The article in the previous post is dead on. I've run into all of the responses that it mentions when I advise people to prepare. The most frustrating outcome is indeed when somebody I care about just blows off what I've said and says he'll come stay with me if everything goes to hell. This is absurd, of course. My new place is sufficiently rural that I have serious concerns as to whether I will be able to get to it. Hopefully I will be there ahead of time. But I don't think there's much chance I will have folks knocking on my door. Not the kind that I want to invite in, anyway.
Quite apart from the difficulty my friends may have in getting to my place, I've already told some of them that they won't be welcome. Family will be, but if anybody else shows up they had better be people with whom I had a prior agreement. I take what I'm doing very seriously, and I don't have the time or resources to waste on people who don't. Even when they are my friends.
That said, I do hope to establish partnerships with people who want to help prepare. Relationships with friends and neighbors are as valuable as anything else a person can have when it comes to surviving a crisis. I will have some resources in abundance: land, clean water, isolation, wood and hopefully by the time it matters, food. I'll be interested in teaming up with people who have skills I need. Some of that might just be manpower, but more likely it's going to be things like medical skills, welding, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, construction, or just supplying things that I need.
My prepping begins for real in about 2 years. What I've been doing for the last decade is buying stuff, but I'm the 1st to recognize how woefully inadequate that is. The fact is, I have very little food set aside. There are countless things that I will undoubtedly encounter that I've never thought about at all. If things were to collapse today, I'd be in real trouble. I expect to need at least 2 years before I'll be any good at growing and canning a variety of foods.
Four years from now I may be able to say that I'm feeling better about my chances of surviving a catastrophe. But, even there, it really boils down to the type of catastrophe. I'm not prepping for nuclear war. If an all-out war happens, I won't survive it. If there's a plague, then my chances are probably pretty good, but it probably comes down to how the thing spreads. If it spreads via ticks or mosquitoes, I could be in trouble. (Ironically, Zika - which spreads by mosquitoes- isn't likely to ever be a threat in New Hampshire. I gather that only some mosquitoes carry it, and those varieties aren't found in northern Virginia. I assume that's because of the temperature. If they are found in northern Virginia, then they sure aren't going to be a problem for me in New Hampshire.)
There are all sorts of possible catastrophes. The only one that I think is nearly certain to happen in my lifetime is an economic collapse. That's the one I'll be worrying about and trying to prepare for. Fortunately, it's one of the ones that has a high probability of survival. But only for people who are ready for it. Also fortunately, preparing for an economic collapse is similar to what I would do if I were focused on numerous other crises. Not identical, but similar. Isolation and independence take you far in many situations.
If this forum is still around in two years, I expect I'll be making some interesting contributions to it. I probably won't be on the internet every day, but when I am, I should be able to share some interesting stories. My list of things to learn is already massive: Fencing (both the barbed wire kind and those made of split tree branches without even nails), growing orchards and a vineyard and a garden, harvesting, canning, raising mushrooms, raising bees, hunting, butchering, smoking meat, raising animals, raising fish, putting in a zip line that will double as a ski-lift, setting up outbuildings and greenhouses, getting power to some of them (at least a solar light), learning to drive an excavator, do driveway repair, clearing snow on a massive scale, setting up a small sawmill, gathering and splitting firewood, learning to weld, and even simply mowing a huge lot. The potential for projects is endless.
A lot of what I'd like to do will never happen. I'm only one person. But to the extent that they do, it'll be sweet.
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