Infrastructure Threats: Food Distribution Systems

No Food on Shelves

Are you prepared for a food emergency? If you’re not, you may need to rethink your preparedness priorities.

If you’re like most Americans, you’ve probably never considered the possibility of a widespread food famine hitting this country. For most people, the very mention of famine seems ridiculous, something that could never happen here in America.

Every day millions of Americans walk into their local supermarket, filling their baskets with only enough food to make it through the week. But, sadly, most people have never even thought about grabbing a couple of extra cans of food while at the store — you know, just in case something terrible happens! Instead, they stroll through the store, blissfully unaware that the whole system is built on a house of cards, a house just waiting to collapse.

Most of these people believe the back of their local grocery store is filled with pallets upon pallets of food. In fact, I often hear people asking the store clerk if they can, “go take a look in the back” to see if they have more of a product that’s not out on the shelf. But, unfortunately, while your parent’s grocery stores may have worked like that, today’s superstores have very little resemblance to their past counterparts.

The Illusion of Food

Walmart Truck Delivering Food

Modern-day grocery stores operate on what’s known as just-in-time food delivery systems. As a result, very little product is actually stocked at the physical store. In fact, the backs of these stores are often only big enough to process what’s coming in on the trucks. That means what you see on the shelves is what’s available.

To stay profitable, today’s grocery stores have about a 3-day supply of food on hand at all times. They use complex delivery systems to monitor, track and reorder products as needed. While these systems have allowed big box stores like Walmart to thrive and take over the entire industry, they have left the average American incredibly vulnerable to even the slightest disruption in the food distribution system.

Every time a natural disaster hits, we witness firsthand how vulnerable our system really is. In what sometimes can be a matter of minutes, entire grocery stores can be stripped bare by a population that’s completely unprepared to deal with even short-term disasters. If you’ve lived through an earthquake, hurricane, or even a decent size winter storm, I’m sure you’re probably pretty familiar with the sight of an entire store filled with empty shelves.

While these small-scale disasters usually only last a couple of days or weeks, they provide a very real and very disturbing glimpse into our future. Should our country ever be hit by a significant drought, shipping disruption, fuel shortage, or war, the delivery systems we depend on will be brought to its knees in very short order.

It’s already happening…

If you’re still not convinced, head on over to your local sporting goods store and ask to buy some .22lr ammo.

For years now, it’s become almost impossible to find certain types of ammunition in this country. While you can find some off calibers, the popular ones are still hard to find and they are not coming back anytime soon.

People are literally waiting for hours in lines, hoping to be at the store when the delivery truck comes in. What’s most freighting about this situation is the fact that the people buying the ammo are still a very small minority of the country. Most Americans are not gun owners, and even among gun owners, very few realize there’s even a problem until they buy new ammo.

Everyone needs food; let me repeat that, everyone needs food! If the ammo supplies can be wiped out, what amounts to only a handful of people compared to those who buy food, what do you think the grocery stores will look like during a major food shortage or crisis?

There will be Riots on the Streets!

Rioting over food

During a major food crisis, areas with a high population density will be the hardest hit. These areas rely on a constant flow of goods that must be shipped in on a regular basis. Once the supply lines stop, these areas cannot fulfill people’s basic food and water requirements.

There will be riots in the streets, and that’s probably majorly understating what will happen! Most Americans are not prepared to survive a food shortage or crisis; they simply don’t have the skills, the supplies, or the mental strength to survive for more than a couple of days without food and water.

You must be Prepared to Feed Yourself

No Food in the store

Don’t listen to the government’s bullshit advice about having 72 hours’ worth of supplies; that number doesn’t even come close to what you really need. In my opinion, two weeks is the absolute minimum amount of supplies that you should have on hand at all times, and even that’s a very conservative number.

I advise immediately going out and buying two weeks’ worth of food and water.  Once you hit that goal, you should set a goal for 3, 6, and 12 months’ worth of food.

Here are some Grocery Options that ship right to your Home

You Need to Be Prepared to Defend Yourself

While the world might be filled with millions of good and decent people, during a crisis, these people can and will quickly become unpredictable. For example, your once jolly neighbor might become a raving madman when he’s faced with the prospect of not being able to feed himself and his family. Therefore, you must be prepared and know how to defend yourself from those that fail to take preparedness seriously.

You Have to Learn to Be Self-sufficient

Preparing for a food crisis means much more than just stockpiling food.  To be truly prepared, you must learn how to be self-sufficient. This means learning how to grow your own foods, studying the wild edibles in your area, and learning how to hunt, fish, and trap your own food.

Preparedness Resources: Preparing for disasters, crises, and threats.

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8 Comments

  1. I believe this article is ‘preaching to the choir’ since most people that come to this and other ‘survival’ sites have already seen the light at the end of the tunnel and it is the ‘big government’ train along with its manifest of killing the economy.
    Regardless, reiterating the need to accumulate much more than the 72-hours of supplies recommended by FEMA continues to be valid points.

    The concern is when the SHTF does happen we do not know what TPTB plan to do in efforts to ‘control’ the situation… do they plan on unwarranted door-to-door searches to remove all supplies in excess of the FEMA recommended 72-hours under the premise of collecting food for the collective good? They have already done unwarranted searches in Boston looking for ‘a terrorist’; they can and probably will do it again by the stroke of an Executive Order pen.

    Granted, this is speculation on my part, but from what I have seen of recent events, I would not put ANYTHING past this current regime to do in order to meet ‘their’ agenda.

  2. Exactly – this article is preaching to the choir.
    Seriously..do you realize how much man power it would take LE/Natl Guard to search Door to Door to see if food is available..? Many LE’s/Natl Guard have familys and they will tend to them first before they get down with some vile order & demand to take food from others.

    Your biggest concern are the the thugs, the criminal scum and whack jobs that rome your hoods; they are currently lying in wait for such an emergency. And all major cities are teaming with them!

    • yeah, go ahead and clamor for more gun control you helpless idiots…when this all happens and it will happen the first to scream will be those stupid ass idiots who went along with the hoax of more gun control…they will be the first robbed, raped and killed and I seriously doubt their little pea brains will comprehend their ignorance !!

  3. What will cause the shortages? Will it be power a power outage? Drought? Or, how about the gov’t needing to restrict travel? What better way to control the actions of people than by limiting their ability to travel.

    The best way to restrict ‘freedom of travel’ would be to limit the amount of fuel a person can have. I remember the gas lines, and the restrictions on the number of gallons per person / vehicle during the ‘gas crisis’. In the end, that was only about a 5% shortfall in available fuel, but it caused lines waiting to buy fuel, sometimes for hours. Because people panic at the slightest change in their normal lives.

    A fuel restriction on purchase quantity would hit the distribution system quite hard. But, it would give the gov’t control over what action people could take, restricting mass protests and riots to more local venues.

    Then you would have the store supplies dwindle to near zero, and people would soon be volunteering to have their rights trampled for a little bit of food or fuel. It has happened in other countries, it can happen here.

    • Yes, the availability of food, water and fuel limited to specific regions could ‘drive’ people to specific locations (closer to FEMA internment camps???); all the more reason to prepare you and yours as best you can to being self-sufficient with diverse home gardens, raising chickens, rabbits, goats, and maybe pigs.

  4. Maybe you all are to young to remember WWII food and gas tokens, well I do remember as a child that you got so many tokens for gas each month and so many tokens for various other things like coffee, sugar, oil, and other goods that were in short supply, so why wouldn’t they do a replay of that now?

    I am so glad I saw the light about 2 years ago and started prepping to the point that now it has become a way of life.

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