As we strike the Houthis and gave a green light to the Israel’s plan to bomb Gaza again, you could be forgiven for thinking war in the Middle East is heating up. There are also reports the U.S. sank an Iranian spy ship in the Red Sea that was assisting the Houthis with targeting U.S. ships.
Just as we don’t know if this latest flare-up will develop into a longer war, or a war with Iran, you never know when or how a serious event that requires your preps will strike. One could hit you out of the blue, or it could evolve slowly over months. Perhaps you might have a few days warning.
In case of the second or third scenario, I keep active shopping lists on multiple websites. I add useful food and other items to our shopping cart and then use the “save for later” button to move them out of the cart. If I think I am looking at some kind of emerging disaster, I can place an emergency order by clicking “add to cart” and then submit. This can be done on my PC or phone at any time of day or night.
In case you want to do something similar, here are the websites I use and some of the items in my carts.
Walmart
I have to pick Walmart orders up curbside because we live outside the Walmart Plus delivery zone, but that’s OK because we can get fresh, refrigerated, and frozen items that can’t be shipped via UPS or Fedex. As a result, Walmart is our top choice for fresh foods, frozen foods, and pet products. My shopping cart includes:
- Chicken feed, dog food, cat food, kitty litter, and related items
- Onions, potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables
- Lots of cheese and other dairy products
- Ground meat and multiple kinds of sausage
- Frozen foods
- Canned food and shelf-stable food in jars, from pickles to spaghetti sauce
- Crackers and other dried goods
- Baking mixes, sugar, flour, baking powder, etc.
- Motor oil, spark plugs, laundry detergent and other household goods and hardware.
It’s a good thing I drive a pickup truck because this will be a large order.
Sam’s Club.
You will note there is some duplication between the Sam’s Club and Walmart lists. This is because Walmart will often limit your orders to 12 of an item and because it is likely some items will be sold out. Also, depending on the emergency, there is the very real possibility that UPS and/or Fedex deliveries will be suspended. By ordering from both online stores, I hope to get at least some or the things we order.
Sam’s Club claims to get things to us in two days, but they ship from multiple warehouses, so we end up with multiple packages, some of which take more than two days. That may be because of where we live, of course.
Much of what we have on our Sam’s Club list is what I call, “More of the same,” meaning things we already have in our prepper pantry but could always use more. Most of these falls into these categories:
- Dried or canned grocery foods, like soup, peanut better, canned meats, canned fish, canned fruits, chicken broth, rice and beans, pasta sauce, etc.
- Breakfast bars, protein bars, cookies, crackers, snacks, candy, etc.
- Paper products, including facial tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and trash bags
- Pet foods and treats
- OTC medicines and vitamins in their traditional large bottles
- Batteries, especially AA and AAA
In the case of another pandemic or other slow-moving danger, we would make one last in-person trip to Sam’s Club and pick up their fresh foods, like beef, pork, chicken, salmon, deli meats, bacon, and other staples we can freeze.
Amazon
Most items we order from Amazon.com arrive in a day or two, although this slows down during the holidays. If we order items delivered to our post office box, they often get their faster than items sent to a street address. I like the P.O. Box delivery because an Amazon truck brings it all the way to the post office with no third party carrier involved. Plus, after Helene, the post office was up and running in about a week. It took several weeks for UPS to service this area again, and many packages were lost or returned as undeliverable.
I think Amazon’s inventory management software is better than many other retailers, so when they say something is in stock, there is a better than 99 percent chance it really is in stock, at least if it ships from an Amazon warehouse. I would be careful ordering from third-party suppliers on Amazon.com because we won’t know if they are working or not during a SHTF event.
Amazon is also likely to have more surge capacity than a smaller retailer. I remember ordering things prior to Y2K and waiting months for it to arrive becuse it was backordered. That is far less likely to happen with Amazon.
My order from Amazon includes things like cases of Keystone meats, headlamps, weapons-mounted flashlights, freeze-dried cheese, and other expensive things I don’t want to buy now, but I will welcome when the SHTF. It also includes hard-to-find things like specialty coin batteries (I can’t get CR1632s or CR1/3N batteries locally).
Costco
I tried to set up a shopping cart at Costco.com, but it does not persist for long, even when I create it while logged in. As a result, I stopped creating a cart on this site. This doesn’t mean I won’t order from Costco at the last minute, only that they will be low on my list.
My Costco list is very similar to our Sam’s Club list, except there are a few of their Kirkland brand items we like. For example, I would order socks and maybe some of their other clothing items.
We do not have a Costco within a two-hour drive, so we won’t be going there in person.
Cross Your Fingers
While there is no guarantee your items will show up if ordered during a state of emergency, that doesn’t make doing so a bad idea. There are many variables, so don’t rely on it, but consider it a last-ditch emergency action to bolster your everyday preps. Then cross your fingers that at least some of it gets through to you, even if it is late.
While the busy pickers and packers in warehouses around the country are pulling my items and packing my boxes, I’ll be visiting the general store to get chicken feed and whatever else the situation calls for, because redundancy is a prepper’s friend.
If there is a giant flash in the sky and fallout in the air, the trucks will not be delivering anything anywhere for a good long time. But all the companies listed above delivered during the pandemic, and several offered curb side pickup. So depending on what the disaster is and how quickly it strikes, having a shopping cart ready to be ordered in just a few clicks on the keyboard or phone may help you beat the rush and do some final stocking up.
Food, the First and Final Prep
As you can see from my lists, we are getting extra food. Even though we are well-prepped, I am of the opinion you cannot have too much food during a long-term emergency.
We say “food, water, and shelter” in that order because food is paramount to long-term survival. In most of the disasters that saw the death of millions, starvation was to blame, even if it was brought on by war or revolution. If disaster strikes and your home is intact, you have shelter, bedding and clothing. Your shelter won’t run out or get used up, but your food will.
In many parts of the country, you can find water—although it might not always be drinkable without treatment—or collect it when it rains. But most Americans can’t find food in the wild. This is why I store it, grow it, or raise it. That’s also why I’ll be ordering food at the last minute, and why I recommend you do the same.
