Bomb shelters.

Here’s what the Seattle City government thinks people ought to prepare.

The main threat people there tend to worry about is an eventual massive earthquake and/or tsunami. Also perhaps Mount Rainier erupting.

Precious metals in the form of silver and gold coins..They believe that is commodity can be readily traded for other supplies if the the monetary system crumbles.
Others are stocking up on ammunition. A box of .22 LR is a popular size and can be traded for something else if needed . Bu
I agree with you that a flat of water won’t do much good in the long run, but it will help for a few days. And it is something everyone should have if/when there is another natural disaster.

American survivalists buy guns. Over here, when the Last Trump sounds I’ll have a fishing rod and a box of matches.

I don’t personally know any “preppers” like you see on TV but I know several including myself who keep enough supplies on hand to handle a good month or two of hard times.

I find the people who stock up on silver and gold amusing. Silver and gold have no inherent value. You can’t eat them. You can’t turn them into tools. All they do is be shiny, and are kinda useful in creating computer parts (which won’t help in a post EMP apocalypse).

The last gamma ray extinction event was 440mya, chillax.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090403-gamma-ray-extinction.html

I’d definitely want extra toilet paper for that.

Otherwise, 10 years after the thermo-nuclear war, I’ll probably just gallavant about gleaning the freshest meat I can find while I hunker down for the 10,000 year wait.

Everything will be free for the taking, like oh well you know, so small bills will be as useful as big bills cf. toilet paper.

If you wish to prepare for the end then best preclude it from happening.

They are not collecting metals for that kind of apocalypse it’s for if money becomes worthless. Silver and gold will always be treated like currency provided there is still some society left. Little single shot bottles of booze, ammunition and MREs are likely candidates for money post apocolypse.

“Silver and gold will always be treated like currency”

That’s the point I’m arguing. There’s no inherent reason it would be, especially since most people don’t have a stack of gold doubloons.

Might as well insist your bottle cap collection will be treated as currency.

Bottle caps are not rare or even usefull. Faced with currency devaluation or even collapse silver and gold remain universal currency and probably will for a long time. Your scenario assumes there is no society in place that values it, mine and that of many others does

American society decided gold wasn’t currency a long time ago. Silver’s worth what, $15 an ounce? Neither one is useful for anything other than making jewellery.

I think if the feces hits the oscillator, these people will find others are not as interested in their gold eagles as they’d like.

Again, two different types of SHTF. If we have a currency crisis gold and silver will be hot items. They are compact, transportable items of concentrated wealth that can be converted to whatever currency you like.

One suggestion that I saw recently, and which made perfect sense to me when I read it, is to have a list of your most important contacts’ phone numbers, including all of your family members, printed out on paper copy that you can keep safely somewhere. That’s a very good idea, because you never know when entire information systems that we rely upon may go down, and the data in your cell phone or computer could be useless.

Of course, it would also be useful if your contacts and family members all have land line phones that you CAN call from a land line of your own, and that’s not always the case, either, of course.

Pretty covered here as far as food goes. Huge ½ acre garden, lots of canned veggies, fruit trees, apples, plums, cherries. 40 chickens, dozens of eggs daily, , a steer, a sheep, the horses, ( would hate to eat the horses though LOL ) and years worth of firewood. Plenty of guns, ammo, ( not mine but the property owners are well stocked ) and a huge pond with fish and frogs if pickins’ get really lean.

All that’s missing is a bomb shelter. Same with the neighboring ranch property. 6 humans total and 17 acres of combined resources, we’d hang in for awhile anyway.

After the recent power outage that affected over 60,000 people in the Rochester NY area, I ordered several of these units: 6 LED Solar Camping Light for family members.
They put out a lot of light and can even be used to charge a phone.

I guess it depends on what you are preparing for. Hurricane? Water, gas for the generator and chainsaw, food, candles/oil lamps, etc. Collapse of society? Water, food, guns, ammo, etc. The basics are that you need water, food, shelter and protection. So whatever the prepper is worried about is what he/she will gather.

The question: what are survivalists and preppers buying these days?

I wasn’t asking what I should buy or looking for other advice, although it’s interesting, and thanks. I wanted to know what the current best-sellers are among people who are really into the whole disaster prep stuff. What’s big at the prepper shows? What are the hot items at surplus stores? That kind of thing.

(I had no idea there were TV shows about preppers.)

There is no single hot item outside of bricks of 22lr ammunition. It’s a hodgepodge of storable food, backup power systems, communication gear and stuff like that. I suspect bomb shelters are getting higher up on the list.

Books, water ,and energy bars. Also canned beef stew and tuna kits.

@ARE_you_kidding_me

Let’s say in our hypothetical post-apocalyptic, every man for himself scenario (and let’s be honest: that is the kind of scenario that most of these survival preppers have wet dreams about) I have a good store of food and you have shiny metal. What reason do I have to trade my food for your gold? I can’t eat it. Can’t burn it. Can’t clothe myself with it. Can’t use it for shelter. Of what practical value would that gold have for me?

There really aren’t any single products preppers buy because they are all different. They all worry about different things, they all live in different areas, they all are starting from different points financially. Maybe one person has food but no guns or ammunition. Maybe another has gold and silver but no gasoline. Maybe one is worried about a Yellowstone eruption and they want to invest in gas masks and protective clothing. Don’t be fooled by the label “prepper”, they are still just people. The BEST preppers understand it isn’t stuff, it is a mindset. They align their lives to be more independent…less reliant on others. They learn how to best fend for themselves so they are more prepared for a variety of disasters.

@Darth_Algar How many times do I have to say that hoarding gold and silver has nothing to do with a mad max style apocolypse and is about weathering a financial or political crisis. I’m quite certain that people who converted their Zimbabwe bank notes to gold and silver did much better than the people who did not.

@ARE_you_kidding_me

A financial crisis isn’t really what comes to mind when the term “survivalist” comes up.

I think more along the lines of bombing, invasion, natural disaster too not financial crisis. Food, water, safe shelter, etc. not money/gold/silver. In the event of a serious survival situation, currency, in all it’s recognized forms would be rendered useless. People would be trading food for water and vice versa, or bartering for tools. A bag of diamonds or gold coins would be worthless.

To put some perspective into what @ARE_you_kidding_me is saying, when civilization fails, as it has from time to time, it doesn’t (or hasn’t yet, anyway) failed universally and world-wide.

Here I’m thinking of 1930s Germany, most of Russia through most of the 20th century, China at mid-century, and even the United States during the Revolutionary War (and for some time after) and the Confederate States during and just after the American Civil War). That is, “pockets of civilization” – and government – fail, and people need to find ways to survive when they may have skills, goods and services and other marketable commodities, but limited specie with which to effect trade.

People who had a little gold during the worst times in history generally found a way to exchange that with people who had whatever “stuff of life” they needed, even if that was just an escape route to a place with more stable civilization.

Yeah, when the meteor hits and the skies go dark around the world, that’ll be a different situation, and gold may have less utility. Still, until everyone recognizes its utter uselessness at that time, it may have some utility “up to that point”. It’s not bad advice, as a rule, to have some store of recognized historical value that can be transported easily and quietly and traded discreetly. Gold in coin and bar form has traditionally been that thing of value.

@Darth_Algar “Survivalists” plan for a variety of eventualities. Financial crisis can be just as devastating as a natural disaster or an invasion. Look at what is going on in Venezuela. Their economy has crashed. People are scrambling for food and water…the basic necessities of life. They are rioting, looting…anything to fight for their own survival. A “survivalist” looking at that would think they would have to have enough food and water to get through the crisis AND protect what they have from everyone else that is trying to take it.

@CWOTUS

1930s Germany? You mean in which they were an economic and military superpower that dominated Europe? I know, you’re referring to the Weimar Republic (though it barely existed into the 1930s).

At any rate none of the examples you gave were exactly failed states. All of them still retained functioning governments.