I’m always surprised about this, too. I know we’re blessed to have our preparedness programs, but it seems like people would be a little more prepared. I’m always surprised to watch people go a little nuts over weather we consider normal winter weather here. We will get big snowstorms that move east and then there’s the news stories.

We were living in Democratic Republic of EdgeOfTheWorld when a political situation sparked unrest.

It wasn’t unexpected and the organization we were there with had stocked food/water/essentials for two weeks in a building that would serve as a rally point.

Best laid plans … Just by chance, the wall around that particular building was breeched and the whole stockpile went up in smoke when they torched the compound. We were across the street, watching the whole thing from another villa (we had all sent our families out-of-country and had set up a temporary man cave to wait out the problems).

We had to ration food and bottled water, we had no electricity or running water and the man cave plan got old pretty quick. We were finally extracted and made it across the border into Malariastan.

You can’t really prepare for any or all things that might happen. I think the milk and bread thing, in many cases, is just an attempt to assert some control over one’s situation in the face of impending crisis.

Who is we?

Hey moderator, when you delete my duplicate, delete #7 please.

anngd @ 5,

It isn’t secrecy it is anonymity, or an attempt at it at least.

You can put any number of things in a 24 hour kit, but that doesn’t mean that some aspect of the event won’t require something you don’t have.

In our case, we had made plans and stockpiled much more than would have been required. It was just bad luck that the rioters came down that particular street, managed to pry open that particular gate and torched that particular building. You simply cannot anticipate for every scenario.

#3

“The piece I don’t get is why Bread and Milk? Why not ice cream or steak?”

I agree, Devyn. Personally, I am glad there is plenty of steak and ice cream available at my local grocer before a storm – thanks to all the suckers stocking up on break and milk.

People run out to get bread and milk and other staple perishables because they are not easy to store in sufficient quantity over more than a relatively short period of time before they go bad. Bread, milk and eggs are purchased by most people on an as-needed basis because it is a rational, sensible thing to do. It is no mystery that people will be motivated to acquire these sorts of perishables when they hear that access to their usual supply may be threatened. The business principle of just in time (JIT) extends to the size of the aisles and inventory in the back room versus on the shelves for a grocery store. The number of gallons of milk on the shelf for instance is way smaller than the number in the back that is on hand. Whereas, the amount of Sweet-n-Low that a store has in its inventory is exactly what you see on the shelf and is not something people are concerned will go bad before it is used. And although the dairy section is relativley large compared to the amount of aisle space in front of the Sweet-N-Low, it is not proportional to the number of buyers of each product. A large grocery store is built to serve only about 1,000 dairy items a day although it will count on about 20,000 people living in the homes between it and the next store of equivalent capacity. At any given time, the store counts on not more than 10 people being in the dairy section at one time and puts no more than about 60 gallons of milk on the shelf but it has ten times that amount in the back on hand. If just 200 people show up and get three gallons of milk instead of their usual one, a local news camera will caputure a scene that incorrectly and artifically appears as a “shortage caused panic”. The reason people run out to get snow shovels is because they do not have them or they do not like what they have — it’s not because they get more shovels. Snow shovels are heart attacks on a stick. They are awful to use and they break. They are not ever handed down to the next generation because they break backs if they don’t break themselves. Snow shovels break more frequently than just about any other kind of yard implement. And it does not always snow a lot every season. In fact, even in typically snowy places, sometimes you can go three or four winters without having to buy a replacement for the lousy or broken snow shovel you misplaced at the end of the last season you needed to shovel snow. Anyone who has been responsible for shoveling snow and for purchasing the snow removal equipment for more than a couple years knows that the best way to ensure a nearly snowflake free winter is to purchase a brand new very expensive snow thrower. Conversely, it will be one big wet heavy dump of snow after another should you decide to see if you can get by without snow shovel.

Dave Smith–
I have thought about this too, in trying to understand, and it just seems that all of a sudden everyone needs four or five times the amount of milk they would normally consume, and while I believe that people in different parts of the world probably buy bread and milk everyday, your average American does not. So, especially in the Greater Atlanta Area where it rarely snows and if it does no one is truly homebound for more than 24 hours at the most, why does everyone need to stockpile so much milk when the weatherman hints that a single snowflake might fall? I would love to see the stats on how much milk is wasted after a snowstorm in GA. There is no way people are drinking that much more milk than usual, even if you count that the people who are buying their normal milk ration are there plus the people who would have normally bought theirs the day of the storm. By your logic that should really only be double the amount of people on the day before the storm, and believe me, if you have been in the grocery store during one of those milk and bread frenzies, there are waayyyy more than double the usual number of milk and bread buyers there. More than even five times the number, I would guess. When they have to guard the milk case, you know it is ridiculous.