Re:Disaster prepping is mainstream again
by blhack on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @12:58PM
(#25060842)
I think what those people were trying to hedge against was a short term loss of basic infrastructure like water or power. It wasn't meant to last for 2 months, it was meant to last for a few days.
Re:Disaster prepping is mainstream again
by ghaff on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @01:14PM
(#25061010)
I definitely know people who were posting online about how they had 6 months supply of dry and canned goods socked away. A few days makes sense in any case; I actually lost power for 2-3 days this summer just because of a storm. But I could easily cover that with just what I normally have in the house.
Re:Disaster prepping is mainstream again
by qqqwerty on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @04:08PM
(#25063000)
To be fair to those people, at the beginning of the pandemic there was a lot of uncertainty around COVID-19 transmission rates. Buying a few weeks of food was a good way to hedge against the potential case where COVID-19 was so virulent that even going to a grocery store presented a high risk of transmission. Of course, we now know that even in a hotspot grocery shopping using basic precautions is fairly safe. But it was not clear at the time.
At the time of the original virus shutdown in the US, I saw a ton of essentially panic buying of things (like canned goods and rice) and bottled water that seemed to be aimed at a complete infrastructure breakdown. Yet, I'm guessing that most of the people preparing to hole up for months lacked many of the other things they'd need if they actually lost electricity and water for an expended period of time.
While of course they would need many other things as well, if you actually believe that there's going to be widespread societal breakdown, you probably do want a gun and ammo in addition to food, large quantities of water, and so forth.