I stay a bit away from prepper threads because they never address the proper scenario.
Forever. It’s not a storm or an earthquake. Whatever happens, envision forever.
That will change everything. Money means nothing. No contact with the Federal Reserve. Gold certainly means nothing because you can’t eat it.
Forever. What ever happened is never going back to how it was. Think in terms of 90% or more loss of human lives. Then you understand forever, not to mention the fly population on urban corpses.
On the other hand the probability of a storm blowing up and you being without power for a week or so has happened before repeatedly and will likely happen again.
That is simply not true and proof you don't really read these threads.
Most here are preppers, not survivalists and prep for what we're facing.
Here in NH we don't have the risk of earthquakes or floods, or even tornado outbreaks, although a small one is not completely out of the question. The terrain here is not right for tornado development.
Our big issues are snow and possible ice storms and most people here are ready for them with power outages for possibly several days.
For anything serious, we do need to be prepped for forever, but that does not mean physical supplies. It means making yourself right with God.