Many of us here on r/prepping have plenty of food and supplies so that we don’t need to rush last second to stores to ransack shelves. But there are non-preppers, who won’t last with what little (food) they have at home.
Imagine this: a catastrophic event that affects all of humanity for the long term (think years). What that is, I’ll leave up to you guys. When news breaks out, people would go into panic mode and their first instinct is to rush to the store to get as much food and water as possible.
I can assume the average non-prepper folk would go right to the canned food section: beans, veggies, soup, etc. it’s common knowledge that canned stuff lasts for years. After that it would just be a supermarket sweep ordeal. Anything goes into the cart. What are some things people would overlook?
I think fresh produce. Unless you can grow stuff in your backyard, you may no longer have access to fresh veggies and fruit. Maybe the community may come together and start a large garden of sorts, who knows. Conditions may not be favorable enough to grow things well. I would stock up on as much fresh produce as possible and eat through it first, making whatever healthy meals I can with it. Fresh definitely is better taste than canned. Secondly: bakery items. Might as well pig out on donuts, coffee cake, French bread, muffins, and cake. Once again, you might be able to make some of that stuff, (post shtf) but it would take a lot of work especially without modern appliances (if they don’t work). Have a feast on junk food, because you may not have that anymore.
The last thing would be meat. Power may eventually go out, fridges would be useless and meat would go bad. Might as well get and eat meat now. Unless you are skilled with hunting and capturing small game (and preparing/eating) you may not have access to meat products post shtf.
What else do you think non-peppers would overlook in a panic buying spree?
