Depends how TEOTWAWKI you wanna get. I think at some point most preppers realize that having a degree of self-sufficiency and a strong community is far better for a collapse scenario than any alternative store of value. I've been splitting the difference between stocks, crypto, and bullion, and I'm looking to buy a home in a smaller community where I hope to try my hand at small scale farming/ homesteading. Ultimately though, having a large number of competent people you can trust with your life is the best thing for any prepper scenario.
I agree, I think I found my way to the prepper community through my homesteading/small farm journey. What I personally have found is that homesteading and farming can be very capital intensive to startup. Sure You can bootstrap any venture but I feel to enable the best chances of success does require cash flow and the more You put in at the start the sooner You can take profits.
EG: My first profitable venture on my homestead was laying hens, I built my own coop and converted an existing dilapidated green house into a run. The materials required to construct and convert cost me ~ $1500 and then the purchase of brooding equipment, waterers, feeders, and chicks ran me another $1000 or so. All in I would say it cost $3500 Dollars and 6 months before I saw my 1st egg and another two years before my hens were hatching out new chicks. I currently make around $100/month profit through farm gate egg sales at $5 a dozen and have a never ending supply of fresh eggs for myself...but that took almost 4 years from my initial investment plus the daily work of egg collection and watering. I am still looking at another two or three years before I break even not including labor, barring any unexpected expenses.
Don't even get me started with my Honeybee operation!!!
My point is yes self sufficient homesteading is my goal but without the investments I made into the markets, the money wouldn't have been available. In my case I was able to grow my "off farm" investments while drawing on their profits to finance my "on farm ventures" which required time to turn profitable. Unfortunately I think those times are over and it is time to reevaluate my holdings before I find myself draining their principal value to fund my living.
Good news; when the economy implodes there will be no financial costs, but you’ll have skills.
5% of the public hunts. My guess is, should society collapse, there will be plenty of work cleaning up the bodies as millions go nuts in shock and kill themselves at home before a civil war can get off the ground.
More optimistically it’ll be like 9/11, NY blackouts; shock, awe, but people settle down and figure it out.
Who knows, maybe this is all embedded paranoia from the Cold War era and complete social collapse is impossible.
Local urban areas will surely clamp down and secure infra. Going it alone in the woods seems like a fine recipe for just putting the gun in your own mouth eventually.
