Check out the book "The Great Influenza" about the circumstances of the pandemic of 1918-1919. The book says it was atypical, the evidence is that it started in the US, not Asia, and was transmitted when troops were sent to support the WW I allies. There were warnings by doctors about shipping infected troops, but goodness gracious, there was government inertia and ineptitude involved...

As for stockpiling weapons to guard food supplies, this sounds like a paranoid response. With a large die-off of people, the problem is not lack of resources, but preservation of the medical infrastructure.