Of course, Mormons being individual human beings they vary in how diligent they are about that practice. Not all have a year’s worth, or six months worth, or any at all. Like some non-Mormon preppers some of them will buy a “package” of items that might include things like “wheat berries” that would need to be further processed - did you remember to include a hand mill to turn that into flour? No? Have you heard of frumenty and do you know how to make that? Then there are issues of storage and rotation. Some people are good at it, some are not. While there are a few things that have a genuine 20-30 year shelf life most do not, but I guarantee some Mormon stockpiles were purchased decades ago and forgotten, of very questionable utility.
It’s not actually a religious requirement even if the church and culture strongly encourages that. Large families can make that challenging just from the standpoint of finding a place to store literal tons of food, never mind the cost of it all.
I’ll just note that the belief that “all Mormons keep a year’s worth of food” can make them a target of people lacking food, whether or not those Mormons actually do have that much.
I’ve been keeping a 1-3 month “prepper pantry” for decades (even if I haven’t always called it that) and if you don’t integrate it into your usual use you won’t rotate items, and you won’t inspect it often enough to catch things that have gone bad (something always goes bad, gets broken, is found by bugs, mice, mold, etc.). Then there’s the whole issue of storing things you don’t like/won’t eat. If you store raw ingredients like dry beans and wheat berries you need to know how to turn those into food - it’s not hard, but you have to know how to do it. Are you able to do that if you can’t access the internet? (Yes, yes, I know a lot of us old farts can do that but a lot of people can’t).
I was joking with my brother that the prepper canned foods his friends/clients were buying were just relabeled Hormel, Campbell’s and Del Monte cans relabeled with the expiration date changed from 2/2026 to 2/2035 and the price increased tenfold. Same with MREs.
150 years ago food production, not to mention storage & transportation, was pretty primitive and inefficient compared to today. Those are the reasons for famines that are no more, even with massively bigger populations.
I think it will help to define the catastrophe and thus what resources will be available.
Here are three possibilities…
Zombie Apocalypse
A highly infectious disease (spread by biting at least) has turned 90% of the population into zombies. (They are undead and need no food or water. Their sole motivation is to infect the living.)
Government (local and national) has collapsed, but the infrastructure is intact. So power supplies continue until lack of maintenance causes failure. Shops have stored supplies (but you have to get past roaming zombies to reach them)
Nuclear war
All major cities have been destroyed and 60% of the population are dead.
There is no national infrastructure (e.g. power) and no supplies / resources in any city.
Civil War
The country is ruled by a Dictator who has declared a ‘national emergency’. The Constitution has been ‘suspended’ and no election will be held until the ‘emergency’ is declared over.
Most of the army (say 60%) are obeying the Dictator, but the country is split with armed resistance in about 40% of the country.
Infrastructure is largely intact and shops are available locally.
Back in 1998/1999, I stumbled on a Y2K discussion online community. Not surprisingly, there were preppers among the “we’re all going to die” contingent (and also the “better safe than sorry” folks). One of the guys most convinced of the upcoming societal breakdown had a signature tagline (paraphrased after these years - the original was pithier as I fail to recall it) “If you live within 5 miles of a 7-11, you’re doomed”.
As an aside, everyone was basically civil to each other, which I can’t imagine in our modern online society. The most active members (including Mr 7-11) apparently all met up in real life sometime in 2000, at least in part to use up some of their supplies. From the pre-2000 discussions, some of them had a lot of 5-gallon buckets of dried beans to work through.
It is sort of interesting how some prepper forums are quite civilized.
One prepper I’ve encountered on such a forum is still using up some of his Y2K supplies. Dude apparently has caches of stuff buried in all different locations, lives in a rural areas, etc. Admits he did go a bit overboard in the past and it is no longer spending so many resources on that. Also full of very good advice for folks just getting into the concept of “maybe I should have a 72 hour kit” without judgement or calls for them to move into the wilderness.
But… it’s 26 years later and you’re still working on the Y2K stash? Dude…!
Well yes. It seems maybe my point wasn’t fully made.
If due to the Crisis food production methods crash back to 150 years ago, 1875, then food production quantities will too. With 95% of the populace working skillfully and diligently in agriculture we might feed some of us. The rest will starve. And we’re not going to get to 95% working skillfully or diligently before the existing food supplies run out.
US population then was ~55M. It’s 340M now. 7x the people. There isn’t 7x the arable land, especially not in a world without irrigation.
My point, that I didn’t quite put onto the page, was that the loss of modern agriculture will ensure that famine alone will kill WAG 90% of Americans in just weeks to months. That’s before we consider the death toll from disease or violence.
I prepped for y2k. I bought a week’s supply of bottled water and food that didn’t need cooking or refrigeration. Actually, i bought the water, and some wasa crisps for bread. But my cupboard was already full of peanut butter and canned beans, and i decided i didn’t need to add to that.
I thought a disruption was likely enough that i should prepare for it. And i also thought that if the disruption lasted more than a week, i was screwed, whatever i did.
My husband still teases me about the wasa crisps (they keep for weeks on the shelf) but i like them, and eventually ate all of them.
I also prepped at the start of covid. I expected supply chain issues. I went to the local Indian grocery store and bought a lot of rice and beans. And i mail-ordered some dried fruit. Later in the pandemic, when i was appalled at the treatment of slaughter house workers, i found some local sources of meat that was slaughtered by a small collective, and (win) delivered the meat to my door.
But if my neighbors had been starving, i would have shared. I have no defenses, and also, i wouldn’t be able to live with myself if i somehow succeeded in keeping my food from my neighbors.
If society collapses around me, I’ll die. I’m not prepping for that scenario.
I like watching documentaries about preppers because it makes me feel better about dying early on in the apocalypse.
I watched one about a prepper facility - someone had built a giant underground complex with lots of storage space and different sized apartments depending on how much you wanted to spend to reserve your space and the usual bumph. It was extremely clear to be that in the event of a disaster that resulted in any lengthy close-quarters living situation, the floor would be running red with blood in short order (think “High-Rise”) because I’m guessing the sort of people inclined to buy space in such a facility will trend toward fearful, paranoid, and not at all altruistic.
Among the many problems with reviving massive agriculture is this: far fewer draft animals (horses and oxen, primarily) available to power the plows, wagons, carts, and other such necessities when petroleum-fueled machinery is no longer an option, not to mention enough people with the skills and knowledge to use them, train them, care for them, and so forth.
ISTR that a Doper purchased an acreage a few years ago, and while doing some excavations to remodel outbuildings in one way or another, found assorted caches of 5-gallon buckets which contained a variety of edible and non-food supplies, dated from the late 1990s.
This is my strategy too. I do serious prep based on hurricane season, and can handle a week or so on my own - food, water, generator, propane, etc. It’s enough to tide me over until things start to get back to normal. I also take into account a few friends and family members that I know won’t have supplies.
I used to work for a major insurance company. They had plans to survive (and pay claims) after major earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. But they explicitly assumed they would just go belly up in a nuclear war (despite the war exclusion) and other civilization-shattering events.
Honestly, I really don’t care about surviving the fall of society; it doesn’t seem worth it.
There’s a Far Side comic where a male and female survivor are climbing out of a hatch in the ground, and the man is exclaiming “Thank God, Sylvia! We’re alive!” And from there to the horizon there’s nothing but barren land and burning wreckage; raising the question of what they’ve survived for. That comic kinds of sums up my feelings on the subject.
I try to keep a stockpile that’ll last a few weeks, in case of service interruptions, natural disasters or just getting sick (I live alone). I even have a “bug out bag” with a few days of emergency supplies, in case I have to abandon my apartment because of an earthquake or the like. But I don’t bother with any plans on how to survive the apocalypse.
Preppers usually stock up on guns and ammunition for self-defense. This is important, because there’ll be a non-trivial cohort of survivors who hoarded nothing but weapons.
I don’t think there’ll be a lot of coffeehouse moralizing in the post-collapse world. If you have a lot of food and don’t share with your neighbors, they’ll simply come and kill you, and you’ll be forced to stay holed up in your vault or whatever to wait them out.
Good point. A LOT of people are dependent on maintenance meds to have anything resembling longevity.
I recall reading some novel about a post-Fall world. Might’ve been Warday. But whichever work it was, one line that stuck with me was something close to:
The mass deaths came especially swiftly to Florida, land of the aging retirees dependent on others.
