I'm not a prepper, but there has been a rush right around the world recently to stock up on supplies in fear of the Coronavirus.
Not saying your friend is wrong though, he's probably right, if you live in a city, stocks are probably gonna run out from a lot of supermarkets, because of that rush to stock up and in the news headlines just now, Scott Morrison was talking about supermarket shelves being stocked.
The problem would be though the numbers of imports and exports getting cut down, even though there are a lot of consumables you eat and drink that are produced in Australia, and there is also plenty of stuff that is not, but I believe a lot of the materials for packaging is from overseas.
-----------
Are we prepared though for such an event?
We are all good for water, there's a river nearby with fresh food in it hahaha, we are a long way upstream, and a short drive away from that part of the river where you can say no one lives past this point upstream, otherwise probably only around 300-400 people live past us, there's a massive forest with deer in it, not that I could kill a deer or skin one though. Lol. But since we are in a much lower population semi-rural sort of area, and the towns around here are small, the supermarkets should be able to keep their shelves stocked for longer.
But for those living in higher populated areas it would be wise to stock up now.
And because of that, I don't think there will be a case where we would have to stay home and bunker down.