Doomsday planning for less crazy folk
One that that needs to be emphasized is you only perfect preparation for about 2 weeks of the worst case, after that you need must less.<p>Lose your job for 6 months, cut your budget and use your emergency savings, but most of your supplies are not used (tap water is still safe to drink).<p>Complete collapse of civilization? 2 weeks to enough to understand how bad it is - when the power isn't coming back that implies such a reduced population that you don't worry about looting: in fact you should be with the few remaining people looting what there is.  Break into WalMart for clothing.  If you live in an area where you cannot support yourself farming break into a dealer's safe, get the keys to a new truck, and break into gas stations tanks along the way to fill it up until you get someplace you can survive long term.  (the truck will be abandoned once you are there: fuel goes bad quickly).<p>On those lines, you don't need to move to a rural area and practice survival skills now. All those massive corporate farms: at best they have enough fuel to get in half the harvest so they need your manual labor now. Get out of the city and you will find rural areas with plenty of food in desperate need of labor. Almost nobody knows how to harvest corn by hand. Few people know how to use a horse. they need your help to figure it out.  Make yourself more valuable by bringing seeds for vegetables that are not in the fields.