Global Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Megathread - A cozy thread for watching the supply chain fall apart just in time for the holidays

[jumbomilkers]

After I stockpiled 90 days' worth of cat food. My cat has decided he doesn't like that type of food anymore and wants *different* food.

If the shit hits the fan, I'm thinking of eating the cat.

I love it when they get particular as if it’s not all just stinky mush.

 

[contradiction of terns]

After I stockpiled 90 days' worth of cat food. My cat has decided he doesn't like that type of food anymore and wants *different* food.

If the shit hits the fan, I'm thinking of eating the cat.

One of the greatest philosophical questions of our time.


Speaking of books. If you are now interested in prepping, I recommend picking up books on all kinds of useful things as part of this. I have a library of topics ranging from marine biology to C++. I pulled a very tiny selection of books I recommend, and I still say the Foxfire books are a must-read if you're interested in doing redneck things like distilling moonshine.


Apparently this is what 'better' looks like in current year. Yes, this fridge contains nothing but milk cartons, each supporting a single pizza. I liked the ghetto stickers slapped over the price from 3 months ago, too. Guess there's a sticker shortage or something.

 

[Hatoful Dandy]

I love it when they get particular as if it’s not all just stinky mush.

That's what one of my cats did. He eventually decided to just dramatically flip over his food dish whenever he got wet food till I switched to dry.

 

[Mooger Meng]

After I stockpiled 90 days' worth of cat food. My cat has decided he doesn't like that type of food anymore and wants *different* food.

If the shit hits the fan, I'm thinking of eating the cat.

"Cats can't read, but they can compare. Cat goes into the pantry and sees you've got too many cans of one kind of cat food, it don't want that kind no more, just goes over into the corner and licks its butt. They oughtta make butt flavored cat food."

 

[Gar For Archer]

This is some tortured logic.

A prepper is someone who desires to be prepared for seen and unforeseen events and they have evaluated threat models relevant to them and applied that to their planning in a thoughtful way.

A person deploying life-altering amounts of capital to prepare for low-probability scenarios is a hoarder, OCD or is suffering from paranoid delusions--in other words struggling with mental health issues.

Both call themselves preppers.

BTW I have around a year of household food and supplies and I deployed roughly 1% of my yearly household income to arrive at that level--however because I utilize only deep pantry techniques I'm not actually spending any more money I'm just paying forward purchases, which in an inflationary scenario ends up being a cost-saving measure.

If you’re not living paycheck to paycheck, it’s always worth it to double up on supplies and non-perishables. Need some more garbage bags? Buy two boxes instead of one. Or even better, three. Same with foil, plastic wrap, or any dried/canned foods (rice, beans, pasta, whatever) that you go through on a regular basis anyways.

 

[Sped Xing]

If you’re not living paycheck to paycheck, it’s always worth it to double up on supplies and non-perishables. Need some more garbage bags? Buy two boxes instead of one. Or even better, three. Same with foil, plastic wrap, or any dried/canned foods (rice, beans, pasta, whatever) that you go through on a regular basis anyways.

This is part of why it's damned expensive being broke. If you only have 5 dollars, you'll get the five dollar single pack of whatever even though you know damn well the ten pack is only 10 dollars.

 

[contradiction of terns]

I have been a busy bird, but I had to take a moment to share the tragedy of the dreaded cream cheese shortage.

Cream-cheesed off: bagel-loving New Yorkers face supply chain nightmare

Also, the tendies are running low.
Supply chain crisis now threatening chicken tenders

 

[Joshuan Moon]

I could not find regular bulb garlic at two different grocery stores. The last one I tried an employee told me they haven't had any come in for weeks. I'm going to try the fancy organic grocery store and see if the same holds true for them. I remember hearing something like China was exporting so much cheap garlic that it killed off much of the domestic production years ago. Is my garlic really sitting around on a boat right off California right now?

Edit:
There was much success at the fancy store. The garlic was even half price. They claimed the garlic to be from USA so no China boat issues there. Still I have no clue why the other stores had Jack and shit.

 

[Sped Xing]

Just a couple quick pictures of the absolute state of the Abilene, Texas Gual-Mar.

Spoiler: Festive

The picked-over after Christmas candy clearance was understandable, until I remembered it's 5 December.


EDIT: The Tractor Supply is overflowing with Crimbus crap, but the tool section is looking forlorn.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

I also noticed the cream cheese shortage. I assumed it was just a couple of local stores. Interesting.

There's a running thread in Atlas Shrugged, a book I never thought I'd find so relevant and timely, where copper wires snap, but there's no more copper supply because most of the mines have been blown up or abandoned. And every time this happens, a cascade of effects impacts an entire supply chain, causing massive disruptions to people's lives because they never really considered how important the supply of this one metal was to their daily comfortable lives.

Now we're seeing it with silicon wafers. And it turns out we don't make them here. At all. There's no one manufacturing those blanks. It took this level of crisis for anyone to realize that it's a matter of national security to keep at least some of the production in-country that we rely on for all the electronic devices that power our industrial control systems, pipelines, defense grid, power grid, and city infrastructure.

It's absolutely insane that we didn't have any of this production capacity before. If we had a real president right now we'd be launching a big scale investment program into domestic chip manufacturing as the potential greatest threat to our supply chains and future as an economic and military entity.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

The US abandoning domestic manufacturing of these critical goods like silicon chips and OTC medicine (apparently before 2020 it mostly came from China and India) is largely because of corporate greed and because the idea we needed these goods if SHTF never occurred to anyone. After all, the US had no rivals after the end of the Cold War and our only enemies were the goatfuckers AIPAC and the neocons hated and it was the end of history. Nothing was going to happen that would disrupt supply chains, right?

 

[GuntPunt]

Could only find gluten free bread at the grocery store the other day.

Shit sucks.

 

[Ancient Pioneer]

I also noticed the cream cheese shortage. I assumed it was just a couple of local stores. Interesting.

There's a running thread in Atlas Shrugged, a book I never thought I'd find so relevant and timely, where copper wires snap, but there's no more copper supply because most of the mines have been blown up or abandoned. And every time this happens, a cascade of effects impacts an entire supply chain, causing massive disruptions to people's lives because they never really considered how important the supply of this one metal was to their daily comfortable lives.

Now we're seeing it with silicon wafers. And it turns out we don't make them here. At all. There's no one manufacturing those blanks. It took this level of crisis for anyone to realize that it's a matter of national security to keep at least some of the production in-country that we rely on for all the electronic devices that power our industrial control systems, pipelines, defense grid, power grid, and city infrastructure.

It's absolutely insane that we didn't have any of this production capacity before. If we had a real president right now we'd be launching a big scale investment program into domestic chip manufacturing as the potential greatest threat to our supply chains and future as an economic and military entity.

We did a have a real President, Trump's entire anti-Chyna shit was your warning, everyone disregarded it and kept shouting that trade wars were impossible to win. Trump was trying to force a change that would induce a trickle of industry back into the US, or at the very least spread it across more than a singular country. So much industry is housed in China that its become a strategic liability. Outsourcing had been going on for a number of years but Bush Jr. and Obama stood idly by while it accelerated to insane levels.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

the Trucking shortage is hitting hard, i didn't go to quite the best school but they should have been forcing us to work out in the gym for half the day, because manual labor and trucking jobs are making 6 figs now, $30/hr+20k signing bonuses all across the country from US foods (the walmart of employers in that sector), and owner/operators are getting $1+ a mile now. At a certain point i expect to see the strippers and lot lizards go from servicing the truckers to being ones. i've checked and trucking is pretty much the only place hiring at that rate, so even if say you graduated college with a masters in engineering, unless you were doing internship work that entire time you'll be seeing way fewer exclusives for you and a shitload more of these type of jobs, even in the $50,000+ category on job boards.

 

[glad vlad]

I was getting coffee yesterday and the staff were announcing that there was no cream cheese, what a weird shortage. I went grocery shopping today, most things looked fine but the milk case was mostly empty. What’s causing the dairy shortage, I wonder?

I’ve been trying to buy a monochrome laser printer. Totally sold out in stores, very slim choices online. Is this still part of a shift to working at home? Chip shortage?

 

[RainwaterDrop]

I was getting coffee yesterday and the staff were announcing that there was no cream cheese, what a weird shortage. I went grocery shopping today, most things looked fine but the milk case was mostly empty. What’s causing the dairy shortage, I wonder?

I’ve been trying to buy a monochrome laser printer. Totally sold out in stores, very slim choices online. Is this still part of a shift to working at home? Chip shortage?

On my neck of the woods anything dairy skyrocketed, there was a dip in demand once the coof hit plus inflation so shit got fucking crazy over here!

As a nice example, there was a particular cheese I liked, imported. Normally it cost me around $30 but I would get it for $15 on sales, even cheaper when they were close to expiration date. Nowadays it sells for $50 and I'm lucky to see it for $25 on expiration date sales, fuck the coof!

We did a have a real President, Trump's entire anti-Chyna shit was your warning, everyone disregarded it and kept shouting that trade wars were impossible to win. Trump was trying to force a change that would induce a trickle of industry back into the US, or at the very least spread it across more than a singular country. So much industry is housed in China that its become a strategic liability. Outsourcing had been going on for a number of years but Bush Jr. and Obama stood idly by while it accelerated to insane levels.

Precisely, on my neck of the woods almost everything in terms of foodstuffs is produced locally, apart from random flavors and some shit being MIA and then coming back some time later things have been mostly stable here, never saw any intense shortages myself. The situation isn't good and I'm really thankful for having a job in these times, but it's more of a matter of people being not being able to afford stuff instead of foodstuffs themselves being unavailable. Which also fucking sucks lol!

It's absolutely insane that we didn't have any of this production capacity before. If we had a real president right now we'd be launching a big scale investment program into domestic chip manufacturing as the potential greatest threat to our supply chains and future as an economic and military entity.

Chips and semiconductors are a vital industry and almost all of it is located in Taiwan, TSMC is working on expanding to the U.S. and Japan, considering how China is a clear threat to Taiwan itself, but they are very delicate and difficult to produce, you need very specific and expensive equipment that needs highly skilled people to operate, the equipment itself is also very delicate. You can't simply pop up a new facility on a week, but they are moving towards that direction!

I remember hearing something like China was exporting so much cheap garlic that it killed off much of the domestic production years ago.

That's their M.O., they build a colossal supply of the targeted goods, dump them out on the international markets and once they have fucked over the target markets they enjoy their new lion's share of the market!

 

[contradiction of terns]

EDIT: The Tractor Supply is overflowing with Crimbus crap, but the tool section is looking forlorn.

Local Tractor Supply is empty on the X-mas garbage as well (not that I care, since I sorted my affairs out months ago). I'm just glad that their feed section isn't 90% empty shelves anymore.

Also, Biden says you (and me, and the media) are lying liars pushing fake news because there are no empty shelves.

Biden criticizes the MEDIA for reporting on empty shelves during the supply chain crisis and insists America is on the way to recovery after another dismal jobs report missed expectations by 333,000

I was getting coffee yesterday and the staff were announcing that there was no cream cheese, what a weird shortage. I went grocery shopping today, most things looked fine but the milk case was mostly empty. What’s causing the dairy shortage, I wonder?

I’ve been trying to buy a monochrome laser printer. Totally sold out in stores, very slim choices online. Is this still part of a shift to working at home? Chip shortage?

This is the price everyone has to pay for Christmas presents on the shelves. Check out the pair of articles about agricultural imports/exports in the Global Depression 2022 thread OP. Dairy products are going unshipped to make way for toys.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave]

Up here in good ol’ Canada, still using Walmart as my metric because, let’s be honest, everyone shops at fucking Walmart nowadays and I know people there - the last of the Christmas merch they had was put out 2 days ago, and there’s nothing else coming in, while just like you guys down south Pet Food is having one helluva shortage. Foodstuffs have been remarkably hit or miss when it comes to shortages, but it’s the inflation thats kicking us in the teeth (as a random example, Bacon has doubled in price since before the Coof).

Admittedly with the first part of the report, a lot of that might just be because Vancouver got motherfucked by flooding, cause a lot of our shit comes from the that port…

 

[ZMOT]

The average person has around three days worth of food in their house.

If you have 3-6 months in your house, which is hundreds of pounds, you are at least prepper-adjacent.

what if you live in a house that is 3-6 months worth of food?
the witch from hansel and gretel was the first prepper!

I was getting coffee yesterday and the staff were announcing that there was no cream cheese, what a weird shortage. I went grocery shopping today, most things looked fine but the milk case was mostly empty. What’s causing the dairy shortage, I wonder?

I’ve been trying to buy a monochrome laser printer. Totally sold out in stores, very slim choices online. Is this still part of a shift to working at home? Chip shortage?

probably both, higher demand and less individual parts. it's like last year where some countries where jerking themselves off they produce medicine locally but ignored most of the raw stuff comes from china.

as for shortages, I usually buy at discount stores which seem to be fine in yurop (tighter selection makes it less of an issue), however ham for some reason has become obviously expensive. only noticed it because the price was like 50% higher and the package was smaller on top of it (150g instead of the usual 200). don't think that's produced abroad so I'm wondering what's up with that.

Speaking of books. If you are now interested in prepping, I recommend picking up books on all kinds of useful things as part of this.

you need to have the basics first, down to knots and other stuff if you never were a boy scout. stuff about micro farming (which also works if you just want to grow your own spices etc.). knowledge how to store and conserve all that stuff.

depending how deep you want to go into it books about survival and combat. when SHTF all those stored goods don't mean much if someone can just show up and take it.

 

[Billy Beer]

UK

Haven't noticed any shortages in weeks now, apart from the usual stuff that runs out before it can be replenished (Orange juice is the main one, for some reason. I buy 5 cartons at a time now...).

The last item I saw a shortage of was cucumbers, wierdly enough, and Tesco didn't have any in for a week. Outside of that, we're back to business as usual.