Lengthy feature article on preppers in the wilds of Idaho.

HAYDEN, Idaho – Don and Jonna Bradway recently cashed out of the stock market and invested in gold and silver. They have stockpiled food and ammunition in the event of a total economic collapse or some other calamity commonly known around here as “The End of the World As We Know It” or “SHTF” – the day something hits the fan.

“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not,” said Bradway, 68, a cheerful Army veteran with a bushy handlebar moustache who favours Hawaiian shirts. “But we’re prepared. Anybody who knows us knows that Don and Jonna are prepared if and when it hits the fan.”

The Bradways are among the vanguard moving to an area of the Pacific Northwest known as the American Redoubt, a term coined in 2011 by survivalist author and blogger James Wesley, Rawles (the comma is deliberate) to describe a settlement of the God-fearing in a lightly populated territory that includes Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon.

Although there are politics discussed in the article, please keep the politics out of this thread

Link to the rest of the article.

What is there to discuss? We all place ourselves somewhere on the preparedness spectrum, a personal lifestyle choice, and carry on. I worry more about (and prepare for) fires, power outages, burglaries and earthquakes, rather than society's total collapse. I lurk on some "SHTF" sites just for grins, amused at the simplistic scenarios that don't reflect historical reality (IMHO). I guess these folks don't remember the late 60s and early 70s.

Everyone needs a hobby to keep them off the streets and out of trouble...

But if society collapses, I don´t think gold and silver will be to any use. Only thing that will have a value is food, ammunition,hygiene stuff etc.

The reasons they give for expecting society to collapse are laughable. And if it did they'd be the first to die now everyone knows where theres people with supplies for it.
qjs

One only has to look at the example of Yugoslavia, which went from a beautiful, modern country hosting the winter Olympics in 1984, to a country, which in less than a decade, was divided and destroyed by civil war resulting from political, economic, and ethnic strife.

Yugoslavia fell apart because of ethnic tensions. The USA has a mainly white population, with plenty of every other race, but elected a black president and governors and congressmen from every other race.

The USA is the proof they are wrong to racists everywhere. It's the worlds melting pot and the most successful nation.
Not much sign of an imminent race war there.

qjs

But in such a instance, you are way beter of by getting out the country quickly than trying to stick it out. Sometimes having the money to move quickly and have little that tie you to a certain location is way better than having lots of stuff in once location.

Can these preppers survive historical situations? Real situations that have happened? Could they survive the breakdown of Yugoslavia if they were transported back in time? If you transport them to ISIS-held territory in Iraq or Syria, can they survive ISIS?

Many "total societal collapse" preppers seem to have something more akin to homesteading in mind. "How to survive long term in the wilderness without the benefit of civilization" sort of thing. Make sure to have a cache of small arms and ammo to fight off the obligatory band of three bad guys you see in the movies! Nobody is thinking about a well-equipped modern army that has no scruples about killing you. There is a reason that war zones often produce a lot of refugees.

That statement tells me they are not very smart preppers. Wasting all their money, tieing it up in bling-bling speculation when they could have used it to buy something that would actually be useful. Gold and silver might be worthwhile investments (might!) if you were in a functional society, that had currency, that was based on the gold and silver standards. Or if you expected such a society to re-emerge out of the ashes quickly after the SHTF.

But I thought they were prepping for when that society had collapsed and was no longer in place. They might as well have invested all their money in Barbie clothes and accessories.

IMO, gold and silver should never be regarded as investments, they pay no income or dividend and carry the small but real risk of loss by fire, theft or accident.
The value of gold or silver may go down as well as up if compared to paper money, land, or other investments.

Despite this I still favour a modest supply of precious metals, but this should be regarded as a disaster prep or as insurance against an uncertain future and NEVER as an investment.

In an absolutely total collapse I doubt that anyone would want your gold, it has almost no practical uses in a post apocalyptic world.

If however the collapse was not absolutely total, then gold would almost certainly retain some value, it has always retained some value in the past, why would next time be different?
A good example would be the various wars, conflicts and other troubles in parts of eastern Europe. Gold was sought after and those who had some bartered it for food, fuel, ammunition and other supplies.

The main merits of gold are portability, non perishability, and that governments cant print more of it.