How about spending your energy working on fixing these issues instead of focusing on prepper stuff?
1. Status is relative, making $70k in rural Idaho enables a happier life than making $90k in San Jose.
2. In the post-apocalyptic world, many preppers will be relatively better off, having lots of practical skills like farming, mechanical know-how, survival skills, etc, vs professionals who thrive in a stable city but wouldn't last a month in the wilderness, can't hunt for food, start a fire, etc.
Therefore, the post-apocalyptic world becomes some sort of fantasy, where finally your skills are valued, and Joseph the lawyer will be begging you for help.
Nor the many other gigantic crises that face the earth such as plastic pollution.
As there is no way the people of earth will unify to fix this, better start getting ready sometime in the next 20 years for a gigantic shift in where people see civilization is headed.
There’s no escape for you or your family, except averting disaster in the first place, or death. Unless your prepping amounts to a suicide pact, then it’s just a fantasy to keep you from being too afraid. As comforting fantasies go, prepping seems like a particularly expensive and time-consuming one. Unless you’re desperate for the illusion of control, your time and money is better spent elsewhere.
I we're running from a lion I don't have to be faster than the lion, just faster than you.
I lock my doors for the same reason. My lock won't keep out someone determined to get in but they'll dissuade a casual opportunist.
90% of us would be better classed as the gazelle in this analogy. Even the lions would be fighting each other for dominance.
> If you want a preview, study famous famines and sieges, like the siege of Stalingrad, and the Holodomor
Most hardcore preppers either live outside a city or plan to escape the city pretty quickly, so I don't know what Stalingrad is supposed to prove. Were their people with remote bunkers and years of food supplies when holodomor happened?
Won't you worry they'll knock you off in the night so there's one fewer person to share with?
But you are right that if you prepare too well. So well that it's visible, it is likely that it will be taken from you. Or you can end up as that guy who prepared for zombie apocalypse and lost it all (100k USD invested) in hurricane.
It will never (with exception of all out nuclear war) be total world annihilation. Yet most people seems totally unprepared for stuff that just keeps happening. And it will likely be getting more frequent with climate change.
Disaster preparation is very much about community. A mistake or lack of luck can easily wipe out your "preparation." A disjointed community can eradicate it (and yeah, they'll spot your creepy 'grey man' shtick eventually). But a community could, and arguably should, prepare itself for possible disasters.
But what do I know, I just live in a place where if a levee breaks somewhere half the country will be taking boats to work.