Ever see a super market cleaned out?

[killer]

I was stationed in Biloxi MS in 1974? when a hurricane stalled 100 miles out for three days. The town had been hit with the eye 10 years before? and the locals knew what was coming.

Stupid kid I was from Minnesota I figured it would be like a snow blizzard. Few days at most and we'll be back to normal.

I was ordered back to the base for lockdown and figured I'd stopped at the local grocery store to pick up some snacks.

I remember how the shall we say "gravity" of the situation slowly sunk into my pea brain as I walked down aisle after aisle with NOTHING ON THE SHELFS. I did find one bent can on the floor without a label and I actually considered buying it not knowing what was inside.

Stock up boys...be prepared.

[just_a_car]

Yeah, I've heard of situations like that happening in Hurricane/Tornado areas and sometimes in heavy blizzard areas.

I'm fortunate that the two big things we have to worry about in Western Washington State are Volcanoes and Earthquakes, which don't happen very often. We actually had a waterspout and a honest-to-God tornado hit in the last six months.

[Seven©]

Originally Posted by killer

Ever see a super market cleaned out?

Yes. Just mention the word "snow" in WNC.

[Big Tool]

Saw plenty of it in Katrina. 2weeks without electricity "got used to not having it"

Food on the shelves is one thing, not having gas to go find food is another. Luckily we were prepared and able to get the hell outa town if need be. The biggest problem was no phones. It's hard to believe that people once lived normal lives without the stupid things. Just meeting someone became a complete headache.

People will never understand something like that until they live through it. The depression of seeing everything you know torn to pieces is enough to drive a person mad. I lived in Poplarville MS, and everything south of that town still looks the same as after Katrina, Years later and it still looks like a barren waste-land. If you go about 15 miles further north on I-59 it looks no

[Gray Wolf]

When I was a teenager, I walked 1.8 miles through snow 18" deep (where it
was NOT drifted) to a grocery store, and did not find empty shelves.
I could buy all the toothpaste, laundry soap, paper towels that I wanted,
but there was nothing edible left, and that was a big supermarket chain store.


When I lived in SE Texas, it amazed me how people would wait until a hurricane was in the gulf, then try to get flashlights & batteries from the local
'Mart stores!

[mos19k]

I've seen the mad dash to the markets just before every hurricane we've had. The folks just don't learn and are completely reliant on the government. I've told this story before so I apologize for my redundancy.

Back in 2005 we had several weak hurricanes come through the Miami area, the strongest was a category 2. Damage was relatively lite, mostly some shingle and siding damage to the houses. We did lose power, in some cases for up to a few weeks. Our local EMA was incredible, they had the distribution centers up and running the very next day after one of these storms. I happen to work next to one of the distribution centers and was working traffic control in front of my facility. It amazed me that the line for the food and water was over 2 MILES long, please remember, very lite damage and no power. I started to ask people why they were in line, not one of them had bothered to store emergency food and water even though they had over a week's notice that the storm was coming. This was in a nice middle class area, no one had any excuse for not being prepared with the minimum of three days food and water.

Those rushes we see on the super markets are from folks that have no food in their houses, they simply buy food from one day to the next. I've seen people purchase entire shopping carts full of frozen TV dinners and they don't have a generator to run the freezer, they simply don't comprehend the situation.

[damage855]

I agree mos19k the majority of people are sheep. If the goverment ever did fall most would just die not having the slitest clue where to get food other than from the local store.

[ArkansasHunter]

Our pantry stays full of food and when we bought our home it was all electric so I plumded it for natural gas.
Our stores get hit hard when the chance of snow is high, because we get sleet and snow with freezing rain where I live .
Most folks don't know how to drive on it here and when it's solid ice you don't drive on it.
The Lights go out but we still have telephone service and water, haveing a Gas stove in the kitchen and a big Dearborn heater set up in the liveing room.
We don't get cold or hungrey.
I use to remove the Dearborn heater every Spring but I havent in a few years, it looks fine in the liveingroom.
I also have a back up gas heater put away in our storage room if we need it.

Please note this winter I let some one beat me to some dearborn heaters that were in our news paper.
I want to collect a few of them so next fall if not sooner I'm going to buy 2 or 3 more so I can loan them to people that need heat if we have winter storms.

My brother calls me every year...Mike if our Power goes out can I borrow your extra heater ?
I guess he's to stupid to relize he can buy his own, theres still a lot of old dearborn heaters that look new where I live.
A.H

[Big Dog]

I keep my supplies stocked - food, water, gas, etc. In cold weather, I'd have trouble with heating if the power died - gotta remedy THAT!
For basic hurricane situations, I'm set. I do like to go by the local Wally World to watch the sheeple as the hurricane is approaching - it's better than TV!!
I watch the Soccermoms fighting the College Kids for batteries, bottled water, and canned food.

Then when the current emergency is over - they get RID of everything fast as they can! Weird . . .
They don't seem to realize it'll happen AGAIN.

[just_a_car]

As for power outage and cooking, my family is pretty set. We have about a cord of cut timber from 4 birch trees we had felled. It's been sitting under our deck under a tarp for about three years now and should be nice and dry.

[Cyrano]

Up here I simply keep things stocked up. Not as much as I would like due to lack of storage space and lack of cooperation of my wife, who WILL NOT hear of getting a chest freezer. But I don't worry about snowstorms any more becasue the local weather talking heads haven't called a storm correctly in about 8 years.

Every time, it's "Ohmigawd, the worst blizzard in history is coming!" and the sheeple panic and dash to the supermarkets and clean off the shelves. I find a real weather map and look at it and decide how bad it will likely be. I generally am right to within a couple of inches. (Ship's officers have to take meteorology courses and after years at sea you get decent at reading the weather. It's not a gift or anything.) Sometimes I will go and pick up extra food, but mostly I don't. We've had the roads so fubar'd travel was impossible only twice in 17 years, and even then they were only screwed up for a day and a half, mostly because the town had blown the sand and salt budget that's supposed to take the town through 4 months in just 7 weeks and it took awhile to scrape all the roads back to bare asphalt. The whole region was out of salt, salt sand, straight sand, rock salt, calcium snow-melter, you name it. The town was reduced to spreading fly ash on the roads, and all that did was kill the grass at the edge of the roads come spring. It sure didn't do anything for traction!

There are times when I wonder if the owners of the TV stations all pown stock in supermarket chains or something. Either that, or the sheeple have a hair-trigger on the panic button.

[Palladin8]

One thing I noticed when I was living in Utah was that almost everyone there had food storage rooms. Usually a room in the basement of the home that was supposed to sustain the family for several months. I think it's a great idea to have food and water storage for at least a month. Not to mention other emergency supplies.

[stitchclimber]

Not generalize, but the storage rooms in utah... isn't that a mormon thing? If I remeber correctly, most mormons in utah stock up for the end of the world or something. I could be completey wrong though.

[daveyj]

Yes we mormons all have very large storage rooms here in Utah. Last I checked the end of the world is coming next Friday? Are you prepared? All kidding aside, a lot of people here in Utah do have storage rooms in their houses, generally in their basement if they got one. No it isn't for the end of the world, but for general emergencies, even if the only emergency is being out of work for several months. The LDS church has advised having a years supply of food on hand if at all possible, but that isn't possible for most people. Nothing wrong with having extra stuff on hand. I'm sure you all would agree with that.

[stitchclimber]

that clears things up. thanks