“One of the best and most effective preps is to eliminate consumer debt.”
The entire grid is down, there’s no fuel, no water, no nothing. I don’t think your credit score is really going to make much difference. And who is coming to repossess your house? If they do, shoot them. (Just being a little contrarian.)
That is ghetto fantasy (EMP/nuclear war/alien invasion will send us back to the 1800s and I won’t have to pay anything off), in real life when the emergency is over you want to have weathered it well and do not want the chaos of credit shot, things being repossessed, losing your home, etc., and if your employer went out of business you want to be in a position to keep up with things until you get back on an even keel.
We just went through one of America’s biggest emergencies and being debt free was good advice for it.