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Comment by rev_bird | Hacker News Reader

>if things turn so badly to shit you need a year of food, food is going to be the least of your worries.

I don't see why this is the case -- saying "doing X is going to be the least of your worries" seems to imply that there are going to be other priorities and "X" will be ignored -- i.e. "charging your phone is going to be the least of your worries." But food... you _need_ food, even if there are other crazy things happening all around you. If that's the case, I can't help thinking it would be better to do the things you CAN do to prepare. One less thing, etc.

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It's a reflection of the idea that if civilisation collapses to the point you can't obtain food except by pulling it out of your emergency store a year later, you're probably going to have died of disease, injury, thirst, violence or a number of more pressing concerns.

Seriously, if the ability to get food to people has been down for a full year, you won't have medicine. You almost certainly won't have fuel, electricity, public order, sanitation, or clean water.

One thing that I think is frequently overlooked is that a person with a year's worth of food stored up also has enough to feed the whole neighborhood for a week if necessary, which might make a really big difference for a lot of people. Having the goods gives you a lot of flexibility and might take some of the pressure off of emergency relief services. I try to keep far more of the basic things on hand (first aid, food, and water purification stuff) than I think I'll need just because I know most people don't, and I live in a place with a moderate risk of catastrophic earthquakes and tornadoes.

If food supplies haven't been restored for a year, it means there's probably been some extreme collapse of society and loss of life. Never seeing your friends/family/loved ones again, just surviving day by day for no purpose. I'd rather die quickly in the early stages than survive in such a bleak world.

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