Another note to this thread. One of the biggest (and darkest) reasons I have preparations is collapse (and no, you can't prep yourself out of it, but for those of us living with one foot in this world and one in the future world trying to decide when to jump, it may give the ability to transition when systems fail). You can define collapse any way you want. My personal definition goes something like this: 7.6 billion people (as of 2018, subject to exponential revision upward) are consuming this world. Our geopolitical systems seem to be heading away from stable democracies and/or stable communism and toward fascism, dictators and nationalism. Our world is increasingly driven by policies that favor the few at the expense of the many, largely due to the injection of money by the wealthy to control the outcomes. Our darling media (both sides of it) is largely controlled by several of those players and we're left to our own to dig for truth. Our world's largest currently available energy source, fossil fuels, is finite and directly responsible for climate change. Climate change is resulting in a mass extinction event and pushing the earth toward a climate modern humans have not lived in. Our water, transportation and agricultural systems are entirely based on stasis within the norm and cannot account for climate change in the temporal or spacial scope climate change will require (i.e., shit's changing too fast to adapt).
Here's a light hearted article that gets at this. When we consider this, that or the other crisis, it is alarming. When we try to tie all of those crises together, we get a "holy shit" moment. I'll note that the linked article misses many other "holy shit" events that should enter into consideration, including bee die off and its impact to the natural world and human agriculture, bat die off in North America (it's not just happening in Australia), salmon collapse, fisheries collapse, expansion of wild fires, expansion of drought/flood cycles, coral bleaching, collapse of the Arctic sea ice, pending collapse of the Antarctic, disruptions of the jet stream, and on and on and on.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114 ... ink_114741
The title is apt. Collapse is already here and has been for some time. Not to be all doomery but, discuss.