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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

Buy house with few dozens of acres of land. Buy tools to cultivate the land. Buy few sacks of potatoes, learn how to grow them. Buy few sacks of salt, ensure it's stored safely. Learn how to weld with gas, buy enough gas to be stocked. Buy medicines. Buy guns. Buy bullets and vodkas. There are many thing to do to survive in harsh times. But first thing you need to ensure: your own home where you can live; defenses against strangers; preferably good community, you can't survive alone; ability to grow enough food; something that could be used as a currency: salt, bullets, vodka.

Also be ready to evacuate from the city when time will come. Move early, roads will be stuck very quickly. Keep your car tanks full, keep few cans of gasoline as well.

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OP was asking about hard economic times, not doomsday.

Has there ever been a time in the last 100 years when this kind of model has been useful. I understand the attraction, but I can't imagine how we could end up in the kind of situation where what you describe would be useful, without say total nucular war, at which point what you describe isn't enough.

I mean, it might be useful in Ukraine right now.

I don't think it's useful if in the threat model there is also the risk to get a misplaced missile on your house. Yeah you can defend against some poor guy/group of guys looking for food/things, but that's about it.

To be fair though, a missile on your house isn't exactly the only threat in the model right now in Ukraine.

Indeed it isn't, but it's plausible enough to make that other plan useless anyway.

It does not protect you from being bombed to oblivion, or summarily shot by anybody with an ak-47 jealous of whatever you have, or raided by a military looking for food or entertainment, or expropriated in the unstable years ahead.

It might help if things don’t go too pear shaped, but this kind of event (a foreign invasion by a military with no regards for civilians) is basically game over regardless of your situation. The best outcome is you survive and rebuild.

If anything, Ukraine shows that civilization doesn't necessarily immediately collapse.

Despite the madness the only thing I learn about looting from Ukraine is:

- civilian would-be looters still getting punished

- Russian soldiers are looting

i.e. when your rations expired you get desperate and since the Russian army is armed and know they are an utter disgrace anyway this happens.

> If anything, Ukraine shows that civilization doesn't necessarily immediately collapse.

It’s been 20 days. I’d refrain from being overly optimistic just now. More likely than a full civilisation collapse is a return to feudal tribalism as in Afghanistan and Lybia, which is not very good either.

Yes of course there has. Take the UK during WW2 for example, there was this campaign:

https://dig-for-victory.org.uk/

This is very costly advice financially, because getting good at these things takes significant time and mental energy. The opportunity cost that could be redirected into getting a high paying career so you have discretionary funds and learning safe investing should be weighed up against this.

However costly things can be worth it, it depends on your situation and preferences. But don't underestimate the time involved in learning broad ranged skills to look after a house, land, food production, repairs, survival skills, prepping etc which op is talking about.

When nobody has money, the first thing governments will go after is land/houses, you can't move/hide them ;)

It is a mistake, gold is the only safe bet

Mate they'll go after your gold before they go after your land.

They can't go after something they don't even know you have.

They can make it illegal to privately hold gold. Wouldn’t be the first time in history. Good luck trading your gold for goods and services under these conditions.

I don’t think outlawing gold would stop the trading. Drugs are also illegal. Also in a crisis such as the one being discussed the laws and the concept of legality doesn’t mean much.

Btw it is estimated that the last time gold was declared illegal, only about 5% of gold owners gave it up.

But I can't eat gold. I'd rather have a homestead away from population centers than an equivalent in gold, because how likely - government takeover of your home - is that scenario? Where / when has that happened in the communities that HN people are active?

I mean it's happened to Russian oligarchs, but those were investments that they didn't even live in. It's happened to Palestinians, who live under an apartheid regime. But other than that, I can't recall anything like that happening. WW2 Europe maybe, for specific demographics.

What are you going to do with the gold? That's called bagholding, not a productive asset.

Actually, have you tried figuring out WHFIT taxes on $GLD? I ended up invested in it once and had no clue how you do it.

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