You can fit everything you need for two or three months for a family of four in a couple of big plastic totes. Takes one shopping trip and not a lot of money.
That, realistically, is about as far as you can plan.
OK, that aside, I’m a professional prepper. Specifically, my federal employer is required:
https://www.fema.gov/continuity-operations
My specific role is developing/implementing a communications systems that will function in a COOP event, and beyond.
Are they though? Look at Chernobyl & Fukushima Daiichi. Look at Stuxnet & how vulnerable our infrastructure grid is supposed to be in this country. Realize what would be involved if a couple of million people had to suddenly evacuate a major metropolitan area because terrorists got their hands on some type of nuclear device. All of those people try to relocate to another area of the country while out of work & the trillions in real estate that was their homes & businesses suddenly worth (next to) nothing.
No, I don’t personally prepare for these types of things & I think the folks with a six month supply of food, drink, & fuel would be better off with about a three week supply & the rest invested in retirement savings, but if the fit hits the shan in a major way they’ll be the ones laughing at us.
Like I said, you’re at an advantage because you’re already close to living an agrarian lifestyle. However, if society collapsed you’d of course then have to defend yourself against roving bands of non-prepared, thieving, murdering criminals. And the thing is, because of the size of just the US population, you’d have to deal with a lot of them. The US is totally dependent on an efficient & reliable food growing & distribution network to keep itself well fed. If that collapsed mass starvation would be an enormous, immediate, and unstoppable occurrence. If you were able to survive the first couple of years, after most unprepared people had died, you might have a chance.
It’s all or nothing. You’d have to devote nearly 100% of your time & money & effort to preparing to live post-apocalypse or you’d never have much of a chance. Even then it’d be a crap shoot. And if you do devote your *entire *life to that, well, it kinda means you’re expecting (and hoping) it happens. And that’s no fun! 
there’s nothing wrong with having enough supplies on hand to ride out, say, a one or two month long disruption. stuff like non-perishable food, basic toiletries, etc. for most “first world” disasters like widespread blackouts or severe weather, your best bet is going to be to “shelter in place” (so long as said disaster hasn’t leveled your shelter.) the problem with “preppers” is they’re preparing for a “Walking Dead” kind of catastrophe where civilization breaks down completely. These are the idiots who are still gobbling up .22LR ammunition like crazy.
That is fascinating as hell to me. I’d imagine solar/wind powered repeater systems with batteries at the base of the tower (or something along those lines) would be a part of the planning. I once had a discussion with someone convinced that FEMA was setting up a coast-to-coast repeater system with a common channel and I had to explain that uh, no, it doesn’t quite work that way. 120-thousand people aren’t going to be on one channel at the same time. 
Still, just keeping up with the crypto must be a nightmare. (And no, I don’t expect (or want!)) you to discuss that here.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
Probably not. The flip side is that a breakdown in food transportation would also inherently result in a breakdown in people transportation–there’s a good chance that the majority of Americans who live in cities would die before they could make it to the countryside. In fact, I sort of see that being a guarantee–whenever a city is evacuated for a storm, roads are completely clogged up, and urban dwellers in some cities don’t even own cars. There’d just be no way that the majority of people could make it out alive.
In addition, people who live in urban areas are less likely to own guns, so there’s another advantage.
I think you’re underestimating just how densely populated the modern first world is. Even if just the citizens in the outskirts or suburbs of large cities got out, and even moving only on foot, we’re still talking about a huge wave of very desperate people.
Or previously lived in a hurricane zone. I have been ordered to evacuate twice. Once I took my shotgun and my issue sidearm and with my bosses permission crashed on the couch in the breakroom at my work site. He figured additional personnel on hand at a bank operations center would be handy. The other time my BF of the time and I evacuated to his mothers farm up in Dillwyn VA. [My third hurricane I was already up in Williamsburg VA and was already self evacuated in a manner of speaking. My week of vacation sort of got extended =) ]
I have also been snowed in at various times - once for almost 10 days. We have also lost power on the farm for weeks at a time [once thanks to a hurricane in the early 1990s but generally thanks to snow or other storms knocking down power lines.] We start the winter with a stockpile of wood - though we do actually heat the house to a large degree with the woodstove. We also do have a generator to run the pump and refrigerator, and we also have at least 3 months of canned and dry goods on hand at any given time. My stockpile of food was very handy one 6 month period when mrAru was out to sea and I had a non-driving roommate. When you have pneumonia and complications that mean you tend to have hallucinations and dizzy spells that prevent you driving, it makes getting out for groceries interesting to the point where you don’t tend to leave the house. It is also great to cycle through when you are broke and can go without buying groceries for a month or two.
I’ll tell you why I scoff at them: they think that life is worth living after everything’s gone to hell.
I’m probably a doughy, soft, typical suburbanite. I like my fast food, I like my car, I like paying people to do manual labor. There is no way in hell I would ever be comfortable in a post-apocalyptic world. Luckily for me, I’m atheist and see no intrinsic value to life. If the end comes, I don’t want to live, I’d rather die than be taken from my warm bed, my computer, and video games. I don’t want to dig a well for water, I don’t want to forage for food, or sleep in caves, or learn how to farm. If the apocalypse comes, I’m just going to kill myself, its not worth living in a place like that. Therefore, I will never make any preparations or stock up for such an event
What do you consider military-style rifles?
I have to ask, when in the course of human history has “civilization collapsed” like the preppers imagine? We have some ancient examples, like the Mayan, and the collapse of the Roman Empire. But the Roman Empire didn’t collapse overnight, parts of it were still going in 1451 when Constantinople was finally conquered by the Turks. The collapse of the Roman Empire took centuries of ups and downs, wars, invasions, loss of trade, and so on. And what replaced the Roman Empire wasn’t nothing, local governments still existed, either local officials who no longer answer to the imperial government, or new guys who wander in and make themselves the new aristocrats and everyone else are now serfs.
The closest we’ve come to this sort of thing in modern times is the collection of disasters in the early 20th Century of WWI, the depression, and WWII. And despite the wars and totalitarian governments and invasions and economic dislocation and famine was there anything close to civilizational collapse, or the collapse of government authority, in fact in many cases the problem was exactly the reverse. Maybe you go to bed one morning in Poland and wake up the next morning in Nazi Germany, and that’s a problem, but it isn’t a problem that can be solved by shooting your neighbors when they come asking for some canned goods.
The real way people survive disasters is not acting as lone heroes who ruthlessly murder everyone who stands in their way, but by working together as a community. A guy who shoots at his neighbors after a disaster isn’t going to be very well liked. A guy holed up with a small arsenal has to sleep sometime. Human beings live in groups, a person alone can’t hope to survive.
That there is some penetrating insight. What low down cur in this thread was it that proposed murder as a viable survival strategy? A fool like that bears watching.
Europe came close with the Black Death. WW1 and 2 were nothing in comparison.
Well, you’ve got your stockpile of canned goods and ammo, right? And after the disaster hits, your neighbors knock on your door and say, “Hey mister, I notice that you seem to be doing OK, be we’re out of food and real hungry. Can you spare us some food?” And you tell them to buzz off. The next day your neighbor comes back and says, “Well now mister, I’m really really hungry and the baby is sick. We really need food now, so I’m just gonna come in and take some, I know you’ve got plenty.”
When that guy tries to push past you into your storage area, you’re either going to give in and share your food, or you’re going to have to shoot him.
That’s what all that ammo was for, right? To defend yourself and what’s yours? If you’re not going to shoot your neighbor who’s trying to take your food, then what’s your plan?
When does the murder part of this come in?
That’s what the preppers don’t understand, Lemur. Society isn’t some fragile artificial construct that will collapse if pushed too hard - society is the natural state of mankind. It’s what human beings default to. If anything, it’s *loners *who are the aberration.
Please let me emphasize here, as I have elsewhere on this board, that I am not and never have “prepped” for a zombie apocalypse. While I can envision occurrences that might prompt such events to unfold, I consider them remote and likely not survivable (and not particularly desirous of being survived). The only thing I’m ready for is the 40% chance of a very large earthquake unleashing in my vicinity. If it happens, there will be no fuel. There will be no roads. There will be no bridges or dams. There will be only food, water, heat and shelter one has on hand. This is a situation that may persist for up to six months. That’s all I’m prepared for.
I agree with others that community is the key. Having others nearby upon whom you can depend and who can depend on you in such a crisis is the biggest asset you can have. Handled.
And with all that, a tree could fall on me during the event and that would be the end of it regardless. Or I could slip and fall in the shower. You can’t worry about everything.
That’s correct. And in every society there are those who are prudent and make preparations so that the society doesn’t have crises that are worse than they need to be. Also in every society are those who follow the Blanche DuBois strategy.
And the foresight to get out when the shit is starting to hit the fan.