One of the men in my first Army unit was fond of saying, “Ain’t but one thief in the army; everybody else is just trying to get his crap back.”

I disagreed with that — somebody steals from me, I don’t care if he was looking to replace what someone else took from him, he just stole from me — but I understood the basic principle of a cascade effect. One person panics, his actions panic somebody else, until even the people who aren’t panicking have to respond to the conditions created by the panic. (Unless you’re vaguely paranoid to begin with, and were already stocked up ahead on the basics.)

I’ve spent the last ten days regularly checking the toilet paper section in the stores: not because I need any (I don’t), but just as a barometer to see how things are doing. So far? still going out as fast as it’s coming in, which is silly, but on the other hand it does keep coming back in.

We got rich, we got comfortable, we got complacent. We forgot that scarcity — or at least, unpredictable episodes of scarcity — is the natural norm. I was raised by a couple of Depression kids, which means my upbringing gave me a certain inoculation against complacency.