I remember listening to radio talk shows in the 1970s with a variety of guests. One of the more frequent visitors talked about a soon-coming inflationary depression, where our dollars would be completely worthless, and because of the spiraling prices, companies would close their doors and lay off millions.

Many times, he talked about buying precious metals (bullion at first, but as the years went on, he started promoting gold krugerrand coins) and food dehydrators.

Around forty-five to fifty years later, nothing even close to his scenario has happened. And, as another fairly regular guest used to say "you can't eat gold", so I'm still suspicious of people who want us to buy precious metals in order to ensure we can buy food.

Gold was recently USD$2023.70 per ounce. So you hike down to your local supermarket and want to buy a steak for tonight's dinner. Uh, that steak may be expensive, but you've got at least $1800 in change coming. If you're not using dollars, how are you going to get change? Oh, I know. Buy ten of those steaks and you don't have to worry about change.

Except how are you going to store those steaks long enough to eat them before they spoil? In such a scenario, you're certainly not expecting the power company to continue supplying you nor can you expect to buy fuel for a generator.

So even before you deal with not being able to correctly predict the future, you're dealing with a rapid expansion in the number of things in your currently lifestyle that must be replaced or that you must adapt your lifestyle in order to live without them.

So, I don't know. Probably plan for your local community to be more resilient against various negative events, but that's going to take you working with the municipal governance board and municipal employees to map out what must be done and then to allocate sufficient resources for doing those things. As soon as you do this, you'll realize that some of your current neighbors are already experiencing deprivation, and you'll want to figure out how to alleviate it.

And that's part of my problem with "preppers". Yes, do what you can to prepare yourself and your loved ones for unexpected hardship, but don't be extreme about it ... as you're not going to last long if society collapses around you, and if you have the time to prep, you also have the time to move your entire community toward sufficiency.