Blockades and Supply Disruptions: What Real Prep Looks Like

Most "blockade prep" content is doomsday cosplay. Here's the realistic version: what actually happens during regional supply disruptions, and what genuinely helps.

Real-world supply disruptions in the last decade — COVID 2020, the trucker convoy 2022, regional port strikes, the various weather and conflict events — gave us actual data on what hits, what shelves empty, and what kit actually helps. The prepper-internet version is mostly fantasy. Here's the empirical version.

What actually happens in a real disruption

The first 72 hours: panic buying. Bottled water, toilet paper, eggs, batteries. Shelves empty for these specific items first. Other essentials remain stocked because most people don't think to grab them.

Days 4-14: real shortages in specific categories. Fresh produce, perishable dairy, baby formula in localized regions. Imported goods if your region depends on a specific port.

Days 14+: prices climb on remaining stocks. Some items return as supply chains reroute. Others stay scarce until the underlying disruption resolves.

What actually helps

30 days of shelf-stable food you'd actually eat. Pasta, rice, peanut butter, canned beans, oatmeal. Not freeze-dried buckets. Rotate through it in normal life. The food storage that gets eaten is the food storage that's actually there when you need it.

14 days of water at 1 gallon per person per day. Two 5-gallon Aquatainer jugs covers a family of four for a week. Refill every 6 months.

Cash. $500 in $20s. ATMs and card readers fail in disruptions. Cash works at gas stations and small businesses.

Prescriptions, 30-day overlap. Insulin, blood pressure medication, anything time-critical.

A Yeti cooler or equivalent for refrigeration if power's intermittent. Cheap insurance.

A Stanley tumbler for keeping water cold or hot from limited supply.

What I'd skip

"Tactical" gear. Body armor. Concealed-carry classes if you're not already there. The actual statistical risks of a regional supply disruption don't include personal armed conflict.

Freeze-dried 90-day buckets. Expensive. Unappetizing. Often expire unused.

Bug-out bags for scenarios where you're "bugging in." Most disruptions favor sheltering in place, not evacuating.

The hardest part

Practice. A 24-hour drill once a year. Cook from your stored food. Use only your stored water. Use the flashlights. Note what failed. Fix it. Atomic Habits applies: the system you've rehearsed is the system that works under stress.

The honest answer

$300 of practical supplies plus a 24-hour drill once a year outperforms $5,000 of prepper-aisle gear that sits unopened. The math heavily favors the boring version of prep.