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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

> But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends."

From what I've been hearing, the big problem for lots of people stuck under lockdown is simply getting groceries/food deliveries at all. The government isn't letting delivery people work, and the military response to distributing food isn't filling the gap (maybe if you are lucky, you'll get some pork and bai cai form the gov at your door). So that would suck, if true. I also rather guess experiences differ between richer districts and poorer ones.

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I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai.

I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China.

Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.

Chinese tend to grocery shop daily or bi-daily for food they need for a day or two, they don't have space to store a bunch of canned goods (especially in Shanghai). They might have a stockpile of fangbianmian (instant noodles), but that's about it.

Interesting. A form of the supply chain crisis if you will.

In many large Asian cities the average person has little space to store food and often no cooking appliances and minimal fridge space, this is especially true of younger people who are stuck in the rent trap and spending US$1k+/month on a shoebox. This is becoming increasingly true as people start to rely on takeout food delivery which is quite convenient when you work 12 hours per day.

I'm still shaking my head over anyone who didn't stock up (assuming they could easily afford it) once it became clear that getting infected = 2 weeks quarantine (which was the case in many Western countries too). Even a year into the pandemic people kept being surprised about the obvious.

Not everyone has the place or the budget to stock up. If you live paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment, it might not be that obvious.

They definitely do not prep in that city. Maybe you can survive a year on a sack of rice and potatoes, if your utilities aren't cut off.

But without guns and land, prepping becomes "hiding until the situation hopefully goes away"

That'd have to be a big fucking sack of rice and potatoes.

The body also needs some other nutrients than the carbs you‘d find in potatoes and rice…

Potatoes are actually the better option.

IIRC there was a long experiment in pre-war Poland (University of Lwow, now Lviv in Ukraine) to demonstrate that potatoes consumed with milk, sour cream etc., while very being a very monotonous diet, can nevertheless sustain adults without causing them nutritional deficiencies.

Of course, you need to be able to tolerate milk, which many East Asians aren't.

The milk doing all the hard work, as it's a nutritionally complete food to raise babies.

You don't last long on potatoes only. I bet milk only is doable even if very not optimal to an adult body.

Furthermore, the Irish survived on potatoes and cream alone.

Correct. I'm in Shanghai.

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