Get real. A lot of locations will wind up like "Escape From New York". Total mayhem and annihilation with sporadic gunfire. LA riots in 1992 is your template. Remember the storeowners taking target practice with Sigs? The gubmint cheese better not get cut off all blankety-blank will break loose.
you would only need cash, everything else would be worthless .. (your current total monthly expenditures) x 24 = good (your current total monthly expenditures) x 36 = enviable (your current total monthly expenditures) x 72 = ride out the crash in style add a 30% margin of error to all of the above.
I lived through the economic collapse of Argentina in Dec 2001 to Mid 2002 Best bet is to have a place in another country all set up that you can get to. I moved back to USA to Miami to get away from there. I'll tell you a few things about living in Buenos Aires then. Crime skyrocketed and so did kidnappings. There were daily riots, all day long everywhere in the city. My cousin arrived in BA in a bus just as the riots started. He talked to a friend w a gun store about buying bullets but his friend told him ALL the bullets in the whole city were sold :eek: At the time I was very much not ready for this. I barely had any food in the house, no weapons, water supplies. Luckily my apt was built like a fortress. Now since I live in Miami and we get hurricanes ocassionally which can feel like the end of the world I am much better prepared for a hurricane or an economic collapse. You need shelter, food, water, protection, transportation etc I have 60 gallons + worth of water jugs that I can fill when I hear a hurricane is coming. Have food for a month at least, shelter, and a giant diesel 4x4 SUV filled w supplies. Ideally I'd like to have a small farm/ranch off the grid and off the beaten path I can run to full of stores.
More good advice from one of your countryman: http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban-survival-2005.html
I'll second this one. Quite a bit different from most survival guides which assume you only must prepare for nuclear winter and roving Road Warrior cannibal tribes and that everything else goes out the window.
bunch of loons. there wont be a total collapse, government would just take over everything. we'd live in a despotism. a total collapse on the scale you folks are talking about would require a natural disaster of biblical proportions.
+1 These crazies think the economic collapse would automatically usher in an age of the Flintstones. Gimme a friggin' break. What you will see more likely than not is the age of dictatorship and war. Learn your history!
I guess some people missed this line in the original post: I think that few people here believe that we will have a total collapse with a return to the stone ages. The economic situation is not black and white, but has many shades of gray. Our economy is headed for a very dark shade of gray. The government is almost in a frenzy, spending more and more money, in an attempt to solve our economic problems. There is absolutely no talk of spending cuts. Creating massive debt to solve an even larger debt problem is about as insane as it gets. The "bubble" of government spending is unsustainable, unrepayable and is bound to burst. IMHO, anyone who thinks we are not headed for a dramatic economic upheaval is in denial.
Nobody's denying the fact that we're in a serious economic trouble and the inevitable consequence won't be pretty. But even in light of complete economic meltdown (ie. Uncle Sam declares bankruptcy), it doesn't mean that we'll be returning to the lawless days of wild, wild west. It has been illustrated throughout history that when the times get rough, human beings have a bad tendency to band together and elect a ruthless leader who will in turn enforce law and order--no matter at what cost. Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, you name it. They're all byproducts turbulent times. And, yes, they were all warmongers.