Surviving economic meltdown

What kinds of catastrophes would you hope to survive? Is preparing for an economic meltdown even on your To Do list? Can you protect yourself from extreme events with judicious investment decisions? Is it even worth trying? If it’s a giant meteor heading towards Slough then you’d want to go in the first impact. Slough might gain something aesthetically, but it wouldn’t leave a future to relish. But what about a more modest society-rattling scenario? Some kind of economic collapse, say. How might such a scenario unfold and what will it do to your investments? My experience of economic meltdowns is modest. So rather than making up my own scenario, I’ll lean on someone else’s imagination. The Mandibles In her book, The Mandibles*, Lionel Shriver follows the plight of one family in their attempts to survive the mother of all economic meltdowns. It’s based in the US but it’s not too hard to imagine a UK parallel. In the novel, runaway US debt turns international investors sour on…