People who wear glasses are screwed but not as screwed as people who rely on medication.

https://www.engineeringforchange.org/solutions/product/adspecs/

Hopefully if enough of these get distributed it won't be so much of a problem except for people with astigmatism.

https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/european-inventor-award/meet-the-finalists/joshua-silver

Joshua Silver, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford, first had the idea to manufacture adjustable lenses for the poor, removing the need for expensive equipment and professionals, in May 1985 after he had created a variable focus lens out of curiosity.

His invention allows wearers to adjust the glasses to their personal prescription without the assistance of a healthcare professional. They simply look at a reading chart and adjust the glasses until they can see the letters clearly.

The glasses use durable but flexible plastic lenses, which have fluid sacs filled with silicone oil between them. These glasses can easily be adjusted by the wearer by simply adding or removing some of the oil in the sacs.

The invention is not without its limitations, however. Currently, the principle only functions successfully with circular lenses, limiting the design opportunities. Additionally, the principle can only alter the magnification of objects, so the glasses cannot treat those with astigmatism. What these spectacles lack in aesthetics, however, they make up for in spades with utility and work on non-round lenses is already underway.

His stated goal was to make the overall cost of a pair of glasses as low as $19.

Not that useful in scenarios besides reading: if you curl your hands in front of your eye and leave a very tiny opening you can create a pinhole that'll make a tiny bit of your view in focus

Photo from Minute Physics demonstrating what you need to do for that:

https://youtu.be/OydqR_7_DjI

Your screwedness depends on how bad your eyesight is. Can you see well enough to tell a weed apart from the crop you're growing when looking at arms length? Then that's all the eyesight you need to be useful to a community

We could rely on scavenging what's already been made. Even if it isn't your exact prescription, a little might be better then nothing.

Our modern life involves a lot of reading and writing and sometimes very technical work. But the work of surviving on planet earth is a little less vision intensive: farming, cooking, childcare, handcrafts. Depending on how bad your vision is you might even be slow and shitty at these, but people can adapt to a lot and figure out how to perform tasks they’ve done before, even with poor vision. Look at the blind: they can be functional. Yes there are things like hunting which you could. not. do. with poor vision but that’s why we live in tribes. Someone younger with better eyes will do that while you shell nuts all day.

I know of a YouTuber called the blind homesteader. He has family and friends help him. They have quite the homestead and he often helps the community around his homestead too.

Eye glasses started showing up around 1300 AD. Implies the basic tech / processes required to make them is relatively simple, given that they've been around in some form ever since the middle ages. Granted, they wouldn't be as sophisticated as they are today, and many people with very niche issues would suffer.

Anything more modern, requiring microchips or heavily integrated international supply chains would go poof. Personally, I'd worry about dental and medical stuff we diagnose with x-rays. Like it's not too uncommon for people to have a root canal these days... but it didn't become a more 'common' thing until around the 1800-1900 period. Hell, getting your wisdom teeth pulled in a post-event world would likely suck some serious ass.

You can make a rough magnifying lens by trial and error using glass and a hand grinder—not the same as prescription lenses, but for many it would be better than nothing.

It took centuries to get to disposable contact lenses while trying to figure out the physics, both in optics and in manufacturing any sort of spectacles, at the same time.

Will the survivors of the apocalypse be able to pick up where we left off or will they essentially start from scratch? That depends on the apocalypse and on the survivors. Do documents and knowledge survive, perhaps in a stash or in digital form? Do the survivors include an optician or a material engineer? Chances look good if that's the case. If no, life will get a lot harder for many people.

Maybe contact lenses are apocalypse proof

Do we have surviving scientists and engineers, or books? Then everything is easy-ish: Progress took time because we didn't know anything, everything was trial and error. Now we know the correct forms of physical laws or their usable approximations so rebuilding is just a matter of time (generations maybe).

If somehow the collective wisdom is lost, back to the stone ages with you.

edit: High school education brings you to the 1920s tech (era of elements and alloys, just before composites) so maybe if we have any surviving adults, you can have glasses?

I assumed surviving doctors would do for people what they did for sawyer in lost.

Use what you can find to get as close as you can per eye.

Other than that, sucks to suck, And I say that as somebody who is both near sighted and far sighted.

You'll have to hit up the local glasses stores. Luckily there's plenty of em.

You'll be okay, OP. It will be extra shitty though. Imagine running from a horde of cannibalistic raiders and you drop your glasses...

If people survive the "apocalypse" then glasses will survive too. You just likely won't be lucky enough to get lenses that are a perfect match for your prescription.

6 out of 7 houses on my street have at least one person with vision problems. Between the six of the houses we probably conservatively have 50 pairs of lenses if you count all the old pairs people tend to hang on to. My house has at least 10 just by itself.

I once lost my glasses and used an ordinary drinking glass as a monocle as substitute. It wasn't perfect, but good enough for me to find my glasses. (This was before cell phones had cameras).

Having been very near sighted for most of my life, I've come to the conclusion that it's not really that big of a handicap. It's mostly an issue for reading things, and even that can be done when putting it close enough.

I can't really think of anything in a hypothetical apocalypse where 20/20 vision would be absolutely necessary.

We're fucked. Our genes told us.

One would think that if most of society is toast there will be a shitload of left over glasses that could be collected and then distributed to those in need.

If you have or can scavenge a laser pointer, just go hog wild shining it all around in your eyes. You have nothing to lose trying it at that point and maybe you get lucky and give yourself DIY lasik.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/lesson

If there's that type of event, we (the survivors, that is. 95% of us will die) are going back, way back. When the elevator falls from the 21st century down to the 20th and 19th, the cable snaps and we're going back to the ground.

See, even a hundred years ago, items like a light bulb or electric motor already depended on a very large supply chain and many people working together that never meet in real life.

How do you make glass? Do you even know what glass is, how many types there are, how to make it different thicknesses or shapes? And even if you can, can you make more for everyone else?

What are you doing in the meantime that you don't have glass? How are you feeding yourself? With what?

Even if you think glass is "simple", how would you get the materials and tools? The people who used to do that, where are they? What knowledge have they lost? Where is that material today?

In other words, you're back to your bare hands and wits and whatever is in walking distance from you, right now.

Think you'll survive long enough to worry about glasses?

https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ

For myopia, only an issue for a couple of generations. If we’re living off the land again, myopia will stop being a thing as in the past.

get an extra pair, throw it in the safe where you keep your beans and water