I have heard rumors that it’s going to get harder to get a visa if one has sufficiently high student loans. If true, I don’t know how that free education plan will work out.
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Let’s see… Southern California suburbia. So no real “woods” in reasonable driving distance that would be in any way affordable. Plus the freeways are likely to be jam-packed or shaken into twisted hunks of concrete and rebar… Guess I’d better hole up here and start digging through the rubble.
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One thing I’d consider in some situations where phones and Internet are down (or locked down) is to stick a Raspberry Pi on the roof loaded with Wordpress, a wiki of useful information, email, and cover the neighborhood with wifi. So long as people could charge phones, they’d be locally connected
The downside is that it’d be easy to find by anyone that doesn’t want me doing that.
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It doesn’t. All that prepper shit is a bit spendy for me. I got a box of plasters and half-pack of paracetamol and groceries to last until the next grocery delivery, so if it’s timed right and there’s no power cuts or water outages, I’ll probably be OK.
I have tea-making and cookery skills but I’m gonna be a huge liability otherwise. 
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One is all you need. You won’t survive to need a second one.
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Also we might have a few machetes around the house. Just in case.
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If I’m stripped of my citizenship and kicked out of the country, I don’t know that I would have high hopes for a visa either way.
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12 gallons of water per household person
Windup radios and Ham radios
Solar charger
Lots of batteries
Lots of flashlights
Lots of knives
Lots of firestarter stuff
5+gallons of propane and grill, White gas, and alcohol for stoves
Foodstuffs we normally eat with long shelf lives
9 MREs per person w/heaters
Small supply of camping and outdoor gear, (white gas lamp and stove, tents and bags, hatchet, etc)
some shooty stuff
Common antibiotics sold as fish meds + Physicians reference marked for each
Water filters (gravity, pump, straw), chorine and iodine tabs, unopened bottle of bleach designated for emergency use.
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I think the people who relish the idea of a breakdown of society are those who feel like their skills or values are no longer relevant in today’s society. That’s why I feel like the Obama presidency caused surge in prepperdom. And I think the rise in popularity of zombie fiction is related to that - it’s an apolitical theme that allows people to fantasize about a return to “simpler times” when you didn’t have to have a college degree to get a decent job, and working with your hands was considered a valuable contribution, not the mark of a low-wage worker.
And I guess that’s why I’m sort of ambivalent about prepping. Part of me recognizes the need to be prepared and that there are very real reasons to be concerned about natural and man-made disasters, but I don’t want to fall in to or support that apocalyptic prepper fantasy.
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Take up camping. It’s fun, it’s healthy, it’s an excuse to buy stuff and practice with it.
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For all sorts of reasons, that ain’t gonna happen. 
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Bad Taste!
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Wait, what now?
Well, my earlier post was poorly written anyway. I implied that the US government was responsible for giving out visas to other countries, which is of course wrong. The rumor is that the US (in the future) won’t let holders of large student debt out of the country, not about denying visas. If this were to happen, and one had student debt and was a deportable undesirable, hard to say what would happen.
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The greater number of Apocalypse When? people I’ve known only think they have the skills or values. They fully believe it is only the fact they need to maintain the veneer of civility and political correctness that is keeping them down. And once the hordes of Zombies rise up they will be the Alpha Males they were always meant to be.
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I’m a Prepper! Wouldn’t you like to be a Prepper too?
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On one hand, neither do I. On the other hand, I don’t want to be helpless when something happens (I’m in the Pacific NW, so even if we don’t have a complete societal breakdown the threat of natural disaster is very real).
I’m just as unprepared as most people right now, but I do recognize that I Need Some Stuff.
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Curious; where are you and what are you preparing for?
