Wasteland of Resources

You probably won't find this site focusing on severe long term society ending type scenarios. They are possible, but rather unlikely. In learning about emergency preparation, there's a lot of content on the web that focuses wilderness survival. This is all good, there's lots of ways you could find yourself needing to survive by picking berries or snaring a rabbit and cooking over an open fire. The question I ponder is if by chance something catastrophic did happen, total societal breakdown, how many resources are out there in existence that couldn't be acquired when needed. For instance a vehicle. In the U.S. we've been building cars since about 1900. As of this writing, there are about 290 million cars in the US and 330 million people. If something occurs like Covid 19 with more lethality, is it unreasonable to expect a drop of 50% in population? probably not. That'd put us at 290 million cars for 165 million people. In that scenario, sure people might be hoarding them, but there will likely be opportunity to acquire one.  With half the folks around, there would likely be abandon buildings for shelter, abandon food, abandon resources. I think it's still smart to prepare for whatever scenarios you think are appropriate, but it's probably a good idea to think through what resources may be available as backup plans.