Thank you for the link, “One second after” was the impetus for getting me into preparedness. The audio is great.
As to thoughts on the topic, there are all sorts of places that will provide great info, so I will simply mention what I personally think are the most crucial.
1) Water: have a means for access to clean water. A big Berkey system, or a handpump on your well (see Bison and Simple Pump for long term options, Flojak is a shorter term option).
2) Heat: have firewood already set aside. More than you need. Don’t be trying to suddenly take up felling, splitting, stacking etc AFTER the SHTF. Have a stockpile set, even if you just use it for winter campfires. Should SHTF, you may need heat within 1 day of it occurring, so have some set aside, plus the tools and skills to set up more. Aside from the chainsaw and maul, I have axes and crosscut saws just in case.
3) Food: if the SHTF in the fall or early winter, you’ll have no time to expand your garden and work on such things. Have a couple of buckets of rice, beans, whatever, set aside. Maybe a jar of multivitamins (take at least one every 3 or 5 days to avoid major deficiency). Remember, our ancestors called late winter through spring “the lean months” because nothing was bearing fruit yet.
4) Have some seeds stockpiled for that garden, buy more than you need and then rotate them out every 2-3 years.
5) Have some firepower to get meat. I’ve been a hunter for years. Up here in northern New England deer hunting isn’t easy. Additionally, everyone else will also be looking for deer (or to jump your claim after you manage to bag one). I plan on a menu higher in small game (squirrel!) than venison and bear.
6) Have some firepower to protect items 1-5. Because if a person’s family is starving, and the parents were incapable/unskilled to provide for them, they might well term to looting — and I can’t really blame them. I can say “Don’t try it with me or mine, or in my community”, but I can’t really fault someone for acting desperate when their children are dying of starvation and exposure.
Hmm, that was longer than I intended. Sorry about that.