Another question from leftofcentralfl in Mnionreport:



I wouldn’t call them “mistakes”, I don’t hold the SHTF Bible so all I can give is my humble advice which may be correct or not, so all I can tell you is “ I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, and depending on how sure I am , add a smarta** grin.
There’s simply some preparations that make little sense if you think about it, others that I’ve seen that just wouldn’t work, in spite of all the speculations.
a) Maybe the one that rubs me the wrong way the most concerns retreats. It’s also something many survivalists consider the summit of their preparations. A self sufficient fortification-ranch, with the nearest neighbor several miles away.
Isolated farms or retreats are targeted and are often victims of robbery and in some cases extremely violent home invasions. You may have 6-10 able men you are counting on to defend it when TSHTF… “when TSHTF” …so they aren’t there right now? Then you don’t have them, nor will you have them when you need them, most likely.
The isolation works to the attackers favor, who often take their time having their way with everything and everyone inside the house.
The “away from everything” theory just doesn’t work when taken to the field. Happens here and same happens in Africa where ranchers and farmers have to fight rebels, rogues or whatever they are calling them these days.
They’ll find you, they’ll know about you one way or the other. You cant hide simply by living a gas tank away from the city. If there’s a road that reaches your place, you are fair game, doesn’t matter if it’s a dirt road in poor condition. You get there with a car/truck? So can bad guys.
You are obviously safer from small time robberies or pickpocketers and snathcers, but you are more vulnerable to the worst kind of criminals. Not that living in a city or suburbs makes it MUCH safer, but I’d rather live here where I live now than in a farm house any day of the week. People can somehow organize to hire security, talk to the police. Yes, most people border idiotic and are pretty clueless, but it’s better than being alone with no chance of even trying to convince people.
I’m not talking about living in a large city being the best option, I’m talking about living in a small town or community, looking for safety in numbers but avoiding the problems of a metropolis.
I definitely would choose a house in a small town or subdivision near a city, rather than a far away retreat.
Rather than looking for the ultimate self reliance retreat in the middle of nowhere, look for a subdivision where you have enough land, where you can keep a small orchard and some small critters if you want, a place with a basement where you can build a NBC shelter as time and money allows. That’s what I’d look forward to if living in US.
b) The barter items thing is also pretty strange. I don’t see how it could possibly be a smart idea to buy goods to sell or trade after a crisis, surely not in the quantities suggested by some people. Beats me, are they going to set up a shop in their garages and sell everything? Would you buy food an other supplies from a guy that sells it with no possible way of verifying the conditions under which the food was kept? How much of a profit could you possibly make , comparing to having saved that same amount of money in gold, for example?
I don’t understand it and I don’t know of anyone that made a profit by doing this. Yet, people stock up on TP and many other cheap, easily obtainable items thinking that it will be “worth it’s weight in gold” after the crisis. Newsflash: if it’s cheap and easy to produce, it will keep being that way AFTER tshtf.
Some guys advice to “invest” in such goods, tools, food and supplies for after TSHTF. No, no , no. 200 or 500 bucks worth of tools rusting away in the shed is not an investment. Its’ 200 bucks worth of tools for which you don’t have any use. That’s not an investment.
An investment generates money, while products rotting away in some basement does nothing for you.
c) Forgetting about their financial security. I’d worry about REAL investments. Buying real estate that will provide me with a steady income on the longer run, an investment portfolio divided in a couple of reliable ( or as reliable as any organization can be) that will slowly grow, most of it set on minimum and medium risk investments, and not falling for the promises of high risk ones.
Money is so important, I cant begin to explain it. When prices skyrocket beyond the limits of superinflation, money does not turn into toilet paper as many survival experts predict, it become cherished, more valuable to you than ever. You have to turn yourself into a discriminating shopper, always looking for the best possible price, sometimes shopping in different branches of supermarkets so as to find the better deals and avoid those “hot” items grocery chains slip without you even noticing.
My father is visiting right now, handling business, and one thing he told me when I asked how did he see things going on here, he used the words “cheapskate” and “miserly”.
He said something like“ People count coins over and over, by the cent, and spend maybe 10 minutes thinking about spending every cent. They also look kind of shabby, untidy, I can’t explain it. Even the guys running around downtown with suits look bad”
I explained that his overall perception was indeed correct, mostly because the average person here uses clothes until they wear out, there’s not that much money left for looks, not getting haircuts as often as they should, shaving.
Yes, the fall on the purchasing power of people did affect the average person ( at least most of them if not all) and you can see it on the streets.
d) Not all places are equal in terms of crime, but if something like this happens in US, I’d worry about being armed at all times, and learning how to use it to defend myself.
Again, not talking about waiting for the end of the world to bug in and pull the shotgun out of the firing ports, go on with your life but to do armed.
Most people here don’t see things this way.
The anti gun campaign in very strong here, and the majority of “sheep” see guns as evil objects, even though rape, crime and violence is smeared on their face every day. What can I say, most people are pretty stupid.
Those of us who go armed in this country are a reduced minority. After a few words, we recognize each other at the range or at gunshops with a knowing nod, knowing that most people, even among shooters , don’t share our opinions.
Even among “gun people” we have our important share of “Zumbos”, elitist hunters who think that firearms are hunting tools and shouldn’t be used by the lesser “civilians” for self defense.
d)Not trying to bore anyone to death here or anything, but going back to the issue of money. It’s so important to be financially set. Rather than spending tons of money on junk you wont ever use invest it smartly. Rich, unprepared people will suffer after TSHF… only in your wildest dreams. Money buys everything, including expensive food, medical care, security and relocation if needed.
When the economy collapses a big chunk of what used to be middle class ( 50% as minimum, more for sure) ends up being poor. It doesn’t matter how much guns you have, doesn’t matter if you can start a fire with a couple of Popsicles sticks or build an atomic bomb with a Snickers bar and a paper clip. Skills are of course important but you finances affect everything.
If you are middle class do everything you can to improve, climb way up the ladder. No I’m not talking about making more money than Bill Gates, I’m just talking about something every determined middle class person can achieve , no need to be a freaking financial genius. Make sure you climb your way up to the upper middle class, because once the pyramid starts sinking you don’t want to be below the 50%.
If you are really serious about financial security, diversify your real estate and other investments in different countries. My father did this and it made all the difference in the world. The man is my hero.
When you see serious trouble in the horizon and survivalists are thinking about bunkering in their cabins, you simply go on vacations to check out that little apartment or house you bought in Costa Rica for a bunch of pocket change a month. If Zombies take over or China invades, you can look for a job there, or live like a king thanks to the income you receive from that other apartment you have in France, a place in a small town near a mayor University, which you rent to students each year.600 Euros a month will allow you to live comfortably in Costa Rica, and most countries in South America. And the best part of all this? If nothing EVER happens you just have a few properties here and there that are constantly generating money for you, in case you want to retire early or if you ever have a health problem or any other issue that puts you out of the job market. Again, a couple of properties here and there inst’ such a big deal, most people can achieve that with a bit of effort, its’ just a matter of priorities.
e)The lack of reality based preparations. Some people focus on preparing for something that will never happen, preparing for getting up one day and walking into Mad Max’s world. This is of course, not a smart idea. Not only are you forgetting about the other, more likely possibilities, but you also ignore that you’ll have to go trough them before it reaches to a road warrior point, if it ever gets to that.
People that have thousands and thousands of dollars in tools, equipment, and maybe spent hundreds of thousands more building the ultimate retreat, but don’t have a penny invested anywhere. When asked they‘ll say that it will all be worth nothing when TSHTF.
Hopefully, this person will have several years worth of food along with all the other stuff he’ll rarely get to use, so at least he wont starve to death. But is eating all you aspire for in live? Not to mention what would happen if he got sick/robbed/place burns to the ground/hurricane/flood destroys it and suddenly needs the money he said he would never need.
Prepare for a broad spectrum of possibilities. So you’ll have your food and supplies for short and medium periods of time where supermarkets may be closed due to looting, riots, lack of supply , etc and you have others plans in case things get worse or you are forced to get out of there.
Something like what happened here happening in US? Don’t go nuts, shooting the neighbor’s kid for crossing over to your yard to pick up his frizzbe. Just adjust to the situation.
Once the first few weeks are over and people start calming down, just be more careful out there, don’t throw away money on stuff you don’t need and try to keep a generally low profile. It’s also important to do well at work, because people get fired like crazy during those times, companies trying to reduce expenses or not needing you any more for lack of production.
During these times is when your investments kick in. Not only do you have a place to exile to if things don’t go back to normal or they don’t fit what you expect in life anymore, you also have a form of income that is out of the circle of your local economy. Let’s say the dollar looses ½ it’s value, you still have your apartment in France or wherever the heck you want to invest, pumping in Euros that are now much more valuable, probably compensating for the local inflation, so weather you decide to leave or stay, you have the means to go either way.

FerFAL

Many of your points are valid and to that end i agree with you. However, a large proportion of what you've just said heavily relates to a stable, if not rapidly declining economy. The one problem i have with many of the points you have raised regarding the economical logic you forsee people adopting is that you assume that there will be an infrastructure to support an economy, on any level be it national or local.

The general consensus on the boards is that when TSHTF, there will be nothing left to support an economy. Also any event which can be classes as a SHTF type event will most certainly affect most if not all nations on the planet, therefore your ability to adopt a foreign currency as you have suggested, from another country is rendered useless.

You also talk about investing for when TSHTF, its worth mentioning then that ownership of anything is going to be more via proxy than "i have the deed to that land, get off it now". Investment is the process of exchanging goods or services ready for exchange at a later time. Those tools you mentioned that were rotting away might not be of any use to someone now, but when you've got hundreds of thousands of homeless people the ability to construct houses and/or other facilities is going to be a powerful bargening chip indeed.

Your logic is flawed as far as i can see on only one level, it pinions heavily on an infrasturcture that cannot possibly exsist in a true SHTF environment. People are going to be more worried about who's going to raid them, how they're going to get their next meal and more-over where they're going to live to be bothered with the exchange rate. Its fair to say that some trade will begin, on a local level where goods and services are bartered for and exchanged with. However at this level it will be mostly goods that are useful to them in their everyday lives, such as; TP, milk, water, a strong pair of hands to help cut wood, etc.

Dont get me wrong, im not attacking you or your ideas, however i think its worth me pointing out that in TSHTF when money is just paper and credit cards are just plastic, sitting there with your french apartment (which has probably already been raided) and telling people they were fools for stocking up on items that help them survive is a bad idea indeed. ...i needn't say anything, but i shall anyway; you have fun starving to death on your paper mountain whilst the rest of us grow our own food and build our own homes. All that cash'll come in handy for puttin on the fire when we 'skilled types' come and raid your real-estate for supplies.

I believe that a balanced is what is important. It's also important to think about all posibilities and what you would do "if". I liked your thought on the retreat. As far as investing, I don't agree. There is every likelyhood that communications will be down for a long time, people will not be paying rents etc.. If you are not going to trust banks and want to invest, invest locally...buy the land next to yours and rent it out.
I'm not a believer in stocking up a lot of stuff for bartering later. I like to think of that old saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket", get enough food and supplies to be somewhat self relient for a period of time, invest, bury some money in the bakc yard, know your neighbors etc.

Orion, you live in England, UK?

FerFAL

+1 FerFal's criticism of the retreat plan and the lack of defenders after collapse assumes both that: the collapse will be immediate and no one will have time to reach my retreat but myself and family, not to mention that we will have given no thought to preparing ourselves against a home invasion. AND that these desperate and evil criminals will see the lights go out, drop whatever they are doing and haul ass to my retreat hoping to catch me there unawares. I imagine the decline will be gradual over the course of a few weeks as supplies run low in the cities and people realize it isn't going to get better for a long time and people become desperate.

Living in a small town and having neighbors might have its advantages but that assumes that your neighbors are GOOD neighbors which is difficult to determine prior to purchasing a home. You also run the risk of having the unprepared drain your resources or in a worst-case scenario redistributing supplies "for the good of the many" by force. When it does get bad people will flee the cities for the rural communities you are speaking of carrying crime, hunger and possibly disease with them. In any of these cases I would rather not rely on human nature.

I agree that investments are a good idea as long as you regularly turn those investments over into hard currency like gold and silver. The purchasing power of paper money relates directly to confidence in the issuing government. In a SHTF situation that confidence will most likely be shattered and trying to withdraw your investments and transform it to usable currency may be impossible.

If you want to be truly prepared, prepare to be alone and unable to rely on anyone, in other words prepare for the worst.

The one true England, yes.

First, I have to agree about the important of Money. Money is so important and will give you the ability to do many things in the more likely scenario of a relatively slow disintegration of the economy, society, government, etc... but only if you have the foresight to realize that you are watching the SHTF in slow motion. But still, money=options.

Second, your outlook on the international diversification as a form of economic security is fatally flawed. Ever since WWII we have been building a "nation-state" system and one world economy. If the US economy goes to crap so do europe and china and japan. This applies to all major countries. It is not several separate large economies, it is one big internationally interdependent economy.

Thirdly, as for your criticism of the "retreats" you have merit there, but I don't think that the threats you enumerated are particularly likely. I also think that they are relatively easily to defend against.

Finally, on the issue of stocking up, I both agree and disagree. I think there are things that are and things that are not worth stocking up on. Food, water, etc.. are good to have in almost any situation. Things like alcohol are also potentially valuable in a PAW and they last forever. If you collect wines then they also become major investment in a good economy. I think that amassing basic tools is a little rediculous though. The hardware stores might get raided, but somehow I don't think that hammers and nails are going to become hard to get in the PAW for a long time.

On which boards would that be? I know most survival/preparedness forums and that is not the general consensus.
You are talking about something that has never occurred and is not likely to occur in a million years.
SHTF events occur in greater or smaller scale, for longer or shorter periods of time.
I’m talking about real crisis and disasters that could actually happen, and occur every now and then.

Actually no, that would be trade. We’ve had trade and barter for some time, through the entire country, called “Barter clubs”, and we quickly found out that it didn’t work as well as you’d expect.
Its’ one thing to imagine it, talk about it, or doing it in a Fallout 2 RPG.
It’s VERY different doing it for real. At first it works, kind of, but people soon find out better ways.
Investment is “the outlay of money usually for income or profit”.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
Meaning, an investment “works” for you, it generates profit on its own. Buying goods hopping to sell them for a profit during an extremely unlikely scenario is not investment, it’s wishful thinking.

That statement right there would be similar to trying to reduce a heart transplant to an explanation that would border something like “you cut up the chest on one guy and pull his heart out and you open the other guy’s chest and put the heart in there”
Being extremely humble here, but you have no idea what it’s like to have “hundreds of thousands of homeless people”. Basically you don’t understand what a person needs in terms of housing, specially during emergencies. I do. I’m 4 months away from getting my Architecture degree, and this year I happened to specialize in just that, Emergency and Crisis Housing.
An interesting specialization these days, students came from France, Spain and many other countries just to take this specialization, given the ongoing catastrophes and disasters all around the world.
Having some tools and supplies wont matter at all. If you have enough plywood you’ll barely be able to build a rudimentary shack, and you are still lacking every single installation. You might as well say that your plan is running into the woods and building yourself a shelter with leaves and branches. Unless your idea of tools and supplies is tons of cement, wood and bricks and a 10 million dollar construction company, because that’s what you’d need to house a relatively small neighborhood.
Believe me, you’d want to be somewhere else when it gets to "“hundreds of thousands of homeless people”.

You use the words “True SHTF” for something that does not exist and has never occurred, ever, and is extremely unlikely to occur, but you choose to ignore real SHTF situations that did, and do occur.
Considering SHTF events, from Katrina to the tsunami in Asia, the fall of the Soviet Union, going through things such as our economical collapse here in Argentina or a war in whatever country you’d like to think about, basic infrastructure was always restored and the big multinational companies continued to exist.

??:) Seriously, you just don’t understand.
Raids?? This sounds more and more like an RPG game.
You worry about criminals targeting you, not “raids”. And any person in any country that is going trough an economical crisis checks the exchange rate several times a day. Today I only check it once a day. During years I checked it 2 or 3 times, specially before making purchases. Same thing happens in other countries during economical collapses.

Again, this is just your fantasy, fueled maybe by games or literature. TP is cheap to produce, SHTF or not, the idea of TP being a much cherished commodity after a crisis is pure BS.
Just have some stocked to hold for a month or two, nothing more. Just as soon as things settle, someone will start making TP and it will be nearly as cheap as it used to be.
I just finished interviewing a maid we want to hire, about 10 minutes ago. Her husband has been looking for a job for 6 months and just now found work in a factory. Strong pare of hands? Almost everyone has those, you better have something else to offer if SHTF, of any degree.

The bad idea is planning for something that will not occur and ignoring those things that do occur frequently enough.
FerFAL

My plans for zombie apocalypse won't help much in responding to an economic recession, and the thread author is quite right that economic disasters are much more common.

Regarding barter stockpiles, what happens when the stockpile runs out?

Even worse, what if you've chosen your stockpile poorly? TP has substitutes; people may not want to trade for it. Nails can be scavenged; why trade for something freely obtainable?

I think having "means of production" and alternative power source for the cottage industry allows ongoing production of items for exchange. An "assembly line" that can be "retooled" quickly to meet changing demands of your market would be best.

I think FerFAL is spot on with his assessment.

Look at the current economic situation here in the states;

1. Lending institutions are getting hard hit from years of bad lending practices.
2. House prices falling at depression levels.
3. Forclosures up as much as 800% in some areas of the US.
4. Retireing baby boomers have begun to draw social security.
5. Take a look at the trade deficit.
6. The latest boom (and soon to be bust?) of the stock market.

We are ripe for a serious economic crisis for these reasons and many more. Now take a look at the countries that have suffered serious economic collapse, FerFAL's Argentina, Zimbabwe and any other you can imagine. Now look at areas that suffer natural disasters like the gulf coast of the US, the pacific rim after the tsunami and whatever else. Look at the acts of war be it Iraq, the former Yugoslavia or East Timor. In none of those places was there a total collapse of the pre-existing infrastructure. I defy you guys to find a single example of a total collapse of the system that would have the lone survivor living totally isolated and living only on his stored supplies. Won't happen.

Society will not end with a bang, but a wimper. The slow slide into chaos will be the rule and not the exception.





Looking at some of FerFAL's suggestions I see it as damn fine thinking. Invest in properties, great. If your home is lost from disaster you will still own a liveable structure somewhere else (across town, across the country, another country). Might have someone liveing there but you have the option of not allowing the residents to renew the lease. Even if you still have the home you continue to have residual income from the residents and if the economy contracts you will have a ready supply of renters who are forced to downsize their living arrangements in tough times. Even if you don't have renters you still have the value of the property, this alone may allow you to keep your primary residence as you surrender one property to settle the tax debt on your primary residence (and with luck the properties that still turn a profit).

Even with a world wide collapse of the system there will be some places better off than others, having the option to choose one of the better places would be damn nice.

Not only is it likely, it actually occurs that way. Not a day goes by in my friend’s farm, when trespassers aren’t stealing wood, pocketing a bit of harvest, or pouching, hunting around with dogs out of season without his permission. As I said, it’s pretty standard operation to shoot a few rounds in their general direction to make them realize you spotted them and that they are not welcomed.
He had several armed robberies too.
On one occasion they poisoned and kill all the dogs.
Once, they took the daughter of one of the families living there and using her as a hostage they stole a bulldozer and other machinery.
The warehouses he has get broken into on occasions too.
Cows and horses got robbed on several occasions as well.
This guy has several buildings and warehouses there, along with a big main house and two smaller houses for the two families living there 24/7 that are hired to work there and watching over the place. Still, he has problems with intruders.
A normal family with no help … forget about it. You need serious manpower to keep such a place safe, with people dedicated to security alone working around the clock.

FerFAL

The chance of TEOTWAWKI is incredibly small. The most likely causes would probably be widespread nuclear war, super volcano, and asteroid strike. The first is the most likely, but most that prepare for TEOTWAWKI don't have sufficient radiological preparations anyways. The most important acute(chronic too) SHTF scenario to prepare for would probably be bird flu or similar pandemic. Regional disaster concerns are of course an acute danger depending on locale. Terrorist attacks and war are ever present dangers. However, economic collapse or depression(perhaps set off by one of the acute SHTF events, natural disaster, pandemic, or terrorist attack) is by far the most pertinent chronic SHTF situation to prepare for. TEOTWAWKI is pretty much a fantasy.

In short, I agree with most of Ferfal's assessment. Bird flu and economic collapse are the two SHTFs that I really worry about. He has lived through an economic collapse and his advice on it should be heeded, though if the US really went down it would likely be even worse in many areas.



I have often heard this, but never really seen the reasoning behind it. If our economy crashes, the rest of the world would hurt too. That doesn't mean that they would suffer as much as us, or take as long to recover as we would. They are not THAT dependent on us. Countries have started moving away from the dollar and towards the Euro. I think international investment is a great idea.

I agree with Drunken here. While the US market has been important to us here in Norway, we now export and import goods from all over the world.
I guess we would get hit hard if the US stockmarket took a nosedive, but I don't see mass unemployment and homelessness as a outcome.

If you think economic collapse is not THE most likely threat for those of us in the US I believe you are sadly mistaken. This link should steer you in the right direction.

http://www.gao.gov/media/video/fiscal/w ... fiscal.wmv

When I first read this thread, it was a bit much to digest late at night with my work addled brain. Coming back to it, I generally agree with your post.

Economic collapse is the "PAW" the wife and I see as most likely, combined with the need to be ready for natural disasters (such as flooding).

To us that means insulating against downturns by being more self sufficient, which for us is pretty easy to do:

1. GET OUT OF DEBT! If you have any, it makes it harder to save and buy the things you could need.

2. Build a nest egg for when small financial disasters creep up (like the transmission going in your car or the roof getting blown off the house).

3. Keep cash on hand (if the economy turns real sharp, it might be hard to just pop by the bank and get some).

4. Use cash for purchases, which we find discourages the accumulation of debt and makes small business owners happy.

5. Have people you can rely on. That is met by our friends and neighbors.

6. Have food sources available that are not dependent on a supermarket, both by putting food by in good times while growing our own.

I don't own my guns with the primary purpose of keeping off hordes of zombies or marauders. I mostly like to shoot. But I also know that I can take game with them and am fortunate enough that I live near state game lands and also have a stream behind the house with trout and crawfish. Many of my neighbors are also gardeners and I brew my own beer, so we can share amongst ourselves.

If we need to run to town, we can carpool in the most fuel efficient vehicle, but if the roads get bad, a number of us have SUVs and trucks to help one another out.

I am not out to build a compound, BIL, or retreat. I am building towards a home that is self sufficient as best as I can so that if the power goes out, I still have light and cook my own food.

Dude, I so posted that link in the other thread FerFal started way before you did. I bet we both lifted it from the same place.

Damn, didn't see another thread from FerFAL, I always look for his stuff in most forums I read. I will look for that one now.

Don't know if we have the same source for the Video but when you sober up I guess we do think along similar lines. Economic issues are the only real short to mid term disaster I see as a serious possibility (probability actually).

FerFal,
I have been reading what I can about the financial crisis in Argentina. I even went to Buenos Aires for a few days ('06), but as soon as I asked my guide about the crisis, someone changed the subject. I never got an answer and I never had another chance to find a true local. Long story-who cares.

I understand how something like the 2001 crisis would change people, as I lived in an area of the US where we went through a localized depression. I was younger. I couldn't even get a job at Jack in the Box. They wouldn't even give me an application. My father lost his job. I will never look at things the same way. I'm still here. I'm still standing. I love your info about how to survive possible financial crises.

You are the only voice on the Internet (that I've found) who gives a real-world picture of what happened in BsAs. (I'm sure there are more accounts in Spanish, but I'm American and by definition mono-lingual.)

Please continue to give us your take on what's going on and what happened/happens to you. I like that you have a cosmopolitan viewpoint and are not Americentric or Argentina-centric.

I was following FerFALs posts on another forum until religious intolerance from the forums owner got in the way.
I think his observations are correct.
I really doubt that things fall a part as quickly as "28 Days Later". It's more likely that there will be a slow downward spiral like the parable of the frog in the pot of water. I think this even if a nuke were to vaporize CA and NY tomorrow. Even with it's head cut off society will stagger along for some time before it drops.
Our greatest tool is our mind. If we focus on learning things that may keep us alive like how to move quickly and shoot accurately it may give us the edge we need to survive.
The human race is full of predators that will lie, manipulate, cheat, steal, rob, and kill to take what you have. Our biggest threat comes not from our inability to harvest wild edibles or hunt squirrels but from the douch bags that think they are entitled to anything they want.

I grew up expecting the Soviets to nuke us. I'm still not trusting Putin since he was/is KGB so nukes aren't out of the question. After all he doesn't have to launch on us, he just has to say 'hey Osama take this to America'. So that's till on the table but not on top of my pile of worries.
Of course we need to worry about economic disasters but more likely it'll be something like someone managing to take out the electrical grid. You know, what to do when the lights, phone, water, etc. stop working. Right after that you're guaranteed economic disaster.

But when the lights go out what happens?
Do the people without generators sit at home in the dark or do they look down the road at the lights and say "Hey we need that"?
What happened after Katrina?
Do the people who raid Walmart only to find all the food gone go home hungry or do they smell the chili cooking at someones house and say "It not right they should eat when we're hungry" while kicking in the front door?
Think about it. The power going out for a week would be an inconvience. If you have food and water, so what. It would be an adventure.
Not so to the vast majority of Americans who have maybe three days of food in their pantry. Life suddenly becomes a dire emergency where morals and common sense are abandoned.
If the power stayed off, well, things would get interesting.

I figure that when the power goes out it's not going to be short term. And you're right morals, right and wrong, decency go out the window for a lot of people. I've got 2 small children and they will not go hungry, I will but not my kids. That doesn't mean I'll boot the neighbors door and take theirs either. That's what motivates me to get ready. If my supplies run out before I get to BOL for whatever reason then it's time to hunt. If it's bad enough it's 'here doggy doggy'.

there is a new guy at work(2 weeks). today, he stood at me and said: did you know that a guy with bio-chemical skills can create a virus that could wipe off the entire planet in 2 day

then he said : are you ready for this?? i am!!!!!!!

..............

what do you say to something like that???

congratulations, you will be the only living thing on earth

of course, the guy reminds me a cellular lifeform, so i wouldn't compare him with any of you but still :claim loud and clear that you are able to face about any situation might be a bad thing to do....

would you?? i wouldn't !!!

This smacks of Cat's Cradle....

In the end, no one can exist, so why bother?

As for the other, economic collapse, I have this discussion with a buddy who invests in gold... His belief that by investing he can outlast many things. My argument with investing is this; if it's not physically in your house, how can a billion dollars worth of gold benefit you sitting someplace else? To me, it's the same as paper money in the bank. Once the communication to those facilities are cut off, the money you had is worthless.

I'm not saying don't have those investments or that money, it's just one of those Black Tuesday thoughts; when the doors close, its gone.

I agree with a lot of the post though, relying on 15 buddies to help out when TSHTF is stupid, they're going to have problems of their own. I've said this in other posts and will always say it; live in a community where you can rely on and trust your neighbors. neighborhoods will be the way people exist. Having that solitary BOL in the hills is a fine romantic idea and makes for a great story, but in the end, you can't rely on that to exist. Zimbabwe, South Africa and countless other locations around the world have shown that those ranchers in their fortified homes could not stand up to multiple armed insurgents alone. Small families could not make it against determined, even half starved and poorly armed attackers. The movie Blood Diamond even mentions this.

Being self sufficient is one answer, gardens and learning how to store and grow, not relying on modern communications and power, but to exist beyond is going to take much more than just that. I am starting to explore this in my story Cole in the art section, and there are a dozen other examples out there of communities existing where others fail.

I feel like I'm rambling now, so I'll just stop.

Doc