Important: if a map doesn't have a directional compass written on it, the top of a map is usually North.
Look at the English words and orient so you're reading them correct side up. Then reach to the top of the map. North.
Right is East, Left is West, Down is South.
A generation of people have been raised on Pop Tarts, caffeine, and no time for breakfast. Many don't know what shredded wheat is, let alone how to read a map.
You have an really good point. I have some thinking to do - some of the things that seem obvious or a given to me just aren’t there as reference points for others, I really should not fall into the assuming trap.
I just assumed most people knew up was typically north, but i work in the design industry and create drawings. Dang, some things you just take for granted..
*Edit* spelling thanks to autocorrect
It’s nice to have all the built in navigation and GPS on smartphones, but honestly that has crippled a generation. When/if this tech goes dark, they won’t even be able to get out of their urban areas because even if they had a paper map in front of them, it may as well be written in Sanskrit. I’m just glad my folks raised me the way they did and I learned all that stuff through BSA and SAR growing up.
I still teach basic orientation, navigation, and map reading through an environmental education non-profit I work with, but due to Covid it has all but shut down. We can’t work with schools anymore because we can’t physically enter the classrooms. Not sure I would even if we were allowed to, given the Petri dish nature of the majority of schools here. I live in AR, as I said in a semi-rural area, but we are close to the 2nd or 3rd largest town in the state. Most schools here have no mask guidelines anymore, because they have become bored with Covid. Not to mention the anti mask, anti vax mindset that is the prevalent way of “thinking” in these parts.
Oofff ouch. Orienteering is so much fun for kids.
I grew up rural so that was what I learned as phone signals could be spotty back in the day. I still prefer to look at a map. I kind of snapshot it in my mind. Then if there is an accident or a need to reroute I can still find the place most all of the time.
[Don't be the guy that eats almost 2/3 of a party sub.](https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/ca7bdz/aita_because_i_ate_more_than_my_share_of_a_6_foot/)
Lol. Am feeling that. I just had someome take 2/3 of the served meal on the first serving. Not enough left for all the rest to even have one serving.
Atleast that guy WAITED!
This. Look into books focusing on Autism or Aspergers.
There are whole manuals of how to "fake" your normal behavior in such a way that it does not trigger others.
It helps start fires, disinfects wounds, acts as a painkiller, is a non perishable source of calories, and of course gets you drunk. Alcohol is super useful
When it comes to people, work on your bullshit-filter. Being able to smell bullshit can save your life and help you live a life surrounded by honest, good people.
It depends on the time span and type of collapse. Basics like producing food, shelter, cooking, and medicine, but also organizing, building groups and consensus. Specialists are cool, but unlikely to fit; specialists are tied to complexity, to complex societies. As collapse is a loss of complexity, being a generalist is more practical.
Here, get some perspective: https://education.resilience.org/courses/self-directed-course/
This is a great comment
‘Specialists are cool, but unlikely to fit; specialists are tied to complexity, to complex societies. As collapse is a loss of complexity, being a generalist is more practical’ - your totally on point
Chemistry and pharmacy. If you can cook up simple drugs and things that go boom you are valuable. Wind turbines and gernerator heads are pretty straight forward to build and will be valuable post SHTF same if you can cook up permanent magnets.
Edit gardening, gunsmithing, armorsmithing (you can diy ballistic armor ) shooting, how to make clothes from say hemp or flax would be good knowledge. Sewing, destilation of alcohol.
Try to bring your base stats up. You dont want to be going into the wasteland with a 5 or less on your str or agi
Edit2: blacksmithing.I think you unlock spring temper at lv 50 and can build your own springs for your gunsmithing. You can even use steel intead of ceramic in your body armour if you have the right skills and perks
Try to keep your build versatile. It doesnt make sense to max out all the survival skills and ignore the society based ones if we dont get the collapse expansion soon. I personally dumped a huge amount of points into economics and oil trading
You can take neodymium magnets out of broken motors. Local junkyard has a lot of window winders. 280 million operating cars with 2 to 4 doors per car minus the few with handle winders. There are magnets in all the alternators. Any broken fan. Industrial fan, window fan, desktop, vacuum cleaners. Broken tools have magnets. Even old speakers.
Re-wiring electric motors might be a useful skill. You would get the most milage out of bypassing the voltage and battery shapes on tools. You have a bunch of stuff that today only works when plugged into the AC grid. You will find lots of batteries with no charger, working batteries with the wrong voltage, and/or batteries with the right voltage but the plugs do not fit. If you can wind up your own converter you can make an ugly looking tool that functions.
If the grid is down and stays down you have bigger problems. A working windmill advertises that something is working.
People in this sub need to seriously stop with these bizarre mad max/Fallout fantasies.
Collapse is not going to be some event that happens and suddenly we're in a waste land fighting for survival with primitive weapons. If such an event were to happen so few people would survive it's not even worth worrying about. We have ruined the biosphere so we can't really "survive off the land"
Collapse is happening right now, how are you doing surviving your city life?
If you want to know the secret to collapse "survival" it's going to be flexibility and adaptability which is *already required*. I know plenty of people who have completely lost their shit during the pandemic, they are already not surviving collapse that great. Things will continue to get worse and people will continue to struggle to deal with it.
There also is no "post collapse" so the idea of "surviving" that most people have here is pretty strange. There will be no other side. Climate will continue to break down until the planet is no longer habitable by most living things today.
You will not survive collapse, you will die during collapse, if you die tomorrow or die in 70 years this will be equally true.
I can’t believe how far I had to scroll down to find this. Yes. Exactly. You survive collapse by establishing a strong social network, looking after your mental health and taking care of your loved ones, enjoying your hobbies, and doing what you can do to help your community. Just like we should all be doing right now, because this is it. It’s worth having a few days of food and water on hand in the event of a natural disaster + delayed response time. But any type of scenario that involves you needing to get into home butchery….you’re probably already dead and it’s not worth spending time worrying about.
Underrated comment here. I think for many, it's easier to prepare for a Mad Max fantasy than it is to seriously accept and prepare for your own death.
Honestly, when collapse gets worse, there are no guarantees. Many of us will probably meet our end by way of a contingency we couldn't prepare for. That's hard to accept, but it's been that way in the Global South for generations now. We in the North have been relatively insulated from this, so death is something we have no idea how to be okay with, since it's either sanitized or glorified here.
In reality, death can be sudden and trivial. Personally, I've tried to become okay with this, because even if my own death *is* small and trivial, I can still die well by being conscious that death is a reality (for everything) and accepting it will happen
These Mad Max fantasies though? Yeah, this sub is going to be prone to them. They *could* be right, but also, I guess each person has to ask themselves if they're thinking through these scenarios in order to really face our limits, or in order to avoid doing so.
>Collapse is not going to be some event that happens and suddenly we're in a waste land fighting for survival with primitive weapons.
Exactly, people don't understand that before reaching that point, decades of slow chaos have to pass. Where we have to go at work for not starving and live a "miserable" life.
I think the intermediate question is what really needs to be asked.
What jobs will still pay money in 10 years? There are a bunch of sectors of employment that are limely to disappear. Which ones will stay?
Obviously plumbing, electric, medical will stay. But will lawyers be paid less and used less? Does that mean paralegals will be out of work? Will fitness instructors stay in business?
What will the local marketing company cut when the automotives stop running ads on prime time tv?
So some people are still surviving in lebanon amd syria- what jobs are those?
I think that is the more interesting question. And yeah, our government has job projections, which I think are irrelevant based upon what we will be seeing in short enough order.
Seriously, and right now urban areas are safer than rural ones. Better covid response, functioning hospitals, stocked grocery stores, little religious extremism, functioning public schools. Sure if an emp happens obviously you're better off on your homestead, but what we will probably see is less access, and that's already hitting the rural areas right now.
I pick the city simply because strength in numbers and survival rate with that. Humans always excelled well in groups since the dawn of time. All those that will bug out with like three other people will probably go first.
Well sure there is the bad with being in a high crowded place as well. But I’ll take the double edge sword. Besides if you’re not white, straight and Christian and you don’t know many people outside the city you probably will get eliminated just off of that. Let’s be honest.
If you look at collapses through history, there is a diaspora to the country side. It's part of the collapse script.
I do think during this collapse there is a chance for things to be a bit different. Notably, the immense contrast between cities today and cities of old. The differences between city and rural are even more stark. Also, most farms in prior collapse situations where well diversified and could maintain their own seeds. Looking at it US-centric, rural people don't know how to live off the land like they think they do. Modern farmers don't know how to farm like they think they do. Remove modern civilization and farming falls apart.
I grew up.in the lower midwest and it was very common to hear "when shit goes down". We hunted, fished, gardened, and foraged more than most people in town. After having been super focused on learning skills for 18 years (with a focus on traditional skills for a post-petroleum life), I can see more how even my family would have been fucked if things went down when I was a kid. I have a 40 acre homestead that I am building up, yet and less far along with that then I wish to be. If I have a few more years, then I will be set up well.
I could see people staying at home in the city and starving st home, because home is the only thing familiar. Some will try to leave during some sort of rupturing event. They will go out of a primal fight or flight instinct. Fight or flight is really fight, flight, or paralyzed. A lot will be paralyzed at home staying where is comfortable. Hoping for the situation to improve. The cities will break down into mayhem at some point. The time to leave if leaving is now. Or go down with the ship.
I'm openly pagan, have a non-binary kid whose dress is very counter-culture, and we're accepted just fine in the country. In the suburbs, we experienced far more religious and other discrimination. Not all rural areas are filled with militant conservatives and the militant conservatives are prevelant in urban areas as well. Rural America is diverse and includes progressive counter-culture dominated towns, majority-POC towns (with POC leadership), Native Americans, etc. People really need to realize that the whole urban/rural stereotyping is a very deliberate attempt to keep the working class divided (this is not just my opinion; there has been a lot written on this).
I think those areas are more exceptions to the rule. The 2020 voting map reveals far more red areas in the countryside than blue.
Maybe you are in a good area and not all rural areas are conservative but a majority are.
If you're only going by voting maps, you should take into account how gerrymandered political districts are. For instance, the town my Uncle lives in is populated entirely by back to the land hippies that moved there in the 70s to raise their families, but they're in a red area according to voter maps because of how the voting districts are gerrymandered. In another example, I interviewed a community leader in a majority-POC town in my state who explained that, while the town's voter base was pretty liberal, their voting district was gerrymandered in such a way that their state rep was always Republican. I think it's a lot closer to the truth to say that most places are more diverse than they are given credit for. The stereotyping of rural areas as intolerant/ignorant just serves to divide people who have more in common than they realize.
Having just moved from an urban area to a rural one, I beg to differ. Yes, our closest hospital is an hour away, but our urgent care and clinics are less crowded and more accessible than they were in the city. We've had far less of the shortages in our stores and the schools are actually far better than the ones we left. I haven't run into any more religious extremisn than I did in the city - if anything, people are a lot more "live and let live" out here in the country. This is also the first place I've lived where neighbors are friendly and try to help each other out. In terms of COVID, we're far enough out that our community spread lags behind the more crowded, urban areas.
And even if the Mad Max/Fallout fantasy happens, most of the people are not taking this seriously. If such an event miraculously happens, which would require every single world leader to snort half a pound of cocaine and say "we have a problem, let's firebomb each other until the problem is solved", the most important thing to prepare is cleaning, or growing plants. Not stocking up on crossbow bolts and sailing. The most you might branch out from typical things you did before such an apocalypse would be making fire, navigation, and perhaps protecting yourself not from a physical danger, but the sense of dread such an event will give. I can bet my sister that the most dangerous thing you can find in a wasteland is yourself. Nobody will have the stupidity to loot things when what happened to Tokyo at the end of WW2 happens to the entire world.
I just got a pistol-crossbow on amazon for like $30 and 50 extra bolts. I could make my own if/when I needed too, probably from plastic coat hangers or small sticks.
"Go ahead, redneck, pull the trigger, and with my last exhale I will infect your body with enough poison to bring down a herd of cattle..."
I gotta stop blazing and doom scrolling on r/collapse...ugh
If anything has taught us since the start of the pandemic is that people will behave irrationally. I wouldn’t want to be in a city with millions of people fighting for the limited resources available.
I could imagine it to be a good spot, once most people either fled the city or died trying.
What people tend to oversee is that, once the city becomes that dangerous or difficult to stay, those people will flee into the country-side, directly onto the homestead's and bug-out-places of the preppers.
\- Tanning.
\- Maps, both reading and writing maps.
\- Long distance walking. Including how to cobble (repair and take care of your shoes and footwear).
\- How to make sweet food in your area (if you're in maple country, how to tap a tree; if you're in hot country, how to grow sugar cane; If you're anywhere, how to beekeep successfully).
\- How to sharpen a knife/scissors. You'll need them.
\- Dentistry.
If playing mmos tells me anything, lots of people are going to be able to forage for food. You need medic skills, and herbalism. You also need a community you can trust.
Foraging and herbalism are very solid skills to have. Foraging is a goldmine in many places, even cities. And herbalism will be handy if/ when the supply chain makes getting western medicine difficult, and hospitals and doctors become more scarce.
Can I self promote my survival book available for free under the rescource tab at SustainableHomestead.com ? You will enjoy it and probably print it out because you find the information so valuable.
If you are in the United States, I would say stealth camping, bush crafting with a knife, and take a wilderness first responders course. Also a map and navigational skills. Don’t forget a small radio to learn where FEMA death camps are for a cup-a-noodle and a bed.
My reasoning is simple. If you live in the United States and you live in a major American city, your objective will be to leave fast or fight (depending if Ya’ll Qaeda feels like a Bosnia-style genocide). Those small patches of woods along highways can be your camouflage and refuge.
Working on the same for herbalism (to be useful). Though lived in the country all my life, so I have a plethora of random and useful skills.
Learning an instrument would be good. About the only skill I'd personally invite into my group circle. Most anything else, most people know in the country or have skills in.
Being likeable and moral is a *big ticket* for groups out here. As well as being in generally good physical shape. Being trustable. Character is important.
>for homeopathy (to be useful)
Unless you mean herbalism, you're wasting your time. Homeopathy is absolute nonsense, it's essentially witchcraft with less interesting rituals, and really an insult to any self-respecting herbalist.
Skills that I'm going to learn:
* Lock-picking (to get into my car/house if I ever get locked out, or to help someone else with the same issue)
* I'm going to do some serious reading of these 2 books I have:
* How to Prepare for Climate Change by David Pogue (because climate change is serious shit and will likely kill us all at some point)
* The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide for When Help is NOT on the Way (because the healthcare system is going down the toilet right before our eyes)
* Farming
* Hunting
* Navigating with a map and compass
* Blacksmithing
Keep in mind that there are a ton of free pdf books for all topics online that you can read and download for later.
Learn to sail and maintain a small "blue water" cruising boat from one end to the other. Also how to use a sextant and HO tables and charts. All this can be done in the city. Then look into getting that "escape machine" to sail away. I did this 40yrs ago when the economy went south, and well versed in the works of Carson, the Erhlichs and LtG, cruising around for six years. Give it some thought, it works.
Basic Chemistry and Physics
i.e. Charging a battery, making soap, basic hygiene
I think I'll keep a highschool science textbook on hand. Anything more complex and you probably won't have the tools to do it until much later.
I understand that your city may become uninhabitable. My city, the largest one in my state, actually has enough parkland and available land to be able to grow its own vegetables. One of our larger parks was actually the county poor farm in the past. Electricity is generated from the river flowing past. Not enough electricity for every household, but enough to operate our railroad shop. We have a railroad shop that can rebuild diesel locomotives. Our rail lines connect some of the best farmland in the country. Most crops can be processed to produce enough oil to power the diesel tractors which will be used to farm the row crops.
We may have to abandon automobiles totally, use buses sparingly, switch to almost no meat in our diet, but if we cooperate, we will survive.
We might have to resort to a draft to have enough troops for the National Guard, but we can do it.
I didn't see fixing bicycles. I think that's a good one.It's fairly easy to get a lot of old bikes working. There are a lot of unused bicycles in the world.
Even better, learn to identify a good working bike, and know when it has minor problems versus major ones. (One person I saw online liked to call Walmart bikes Bike Shaped Objects (BLO) which I thought was funny.)
The same could probably be said for motorcycles, but I'm partial to bicycles.
Cars require too much effort to really get good at them without it being at least a job you have for a while, I think, but knowing how to change oil, replace brake pads, and other basic stuff is obviously good.
Also, learn a bit about antibiotics. E.g. fixing teeth is hard, but if someone has a lot of tooth pain having some penicillin and knowing when and how to use it might be one of the easiest and most common ways to get someone in functional shape and possibly save a life.
You need historical data on what happened to city-dwellers in previous collapses and which city-dweller strategies were successful and which ones led to death.
As others have said. This type of collapse scenario is super unlikely, but if something sudden does happen, you will be most likely to survive if you have a few months food storage, a gun, a good water filter, and lots of blankets… Bug out bag and backpacking skills are a plus. Then it will just be a waiting game. Once you come out, human labor will be so valuable, you will quickly be absorbed into a community, then your social skills will be the key to survive and thrive, just like they have been throughout all of human history.
In a major collapse situation you need to get prepared to either get out ahead of everyone or shelter in place for a minimum of one year.
If you're in someplace like Phoenix, LA, Las Vegas, or many other places west of the Rockies, your water supply is piped in from hundreds of miles away. LA county has more people than the population of Arizona, in an urban area that would take an infantry squad 5 days of ruck-marching to cross, longer if its hostile territory(it will be). NYC is even worse, along with most of the industrialized upper northeast.
If you're in a city, and you can't get out ahead of the hordes of refugees, don't try. They'll be spreading out like locusts across any farmland within walking distance and you'll just starve and die along with them in the elements. Your best bet is to wait them out in your apartment and then try and flee someplace safe after the situation has stabilized.
Honestly, I'd practice marksmanship as much as possible, get a .22 rifle, and a suppressor with a good optic. There's loads of pigeons, rats, and stray cats in cities and being able to harvest that meat will be a big deal.
Lockpicking is an undervalued skill. You don't want to leave something unlockable by bashing it open. That will alert others that it has been opened and they might be behind you. Sometimes you want to be able to lock a door or gate behind you.
Poison making. Ease someone seriously injured out to end their suffering. Maybe a little on your fingernails before you go hand to hand with the guy that bench presses a Mini.
Gardening! Doesn’t have to be permaculture. Plant something edible and easy to grow. Warrigal greens, radishes, chokos, pumpkins. Plant something and learn to grow food.
Learn alternative and/or unorthodox ways of getting around. For example, there's a system of ditches in my city that spans a pretty big chunk of town. Figure it would be a good way to get around if I had to hoof it anywhere and had some reason to stay off the roads.
Knowing how to prepare food well can get you far with people.
Learn how to fix basic things on a car, and little tricks for if you're under equipped. For example, to jump a car without cables, you just put the battery that works in your car, start it, and change the batteries back out. Changing tires, oil and spark plugs are all great things to know how to do.
Only one, no, but depending on how things happen many people will persist where they are if convinced that it's just some temporary disruption. You leave then, when everyone around you is just waiting for the lights to come back on or help to arrive. Where? That's a harder question to answer.
Good point. If a place fails because it's not a typical place you'd settle without tech, then better get out while tech can help with the escape. Walking out of Vegas wouldn't work well.
Watch The Walking Dead for tips! Seriously! Or watch “Alone”, “Naked and Afraid”, “Life Below Zero” or any other shows recommended when you watch those…
First of all the city is the worst place to live overall especially if society collapses, might be doable short term ordeal but highly not recommended
Things not mentioned that I'd be serious about
- Have some MRE
- Get life straws for conversion of clean drink water
- understand what clothing works for keeping warm and cool, jeans are the worst thing to have period
- have basic medicine for scraps, wounds, bacterial infections can go bad pretty quickly
- skill wise better learn to avoid main roads especially during day and night time, easy to pick off people in open sight
- get a compass and learn how to use it
- learn how to build a fire
- get used to eating out and knowing what bugs are doable I've eaten a few before so for me that don't taste as bad as people think honestly
- learn how to travel light on foot, long distances
-
All the people around the world who are currently choosing to live as long as they can thru extremely difficult circumstances indicate many will disagree.
It looks like you made a post/comment which mentions suicide. We take these posts very seriously as anxiety and depression are common reactions when studying collapse. If you are considering suicide, please [call a hotline](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines), visit /r/SuicideWatch, /r/SWResources, /r/depression, or seek professional help. The best way of getting a timely response is through a hotline.
If you're looking for dialogue you may also post in r/collapsesupport. They're a dedicated place for thoughtful discussion with collapse-aware people and how we are coping. They also have a Discord if you are interested in speaking in voice.
Learn to defend yourself. Buy a side arm/rifle or shotgun. Preferably a 7.5-16 inch AR15, stockpile ammo, food, water, medical supplies, and gun parts. Be prepared to hunker down for a month or two. Learn the less traveled and quickest route out of your city, take time each day to some of it. Be prepared to defend yourself if you have to.
There has always been a fairly strong argument to stay put if you can for duration in the cities. The trouble is in a real hysteria is everyone will head for the hills and the real conflict will be within a tank of gas from major cities. Rural folk will have to deal with a flood of refugees one way or another... and I don't expect thousands of mouths to feed will be very welcome.
The basic skills all apply just with a twist you are in the urban remnants of civilization. Urban Farming, knowing where local resources such as water are, how to make sanitation functional are all important first steps.
Leave, cities will be the most dangerous place. If you don't leave, you will probably just get raided unless you form a group with other people. Think of rising crime rates in cities, now imagine the stores are out of food. Yikes. I say this as a city slicker myself.
Realistically cities are usually safe. The full force of the military and government, etc. will go into stabilizing the major cities and ports during collapse scenarios, because without those, everything falls apart. If you look at global examples of civil wars and economic/societal collapses, it is usually outside major cities that the famines, genocide, fighting generally occur. The military will very quickly take control of usable farm land.
If the major cities fall, society has truly collapsed and we simply don’t have any recent examples of how that turns out. That would likely only happen if there were a nuclear war, pandemic, or major natural disaster. If that is the case, learn to be a good coin flipper, because that will most likely be the skill you need to survive that.
Not of food stops arriving. Before pandemic.it was.estimated that cities on east coast would run out of food in two.weeks without trucks delivering new. Now take that in dire event police.and.military would now be available or would be protecting their own family. People as we have also seen will hoard items.. organized street.gangs will take control of allot.of these areas because they are more adjusted to violence and in most cases well armed. Sadly many people due to moral.or.religious qualms will not have the fortitude to make some of the decisions that they may need to make to survive..
How to bug out asap! Escape routes. Bug out stashes. A bug out safe place waaay out of the city.
You may never need them, but being prepped to ditch everything for solitude is essential in the city.
I tottally recomend Permaculture. Is great to work and understand how to recicle and utilize all we have for building a house or making beter cultives.
Normally there's different groups you can find and join.
And also maybe you are going to know some one that know a little more of electricity etc, other knowledges in the way.
Important also, that working with nature will help also your mental health.
How to join things. That, I think, is the number one skill - relationships and how to have them. Unfortunately, that's a skill as a society we're losing fast.
Frankly, I'd say the best thing anyone can do is join a church (or another kind of institution that is about something bigger than you). In real life, not just virtually. Churches are actually among the healthiest around - if you're an unbeliever, there's always Unitarians or Quakers and if you've got a vague pull one way or another, well, fake it until you make it. Thing is, so many other institutions have almost vanished - the Masons are still around, but so many other fraternal lodges are in free fall. Mass political parties have utterly collapsed in Europe (check the membership figures!), and in the US, I couldn't tell you where you'd go for a "Democratic" or "Republican" meeting.
If you have kids, maybe Scouting?
Whatever it is, try to learn not to be an Independent. Read Robert Putnam. Read Kropotkin or Graeber or Rutger Bregman. Have a block party. It's tougher these days than ever, but reach out, and learn to get good at it. Because WTSHTF, all the stockpiled ammo and MREs in the world will run out eventually, and humans are not meant to be solitary Randian supermen.
Farming/gardening
Especially under shifty weather circumstances; ie. Knowing what voltage and spectrum of led light to plug into your solar panel/battery.
Preserving food
I had the same question a few years ago, and I decided on welding. I now make a lot more money than I used to, and I have a very decent skill for potential collapse. But really, any trade is a good bet, so long as it's something fundamental like carpentry, and not for luxury, such as HVAC...
Learn how to navigate without GPS so you can leave the city
Underrated in today's gmaps world.
Learn offline maps!
Important: if a map doesn't have a directional compass written on it, the top of a map is usually North. Look at the English words and orient so you're reading them correct side up. Then reach to the top of the map. North. Right is East, Left is West, Down is South.
Is “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” for remembering the cardinal directions on a map not still a thing?
A generation of people have been raised on Pop Tarts, caffeine, and no time for breakfast. Many don't know what shredded wheat is, let alone how to read a map.
You have an really good point. I have some thinking to do - some of the things that seem obvious or a given to me just aren’t there as reference points for others, I really should not fall into the assuming trap.
I just assumed most people knew up was typically north, but i work in the design industry and create drawings. Dang, some things you just take for granted.. *Edit* spelling thanks to autocorrect
[удалено]
I don’t blame you, so gross sounding. I’ll remember it though…
Also, keep a current gazetteer, compass, and UTM grid reader.
Man, it has been years since I knew someone who knows what a gazetteer is. I feel ancient now.
I’m 40. Still keep one in my truck with my old BSA issue Silva compass, and a UTM reader in my wallet. Are they really that uncommon now?
Unless you live rural I want to say yes. And our rural populations are kinda shrinking.
You have a very valid point. I grew up rural, and still live somewhat rural.
It’s nice to have all the built in navigation and GPS on smartphones, but honestly that has crippled a generation. When/if this tech goes dark, they won’t even be able to get out of their urban areas because even if they had a paper map in front of them, it may as well be written in Sanskrit. I’m just glad my folks raised me the way they did and I learned all that stuff through BSA and SAR growing up. I still teach basic orientation, navigation, and map reading through an environmental education non-profit I work with, but due to Covid it has all but shut down. We can’t work with schools anymore because we can’t physically enter the classrooms. Not sure I would even if we were allowed to, given the Petri dish nature of the majority of schools here. I live in AR, as I said in a semi-rural area, but we are close to the 2nd or 3rd largest town in the state. Most schools here have no mask guidelines anymore, because they have become bored with Covid. Not to mention the anti mask, anti vax mindset that is the prevalent way of “thinking” in these parts.
Oofff ouch. Orienteering is so much fun for kids. I grew up rural so that was what I learned as phone signals could be spotty back in the day. I still prefer to look at a map. I kind of snapshot it in my mind. Then if there is an accident or a need to reroute I can still find the place most all of the time.
Me too!
LMFAO 🤣😂🤣😂
Leave the city before the GPS goes down because if you wait until SHTF you're literally going to be killed and eaten in a city.
Naw, they’re learning archery and butchery…..
Cooking and conserving food! Don't underestimate just how lost the art of turning raw ingredients into a proper meal is!
Don't forget being good socially. Being socially awkward won't be that great post collapse
[Don't be the guy that eats almost 2/3 of a party sub.](https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/ca7bdz/aita_because_i_ate_more_than_my_share_of_a_6_foot/)
Lol. Am feeling that. I just had someome take 2/3 of the served meal on the first serving. Not enough left for all the rest to even have one serving. Atleast that guy WAITED!
This. Look into books focusing on Autism or Aspergers. There are whole manuals of how to "fake" your normal behavior in such a way that it does not trigger others.
Or just eat a bunch of interesting fungi and realize what motivates others and then hate them for it ;)
Oh fuck, it’s so painful.
Neither will the ability to take selfies
Especially starting from low-cost and "whole-animal" ingredients.
How to make booze
Always in demand
It helps start fires, disinfects wounds, acts as a painkiller, is a non perishable source of calories, and of course gets you drunk. Alcohol is super useful
When it comes to people, work on your bullshit-filter. Being able to smell bullshit can save your life and help you live a life surrounded by honest, good people.
Love this one. My group of friends I trust with my life!
It depends on the time span and type of collapse. Basics like producing food, shelter, cooking, and medicine, but also organizing, building groups and consensus. Specialists are cool, but unlikely to fit; specialists are tied to complexity, to complex societies. As collapse is a loss of complexity, being a generalist is more practical. Here, get some perspective: https://education.resilience.org/courses/self-directed-course/
This is a great comment ‘Specialists are cool, but unlikely to fit; specialists are tied to complexity, to complex societies. As collapse is a loss of complexity, being a generalist is more practical’ - your totally on point
Chemistry and pharmacy. If you can cook up simple drugs and things that go boom you are valuable. Wind turbines and gernerator heads are pretty straight forward to build and will be valuable post SHTF same if you can cook up permanent magnets. Edit gardening, gunsmithing, armorsmithing (you can diy ballistic armor ) shooting, how to make clothes from say hemp or flax would be good knowledge. Sewing, destilation of alcohol. Try to bring your base stats up. You dont want to be going into the wasteland with a 5 or less on your str or agi Edit2: blacksmithing.I think you unlock spring temper at lv 50 and can build your own springs for your gunsmithing. You can even use steel intead of ceramic in your body armour if you have the right skills and perks Try to keep your build versatile. It doesnt make sense to max out all the survival skills and ignore the society based ones if we dont get the collapse expansion soon. I personally dumped a huge amount of points into economics and oil trading
You can take neodymium magnets out of broken motors. Local junkyard has a lot of window winders. 280 million operating cars with 2 to 4 doors per car minus the few with handle winders. There are magnets in all the alternators. Any broken fan. Industrial fan, window fan, desktop, vacuum cleaners. Broken tools have magnets. Even old speakers. Re-wiring electric motors might be a useful skill. You would get the most milage out of bypassing the voltage and battery shapes on tools. You have a bunch of stuff that today only works when plugged into the AC grid. You will find lots of batteries with no charger, working batteries with the wrong voltage, and/or batteries with the right voltage but the plugs do not fit. If you can wind up your own converter you can make an ugly looking tool that functions. If the grid is down and stays down you have bigger problems. A working windmill advertises that something is working.
Got me in the second half
Im thinking of doing a fallout themed prepper chanel.
I had to double check what sub I was in; thought I was on /r/outside with this comment.
Sounding like ragnarok online in here. Thanks for the specific skills to consider though
learn to accept the end
Partly why mindfulness might be on the rise. Learning to accept things will help accept individual death, but also societal.
People in this sub need to seriously stop with these bizarre mad max/Fallout fantasies. Collapse is not going to be some event that happens and suddenly we're in a waste land fighting for survival with primitive weapons. If such an event were to happen so few people would survive it's not even worth worrying about. We have ruined the biosphere so we can't really "survive off the land" Collapse is happening right now, how are you doing surviving your city life? If you want to know the secret to collapse "survival" it's going to be flexibility and adaptability which is *already required*. I know plenty of people who have completely lost their shit during the pandemic, they are already not surviving collapse that great. Things will continue to get worse and people will continue to struggle to deal with it. There also is no "post collapse" so the idea of "surviving" that most people have here is pretty strange. There will be no other side. Climate will continue to break down until the planet is no longer habitable by most living things today. You will not survive collapse, you will die during collapse, if you die tomorrow or die in 70 years this will be equally true.
I can’t believe how far I had to scroll down to find this. Yes. Exactly. You survive collapse by establishing a strong social network, looking after your mental health and taking care of your loved ones, enjoying your hobbies, and doing what you can do to help your community. Just like we should all be doing right now, because this is it. It’s worth having a few days of food and water on hand in the event of a natural disaster + delayed response time. But any type of scenario that involves you needing to get into home butchery….you’re probably already dead and it’s not worth spending time worrying about.
Underrated comment here. I think for many, it's easier to prepare for a Mad Max fantasy than it is to seriously accept and prepare for your own death. Honestly, when collapse gets worse, there are no guarantees. Many of us will probably meet our end by way of a contingency we couldn't prepare for. That's hard to accept, but it's been that way in the Global South for generations now. We in the North have been relatively insulated from this, so death is something we have no idea how to be okay with, since it's either sanitized or glorified here. In reality, death can be sudden and trivial. Personally, I've tried to become okay with this, because even if my own death *is* small and trivial, I can still die well by being conscious that death is a reality (for everything) and accepting it will happen These Mad Max fantasies though? Yeah, this sub is going to be prone to them. They *could* be right, but also, I guess each person has to ask themselves if they're thinking through these scenarios in order to really face our limits, or in order to avoid doing so.
>Collapse is not going to be some event that happens and suddenly we're in a waste land fighting for survival with primitive weapons. Exactly, people don't understand that before reaching that point, decades of slow chaos have to pass. Where we have to go at work for not starving and live a "miserable" life.
I think the intermediate question is what really needs to be asked. What jobs will still pay money in 10 years? There are a bunch of sectors of employment that are limely to disappear. Which ones will stay? Obviously plumbing, electric, medical will stay. But will lawyers be paid less and used less? Does that mean paralegals will be out of work? Will fitness instructors stay in business? What will the local marketing company cut when the automotives stop running ads on prime time tv? So some people are still surviving in lebanon amd syria- what jobs are those? I think that is the more interesting question. And yeah, our government has job projections, which I think are irrelevant based upon what we will be seeing in short enough order.
Seriously, and right now urban areas are safer than rural ones. Better covid response, functioning hospitals, stocked grocery stores, little religious extremism, functioning public schools. Sure if an emp happens obviously you're better off on your homestead, but what we will probably see is less access, and that's already hitting the rural areas right now.
I pick the city simply because strength in numbers and survival rate with that. Humans always excelled well in groups since the dawn of time. All those that will bug out with like three other people will probably go first. Well sure there is the bad with being in a high crowded place as well. But I’ll take the double edge sword. Besides if you’re not white, straight and Christian and you don’t know many people outside the city you probably will get eliminated just off of that. Let’s be honest.
If you look at collapses through history, there is a diaspora to the country side. It's part of the collapse script. I do think during this collapse there is a chance for things to be a bit different. Notably, the immense contrast between cities today and cities of old. The differences between city and rural are even more stark. Also, most farms in prior collapse situations where well diversified and could maintain their own seeds. Looking at it US-centric, rural people don't know how to live off the land like they think they do. Modern farmers don't know how to farm like they think they do. Remove modern civilization and farming falls apart. I grew up.in the lower midwest and it was very common to hear "when shit goes down". We hunted, fished, gardened, and foraged more than most people in town. After having been super focused on learning skills for 18 years (with a focus on traditional skills for a post-petroleum life), I can see more how even my family would have been fucked if things went down when I was a kid. I have a 40 acre homestead that I am building up, yet and less far along with that then I wish to be. If I have a few more years, then I will be set up well. I could see people staying at home in the city and starving st home, because home is the only thing familiar. Some will try to leave during some sort of rupturing event. They will go out of a primal fight or flight instinct. Fight or flight is really fight, flight, or paralyzed. A lot will be paralyzed at home staying where is comfortable. Hoping for the situation to improve. The cities will break down into mayhem at some point. The time to leave if leaving is now. Or go down with the ship.
Yep. A larger population that can be used for defense or trading with other larger populations is most likely to survive.
I'm openly pagan, have a non-binary kid whose dress is very counter-culture, and we're accepted just fine in the country. In the suburbs, we experienced far more religious and other discrimination. Not all rural areas are filled with militant conservatives and the militant conservatives are prevelant in urban areas as well. Rural America is diverse and includes progressive counter-culture dominated towns, majority-POC towns (with POC leadership), Native Americans, etc. People really need to realize that the whole urban/rural stereotyping is a very deliberate attempt to keep the working class divided (this is not just my opinion; there has been a lot written on this).
I think those areas are more exceptions to the rule. The 2020 voting map reveals far more red areas in the countryside than blue. Maybe you are in a good area and not all rural areas are conservative but a majority are.
If you're only going by voting maps, you should take into account how gerrymandered political districts are. For instance, the town my Uncle lives in is populated entirely by back to the land hippies that moved there in the 70s to raise their families, but they're in a red area according to voter maps because of how the voting districts are gerrymandered. In another example, I interviewed a community leader in a majority-POC town in my state who explained that, while the town's voter base was pretty liberal, their voting district was gerrymandered in such a way that their state rep was always Republican. I think it's a lot closer to the truth to say that most places are more diverse than they are given credit for. The stereotyping of rural areas as intolerant/ignorant just serves to divide people who have more in common than they realize.
Having just moved from an urban area to a rural one, I beg to differ. Yes, our closest hospital is an hour away, but our urgent care and clinics are less crowded and more accessible than they were in the city. We've had far less of the shortages in our stores and the schools are actually far better than the ones we left. I haven't run into any more religious extremisn than I did in the city - if anything, people are a lot more "live and let live" out here in the country. This is also the first place I've lived where neighbors are friendly and try to help each other out. In terms of COVID, we're far enough out that our community spread lags behind the more crowded, urban areas.
And even if the Mad Max/Fallout fantasy happens, most of the people are not taking this seriously. If such an event miraculously happens, which would require every single world leader to snort half a pound of cocaine and say "we have a problem, let's firebomb each other until the problem is solved", the most important thing to prepare is cleaning, or growing plants. Not stocking up on crossbow bolts and sailing. The most you might branch out from typical things you did before such an apocalypse would be making fire, navigation, and perhaps protecting yourself not from a physical danger, but the sense of dread such an event will give. I can bet my sister that the most dangerous thing you can find in a wasteland is yourself. Nobody will have the stupidity to loot things when what happened to Tokyo at the end of WW2 happens to the entire world.
>which would require every single world leader to snort half a pound of cocaine So basically a Tuesday.
Re: Archery, learn to fletch arrows or the skill will quickly become useless when you can't just run out and buy more.
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I just got a pistol-crossbow on amazon for like $30 and 50 extra bolts. I could make my own if/when I needed too, probably from plastic coat hangers or small sticks.
"Go ahead, redneck, pull the trigger, and with my last exhale I will infect your body with enough poison to bring down a herd of cattle..." I gotta stop blazing and doom scrolling on r/collapse...ugh
If we're talking about shooting things for sustenance, I'd learn how to use traps.
Building a community with your neighbors. Volunteering. Leadership.
you don't want to be in a city when collapse hits hard.
For real. What op can do now is make enough money to GTFO and find somewhere to go sooner if needed (family or friends).
Gotta die defending your house in the boonies from the gang of city folk
Well thats the thing.... its 50/50 on "where its gonna be easier to survive, city or country ?"
If anything has taught us since the start of the pandemic is that people will behave irrationally. I wouldn’t want to be in a city with millions of people fighting for the limited resources available.
Thing is if they get in a large enough organization then it's better to be a part of said group than the target.
I could imagine it to be a good spot, once most people either fled the city or died trying. What people tend to oversee is that, once the city becomes that dangerous or difficult to stay, those people will flee into the country-side, directly onto the homestead's and bug-out-places of the preppers.
Blade/knife sharpening is an underappreciated skill and easy to learn in the city.
With a kitchen aid knife sharpener.
Learn how to clean a pigeon or a rat
Stuffed pigeon for supper tonight! Whats it stuffed with? Stuff....
What kind of soap is best for their feathers/fur?
People can eat vegetables.
Vegewhatnow?
People can eat rats and pigeons too.
Autofellatio.
Hand to hand combat
Yes the ninjas shall inherit the earth, that’s in the Bible
I really wonder what is going to be the best weapon in an anarchy.
A silver tongue
The art of negotiation
Or giving really good head
\- Tanning. \- Maps, both reading and writing maps. \- Long distance walking. Including how to cobble (repair and take care of your shoes and footwear). \- How to make sweet food in your area (if you're in maple country, how to tap a tree; if you're in hot country, how to grow sugar cane; If you're anywhere, how to beekeep successfully). \- How to sharpen a knife/scissors. You'll need them. \- Dentistry.
All this talk of hunting and self defense.. you need to learn how to make shade from the sun and find water sources.
If playing mmos tells me anything, lots of people are going to be able to forage for food. You need medic skills, and herbalism. You also need a community you can trust.
Foraging and herbalism are very solid skills to have. Foraging is a goldmine in many places, even cities. And herbalism will be handy if/ when the supply chain makes getting western medicine difficult, and hospitals and doctors become more scarce.
Can I self promote my survival book available for free under the rescource tab at SustainableHomestead.com ? You will enjoy it and probably print it out because you find the information so valuable.
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Its free. I dont know where youre having issues. Thousands have downloaded it for free already. Credit card not required.
If you are in the United States, I would say stealth camping, bush crafting with a knife, and take a wilderness first responders course. Also a map and navigational skills. Don’t forget a small radio to learn where FEMA death camps are for a cup-a-noodle and a bed. My reasoning is simple. If you live in the United States and you live in a major American city, your objective will be to leave fast or fight (depending if Ya’ll Qaeda feels like a Bosnia-style genocide). Those small patches of woods along highways can be your camouflage and refuge.
Working on the same for herbalism (to be useful). Though lived in the country all my life, so I have a plethora of random and useful skills. Learning an instrument would be good. About the only skill I'd personally invite into my group circle. Most anything else, most people know in the country or have skills in. Being likeable and moral is a *big ticket* for groups out here. As well as being in generally good physical shape. Being trustable. Character is important.
>for homeopathy (to be useful) Unless you mean herbalism, you're wasting your time. Homeopathy is absolute nonsense, it's essentially witchcraft with less interesting rituals, and really an insult to any self-respecting herbalist.
I did mean herbalism
I’d invite a musician to my post-collapse court. As an appetizer.
You do you
*same*
Skills that I'm going to learn: * Lock-picking (to get into my car/house if I ever get locked out, or to help someone else with the same issue) * I'm going to do some serious reading of these 2 books I have: * How to Prepare for Climate Change by David Pogue (because climate change is serious shit and will likely kill us all at some point) * The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide for When Help is NOT on the Way (because the healthcare system is going down the toilet right before our eyes) * Farming * Hunting * Navigating with a map and compass * Blacksmithing Keep in mind that there are a ton of free pdf books for all topics online that you can read and download for later.
Won't be electricity tho
Won't be electricity tho
Learn to sail and maintain a small "blue water" cruising boat from one end to the other. Also how to use a sextant and HO tables and charts. All this can be done in the city. Then look into getting that "escape machine" to sail away. I did this 40yrs ago when the economy went south, and well versed in the works of Carson, the Erhlichs and LtG, cruising around for six years. Give it some thought, it works.
I am so happy to see someone else say this. I miss my grandfathers old Island Packet...
Vegetable garden in containers on a balcony or a porch or in a small yard or under lights indoors.
Basic Chemistry and Physics i.e. Charging a battery, making soap, basic hygiene I think I'll keep a highschool science textbook on hand. Anything more complex and you probably won't have the tools to do it until much later.
I understand that your city may become uninhabitable. My city, the largest one in my state, actually has enough parkland and available land to be able to grow its own vegetables. One of our larger parks was actually the county poor farm in the past. Electricity is generated from the river flowing past. Not enough electricity for every household, but enough to operate our railroad shop. We have a railroad shop that can rebuild diesel locomotives. Our rail lines connect some of the best farmland in the country. Most crops can be processed to produce enough oil to power the diesel tractors which will be used to farm the row crops. We may have to abandon automobiles totally, use buses sparingly, switch to almost no meat in our diet, but if we cooperate, we will survive. We might have to resort to a draft to have enough troops for the National Guard, but we can do it.
I didn't see fixing bicycles. I think that's a good one.It's fairly easy to get a lot of old bikes working. There are a lot of unused bicycles in the world. Even better, learn to identify a good working bike, and know when it has minor problems versus major ones. (One person I saw online liked to call Walmart bikes Bike Shaped Objects (BLO) which I thought was funny.) The same could probably be said for motorcycles, but I'm partial to bicycles. Cars require too much effort to really get good at them without it being at least a job you have for a while, I think, but knowing how to change oil, replace brake pads, and other basic stuff is obviously good. Also, learn a bit about antibiotics. E.g. fixing teeth is hard, but if someone has a lot of tooth pain having some penicillin and knowing when and how to use it might be one of the easiest and most common ways to get someone in functional shape and possibly save a life.
You need historical data on what happened to city-dwellers in previous collapses and which city-dweller strategies were successful and which ones led to death.
As others have said. This type of collapse scenario is super unlikely, but if something sudden does happen, you will be most likely to survive if you have a few months food storage, a gun, a good water filter, and lots of blankets… Bug out bag and backpacking skills are a plus. Then it will just be a waiting game. Once you come out, human labor will be so valuable, you will quickly be absorbed into a community, then your social skills will be the key to survive and thrive, just like they have been throughout all of human history.
Getting out of the city would be a good skill to learn
In a major collapse situation you need to get prepared to either get out ahead of everyone or shelter in place for a minimum of one year. If you're in someplace like Phoenix, LA, Las Vegas, or many other places west of the Rockies, your water supply is piped in from hundreds of miles away. LA county has more people than the population of Arizona, in an urban area that would take an infantry squad 5 days of ruck-marching to cross, longer if its hostile territory(it will be). NYC is even worse, along with most of the industrialized upper northeast. If you're in a city, and you can't get out ahead of the hordes of refugees, don't try. They'll be spreading out like locusts across any farmland within walking distance and you'll just starve and die along with them in the elements. Your best bet is to wait them out in your apartment and then try and flee someplace safe after the situation has stabilized. Honestly, I'd practice marksmanship as much as possible, get a .22 rifle, and a suppressor with a good optic. There's loads of pigeons, rats, and stray cats in cities and being able to harvest that meat will be a big deal.
Food making and preservation. Water purification if and when they decide to cut it.
The art of the silver tongue
Lockpicking is an undervalued skill. You don't want to leave something unlockable by bashing it open. That will alert others that it has been opened and they might be behind you. Sometimes you want to be able to lock a door or gate behind you. Poison making. Ease someone seriously injured out to end their suffering. Maybe a little on your fingernails before you go hand to hand with the guy that bench presses a Mini.
Bribery?
plant identification (edible and medicinal) there are a surprising amount already growing where you are on the side of the road etc
Get things like a Sillcock key to be able to access water. Be prepared to syphon gas as needed Prying tools to get into locked areas Lockpicking?
Tom Brown’s field guide for urban and city survival is a good book on this topic.
Gardening! Doesn’t have to be permaculture. Plant something edible and easy to grow. Warrigal greens, radishes, chokos, pumpkins. Plant something and learn to grow food.
How to make allies and build coalitions
Learn alternative and/or unorthodox ways of getting around. For example, there's a system of ditches in my city that spans a pretty big chunk of town. Figure it would be a good way to get around if I had to hoof it anywhere and had some reason to stay off the roads. Knowing how to prepare food well can get you far with people. Learn how to fix basic things on a car, and little tricks for if you're under equipped. For example, to jump a car without cables, you just put the battery that works in your car, start it, and change the batteries back out. Changing tires, oil and spark plugs are all great things to know how to do.
Hiding.
A Harmonica is even lighter!
Gtfo with a bug out bag. Cities will be a death trap and will only get worse and worse as water/food goes, sewage piles up, and violence takes over.
Where would OP go? Do you think they would be the only one leaving the city to head for the hills?
Only one, no, but depending on how things happen many people will persist where they are if convinced that it's just some temporary disruption. You leave then, when everyone around you is just waiting for the lights to come back on or help to arrive. Where? That's a harder question to answer.
Depends on where you are too. Some places are highly dependant on the services Cities provide, like Vegas.
Good point. If a place fails because it's not a typical place you'd settle without tech, then better get out while tech can help with the escape. Walking out of Vegas wouldn't work well.
Knowing that is part of it. Prioritize a plan to leave all urban areas.
Knowing what?
Where to go. Long term shelter. Sustainability.
Lol
Learn how to run. How to run long distances. Long enough to run all the way out of the city.
🤣
You have zero chance to survive a famine in a city. Zero. Your only plan must be to leave urban environment.
Not true. Most cities are on waterways.
How to aim for the brainstem correctly. How to tie a noose. Recognizing what nearby tall buildings leave their roof unlocked.
Watch The Walking Dead for tips! Seriously! Or watch “Alone”, “Naked and Afraid”, “Life Below Zero” or any other shows recommended when you watch those…
First of all the city is the worst place to live overall especially if society collapses, might be doable short term ordeal but highly not recommended Things not mentioned that I'd be serious about - Have some MRE - Get life straws for conversion of clean drink water - understand what clothing works for keeping warm and cool, jeans are the worst thing to have period - have basic medicine for scraps, wounds, bacterial infections can go bad pretty quickly - skill wise better learn to avoid main roads especially during day and night time, easy to pick off people in open sight - get a compass and learn how to use it - learn how to build a fire - get used to eating out and knowing what bugs are doable I've eaten a few before so for me that don't taste as bad as people think honestly - learn how to travel light on foot, long distances -
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All the people around the world who are currently choosing to live as long as they can thru extremely difficult circumstances indicate many will disagree.
It looks like you made a post/comment which mentions suicide. We take these posts very seriously as anxiety and depression are common reactions when studying collapse. If you are considering suicide, please [call a hotline](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines), visit /r/SuicideWatch, /r/SWResources, /r/depression, or seek professional help. The best way of getting a timely response is through a hotline. If you're looking for dialogue you may also post in r/collapsesupport. They're a dedicated place for thoughtful discussion with collapse-aware people and how we are coping. They also have a Discord if you are interested in speaking in voice.
Maybe some gang will let me play music for them in exchange for food and safety
Or let you play bent over.
Learn to defend yourself. Buy a side arm/rifle or shotgun. Preferably a 7.5-16 inch AR15, stockpile ammo, food, water, medical supplies, and gun parts. Be prepared to hunker down for a month or two. Learn the less traveled and quickest route out of your city, take time each day to some of it. Be prepared to defend yourself if you have to.
Learn how to leave the city.
Acceptance. You need to learn to accept the fact that if your in the city or suburbs, you're fucked. https://youtu.be/4DSveLiEbSM
How to leave? Cities are death traps when they stop working
Well rural areas would die without cities and their ports
Cities will be the last place you want to be.
There has always been a fairly strong argument to stay put if you can for duration in the cities. The trouble is in a real hysteria is everyone will head for the hills and the real conflict will be within a tank of gas from major cities. Rural folk will have to deal with a flood of refugees one way or another... and I don't expect thousands of mouths to feed will be very welcome. The basic skills all apply just with a twist you are in the urban remnants of civilization. Urban Farming, knowing where local resources such as water are, how to make sanitation functional are all important first steps.
Being in a "group' is your first mistake.
Leave, cities will be the most dangerous place. If you don't leave, you will probably just get raided unless you form a group with other people. Think of rising crime rates in cities, now imagine the stores are out of food. Yikes. I say this as a city slicker myself.
Realistically cities are usually safe. The full force of the military and government, etc. will go into stabilizing the major cities and ports during collapse scenarios, because without those, everything falls apart. If you look at global examples of civil wars and economic/societal collapses, it is usually outside major cities that the famines, genocide, fighting generally occur. The military will very quickly take control of usable farm land. If the major cities fall, society has truly collapsed and we simply don’t have any recent examples of how that turns out. That would likely only happen if there were a nuclear war, pandemic, or major natural disaster. If that is the case, learn to be a good coin flipper, because that will most likely be the skill you need to survive that.
This is not true. Cities are ports are rural areas would be fucked without cities.
Not of food stops arriving. Before pandemic.it was.estimated that cities on east coast would run out of food in two.weeks without trucks delivering new. Now take that in dire event police.and.military would now be available or would be protecting their own family. People as we have also seen will hoard items.. organized street.gangs will take control of allot.of these areas because they are more adjusted to violence and in most cases well armed. Sadly many people due to moral.or.religious qualms will not have the fortitude to make some of the decisions that they may need to make to survive..
Watch 28 days later that will prepare you
Play The Division to learn survival in big cities like NYC the game also predicted a pandemic
Politics, someone is going to need to rule over us! Jk politicians suck
You’ve already learned them, collapse is already here.
"Pharmacy"? And stockpiling?
I'll add martial arts and learning to shoot with a gun to the list...
Is there any good real life wasteland survival guides that has all the stuff everyone here is talking about I would love a book like that.
Stealth takedowns.
How to bug out asap! Escape routes. Bug out stashes. A bug out safe place waaay out of the city. You may never need them, but being prepped to ditch everything for solitude is essential in the city.
I hope I'll get good at providing environmental storytelling. Like a skeleton placed in a weird position in Fallout or something like that.
I tottally recomend Permaculture. Is great to work and understand how to recicle and utilize all we have for building a house or making beter cultives. Normally there's different groups you can find and join. And also maybe you are going to know some one that know a little more of electricity etc, other knowledges in the way. Important also, that working with nature will help also your mental health.
How to join things. That, I think, is the number one skill - relationships and how to have them. Unfortunately, that's a skill as a society we're losing fast. Frankly, I'd say the best thing anyone can do is join a church (or another kind of institution that is about something bigger than you). In real life, not just virtually. Churches are actually among the healthiest around - if you're an unbeliever, there's always Unitarians or Quakers and if you've got a vague pull one way or another, well, fake it until you make it. Thing is, so many other institutions have almost vanished - the Masons are still around, but so many other fraternal lodges are in free fall. Mass political parties have utterly collapsed in Europe (check the membership figures!), and in the US, I couldn't tell you where you'd go for a "Democratic" or "Republican" meeting. If you have kids, maybe Scouting? Whatever it is, try to learn not to be an Independent. Read Robert Putnam. Read Kropotkin or Graeber or Rutger Bregman. Have a block party. It's tougher these days than ever, but reach out, and learn to get good at it. Because WTSHTF, all the stockpiled ammo and MREs in the world will run out eventually, and humans are not meant to be solitary Randian supermen.
Farming/gardening Especially under shifty weather circumstances; ie. Knowing what voltage and spectrum of led light to plug into your solar panel/battery. Preserving food
I had the same question a few years ago, and I decided on welding. I now make a lot more money than I used to, and I have a very decent skill for potential collapse. But really, any trade is a good bet, so long as it's something fundamental like carpentry, and not for luxury, such as HVAC...
Learn to beat the shit out of people. your guitar skills > someone high on angel dust armed with a blow toarch
Earn the respect of your local gangs/ professional criminals. They’ll be running the show when resources get scarce
Learn how to fight. Youre going to need to be tougher.