A number of people I know have become “preppers.”
According to Oxford, a prepper is “a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically, by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.”
Some of the people I know would take issue with the phrase “a disaster is likely to occur” and replace it with the phrase “a disaster is in progress.”
I had coffee a few weeks ago with a school cook and a hospital cook from two different states. Both said it’s become difficult to fulfill menu offerings because “the stuff just doesn’t come in.” Orders that used to be shy one item are now shy by six.
A manufacturing plant manager said her company can’t get the metals it needs to manufacture the nuts and bolts it produces.
A guy wanting to stripe a parking lot said there is a shortage of parking lot striping paint.
A pharmacist friend who makes custom medicines said her products are ruined when the delivery service, which is short of truck drivers, simply does not show up to pick up the order. “They don’t even call to say they can’t do it,” she said. (She used other words, too, but this is a family newspaper.)
A friend who works in a nursing home said, “We posted a job for a CNA (certified nurse assistant) for three weeks. No one applied.”
This is the world the preppers are getting ready for. Not the world where you can’t get parking lot striping paint, but the world where you can’t get employees or bread.
The day preppers are prepping for is the day “the stuff hits the fan.” The day that you and I find the grocery store shelves empty is the day they survey their hidden stash of canned goods and high-protein dried goods.
It seems like madness that anyone thinks that way in the United States of America in 2021. But the last time I was at Costco, I noticed only one half-filled pallet of toilet paper packages remained on display. So of course I bought one.
It can’t hurt to be prepared.