There's "modern society collapse" and there's "a 5 day blackout in a city", most people are not even prepared for #2, it doesn't hurt to plan for that.

Why are you calling him a fatalist? He plans to survive. You are in reality the fatalist, for saying he'll die within a month.

If society collapses that badly, I'll probably move to my brother-in-law's farm. Farms are generally the best place to be when society collapses.

Most farms depends on big tractors - if society collapse they will have a lot of food rotting in the field unless humans get out there and deal with it by hand. You won't like your lifestyle, but if you can get to a remote farm (remote is key - you need to get away from labor competition) you can do okay.

Some will. Some of us already live relatively independent lives. Not a lot, to be sure. And it can hardly be done in a city.

Agree, some will. But none of HN crowd. We'll all die, me, you, him.

Well, not me. That's my point. I live in a well-stocked rural setting with independent food, water, energy.

walls? moat? traps? guns and a lot of ammo? because you answer "no" to any of that, your well-stocked rural setting going to be visited by the hoards fleeing from city and depleted in a week, leaving you to die of starvation in next 3. So that month I was talking about, still going to happen

Well, not to reveal too much, but we're not going to be giving anything away to the 'hoards'.