I don't believe anyone is going to be needing to use silver dimes to buy food.
[...]
I don't really believe in the doomsday prepper scenario one iota. Food will not disappear if the value of the dollar drops or even plummets.
I agree with you, wafdawg. It is very unlikely something bad will happen, and that's fundamentally why prices are cheap. But, if the worst happens, I have enough food to get me by for significant span of time. If nothing happens, which is the most likely scenario, I can just be an obsessive bargain shopper and buy only when the price is right. When my income is interrupted, which happens for pretty much everybody eventually, I don't have to worry about the basic essentials.
I remember the Los Angeles riots. It was not safe to go outside during that time. If you have a stash of food, that's perfect, you can just stay home and not worry about anything. If you DON'T have a stash of food, you might be a bit uncomfortable, or you might be forced to eventually take some more risks.
"Prepping" used to be called "survivalism". Back then, it was very uncool, and survivalists were, at worst, considered in the same group as many other weirdos you wouldn't start a conversation with in line at Walmart. Being a survivalist stockpiling food in the USA is very weird. Why? Because the USA is the world's #1 food producer. But that doesn't mean you can't benefit from keeping some food and extra lightbulbs around. Since Hurricane Katrina, people in the USA started to take the more moderate survivalists seriously. The government also began to encourage people to adopt their "be prepared" mindset - that's the Boy Scout motto too, and if it's good enough for Boy Scouts, maybe it's not so bizarre for common people.
To distinguish themselves from the bunker-dwelling survivalists, ordinary people started calling themselves "preppers". It makes perfect sense to me. You don't need anarchy to benefit from having a little extra food and supplies around. I consider a stash of food to be a fundamentally necessary form of diversification for anyone with enough extra resources to begin considering an investment strategy. $100 can go a LONG way if you're able to train yourself to think economically, which is good for everything else you do too. Buy beans, brown rice, and whole grain pasta instead of Twinkies and frozen pizzas, for example.
I completely disagree with pandamonium's outlook, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. I've misjudged the efficacy of his strategies often enough to become wary of dismissing what he says outright. I don't think the end of the world is coming, because all the powers that be are doing everything they can to avoid it. But that doesn't mean nothing bad will ever happen. Better to be over-prepared than completely helpless, but all things in moderation. The next riot, hurricane, job loss, flood, fire, or illness will be much more limited in its effects if you're prepared.
The definition of wealth is having more than other people, and that applies to both the good times and the bad. A bag of beans is excellent barter in Mad Max's world. It's also delicious for stews and other nummy things. Farmland around the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear reactors is perfectly capable of producing food. The problem is, it was all unexpectedly contaminated, which caused sudden price increases for imported foods from other countries that had no chance of being contaminated.
And, of course, the on-hand supplies of foreign imports were depleted in a matter of hours and days after everyone was warned not to eat Japanese food. It took weeks or months to import an increased supply of uncontaminated food to bring prices back down to something tolerable. It took a year or more to increase food production on native farms to compensate for the loss of local farm output.
How often do I ever need to get into my stored food supply? Every time it's raining outside and I don't want to go shopping. You don't need a disaster to benefit from some basic "prepper" preparing.
I think it is wise to plan for the worst, but expect the best.
Sounds like good advice!
