would be no clients left.
It wasn’t cruel. It was reflexive. Any ordinary achievement that other parents might celebrate was treated as denial of the reality of The End. Any success was irrelevant compared to survival.
I realized that fear didn’t just distort his view of the future. It made him unable to stand with me in the present.
I didn’t want to leave. I tried to set boundaries—no politics while spending time together, no sending me articles—but they never held. Finally, I gave him an ultimatum: “A relationship with me outside of these beliefs, or no relationship at all.”
He replied, “Ryan, you’re looking for a relationship. I’m trying to survive.”
Now, he lives by himself in the woods. And the last time I spoke with him, that’s what he said to me: “My favorite time of day is going to sleep, because at least then, the madness stops for a little while.”
My heart broke when I heard these words, and they crystallized the cost of fear to me: the joys of life itself.
But even after I walked away, the fear remained. Hypervigilant survivalism—always scanning for threats, preparing for the worst—became the water I swam in. I couldn’t imagine a life without fear, and took to thinking about problems big enough to justify constant alarm, like making life multi-planetary to reduce existential risk.
If you look hard enough, there is always something to fear.
Now, when someone responds to the story of my youth with the comment that my father might be right, or I hear warnings about AI risk or climate catastrophe, I’m conflicted.
Not because I think the risks are imaginary, but because I recognize the tone.
Fear doesn’t always wear the costume of paranoia. Often it sounds like wisdom, or even responsibility.
The most dangerous fear isn’t the loud kind. It’s the kind that convinces you that joy is naive and rest is irresponsible.
I get it. There’s no shortage of compelling reasons to believe the end is near. The apocalyptic prophecy is becoming mainstream, and it can feel naive to pretend the risks aren’t there.
Logic says to face it head-on and spend every waking hour working to reduce the risk. To push aside mundane moments—chances to connect with a loved one, or speak with a stranger—when there are pressing threats ahead.
The rational part of me agrees. It just makes sense.
The other part of me—the witness, the boy—wants to warn those warning: be very, very careful.
The question isn’t whether to take the risks seriously—it’s what that seriousness might cost you. There’s a way to engage with existential risk that preserves your capacity to love and connect. And there’s a way that hollows you out until your favorite time of day is going to sleep.
We can’t let fear for the future steal the present.
For me, this means faith. The belief that even if the worst happens—even if civilization ends, even if we all die—there’s something beyond this. That love and truth endure even when bodies don’t.
But faith isn’t the only way. It can also be as simple as paying attention to what’s actually here. The person sitting across from you. The meal you’re sharing.
The mundane moments that, in the end, are all we ever had.