SThere will not be some extended period of anarchy. If this were to happen, it would be basically a first in the history of the industrialized world. No matter what you think about those people in the cities who don't have survival skills, the plain fact of the matter is that someone is going to step up and organize them. This always, always, always happens. They will be easy to train, easy to motivate, and easy to frighten into doing the bidding of whoever is calling the shots.
We all like to be self sufficient, which is good. It will be important. But the reality is that whatever the new government looks like, it will have the resources it needs to train the so-called "sheeple" and any prepping or tactical advantage that you have willbe short lived if the new order decides to take your stuff.
Solddiers are very easy to make. In fact, it was my experience in the Amy that the guys who most resemble the "sheeple" that we always ridicule often make better soldiers than the boyscouts. THey don't question their orders and do what they are told no matter what, which will be doubly true if their alternative is starvation.
A lot of people claim an advantage in having grown up with guns and so forth. Again, that advantage will probably be short lived in a total collapse scenario. It was my experience commanding OSUT that the guys who entered the Army having never touched a gun usually qualified with their weapons with higher scores than the guys who grew up hunting and shooting beer cans. I'm not sure why this is true but I suspect it has to do with the lack of bad shooting habits and a willingness to be taught how to shoot the right way, again, unquestioningly. That may seem a bit counterintuitive but I saw it all the time.
Likewise, deployed in the field in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I didn't see a significant difference in the behavior of soldiers with varying backgrounds. The plain fact of the matter is that it is easy to make an army. Especially in an envirobnment with a large population of hungry, scared people. A few months of combat training and anyone can be knocked into reasonably good physical shape, disciplined, taught all of the combat skills that they need to wage war, and sent out to make everyone else's life very bad.
Then you have a choice. They come for your guns, what do you do? They will be more than happy to pry them from your cold, dead hands and give them over to the government for "the greater good".
I woud argue that in this hypothetical, the only real chance of survival with any kind of quality of life lies in escaping the country and resettling elsewhere while this place goes nuts on itself. At that point, I would have no compunction about doing this, as the nation I knew and loved would be dead.
