My friend and I ain’t no fools! We know that when the Sun goes nova, or the zombies decide to wake from their eternal rest to feed, that the only recourse for those intelligent survivalists out there is to run to your nearest Meijer Thrifty Acres and barricade the doors (hopefully, in the case of the Sun going nova, we can retrofit the building with giant boosters to launch us into deep space… ala Space Ark).
For the sake of simplification, let’s say “they” were to lock you up in a fully stocked Meijer (but devoid of other fellow survivors) indefinitely. The rules are thusly:
You cannot exit the building… this means no overstepping any threshold, or even sticking an arm out the window.
You have electricity, running water and plumbing.
Hey Opal! Whazup?!
Thaz it. Now, how would you get started? How would you alter the store? And how long until you expire?
Also, for those of you not living in the Mid-West (or Mid-East?), just insert your own local variety of Gigundus Mega-Super Grocery/General Merchandise Store.
The reason I’m asking is that you can go outside, grab all the potting and lawn soil, take it back into the store, plant vegetable seeds from packets, and start your own garden. You can create soil amendments from your body wastes, finely shredded cardboard, and other suitable materials.
I don’t think there’s a way to calculate the total amount of calories in an entire supermarket, but let’s try this:
1500 calories a day
547,500 calories a year
27,375,000 calories in 50 years
If the total number of calories of all accumulated food products in the stiore is about 30,000,000, and it’s not going to go bad, you should be set.
The other thing to worry about is medical issues. If there’s a pharmacy, you might be able to self-medicate for a limited time. If you need surgery, though, there’ll be problems.
crap. Hadn’t thought of the garden center. I’ll say it’s fair game, but only for grabbing good… then it’s back indoors. But what does one do for their protein needs when all the meat runs out?
Perhaps we gan keep them Guinea Pigs and Goldfish breeding. Mmmm… good eats.
Well, I think that needs clarification. It’s like talking about the difference between a Target and a Super-Target – there’s a LOT more food in the Super-. I could live on cereal and boxes of wine in a reg’lar Target for a while, but at das Uber Tar-jeh, I could make myself happy with heads of iceberg lettuce, smoked salmon and pre-formed chicken kiev done up right in an Easy-Bake oven for quite some time.
wow, already, I think it might be entirely possible to live a full life inside a store. That is untill the “Space Madness” sets in, then you might take a stroll down to the Hunting and Fishing isle, and load up that 30 Aught-Six with some shells, and off yerself.
A Meijer is very comparable to a Wal-Mart. It has a fullservice (very large) grocery store as well as a pharmacy, clothing and all the other stuff you find in a superstore of that type.
It would take a while to work through all the fresh meat, and even longer to work through all the canned meat. I’m alone? I’d say about 5 years.
Which is why one priority must be to immediately season and jerky all fresh meats, and can and/or pickle the fruits and vegetabes. Most of these super-stores seem to have the requisite equipment to do so inside, and it’ll keep you occupied the first three or four days.
Don’t forget that he just said you’re not allowed to leave and go outside. Make use of the employee lounge and/or any other areas of the store that you can. Head over to hunting/fishing/camping and get yourself a stove! Make your own modifications so that it runs off the natural gas supplied to the store, because you still have utilities according to the OP.
My immediate thought was “What if the gardening department is under glass?” That is technically “indoors,” isn’t it? In any case, there will be grow lights and fixtures there, so you can set up gardening in the Little Misses section. Potted tomatoes will go a looong way towards keeping you alive and healthy. Most of these places have a book aisle, so there is reading material and spare toilet paper. Hammocks strung wherever looked good. We have power, computers, TVs and Playstations to keep us occupied. With no contact with other humans, there is no threat of contagion. I could stay alive indefinately under those conditions. Until my system ran down of its own accord, of course.
The closest store of that type is our Super Target, which has a deli and in store bakery. It produces jojo potatoes and macaroni and cheese and meatloaf and fresh cakes so it has to have some sort of stove going on in back so I’d be set for cooking!
It doesn’t have an outdoor nursery, but does have a gardening center with big pots and seeds so I could try to start my own Garden of Eden near the big entry doors. (I’m assuming the zombie scourge would be looming hungrily there, so as a bonus I’d get to taunt them with my ripe, red tomatoes!).
The first problem for me would be dairy - but I suppose powdered milk can help with that and one could freeze butter? So many of the dry mixes require dairy to make.
The second problem is that Target’s Anime and game section is rather small so I’d try to burrow through the wall into the Best Buy next door. (Which isn’t allowed, but I’d think about it a lot).
Truthfully with all the canned and dried goods and the fact that one could use some of the fresh foods to create new crops if the seed section is lacking (corn, potatoes, onions etc…) I think one could survive until insanity sets in - at which point the zombie scourge will probably start looking good…
“Hi, uh, sorry – I’m looking for brains?”
“Hmmm …”
“Brains? Delicious brains?”
“Oh, brains - have you tried down aisle 5? Housewares?”
“Yeah, nothing there. Tried kitchenware, too.”
“Oh, gee, uh …”
“Well, they were in the circular this week, so I figured …”
“Well, brains are pretty popular right now, so there’s a good chance we’re sold out.”
“Do you think you’re going to get any more in?”
“What’s today, Thursday? We usually get a shipment in on Wednesday nights, but if there’s none on the shelves, I doubt if we got any. You might want to try another store.”
“Can you special order one for me?”
“Well, the fact we didn’t get in any last night probably means that they don’t have any at our distributing warehouse. You’d be waiting for quite a while.”
“Well, can you phone anoth-”
“Yeah, no, we don’t really do that. Try checking up at Customer Service to see about a raincheck, okay?”
