There are always plenty of disaster based scenarios that get speculated on in the prepper community. I guess it's like any extreme event, it gets our attention even if the chances of any specific disaster occurring is low. Of course, if the preparation for an event has a low cost, either in money or time, then it probably is worthwhile to invest in that preparation.

Better yet, if we can change our lifestyle so that we are inherently more resilient to emergency type situations, that would be ideal. This article however will not be about any one specific scenario, it will be about what to do to prepare for the slow decline that is western civilization.

The first step is always to identify the problem, and a collapse of society is going to be a messy thing that will affect populations disproportionately. But in general I will try to outline the necessary preparations that will help my readers with the irreversible collapse.

If you need some convincing that this is what will most likely happen, I am happy to provide some back up research. Continue reading for a more indepth analysis of where our society is headed.

Since it's important to be prepared, I figured I'd look up some statistics to see what were the events that we had the most chances of encountering in our daily lives. That way, knowing that information, I would be able to prioritize what to prepare for.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good list of events with their associated odds. I found a few that had information about the chances of dying during certain emergencies, but it's not exactly what I was looking for. What I wanted were numbers for the chances of an event occurring, not whether people died or not.

So, one by one I had to research specific events to get the exact statistics for this list. Many of the numbers come from insurance companies and governmental agencies.

A lot of what people know about preppers and survivalists comes from the critical side of the media. Whether someone has heard a negative news item like the 'survivalist' who killed cops in Pennsylvania, or heard about the TV show Doomsday Preppers, which just by it's very name can sound fairly extreme, there is plenty of marginalization being directed towards the prepper community.

But you have seen the light and have finally come to the realization that maybe you should get ready for some future emergency yourself! You don't want to rely on the government for help in a large emergency, as we found out with Hurricane Katrina, they kind of screwed up on that one.

So you tell your loved one(s) that you want to start prepping and to store some food and water for starters, and you get a blank stare, or worse you get treated like a loonie at the insane asylum.

Well, here are a few ideas to deal with the naysayer in your house . . .