The coming collapse: what should one expect? How does one survive?

Sorry about that it should be 400 AD when the Romans empire started to collapse, no idea why I would think it was 1400. By then things were a lot more settled.

If you are going to bug in, I would be certain to have enough food supply and water to last up to 12 months. In the city, you want to take protective measures by hiding your supply and having a means to lock it up if need be, and weapons to protect yourself. Have enough of your medication stocked away with some natural alternatives or antibiotics in case you need them. Have a good first aid kit and know how to perform CPR. If you are a woman, have your personal supplies stocked up too.

If you are going to bug out and get out of the city, get a bug out bag ready now, full of high protein bars and small things you can pack that will sustain you, and make sure you have a decent supply of water you can take with you or a compact filtration system.

Personally, and this is what I keep telling everyone..... I would get out of the city now. I would not wait until SHTF. I know that's not possible for everyone, but it is something you need to consider. Can't move into the country? Fine. But find yourself a small town in a rural area. Small enough where you know people are going to stay cool headed.

After living in a big city for a few years, I took a good look around and realized I'd be trapped there if something happened. Think back to 9/11 and how panicked some people were acting. The grocery stores were being cleared out in some areas of canned goods and water. The gas stations had a line wrapped around the block. People will panic if something happens. So be ready. Don't be that person caught at the store looking for water and food because it will be gone.

By the by I have been told 2013 is when all of this will happen. This is going to be a year from hell so be ready.

Originally posted by pikestaff
When bartering starts to be 'the norm' and there are set values on bartered items, then you will know things are getting back to 'normal' But as gold/silver cannot be eaten or worn, those metals will take a lot longer to be acceptable. Seeds, cloth, clothing, footwear, dried food, other preserves are all worth stocking up with, if you have the spare cash.

In addition, cigarettes and booze are going to be a hot commodity. I'd definitely keep some stored for strong bartering purposes.

I am sorry to be the bubbling bursting bad guy, but I'd doubt many of us if any at all would survive.

Key thing to think about, who's gonna take care of the crap we've made 100% personally attended machines, that control everything from Temperatures and pressures, cool offs, and such? Lot's of things to go boom after a kinda short period of time.

Not to mention the Million or so street gangs that are more armed than any of you country boys could ever dream of, since of course they don't have to rely on laws to hold them back from what they can purchase. Which by the way, so many have made themselves targets, Light travels, smoke is smelled, and voices carry in the cold winter night.

Then you have good ole mother nature, survivalist or not, I dunno how many of you live honestly without power, clean running water and most of all medical supplies...

Watch the road, it's a better depiction of any aftermath situation. Like mad max, on a 10 dollar budget.

Originally posted by 00nunya00
reply to post by St Udio

 

Right on, so you see a Hunger Games-style future for the world, with little to no hope of any semblance of our current society coming back for generations? Do you see any hope of humanity---the masses of "little guys"---coming together and working currency-free for a period while we all put our sweat equity into getting the "system" restarted again, from the bottom up?

yes indeed... watch a few of those early Colonies movies... where those that built a community 'fort' had to temporarily abandon their frontier log cabins..and fight both the enemy Indigenous peoples and the British
(think of them as 21st century analogs of terror groups/gangs and the militarized U.S. government bent on taking away the preppers & survivalists resources)

Originally posted by MommaDukes
I, too, am curious. I was looking for the same answer myself and logged on here and immediately saw this thread. I could maybe make 2 weeks but that's about it. Living paycheck to paycheck doesn't leave much left over for extra supplies. I would like to move to the country but South Florida doesn't have much country to it.

I know how this is. Here is what you start doing today. Every single trip you make to the store, buy two cans of food to store away, and every time that you can, get a jug of water. You may also want to invest in a compact water filtration system too. You don't want to wait until something happens, then run to the store and find the shelves empty.

reply to post by Moneyisgodlifeisrented


I'm expecting people from the cities to flood the country. This is why the husband and I are starting an underground shelter on our land, far off from our house. We will need to secure our food because I know we'd be killed for it in an instant. I never thought one day I'd be talking about taking our survival that far but I do believe things are going to get bad and if I want to protect my daughter then I have no choice.

I am preparing for at least a year before things get back to semi normal.....A year of food, a year of water, medicines, toiletries, plenty of seeds for crops, fuel whether propane/wood/solar panels etc.....protection.....

A year gets you through each season alive and able to possibly stand a chance at survival....

So no one here thinks that TPTB are planning on introducing a global currency and debt reset in the event of a collapse?

What I see happening is the global economy will crash, they will let us all twist in the wind for a few days, maybe a week or two, and then will have a summit where they decide the only remedy is to reset all of the global debts and start fresh, with the caveat that all countries will now operate under one worldwide currency that cannot be manipulated and fluctuated in the way separate currencies are. Of course, to control and monitor this currency, they will need a governing body with much more bite than the UN, and this will be your basic NWO beginning.

What scares me is the ensuing war between TPTB and those of us who reject and resist the takeover, not so much the crash itself. Am I the only one?

are we talking immediate large-scale eco collapse? I don't see that happening except from natural disaster or war/terrorist attack. I'm more worried about gradual decline where we suffer like the frog in the pot. I can see unemployment slowly creeping up to 15-20% and hugely increasing demands on government provision with a smaller and smaller workforce to provide.

lots of survival stuff on this site www.survivalistboards.com...

If you want an idea of what to expect, then look to history.

At worse case scenario, we may see the collapse of our country as a republic and re-emerge in some other form of government.

At a minimum, we most likely will see a world like the one of the Weimer Republic of Germany during the 1920s. A collapse of the economy and currency, and hyperinflation.

One story from that time is that a man drinking coffee in a cafe had to pay more for his second cup than his first as prices were going up that fast. People digging through trash and scrap for food and fuel.

No jobs. Mass hunger and want. In Louisiana in 1933, half the houses in the state were forclosed on... in one day.

Riots and civil unrest... aka the Bonus Army that marched on Washington, or the rise of militias and "social" groups in Germany that gave rise to the Brown Shirts, the Nazis, and the SA.

The economy collapses. Food shotages. The rise of a Fascist state... almost there now.

Do not count on anything from any where beyond your family... If you want to see what it will be like, simply go and flip off your breaker box... hide the car keys... and see how a weekend like that would be.

Count on living like the 19th century... walking everywhere, cooking on a fire, washing from buckets of water hauled from a lake or stream or hand pumped from a well. You waste nothing... not one scrap, not one loose button, not the shoe strings from a worn out pair of shoes, not the nails from a packing crate, nothing. Every meal is eaten... no waste, no scraps... leftovers are saved for the next meal as there is no way to keep them beyond a day or so.

You learn to improvise and make and engineer things... make something from nothing... use the soles from worn out shoes as hinges on a shed, use a wire clothes hanger as an anttena for the radio, the shelf from an old refridgerator becomes a grill, etc.

You save old screens from windows and use them to sun dry tomatoes because all of the canning jar lids are used up and you can't buy more at the store. In fact, growing and preserving and gathering food takes up a great deal of every day. Cutting wood and drawing up water to do so takes up the rest of your day.

If you are lucky enough to have family alive that lived through the Great Depression... visit and talk with them. Life was simple but harsh and unforgiving. You made do or did without.

OK... I guess that about does it, hope that answers your question.

reply to post by 00nunya00


I see your point in the emergeance of an NWO super state. I expect that... along with a single currency and over bearing laws and regulations and attempts to control the populace.

You are one step from crossing the line into Christian Apocolyptic End Times Theology... aka a one world government and the mark of the beast.

I will resist it and defy it and will probably be martyred.

reply to post by AlreadyGone


Well, yes and no----I agree that looking back to the depression of the 30's will glean some info on how bad it can get, but things are far different now in many ways. For instance, no internet and internet economy back then----how does that play in to the recovery? What advantage---or disadvantage----will the ability for everyone around the world to communicate in real time during the first days and weeks of the collapse give us? Chaos and confusion and reliance on a newspaper to tell you what's going on helped TPTB keep the reins last time, but what about this time?

Also, a vast majority in this thread are saying to prepare for years and years, if not decades, of living salt-of-the-earth and Little House. This was not true even back in the 30's, when for all the lack of technological advances you'd think they would have been crushed back to the stone age like everyone here is suggesting----yet they weren't. Ten years out, things were getting better again, and 20 years out they were spending big again. What makes us so sure that this time we'll just lay down our tools of trade and start begging in the streets? We didn't just give up before, and we didn't have half the population starving to death in the first year----why is everyone suggesting that will happen this time?

reply to post by 00nunya00


First...you asked for opinions. That is mine.

Second, I tend to look for worst case and anything short of it is a good thing.

Thirdly, will there be an internet... and if the NWO takes over, as you suggested, will we be allowed to use it openly and with full access?

Yes, things did get better after the Great Depression, but it did last 10 years and the world wide economic collpase was the catalyst for the Second World War... it took the war plus 2 more years or until 1947 for the past war economy to recover to the thriving levels of the 1920s... not too encouraging.

Oh...and I do beg to differ with the notion that people were not starving.

In the 1920s and 1930s, 2 out of 3 people in the US lived on farms... now only 2 percent truly farm. My dad says that they didn't have much, but by living on a farm they rarely went hungry... but they did from time to time.

In the early 1930s and the initial stages of the Depression, people were hungry... lines went on forever at soup kitchens. We saw the migration of entire communities and demographics from one area to another seeking jobs and sustinence. Farmers killed there horses to eat them. If food was available, you could not afford it... which led to price controls and then to shortages.

Imagine destitution and hunger and want on a level like the Great Depression... match that with the lack of civility and morals rampant today... and true iggnorance of self sufficiency... and you have a recipe for disaster.

Originally posted by AlreadyGone
First...you asked for opinions. That is mine.

Second, I tend to look for worst case and anything short of it is a good thing.

Not trying to discount your opinion, just playing devil's advocate to test it. No offense meant.

Thirdly, will there be an internet... and if the NWO takes over, as you suggested, will we be allowed to use it openly and with full access?

That's a great question----I think it really comes down to how quickly they plan on showing their hand. If they take over ASAP after the crash, then no, we'll be screwed. But would they leap on that takeover right away, or like I said, let us twist for a while to make us all scared of starvation and more accepting of the global takeover? I think they will keep the net up so we can all create enough panic for each other that we're scared enough to not resist. If we have some time, will we be using it to organize whatever resistance we can?

Yes, things did get better after the Great Depression, but it did last 10 years and the world wide economic collpase was the catalyst for the Second World War... it took the war plus 2 more years or until 1947 for the past war economy to recover to the thriving levels of the 1920s... not too encouraging.

Exactly my point---they didn't let us completely fail, just enough to break us and then they put the pieces back together. But I think war, this time, would be counter productive to the plan of establishing one-world governance. Either way, we're not talking about generations of starvation and poverty, we're talking about one generation learning the "new order" and how to get along within it.

Oh...and I do beg to differ with the notion that people were not starving.

I never said they weren't starving, I said *half the nation didn't starve TO DEATH in the first year as others have suggested we would next time.*

In the 1920s and 1930s, 2 out of 3 people in the US lived on farms... now only 2 percent truly farm. My dad says that they didn't have much, but by living on a farm they rarely went hungry... but they did from time to time.

In the early 1930s and the initial stages of the Depression, people were hungry... lines went on forever at soup kitchens. We saw the migration of entire communities and demographics from one area to another seeking jobs and sustinence. Farmers killed there horses to eat them. If food was available, you could not afford it... which led to price controls and then to shortages.

Imagine destitution and hunger and want on a level like the Great Depression... match that with the lack of civility and morals rampant today... and true iggnorance of self sufficiency... and you have a recipe for disaster.

These are two great points. We have very little ability to feed ourselves on a small personal scale this time, and the implements necessary to do so will be in short order and too expensive very quickly on. We might face a much bigger problem of starvation this time because of that. Combine that with the vastly different moral landscape of the present that you mentioned, and it truly is a recipe for disaster.

But they did, as you pointed out, provide at least soup lines for the starving. They will not just let us starve en mass, though they will probably let us starve enough to cease being a threat.

My guess is the farming operations already established will be put under direct control of the government, which will take all the goods and distribute them as they want. Thus they hold our food supply completely in their own power. It will all be free, but never enough and directly tied to your allegiance to the government. I don't see them outlawing small-scale non-commercial farming, because I don't think they will just come out and be that transparent. But if they also control the water, you can bet they will ration it to the point where it's as precious as gas, and you won't be pouring it on your garden. Hunting may be outlawed if they turn to it to supplement the food supply, or they may just drastically cut the hunting licenses granted.

Forget about gold and silver. If a total economic collapse happens... drugs, alcohol, food, water, and weapons will be damn near priceless.

Here's a clue, whatch Europe!!! My guess after those folks economy crashes USA has roughly two weeks before the SHTF. I would imagine a global reboot and debt nullification with a global currency to kick things off. The little people, like us, may still be on a barter economy for a cuple of months until goods and services start going. Well, that's my opinon anyway. BTW, as others have said, the cities will be really yucky for a few weeks. Military and LE would step in to regain order fairly quickly. People treat people like animals right now...imagine what a callapse would be like.

Oh, watch for jersey barricades in major intersections and throughfares...that would be a big AH HA.

reply to post by 00nunya00


In my Opinion- The First issue will be the Power Grid going down and then all communications. Banks will lose all client information. Martial Law will be en-forced and you will be stuck wherever you are located.

Carry Cash on you at all times. Get youre money out of the bank and hide it. Keep youre Gas in car filled up at all times. Stockpile Food, Water, Antibotics, First Aid Supplies, Tents etc. Get out of the city and move Northwest if you can afford to. Know how to survive out in the woods if needed. If you live in the city it will be to late to leave after all of this goes down.

It sounds like to me you have a good play already! As far as the banking- the plan is to get rid of cash and everything will go on debit card,this will allow the Government complete control. This changing over the cash system is already happening in Sweden and Spain.