Definitely building a trusted support group. If you can do that, the learning curve can be drastically reduced and so many other daunting tasks made more palatable (pun intended). Have a canning day with your group where you can learn and have something to store away. As opposed to learning and acquiring that equipment on your own. That could shave weeks/months off.
I think the gray man part is important as well. There are way to many factors to that though for a one size fits all answer. You don’t want the red, neon doomsday prepper sign in the front yard and you don’t want to be paranoid, freak loner and there’s a big space in between. One has to balance that out the best they can.
Like Decomposed hit on and Selco and Daisy often expound upon, expecting to go solo or anything resembling that, is probably the least survivable SHTF scenario. Having a trusted support group is a no brainer.
