AUBURN - The woman is not crazy. She will tell you that over and over as she describes the awesome array of survival items heaped high in her basement.

There are 700 packets of water meant to last for years. There is a pellet stove with a deep cycle charger and solar panels to re-energize on long stretches without power. There are four tons of pellets, enough for more than two winters.

There is a machine that seals and preserves food. There are nearly 200 batteries and two charging stations. There are 25 gallons of gasoline in a locked shed, a stockpile of medications for every ailment, vitamins with a five-year shelf life to stave off scurvy and related afflictions.

There is freeze dried food of all kinds. There are 16 oil lamps, 30 bottles of oil, 20 spare wicks. There are medical supplies, 100 bars of soap, 500 disposable razors.

There is a .357 and other firearms. There is plenty of ammunition.

"If I have to protect my house, I want to be able to do it," she said.

She is 41 and not paranoid, she insists. She is just prepared.

And cautious. She does not want her name used or her location revealed. For the purpose of this article, she refers to herself as Sarah.

"I'm not wacko," Sarah said. "My father lived through the Depression and he always drilled it into my head: never, never, never get caught unprepared."

It's the economy, of course, but more than that. For more than a year, she has been watching the struggling market, anticipating a day when it would go bad. For a year, she has been preparing for the worst.

"My fear is that a depression is coming, yes," Sarah said. "I think we'll survive that. I think we'll get through it because there is not a big shortage of things like there was in the 1930s. We'll survive the depression but as a nation, we'll be vulnerable. Terrorists could strike us while we're weak. That's what scares me."

She is not talking about the end of the world, not exactly. Her worst-case vision is of a society in ruins, with starvation and desperation, death and despair. She is not thinking of an apocalypse of biblical proportions.

"If it were the end of the world altogether, I'd be OK with that," Sarah said. "If I have to die, I could come to grips with it. I just don't want to suffer if I don't need to. I don't want to freeze to death in my own house. I don't want to scrounge for things like toilet paper."

And so, the preparation and stockpiling. In the spring, she began researching the shelf life of foods. She began picking up dehydrated foods a little bit at a time. She also bought basic items like shampoo and soap and toothpaste.

She kept on buying it until she had enough to last her years.

"Every single thing I bought, it's something I need anyway," Sarah said. "If things never go bad, I'll be happy. I'll have a big party and everyone will eat dehydrated food."

She exhibits pragmatism with only a hint of paranoia. Even the guns are there only as a precaution. She does not expect to ever need them.

Food and water and medicine is not the end of it. As she continues to educate herself, she learns other tricks.

"Everyone says to buy gold," Sarah said. "I can't afford to buy gold, I'm sorry. I'm picking up cigarettes and liquor instead. Those are the things that can be bartered."

Sarah has a husband and a full-time job. Her husband was skeptical of all this preparation at first, but he has been coming around. When Sarah began to stockpile, talk of an economic downturn was only a murmur, a far off rumor few paid attention to.

"I've been thinking about it a long time," she said. "I don't know where it comes from, exactly. Maybe it's just a survival instinct. I don't know."

These days, with the Wall Street bailout an instant failure and oil prices unpredictable at best, almost everybody acknowledges that things will get worse before they get better.

People like Glenn Beck don't help.

Sarah was watching the conservative host on CNN one recent night as he quizzed a pair of economists about the situation.

"Those guys were freaking out about it, saying how bad things are and how much worse they will get," she said. "You never hear that from those types. They usually give us some liberal spin and say everything will be fine."

So she went shopping some more the following day and added more items to the growing stacks in the basement. Places like BJ's Wholesale Club have been a friend to her. So has an affinity for a company called Mountain House, which specializes in foods for camping or emergency situations.

Sarah has bought plenty. She does not plan to use if for camping.

"Right now, I feel like I'm ready for just about anything," she said. "I have all of this stuff ready to go. If things get better and I don't need to go the grocery store for a month, six months or a year, that's great, too."

Few people know about her preparation. They don't know about the inventory lists kept on clipboards in her cellar or that she has blacked out the windows down there. Soon she will start to board up the windows altogether but she won't talk about it much.

It is for reasons of both safety and vanity.

"I started talking about this to everyone who would listen in April, then stopped talking in July and kept on stockpiling," she said. "I got the feeling people thought I was overreacting. I don't want people to think I'm nuts. I just want to protect myself."

If nothing else, if the economy recovers, there is no act of violence committed upon the country and nobody has to live out of things in their basement, Sarah will not consider it a waste of time. In recent weeks, she has been feeling at ease in spite of the never-ending clamor of grim reports on the television news.

She knows she is ready. The peace of mind is worth every penny spent and every minute of planning for the bleakest of possibilities.

"I don't feel anxious anymore," she said. "I feel like I've done all I can do and I have what I need to survive. And that alone helps me to sleep at night."