So I'm making another Wal-Mart run today, and, as I'm checking out, I say to the check-out woman: "So, is it starting to get busy?"

"Oh, yeah, it really is," she says.

"Are people buying different stuff?" I ask.

"Oh, yeah!"

"Like what?"

"Water. Lots of water!" she says. "And canned vegetables."

I did see a few people with carts full of bottled water and nothing else.

If this isolated anecdote means that people have, indeed, started to prepare, I'm delighted.

-- joe (joe@adeveloper.com), November 27, 1999

Answers

At Cosco, the woman ahead of me bought 28 cases of water. She sure must get thirsty. At Save-A-Lot, three woman had a total of seven shopping carts. Each filled with case after case of canned fruits,vegetables, pasta and tomato sauce. Maybe it is starting!

-- Ruth Edwards (REath29646@aol.com), November 27, 1999.

Ok all you sceptics. Here is the scenario. THIS is real. I am listening to the Wichita news a few minutes ago. They do a story on a Walmart Super Center in Wichita, Kansas.

Yesterday, 11-26, this store was to open early for the Christmas Shopping season kickoff. Before they could even open the doors they had to call Police for crowd and riot control. Get this; 4,000 people had massed outside the doors waiting to get in ! They were getting cranky and showing signs of beligerence so the Police had to respond to contain the matter.

Now this was just a regular shopping day people ! Admittedly the busiest, but no emergency was in progress. Should these people have thought their future depended upon them getting in for survival supplies, how do you think this scenario would have went ?

When things get tough (and even when they don't), people DO NOT care about your well being. L.A. was a good example of that. It takes nothing for a group of people, yes, your own neighbors, to turn into riotous bands of uncontrollable and unconcientious mobs.

These people at Walmart hadn't gotten that far yet, but should the store been late opening or if the Police hadn't arrived in force, could it have ? I would bet yes. And this over a few Pokemon cards at reduced prices. Quite the civilization, aren't we ?

-- Rob (maxovrdrv51@hotmail.com), November 27, 1999.

Wal-Mart ran a special Thursday at many stores on a $300?? T. V. for $99. I heard someone bought 15. To sell later, maybe????

-- GG (gggarden@worldnet.net), November 27, 1999.

Yep...

-- Rob (maxovrdrv51@hotmail.com), November 27, 1999.

Advice: Buy some frozen food now to eat during December. There will be days you won't want to go to the store at the end of the year.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), November 27, 1999.

Keep in mind, some folks just routinely buy in bulk once a month or so to save money. I routinely buy 100 cans of cat food at a time (at the pet store warehouse it's way cheaper than any grocery store). Once every two months is all it takes.

But a hundred cans of anything looks pretty impressive when you're standing at the check-out counter with nothing but a box of condoms & some breath mints.

-- my kitties (won't@go.hungry), November 27, 1999.

Mara,

Excellent advice!

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), November 28, 1999.

Mara,

Yes, wonderful advice! I had never thought of this one. Thanks.

-- eve (123@4567.com), November 28, 1999.

Kitties -

I shop twice a week, once on Sunday and again on Thursday when the sale items come out. That's at least 104 trips to the grocery store per year. Add in a maybe once a month dash to get something I ran out of--116 trips. I go to Sam's once every two or three months, Wal-Mart once a month on average, sometimes more. In all those outings I have NEVER seen anyone pushing carts full of water and/or canned food--unless there's a winter storm due, and I'm sure that variable would have been mentioned in joe's post if it were applicable.

-- Shopping (is@my.job), November 28, 1999.

My sister lives in the desert southwest. She recently became a GI and converted my wife in the process. She recieved a pretty decent Y2K pamphlet from her local suburb. Pamphlet was blunt. Simply said, we're not sure on the best days, and this won't be one of our best. It then follows with the tried and true "We may not be able to avoid the cause, but we are prepared to deal with the result."

Interestingly, it has a section dedicated to where you should go to report emergencies if your phone does not work on Jan 1 or after. The locations are sprinkled throughout the city in key locations. Most are fire stations, a few hospitals and grocery store parking lots! Even stranger, I had noticed some Mobile Mini trailers strangely situated at the back of one of these centers recently. None of the stores that these would serve would have had a need for extra storgage. My guess is that these tractor trailer sized units house the generators and the command center equip. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if they have some cyclone fencing as well.

-- Gordon (g_gecko_69@hotmail.com), November 28, 1999.

Since the previous thread on shipping trucks parked in Walmart parking lots our local Super Wally has had 12 shipping containers parked around the store- not in the loading dock area and on the ground not on wheels for easy moving and shipping. I've never seen this before even around the holidays. They are locked up tight. Must be full of the Pokemon stuff.

-- Wm McBride (mcbri29@attglobal.net), November 28, 1999.

The day after Thanksgiving I went out to WalMart for the 6am-11am sale. Many, many posts down I wrote about my experience. People were shoving, swearing, and elbowing as they tried to grab for their items.

What was so frightening to me was the looks on the shoppers faces. No one was smiling or having a good time. (After all-Christmas is suppose to be the joyous season) The people had looks on anger, impatience, and sometimes madness. Two men got in a fight over the last tv. (They were only $99) Others exchanged harsh words when all the computers were gone. People were grabbing $5 Barbie dolls as though they were gold blocks.

The message here is this. If people act so irrational and ugly over unnevessary things, how are they going to act when they realize the items of survival are not going to be avaiable?

Should the herd wake up and panic, it is going to be an ugly sight.

Now is the time to finish any prepartions and stay out of the stores. IMO, now is also the time to go quiet about Y2k. You don't want to be remembered as the ONE WHO PREPARED when others run out of food and water.

The humor in my story is that I took my husband with me to the Great Sale. It was his first and probably his last. We both had shopping carts becasue we were after TWO of the tvs and two vcrs. Within seconds, I lost my husband. Several minutes later he reappeared without his cart and a dazed expression on his face. He had been bumped, jostled and snarled at by shop crazy women. He was a man on the run. We were able to snatch our purchases and get out of the store quickly. It was a good lesson for both of us.

-- Linda A. (adahi@muhlon.com), November 28, 1999.

Mara.. actually, since I decided NOT to go the generator route, I am aiming to have a totally cleaned out freezer and fridge come rollover. I'm getting down to things you might have to carbon date to identify. Hey... I'll call it Carbon Date Stew... or Cro-Magnon Man Meals. If the power goes out on Triple Ought Day I will have enough to worry about besides cleaning out rotten food from the freezer and fridge. Better to use it or toss it now while I can be a bit more creative (and while the trash service still works).

We should all be about done with stocking up by now. Time to start exploring new recipes with all those non-perishable foods we've stored, and time to practice cooking without electricity. Check out http://www.y2kkitchen.com/ for some great easy ideas.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), November 28, 1999.

People won't want to go to the store because of the new prices. Crowds don't line up at the door for dried minced onion selling at ten dollars.

I think we're going to be "surviving" off our stashes very, very, soon.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), November 28, 1999.

I'm sitting here LMAO reading these threads. I use shaving cream on my carpets to get spots up -- works great! I do all the buying and storing of stuff in the house and my husband doesn't know to what extent I have purchased and stored. He wanted to clean up a spot on the carpet and asked where the shaving cream was. When I opened up the cabinet he said WOW!! Then I opened up another cabinet and he said WOW!! He said, I guess you plan on bartering. I said I don't plan on seeing any of this stuff around for a long time, it's good as gold. Got shampoo, shaving cream, baby wipes, toothpaste, hydrogen peroxide?

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 28, 1999.

Dear "Lucy,"

you find it "strange" that I would delighted if I saw that people were preparing?? that's a "twisted view"???

over the past few months, I've come to believe that people should always be prepared. I'm also "delighted" when people fasten their seat belts, look both ways before crossing the street, buy life insurance, etc. etc. to say that my simple honest statement somehow means that I'm "hoping for massive Y2K disruptions" is just frankly nuts.

jeesh.

-- joe (joe@adeveloper.net), November 28, 1999.

Last Friday at my local Wal*Mart, a woman bought two television sets and put them by the exit so that she could go back into the store and shop for more merchandise. While she was preoccupied, someone saw her full cart and boldly pushed it out into the parking lot. When the woman returned to the check out, she was extremely upset that her televisions were missing. The last I heard was the thief had never been caught.

And that is why Wal*Mart has begun checking ALL merchandise receipts of people exiting.

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), November 28, 1999.

sorry, I did indeed think about what I said. Don't you have something better to do than to snipe at sincere posters? I don't know what y2k will bring. I hope people prepare. if my particular choice of words offends you, again: jeesh. Chill, will ya, "Lucy"?

-- joe (joe@adeveloper.net), November 28, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

Lucy said: Could there ever be any reason to be delighted? Seems to be that is a bit callous and probably the work of a mind [that] is hoping for massive disruptions so they would be "right" about their efforts to stockpile. With that in mind, I'd have to say that person who is "delighted" about hearing proof of stockpiling is just making it up [to] serve their own twisted views.

You're the one who is delighted to find out people are preparing for what could be the biggest disaster in history. Frankly, I can't see how anyone could be delighted about that. Maybe relieved to see people doing the right thing. Maybe satisfied to know that some people are taking precautions. But delighted? Hmmm, sounds like you are looking forward to something big happening. Delighted is what you get when you buy a new car, or win the lotto. But when you're facing TEOTWAWKI...that's bizarre.

I'm with Joe on this one. For those of us who understand that the code doesn't care whether or not we prepare, every person who prepares now is one less person who will be scrambling for those items a month from now. The better prepared we are as a whole population, the less the impact of whatever difficulties we may encounter.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), November 28, 1999.

I'm "delighted" too to hear of anyone preparing!

So there.

I'm saddened by the greater group who don't. It's irresponsible behavior, with such massive potential global impact facing us.

And I'm disgusted with Koskinen, et. al., who cared more about systems, banks and machines, than people's lives.

Chill out "Lucy" troll a.k.a (Doomers@suck.big time!!). Time to delete that spammer... again!

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 28, 1999.

Hey Diane, never for a moment have I questioned your santimonious crapola.

So there.

-- (good@grief.queen of the sighs), November 28, 1999.

And another thing, every time you delete me just because you don't like my opinion you become more and more like the people you hate.

So nah nah nah, and double dumbass on you.

-- (get@help.soon), November 28, 1999.

Diane, just wondering. How many real people, that is not fellow trolls or even the same troll using a different name, have complained about your deleting certain people? I think you're doing a great job. Don't let them play on your conscience. It seems obvious you delete to make the forum more readable and civilized. I question the motives of those who queston your motives.

-- thomas thatcher (jabawaki@erols.com), November 28, 1999.