Prepper culture definitely still includes the amassing of food and water storage, as well as paraphernalia like CB radios. It’s just that there are perhaps some loud believers in the need for ammo thrown in there, and why not?
Boy would I love to get ahold of some handheld radios designed for 'prepper' use.
1. use cognitive radio techniques to find and frequency-hop to whitespace radio frequencies that are conducive to best propagation over the 0-10 mile range on unlicensed radio bands
2. use ad hoc mesh networking to support sending datagrams like text messages (preferably E2EE via say Signal Protocol) or GPS coordinates up to, say, 7 hops away
3. support a 'emergency mode' where the radio power limits are relaxed and the frequencies for use by point A are relaxed to cover any radio band not actively reserved by law enforcement / military / first responders. In theory the cognitive radio techniques of frequency hopping and waiting to transmit until confirming radio dead air would prevent radio interference with whatever commercial TF / broadcast radio / CB radio / MURS/FRS/Business band radio signal, but to keep the FCC and HAMs hearts from stopping, things like the military bands could be blocked off just to provide that last 0.00001% guarantee of safety against interference.
All of the 3 _seem_ possible to productize using SBCs and SDRs, but I don't know where to start, I think I gotta finish my 8-bit breadboard computer YT series by Ben Eater before I even tried to tinker with this.
Long term bow, atal, and sling are much better for hunting.
As for atal or sling, unless you've been practicing with these since you were a child, I think you'll sooner starve to death than score yourself a single meal. The cultures which used those tools had people practicing with them for years before they were useful with them. A sling is easy to make, I encourage you to try it out. I used a pair of shoelaces I bought at the grocery store for $2. It is not easy to even get the projectile flying in the general direction you intended, so if you try this make sure you're far from any buildings or bystanders...
(But really, I recommend buying some canned food. It is unlikely any infrastructure collapse would last more than a few weeks. Any scenario where you have to hunt for food at all, let alone for years, seems exceedingly unlikely.)
To justify my stance, in a long term survival situation slings are for low risk low reward hunting. With even moderate practice they become very high calories per resources and time invested while your doing something else. Aka, if you’re collecting firewood and see a squirrel, vs specifically looking for squirrels. That’s still true if you’re missing 95% of the time.
Plenty of active bow hunters are around to tell you how long that takes to learn. Unfortunately, manufacturing arrows and replacement bows takes significant effort. Atal are generally worse than bows, but vastly easier to manufacture and maintain.
As to ammo it’s very much possible to find good ammo that’s 50 years old. Depending on specific ammo to still be good in 50 years is a very different thing when you can’t depend on climate control. That’s not a concern at 70+ but a 25 year old presumably has a longer time horizon.
Enemy humans are a very different problem. Humans are smart, and sometimes they hunt you.
Controlling humidity after a long term collapse is much more difficult. Less so in arid areas, but their hardly ideal without modern infrastructure.
As for humidity, I think you would be surprised. Much of Appalachia and the East Coast have high humidity levels (typically 70-90% during summer IIRC) and I've never found ammo damaged by humidity there. I've shot 25 year old ammo that was put in an ammo can and dumped in a hiding spot near a pond (so, very high humidity) and had no issues shooting with it. Even if the ammo is stored in the manufacturer's cardboard box, I wouldn't worry about humidity damage unless average levels are over 85 or 90%. Water damage is a different matter, but I don't have any experience with that.
Edit: It's mostly true that ammo in a fire will just pop and maybe just throw a little brass a short distance.
BUT from that fire I'm witness to the fact that ammo can also "fire" with enough force to go through steel 50 cal ammo boxes and continue through such things as walls and cans. There were bullet holes through the shop's paneled and insulated tin walls. https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/ammo-in-a-fire...
I will admit I may be overstating the humidity issues, my personal experience was 15 year old ammo in Florida shed which had issues but clearly YMMV.
Some parts of Florida are more humid than Appalachia, so maybe the difference between 75% and 95% humidity has a greater effect than 55% to 75%.
As to humidity, I don’t know it might be just extreme humidity or it could be humidity + temperature, or perhaps we had a bad case of ammo to start with.