We're having trouble surviving a (reasonably mild by comparison) pandemic as a species that has killed millions! Now multiply what we've seen by several orders of magnitude. With all the greed and guns in the USA... oof.
When the pandemic hit, these were the same items people hoarded (in addition to toilet paper). Why? The pandemic wasn’t going to shut off a fridge/freezer. It wasn’t going to disable the water system. People reacted in the only way they knew for a crisis they experience often — not what the actual situation was.
It served as a reminder that when a major, acute crisis hits, most people are not going to be thinking rationally. They’re going to rely on whatever instincts have been developed.
I can’t even imagine what extremes would result from a fast-moving crisis like a nuclear explosion.
In the end our version of "shutdown" was much milder, but we didn't know that at the beginning. We were rather fortunate that delta variant didn't come along until our vaccination program was well on its way.