If society breaks down, you want to avoid big cities, which means avoiding interstates. If you have to travel, take state routes and minor highways through or around small towns. Set up camp down south so the winters are warm; the Mississippi River basin seems ideal because it has very fertile soil for crops, but it also has racist gun nuts who aren’t smart enough to grow crops and will kill you for yours. Plus, if society goes in a nuclear strike, New Orleans is an major port target, so everything within a hundred miles will be covered in nuclear fallout and black rain. Find a river in the middle of the country, not too far north, maybe the Missouri or Ohio, and try to rough it there instead. Problem is, a lot of big cities lie on these rivers, so if any of them are targeted, then everything downriver is contaminated. St Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, you have to hedge your bets and find a spot as far from them as possible while keeping close enough to the river for it to be useful. Maybe find a tributary off the beaten path.
First stop, every pharmacy in town; 5-finger discounts, EVERYTHING MUST GO. Pain medication will be worth its weight in gold after the end; opiates and opioids and oppa-gangnam-styles and whatever the hell else people are addicted to now will be indispensable. People will kill you for them, so guard them with your life, don’t advertise what you’ve got or where you got it. Only use it when someone else has something you want; welcome back to a barter economy. Gold is just shiny metal, gems are just fancy rocks, they’re heavy and useless, their value will fluctuate as people get used to their new lives. They will be worth a lot at the start because everyone believes gold is valuable, but as they realize they can’t actually do anything with it, the price will plummet. Then, years later, after society has started coming back, its price will go up again as people try to establish a currency so they don’t have to barter anymore.
If you want to set up shop south of south of the border, try growing coffee and cocoa beans, maybe weed to a lesser extent; you will be hailed as a GOD in the new world. Everybody needs their fix, so if you can set up a trade network across the Caribbean, your farm will become a boomtown for international commerce. If you’re in the midwest, and think you can handle northern winters, grow as many grains as you can. Corn and wheat as far as the eye can see (post-apocalyptic Iowa will look a lot like modern day Iowa). Penicillin will be very useful, but don’t just let bread go moldy, you’ll end up killing yourself that way. Do your research NOW, before the collapse. Poppies can be grown for opium and morphine, cause you’re gonna run out of supplies you looted from CVS at the start of the end.
Don’t just stock up on goods, stock up on the means to make new goods. Don’t get vegetables, get vegetable seeds. Your new life is agrarian, so get out the Farmer’s Almanac and prepare for the autumnal harvest. If you can make bread, you can make beer, which means you can make lots of friends who may or may not kill you for your bread and beer. Be careful who you let into your inner circle, try to keep your community small at first until you have a dedicated security network. I don’t trust people anymore, not since 2016, so when it all ends, it’ll be every man for himself for a while. No rules, no repercussions, just might-makes-right, so try to avoid the “mighty” until things settle down.
Time to go back to the stone age, because you gotta learn to make fire without flint; it’s not hard, you just need sticks and rope to make a bow drill (your shoelaces will work perfectly). With fire, everything becomes so much easier; boil your water, cook your food, sterilize your needles if ever you need to.
Astronomy will help you navigate and tell the time. Create an analemma; check the position of the sun at the same time every day, and you’ll be able to tell what time of year it is. You can tell your latitude based on the angle of Polaris against the horizon; longitude will be more difficult, because you need to know what time it is in a certain location. It’s “noon” when the sun is highest in the sky; not necessarily overhead, it drifts north and south with the seasons because of the Earth’s axial tilt. When it’s solar noon, check the last of your digital clocks to see what time it actually is; depending on how far off you are, you can determine your longitude based on how far you are from the center of your timezone. If possible, get a solar charger for your phone; the internet will be dead, but the compass, level, clock, calendar, pedometer, and flashlight will be extra useful in the After Times.
