World Bank says not to horde food or gasoline.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) March 14, 2022
It’s real.
World Bank’s Malpass warns against hoarding of food or gasoline
When those fuckers are telling you not to horde food and gas it’s because they don’t want the competition.
I worked for a company that declared bankruptcy, sent out an email blast with the new corporate severance package, then HR followed up with an email how everything is fine and that was just an FYI policy update. The next week a third of my co-workers were laid off.
This statement from the World Bank feels a lot like HR telling me that the severance policy email was nothing to worry about.
Anyone who listens to the WB has his (or her) own problems.
Why listen.
They are irrelevent.
Sure they got power.
Aint nothin Unbreakable.
Nothing.
The chippers wait
Isn’t that just fun.
I worked for a company that changed corporate ownership, which meant (among other things) migrating intranet networks, transitioning computer OS images and software packages (and versions), and re-working life-cycle and procurement to be in line with the new corporate umbrella. (That was not the extent of it, but understand I work in IT, so that’s primarily what I remember.)
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It also meant changing corporate insurance and health care plans.
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I will never forget the HR lady, standing in front of a room full of employees, positively gushing about how the new plans will cover more at a reduced cost and be better than the old plans…
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… and then unveiled the HDHP model. (For those unaware of corporate-speak: High-Deductible Health Plan.)
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The plans did indeed cover more; the list of covered visits and procedures was longer. And the monthly premiums did indeed cost slightly less.
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But the deductibles increased to $5k or $8k … from around $2k; they weren’t kidding about High-Deductible.
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There was much outrage and grumbling during that meeting. And the HR lady just smiled and assured us everything was going to be great. (The lived reality: We paid much more than before; we rarely met the full deductible before year’s end. The vast majority of our check-ups and appointments were paid out-of-pocket, in addition to the monthly premiums.)
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Because of that experience, I listen twice — and read three times — on every word HR says. To paraphrase author Robert Jordan (God rest his soul): HR cannot lie, but the truth they tell and the truth you hear are often very different.
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The World Bank is acting like World Government HR. If they’re saying to not hoard food and fuel, I’m thinking I don’t have nearly enough set aside.
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I will also need more ammunition.
Years ago I, and every other person in our district, were required to attend the HR presentation on the new insurance plan. The company was moving from one plan to another.
The lady went on and on about how wonderful the new plan was (it did get us dental and eye, which we needed). Then she got to the kicker:
This will save the company X millions of dollars per year! The cost per employee only goes up around Y dollars per month!
So, being the math dude I am, I looked at my employee number, as a relatively new hire. Did the math and raised my hand…
“So the company has about Z employees. Our costs is going up by $Y per month. $Y*Z*12 is almost exactly equal to what the company is saving. Are you just passing on the costs to us?”
I was invited to be a part of a “committee” that was looking into getting the answers to all these questions. The committee meet one time, that day. The company never did answer any of our “hard” questions.
Archer is right. If you do not have at least a Weeks Supply of food set aside? Do it now!
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Canned Food works great. Frozen and refrigerated food will likely go bad when the power goes out. I have been buying extra cans of soup and vegetables, and tuna when it is on sale. All stuff I normally eat anyway, just a little more.
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You do not necessarily need the 20 year storable freeze dried food, unless you think you are going to need to carry it on your backs, although a few meals for everyone might be a good idea if you may have to bug out on foot.
I don’t think a weeks supply of food will last long enough to realize just how bad the coming shitstorm really is.
First you have to decide on what your assumptions are. Power out for a week but civilization intact? That’s a small problem, easily handled by a modest food supply plus a way to prepare it. (In our case, that means a generator.)
If you want to assume something else, like an EMP attack that takes out computers all over the country, now you need an entirely different set of preparations and a much longer time span. Can you grow your own food, in sufficient quantity, and prepare it, and defend it from looters?
What’s being done to America, isn’t going away for a long while, even if the republicans win back control of government, because a LARGE percentage of them are demoncrats in sheep’s clothing. When the SHTF, it will not pretty or quick.
I think I should be stocking up on gardening and canning supplies in addition to rice and beans. Biden gardens are going to be the new norm i think.
We are having the family discussion on reducing our costs for food and preparing for the coming years.
First, we are getting a boatload more canning lids and jars. We only have a few hundred jars right now and not nearly enough lids for all of them.
Second, the family is working the garden this year. We expect to put away 100+ jars of things from our garden. In addition, we’ll be taking advantage of the free apples (for the picking) and other places where we can pick and save. And all of that is coming home. The sort of thing where we buy four or five bushels of tomatoes to can.
We are also looking at increasing our chicken count. We only have 5 right now. We need to increase that and start growing our own. If we can get to the point where we can harvest a chicken once a month and have eggs for other times, that would be wonderful. They won’t let me raise rabbits, as rabbits == bunnies == pets.
We are looking into getting some goats, they provide hair that can be turned into yarn and such. Yes, I know how to do that and have done it in the past. Time to get the loom out and setup.
In addition to all of the above, we are going to go to the local feed store and buy a few hundred pounds of unmedicated feed corn. It turns out that feed corn is just dried corn that can be turned into corn flour or corn meal with the equipment we have on hand. The only thing that you have to do is clean it. You can clean the feed corn pretty easily.
LEARN to bake your own bread. Get some yeast. It is amazing how much better it tastes and how much better for you good homemade bread is. And it is likely cheaper once things get a bit more expensive.
Get yourself a grill that uses propane. Make sure it has a side burner. You now have a way to cook when there is no electricity or the natural gas is cut off. We have both the grill and a propane burner. We use the propane burner to bring 10 gallon pots to the boil. They can also be used for canning.
Lastly, and very important, now how to use everything you buy. A few years ago I watched as a newly wed couple at the local LDS cannery very carefully checked their list and walked out with a couple of hundred dollars worth of canned, long term stores. I asked the young lady if she knew how to cook or use the wheat berries she had purchased. She had no idea. She didn’t know how to grind it to flour, she didn’t know how to make any thing from it. She had it. She was ready.
Be able to use every tool and supply you have. You just bought a new gun. You take it to the range to find out how it handles. Have you tried opening one of those cans of long term stores? Do you have a working can opener? Maybe you should invest in a handful of P-38s. You have a wonderful water filter/pump. How long does it take to pump 5 gallons of water to fill your water jug from that puddle out in back of your house? How do you back flush it? How do you replace the filter?
How do you prepare one of those meals you got, ready to eat. Have you ever sampled a 72hr bar? Are you really willing to eat 72hr bars for the next 3 weeks?
Just to put this in perspective, Amazon wants $38-$65 for 25 pounds of corn meal. I just picked up 100lbs of corn that we can grind into corn meal OR corn flour for $30.
Yes, it is sold as animal feed. But as the lady behind the counter explained, it is straight from the cob to the bag. Nothing is done to it.
What Therefore said. I can’t tell you how many people I know have no idea how to open a can without an electric can opener. Trust me when I say, rubbing it on concrete is not going to get you where you want to be.
My goal is to have about 18 months of food on hand. Why? Because worst case scenario has TEOTWAWKI happen right about mid-July… too late to plant most foods in my part of the world. So I need to last all summer, *plus* all next summer while stuff is growing. And I need the seeds to grow what I can, that “next year”. And some of what I grow has to become seed for the *following* year, so I have to account for that.
Be aware, too, of how much is “enough”. It’s easy to look at your food supply and go, “Yeah, that’s a lot.” Try living out of it for a week. Watch how fast it goes down. We’re *spoiled*, America… We eat 6oz of protein (usually meat) at most sittings at the table. That’s 18 oz or more every day! The average can of tuna is 5 oz, and I know that when I plan my preps, that can of tuna represents *two* people for a meal. That means that my preps assume I am going to be feeding each person HALF of what they’re currently getting. And in a TEOTWAWKI situation, we’re all going to be working a lot harder than currently, meaning our need for fuel is going to go up up up. I bought a flat of canned turkey when it was on sale, great price. 24 cans of delicious protein! That’s 6oz cans. For my family of 6, that means it’s 10 meals. Maybe. That’s it. What looks big in my pantry is actually very, very small in the grand scheme of things.
I have tons of dried beans, because they’re good sources of protein, keep forever, and you can plant them to make MORE beans (most brands anyhow… easy to test). I know how to cook with those beans… but I know a ton of people who hoard beans and other legumes, who’ve never eaten a bean that didn’t come out of a can.
You have to know what to do with it. It can’t be your first time, DURING the emergency. You have to practice this stuff beforehand.