To the concern: I am an Industrial Engineer by training and I currently run a purchasing and logistics department for a foodservice distributor in the Midwest. I follow this industry and work with an Ai daily to complete tasks at my job and build solutions for others. Before Ai I did this same thing, but much more slowly. As I see it, AI had reduced the headcount in my office by about 50%. It isn't even that an AI is sitting at a desk holding down a particular role, it is that it has made that person using the Ai tool 500% faster, and they can easily do 5 people's jobs now...so why have the other people.

This reduction in my office alone has happened in the last 12 months, and without additional strain on my remaining coworkers, as far as task stress is concerned. Job security is...another issue though. Additionally in reducing headcount we have not lost business or dropped key metrics. So I dont think this is a fluke...

This is all to say nothing of the actual advancements in functionality and the reduction in expense. As an example, I have an Ai program that replaced my receiving clerk, they check receiving documents against the erp system and the invoicing and associate freight etc etc. When I built that program it was costing me almost $4 a day to run the Ai back end. Now it costs $0.20 per day, and when Gemini 3 flash comes out of preview, that will drop to $0.01 per day because it is more functional and much cheaper. All of the Ai tools around me are seeing similar improvements and reduction in costing. If everything stopped moving forward today, we are all already fucked, we just dont know it yet because it takes time to implement ubiquitously.

To the preps: I am not sure how anyone prepares for this. At best we have a rocky transition of at least years between where we are and some sort of wealth redistribution. That said, I honestly dont think that is the path we are on. It feels much more 1984-ish with Palantir and the drones and the like...

My current prep is to try and remove myself from population centers where there will be the most disconnect between resources needed and resources available. I think things in the cities are going to get dicey when people realize that mostly we are horses and not carriage drivers. There might be a reprieve for manual labor initially, but again, that is just a gap between creation and implementation when you look at things like the new atlas robot that was at ces this year.

There are a lot of folks that are pushing the superintelligence story, and that is sort of the wildcard. If you can get an Ai that increases Ai development, and then you spin up ten thousand of those (arbitrary), what happens then? I think this is probably unlikely. The labs know this would be a loss of controll situation so they won't do that sort of bg boot up of Ai researchers, it will be incremental as they need the advancements to hold market share. Fast takeoff seems unlikely. Slow takeoff will kill us all anyway.

How are yall preparing?

Someone posted asking how people are preparing for the ai emergency and the mods locked and removed it saying that Ai is not an emergency and this is an emergency prep board. I disagree. Anyone else?

Yesterday I got caught in the chaos at Dublin on airport from the bomb threat and cyber attack.

What I did that made a difference:

1.) As soon as my cab pulled up and I saw tens of thousands of people standing outside with police everywhere, the first thing I did was call AMEX travel and told them to book me a hotel room near the airport. Any room. I booked a non refundable room for that night, and a second refundable room for the following night. (This is not a pitch for AMEX, but they were INCREDIBLE throughout all of this). This proved crucial. Eight hours later, our flight was cancelled and there were no hotel rooms anywhere in Dublin. People were in full on panic mode, trying to find a place to stay. (I ended up taking in an elderly lady named Rose in my hotel room, who had no where to stay…and now I have a new lifelong friend).
- The biggest lesson from this was to start acting and making alternative plans, the second you see that something is wrong. I could not believe how all of these people, all facing the same situation, were all standing around doing nothing.

2.) Don’t rely on anyone else to help you. Do it yourself, before you need it. When the airline cancelled my flight, we got an email saying everyone was on their own for lodging. (I already had that covered). I called again and booked my return flight directly through AMEX, the second the flight was cancelled. (Again, not a pitch for AMEX, but I got booked on the next flight immediately, while everyone else was scrambling on travel websites trying to find flights and accommodations). I was very happy I did this, because the flight was full soon after I booked my seat. If I had waited, I wouldn’t be headed home to my family until later this week.

3.) Carry local currency. I had a few hundred Euros on me in cash, and I was very glad I did. I figured that if they can sabotage the reservation system, they can also take down payment processing systems. I didn’t need the cash, but I was glad I had it.

4.) Carry protein bars and snacks, and a water filter. There was no where to sit down to eat and the food kiosks were slammed, because there were so many people jammed into the airport. It was nice to not have to worry about eating (even though I didn’t have a proper meal). There was also no where to refill a water bottle near the gates. You could only buy water. I carry a GrayL water filter bottle. It was nice to know that no matter what happened, I could have clean water.

5.) People are great…and they suck. Most people were great, but some people’s patience was gone. People started yelling and screaming, if someone ended up one person in front of them in a line. (And there were LOTS of lines and they were all exceptionally long and slow). I spoke to one couple in the hotel this morning. Their flight as cancelled shortly after mine. They said the airline representative came in with three police officers, and made a brief announcement that their flight was cancelled and they were all on their own. Then she abruptly left. They said people started screaming, kicking doors to get out, and climbing over counters. Keep your head on a swivel to make sure you’re avoiding those potentially bad situations.

6.). Be very careful of a stampede. When they cancelled our flight, they led us to an escalator that led up into a hallway. They didn’t unlock the door at the end of the hallway. People went up the escalator and had no where to go, while more people were coming up the escalator behind them. It got dangerous very quickly. I managed to be by the wall, and was able to get out of the way. It doesn’t take much for a crowd to crush someone. Thankfully, they got the door opening before anyone got hurt.

It wasn’t anywhere near a survival situation, but the steps and actions are the exact same (and things everyone here already knows): start acting and planning for contingencies, the second you sense that something is wrong. Get a head of the curve, so you’re not stuck as one of the helpless masses.

I really got into ultralight backpacking a few years ago (thanks to r/ultralight). Trimming my base weight forced me to think completely differently about “survival math”. Every gram/ounce has to justify its existence, and luxury items are constantly reevaluated. You start semi-obsessively asking questions like: what does this item or piece of gear actually do for me, and what's the lightest way I could accomplish the same thing? That line of thinking bled directly into how I think about bug-out bags, redundancy, comfort vs practicality, and more. And the “fun suffering” of walking long distances in nature, sleeping outdoors in a variety of conditions, dealing with hunger, water purification, critters, boredom, physical strain… I imagine this would help my mindset in a real emergency.

The other one might sound ridiculous, but I read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction. Good authors put their characters under believable pressure and stress and the decisions they make often leave me wondering how I’d react in that situation, fictional or not. And there’s often some valuable practical info and prep wisdom buried in those stories. And mentally, it helps me foresee how communities could fracture, or how quickly norms might collapse. What people actually barter for versus what they think they'll barter for. You get a kind of low-stakes mental simulation of scenarios that can’t really be reproduced outside of fiction. “The Road”, “Station Eleven” (awesome Canadian novel), “Lucifer's Hammer” (my favorite), “Bird Box”, “The Passage” (trilogy), and so many more. I probably pulled more mindset insight from those than from half the forums I hang out at.

So what's your prep-adjacent hobby? What do you do that isn't officially prepping but is actually making you more prepared or resilient?

I moved from semi rural to really rural / mountains. I used to think I had an edge with force multipliers: NVG's, Thermal, and suppressors

Living out in the sticks EVERYONE has Thermals. With financing and lower priced units Everyone has them and I was surprised how many hunt with suppressors too.

Everyone is well stocked on food as a way of life too. Granted longer than a month or two hard SHTF rural America will be like "the Road"

My new force multiplier is being friendly with right folks near me.

Thoughts on this? Just in my area?

https://en.defence-ua.com/media/illustration/articles/98d651d65d743116.jpg

Edit: not sure what people saw in here that made them think I was trying to define SHTF or ask them what they thought it should mean. None of that is the point. Please read the whole post before commenting, thanks.

Edit: I'm shocked by the number of people who didn't get further than the title and tried to explain that SHTF meant a particular thing to them, or existed at all. Please read the post before you comment on the post.

Instead of writing this as a comment on just about every single post in here, I'll try a top-level post. I realize people coming in here for the first time don't usually do searches or even look at stickies, so this is basically a single shot attempt to solve an ongoing problem. That problem being: the sub gets loaded with posts asking a meaningless question that doesn't have a useful answer, and that doesn't help people prepare for anything.

SHTF ("Shit hits the fan") is a meaningless acronym. No one has any idea what it means, or means to anyone else. I saw two posts today which amounted to "when SHTF, do I need to..." (one had to do with storing extra gas in his truck, another had to do with altering clothing.)

And the answer to those and to every other question of that form is "It depends on what you mean by SHTF, doesn't it?"

So I'll say it loud: IF YOU DON'T DESCRIBE WHAT THE ACTUAL PROBLEMS ARE YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT, NO ONE CAN OFFER SOLUTIONS. "SHTF" isn't a problem. It's an acronym used by people who don't want to think about specific situations, either because they are too lazy to work out what might actually happen, or they've been brainwashed by survival gear manufacturers into believing that everything's going to go wrong at once.

If you don't know specifically what to prepare for, you can't prepare. Period. All you can do is stock food and water (and for some, ammo) and hope that's all you need to cover the problem, whatever it is. And maybe it is. Who knows? We sure don't.

I'll give examples.

The US Carolinas over the last few weeks. They got hammered by storm remnants like they haven't seen in years. Some areas got cut off for days. People died and things got serious and it look awhile to open roads and get emergency aid in there. Or even to get the lights back on. Was that SHTF? In my book it qualified, because people died. What was the appropriate prep? Three weeks of food and water, a way to repair damaged houses and a way to avoid flood waters.

The US in 2020. Covid pandemic. Over a million deaths (and still counting), many of them preventable. Was that SHTF? I think so, because of the million deaths. What was the prep? You really didn't need a big stock of food and water for this one, at least in the US. In some places, extra toilet paper would have been nice, but not essential. You needed medical mitigations and to ignore bad advice. Having a lot of N95 masks in advance would have been key. That's specific to Covid, though. Worse pandemics are possible, and people can talk about high CFR and high R0 pandemics where you do need to stock a lot of food because social contact is simply too dangerous.

Then there's the one that some but not everyone means by "SHTF." It's some sort of collapse of US infrastructure, such that you can't buy food, get water, or get fuel, for months. That would certainly be an SHTF, but how you'd prepare for it, I don't know. The urban population - 80% of the US total population - would come out looking for food. They'd walk until they dropped dead of starvation, which takes about a month. There are about as many guns in cities as there are in rural areas (lower percentage of ownership, but way more people, and it happens to roughly balance out; the worse possible situation.) Fights over food and water would be catastrophic; and since existing farmland can't feed the US population without modern infrastructure - pumped water, fuel for harvesters and for shipping food, refrigeration, insecticide and fertilizer - and can't even come close, the carnage will continue until the population gets to what the land can support using mid-19th century methods - animals for plowing, hand weeding, horse drawn mechanical seed drills.

At a handwave, that's a change from 333 million to maybe 100 million. Along the way there will be a lot of gun deaths, disease and epidemics, and injuries. Realistically, the only possible prep is a self sufficient community, on arable land with clean water, completely independent of fuel or electricity, very far from any large population center. There are few of these and they aren't a thing you can build on the fly during a crisis. The only viable prep for this, for most people, would be to move to an area with more arable land and water and fewer people and guns, which, if it's going to collapse, will collapse in a less violent fashion. Aka, leave the US in advance.

Three different SHTFs, of different scale, with completely different mitigations.

Or, since the point is to show that SHTF isn't a meaningful term, we might call these by what they are: a major weather event, a pandemic, and an infrastructure collapse. But the preps have virtually nothing in common.

The same goes generally for "doomsday," because unless you mean a literal, final day of existence (which really isn't a prep scenario) it's not clear what you're talking about.

So please stop asking what you should have or do when "SHTF." The only possible answer is "well, it depends." But if you ask specific questions, you might get useful answers.

This has been a public service announcement.

Seriously, it just bug me to no end when city dwellers/suburbanite with zero community building in the country or existing tie brag about their go bag with very offensively oriented firearm.

Sure, pack a pistol when you are bugging out to wherever for a few weeks so you can defend yourself in a shady hotel or nature.

But when people allocate a large amount of their load out to tacticool gear with offensive tools like fancy optics or suppressor and answer that you aren’t trying to make it to your homestead, you just make folks like myself who focus on self-sufficiency out in the country nervous. I can’t imagine we would have a friendly interaction in any sort of disaster environment and people like that make me worry about safety for my family.

EDIT: I am called fudd a lot here so I just want to explain my position some more.

I have my own firearm. One 30-06 type semi auto rifle with high powered optics, multiple AR15 type with intermediate cartridge. Level 4 plates, drones etc. i have no issue with 2A, suppressor, effective ammo or modern gear.

My issue is specifically with people who “bug out” and carry a small bag that is filled 50% with long rifle, big ass ammo, suppressor and 2lb optics. It’s very obvious what they are trying to achieve.

Again, maybe you are just wondering to the country side doing community building, but do you think I gonna invite you in for tea when i see you in my deerstand / drone screen when you roll in holding a SVD with 8x?

Put your dam plates and chest rigs away. Even in the worst case SHTF scenario, you won’t be out dressed in your tactical gear patrolling the neighborhood.

Why not ? Cause you want to live!

Going on “patrol”, especially in tactical gear with a long gun is a death sentence in SHTF. Any mobs, looters, gangs etc. that you’re patrolling for will make easy work of you.

Want evidence? Look at Kyle Rittenhouse. He came within seconds of death, with police 2 blocks away! In a true SHTF scenario the mob would have shot him from a distance.

Stay inside. Stay hidden. Blend in. And carry concealed!

Patrolling will not make you safer. It will make you an obvious target.

Edit: this is not an anti gun post. Protect your home and your family. Guns have a place. This is an anti walking around in public displaying said gun post.

Through last year and into this one I did a lot of MRE eating, survival food testing/survival food challenge stuff with my network and in my opinion I have concluded that premade survival meals are no longer part of my preparedness plans.

Most of the big names in survival food take 20 minutes of simmering for their meals to be ready, when they are ready I have never been overly impressed by them.

I hear a lot of parroted sentiment about, "If you are hungry enough, you'll eat it."

I believed that until last year when my hosts and I conducted the Ration Or Ruin challenge in May. We ate only survival food 3 days a week and foraged, fished, hunted, and trapped the other 4 days to eat. We did this the entire month.
,
Long story short we starved a lot of days. Then, when it came time to eat our survival meals, many times we didn't finish them. Despite being hungry.

This is a big revelation for me and one that costs me money because I am also not taking on survival food sponsors anymore. I don't believe in the stuff. I will continue to stock freeze-dried meats, eggs, and of course staples like flour, sugar, rice, beans, lentils.

Anyone else changing their minds on these freeze dried survival meals?

It was revealed the reservoirs were depleted quickly because it was designed for 100 houses at the same time….not 5,000. I urge you to call your local leaders and demand an accounting of available water tanks. And upgrade for more.

OBLIGATORY: this didn't happen to me but a family friend.

If you were in a major natural disaster, think Katrina or NC floods or somethings, and someone in your neighborhood had preps (access to power via generators, solar, etc, water via a well, stockpiled food, gas reserves, Starlink internet/communication, etc.) how would you feel if they charged their community members to access to this? Just as a example, $500 to run a extension cord from the solar generator to the neighbors fridge, $50 to use Starlink for a hour, $10 to fill up a gallon jug from his well, etc.

This community seems to regularly talk about sharing preps with the community (which is great). The argument this person was making is that the 'Karen next door' who never tried to befriend the guy with the preps, who never spoke to him once before, didn't even know his name and wont care again the second the lights come back on, doesn't automatically get to share his electricity/preps. The guy up the street who didn't do any of his own prepping should rely on this guy to share his food. Not everyone in the neighborhood can use the Starlink to watch their favorite youtuber....I get that but it just feels yucky.

I have a family friend who is dealing with the power outages in Indiana. I also have some family that went through some major hurricanes in FL. We were talking about some of their situations (currently in IN and during Irma in FL) and this topic came up. What do you think?

It was a perfect storm. Thursday night my son (16yo) came home coughing. We are in North Texas and we had a bunch of dust blow in a couple of days before so I assumed it was allergies... until he woke up Friday with a fever of 102.9.

Got him dosed up, he stayed home from school. Friday around 4 I started feeling light headed. By 10 I had a fever of 102. Took meds went to bed. I knew we had a chance for severe weather overnight, but I didn't turn my ring tone up on my phone which I normally do with chances of severe weather. I didn't plug in my weather radio. I didn't charge my smart watch which would have woken me up even with my phone on silent.

My son came into my room at 5:15 freaking out. It sounded like a freight train outside. Hail was firing at the windows like bullets. And I couldn't think. I couldn't process what to do. I was completely helpless. I'm never like that in a weather emergency. I grew up in the south. I'm no stranger to bad weather.

But my temp was 104. I couldn't think clearly because of my fever. I tested positive for COVID yesterday afternoon.

We are okay. We didn't lose any windows or have major damage like many people did in our area. But it made me realize that I was complacent in my safety protocols because I felt so crappy.

So this is a reminder... we have plans. That's what we do as a prepping community. But that means following our safety protocols all the time.

A year ago I bought 20 Waterbricks. They’re 3.5 gallons each, stack nicely, and fit perfectly under the bed. They’re a little pricey, but we live in an apartment and other storage options didn’t make sense.

My wife rolled her eyes when I started storing some food. She rolled her eyes when I got some gear. When I got plastic containers to store 70 gallons, she teased me and said “The Delaware River is right over there.” I’m not gloating, I didn’t say a thing! But I think this tragic environmental disaster that didn’t happen far away, it happened to us, finally opened her eyes.

She’s happy we don’t have to travel 50 miles to find bottled water.

Not me, found this on X, thought it might be of interest:

https://www.opensourceecology.org/

Source:

https://x.com/CR1337/status/2033887250338222303

So, there is an old trope in the community that 50% of people wouldn't last 90 days after a cataclysmic event. Was there actually a peer reviewed study on this or is this just conjecture that we keep repeating?

Now that Bird Flu seems closer then ever to starting a full blown pandemic, are any of your prepping specifically for a mass quarantine or maybe the opposite? How would you prep for a scenario that disinformation spreads and everyone thinks it's a hoax when in reality it's quite deadly?

Edit: I am glad to see adleast 80-90% of people believe viruses are real and not government controlled nano-bots, however that 10-20% is quite concerning to me and shows how society isn't prepared for another pandemic if we can't all agree on basic facts like whether a virus is real or not. I mean we were all there for COVID, weren't we?

Edit 2: I'm seeing peoples belief in virology and conspiracies is on a spectrum.

-People who believe viruses are real and a threat

-People who believe viruses are a threat but came from a lab

-People who believe viruses are nothing to worry about or matter

-People who believe viruses are a threat but don't believe in vaccines

People who believe COVID never happened

-People who believe viruses don't exist now or ever have

How did we get to the point where nobody can agree on simple facts of people getting sick and dying or the fact that COVID happened and millions died?

For the purpose of discussion , you work in a metro area and live in the burbs 25 miles away. Politics is not the issue (not a right left discussion as per the rules) but some event happens that brings out the worst in people around the area you work. The standard protest, looting, firebombs and fireworks and the general violence and destruction that follows . The building you’re located in or next to, either contains a part of what they are unhappy with or adjacent to it. Staying in place is probably not a good idea (but if you choose to stay in place,why?), what is your plan and kit to get back home? What steps are you taking to get there?

How are you handling movement, conflict if unavoidable, and distance?

This is a situation that while you may agree with the discontent (or may not). you’re not part of that group so you’re either neutral or classified as unfriendly .

I did a search and the last posts similar didn’t really answer the question .

Chaos is imminent and all the obvious choices of big box stores are being ransacked by the desperate hoard. What stores are you hitting up that people might not think about for last minute supplies?

Mine is HomeGoods. They usually have a sizeable selection of coffee, dried fruit, jams and jellies, cooking oils, candles, and cookware. Some even have cases of bottled water.

Hello everyone,

I’m here to hopefully get some insight/ advice from personal stories if anyone else has encountered an individual of a similar mindset. I’m also here to vent because this has been eating away at me all day and it’s driving me crazy.

An individual that I’m very close to and previously looked up to as a role model has more or less opened up to me about their SHTF plans and it was very disturbing to me;

• “The highways get backed up and families come knocking on my door to use my bathroom? I’ll shoot them right there”

• “I’ve already planned on which one of my neighbors I’m going to kill”… not even necessarily to take their resources, but because they are “selfish people who only think of themselves” uhm… ironic.

“Anybody with blue or purple hair will be my first target”

He made jokes about how killing women and children is easy. He’s a vet from the initial Iraq invasion so I wouldn’t be surprised if he got away with terrible things he did back then.

He casually talked about putting his wife down “quick and easy”

He recommended that the first person I kill be my pansexual younger sibling because they would somehow be the first to get me, my wife, and son killed. “Just do it humanely with a knife to the back of her skull.” After he said that I completely shut down. It has been eating away at me all day and I just need some people to talk to now I guess.

I think it’s safe to assume the vast majority of you here are respectful, peaceful, well intended people who want to preserve life and community when things go bad. Thanks.

I’ve learned that a little luxury during a crisis is a godsend.

When my socks get wet in a flood after helping pull someone’s car back onto the road, and I’m stuck in my truck soaking wet during the downpour and traffic jam, I don’t want to open my GHB and put on an old, stained, stretched out pair of socks. Sure they’re clean and dry, but ugh.

I keep two pair of brand new socks, vacuum sealed by the pair, in my bag. When I’ve helped three cars get out of the snowbank and back on the road, and I’m cold and wet and proud of myself for being able to help, I want to reward myself with a warm, fresh, soft, dry pair of socks for the long, slow drive home.

Now imagine you have to evacuate because of a fire, hurricane, or other approaching disaster. You grab your go bag and drive away. You don’t have time to pack, or to pick and choose. You grab what’s prepared and go.

When you get to the next safe state and finally find a hotel with a room, do you want to put on old clothes that you only kept ‘for an emergency’?

Or do you want something soft, warm, clean and fresh.

I used to put old stuff in go bags thinking I’d never need it or that “in an emergency I’ll be happy with whatever I have”. No. No I won’t be happy. I’ll be fine. I don’t want to be fine in a crisis. I want to thrive. I deserve good stuff.

So do you!

Pack accordingly.

Good luck!

The power went out here last night for a max of 45 minutes to an hour.

I grabbed my flashlight out it within reach and turned on my scanner to the local sheriffs office frequency just to see if it was something like a car accident or something that hit a pole or whatever common causes of power outages it could’ve been.

This was maybe 10 minutes in, and people in town (I live a mile or two out) were already breaking into cars and trying to rob T mobile. And I live in a town with a population of 13k people. Nice quite conservative area and people are already stealing shit just because the powers out.

What’s that expression about people going without basic services to resort back to primal instinct? 3 missed meals? Yeah well people will start stealing your stuff at about 10 minutes if they think can get away with it.

Edit: adding more crap.

Not to mention the girl I’ve been seeing near freaking out because she’s got one tiny flashlight, and the powers out.

This is the kind of stuff that everyone should be worried about long before the end of the world as we know it. People are stupid, and cause problems. What I was most worried about was that it was hot and my AC was out lol.

Felt like ranting.

Second edit: clarification.

Seems like a lot of people commenting think I’m saying that there was mass looting in the streets, there was a couple car break ins, and one attempted store robbery. Yes it could have been a coincidence but stuff like that here is extremely rare, and this was likely the same individuals. My point is people will start taking advantage of easy targets instantly

Maybe the mods wanna sticky a thread dedicated to the drone conversations?

I'm on Long Island (NY)

I've been ignoring the drone stories mostly 'cause eh, they're close but it's NJ, not here

Well, now they're here, over my home too, my family.

I know "they" probably don't pose an immediate threat themselves. But I have a super uneasy feeling about what it could imply is coming in the near future.

Anything you guys are doing or would do differently/extra when they're scoping out your home/neighborhood?

About a month ago I set out to answer the question, "What is the best place in the US for a prepper to move to if they want to homestead?"

I originally built my model around the basics: climate, water, food, security, cost of living and strategic distance. Unfortunately, my proxy for "food" was cropland, which incorrectly boosted places like Kansas and Iowa to the top of the list.

I've refined my ranking factors, and I would love your feedback on if you think this is the right.

• 17% Climate Stability - How hard natural hazards hit here and how far the temperature has moved from its 20th-century baseline.
• 17% Water - Whether water is here. Rainfall normals, or delivered irrigation.
• 17% Homestead Capacity - Whether a household on five to fifty acres could feed, heat and shelter itself here, and whether the law lets it. Forest cover for firewood and game, operations running one to nine head of cattle, growing season, and the state legal latitude over your own land: water doctrine, building-code adoption, food freedom and right-to-farm.
• 13% Social Stability - Net migration, social vulnerability, and crime rates.
• 10% Solar Potential - Annual solar irradiance.
• 7% Affordability - What it actually costs to live here: the annual cost of owning the median house (mortgage, property tax and homeowners insurance combined) alongside median rent. Lower cost areas score higher.
• 7% Privacy - Documented surveillance device density, the surveillance programs local agencies are recorded to run, exposure to the 100-mile border zone, and state legal protections.
• 7% Livability - Employment, primary care access, educational attainment, and household broadband.
• 7% Strategic Distance - Distance from publicly documented strategic sites and nuclear power stations, weighted by what each one is: ICBM launch facilities and command sites count for far more than a port or a refinery.

Overall Best States to Homestead

1. Tennessee
2. Alabama
3. Missouri
4. Maine
5. Indiana
6. Illinois
7. Georgia
8. Kentucky
9. Vermont
10. Kansas

Overall Best County to Homestead: (Carroll County, VA breakdown)

• Climate Stability - 67/100
• Water - 69/100
• Social Stability - 69/100
• Solar Potential - 33/100
• Homestead Capacity - 87/100
• Affordability - 86/100
• Privacy - 82/100
• Livability - 52/100
• Strategic Distance - 92/100

This list feels pretty much better to me.
Tenn. and the Ozarks are well represented. Maine surprised me a bit being so far north. West Virginia is pulled down from social instability and livability. Virginia has a lot of military targets and popular centers.

Would you say this list is accurate, or is something being overlooked?

I see dried beans being praised here as like the ultimate food to store. But am I missing something? Don't you need to boil a decent amount of water just to get them edible?

Whats the point in stocking a food that would use a larger amount of gas and water and which are both much harder to store and accumulate than food?

I've been building a county-level model to answer a question that comes up here pretty often: if preparedness were a major factor in where you lived, which parts of the U.S. actually come out ahead?

I ran it across 3,000+ counties. The results heavily favor the central U.S., especially Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and surrounding areas. Most coastal areas do poorly. DC comes in at essentially the bottom, with much of New Jersey not far ahead of it.

Before I get too far, I'd like people here to pick apart the methodology.

These are my current categories and weights:

19% Climate Stability
Natural hazards, temperature trends, drought, wildfire and flood risk.

19% Water & Food
Groundwater reliability, precipitation, growing season and cropland availability.

15% Social Stability
Migration trends, social vulnerability and crime.

12% Infrastructure
Solar potential, off-grid power viability and proximity to nuclear facilities.

12% Self-Sufficiency
Rural/urban classification, agricultural diversity and land availability.

8% Affordability
Home values and rents. Cheaper counties score higher.

8% Privacy
Surveillance device density, known local surveillance programs, 100-mile border-zone exposure and state privacy protections. Higher score = less surveillance exposure.

7% Livability
Employment, primary care access, education and broadband.

The model is intentionally trying to balance normal life with long-term resilience, rather than rank the best place to survive one specific disaster.

What would you change?

Are any of these categories overweighted? Underweighted? Is there something important that deserves its own category?

I'm especially interested in factors that can actually be measured consistently at the county level, rather than subjective things like “good community.”

I can post some of the county/state rankings in the comments if people are interested.

For example, would it be like "Yup, oil absolutely skyrocketed and the entire supply chain is messed up now, so you're going to be walking a lot more and eating more local potatoes".