"One note I'll add... it takes years to develop a sustainable mini-farm. It's also incredibly hard work."

Pay attention to that!

Even if you have most of the tools, you aren't going to provide enough food for a family from any size of garden if you start from scratch when the disaster strikes. You would have to have the production already going and growing, and then just keep it going. The smaller the area you have to garden, the more intensively you have grow, and you have to pay attention to every detail. To extend the seasons, you'll need a greenhouse or walk-in hoop-house.

Most people haven't even gotten a basic $15 soil test to find out what the nutrient level in their soil is like. They don't have enough hand tools for the job. They don't have enough seeds. And they don't have enough knowledge. The learning curve in food production is pretty steep.

I'm learning, but the more I learn about the needs of soil, the more I realize how much I don't know, and there are lots and lots of details to remember.

And even if you know, the changing weather is creating havoc with the crops. Here in the PNW, it rained all winter and spring and into summer. Summer temps didn't start until about Sept. 1, and lasted a full two weeks. Whoopee. If I had to live on what my garden produced, I would starve to death.

The soil of the PNW and NE is nutrient-poor because all the precipitation washes the mobile nutrients out. Much of the South doesn't freeze, so they have ongoing bug and fungus/mold issues.

There's a new Dustbowl going on in the same area as the old Dustbowl of the 1930s, caused by the same things the prior one was: severe drought, 70 or 80 years of poor farming methods, and no use of cover crops. Many American farmers are slow learners, esp the corporate ones. Do you live near the 100th meridian? Well, good luck!

Foraging in a large-scale disaster is nothing but a joke, and some people need to get their heads wrapped around that.

So, if/when our steadily-faltering economy crashes, EXACTLY what is your plan?

Sue