Post: #28

If I'd had the time when I started the thread I would have posted this in the OP.

In my opinion it's the most important advice I can give on this subject.

Do NOT center your planning around predicting the day/month/year of a disaster or the form it will take.

Doing so will cause you to make stupid decisions that will prove harmful in the end.

I'll relate this to a personal example. A decade ago I was certain that a financial collapse was imminent. All the so-called experts were saying "6 months, tops". 6 months later? Same. 6 more months? Same.

They're still going.

Now fortunately I didn't trust them implicitly or the best option would have been to max out five credit cards buying food, water and guns before everything went Mad Max, but the reality is that I did push some of my plans for relocation too severely and afterward did not do as much as I should have to invest in a non-collapse world that still exists to this day.

Do not stop investing in the non-collapse world.

Don't quit your high paying job to go live in the sticks on the premise that it's all going to shit in 6 months anyway.

Don't buy 10 years worth of MREs that you're not going to eat in a pre-collapse world.

Don't sell your economical car to buy a Dodge Ram on the premise that in a week or two you're going to have to bulldoze your way through hordes of suburbanites-turned-cannibals on the road to safety.

Wherever possible, invest in survival strategies that do not affect your bottom line.

If your family will eat 100 cans of beans over the course of 2 years then functionally it costs you nothing to buy the 100 cans of beans and replace them as they're used. If shit goes south you have 100 cans of beans.

Simple.

Don't throw money at your fears. Adjust your hobbies if you like. Expand your knowledge. Take advanced first aid courses of learn wilderness survival if that sort of thing interests you but don't impoverish yourself and make yourself miserable on a breakneck journey towards survivability for a disaster that might not arrive for another ten years or at all.

The Leonard that stayed put in the city with his decent job and invested in the stock market would currently own both his city home AND his country home, and although I prefer living in the country for personal and family reasons that was just a lucky outcome.

Don't fall for the hype. Don't get caught up in the panic.

Make smart, sensible decisions that will serve you well whether a catastrophe befalls your region or not.