Nine Meals from Anarchy
Posted by PrepperApr 29
The phrase ‘nine meals from anarchy’ sounds more like the title of a bad Hollywood movie than any genuine threat.
This expression was coined by Lord Cameron of Dillington to describe how perilous Britain’s food supply is.
The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the fuel that now streams steadily through the pumps and into the engines of vehicles which deliver food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.
If the trucks stopped moving, we’d start to worry and we’d head out to the stores, stocking up our pantries. By the end of Day One, if there was still no fuel , the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We’d be in a panic. Day three: still no fuel.
What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn’t stocked up began stealing from their neighbors? Or looting what they could get their hands on?
If this happened during warm summer months, home gardeners might produce some food for themselves, but your delicious summer peas won’t go far when your kids are hungry and the canned food has run out.
It was Lord Cameron’s estimation that it would take just nine meals - three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos. A far-fetched warning for a First World nation like Britain, or even the United States? Hardly. Because that’s exactly what happened in the U.S, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. People looted in order to feed themselves and their families.
If a similar tragedy was to befall Britain, we are fooling ourselves if we imagine we would not witness similar scenes of crime and disorder.
Well, today much of the world is facing a very real crisis. For most, it would not be the threat of a sudden, terrifying phenomenon such as the hurricane that struck New Orleans. But in its capacity to cause widespread hardship and deprivation nationwide, it is every bit as daunting. Oil prices are spiraling and the cost is being felt not only by drivers but by each and every one of us who has seen our food bills soaring.
And so as oil prices have risen, so too has the cost of food - and I’m afraid it’s only set to get worse. The age of cheap food is at an end - and it will impact not only on our supermarket bills, but on the whole economy.
Oil is not only used to produce fuel, but to produce feed, fertilizer, pesticides and more. For example, here in the U.S., the use of hydrocarbon pesticides has increased 33 times as farmers sought to increase production and yet, as soil structures weaken due to over-use and mono-crop cultivation, more crops are being lost to pests every year.
Other potential crises, such as EMP’s, natural disasters, epidemics, and societal unrest could also lead to similar disruptions in the food chain.
The net result is a looming crisis of which soaring oil prices, or other disasters, could simply be the starting gun.
Their reliance on diesel trucks for ‘Just in time delivery’ and ‘ warehousing on wheels’; their endless plastic packaging and their transportation of processed foods and raw materials around the world means that our supermarkets have been hit doubly hard by the high oil price.
The warning of being ‘nine meals from anarchy’ no longer seems such a distant or improbable threat. Alarm bells should be going off for those who seek to plan ahead and prepare to insure the survival of their family. Over the last 3-4 years, more and more average people have begun “prepping.” It seems strange that some still view preppers as odd-balls, when one considers that only 2-3 generations ago, preserving and storing food was the norm.
It is amazing how much our world has changed since the mid-20th century. Luxuries our grandparents and great-grandparents would never dream about surround us. I am not just talking about flat-screen televisions, dishwashers and central air conditioning in almost every home. I am talking about the availability of fresh fruits year round, many of which were grown thousands of miles away. I am talking the tens of thousands of food choices available in the typical supermarket. Sadly, these conveniences have led most to abandon gardening and preserving foods. These lost practices, and skills, would make a collapse of the current supermarket food-chain even more devastating.
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