“...People are preparing...”
My wife gets upset with me every time UPS delivers a case of Mountain House to the front door.
Oh well...
My libinlaw was helping us move last year and saw the amount of stored food, etc that we had -
AND WAS MAD, MAD, MAAAAAAAAD.
The reason, for her, was that it was a concrete expression of lack of faith in her god, government.
The reason for your wife might be that she doesn’t want to be reminded of coming hard times.