how long after an event for things to die down

[Lightspeed]

I'm with SD and Nr on a two year possible timescale

I think its likely to take two winters of cold, starvation and disease to cull the human population, and weed out most of the scumbags. Alas, I also expect that some resourceful and resiliant, scumbags will survive, but there will hopefully be less of them, and survivor communities will have a better chance of resisting.

To stay grey for 24 months is a huge task, and will require huge commitment of resources, as well as considerable luck in avoiding being detected by raiders throughout this period.

Actually 24 months is a simplistic calculation. After the second winter, ground would still have to be prepared and crops tended until they could be hargested. Different planning is needed for different seasonal SHTF dates.

I reckon that worst case scenario is SHTF-total-infrastructure-wipe-out in spring. This scenario entails laying up some 27 months of provisions. And not just survival provisions either. Extra calories will be imperative to support the efforts needed for the Year 2 farming renaisance.

I'm now starting to look at what long storage food crop seeds to stash. I'll search this site to see ifanyone's already started to workout a plan for this.