Since I usually shop at Walmart, and since there’s no way of knowing what is going to be “out of stock” for no apparent reason when I get there, I have learned to buy things before I run out and to have an extra one or of two of said things sitting in my pantry, not talking about perishables here, so I am ready for short-term outages or price hikes, but as I said up-thread, I don’t think there is any need to stockpile anything except cheap gasoline, assuming you can find it, at this point. Of course, that could all change tomorrow.
Storing gasoline is not safe. IMO.
We have big barn away from the house and I hate my husband and son keep a drum of diesel fuel there.
I picture the whole barn exploding and big sticks raining down.
But I’m kind of a worrywort. 
Oh…about a gas range. My modern range will light with a match. Just proved it my daughter a few days ago.
As long as I can get fire(somehow) we can cook. We have several options on this.
just for your worry-mind’s sake:
you can throw a lit match into a diesel puddle and the match will go out …
so, chances are EXTREMELY high that you will die of a different event!
(happy to be of help)
Please tell me this guy is overreacting. Please tell me he’s wrong. Please at least tell me he’s being too certain about likely events with an uncertain timeline.
ETA: It’s a very long piece, has a lot of quotations and citations to back up his arguments.
If he’s right there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. Society will collapse completely and most Americans will be dead in 6 months. So quit worrying.
And if he’s wrong, life will go on about like it has been plus/minus kinda like COVID with some supply disruptions.
I believe all new gas stoves have that.
I’ve been babying my 16-yr-old gas range, afraid of having to replace it with the kind that won’t work without electricity. My stove will work without electricity, but the oven won’t – a minor annoyance. I’ve replaced 2 oven heating ignitors (?) and a door hinge,so far.
We were told this was true of our gas stove 2024)–burners will work, oven won’t.
The guy is a nut. If I want an opinion on the near-term future of the oil supply I prefer to get it from economists and other qualified experts, not from someone who’s a self-described mystic and, among other things, holder of an Honorary Professorship at the School of Ancient Wisdom.
The US is in fact overall self-sufficient in oil, though practical realities result in a mix of both imports and exports. If there are shortages in some situations it’s likely because US oil companies have ramped up exports, allegedly to help stabilize global oil markets but I suspect more likely for profiteering. Temporary import disruptions might also cause some issues but certainly not the apocalypse that this nut is predicting.
Oh, thanks, good to hear! I’ll have to investigate for peace of mind.
Best of luck.
Some of what he says is true, but some of his conclusions don’t make any sense.
Yes, we have a crisis baked in. But not all of the world’s oil flows through that straight. The US produces a lot of oil. If we are still selling it abroad to ease the immediate crisis, that’s because we DON’T yet have a crisis at home. And while it’s possible our government is so messed up that we will have a “there is no oil” crisis, I don’t think it will come to that. Like, the Irish starved during the potato famine in part because they were shipping food to the UK. But that’s because the UK owned most of the capital. I don’t think the US is going to starve itself.
It’s true that CA gets most of it’s oil from the middle east. But it’s not true that it can’t get oil from the US. We may not have good pipelines for that, but we have a lot of trucks and trains that can carry oil. Does that cost more? Yes. Will our food prices go up Hell yes. Will we have widespread food shortages? I don’t think so.
Is someone going to starve because of this? Yes, probably. But probably not in the US.
Will stocking up help? That helps if there’s a short-term disruption. It doesn’t help if there’s a widespread famine. Not unless all your neighbors stocked up, too, and you are a large enough group to collectively defend yourself from everyone else who is hungry.
As Y2K approached, I realized that I routinely have a week of survival food in my pantry (peanut butter goes a long way) and stored a few days of water in my basement. I figured that it was possible there’d be a disruption that would take a day or two to resolve, and it would be convenient to have some water, just in case. And also, that there was no point stockpiling more than that, because if my town couldn’t deliver water for a week, I was just screwed.
I was a “prepper” for Y2K. I was a “prepper” for covid. I’m not planning any preparation for this one. Except that I am bracing myself to spend a lot more for everything.
Yay, it’s only some very high-end models that no longer work without electricity! Thanks for letting me know. That’s one less thing I have to worry about now.
You’re welcome. I insisted on this feature. I’m still not happy to have a gas rather than wood fireplace in relation to emergency food prep, but the stove, fireplace, and water heater are gas.
My non-stocking up activity sometime soon will be going through all the canned goods, removing those more than a year past best-buy date, and determining which usual staples and emergency foods to buy. I have a fantasy that whenever we get real garage shelves, I’ll set one up with cans by expiration year so we use or donate more of them.
These two are really the bottom line for any impending “crisis”, real or imagined.
The logistical impact of a crisis is either so minor that stocking up is largely pointless feel-good that ends up being collectively harmful, or it’ll prove utterly inadequate to the actual civilization-wrenching change we’re all about to live (and mostly die) through. There’s not really much middle case for most people.
The financial impact of short or long term crisis-driven inflation is real. But if you have the free cash to “invest” in pre-buying enough goods to move your needle, you have enough that the price increases will be annoyances, not lifestyle-altering. if you don’t have the money to buy e.g. a year’s worth of everything, then you won’t save enough money long enough to matter to you. One more bag of pre-crisis priced cat litter before you have to switch to post-crisis priced cat litter just won’t matter.
Eh, i was happy to have a small stock of everything during the pandemic. Lots of little disruptions that i avoided. I had enough toilet paper that i was able to buy a super-thin spindle and then order a case of commercial paper that didn’t fit on regular household spindles before running out of the regular stuff. Of course, i didn’t run out to buy that case before the pandemic, i had already formed the habit of buying by the case, because it’s convenient. But i was happy to have several pounds of dried rice and beans, and dried fruit, even if it took a chunk of space on the formal dining room.
What’s driving the food concerns is that fertilizer and it’s raw ingredients flow in significant amounts through the Strait of Hormuz. Farmers are reporting a fertilizer shortage in the US. They’re still buying fertilizer, but using less per acre. This will mean lower yields. Combine with the usual weather unpredictability, water shortages out west, and so on and there will be less food produced in the US. Tariffs will make importing items to make up shortfalls more expensive than in the past (not to mention a lot of other regions will also be experiencing fertilizer shortages and weather problems).
So… not container ships of broccoli so much as container ships of stuff like potash.
Just as some folks shrug all that off, confident the grocery store will always have food no matter what, others predict dire shortages. Some folks are thus stocking up on food.
For myself - I’ve long maintained a 3-6 month pantry. Currently I’ve a 3 month one and no more, because I simply don’t have enough room for more. I dehydrate vegetables and fruit because 1) snacks (for the fruit) and 2) I’m only one person and this lets me take advantage of bulk sales that, over time, reduce my food costs. In fact, I have a pound of sweet peppers dehydrating as I type. But this is something I’ve done for decades.
I do have a stash of freeze-dried food, but that is because I go camping and it is very handy to have a couple meals that only require hot water to prepare. Also handy for the rare (for this area) natural disaster but that’s a very modest amount because, again, I don’t have a lot of room.
Home food preservation can be a way to reduce the cost of food but it’s not mandatory.
For most items, I have one container open that I’m using and 1 as a back-up. That’s not just food, that’s cleaning products, toothpaste, deodorant, TP, etc. When I run out I just open the next then put it on the shopping list so I’ll replace it before I run out again.
For myself - the only thing I’ve done recently to “stock up” was to take advantage of a sale to purchase an entire year’s worth of allergy medication for myself. Medication sales can be interrupted by international shipping problems and other supply line issues and, given I have some very serious allergies, it made sense both from the standpoint of saving money and providing a cushion against possible supply line issues.
That’s it. For me. YMMV.
But I’m an American living in a nation with abundant resources, military power (which I feel is currently being mis-used but it’s not like anyone asked my opinion), and wealth. It’s people in other parts of the world with much more reason to worry.
I am fully convinced that there are people in the US who in fact would happily see other people starve, including some of their own neighbors. And yes, I mean that literally. But I don’t want to de-rail this into politics and class warfare so I’ll just leave that there.
Having actually tested this with a few forgotten cans in the back of my pantry, and also consulting with others who have tested this in the real world…
Assuming reasonable storage conditions the food in cans will still taste OK to good up to two years past that best-by date. From 3-4 years it gets a little less tasty but proper application of condiments will disguise most to all of it. Anything past that… I’d eat it during a Zombie Apocalypse or genuine famine but otherwise it’s the trash.
IF the seal of the can is intact, and the rest of the can is intact, the food inside should be non-toxic “indefinitely”. It won’t hurt you to eat it. There are even people on YouTube who make a thing about trying very, very old food. But for most of us we’d rather just get something newer.
To be honest, if the Substack piece is even close to being accurate about how bad things are going to get, the bright side (if there is one) is that it might lead to the Republicans losing control of Congress in the elections this year, despite all of their manipulating districts to ensure victory. Given how idiotic the decision to undergo this war was, that would be fitting.
Nothing wrong with stocking up a bit. Grabbing an extra case when it’s on offer, getting some spare cans for later.
Even for minor disruptions, it means you don’t need to get food for a while. I know people who shop every day and keep almost nothing in the cupboard, just stuff like spices, salt and oil, with everything else bought on demand and replaced when used up. They all live within an easy stroll of a supermarket, but that would still get me jumpy. Where I previously lived an unexpected snowfall cut all the main roads to the town for several days and I was very glad I had gained the habit of keeping a few weeks worth of long-life food around, as the shelves were bare for almost a week- both from the initial disruption and the panic buying that followed. Handy when I got sick straight after coming back from holiday and no delivery slots were available as well.
Even if it does get more serious, it’s not necessarily all or nothing; I know my paternal grandparents -who lived through over a decade of rationing in the UK- kept a large rotating stash of dried food and tins for the rest of their lives, enough to turn the minimal diet available through rationing into a pleasant one* for at least a year if it ever happened again. I’m not going to say they were being silly to do that.
*By their standards
When i lived in Manhattan, and had no extra space, u had to learn to live without keeping a backup of anything. I grew up in a spacious house, and we always had extra around.
Now that i live on a spacious house, i like Broomstick,
I typically keep a back up of things that aren’t fresh produce or meat. And i have some frozen meat and frozen veggies in the basement “pandemic freezer”.
Famous family quote from my Paternal grandmother (ref: WWII rationing)
“We better stock up [on sugar?] before the hoarders get it all”
Brian