Collapse II - The Pipeline

A few weeks ago I posted an article called Collapse.  It looked at the consequences of a major societal collapse from a fiction writer's point of view.  This isn't a survival manual and I'm not particularly a survivalist.  The original article was simply some thoughts to help fiction and especially science fiction writers get this kind of scenario right.  I have some additional thoughts on that subject.

A lot of writers that do societal collapse scenarios have figured out that stores would quickly empty  in the event of a major disruption.  There just isn't enough food in retail stores to supply urban populations for more than a few days or weeks at most, even without hoarding.  What that analysis misses is that there is a lot more food in the pipeline, and at least some of that food would still trickle in to areas that need it and have something valuable to give for it.

Food obviously doesn't just miraculously appear in the grocery store.  For every can of soup or candybar in a grocery story there have to be several more somewhere in the pipeline between raw materials and the grocery store.  In a major social collapse, being near pieces of the pipeline could be crucial for survival.

 For example, let's say that something suddenly stops all forms of internal combustion engines.  Maybe a genetically engineered bug eats all of the available gas or the wiring from all of the engines.  All non-human powered transportation stops.  The links between the parts of our complex urban society fall apart.  That's an extreme case, but let's think it through.  Stores empty out quickly.  People hoard essentials.  Fights break out over cans of spam.  And smart people ask themselves, "Where did the trucks and trains that were bringing that stuff in to the stores end up?"  Even smarter people ask, "Where did those trucks and trains come from?"

In a societal collapse of this kind, finding a truck or a freight car full of spam or energy bars could mean the difference between starving and making it through the tough times relatively well.  Finding the warehouse where those trucks came from would be like hitting the motherlode.  These days, space in retail stores is at a premium, so most of the stock is stored in giant logistic centers.  Those logistic centers are generally fifty to a hundred miles away from major urban centers, along major highways or railways.  Land prices out in the relative boonies are low, and the likes of Target and Nestle build warehouses on the cheap land out near the cornfields.  These warehouses are unbeleivably huge.  They dwarf all but the biggest malls.  If a major collapse happened, people near the right kind of distribution center would ride it out in relative comfort for quite a while as long as they were able to keep looters away and prevent hoarding.

Further down the pipeline, people near packaging plants for non-perishable foods would probably do okay, at least for a while. There would be some finished product, and a lot of food waiting to be packaged.  Even further down the line you would grain storage facilties and other places where the raw materials for our foods come from.  Some of that raw material would be spoiled or eaten by vermin before it could be used, but some of it would be preserved and used.

Distasteful as this sounds, people near warehouses or other parts of the supply chain for pet food would probably do okay.  When it comes to a choice between starving and eating dog food the choice seems distasteful but obvious.  A couple of forty pound bags of dry dog food might be the difference between starving and surviving for a family.

Some of the food in the pipeline would make it to urban areas in exchange for things of value--cigarettes, pop, alcoholic beverages, etc--even if had to be brought in by backpack or bicycle.  As a matter of fact, trade would make the difference between groups that survived and ones that didn't.  More on that next article.