Podcast Episode 267: What If the Grocery Stores Didn’t Open Tomorrow?
What would actually happen if grocery stores didn’t open tomorrow? Not empty shelves after panic buying. Not chaos in the aisles. Just locked doors and dark lights. In this episode of the Wild Fish and Game Podcast, Justin Townsend and Adam Berkelmans explore a thought experiment that reveals how deeply modern life depends on grocery stores and the global systems behind them. Through history, ecological realities, and personal reflection, they unpack the uncomfortable truth that even hunters and anglers, people often seen as the most self-reliant food providers, may not be as insulated from disruption as we like to believe.
Click to Listen
Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube
Leave a Review of the Podcast
Buy our Wild Fish and Game Spices
The Art of Venison Sausage Making
The episode begins with a simple but unsettling premise. Justin asks listeners to imagine driving to their usual grocery store only to find it closed, with a printed notice taped to the door: closed until further notice.
“Suddenly, you realize something uncomfortable,” Justin says. “You’ve built your daily life around a place you barely think about.”
The scenario is not meant to be apocalyptic. Instead, the conversation treats it as a lens for examining the systems we rely on without noticing. Grocery stores feel permanent, but as Adam points out, the stability they provide exists only because thousands of moving parts operate continuously.
“Our food system works because it works constantly,” Adam explains. “Interrupt the flow even briefly and the foundation cracks.”
Lessons From History
While North America has never experienced a complete loss of grocery stores, there have been moments when the food system came under severe stress. The Great Depression, World War II rationing, and the supply chain disruptions during COVID-19 all revealed the fragility behind modern food access.
During the Depression, Adam explains, access to food was limited even though agriculture continued.
“People were stretching flour, diluting soups, and eating cuts of meat that had fallen out of favor,” he says. “Wild game became common once more, not because it was trendy, but because it was necessary.”
World War II brought rationing, forcing households to adapt recipes and stretch ingredients. At the height of the war effort, Victory Gardens produced roughly 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in the United States.
“That required national mobilization and a cultural shift toward growing food at home,” Adam notes.
More recently, the COVID pandemic revealed a different vulnerability: distribution. Food existed, but getting it to stores became difficult. Yeast disappeared, pasta vanished, and meat processing plants temporarily shut down.
“There was enough food,” Adam says, “but the system that moves it broke down.”
The Hidden Complexity of a Grocery Store
Justin emphasizes that grocery stores are not simply buildings filled with products. They are nodes within a massive global network of agriculture, transportation, labor, and logistics.
“We tend to treat grocery stores like buildings,” he explains. “But they’re networks.”
The produce section represents more than vegetables. It represents timing. The meat counter reflects feedlots, slaughterhouses, cold chain logistics, and temperature control across thousands of miles.
Even something as simple as cooking oil depends on vast agricultural systems.
“We mistake stability for permanence,” Justin says. “But grocery stores are ecosystems.”
And like natural ecosystems, they do not collapse all at once. Instead, failure begins when one essential layer disappears.
The Hunter’s Illusion of Food Security
The conversation turns inward when Justin and Adam examine their own food supplies. As hunters and anglers, both have freezers full of wild protein. At first glance, that might sound like security.
But when Justin audits the rest of his kitchen, the picture changes.
“Wild protein is not food security by itself,” he says. “It’s just one ingredient.”
Without salt, oil, flour, rice, and spices, cooking becomes far more limited. Modern meals rely on global ingredients even when the meat comes from a local hunt.
“A deer from Ontario, seared in olive oil from Spain, seasoned with pepper from Vietnam,” Justin notes. “We harvest locally, but we finish globally.”
Even practical challenges emerge quickly. Freezers rely on electricity. Preservation methods like curing, drying, and fermenting require skills many people have not practiced.
“Freezing is convenience,” Justin says. “But it’s not resilience.”
Ecological Reality
Adam pushes the thought experiment further by examining what would happen if millions of people suddenly turned to hunting and fishing for food.
“Wild protein doesn’t scale infinitely,” he says.
If large numbers of people began harvesting wildlife simultaneously, populations would decline rapidly. Fishing spots would become crowded. Out-of-season harvest would increase. Poaching would likely rise.
Adam describes witnessing a stark example of this dynamic while traveling in southern Africa.
Crossing from South Africa into Mozambique after years of civil war, he saw a dramatic change.
“You went from seeing animals everywhere to barely seeing a bird,” he says. “It was a land scraped clean by hungry people.”
The lesson is clear. Wild food systems operate on ecological timelines, not human panic.
“You can’t just declare it berry season,” Adam explains.
Community Versus Independence
Another theme emerging from the conversation is the cultural myth of rugged independence. Hunters often imagine survival as an individual effort, but both hosts argue that community is the real key to resilience.
“In real times of disaster,” Adam says, “community is what gets you through.”
No single person can grow crops, hunt animals, preserve food, maintain tools, and manage land all at once. But a cooperative group can divide those responsibilities.
Community gardens, shared labor, and collective food systems become essential.
Justin points out that grocery stores may have unintentionally reduced the need for those relationships.
“You don’t need your neighbor’s garden if you have a produce aisle,” he says. “You don’t need to trade fish for potatoes if both are stacked neatly under fluorescent lights.”
But when abundance disappears, cooperation becomes necessary again.
Reviving Forgotten Skills
The conversation connects this thought experiment to the Wild Pantry series, where Justin and Adam explore traditional preservation techniques.
Salting fish, fermenting vegetables, drying meat, and rendering fat were once everyday practices. Today, they are often treated as niche hobbies.
“Food knowledge is cultural memory,” Adam says. “If we don’t practice it, we lose it.”
And relearning those skills during a crisis would be extremely difficult. Preservation requires practice and patience long before it becomes necessary.
Justin notes that a growing number of people are rediscovering these traditions through gardening, fermentation, and home cooking.
Over the last decade, short disruptions and supply scares have reminded many households that food systems are not guaranteed.
Rediscovering Resilience
As the episode closes, Justin offers a final perspective. Grocery stores themselves are not the problem. In fact, they represent one of humanity’s greatest logistical achievements.
“The ability to move all those things and have them in one place is incredible,” he says.
The real issue is the assumption that the system will always function perfectly.
“We mistake them for permanent,” Justin explains.
The thought experiment ultimately leads to a deeper insight about resilience. Food security is not just about stockpiles or hunting skills. It is about knowledge, community, and adaptability.
“Sometimes in order to look toward the future,” Justin says, “we have to look toward the past.”
Listen to the Episode
This episode of the Wild Fish and Game Podcast challenges the comforting narratives many of us hold about food security and self-reliance. Through history, ecology, and personal reflection, Justin Townsend and Adam Berkelmans unpack what might actually happen if the systems we depend on paused even briefly. To hear the full conversation and explore the ideas behind this thought experiment, listen to Episode 267 of the Wild Fish and Game Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.