"Prep" your community. You have zero chance of survival without having a group of people you trust. You can start now by starting up mutual aid networks in your city for: rental support, childcare, unions, free markets (i.e. neighborhood swap meet), community garden, etc. Learn to depend on each other and you can win a different future.
It's a good idea to have a store of water and shelf-stable food in the event of a temporary crisis, like a bad storm or earthquake that takes out power for multiple days.
Beyond that it's really about having a network of people.
i have a pistol and one bullet because the post-collapse lifestyle holds no allure for me
the "post collapse lifestyle" is a genre of speculative fiction largely penned by comfortable first worlders
social bonds, to be honest. Mad Max future doesn't have to happen if we can supplant the vacuum of the state with networks of people who know and trust each other. the goal is a world where you don't have to be wearing kevlar and a diy piss-recycling system to survive.
Knowledge is something that you can start prepping for that "should" be relatively inexpensive. Also gives you something to help get a prepper group started as you can just "hip pocket" with your peeps anywhere at the price of $0.00.
Most anglo militaries have their manuals in PDF forms and online. Survival, First Aid, Field Sanitation and Hygiene, google search for "US Military Smart Book" to get the basic training manual which has excerpts from a bunch of other manuals (a chunk of the info won't be relevant and you will definitely know which chunks to skip when you see them). You can go for the combat related things for funzies but outside of Combat Engineer diagrams for building small hardened fighting positions, they won't be much use if you aren't in a group.
Maps could be useful unless you have a great memory and communication skills. So learn about topographical maps in general and see if you can't score some for the area you are in. Topo maps will be very as they give an indication of elevation changes (useful if/when you're going off road to better plan routes.)
Books and knowledge about the wildlife and plants of the local area. These types of books are invaluable and if you're going to spend good money on books, these are the ones you don't want to skimp on. You're looking for full color high quality pictures for the entries. Books with drawings aren't the worst but they definitely aren't great.
Pay attention to the weather. Learn roughly when should get hot, cold, freezing, leathally hot, flooding rain events, etc.
Storey's Guides is a line of books that covers many topics related to various aspects of farming. They are constanly being updated and published, should be available relatively commonly, and don't cost that much. We've accumulated a bunch that are geared towards raising animals but they should have some crop centric ones too.
Pick a technical skill that sounds interesting and read up on it. Carpentry, general construction, electrician stuff, plumbing stuff.
Learn about knives and blades, which is for what purpose and how to sharpen them. For instance, bow saw blades are pretty cheap and typically thrown away after getting dull but can be re-sharpened with a slim taper file to give a blade years of regular use.
A good way to be prepared is to have an intimate knowledge of the political history and political power that dominates your state / province. Powers you'll inevitably have to bargain with, evade, or confront once your emergency supply bag is empty.
Prepping is good for removing (a lot of) your impact on crises, particularly panic buying. You don't need to go to the store for TP "just in case" when you already have 100 rolls and a bidet. You don't even need to buy produce between pantry meals, a decently-stocked freezer, and vitamins.
You will also be able to weather moderate crises fairly well, like power outages, weeks-long water boiling advisories, a breakdown in services and transportation.
It is also an interesting exercise that will make you thoughtful of supplies and your place within the wider productive context. If everyone lost their job tomorrow - or enough to fundamentally change the character of society - how would you get food, clean water, maintain shelter, and protect yourself from sociopaths, chuds, and the desperate? And more importantly, you need to think about what you'd realistically do either as a small unit or as a larger mutual aid network, the latter of which is vastly superior in every way, not least of which is helping prevent your compatriots from dying. Your network is your comrades and/or your neighbors. If you don't have a least one of those, go fix that. As a bonus, joining a socialist org will also make you cool and helpful in other ways.
You will also probably start eating more cheaply and healthfully. This follows from the necessity to rotate your prep by eating the oldest stuff regularly. More meals from scratch using high-quality dried ingredients rather than processed foods and you'll be buying in bulk. Keep in mind that a "prep" need not be more than a few buckets of beans and rice and some vitamins. A 25 lb bag of chickpeas is like $20 and you can make at least a month of dinners with it (plus rice and veggies) for two people. That's less than going out to eat once most places (for 2).
The core skills overlap pretty well with mutual aid generally, so you can wrap them into community resilience and planning. Cooking a big-ass cheap meal is an essential skill for feeding people. Knowing how to treat and store rice so it doesn't get weevils or eaten by rats would be useful in many crises - and not just in the context of your own prep, but in a community food store. Basking in the glories of cheap bulk coconut oil is fun for everyone.
And be wary of libertarian LARPing preppers that think they'll just escape to the mountains with a backpack, guns, and an off-site prep and everything will be fine. In the context where they would actually need to do that, there would be refugees everywhere and armed gangs almost immediately and they'd just steal all their shit. You need to plan to stay where supplies and organized people are and to help the effort if such a thing even happens in your lifetime.
a cheap thing to do is like a 22qt food grade storage container with top and maybe 25 lb bag of white rice. you can get both from a restaurant supply place. rice keeps for a crazy long time, is calorie dense, only needs water and heat, and goes with your scavenged proteins and vegetables to make them last. a little goes a long way so you can help a lot of people around you with it until the situation improves.
