An event at my grocery store.

Holy god OP, I'm glad you made it out of there without being tied up and burned at the stake or something. Geez that's just stupid.
I used to work at Sams Club and I'd see a very small mob mentality form from time to time but that's just scary man. Wow...people are insane.

A question.... If the power was out did the doors work? If they did who was watching them? If no one was... Then the cameras mounted on the store may not have worked....

Who needs money at that point? Leaving morality out of it, that would solve the problem rather quickly.

I know ATS users would be thinking that at that moment if it looked like a prolonged outage....

Wow that is some sort of herd mentality. Which is why im trying to teach people about self sustaining.
Self sustaining has been driven out of the people but is slowly making a come back.
I say get your grandparents to teach you how to garden and self sustain and do some courses before it gets ugly.
There needs to be more gardening workshops, more changes to a healthy diet, teachings on herb foraging etc etc.

Humans have barely evolved from primates and we are still the vicious cruel animals we have always been. We will be like this for thousands and thousands of years to come, if we get that far without nuking each other. This is also a sign of a poor educated people, it will take more than that to bring well educated mature adults down to their basic animal instincts.

Sorry if this has been covered already - haven't got time to read all 6 pages...

The store should have had "manual swipe" credit/debit card machines that imprint a carbon copy slip. I've worked retail for many years and have had quite a few power outages. I've never experienced what you describe, although I've never worked anywhere stupid enough not to have manual backup in case of power outs

Interesting but not all that surprising sadly, people are smart, masses of people are dumb (to loosely quote Men In Black,lol).

I hate to think what animalistic reactions would occur if something truly major happened like a major global catastrophe or alien disclosure. :0


Would it revert back to survival of the fittest and natural selection? Yea, it appears so. I just hope we as a race can evolve past this ridiculous mass stupidity that appears to be retained from our very early days in evolution when we were animals in the strongest sense of the word.

Originally posted by whaaa

Originally posted by Helig
I wonder how many of those folks who flipped out would consider stockpiling necessities beyond the normal 2 week amount now that they have seen first hand what it does to people when they can't get their groceries? Excellent example of a personal/local level incident(the most likely on the threat-probability-matrix) and how it changes people, now I can only hope they learned from the experience!

Learned what? Most people live from paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to stockpile anything.

With out jobs a huge percentage of the population is only 2 weeks from being homeless.

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house!!

reply to post by HeatherTally



It is hard to stockpile when money is short. However I have found some shortcuts...they may not be gourmet but I guarantee that my family and I can live for a long time on these supplies. Buy one-dollar (or less) bags of split peas and lentils, which cook in thirty minutes or less, plus some basic multivitamins. At least with regard to calorie and protein needs, you can cover a family of four for a couple of dollars a day with cheap dried legumes. They also last for a year or two in a ziploc bag. Add in some twelve or fifteen dollar twenty-pound bags of rice and you can eat for a long time with a little water and a heat source. Cans or pouches of tuna or salmon are a little pricey but a little goes a long way mixed with rice and beans. Just some ideas....

Originally posted by TeddiRevolution

If people react in such a way when a small wrench is thrown into the works, what reactions would come from a multitude of things going wrong all at once? After what I saw last night, I wouldn't want to be near a public place should the house of cards topple over, and I don't recommend anyone planning a trip to the store that day.

I remember when we had the blackout that covered much of Eastern Canada and the Midwest and North East of America. It was really weird how well everyone acted really. I half expected people to act crazy, but everyone pulled together. I guess you had the opposite result. Course if it had lasted two more days, I think things would have gotten bad.

reply to post by Jakes51


The only thing scarier than a really hungry person is a parent with a really hungry child....

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by TeddiRevolution

 

Reminds me of an original Twilight Zone episode ( Season One, #22 ) "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street".

Rod Serling, writer, creator of the show, was extremely plugged in to the psychology of his fellow Man.

I was thinking the exact thing as soon as I read the OP. I figured if I read enough posts, someone else would have related it.

Slightly different situation, yet EXACT same mentality.

It doesn't take long for man to become primal.

reply to post by TeddiRevolution


Thanks for posting your story, it was a very interesting read. I agree, when the SHTF for real, it's gonna be ugly. Good thread.

reply to post by Hazelnut


people need to realize that such event are why walmart employees or customers die every christmas. people are more like ants than they realize and once a single mind turns one way, everyone else follows without thinking over the consequences or even the reasons. And so we come to this story. Technology makes life easier, but no amount of technology can replace cold hard cash. keeping atleast 20 dollars of cash can come in handy, and has even gotten me out of tough spots even considering how short a time i have been alive.

well, money is not the problem with stocking up on food as much as spending priorities for most.

I have about a quarter of the income of most around me, but live the most abundantly.

I don't spend my money on movies and games and toys, beer, bars, and car things and new clothes to show off like everyone around me, who never seem to have enogh money for food or toilet paper, but "hey, look at my new hoodie!" they will brag......

For say $100 a month or less for say 3 or 4 months and you could be stocked for at least a year, or more if you can learn to spend wisley...plus growing as much as possible really will save you once the initial cost for soil, heirloom seeds and containers is out of the way, you won't have to spend much on your container gardening again after that if you compost wisely etc....

I was living in a condo for a bit and had no yard, and used a large rubbermaide container for composting, and it worked great!

[edit on 10-8-2009 by mellisamouse]

Originally posted by TeddiRevolution
A severe storm came through my town last night and it knocked out power in my local grocery store for a bit. This was no big deal, as it has happened before. There was, however, a bigger problem we discovered very quickly: The credit and debit no longer worked, and checks couldn't be used. Foodstamps and WIC did not work either.

Coincidentally, there was a rush of people in the store at this same time, and the lines began to clog very fast. People in line joked about how anyone ever did this 100 years ago, things like that. Everyone figured the glitch would be ironed out momentarily. Since nothing else worked, those people who were stuck were forced to use the store ATM that would charge them to withdraw money. They weren't happy but they got in line and started to get the cash they needed.

Until the ATM froze up.

Now the fake smiles and annoyed chatter had disappeared and reality struck for a lot of people, they had no way to access their money, they had no way to pay for their food. Those who unloaded their carts were completely stuck and the ones waiting in line didn't want to give up their spot to go to the bank. People became vocal very quickly.

"There's no way the whole system can go at once!"

"What the Hell do I do now?"

"I'm not leaving without this food."

People started pointing fingers at the cashiers, THEY must have done something. When the manager tried to explain it was not the cashier's doing, the company was to blame for making such a flawed system. Soon enough, with no knowledge of how the system actually worked, people began blaming others for buying too many groceries in the first place. In the span of a few minutes, perfectly calm, content people turned on those around them and eventually each other because food and money weren't immediately available to them.

About that time the manager announced that the debit and checking was back up, and the ATM unfroze and people got their money.

All of the things mentioned could have been causes for the glitch, but how the customers reacted was stunning to me. I can't say what would have happened if the problem hadn't resolved itself, but I know that in a situation where other variables were involved such as a national crisis or mass panic, there would have been chaos.

If people react in such a way when a small wrench is thrown into the works, what reactions would come from a multitude of things going wrong all at once? After what I saw last night, I wouldn't want to be near a public place should the house of cards topple over, and I don't recommend anyone planning a trip to the store that day.

This is a KODAK MOMENT of things to come. Get Ready folks, when 2012 issues really start taking their toll on society as a whole, things will get this bad or even worse.

What I find most interesting about the story is something else. I didn't read all of the comments first, but has anyone else noticed how America seems to be falling apart on so many different levels lately. Every day I see it and feel it first hand.

I've, noticed that day-to-day, operations seem to be falling apart everywhere. The airlines are screwed up. Teachers are being furloughed. Where I live fire houses(stations) have been closed. The post office is broke. The've even taken all of the scales out of the post offices for customers because they are too expensive to maintain.

So many restaurants and stores have closed where I live - that it has really affected the landscape.
I go into stores these days, and so often there is hardly anyone in them. Perhaps I'm alluding to some previous comment as I caught that reference to that one particular episode Twilight Zone.

Originally posted by Cole DeSteele

I'm sure Katrina was discussed at length here in it's time, but I can promise you, the complete de-evolution that occurred in New Orleans during that fiasco fostered atrocities that the general public will never hear about. I have friends that suffered through them first hand, and it is hard to believe some of the stories...given that the then chief of police of NO supressed alot of info to protect himself and his department.

You mean like the one about the brother shooting his sister (to death?) over a bottle of water?

It's really sad. People are so unprepared sometimes and only the strongest will survive and prefabricated civility will go out the door, and it's only because people are so unprepared and so afraid.

[edit on 10-8-2009 by star in a jar]

Originally posted by xoxo stacie
I experienced the same thing a few years back and I WAS the cashier!

It was really scary; it got to the point that I grabbed the mic and screamed at them to shut up and listen or leave the store right then!
I told them it took all of 5 minutes to reset the system and if they had not left themseleves that minute amount of time in their day to wait. They were to push their carts aside and leave the store!
My manager had no balls and well it is a womans' intuition to calm down the children and give them a talking too.

Needless to say it got deathly quite till I was able to get the system back up, then it was biz as usual!

That and women usually more openly speak their mind and in your case it benefited the situation and probably snapped some people back to " reality" and possibly kept it from getting worse...

At that point somebody has to take control because there is always an idiot near by who will spark the flame of ignorance when given the chance...



[edit on 10-8-2009 by LucidDreamer85]

Originally posted by Cole DeSteele
The sheer idiocy of the common man never ceases to amaze me.

To see this happen must have been quite a sight...for people to ignore thousands of years of evolution and adaptation and give in to instinct over loss of control (which is what many conflicts boil down to, if you stop and analyze the situation)

A psych professor of mine used an example to support his theory of man's basic need for control - he laid his infant son gently on his back, and just as gently held his arms down, restricting his ability to roll over. It took less than 10 seconds for the child to fly into a rage. Fights in long lines at the bank, grocery store melt-downs and even road rage all stem from from a loss of internal locus of control, even momentary. Throw in the mob mentality, and you have the fixins for a potentialy dangerous (and actually embarassing) bout of anarchy.

The human race has SUCH a long way to go.

Well everybody wants to be in control of their own lives and when they aren't they get pretty ticked off real quick......

The most wise will stay clam , but even those who think they are will still panic some.......

lol just wait until the rshtf. not sure if it will ever happen, but if it does better have your food and water stocked as people will turn from sweet and innocent to doctor evil. lol