I have very little faith in my fellow man to behave well in an emergency and awhile ago I got to see a little bit of that in action. Being frugal by nature I buy my bread at a local bakery outlet where the bread is shipped because it’s nearing its expiration date. The place opens Saturday at 10:00 am sharp and first in gets the bread for a dollar a loaf, regardless of what kind you get. That includes hamburger and hotdog buns, donuts, and whole grain breads. Whatever’s on the shelf, it’s all for a buck. Quite a deal eh?
We found this little place about a year ago and we go about every two weeks to stock up. When we first started going we’d get there a little after 10:00 and there’d be four or five cars in the parking lot. Everybody was nice and polite and easy to talk to. This morning we got there right at 10:00 and there was a good-sized line reaching into the parking lot. My wife jumped out of the truck and made her way to the end of the line and trooped inside with the rest while I sat outside with my son.
There must have been twenty or more cars in the parking lot and I watched, fascinated, as one woman who already had her bread, backed out and motioned to another vehicle to take her parking spot. As she pulled out some guy in a minivan screeched into the vacated spot cutting off the other car and some guy jumped out and literally ran into the store. The car that got shut out had to continue looking for a parking spot.
My wife came out about five minutes later and I could see she was mad. She piled the bread into the truck and started telling me about some of the behavior in the store. People were elbowing each other and trying to cut in line in front of each other. She said, “One guy came in acting like a dick,” and described the fellow in the minivan and some rather boorish behavior.
She described one petite elderly woman who was trying to get a loaf of bread on the top shelf and couldn’t quite reach it. When nobody offered to help my wife finally stepped up and tried to hand the loaf to the woman, only to have the woman scrabble at the counter in a panic. My wife said, “Hold on, I’m trying to help you,” and handed the woman the loaf of bread. The woman was very thankful, but it says a lot when nobody will help the elderly in a stressful situation like that doesn’t it?
We talked a little in the truck and I said, “I can see how things could really go to hell in a Katrina-like situation now.” She agreed with me and we talked about how the weak will get beat by the strong and ruthless when TSHTF for real. Who will advocate for the elderly? The handicapped? The weak?
I’m sure we all have family members who are older, or handicapped, have medical issues or otherwise won’t be able to care for themselves or, at the very least, will need assistance to survive. Do your survival plans take them into account?
If/when something does happen and the grid goes down – even temporarily – how will your family and friends survive? It might be a good idea to talk with these folks about having a plan in place. If they don’t believe anything will ever happen and it does, you have two options: First, you could say, “I told you so,” and leave them to their fate because they were too stubborn to listen to you. Or, when making plans you could take them into account and prepare for them. 
This adds a lot of complexity to your survival plans of course, but if you prep for your children doesn’t it make sense to prepare for the elderly or handicapped as well? What will they need to survive if the lights go out for a couple of weeks? Medicine? Food? Water? What if they need to be evacuated? How will you move them? I never leave anything up to the government, as I’m sure you don’t, so it will probably fall on your shoulders because you’re the one who’s got a plan and has a level of preparedness that others don’t. What are you going to do?
Believe me, there’s nothing worse than a crisis situation and everybody turns to you and says, “What do we do?” and you don’t know because you don’t have a plan.
What’s your plan?
-Jarhead Survivor
Bread Lines, Politeness, and Survival When TSHTF. It’s Not Going to be Pretty
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14 comments
Tip of the iceburg folks. Just a glimpse of what is to come and it will get much worse. Violence will become the norm as people with no skills make efforts to survive the only way they know how. The bread issue will degrade to the point that it would be better to go to sams and buy a 100lb bag of flour and store it in the freezer(to keep the weavels from getting it) and just make your own bread.
Tip of the iceburg – exactly my point. The breadline itself is immaterial, it’s the way people reacted that was important when they perceived they were competing for limited resources. I agree about the bread – it’s better to have the home made fixin’s on hand and make your own.
yup. Taste better and healthieranyway.
That’s a good point. It’s better to prepare the raw materials and know how to use them. If you happen to be caught with your pants down if TSHTF the grocery stores would be a nightmare. What would the line at the local grain elevator / farmer’s coop look like? Probably busy, but not nearly as bad. Thinking outside the box might give you the time to prep a little bit even at zero hour.
Friends: That’s easy. I don’t have many friends, just a few that might as well be family. They don’t prep to the extent I do, but their parents and grandparents do and they live literally within a couple miles of their family. In many ways they’re in better shape than I am with their family farm that remains in operation. They’re heading to their family farm.
Family: I have a few preppers in my family and we’ve worked out gameplans as to who will take who. Everyone has been accounted for. There are some sick/handicapped/elderly members that will become my responsibility. They’re on oxygen and quite a bit of meds, and that will all disappear once TSHTF. I’ll just have to do the best I can to nurse them back to health naturally. Evacuation could present a problem but we have the resources to make it happen as long as we retain our vehicles. You can only do so much.
Neighbors: My neighbors are prepping more and more and I’ve set aside 3 months for each family (without their knowledge). They have skills that I do not have and I’m trying to plan at the community level so we can be sustainable.
That’s terric that you’re planning for your community as well as your family and friends.
seems thats the way it is, but first ditch the grains, they are bad for you, when SHTF bakeries will not exist
I have to say I encountered exactly the opposite when I shopped at a bread outlet last week. The parking lot was loaded with cars and there was just one space left when I entered the lot.
The store was packed of mostly elderly people trying to get bread and other baked goods before the storm hit. Everyone in there was so polite and pleasant. There seemed to be a sense of community amongst everyone there. It was refreshing to experience. I can only imagine that if that guy in the minivan had come in there and behaved the way he did at your store, I think everyone in the store would gladly have let him go to the front of the line just to get him out of there.
I have to tell you that my mother, who lives with my family now, is a rock. She is 67 and has a few health issues (high cholesterol and mild high blood pressure), but is entirely into planning for the SHTF. She has soooo much knowledge from her father who grew up during the depression. She can fix so many things! She knows how to stay cool in tough situations and actually keeps me focused. I know I would have to bug in with her and the family, she is aware of her surroundings and has learned a lot, including how to shoot! And as the saying goes…ever seen a momma bear defend her cubs? My Mom can be ferocious! Lord help anyone trying to hurt her family!
Stay Safe Everyone!
Personally, and maybe it’s just me, I have a hard time dealing with people acting like an a$$ in public. 99% of the time I am the guy who tells folks like that to shut-up, learn some manners and stay home if they don’t know how to conduct themselves! Honestly (not to sound “macho”) I have never had anyone start “talking smack” after I say that to them. The ~1% of the time I don’t say something to a person acting like that, is if someone else “beats me to the punch”.
As far as caring for the “weaker” people in the community, in my opinion and I don’t care if it sounds “sappy” or whatever, caring for and defending people who can’t defend themselves is a BIG part of what it means to be American. Unfortunately, a vast number of people these days are “self-centered” and don’t care about anything that does not directly benefit them. Again, maybe it’s just me, but if things get to the point where the majority of people around me are acting like that and we are living in an extreme “me or you” environment, let’s just say folks like that won’t want to cross my path!
My folks are both diabetic, my father has a form of “Gulf War Syndrome” and they both take quite a bit of medications. Luckily the doc’s have been pretty supportive of the “prepping” idea, and have allowed them to get a 90day surplus of most medications. Beyond that, we’ll just have to see what happens, but I would do anything needed to ensure my folks have everything they need to get by. They looked out for me when I was a kid, and through several back and knee surgeries over the years. So I will do anything within my power to ensure they are safe and healthy, no matter what situation happens to come along!
In your 2nd paragraph you say it is just American – I say it is just Christian.
Agreed, but since our laws and government structure is based on Judea-Christian beliefs (including laws, values and mores) it could be stated that if the statement worded as “It is just Christian” it encompasses “being American” regardless of the persons religious beliefs. Not trying to “split hairs”, I just feel that it covers more of the population the way I worded it, but both work. Either way there is no excuse for people acting in the manner described by several people here, and personally I get sick of it REAL quick!
I live in Florida and was here for 3 hurricanes in 2004. FEMA set up stations in a couple of locations in town so people could pick up water, ice and MREs. They had the national guard at these sites for people control, and they were necessary. There was also a lot of looting going on and someone broke through my wooden stockade fence to try to steal the generator. Luckily we had it on a huge chain attached to a column on our porch.