Canned water, canned foods, and an adult tricycle.

And no, my answer is not sarcastic.

This may sound like sarcasm, but it's just Python humor...
Prepping for this or most other apocalyptic scenarios reminds me of "No ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
The preparations that matter to me are-
*sacramental, primarily confession and Holy Communion;
*Being available to my family, my students+families, friends and parishioners whom I could help in any way necessary;
*Sharing an unwavering faith in the Risen Christ with my daughters and our grandchildren, no matter what;
*Keep breathing, keep singing, then keep breathing;
*Rebuke evil at every opportunity, especially if its staring at me from the mirror;
*Live "amen."

Whether it's about prepping, hoarding other golden calves and coins with the latest Caesar face and inscription, conspiracies, pandemics, genocides and atrocities that are very real and imminent, or just crossing the street....the question will always remain "What do you expect to encounter when you emerge on the other side? In this world or the next."

Re liturgy (avoiding personal preps for a moment; I have lots to say but this isn't the forum to say it):

Fort Worth recently instituted an Ebola protocol. The Net predictably went nuts: "Schilken is just trying to ban Communion on the tongue under the ruse of Ebola safety" Well, these rules ALSO discourage touching during the Pax, hand holding for the Lord's Prayer, and withhold the Precious Blood, so as leftist liturgical plots go, it seems confused.

In my old religion, we had a saying: "Guard the mysteries: reveal them constantly." All things being equal, in an age of chaos and devolution, the liturgy will never be as developed as it is now. So the best prep is to make things here-and-now the way we want them. However, all things might not be equal. Contagion might affect liturgically liberal parishes more than others (see factors above). Technology may fail (no electric instruments, but acoustic guitars; no pipe organs, short term). When gathering for worship becomes difficult and dangerous, only the dedicated will be doing it.

In such a context, chant is ideal. It's universal, and requires no technology. It will require printed sources, if the Net and electricity fail, and those will need to be stockpiled. Other service books should be acquired and hidden. Ideally, vestments and sacred vessels could also be stockpiled. Think like it's England 1590. If you want to build a really good priest hole, do it, but with modern technology it's a lot harder proposition to hide somebody.

And accept that things will not be what they were. We've been there, in the US. Benedict Fenwick, bishop of Boston 1833-36, estimated that in the first half of the 19th century there was "no singing at all in two thirds of the Catholic churches of America." (Wetzel, Richard D. Oh! Sing no more that gentle song. Detroit: Harmonie Park Press, 200, p. 304.) Kind of puts Liturgy Wars into perspective, eh?

Sorry if I seem like a Doomer. Do what you can, stay close to Jesus in the Sacrament, and know that the Church will survive. And if things get that bad, with the direction the world has been headed, it might not be long until The End.

Generationally, my young friend, I'm thankful to be near retirement or room temperature as I also think your prognosis might just be quite accurate. Remnant Church, indeed. Won't need priest holes, tho', JQ, as I think they will have all turned Francis' Motel 6 into the Burg Dubai Hotel 666 or the Hotel California! ;-)

At the age of 66 with Social Security checks and pensions in hand, I don't personally worry about the future of paid musicians so much. I think some churches that value music either as worship, or as part of their image, will always pay for better musicians. Many of the church musicians I know do as I did. They work in church music on Sunday and teach school the rest of the week. My teaching salary was always higher than the church music salary. I worked for the federal government for 25 years before entering teaching as a second or third - I have lost count - career. The point being that most can not do church music alone unless they are in one of the "prestige" church positions in town. There are few of those positions around.

Think like it's England 1590.

That doesn't seem bad to me!

Four at Durham, May 27, 1590
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Blessed Richard Hill was an "English Martyr, executed at Durham, 27 May, 1590. Very little is known of him and his fellow-martrys, John Hogg and Richard Holiday, except that they were Yorkshiremen who arrived at the English College at Reims, Holiday on 6 September, 1584, Hill on 15 May, 1587, and Hogg on 15 October, 1587; that all three were ordained subdeacons at Soissons, 18 March, 1859, by Monsignor Jerome Hennequin, deacons 27 May and priests 23 September at Laon by Monsignor Valentine Douglas, O.S.B.; that they with their fellow martyr Edmund Duke were sent on the English mission on the following 22 March and were arrested in the north of England soon after landing; that they were arraigned, condemned, and executed at Durham under the statute 27 Eliz c. 2. With them suffered four felons who protested that they died in the same faith.

"Divers beholders, when these martyrs were offered their pardons if they would go to church, said boldly that they would rather die themselves than any of them should relent, one saying (he had seven children) "I would to God they might all go the same way in making such confession" . . . When their heads were cut off and holden up, as the manner is, not one would say "God save the Queen" except the catch-polls themselves and a minister or two.

G: Would that we had the faith and courage to die as did those saintly men!

A possibility is that musicians will become like the priests of the future.

Fixed.

In time of plague and war, it is common to cancel Mass and tell the faithful to stay home. Just like a blizzard.

Of course, priests continue to say Mass.

P.S. 2014 - 1348 = 666

Social Security checks and pensions in hand

Don't put them in the bank...

It's more likely that cash will be worth more for the first few weeks since people can process the amounts in their mind..., until people realize the power isn't coming back on and that the pieces of paper are useless.

Canned water will be the most important trading good, but if you're known to have lots of canned water - people are coming to your house to get it. So hide it. Hide it well.

This is the most entertaining thread I have ever seen on this forum.

Cigarettes will be the currency. Stockpile cigarettes.

Another sign of the ForeHorsemen, Adam's binge watched too much "Orange is the New Black" and "Locked Up."

^That. Amen.^
Thinking and praying with you this coming All Souls' after losing your mother, KLS.

Melo

Thank you kindly, sir. Month' s mind will be on 11/9 at a local (to me) church; my parents' parish is booked into next summer, but memorial Masses have become much rarer birds in my neck of the woods, fortunately for my scheduling desiderata, because local parish calendars are pretty wide open. I just can't fly my dad up here because he's having a scheduled routine surgical procedure two days earlier.

Some general thoughts on what the Church (as such) can do in an emergency, allowing that the public health authorities have not quarantined everyone:

-Give deacons greater latitude in leading funerals (this can be done in the Roman church)
-If this is done, or if the body needs to be buried quickly to prevent the spread of disease, a memorial Mass can be sung later.
-Roman (Latin) presbyters (priests) should be given the faculty to chrismate on a general basis (Eastern Catholic presbyters already possess the faculty to validly chrismate, even subjects of the Latin Church.)
-Give Eastern Catholic priests latitude in celebrating the Roman Catholic Mass, and with a miniscule amount of training, give Roman Catholic priests (at least the ones who can sing) the faculties to sing the Divine Liturgy (remember this is for emergencies only. I do not advocate regularly giving Roman priests bi-ritual faculties if they have not adequately studied Eastern theology and spirituality.)
-Train laypeople to lead the singing of the Liturgy of the Hours (Divine Office) so that there can at least be some public prayer, especially in time of despair. If there are still Sacred Hosts available, there can be a communion service at the direction of the local Ordinary (but let us not abuse this so that this becomes a situation of clericalizing the laity.)
-If worse comes to worse, every Catholic, including laity, should be trained to baptize in an emergency.
-And I echo the remarks to sing the Liturgy of the Saints.

And just so that everyone understands, I am not a leftist liberal who is hellbent on destroying the Church or "empowering the laity". I am very conservative in politics and traditional (but not Traditionalist, SSPX-wise) in liturgical preference. While none of these measures are against Church law, I am firmly a believer in using a priest when you can get one, but if not, we can procure the services of a deacon if need be, or if not even that, a layperson.

Now, as for the OP's inquiry as to how the musical life of the Church can be preserved in such times, part of my reply is already built in: train laity and deacons to sing the Divine Office, and if there is a choir available, you can have choral vespers.

Now, as for how individuals can prepare themselves in an emergency:

-have canned foods and bottle water available in your residence.
-additionally, have first aid supplies (not only band aids but also large bandages to cover wounds when EMS is not immediately available; OTC medications, and if you take prescribed medications, those as well).
-fire extinguisher (and make sure smoke detector(s) is/are functional as well.)
-supplies to care for children (baby food, diapers, etc.)
-finally, one that gets ignored: have prayer books you can read from when you cannot get to church, and teach your children to read from them. This seems to be obvious as this is a Catholic website, but my pastor, parochial vicar, and deacons are always preaching about how people have time to do things such as watch football, etc., but they do not have time to pray.

Now, as for the specific situation the OP pointed out, the emergency ordination of bishops, becomes necessary and that there are not enough bishops in the whole world to carry out ordinations regularly, I would assume that the situation has become so bad that my first order of business is to prepare myself to see His Majesty the King through a good Holy Confession and receiving Holy Communion. I mean this seriously, as I will assume that such a situation will only occur at the end of the world.

I will admit, I have only drunk canned water once in my life, so it is easy for me to forget about this.

FIF,

This may seem like I am playing with words, but in general, I do not like the term "prepping", as it has the connotation which you said, about people (or extreme nuts) preparing for the end of the world. Instead, I use the phrase "preparing for emergencies", which is perfectly legit. That being said, everything I have mentioned above is perfectly in accord with that goal of preparing for a relatively short term emergency (between a few months to a year). If we start talking about things such as the total economic collapse of society (or for us Catholics, a parallel matter would be collapse of the Holy Church), then we would need to consider that it is quite possible that His Majesty the King has already returned to judge the quick and the dead----and that we should prepare ourselves accordingly, including the making of a good Holy Confession and the reverent reception of Holy Communion.

We have priests in the Northeast, but in the days when none were in my Southern area, we only saw a priest and Divine Liturgy perhaps four times a year, at most. We Eastern Catholics had Reader's Services the rest of the time for about a ten year period. Now we have churches of two Eastern Catholic jurisdictions in our city. There are also three Orthodox jurisdictions represented in the area. If we had a pandemic or other societal collapse, we would cope with it as we always have.