The global economy isn’t “slowing down.” It’s circling the drain. Governments know exactly what’s coming—but instead of fixing the problem, they’re doubling down on debt, printing fake wealth, and pretending everything’s fine. They’re just trying to stay in office long enough to make it someone else’s disaster. When the crash finally hits, and it will, it won’t be them living with empty shelves and worthless dollars. It’ll be you.
Our global system made us comfortable, lazy, and dependent. Cheap gadgets, imported food, everything “just in time.” But that convenience came with chains. The more we relied on the world, the less we could rely on ourselves. And when trade stops, those chains tighten. The lights go out, the trucks stop moving, and suddenly “Made in China” means “Gone for good.”
This isn’t the first collapse in history. The Romans had one too back in 33 AD. But here’s the difference: when Rome’s finances fell apart, ordinary people didn’t. They still grew food, forged tools, traded locally. They didn’t need the empire to survive. Today? Most people can’t even cook from scratch, let alone live without imports. When the modern empire of debt collapses, there won’t be a blacksmith down the road to save you. There’ll just be chaos and those who saw it coming.
Related: When This Happens, The Economic Collapse Will Begin
Look in your fridge. How much of that food was grown within 50 miles of you? Be honest. The lettuce is from California, the beef from Texas, the fruit from Chile, maybe a few things from Mexico or Canada—and that fancy imported cheese? Europe. Even the fridge itself was probably built overseas, shipped here, and sold to you on borrowed money. We don’t just live in a global economy, we depend on it like an IV drip. Pull the plug, and everything stops.
Here’s the ugly truth: every one of those global “connections” is fragile. The moment the dollar cracks under its own debt and loses value, those imports vanish. No parts, no fuel, no food from halfway around the world. You won’t be choosing between brands, you’ll be choosing between starving or surviving. The U.S. would look a lot like the 1800s again, except our ancestors had the skills to live that way. We don’t. Most people today can’t fix, grow, or build anything. That’s the difference between a survivor and a statistic.
So what do you learn before the crash comes? Everyone says “grow food” and “find water”. And yes, that’s essential, but here’s the catch: when everyone knows the same skills, they lose barter value. You need the kind of knowledge that’s vital but rare. The kind that keeps others alive when systems fail. It’s not about being a jack-of-all-trades. It’s about mastering something that everyone will need when the power goes out and the shelves stay empty. That’s real security.
Food Preservation
Growing food isn’t exactly easy, but a fair number of people can do it. On the other hand, preserving food without a freezer is a lot trickier, and the consequences if you get it wrong can be deadly serious. If you know how to can, dehydrate, smoke or salt common produce and meat, you can help your neighbors preserve food for the winter – in exchange for a share of the crop, of course.
What happens when the taps run dry?
Canning won’t matter if you can’t find clean water to begin with — and food preservation means nothing if your soil turns to dust.
Two guides every prepper should own:
- Joseph Well: Learn how to dig, build, and maintain your own reliable water source — even when the grid’s down.
- Mega Drought USA: Understand what’s coming, how drought reshapes survival, and how to adapt your land to keep producing when everyone else’s fails.
You can’t store what you can’t produce — and in a collapse, control over food and water is control over life.
Trapping
Hunting takes time, and every minute you’re out in the woods searching for prey is a minute you can’t spend doing something else. Knowing how and where to set traps lets you harvest fresh meat round the clock; just walk your trap line morning and evening to collect anything you’ve caught. Surplus meat is great for barter.
Traps get you meat — but knowledge of plants keeps you alive when you can’t hunt.
The Book of Remedies 2 is your field guide to the healing power of the plants growing right under your feet.
Discover how to:
- Treat pain, fever, and infection with wild herbs
- Make natural salves, poultices, and tonics that actually work
- Identify safe vs. toxic lookalikes in the field
- Build a barterable skill — natural medicine is always in demand
When the pharmacy is gone, the forest becomes your clinic.
Learn from The Book of Remedies 2
Animal husbandry
Another good way to get meat without hunting is to raise your own livestock. It takes some work, but it isn’t an all-day task and you can also benefit from milk and eggs. These are a great supplement to your own diet, and with supply chains breaking down you’ll have an easy market for the surplus.
When people get hungry, they stop being polite. Your livestock, tools, and supplies will be targets — unless you know how to defend them.
The Home Defense Academy teaches real, practical defense tactics built for civilians, not soldiers.
Learn how to:
- Secure your perimeter without turning your house into a fortress
- Set layered deterrents that stop intruders before they reach you
- Handle firearms and non-lethal defense safely and effectively
- Train your family to respond fast, smart, and without panic
Protect your home before it becomes someone else’s prize:
Check out Home Defense Academy now!
Blacksmithing
A lot of the things blacksmiths traditionally made won’t be needed for a while after an economic collapse. It’ll take years for the demand for horseshoes to pick up, and there are enough knives, nails and gardening tools already in US stores to last a few lifetimes. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a demand for custom metal objects, though. People will adapt their homes to suit the new reality, and sooner or later they’ll discover that properly made metalwork is worth its weight in steel. If you can run a forge and anvil, you’ll find plenty customers.
First Aid
When the economy goes down, what happens to healthcare? The US healthcare system is intimately linked to the economy through insurers, pharma supply chains and many other connections. Parts of it will probably keep limping on through a collapse, but a lot of it will just disintegrate. Even basic first aid skills will become valuable in that scenario. Add some knowledge of herbal medicine and you could become a real local asset.
When people get hungry, they stop being polite. Your livestock, tools, and supplies will be targets — unless you know how to defend them.
If hospitals go dark and pharmacies run dry, what will you do?
That’s where The Home Doctor comes in — a practical, no-nonsense medical guide for when help isn’t coming. Written by real doctors who’ve lived through collapse and scarcity, it shows you how to treat wounds, infections, fevers, and emergencies with what you already have.
When modern medicine fails, knowledge is your best weapon.
Learn more here: The Home Doctor – Practical Medicine for Every Household
Organization
How much of our society will survive an economic collapse? It’s hard to say. As the government runs out of money to pay its employees expect a lot of them to just drift away, joining the emerging barter economy and working to support their families. That’s going to leave communities to look after themselves in many ways. The problem with that is people will often just do their own thing and either duplicate what others are doing or leave vital stuff undone. A natural leader with organizing ability can have a huge impact on how well things go.
Mediation
Even when people are trying to pull together after a disaster, disputes can break out – and, if society is already getting shaky, that can be very disruptive. If you’re the one that can calm people down and get them to discuss their issue, then compromise and find a peaceful solution, you’ll be creating an environment where it’s easier for everyone to pull through.
Resilience
Our ancestors had many skills that have almost vanished from modern society. Making their own clothes, grinding their own flour, splitting their own firewood… a hundred and one things, easy to them but forgotten now, helped them survive whatever life threw at them. But all these skills, important as they were, were dwarfed by something else: Our ancestors were tough. They didn’t need therapy if they had a bad day. They didn’t need emotional support animals to do anything difficult. If life knocked them down, they just got up and carried on. If you have the ability to take a hit and keep going, an economic collapse won’t stop you.
It’s impossible to learn all the skills we might need in a single lifetime, but anyone who wants to be prepared should know the basics – then add a couple of other useful, and tradeable, talents. Our economy is vulnerable right now, and who can say if it will manage to return to calmer waters without something going badly wrong? If the US doesn’t get lucky, our post-collapse lifestyle will be a lot more comfortable if we’ve relearned some of the things our grandparents knew.
When the dollar falls, your savings won’t save you — your skills will.
The next collapse won’t look like 1929. It’ll be digital, silent, and fast. And by the time the banks freeze, it’ll be too late to “prepare.”
Dollar Apocalypse is the playbook for what happens after the economy flatlines — and how to stay fed, safe, and independent when paper money turns worthless.
Inside, you’ll learn how to:
- Secure food, fuel, and medicine when supply chains die overnight
- Build barter systems that keep you wealthy when cash means nothing
- Protect your home from looters and desperate neighbors — legally and effectively
- Convert your current assets into survival value before inflation eats them alive
- Rebuild your community when the system gives up on you
If you’re waiting for “official” help, you’ll be waiting forever.
Get the blueprint that turns collapse into opportunity:
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After a lifetime of living a prepper lifestyle, I might point out to the “doubting Thomas’s” that the above list just scratches the surface. Skills; being able to sharpen a hand saw with a guide [no they don’t make them anymore as far as I know], and a small triangular file, sharpening a chainsaw with a round hand file [yes, most if not all will still run post EMP], sharpening an axe or mattock with a file and a stone. The list is almost endless…but very few have retained these skills. Many have never considered these small things, yet in a a full grid down they matter a great deal. Small engine repair; for they can be used to run air compressors, garden tillers, or small generators…at least as long as fuel holds out. Even then, small diesel engines can be had [think filtered waste cooking oil]. These things might mean the difference between life and death. Just a thought!
Yes this is just a small part of it. So many great skills can be useful for us all.
Richard – In addition to those timeless everyday skills and the knowledge behind them such as why you are filing that axe-head cutting edge at a specific angle that the clip on guide is a short cut for, is the ability to apply critical thinking and develop solutions as needed. An example you mentioned is a tiller. You run it until gasoline is no longer available so then what? The need to till is still there so do you revert to manual tilling, maybe for a while. The critical thinking part is what other fuels are available? Can I convert this engine to propane? Maybe my solar system and batteries are doing well so can I convert this tiller to electric operation using an old car starter? Really radical thoughts, can I convert the tiller motor to a compressed air or steam engine? Part of critical thinking in seeking an alternative power solution is the work versus time balance. It is a factor in ramps versus lifting, lifting is shorter distance and faster but takes more work while a ramp is longer distance and more time but less work for the same result. Its not just the old skills but it is also the old way to develop solutions.
One technology I have not observed a lot of discussion on for prepping is “compressed air”. Compressed air is a great energy storage concept. It can be derived from unlimited methods with the variable being the amount of “time” to generate; worst case hand-pump and sweat. Uses of compressed air are immense including motivating small projectiles at high speeds. not just small objects, If compressed air can push a pumpkin a mile, it will certainly push a bowling ball or rounded rock a reasonable distance. I wonder if a windmill with a down rod to a mechanical air pump that is piped to a storage tank could create significant stored compressed air over time? Back to your diesel comment, batteries will eventually degrade. but a mechanical diesel engine with an air starter can always be operated, again even if you do have to hand pump the air tank for four hours for the first time start.
Gardening: Do you have long lasting quality shovels, rakes, and hoes? Hoes, do you have round eye forged hoes to break ground with? These will weigh around 1.5-2 pounds, the stamped and spot welded hoes wont last for the amount of garden work we’ll be doing, especially when the fuel runs out. Seeds, I typically save enough for two plantings, you’ll never know when a crop fails until it does. Same thing, quality seeds from a reputable source. Axes and saws, not the fold up backpacker type, but proper felling axes and crosscut saws. Food preservation, the easiest way to store a lot of salt is with salt blocks for livestock. Do you have enough plywood and lumber to build a privy, smoke house and cover windows?
What’s the gadget that’s solar powered, has lots of plug ends to charge various devices and fits in your hand? Saw it on a feed but can’t remember the name of it. I’d like to purchase one if I can find out the name.
You refer to two different things.
Solar controller is how you convert the power made by solar panels into something that an inverter can use. There are 2 kinds – PWM (least efficient but OK for occasional use) and MPPT which is best due to high efficiency and good for long term use.
Inverter converts DC power (typically 12v dc to 120vAC) to AC power.
Figure what power you think you will need then add 50% or more to the size as a cushion. You don’t want to run them at 100% all the time.
You need lots of panels to power just a few simple things like furnace (gas or propane), microwave, refrigerator, similar. Electric furnaces may require a whole ROOF covered in them.
And lots of batteries to store that power for when there is little sun or at night time so you can run things in the dark.
Power stations are useless without a means to recharge them.
And most are feeble for what you pay.
Usually low storage capacity.
About inverters – modified sine wave are good for resistive loads like incandescent light bulbs and such.
Pure sine wave runs ANYTHING so long as the input voltage is right and the items don’t draw more power then the inverter can provide.
And both need BATTERIES (LiFePo4 to be precise) to store excess energy.
LiFePo4 because they provide a lot more power longer.
Car batteries not so much.
You want to generate what you typically use and double that to allow for night time use, cloudy days, winter time where there is less sun, etc.
Monocrystaline N-Type Bifacial panels are about the best you can get now.
Costs about $1/watt in power generation capacity for each panel.
$200 watt panel should cost about $200.
Victron makes THE best MPPT controller out there but it ain’t exactly cheap. You get what you pay for.
Remember what women always say – BIGGER IS BETTER. And that applies to solar as well.
Just be careful what brands of things you buy and compatibilities.
What you are describing sounds like a solar charger. An example is this one: https://amzn.to/4niYzKL
Blacksmith, sounds ancient, sounds Prep, sounds ANCIENT !
works FOR A lot, SOUNDS ancient. BUT, Welding sounds newer. blacksmithing WILL become important eventually ( according to staff, and I agree). BUT welding is important on day 14, soon as people realize fixing things is the new sport, replacing things is gone. You will repair by welding ( mig) because of the low skill it takes to yield good work. Most farms will have a PTO driven Generator and a Mig welder ( lots of wire will be good )
Sharpening, better learn today ! old BSA field guide will teach you that as well.
Gardening, always good to know a farmer, 20 minutes of diesel can till a LOT of Garden for many families. Think of what you might trade him.
Medical, etc, all depends on the size of the collapse, best to be over prepped, than under
All you mentioned is very useful and it is a shame to see them being dismissed so often. Blacksmithing is seen as a thing of the past but it can quickly become a thing of the present if something goes bad.
Prepper Staff – Search for local community “blacksmithing clubs” and even community college continuing education offerings. Missouri has several active clubs that I am aware of. The advantage is you learn but do not have to immediately invest in significant equipment and forges. For everyone else – hold the line between storing and hording. Example I do a lot of lawn mowing for aesthetics (keep the farm pretty and the wife happy). That means three mower blades two or three times a season. Mower blades are very high quality steel for current and future projects so they get neatly bundled and properly stored while the low quality steel (junk) goes to the scrapyard. Keeping and using poor quality materials only results in poor quality projects; your ideas, skill, and time is far to valuable to waste on poor quality materials.