And do what, exactly?

If you are self preparing, all that is happening is that you are creating a stockpile for a group of raiders to sack.

The groups that will succeed the most are going to be tight knit small towns with an armory and the ability to be self sufficient for most essentials.

If you don’t have a group to plan a strategy around now, you’re just LARPing.

I’m very lucky in that I have a good job, home, land and some strong skills. So, most of my model isn’t realistic for the majority. But anyway, I operate a small farm as a kind of side business/learning experiment to raise livestock/honey/eggs/ grow crops. As an mechanical/stationary engineer I’ve also set up a good failsafe system of temporary generators assuming my solar setup is damaged or loses functionalality. As well as plenty of resources I’ll need assuming I cant get power regardless (alt light sources, hard-core cold gear, water collection and purification, ect) I’m trained with firearms but hope I’ll never have to use them outside the range. I do a good bit of canning and live essentially out in the woods with no neighbors for about a mile in any direction. I have accumulated tools that can handle most projects that may come up (maintenence is not pretty but unbelievably important). Again i recognize my situation isn’t realistic for the majority. That said, anyone in any situation can learn basic skills like canning, sewing, self defense (armed or not) and basic structure maintenance.

Preparing?

I mean, if there is a ‘collapse’, what use will there be to stock pile some food/medications? If those are not stolen by raiders (aka other people believing they ought to survive… a side note to those of our American friends who worship the holy gun: no, you won’t own enough bullets to shoot them all). Those stocks they will only last so long, right? Then, what?

It’s even simpler in my very personal situation: I’m alive today thx to constant medications. Stop the inflow of those medications and I will last a couple years at most (dixit the same doctors that have been keeping me running for many years now). And that is in the best conditions, which probably won’t be what we will all be experimenting.

So, I prepare by being fine with knowing things and I will end. Which they will, even without any collapse. And by knowing other things will replace them, with or without that odd human species that once ruled the planet.

On the short term, as my humble way to try reduce the risk of such a sad collapse happening, I do my best to reduce the resources I consume, and by encouraging people (me included) to rediscover there is an alternative path to self-destruction through constant anger and hate against the other(s)… and against oneself.

If something happens I will try my best to die at the first blast. I am too old and tired and blasee for any apocalypse.

First thing to understand is global collapse isn’t an event. It’s a slow process that unfolds over years, or more likely, decades. We are already seeing it happening, but since it’s not like the movies most of us don’t recognize it.

The second thing is that baring some major instant catastrophe you aren’t going to see hordes of displaced people fighting for your potatoes. It takes real desperation to pack a bag, leave all the rest of your things, leave your home, and walk far away hoping it’ll be better somewhere else. Even now people stay in some of the most dangerous and unhospitable places.

So, odds are you’ll have time to set up a garden, set up a rainwater collection system, maybe get some solar panels. Whatever you want to do to prepare for what you expect is coming, you can probably do it. One guiding principle in this is try to minimize your external dependencies. If you can feed yourself and live comfortably without a big shopping trip every week you are doing better than most. Independence from utilities is more difficult, but doable if you want to put the effort and money into it. Another principle is learn useful skills. Learn how to build things, fix things, buildings, cars, electric motors, etc. Most people jump to protecting yourself from bandits. Do you live in a high-crime area? If so maybe move. If not, take some reasonable self-defense precautions. You aren’t going to fight off an army or even a coordinated gang, so just don’t worry about it too much. Basically, live in an area where you get along with your neighbors and you help each other out. Bonus points if they are self-sufficient too.

I mean, you can’t predict what’s going to happen, so just try to insulate yourself from whatever system shocks might appear. You’ll need to adapt as the years go by and things get worse. Good luck. :-)

Learning skills

Plans are already in place. I’m gonna kick back, watch Blast from the Past, and kiss my ass goodbye while I get good and drunk/messed up. It’s the same thing I do during storm season. I’ve started from literal nothing too many times. I refuse to do it again.

Know your neighbors, befriend your neighbors, when the collapse happens you’ll need food in your gardens sure, but you’ll need your neighbors to think you’re more than a spare pantry when their food gets low, even better if you like each other enough to form a real community thats more defendable and resilient than any single household could be

Been learning to garden for a few years. This year I’m focusing on perennials, specifically heirloom species that were staple food crops prior to the modern industrial era.

Turns out pretty much every non native plant in North America is a food crop. These plants often have superiour nutritional content as well as being more drought resistant, hardy, and ecologically sustainable.

A few to google.

Bambara ‘Beans’ - West African Staple for 300 years. All 9 amino acids. Bio available B12. Grows like legumes. Nitrogen fixer

Bamboo - Edible varieties have lots of fiber and potassium, some protein and low fat.

Old King Henry - Edible shoots like asparagus, edible leaves like spinach, edible grainlike seeds similar to quinoa

Skirret - clumping root vegetable that looks like carrots. Has higher carb density than carrots.

Comfrey - Top Tier mulch/fertilizer.

Clover - Edible nitrogen fixer

Dandelions - Edible nitrogen fixer

Cat Tails - Indigenous, all parts are edible, winter survival crop.

Ashitaba - apparently this plant has insane nutritional benefits for the body and originates from an Okinawan island with the longes average lifspan in the world.

Gardening, getting solar panels and a well is the regular way to handle a crisis.
You can download a lot of data - like Wikipedia, getting books to live on, get a novie collection going, get a sewing machine and good thread also. Global collapse can be just a blink or go mad max. That case guns also.
I don’t believe it will be that bad, but the signs for sure sow a lot of upcoming troubles.

Establish or join mutual aid networks and learn practical skills like gardening, sewing, or mechanics. Ideally don’t live in a city (assuming total trade collapse)

by making peace with death

I always see some truly naive optimism in threads like these. Global collapse means shipping is dead, which means every city is in a state of famine.

Pick your closest city, split the population in 4 for each cardinal direction and run some rough estimates on how many will be walking near your door. That’s ignoring all the people in your own town that don’t have gardens.

I know I have close to a million people coming my way, and someone’s going to kill me for my little dozen potatoes. You can’t fight off that many people with a handful of neighbors. It also takes a shit load of gardening to keep a family of 4 alive.

If your plan doesn’t involve getting the fuck out of dodge and having a cache of food somewhere remote (with a cottage or small cabin if you live in a winter region), it will fail.

I don’t. I’m not egotistical enough to think the world will collapse or that if it did I’d have any ability to survive it.

If there is a mass die off then I’m dying too.

Looking up closest shop for arms. Will likely be visiting places to test things out.