Bracing for crisis, do planners or the local army surplus store have the answer?

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2006

CHICAGO (AFP) — If bird flu strikes America, Ken Hirsch is certain queues will form outside the Army Navy Surplus store his family has owned for more than 50 years.

His cache of emergency rations, boots, camouflaged jackets and other paramilitary goodies is a bellwether of American mass hysteria.

A line snaked around the block when word got out that he had a stock of Israeli gas masks during the anthrax scare after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Things got hairy when the store decided to limit the number of masks sold to each person.

"A lady came in here and she started screaming at us 'you're going to kill one of my kids'," said Hirsch.

"We had an order of nuns - they put a curse on us."

But despite the nightmarish scenario painted...