Assemble a well balanced team:

• A Cook, who can also teach it to others. Armies don't walk on empty stomach, and so do post-collaspe polycules

• A Healer, one who can deliver apocalypse-grade basic medical care (not to dependant on modern facility, prefer médecin sans frontière experience and/or history of medicine in the 20th century scholar)

• A Paranoid Spook Type, that considered somewhat working for an intelligence agency but decided not to for ethical reason. You need a schemer that will outscheme even the scheme-eist of opps schemer.

• A Reclaimer: the meakest debris of industrial civilization will become the luxuries of the new world - have someone who can fix stuff, is handy and DIY-minded.

• An ex-Granola boy/girl that will have some experience bushcrafting or camping, preferentially even urbex-ing. You need someone that will know

• A Farmer or Agronomist - rediscovering the basics of agriculture is possible but going to cost dearly in the first few years. Prefer the pre-bottled knowledge version.

Grab them all from a local hackerspace, pick a cool name, and live a little before those skills are put to the test.

Start with the boring stuff because it saves your ass later

You need a Limited Liability Company with operating agreement modifications that specifically address multimember decisionmaking and asset distribution. Standard LLC structures assume business relationships, not chosen family economics. I'd choose studying Transition Towns legal structures and intentional community bylaws from places like Twin Oaks or Findhorn.

Key legal protections:

- Succession planning for each member (what happens to their share if they die/become incapacitated)

- Dispute resolution clauses that mandate mediation before litigation

- Exit protocols with fair asset distribution formulas

- Decision-making thresholds clearly defined (simple majority vs. supermajority vs. consensus)

Most communes fail because someone gets bitter about money or feels exploited.

People are tribal but also individualistic. You're fighting millions of years of evolution that says "hoard resources, protect immediate family." The successful polycules I've observed (about 40% make it past 3 years) have these patterns:

- Transparent resource sharing with individual autonomy preserved

- Rotating leadership for different domains (finances, conflict resolution, external relations)

- Structured intimacy - regular household meetings, personal check-ins, conflict protocols

- Escape valves - ways to get space/privacy when the collective feels suffocating

Human Reality: It's messier than idealism suggests

The fantasy is mutual aid and chosen family. The reality is that Sarah's anxiety spirals affect everyone's sleep, David's depression means others pick up his garden duties, and someone always feels like they're giving more than receiving.

What actually works:

- Emotional labor distribution - not just chores, but who handles the crying, the conflicts, the outside pressure

- Individual identity preservation - people need their own spaces, friendships, interests outside the collective

- Acceptable selfishness boundaries - what level of "I need to focus on me right now" is okay?

The communities that survive long-term are the ones that embrace interdependence without codependence. You support each other through cancer diagnoses and job losses, but you don't become responsible for each other's happiness or life choices.

Practical starting point: Live together for 6 months in a rental situation before buying property together. Test your conflict resolution, financial management, and daily life compatibility. If you can't handle sharing a kitchen and wifi password, you definitely can't handle retirement together.

Success probability with proper legal structure + realistic expectations + compatible personalities: about 60%. Without all three? 15%.

My first thought is: don't.

My first thought but longer is: don't do that if you don't already have a very strongly-bound polycule, perhaps polyfidelitous (polyfaithful?), and then each member specializes in one or a few roles. Don't get into romantic relationships with people for transactional reasons like crisis survival.