Where is the best place to build a very small settlement with at least a century of drought avoidance in mind?

Question

Where is the best place to build a very small settlement with at least a century of drought avoidance in mind?

Answer 1

If you are considering living "off the grid" and growing crops and such, the suggestion to live on the westward side of a mountain range, specifically the Cascades, is very bad advice.  The growing season for grain crops is Western Washington is too short to do you any good, with very wet springs that will rot the grain in the ground.  Winter wheat will get washed away by the heavy winter rains.  Oddly, summer is extremely dry in Western Washington, so you would have to irrigate.  There is a reason they grow a lot of wheat in east of the Cascades but almost none to the west.  Western Washington is dairy country.

You might be able to make a go of it if you were willing to modify your diet to get your starch from something other than grains, potatoes for instance do quite well here in the lowlands (I'm not sure about higher elevations).  There is little agriculture on the Olympic Penninsula mainly because on the east side there is too much rain and on the west there is no arable land to speak of (they do a little in the Dungeness Valley, but that is in the rain shadow of the Olympics and receives half the rainfall per year of Seattle).  

The bottom line is that agriculture requires a consistent climate, drought has felled many civilizations, and no region of the globe is immune to drought over a 100-yr period since even two years of drought is death if you are subsistence farming (which you will be if you aren't mechanized and tilling only a handful of acres per year of crops).  The sad unfortunate truth is that there is no way to move yourself out of harms way in terms of coming environmental changes, and any disruptions of society they will cause.  Humans are social animals and we will live, or die, based on our cooperation, or lack thereof, as a community.  That is the reality.

Answer 2

I think Bahrain, Chekoslovachia, India, Philipines, Argentina, Columbia, Peru, Brazil and Korea would be good places to start looking.  You can take a bunch of global warming fanatics with you.

Give a scientist a living and he will give you knowledge. Give a scientist wealth and he will give you anything you want.

Answer 3

the amazon?

Answer 4

The westward side of nearly any US mountain range, but particularly the Cascades. Unfortunately the Cascades are part of the Ring of Fire, where the only active US volcanoes have been. They wring a lot of water from overhead clouds, leaving the eastern side considerably more arid.

Given enough local electrical power, anywhere close to the ocean can be irrigated with desalinated water. That isn't cost-effective today but if cheaper power is available in future it would be viable. You can't really rely on inland bodies of water since many have historically come and gone in the past. The problem you may face is that areas not suffering from drought may become flood-prone, so I'd choose an area with some elevation compared to surrounding areas, ideally forested to help reduce run-off. That also points to the western slope of the Cascades.

Answer 5

In a deep dark cave with acess to deep underground aquifer.

Answer 6

Sirus or Nibiru maybe

Here on Earth,on the edge of any rain forest the furthest away from civilization,like the amazon side of the Andes on the lower slopes

Ivory coast is also nice.

There is a Mountain range in Oaxaca in Mexico,near Jalapa de Dias

that has an inner world in valleys where it rains a lot on the higher mountains ,many rivers and streams ,and a contained climate ,this is a very exotic place

Answer 7

??????WTF