It almost never snows where I live. It's pretty remote, 4 roads in, 4 roads out of town. Hundreds of miles to a big city. Anyway, like 6 or 7 years ago there w

It almost never snows where I live. It's pretty remote, 4 roads in, 4 roads out of town. Hundreds of miles to a big city. Anyway, like 6 or 7 years ago there was a freakish huge snowstorm. Dumped feet of snow. Collapsed some roofs in town (including an auto dealership which was a sight). The county doesn't keep snow plowing equipment (and who could justify the expense given how much it snows here?). Anyway, it shut down the roads for days. No way to leave. The stores were nearly empty. It was pretty wild and eye opening. This is only one of many things that can happen. Fires, floods, other "acts of God" to say nothing of potential acts of other humans. A lot of things can happen and suddenly everything you depend on no longer works. It can happen, and it can happen where you live too. Eventually the government may be able to fix things, but they aren't magic either, even when they are competent and motivated to actually help. I helped clean up from a major hurricane once, the military took over. Everything. Distributing water, cleaning up the streets, directing traffic. And it seemed they did reasonably well but it takes a bit to set all that up and assumes the tragedy is local enough help will be able to organize and come in from outside. Now, I'm not suggesting going full survivor. Surviving years of nuke fallout and zombie apocalypse probably isn't reasonable for most people. But in my opinion if you aren't prepping to stay alive (food, water, heat, personal protection and a way to get communications with no power) for a week or two, and maybe up to a month or two in case of emergency you are being short sighted and taking unnecessary risk.