SHTF scenarios are mostly just an excuse to retell American frontier narratives in a modern setting, the places I’ve lived have existed intact at much lower-resource, -infrastructure, -government hegemony and more violent conditions before

So my “survival” stuff tends more towards waiting out disrupted supply chains without feeling pressured into tradeoffs to replace them, and I find this - a high-visibility, electric, USB-refillable lighter/flashlight with a whistle and paratinder lanyard - a neat item. I’d want a portable firestarter anyway, this has increased utility while replacing a specific resource demand – lighter fuel – with the same common one – electricity – enough other gear relies on already and I can source on my own