Your approach seems sound, logical and practical.

You are entirely correct, of course, but I was speaking in the context of Hoyt’s post, which was advocating measures that are within the limits of finances, space, and personal “comfort levels,” although I admit she is on the outer edge of most people’s levels, due to her childhood in Portugal and direct experience with cancel culture.

I’m sorry for your friend, but that’s a radical response that is NOT what I and most “amateur preppers” are doing; I meant that it doesn’t hurt to put a couple of extra cases of beans in the basement, which is what we’re doing.

I also kept the wood from the trees we cut down last summer (local AesopSon has a fireplace), and am reducing spending on non-essentials. It helps that we stockpiled a lot of necessities last year, because of the great grocery store hysteria.

We own our house and his house, and a third in Texas, all free and clear, but that one is by no means off the grid, being in a still-mostly-red city.

Our money is in several different banks and investment companies, to hedge the cancel culture that we’ve seen in finance. I never thought we would reach the point of banks refusing to do business with normal, although conservative, companies, but they have.

That’s hedging our bets in a practical manner, I think.

I’ve put some links on those other threads.

It’s this thinking from people that I generally agree with on many issues that turns me off.

It’s the ‘zerohedge’ thinking.

Doom is always around the corner. What a miserable way to go through life.

You write: “Regardless, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the worst…”

Sure it does. Capacity. I know a few people who were convinced it was all going to collapse years ago, and acted accordingly. One went to live isolated, in the woods, off the grid decades ago. Lost his girlfriend, a wonderful woman, who married someone else. She now has a couple wonderful, grown children, owns multiple homes and has a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars. I haven’t seen him for years, but I imagine he regrets his decision.

Capacity. Doing one thing typically precludes us mortals from doing another. You place your bets. You take your chances.

Add to this the inflation caused by incompetence at the Fed and wrongheaded economic policy, deliberately caused energy shortages, plus rising levels of crime, coupled with rising levels of citizen distrust of all authorities and we may, indeed, be seeing the start of a chain of cascading failures that could possibly destroy our society as it is currently constituted, with our society “resetting” at a much lower and unsatisfactory level.

She’s tapping into a commenter network that is based, world-wide, and not particularly pessimistic – mostly realists of many different personalities and lifestyle persuasions (I occasionally stroll through the comment threads, as do others here in Neo’s Salon, but they are exhaustingly long, so I don’t do it often anymore).

Another word for intuition is gut feeling, and Sarah explained some of how her gut is throwing things at her brain to get its attention.

Maybe nothing will happen.
Maybe the Canadian truckers will be the tipping point.
Regardless, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the worst while hoping for the best (a crib from Neo’s Covid column).

As for the warning bells: if you haven’t listened to Dr. Sowell’s interview yet, please do so soon. He was ringing them decades ago, as were others.
How do nations fall apart?
Gradually, then suddenly.

However, as Sarah usually signs off: In the end we win, they lose. Be not afraid.

Well … yeah!

I do love “Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade” almost as much as “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

I admit I even got to like “The Crystal Skull” after a few viewings. A bit tired, but hey! Indiana Jones.

Many commenters have noted what they see as the decadence overtaking the U.S., and compare Rome’s downfall to what they see as our own similar downfall playing out all around us—and for some of the same reasons.

I have recently commented about our turning from a “high trust” into a “low trust” society, and one of the major factors in this descent is rising crime, and the inability or unwillingness of an increasing number the civil authorities and police to enforce the laws and protect ordinary citizens while giving free passes members of our own nomenklatura.

One apparently increasingly visible and widespread aspect of such rising crime are the “porch pirates” who increasingly prey on citizens, but whose thefts don’t seem to be a priority for police.

And while I thought such thefts were swiftly rising–as indicated by the many reports about them on Youtube, and videos on the subject, rising sales of Ring cameras, and home security systems–I’ve never seen a number put to these thefts until today.

But, today, I ran across one report claiming that 30% of people surveyed say that they have had one or more packages stolen. *

Then, there is the article linked below which reports a study estimating that, just in 2021 alone, 210 million packages were stolen. **

How’s that for helping to change high trust into low?

* https://moneywise.com/insurance/home/porch-pirates-plundering-your-parcels-you-may-already-have-the-protection-you-need

** https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/210-million-packages-stolen-2021-report