Reddit reviews A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North American (Peterson Field Guide)

IF you already have a bug-in kit covering serious first aid, not just bandaids and Tums, water filtration, fire and cooking without power, etc......

The first two titles assume that you have at least some yard with reasonable sun access, or the potential for access to a community garden. (Could presently be a community park, a church lot, neighbor's land, whatever.) Books are presently roughly in the order that I'd replace them if my copies were lost. Buy used when you can. Some of these are available used for not much more than standard shipping.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times

Where There Is No Doctor

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

If you have no comprehensive cookbooks that cover a wide range of garden veggies and game recipes, something like Joy of Cooking is probably in order. The point being that one way or another you may have to get used to enjoying whatever can be had, from an abundance of zuchinnis to rabbit, to acorn meal.

If you are not (yet) handy, find an old copy of something like Reader's Digest How to Fix Everything in a used bookshop for maybe $4.

A regionally appropriate guide to edible and medicinal plants such as A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation

optional, but cheap, Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Your Family Safe in a Crisis

CPR/Adult 1st Aid - many communities of more than 20,000 offers this ~4hr class for free once or twice a year. If an employer offers it for free TAKE IT!!!

The HAM radio thing is a good idea. Even if you don't get a specific license, learning basic electronics & communications technology is really handy. More so if there's a zombie apocolypse or some sort of mass disaster.

medicinal and/or edible plant ID - what's really cool is you can totally do this on your own time and own pace. Even cooler, occasionally you'll find some little nook or trail or corner of wherever you live you didn't know about AND some of the plants are kinda tasty when found in season. There's tons of books out there.

• Find 2 books (or 3 or 4) w/good color photos and cross-reference as you find stuff. Try the Peterson field guides for different regions (& other topics). I wandered down trails w/one book and a notebook and tried to keep a record of what i found. Then, at home, look up images for whatever i thought i'd found. Not to be all OCD but just as a memory aid. I was kinda' blown away at how far i didn't have to go.
  

I have a couple of the peterson field guides which are awesome. This one and this one are great. I also have one of the samuel thayer books. He's freakin hilarious! Ancestral plants is also pretty interesting but it goes into more detail about less plants compared to the other books. These books are specific to my region(mid-atlantic/new england) but I know there are peterson guides for and other areas.

A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guides)