Google for "costco rice shortage" when you get a chance. That was real here in Silicon Valley back in 2008 or so, although I still believe the shortage itself was a false-flag operation to see what would happen.
Ever been to Sam’s Club? I have - pretty well stocked, can’t see why there would be shortages for a long, long, time in a SHTF scenario.
...of course there are 600 of those stores serving, maybe 200,000,000 Americans. So figure 300,000 people per store. Of course there are other stores...so maybe only 10% of that number actually hit Sam’s. So each Sam’s would carry supplies for 30,000 people (their portion).
So now, given a shutdown of their supply line, how many rolls of paper towels can each person (of those 30,000) buy before they run out? I’ll give a hint - about 4 paper towels, not 4 rolls of paper towels, not 4 cases of paper towels, about 4 paper towels...THAT’S IT.
Needless to say, Sam’s will not ration that way - more likely they’ll sell it by the usual case and limit to one each - of which they may have 500 available (at most). So get there REALLY FAST, or you’ll be left like the other 29,500 people, who will see empty floor space where the paper towels once were. The run out of paper towels will be completed about 3 hours after people realize that the supply lines are cut.
Of course there is a second option - buy them BEFORE they run out. We keep at least 4 years worth of them in our house (we’re just getting to the 2009 supply, we keep them dated, of course)...along with 4 years plus of every other non-perishable item I could think of. Most items don’t take much room - with paper towels being the worst, followed by toilet paper - but most other stuff is very compact. Food is tough, simply because of the sheer quantity required and the sometimes difficult storage requirements.
Google for "costco rice shortage" when you get a chance. That was real here in Silicon Valley back in 2008 or so, although I still believe the shortage itself was a false-flag operation to see what would happen.