ON HAMSTERS AND OTHER ANIMALS
We all know human existence is nothing but a grain of sand in life on earth’s sandbox. After making a first appearance on two legs around six million years ago, it took another 5.9 million years before we began to make some tools to catch prey, and it wasn’t until twelve thousand years ago that we started to cultivate the lands. So, really, all considered, the existence of supermarket shelves filled to the brim with an array of peanut butter and vitamin water is hardly worth mentioning. Still, many of us in affluent countries nowadays would be hard-pressed to live without the luxury of having whatever we want, whenever we want it at the tip of our fingers. It makes us feel safe, spares us from the great and daily worry of our ancestors (and still too many people around the globe) for thousands of years: Will we have dinner tonight?
All's well that ends well? Sure, perhaps the modern-day, middle-class urban professional generally does not have to worry about putting food on the table, but there are a lot of other things to worry about. We worry about our health, our jobs, the state of the world, our relationships and appearances. We often worry individually, but sometimes we all worry together. And every so often, those worries translate right back to that most basic of fears: hunger. Because we realise that we can always get kicked out of the supermarket’s Garden of Eden — by a bomb, a global crash, a virus.
The Bomb
Shortly after the end of World War II, tensions between the Western, capitalist countries under the guidance of the United States, and the growing ‘Eastern Bloc’ of communist states, led by Russia, were quickly rising. The conflict was ideological, sure, but the general public in the West was seemingly less afraid of five-year plans and state-owned farms than of atomic bombs — whose disastrous effects had already been provenin Hiroshima and Nagasaki by, who else, the United States themselves. By the mid-fifties, the fear of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil had been translated into a general, yet faulty advice: ‘Grandma’s pantry’ was a campaign set up under the Eisenhower administration, urging citizens to have a seven-day supply of food and drink on hand, at all times. This ‘feminine approach’ to civil defence, playing into ‘female domesticity’, was rather misleading in its premise: an extra can of spam does not, in fact, protect anyone from radiation. Sure, some people built proper bunkers, but most nuclear shelters were little more than a basement pantry.
Early on, these shelters were filled with pretty standard fare that had proven to stand the test of time: cans of soup and wieners, peanut butter, cereals and the like. While these products remained popular for their shelter-proof shelf-lives, some companies began to create products specifically bearing the threat of nuclear disaster in mind. The ‘All-Purpose Survival Cracker’ hit the market in the early sixties. It was made of bulgur wheat, a type of parboiled groats whose “shelf life has been established by being edible after 3000 years in an Egyptian pyramid.” Another invention was ‘Multi-Purpose Food’, a granulated, synthetic protein. It was to be mixed with a liquid, although it could also be consumed dry in fallout situations. One serving was said to contain enough protein, vitamins and minerals to provide a third of an adult male’s daily needs. While the fear of nuclear attack had largely diminished by the early nineteen-seventies, many shelters existed for much longer than that. One family, the Sobels of Racine, Wisconsin, built and stocked their shelter in 1960. It wasn’t until 1996 that they gifted its contents to the Wisconsin Historical Museum, which gave them just about enough time to start building the next one: A new millennium was on the horizon.
The Crash
A lot changed in the period between the nineteen-sixties and the end of the century. For one, the world became ever more dependent on technology, specifically in the form of computers. By the late nineteen-nineties, much of the world was running on them — although these machines were by no means as advanced as the ones we have now. One main problem was storage: a single iPhone photo, taken today, would not have fit on a floppy disk. To save space, computer systems reduced years into two-digit dates. The fear was that when the new millennium rolled around, computers would think the double zero meant a return to the year 1900, causing them to crash. This wouldn’t just mean losing some painstakingly typed up documents on one’s Windows 98, but rather seeing the world as we knew it come to a screeching halt. Electricity, the logistics of ships, trains and planes, distribution centres and so on would all stop working at 00:00 on January first, 2000, causing food systems — as well as many others — to break down.
While this Y2K bug, as it became known, was very much a real concern, conspiracy theorists, cult leaders, gurus and apocalypse prophets used this fear for power. The idea played into an old, Frankensteinian trope: We had created a monster, and it was coming back to get us. Religious leaders urged people to stock up on food, supplies and weapons. Even respectable publications played into the fear. In January 1999, Times Magazine ran a cover with a bold ‘The End of the World!?!’-headline, preparation checklists were published left, right and centre. In the years leading up to the new millennium, wilderness-survival bootcamps became a popular pastime: Soon, meat would no longer come in neatly pre-packaged fillets, the message was. Although not everyone went to such lengths, even the biggest sceptic probably put that extra can of soup or spam into their cart while doing their holiday shopping in December 1999. You never know. Of course, we know now: Nothing really happened. The world’s eyes were on New Zealand, the first country to enter the new millennium. When nothing happened, the country’s preparation efforts were praised. But by the time January second rolled around in the last time zone and even non-prepared countries had been spared, everyone went to sleep — knowing another doomsday would soon be announced.
The Virus
While even the biggest sceptic must have been slightly nervous on December thirty-first, 1999, New Year’s Eve twenty years later was obliviously spent in ways that would no longer be possible a few months into the new year. The fireworks over the Sydney Opera House were beautiful as ever, as thousands gathered in the harbour. Tokyo soon followed, then Shanghai and all other major cities in the world. A new decade, a new hope. It didn’t take long, however, for disturbing news to come trickling out of Wuhan, China, where more and more people fell ill to a mysterious disease. On January 23, the city and its surroundings went into lockdown. The disease at the heart of it all did not receive the name it would officially become known by until February 11: Covid-19. One month later, on March 11, the WHO declared the disease a pandemic, despite early Chinese containment efforts.
By this time, the extraordinary effects of the virus had also become evident in supermarkets across the globe. Suddenly, the ever-filled shelves the affluent West had gotten so used to over decades of relative stability were suddenly empty. Most of the West saw a surge in toilet paper sales; soon after, the sales of bidets increased tenfold. This craze for toilet paper surprised cultures that already washed their butts after going to the bathroom, but it was not just the washing of butts that was new to Westerners: A big part of the virus-constraining programs included education on the importance of washing hands. This was no news to many African countries, which had previously been affected by disease outbreaks such as Ebola. Either way, most countries saw a rising demand for soap, hand sanitizer and various alternatives to that hard-to-get-by liquid: vodka and other spirits in Eastern Europe, and Kolonya in Turkey, a type of fragrance with high alcohol content. In different countries, different lists of favourite and apparently essential products could soon be established. In many cases, these products that people were panic-buying (an act called ‘hamstering’ in German) spoke to national clichés: Feta supplies were short in Greece, prices of rice, wheat and cooking oil skyrocketed in Afghanistan, the Danes were running out of rye, the Lithuanians were low on buckwheat, while the Finns were stocking up on cartons of wine and the Dutch were seen standing in long queues ahead of the closing of ‘coffeeshops’ to buy marihuana.
The little bunkers people turned their homes into were filled with products of two categories. The first category was the all too familiar crisis foods: dried cereals, pasta and cans; i.e. products that will last a while. What was different this time around, however, was that people would not be constrained to a basement or bunker and electricity would freely flow. People could get creative in the kitchen — in fact, some creativity was required in order to make it through all that extra spare time without losing oneself. This meant that products like flour and yeast were running out because suddenly, everybody was baking their own bread. Shelves were soon restocked, however, and for a moment, people seemed to realise that the food supply chain was not under threat. The hamstering stopped.
The Future
When a second wave of coronavirus infections began to affect Europe, familiar sights reappeared. Once again, toilet paper became a hot commodity. The dust settled soon enough and things went back to normal once more, but our sense of security is fickle, and the question is not if, but when and why we will again feel the necessity to stock our nests — and never leave it again.
Text: Yannic Moeken
Copy Editing: Charlotte Faltas
Illustrations: Junshen Wu
Sources:
The Nine Planets: How Long Have Humans Been on Earth?
Sarah Pruitt: At Cold War Nuclear Fallout Shelters, These Foods Were Stocked For Survival
Laura McEnany: Civil Defense Begins at Home: Millitarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties
Wisconsin History: Multi-Purpose Food from Fallout Shelter
Denis Dutton: It’s Always the End of the World as We Know It
Patricia Treble: A Y2K Checklist
Lily Rothman: Remember Y2K? Here’s How We Prepped for the Non-Disaster
Jason Duaine Hahn: 20 Year Ago, Y2K Hysteria Led to Emergency Bunkers and Cost the U.S. $100 Billion
Amanda Sloat: Cologne Sanitizer, Boxed Wine and Bidets: How People in 68 Countries Are Coping with Coronavirus
Peter Rubinstein: Why grocery shelves won’t be empty for long
AJMC Staff: A Timeline of Covid-19 Developments in 2020
