3 Days And Empty Shelves, Just Like In The Stories

Pretty sure I told this a couple of years ago but there was the threat of potentially, maybe getting a little snow. Seriously, they thought that maybe we might get some flurries. No plans to have anything stick and the trucks had already brined the roads.

The wife and I were bored (we had everything we needed and then some) so we went to the store to buy, candy I think, cinnamon bears if I recall correctly. We had to park in the back 40 of the parking lot, it was so crowded. We wandered around the store (Super Target) for about 5 minutes, looking in awe at the empty shelves...french toast syndrome at it's finest:

• There were a couple half-gallons of crazy expensive organic milk in the FIVE door refrigerated section. ALL other milk including lactaid and soy was gone.
• There was I believe a single dozen eggs in the 20 foot egg section and that dozen had some broken.
• There were less than a dozen loaves of bread in a 40-foot bread aisle and ALL of them were squished. In addition, ALL of the "fresh" baked breads were gone, including the bagels.
  
• A lot of canned good were low but few if any were empty.
• There were zero hot dogs, hamburger and other meats left

On the other hand there was plenty of fresh produce left; apples, oranges, celery, lettuce, lemons, limes, carrots, tomatoes, green beans, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, all of the "good for you" foods.

This was in the face of...well, literally NOTHING going to happen. It got cold and I think there were flurries that melted on contact with the ground. Truly a giant zero as far as "snow-pocalypse" goes. And the majority of what people bought was stuff that NEEDED REFRIGERATION in the face of THE POWER GOING OUT (if the worst had happened), and not being frozen (yes, you can freeze bread but I don't recommend milk or eggs unless you know what you are doing with the eggs and I doubt they did).

It took Target almost a week to recover and that was with the trucks coming in all day and night. It was insane. If I hadn't been bored and had a hankering for people watching and some cinnamon bears I would have never seen or believed it, it was...staggering.

BTW, the threat of weather came out about 2:00 in the afternoon. I had been at the store for something specific earlier in the day and it was crammed full of stuff. The wife and I went about 6:00 pm and by that time those sections had been demolished. FAR less than 72 or even 24 hours in this case. It was most likely less than 4. Another 12 hours and I don't think there would have been much outside of the occasional jar of Gefilte Fish left in the store.

 

As for crazy shoppers, warned one of my new neighbors about Walmart on payday(for disability/SSI people), they are usually calm, they came home swearing and saying they'll never do that again. Myself, I prefer to shop 2 days after major holidays for discounted seasonal goodies. The day after, especially if it's Christmas, there are returns and gift card purchases, etc. The next day it's usually calmer. And I can stock up on goodies for at least half the regular price. Bags of the crushed mint candy(I use it for candy cane cocoa), mom got me one on Christmas Eve, it was $3. Went to store yesterday, they were 99cents. We got the remaining seven of them.

 

Yeah, I was going to post that too, "hunters should go to the grocery store to get meat where no animals were harmed." AND these people breed and vote!

VHestin:"I was amazed at the lack of understanding of proper winter behavior."

LOL!! EVERY year when it snows for the first time EVERYONE here acts like they have never seen or driven on snow before! HEY! You have lived here for 20-30-40-50-60 or more years! It's the SAME as it was last year! And the year before that, and the year before that, and the year... SLOW DOWN! Go easy! Getting there late is better than having to get your car towed out of the ditch the next day. Don't expect the guy you nearly ran off the road by speeding and cutting him off because you couldn't get there fast enough to stop and give you a ride, he still might have the shakes from HIS near death experience that YOU caused!

 

There is no accounting the ignorance of the "modern population".
Animal husbandry and its production is seen as a Saturday Morning Disney Cartoon to most super market shoppers..

 

my winter preps are looking for my long sleeved shirt in case it gets cold and covering the lawn mower in case it rains.

 

You can't fix stupid

 

Stupid, is forever.

 

I recall in Lucifer's Hammer that one of the women during the SHTF, went and stocked up on freezer food. I thought what a ditz but then thought, I wonder what percentage of people would actually do that? In some ways the ditz is a bonus for some of us. Like @DarkLight pointed out, the sheep will wipe out the eggs, milk and freezer food. That will leave the good stuff, storage for us to scoop up.

 

I see your point Moto, but you'd better be fast because the canned stuff will go as soon as the perishables are gone. Not to say a person shouldn't be ready to scoop up the secondary stuff, one should just be aware and needs to decide if going out is really worth it.

 

As long as you have a way to prepare it, it might still be a valid option.
IIRC from the book, she had no way to actually prepare what she had bought once the utilities failed.

The Village I used to work in part time had a village-wide power outage for about 6 hours ago two years ago. When power was restored the only small grocery store in town was flooded with people complaining about how they hadn't been able to eat for the duration of the blackout, were starving, and couldn't pay for anything because the uplink to the card processer had gone down in the blackout and could only be reset by the daytime manager. I actually paid for one woman to take some food home for her kids from my pocket cash...

During the same incident the only gas station in town that had a generator lost power too because they'd failed to perform routine maintenance on the generator

 

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

 

I keep cash in my safe along with a last trip to Walmart shopping list in order of priority. It's not a make or break it trip but I will make that last run to add to what I have if I can. It's a good exercise just to make the list.

 

@Tully Mars Good post.

What some people do in these times just leaves me speechless.
The morning after Hurricane Ike hit,,,8 mind you 8 families were out with their hoses washing down their homes, driveways, and sidewalks. Amazing. We were standing up a tree in our front yard keeping an eye on this.
8 hours later these people were coming over to see if we had drinking water.
We had plenty of water in our storage building. I did not share with the window washers.
We had 150 homes In the addition, 2 generators. Us and the guy behind us. People constantly starred at us. Black curtains do work.

 

My grandmother kept a full pantry long before it was ever called being prepared. I always have bought lots of things bulk as yoiu get better prices. My local meijers store is begging people to stock up. They do the buy 10 for ten bucks and get the 11th one free on many many items that normally cost 1.50 per item. So you stock up and save money. We keep a years worth of rotating food and another years worth of long term staples like rice, flour and sugar.

 

Best fun I ever had was sending my youngest brother out to milk a bull.

 

I just bought Echrich Hot dogs for .99 cents a package for a package of 10 regular size by buying 5 packages. Also got a great deal on polish sausage by buying 5 . They are running Campbells chunky soups for 2 cans for 3 bucks . Huge sale on egg noodles as well. Buying bulk is the way to save money and fill the pantry.