In survivalism, whenever the question of "should I do A or B" arises, the correct answer is almost always...both.
That is never more true than when the question is "should I store material resources/preps or should I gather skills".
Genuine 100% self sufficiency is extremely hard to attain and most people will never see someone actually living that way (let alone get anywhere near that themselves.
But even if you did get there, that self sufficiency will depend upon a fragile set of conditions staying the same as they were while you got that system setup. Most significant among those conditions would be weather and security.
If the weather changes profoundly (be it a drought, flood, cold or hot time or some catastrophe like a volcanic eruption that decrease solar radiation, then that system of self sufficiency will almost certainly fail.
If the rule of law is suddenly gone, and you are the only one around who is producing enough food, then operation of your 100% self sufficient system will become extremely risky and hard to sustain (without a decent sized team of hard people to watch your back 24/7). If you did have such a team, then you would need to able to feed them too - and most such food systems cannot just suddenly scale up production by several hundred percent.
The idea that skills are enough and preps are "temporary" is both seductive and comforting for those that:
- Actually think they are or can become 100% self sufficient
- Don't have money for preps or don't want to spend the money they have on preps
- Find the idea of self sufficiency romantic - and think "I wont need preps because I have skills"
- Think that people in the past were 100% self sufficient when they were in reality not
- Underestimate the severity of security threats because normalcy bias prevents them from comprehending how violent "normal people" do become when they get hungry and when the rule of law is gone
- Overestimate how remote the place they live is, and assess that "no one will come for me here" or "folks around here are good people and will look out for each other" - again those assessments are mostly borne of normalcy bias
- Underestimate the probability of crises for which the only survivable course or action is to leave and never come back - a 100% self sufficient food producing system counts for nothing if you have to leave it behind. If you don't think that such crises occur, six million jews, who didn't leave Europe when they could of, beg to differ.......history is full of crises that required people to leave or die
- Want a cop out that means they don't need to prep (which is hard and expensive)
Survivalists should stay anchored in the real world (and look at it without the filter of normalcy bias)......and the real world is that you need material gear/supplies
and skills.
In a very severe crisis, you wont make it without both.
You may not make it anyway, but as I always say to people who want to throw in the towel before they even try, "Please excuse me if I insist upon giving it a try".
