Good post. During the first 24 hours of an event, things will still be relatively quiet which is the time to get any last minute items. After that, stay home.
I encourage folks to stock up for a minimum of 90 days if possible. Even if it just means being able to buy a couple extra cans of food per shopping trip.
Good call on pasta. That stuff will last until the next ice age. Instant potatoes, coffee, powdered milk, honey and rice are excellent staples to have on hand as well.
We but these items all the time and we even live on a small hobby farm here in the states.
Re instant potato flakes - i try to rotate my food stores, but i do occasionally miss something. The other day i found a box of instant mashed potatoes that had a "best by" date in 2021. I opened it..passed the sniff test..mixed some up..totally fine. No mylar bag or anything, just on the shelf in the original packaging.
Here in the states, we predict that looters and panic shoppers will hit all the big chain stores first. Small locally owned shops will be ok just for a bit longer.
In 2020, abut this time the US was going into the first “shut down.” I went to the store with my wife. We were well stocked and we literally just needed some produce. I was standing near the baking aisle watching all of the flour leave the store. The stock guy for that aisle was standing next to me.
“Everyone going to bake bread now?” I asked.
“Yup, we are all out of most brands.”, he said.
“Anyone buying yeast?”
“Nope. I don’t think these people have ever baked bread before.”
That’s people just going nuts without a plan. It’s always good to have a plan. Even if things change, most of your plans will still be good.
Bread is absolutely fine without yeast. Same calories, bit different taste and texture.
That said, being prepared is occasionally baking bread so you can do it if needed. Yeast or no yeast.
Cynical take: I don’t think many people are rational in day to day life, frankly, much less in a crisis situation. For example, a couple of summers ago, we had very unhealthy levels of air pollution in Seattle for several days. The world looked like a horror movie, all orange sky, foggy…and the smell was even worse. The news was telling everyone how hazardous the air quality was, and to stay indoors if possible.
Meanwhile people were on my social media taking photos of themselves doing *optional* (not work) outdoor activities: golf, dining outside, exercising. Captions like: “Having brunch on the patio with the family, had to get a photo of this sky” and “At Jadyn, Bradyn and Hadyn’s soccer match, go team.”
One thing I noticed during the peak of the grocery shortages around this time in 2020 was that the nicer, "upscale" supermarkets all struggled to keep stuff in stock. I have eight different supermarket chains within a 20-minute drive and it seemed like the lower-end supermarkets had better supply overall.
I also noticed exactly what you described. Consumer behavior is just fascinating. Body wash was almost impossible to find but bar soap was readily available everywhere as long as you were flexible on brand. Cartridge razors and shaving cream were hard to find but razor blades, safety razors, and shaving soap were in just about every store. The shelves that normally held dishwasher detergent packets were empty but powdered detergent was consistently available. And water bottles: all the travel size (16oz-1L) bottles were almost impossible to find yet almost every store had at least a small allocation of gallon water jugs.
And while I'm a little sketchy about no-name generic medications (yes, I know they're all legally required to have identical active ingredients, but I prefer to stick to brands with a supply chain I trust), truck stops seemed to have a bottomless supply of aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, cough syrup, you name it.
I actually noticed at my store that the lower priced items were the ones that sold out. I was actually mindful to buy the more expensive brands, if the cheaper brands were out or almost out. I figure I'm in a slightly better place financially than others might be, so i wanted to leave the cheapest items for people who need to buy cheap. That is, if there were even two choices left...
This is it exactly! Absolutely no uniform relation between different shops, what they had in stock, and what was selling out. We switched to bar soap as hand soap was long gone, and never had an issue. The best was always low end stores that sold things like bedding alongside food.
Wow, that is absolutely wild I didn't realise it was that bad! And yep all the TP was long gone in the supermarkets too. Seeing a whole aisle completely empty absolutely did my head in. Then I went to my local shop closer to home and got some without issue! Staying calm is such a free, easy win.
I helped take care of my Uncle in 2018. Little Italian man that is very set in his ways. In January of 2020 I stocked up on foods he liked and hid them in his house and kept some at my house too. His daughter showed up with store brand pasta one day and he was not happy. I told her to go in the garage in the top left corner cabinet and there was several boxes of Barilla. She couldn't believe it. She didn't tell him it was there so we just kept pulling one out at a time. She didn't tell her brother because she thought he would take food home to his house to avoid shopping. When his stash ran out, I took from my stash.
I have a shopping list.
If things start to go off the rails, those are the things we grab, so I don't have to think of it all then
To be clear, we are well stocked already. The list is items that might be valuable depending on the specific situation, or things that don't last long and are best to buy last minute.
Depending on which direction it's going off the rails...
Some items that are hard to find and become valuable but are cheap now, according to some of the posts here from people who have lived through extended periods of war or similar. Lighters, for instance, come up s lot.
Certain pricier tools I don't need now but would want in certain circumstances.
Specific foods like oils and proteins that have a shorter shelf life and become harder to get.
Basic stuff that I have now but would want to top off like toilet paper.
Dog food. I would just grab an extra few bags... More than I want to store and rotate usually.
I noticed that as some local stores had a hard time keeping bread and pasta in stock, you could always buy flower, yeast, salt, etc. In other words, all the ingredients for bread and pasta were available. I bought a bread maker b/c of this.
We lived in a smaller town, 13k people, during Covid, but the whole area has 150k people. TP was not available in the larger city, but in our little city the one grocery store always had it.
In both areas, bread was pretty much gone, but the everything to make it was still there. A friend of mine worked at the grocery store and he'd text me when bread arrived and I'd be there when the store opened to get some.
I saw this in the US too, my mother in law had folks keeping an eye out for powdered milk for her and her sister. Everyone was reporting it sold out. When word trickled down to me in the next trip we stopped by the international/ Hispanic section at Walmart and grabbed a couple cans of nestle Nido out of the hundred cans there for her. The cashier couldn’t believe it when I told her what it was, she had been looking for it too.
Such a brilliant point about the international food aisle! You can often find stuff like coconut milk cheaper than the tinned aisle, and much higher quality International staples.
As a side note to my other comment, the pandemic really illustrated the entire point of being prepared: if the stores run out of toilet paper (I'll admit, that one caught me off guard) or aspirin or canned soup or whatever, you're still good to go.
You couldn’t find chicken breasts but whole chickens were easily available. Anyone that knew how to cook “the old way” could find what they needed. I roasted chickens, beef roasts, and pork shoulders. We made biscuits, dumplings, and cornbread. Easy to find fresh vegetables as long as you were flexible and could be creative. I had powdered milk, eggs, and butter. Chicken broth, canned tomatoes, and frozen stew veggies. We ate amazing meals.
A crazy storm ripped through my province in November 2021. Even though my city was minimally impacted, our grocery store shelves were stripped bare within a couple of hours. Most of our food comes in via the port to the west and every major highway from there had been obliterated and was going to require years of repairs. I have a decent supply of food at any given time but thought I might want to top up on fresh produce... and it was not happening that day.
However the cashiers were giggling to each other about it and within a few days the shelves were stocked again.
Yeah, that beginning of lockdown was kind of insane. The day that panic buying started here in the United States just happened to coincide with a late-winter snow where I live, so the trucks were delayed and everybody in town really started to panic. I also wound up finding ingredients and supplies in places no one else had thought to flock to, like out-of-the-way markets and even pharmacies. I remember buying boxes of tea and pounds of brown sugar at Walgreens, because everybody was afraid to go in there, so the whole store was on clearance.
The beginning of the pandemic was insane. I was a cashier at BJ's (bulk similar to Costco and Sams). It was brutal/chaos. There were days within seconds of opening other cashiers were already to cry (whether it was from fear and/or how we were treated. I ran the front at times, and I'll admit I was ready to ball when we had a line of 30+ people and I was being shouted at. When the masses are frantic (like they were), the people trying to help were the ones treated the worst. The amount that people tried to steal, or when there were limits (which was disgusting, how people tried to get away). God forbid when allergy season hit (I would shield a co-worker so she could bend down and hide a sneeze/cough). This time period, I lost the majority of hope in humanity. Out of the entire time, I only saw 1 incident where a human helped out another human (she opened up a package of hand sanitizer and gave it to an older women ). The rest- greed took over, hostility took over, lack of patience ruled. However, the time period taught me multiple lessons of what not to do and showed me lessons that can be used even in times of "peace".
I'd love to hear stories from European countries from this time. I can't help but feel this problem is very much an american cultural problem that seems to just be getting worse.
That's amazing you got stuff on deal too! Plus you are avoiding those big car park full of panicked cars, crowds getting violent, and long queues for little rewards.
I mentioned this recently in another post, but I stocked up on seeds and bought a bread machine while people were still running for the TP 😅
But I want to share my own blind spot: Pots for starting seeds in. Oh, I had some, don't get me wrong. But not nearly as much as I needed to supply my family, my mom, and to trade.
I did make it work anyway: I went on YouTube and looked up DIY pots for seed starting, and found some origami newspaper pots that worked great. Still, I felt pretty silly for putting myself in that position. And while I had always kinda thought that the preppers who emphasized lists had a point, I (arrogantly) thought I'd just remember what I needed to do when SHTF. I am now a firm believer in having lists.
Here in Canada I watched how the EU was going into lockdown. Texted my ex to stock up for a month or two on staples. She laughed at my nerdness but went out anyways and stockpiled before it was an official thing. There was no run on TP yet.
Couple weeks later shit was locked down here and long lines to get the basics.
Be prepared, there are often indicators of pending doom.
It’s only a crisis if you allow it to be. To one person there was “No paracetamol what are we ever gonna do!?” While the neighbor called the next convenience store and carried on with their life.
The problem with society today is that once you add a bit of stress to one’s life, they crack. Anxiety takes over and they become sheep. Most people don’t have the mental capacity to make figure out the problem to the solution in front of them.
Equally as important is the concept that being rational means preparing for other to act irrationally. I wasn't prepared for toilet paper to be out of stock for an EXTENDED period of time (still wild to me). However, the janitor at my job during that time was cool with me and gave me plenty to get by.
I expect during hurricanes that a lot of bread and milk will go unused and spoil. However, if you want bread and milk better get it early.
Masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaners were another good example of irrational people effecting the rational. Want this stuff? You better have panic bought it with the crazies.
Tons of examples of people behaving violently in supermarkets due to examples like the one you gave. Even though I know I'm not going to have a breakdown over not getting pasta or someone not wearing a mask, doesn't mean I'm not going to anticipate someone else doing so.
Now I've learned my lesson and I'm fully prepared to be a hermit for the next 6 months at a time. Best way to avoid irrationality? Avoid society (Only half joking)
Well pro tip to the preppers out there......🤔 never in an emergency case or mayor event go through the
" front door " . Using the post scenario always go to the back of the store or loading deck....put your car near and buy in bulk from the pallets , it's a little bit more expensive ( you give the money to the workers there ) but you have access to all the merchandise too many times it takes time to restock the shelf's
And that way you don't wait in line and avoid conflicts . Altercations and yelling etc .
I have always done it ( in a pandemic , tornado and war ) not only keeping your head cool but be prepared to be the first ( cash stash )..... you don't have to become the npc running in chaos in a movie or a tropical storm scenario fighting for water or toilet paper......🤷♂️ good luck out there .
What stores sell off the pallet? I've worked a lot of retail and to my knowledge that's not a thing and a good way to get the workers fired. Maybe at a mom and pop store, but any major retailer would view that as theft if it goes out the back door for cash and not through the register.
Thanks for the reply , 🤔 plenty.... because they can use the extra money and have ( many times ) discount deals . You just pick up the goods and everyone wins...... Like I said in the post every time something has happened... I've used it without any complications ( just need money saved for it ) . Even in war . When time is the essential resource don't spend it waiting on an " infinite " line....use it to strengthen your house or put distance between you and the problem . Good luck .
Good post. During the first 24 hours of an event, things will still be relatively quiet which is the time to get any last minute items. After that, stay home. I encourage folks to stock up for a minimum of 90 days if possible. Even if it just means being able to buy a couple extra cans of food per shopping trip. Good call on pasta. That stuff will last until the next ice age. Instant potatoes, coffee, powdered milk, honey and rice are excellent staples to have on hand as well. We but these items all the time and we even live on a small hobby farm here in the states.
Re instant potato flakes - i try to rotate my food stores, but i do occasionally miss something. The other day i found a box of instant mashed potatoes that had a "best by" date in 2021. I opened it..passed the sniff test..mixed some up..totally fine. No mylar bag or anything, just on the shelf in the original packaging.
This is it, I am so much more prepared now! It just blew my mind how everything was fully available q hundred metres down the road.
In a week, it would all be gone and people who can’t handle stress would be running amok.
Here in the states, we predict that looters and panic shoppers will hit all the big chain stores first. Small locally owned shops will be ok just for a bit longer.
In 2020, abut this time the US was going into the first “shut down.” I went to the store with my wife. We were well stocked and we literally just needed some produce. I was standing near the baking aisle watching all of the flour leave the store. The stock guy for that aisle was standing next to me. “Everyone going to bake bread now?” I asked. “Yup, we are all out of most brands.”, he said. “Anyone buying yeast?” “Nope. I don’t think these people have ever baked bread before.” That’s people just going nuts without a plan. It’s always good to have a plan. Even if things change, most of your plans will still be good.
That is mad, isn't it? Just makes you wonder how much of that flour ended up in landfill as well.
Bread is absolutely fine without yeast. Same calories, bit different taste and texture. That said, being prepared is occasionally baking bread so you can do it if needed. Yeast or no yeast.
Cynical take: I don’t think many people are rational in day to day life, frankly, much less in a crisis situation. For example, a couple of summers ago, we had very unhealthy levels of air pollution in Seattle for several days. The world looked like a horror movie, all orange sky, foggy…and the smell was even worse. The news was telling everyone how hazardous the air quality was, and to stay indoors if possible. Meanwhile people were on my social media taking photos of themselves doing *optional* (not work) outdoor activities: golf, dining outside, exercising. Captions like: “Having brunch on the patio with the family, had to get a photo of this sky” and “At Jadyn, Bradyn and Hadyn’s soccer match, go team.”
One thing I noticed during the peak of the grocery shortages around this time in 2020 was that the nicer, "upscale" supermarkets all struggled to keep stuff in stock. I have eight different supermarket chains within a 20-minute drive and it seemed like the lower-end supermarkets had better supply overall. I also noticed exactly what you described. Consumer behavior is just fascinating. Body wash was almost impossible to find but bar soap was readily available everywhere as long as you were flexible on brand. Cartridge razors and shaving cream were hard to find but razor blades, safety razors, and shaving soap were in just about every store. The shelves that normally held dishwasher detergent packets were empty but powdered detergent was consistently available. And water bottles: all the travel size (16oz-1L) bottles were almost impossible to find yet almost every store had at least a small allocation of gallon water jugs. And while I'm a little sketchy about no-name generic medications (yes, I know they're all legally required to have identical active ingredients, but I prefer to stick to brands with a supply chain I trust), truck stops seemed to have a bottomless supply of aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, cough syrup, you name it.
I actually noticed at my store that the lower priced items were the ones that sold out. I was actually mindful to buy the more expensive brands, if the cheaper brands were out or almost out. I figure I'm in a slightly better place financially than others might be, so i wanted to leave the cheapest items for people who need to buy cheap. That is, if there were even two choices left...
This is it exactly! Absolutely no uniform relation between different shops, what they had in stock, and what was selling out. We switched to bar soap as hand soap was long gone, and never had an issue. The best was always low end stores that sold things like bedding alongside food.
[удалено]
Haha, I was on a military base and you could have heard a pin drop across base.
Wow, that is absolutely wild I didn't realise it was that bad! And yep all the TP was long gone in the supermarkets too. Seeing a whole aisle completely empty absolutely did my head in. Then I went to my local shop closer to home and got some without issue! Staying calm is such a free, easy win.
I helped take care of my Uncle in 2018. Little Italian man that is very set in his ways. In January of 2020 I stocked up on foods he liked and hid them in his house and kept some at my house too. His daughter showed up with store brand pasta one day and he was not happy. I told her to go in the garage in the top left corner cabinet and there was several boxes of Barilla. She couldn't believe it. She didn't tell him it was there so we just kept pulling one out at a time. She didn't tell her brother because she thought he would take food home to his house to avoid shopping. When his stash ran out, I took from my stash.
I have a shopping list. If things start to go off the rails, those are the things we grab, so I don't have to think of it all then To be clear, we are well stocked already. The list is items that might be valuable depending on the specific situation, or things that don't last long and are best to buy last minute.
Such a top plan! And again, totally free, and such a minimal amount of effort to put together, but it puts you ahead of 90% of people.
Out of curiosity, what’s on your shopping list for if things start to go off the rails?
Depending on which direction it's going off the rails... Some items that are hard to find and become valuable but are cheap now, according to some of the posts here from people who have lived through extended periods of war or similar. Lighters, for instance, come up s lot. Certain pricier tools I don't need now but would want in certain circumstances. Specific foods like oils and proteins that have a shorter shelf life and become harder to get. Basic stuff that I have now but would want to top off like toilet paper. Dog food. I would just grab an extra few bags... More than I want to store and rotate usually.
Yeah, us too. Stock up now on non-perishables now, and if anything ever happens, go for the produce and dairy section on the way home.
I noticed that as some local stores had a hard time keeping bread and pasta in stock, you could always buy flower, yeast, salt, etc. In other words, all the ingredients for bread and pasta were available. I bought a bread maker b/c of this.
[удалено]
We lived in a smaller town, 13k people, during Covid, but the whole area has 150k people. TP was not available in the larger city, but in our little city the one grocery store always had it. In both areas, bread was pretty much gone, but the everything to make it was still there. A friend of mine worked at the grocery store and he'd text me when bread arrived and I'd be there when the store opened to get some.
Same- we made biscuits and cornbread
This is it!
I saw this in the US too, my mother in law had folks keeping an eye out for powdered milk for her and her sister. Everyone was reporting it sold out. When word trickled down to me in the next trip we stopped by the international/ Hispanic section at Walmart and grabbed a couple cans of nestle Nido out of the hundred cans there for her. The cashier couldn’t believe it when I told her what it was, she had been looking for it too.
Such a brilliant point about the international food aisle! You can often find stuff like coconut milk cheaper than the tinned aisle, and much higher quality International staples.
That is also why you always have a shash of important meds and binge foods and why I know how to make pasta
Definitely! I am such a better prepper now ha ha
As a side note to my other comment, the pandemic really illustrated the entire point of being prepared: if the stores run out of toilet paper (I'll admit, that one caught me off guard) or aspirin or canned soup or whatever, you're still good to go.
You couldn’t find chicken breasts but whole chickens were easily available. Anyone that knew how to cook “the old way” could find what they needed. I roasted chickens, beef roasts, and pork shoulders. We made biscuits, dumplings, and cornbread. Easy to find fresh vegetables as long as you were flexible and could be creative. I had powdered milk, eggs, and butter. Chicken broth, canned tomatoes, and frozen stew veggies. We ate amazing meals.
A crazy storm ripped through my province in November 2021. Even though my city was minimally impacted, our grocery store shelves were stripped bare within a couple of hours. Most of our food comes in via the port to the west and every major highway from there had been obliterated and was going to require years of repairs. I have a decent supply of food at any given time but thought I might want to top up on fresh produce... and it was not happening that day. However the cashiers were giggling to each other about it and within a few days the shelves were stocked again.
Yeah, that beginning of lockdown was kind of insane. The day that panic buying started here in the United States just happened to coincide with a late-winter snow where I live, so the trucks were delayed and everybody in town really started to panic. I also wound up finding ingredients and supplies in places no one else had thought to flock to, like out-of-the-way markets and even pharmacies. I remember buying boxes of tea and pounds of brown sugar at Walgreens, because everybody was afraid to go in there, so the whole store was on clearance.
The beginning of the pandemic was insane. I was a cashier at BJ's (bulk similar to Costco and Sams). It was brutal/chaos. There were days within seconds of opening other cashiers were already to cry (whether it was from fear and/or how we were treated. I ran the front at times, and I'll admit I was ready to ball when we had a line of 30+ people and I was being shouted at. When the masses are frantic (like they were), the people trying to help were the ones treated the worst. The amount that people tried to steal, or when there were limits (which was disgusting, how people tried to get away). God forbid when allergy season hit (I would shield a co-worker so she could bend down and hide a sneeze/cough). This time period, I lost the majority of hope in humanity. Out of the entire time, I only saw 1 incident where a human helped out another human (she opened up a package of hand sanitizer and gave it to an older women ). The rest- greed took over, hostility took over, lack of patience ruled. However, the time period taught me multiple lessons of what not to do and showed me lessons that can be used even in times of "peace".
I'd love to hear stories from European countries from this time. I can't help but feel this problem is very much an american cultural problem that seems to just be getting worse.
I would too like to hear stories from the European countries.
That's amazing you got stuff on deal too! Plus you are avoiding those big car park full of panicked cars, crowds getting violent, and long queues for little rewards.
Go to the foreign markets, they always have ways to get stuff.
I was already decently stocked with food when covid hit, I was low on water and TP that was about it
I mentioned this recently in another post, but I stocked up on seeds and bought a bread machine while people were still running for the TP 😅 But I want to share my own blind spot: Pots for starting seeds in. Oh, I had some, don't get me wrong. But not nearly as much as I needed to supply my family, my mom, and to trade. I did make it work anyway: I went on YouTube and looked up DIY pots for seed starting, and found some origami newspaper pots that worked great. Still, I felt pretty silly for putting myself in that position. And while I had always kinda thought that the preppers who emphasized lists had a point, I (arrogantly) thought I'd just remember what I needed to do when SHTF. I am now a firm believer in having lists.
Here in Canada I watched how the EU was going into lockdown. Texted my ex to stock up for a month or two on staples. She laughed at my nerdness but went out anyways and stockpiled before it was an official thing. There was no run on TP yet. Couple weeks later shit was locked down here and long lines to get the basics. Be prepared, there are often indicators of pending doom.
It’s only a crisis if you allow it to be. To one person there was “No paracetamol what are we ever gonna do!?” While the neighbor called the next convenience store and carried on with their life. The problem with society today is that once you add a bit of stress to one’s life, they crack. Anxiety takes over and they become sheep. Most people don’t have the mental capacity to make figure out the problem to the solution in front of them.
Equally as important is the concept that being rational means preparing for other to act irrationally. I wasn't prepared for toilet paper to be out of stock for an EXTENDED period of time (still wild to me). However, the janitor at my job during that time was cool with me and gave me plenty to get by. I expect during hurricanes that a lot of bread and milk will go unused and spoil. However, if you want bread and milk better get it early. Masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaners were another good example of irrational people effecting the rational. Want this stuff? You better have panic bought it with the crazies. Tons of examples of people behaving violently in supermarkets due to examples like the one you gave. Even though I know I'm not going to have a breakdown over not getting pasta or someone not wearing a mask, doesn't mean I'm not going to anticipate someone else doing so. Now I've learned my lesson and I'm fully prepared to be a hermit for the next 6 months at a time. Best way to avoid irrationality? Avoid society (Only half joking)
Well pro tip to the preppers out there......🤔 never in an emergency case or mayor event go through the " front door " . Using the post scenario always go to the back of the store or loading deck....put your car near and buy in bulk from the pallets , it's a little bit more expensive ( you give the money to the workers there ) but you have access to all the merchandise too many times it takes time to restock the shelf's And that way you don't wait in line and avoid conflicts . Altercations and yelling etc . I have always done it ( in a pandemic , tornado and war ) not only keeping your head cool but be prepared to be the first ( cash stash )..... you don't have to become the npc running in chaos in a movie or a tropical storm scenario fighting for water or toilet paper......🤷♂️ good luck out there .
What stores sell off the pallet? I've worked a lot of retail and to my knowledge that's not a thing and a good way to get the workers fired. Maybe at a mom and pop store, but any major retailer would view that as theft if it goes out the back door for cash and not through the register.
Thanks for the reply , 🤔 plenty.... because they can use the extra money and have ( many times ) discount deals . You just pick up the goods and everyone wins...... Like I said in the post every time something has happened... I've used it without any complications ( just need money saved for it ) . Even in war . When time is the essential resource don't spend it waiting on an " infinite " line....use it to strengthen your house or put distance between you and the problem . Good luck .
So the crisis was no regular pasta, or the 'pandemic' the CDC now says they are **'treating like the flu'**??????????
You typo'd some extra punctuation around the word pandemic.