To not want to buy property for fear of WW3?

[Vizella]

Hi all,

I’m finally getting to a stage where I’ve saved enough for a house deposit, earn well in a remote finance job and am willing to leave London to go to South Yorkshire and buy a house.

Then a niggling thought in my mind says, if your house is destroyed in WW3, all your savings will go down the drain and you will be left destitute.

I appreciate that it’s a crazy thought to have but Iran and Israel are at each other’s throats and Russia has no intention of backing out of Ukraine. When people had their cities bombed in the past, how did they survive?

Tell me if I’m being unreasonable? If so, why?

How are you planning on escaping and where to?

The banks won’t be open because if we get to the stage where anyone with a few quid and the right passport thinks it’s time to make a run for it, their staff will be sorting themselves out, not going into work. Even if they were, they wouldn’t let you withdraw thousands in cash because everyone would be doing it. And I can’t imagine that any commercial pilots or sailors would risk being blasted out of the sky or sea simply to save your neck. And where do you think would take you if you’re not a citizen?

If we get to that stage, we’re all buggered, so you may as well be in the comfort of your own home.

It’s really entertained me that in the event of WW3 your plan is to rock up in the US and instantly find the perfect safe house in a perfect location.

Ok op I’m going to go against the general consensus here. These are my thoughts:

Whilst I think it’s unlikely that there will be WW3, I think there’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment. I think that climate change and mass migration are a far bigger threat to us than war. The truth is that we don’t know what’s going to happen. I read in New Scientist that the world’s forests have recently been emitting more carbon than they’ve been absorbing. So essentially, unless the forest fires stop we may as well have no forest. That could create huge and quite immediate problems in the form of feedback loops. I’m not a scientist but that’s surely common sense?

So yes, your WW3 plan is quite amusing but in my opinion, going on with your life as if everything is normal is far more deluded. I don’t know whether you should buy a house but I don’t think it’s completely silly to keep a bit of flexibility in your plans. I mean, I don’t know what you’d do in this country except to drive to the north of Scotland and then starve.

Sorry for not telling you that you’re mad🤣

And also, America is a rather large place….I’m sure the op can find an area that doesn’t have tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes….🙄

Our nuclear subs are based in Scotland. Might be more of a target than even South Yorkshire!

And also, America is a rather large place….I’m sure the op can find an area that doesn’t have tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes….

Sure, but the OP would need to move there as soon as possible because if she waits till WW3 starts (or even looks like a real possibility) she won't be able to leave the UK at all...........

Better apply to US immigration now OP. Good luck with that........

But the house should survive!

Hi @Vizella I don't want you to think you're mad.

We've just bought our first house and I've had this thought too so you aren't completely alone in your thinking. I'm fully aware I catastrophise and am able to move these thoughts along eventually but yeah, have thought that myself.

The Pacific Coast is all earthquake prone. There's a super quake overdue in the Pacific NW and California is overdue for the big one. There has even been significant earthquakes in the Midwest and East coast. No where in the usa is completely earthquake free.

There are also sporadic hurricanes and occasional tornados (usually over water).

Or Pontefract 😂

Oh yes, Cascadia subduction zone is a great rabbit hole to explore!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone?wprov=sfla1

Ooh, thanks for that (genuinely)! 🤓

I'm a child of the seventies and spent my entire teenage years in the 1980s worried about WW3. I'm much more pragmatic now and, in the event of a nuclear apocalypse, I hope I won't survive the first wave. I'm laughing at the OP's idea of escaping to North America though. Surely that would be an equal target with Europe?
As for avoiding earthquakes, my SIL who lives on Vancouver island says the Big One is coming soon. She doesn't sleep with anything over her bed, the water tank and gas tank are strapped down and when we visited as few years ago, she admired a ceramic art piece I brought as a gift and said that one day all her nice things would break and be destroyed.

So many questions:

which part of America has no risk of those disadvantages?

do you think you will be the only person heading for this sweet spot?

how are you going to get there with a war going on?

why do you think you will be allowed into the country?

Apologies of course, I forgot the mythical third world war could indeed target any part of any country, for any spurious reason. I also lived in Sheffield for a bit so really should've remembered the history!

I think anyone who is considering fleeing nuclear war needs to read On The Beach by Neville Shute, and then consider the fact that nuclear bombs were much, much less powerful at the time it was written.

Or watch 'Threads' and see what the nuclear winter will be like across the entire world. Actually, 'Threads' is probably the last thing OP needs!

If there's a nuclear war, the planet is screwed (except, of course, the cockroaches and Keith Richards, as the old saying goes), and being killed outright will be the best thing.

if WW3 starts , you won’t be able to go down to your local branch of the Halifax and take out £20,000 in used tenners.

You can't live your life in fear. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow.

I am Jewish and know plenty of people in Israel who have bought property- they are fine. Most Israelis live in apartments as well! Even the flats without bomb shelter- while they are less desirable now, the last i checked, my sister in law is attempting to sublet her tiny studio flat (no bomb shelter) for the equivalent of £1k (it is in tel aviv). The rich/upper middle class in Israel mainly do own as it is a home owning country like the UK and I don't think they are disadvantaged by it at all.

Unless of course they bought land on the gaza border but that was always a risky punt (tragically). property prices have even increased slightly as the diaspora buy property there as a back up due to fears of antisemitism

In fact the people I know who have been forced out were renters (recent immigrants) as the difficult economic situation combined with increasing rents made the situation untenable.

Maybe, for those of us lucky enough to have gardens, we need to start building bunkers. While I wait for WW3, I could use it as a hobby room. I've seen similar things on some of George Clarke's property programmes.

I’ve been wondering about what happens to your mortgage during war. I’m sure I’d be too busy trying to protect my family and find food and water to be going out to work to ensure I can pay my mortgage. So if I can’t pay my mortgage due to war, would my house get repossessed?

Also, do you stop getting paid when you can’t work (such as if you had to flee your area)?

I don’t know if these are silly questions, so forgive my ignorance, but I’m genuinely fearful of WW3 starting, and would like to know.

https://www.boi.org.il/en/communication-and-publications/press-releases/2362024en/#:~:text=The%20existing%20program%2C%20which%20is,to%20defined%20amounts%20in%20their

"With the aim of helping customers deal with the implications of the Swords of Iron War, about a week after the outbreak of the war, the Bank of Israel announced a comprehensive program to ease the burden of credit and fees, which was adopted by the banks. A few weeks after the war started, and in view of the fact that residents of the north were also evacuated from their homes, the program was expanded to include residents of the north. In view of the continuation of the war, in December 2023, the Bank of Israel announced a further three-month extension of the program, which was adopted by the banks, and expanded the program to additional population groups. In March 2024, based on the security situation and with a desire to provide special leniencies to soldiers in the reserve forces, the Bank of Israel announced a further extension and expansion of the program.

The existing program, which is valid until June 30, 2024, enables first-degree customers[1]—people directly affected by the war—to defer loan and mortgage repayments[2] with no interest or fees, receive and exemption from most fees, and receive an exemption from interest on overdrafts to defined amounts in their current accounts—all for a period of 3 months from the time they join the program. All other customers—second-degree customers—have the option of deferring loan and mortgage repayments with no fees for a period of three months, with the deferred payments bearing interest that shall not exceed the interest rate in the loan contract."

I imagine that as a developed country and also as a country with nuclear weapons and defense systems, our approach would be more like Israel. There would be men and women going to war and so their mortgages would need to be paid during that time.

I hope so, I’m shopping in Stirling right now !! 🤣

@Opalfleur2025

Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve read your message, but will read it through again later, and read the attachment.

"no better off than a poor person": not going for empathy,are you?🙃

'Poor people' may actually be at an advantage in the post-apocalyptic world; they will be used to living frugally and improvising, and they won't be psychologically devastated to find that the nearest Waitrose is now a 200ft radioactive crater.