- You can run out of anything, from corpses to hot sauce.
We all remember what it’s like to live through a product shortage. After all, it’s only been a few years since the pandemic and the Great Toilet Paper Shortage.
As weird as the COVID toilet paper shortage was, it’s not the only time people had to scramble for weird items. From now-extinct spices to human corpses, all manners of strange commodities have been in short supply over the years.
Here are eight unusual shortages from history — and one that’s ongoing to this day.
1. The Roman Silphium Shortage
Silphium, or laserpicium, was a North African plant that ancient Romans loved to the point that they put it on everything. And we mean it — it was used in cooking, in medicine, as an aphrodisiac, a perfume, you name it.
And then there was no more. The Romans (and other ancient peoples) used so much silphium that the plant went extinct.
Silphium had already been worth its weight in gold, but the plant’s death caused its price to skyrocket. Those with the means hoarded as much as they could, while poorer classes turned to alternatives, like asafetida.
You can’t help but wonder what silphium tasted like for the Romans to eat it to extinction.
2. The British Firewood Shortage
Britannia used to rule the waves, so they needed ships. To construct those precious vessels, English shipyards needed immense amounts of wood.
So did everybody building houses on the British Isles. And then the people living in those houses needed firewood for heating and cooking.
By the end of the 1500s, practically all British forests had been chopped down. That led to a massive firewood shortage, with the price of a bundle of wood increasing tenfold between 1540 and 1620.
The shortage was so severe that it fueled British immigration to the New World, eventually resulting in the birth of the U.S. It also led to the transition to much more energy-dense coal, which in turn fueled the Industrial Revolution.
3. Scotland’s Corpse Shortage
In 1823, Scotland introduced legislation that dramatically reduced the number of criminals sentenced to death. What was perhaps good news for human rights was terrible for Scottish medical students.
You see, to be a good doctor, you must know human anatomy. But with fewer dead criminals, Scotland’s medical academies ran out of corpses to study.
With schools paying ever-rising sums for fresh corpses, some less scrupulous people saw an opportunity. They started digging up freshly-buried bodies and selling them to medical schools for quick dirty cash.
Things haven’t really changed much, since there’s currently a new Scottish corpse shortage. We haven’t seen any reports of people digging cadavers up this time, though.
4. The WWII Stocking Shortage
One of the new-fangled military branches first employed to effect in WWII was airborne infantry. However, manufacturing all the parachutes, ropes, and other materials required lots of nylon.
As a result, the U.S., Germany, and many other fighting countries diverted all nylon supplies from civilian to military use. That means women suddenly ran out of stockings — a terrible thing to happen, considering stockings were the latest craze.
The ladies got creative, though. One of the most popular substitutes was paint-on stockings, with women using makeup products to basically draw stockings on their legs.
Yet, it just wasn’t the same thing. When nylon rationing finally ended after the war, each country saw “nylon riots” as women were ready to fight for new hosiery.
5. Operation Pig Bristle
Following WWII, Australia had a bigger problem than a lack of pantyhose. All the young men returning from the front to start families needed houses — but Australia ran out of paintbrushes to paint the homes.
Now, Australia isn’t that far from China, and China grows plenty of pigs from whose bristles they used to (and still do) make paintbrushes. The problem was that China was embroiled in a violent civil war that made visiting it extremely dangerous.
So, the Australian government launched Operation Pig Bristle. Three Royal Australian Air Force cargo planes flew several daring missions to war-torn China to acquire 25 tons of pig bristles.
All so that Australia’s own veterans could have a nicely painted house.
6. The Johnny Carson Toilet Paper Shortage
The pandemic-era toilet paper shortage isn’t, bizarrely enough, the only one in U.S. history. There was another one in 1973, that kicked off with a joke Johnny Carson told on The Tonight Show.
At the time, American commercial facilities were having issues securing enough toilet paper for their daily operations. During his show, however, Carson cracked a joke about the situation that made it seem the whole country was running out of butt wipes.
People flew into a toilet paper-hoarding frenzy, which in turn led to stores rationing supply, resulting in occasionally violent confrontations. The situation was defused only after Carson himself delivered a public apology, explaining he had exaggerated the shortage for humor’s sake.
“I don’t want to be remembered as the man who created a false toilet paper scare,” he said in his address.
7. The 2012 Twinkie Shortage
You might remember this story. In 2012, Hostess Brands announced it had filed for bankruptcy and would cease its commercial operations during the same year.
People went nuts. Where would they now get their horrendously preservative-laden snack cakes from now?
Soon enough, stores throughout America ran out of Twinkies as people began hoarding the cakes in massive numbers. Some of the mass buyers didn’t even like Twinkies — they planned to later sell the infamously unperishable cakes at a huge profit.
Well, those plans kind of went down the drain. Hostess Brands was bought out by a couple of investment companies and Twinkies were back in stores by mid-2013.
8. The Sriracha Shortage
Finally, it’s time to cover our latest shortage. However, as any fan of spicy Asian sauces can tell you, this one is by no means historical.
The sriracha shortage is still very much ongoing, and has been for a few years. Huy Fong Foods, the Californian company behind the famous rooster-labeled sauce, seems to have perpetual difficulties in sourcing chili peppers.
In 2016, the company ran out of peppers due to some shady dealings with supplying farms. In 2022 and 2023, Sriracha production stopped due to droughts in Mexico.
Things aren’t much better this year. The company again halted production in May 2024 because the year’s chili crop was “too green.”
Maybe it was the right choice. Would you eat green sriracha?