>preppers would be better off hiking, hunting, fishing, gardening, and learning homestead skills for the psychologically grounding effects For me at least this

>preppers would be better off hiking, hunting, fishing, gardening, and learning homestead skills for the psychologically grounding effects For me at least this is definitely an aspect of it that is very important. My assumption is that globalization will break down either within our lifetimes or that of our children and it's not too hard to imagine the same thing happening to us as happened at the end of the bronze age. There are many levels on which what we are doing is fundamentally unsustainable, so it's not a stretch to say that it will not be sustained. I think people have a rosy idea that technology will save us or that there will be some gentle transition, but so far technology has only increased demand for energy, and in terms of food production there are inputs to that to which there are no alternatives. Combine that with the picture demographics paint and it all doesn't add up to "it's going to be business as usual forever". We've already seen how vulnerable supply chains really are and eventually if enough of the supply chain collapsed then there comes a point where it becomes a positive feedback loop as the base level of complexity needed to support society goes away, so too does the complexity in that society. In such a case even the typical things preppers do are kind of useless as long-term solutions except for the stuff that is about those fundamental skills of living alongside nature. Even then there are a lot of assumptions baked in for a lot of people who have some of those skills currently like "I can go to a store and buy NPK fertilizer". I see the typical prepper stuff as giving you a great level of preparedness for most everyday disasters you might face, but only giving you what amounts to a "solid buffer of time" to figure out how to survive in a fundamentally new reality. All things considered I think it's worth having that buffer and a level of calmness than not, but also in addition our family is starting to learn to live more off natural resources to build that base of skills. You need both.