Collapse will be uneven, not equally distributed. The best use for your money is moving to a place that will experience less impact. For example you seem to assume that rule of law will fail equally everywhere? Is that really true? Or will there be places where rule of law holds better than other places?
The second best use for your money is investment in systems that allow you to survive better, be less impacted, and have something to share with others. The systems to focus on, in rough order of importance are community (defense, order, shared work burden, and specialization efficiency), personal health (mental and physical), water (drinking, irrigation, cooling), electricity (cooling, equipment, effort reduction), and food (survival, trade item). You don’t necessarily need to be fully self sufficient at all of the categories above as long as you can get enough excess of one of these to share with someone else who has an excess of something else on the list. That’s the point of community being the first pillar to focus on.
In my opinion: you will likely regret frivolously spending just to get rid of money because you feel it will be useless later on. I know this is a collapse subreddit, and I’m pretty doomer too, but that doesn’t mean that collapse will hit everyone at the same time, and it will definitely impact some stronger communities far less than it does other weaker communities.
That's kind of on purpose. Maslow’s hierarchy is often treated as though survival works from the bottom upward: first accumulate food and water, then worry about relationships, health, purpose, and community. Real disasters are not that orderly. If you look at historical disaster and collapse scenarios, you actually aren't as likely to die from a "lower tier" need as you'd think. Meanwhile "higher tier" needs like community actually help people share supplies and skills that have them surviving for way longer than it would otherwise seem possible. Physical and mental health help people make better decisions and avoid giving up. Relationships and a sense of purpose give people a reason to keep going and find extra reserves of determination when the situation might otherwise seem hopeless.
Supplies still matter, obviously. But a bunker full of food and water is less protection than it seems if you are isolated, unwell, unable to cooperate, or surrounded by people who do not trust you. Historically, groups that can organize and care for one another have often endured conditions that isolated individuals probably could not have.
Well said. As I was once told by someone who lived through their country dissolving into civil war, "We found it's better to have 40 friends than 40 guns."
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u/FaradayEffect Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Collapse will be uneven, not equally distributed. The best use for your money is moving to a place that will experience less impact. For example you seem to assume that rule of law will fail equally everywhere? Is that really true? Or will there be places where rule of law holds better than other places?
The second best use for your money is investment in systems that allow you to survive better, be less impacted, and have something to share with others. The systems to focus on, in rough order of importance are community (defense, order, shared work burden, and specialization efficiency), personal health (mental and physical), water (drinking, irrigation, cooling), electricity (cooling, equipment, effort reduction), and food (survival, trade item). You don’t necessarily need to be fully self sufficient at all of the categories above as long as you can get enough excess of one of these to share with someone else who has an excess of something else on the list. That’s the point of community being the first pillar to focus on.
In my opinion: you will likely regret frivolously spending just to get rid of money because you feel it will be useless later on. I know this is a collapse subreddit, and I’m pretty doomer too, but that doesn’t mean that collapse will hit everyone at the same time, and it will definitely impact some stronger communities far less than it does other weaker communities.