“I hope your food is growing well.” (Email from one of my doomer/prepper buddies in Texas, who grows a huge garden that would feed a platoon.)
My response to him: “Re growing food, I am terrible at gardening. I do it, just not well. In summer I mainly forage. If I can’t make myself useful enough to trade for food when push comes to shove, well hey, I’ve lived a good long life. And I know lots of ways to go that are readily at hand, and am prepared to go. But I don’t think it’ll come to that. Somehow at least one of my skills will be useful enough to trade. Not everyone can be good at everything.”
I wrote the above the day before yesterday.
Then yesterday, two different neighbor couples stopped by my driveway to say hi. They always enjoy my yard, and we always talk about plants and other good stuff.
Both couples are growing food at their places. Lots of people, actually, are growing food and doing other actions to reduce their reliance on distant, hyper-centralized, hyper-industrialized systems. We trade seeds and encouragement.
I’m not a full-on doomer or prepper. I’m more of a “doomer/prepper lite.” I think it’s wise to have a certain amount of food, water, and other basic necessities stored up for emergencies. But I’m not out to build a fortress. I firmly believe that what ultimately matters is the ability to connect with people and share resources. (Though I do have to remind myself of this at times when I panic because I don’t have that food-growing green thumb.)