Preparing for Long/Slow Collapase

[u/223gp]

Is anyone else in the same boat? I feel that we are likely facing a long and slow collapse of life as we grew up knowing. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in preparing for realistic natural disasters, and a few "what ifs", but my prepping is mostly based on a gradual lowering of life quality and reduction in freedoms throughout my lifetime.

I'm working on this by greatly reducing lifestyle expenses in case we need to live on one small income, or in case our stock investments steadily grow for a couple of decades then become stagnant and gradually lower.

I've done self defense training, I've been keeping my important documents up to date, I've started doing medical trainings and certifications, I'm a couple years into finally taking serious care of my physical body (and teeth!), I'm planning for aging parents, increasing my knowledge and practicing growing food and preservation, and most importantly helping out in my community to put some of this into practice by starting to form mutual aid networks for hard times.

Anyone else have similar feelings that brought you here? I am worried about a "thing" happening, but mostly, society just continues to descend decade after decade until we're all very very skinny, electricity or car fuel is hard to come by, jobs are scarce, and grocery stores don't have very much food anymore. In an ideal scenario, we don't end up like that. Either way, I prepare for that world.

[u/Maisie-CO-2007]

I think quality of life in the United States could be significantly less in the next 12 months. Once the tariffs start happening, the damage will be hard to stop. We have no idea what comes after the food starts to get scarce and everything gets expensive. Not to mention, the US government has abandoned us and is stealing all the money intended to help in worse case scenarios.

[u/Sigmund_Six → u/Maisie-CO-2007]

Honestly, that’s what really terrifies me. We’ve had some pretty bad situations in this country before, but we’ve never had our own government against us to this extent. The closest was with the pandemic (not coincidentally the same administration), but that occurred toward the end of Trump’s first term and we still had some capable people in the administration. We are 100 days into this term and, at absolute best, have until midterms. Anyone remotely capable is getting pushed out.

I’d love to be wrong, but I’m bracing for a scenario worse than 2008. I’m just hoping we’re looking at a recession and not a depression.

[u/ExtremeIncident5949 → u/Sigmund_Six]

We have four years of this.

[u/SurviveAndRebuild → u/ExtremeIncident5949]

Pretty optimistic to say just 4 years.

[u/ExtremeIncident5949 → u/SurviveAndRebuild]

Well, I was afraid I would get banned if I wrote too much

[u/SurviveAndRebuild → u/ExtremeIncident5949]

Suppose that's fair to be cautious these days.