The case study reconstructs the flow of events during WWI and WWII which both resulted in shortage and later on famine in Ljubljana. It gives a comparison between the two periods of extreme conditions, and illustrates the distress of individuals in their battle for survival. The article emphasizes that economic preparations for both wars proved to be insufficient in all countries and at all levels. The town of Ljubljana was no exception, although some differences could be seen between the preparations for the First and the Second World War on account of bad past experience. The preparations for WWII namely started sooner and were implemented more systematically. Nonetheless, due to increasingly higher living costs and food shortage, inhabitants were forced to make cutbacks on spending and to prepare very modest meals even before the very beginnings of WWI and WWII. After the implementation of war economy, the situation in Ljubljana was still unstable, and the limited supply of living goods was followed by an even higher increase in prices, and, afterwards, the shortage of flour and bread which were the first ones to be rationalized. In both cases, the shortage and the rationalization of other important foodstuffs followed. On account of general shortage, the daily amounts of rationalized foodstuffs were unstoppably decreasing, resulting in increasingly lower living standard, and leading to growing shortage, famine and diseases. The shortage, famine and diseases are, thus, something which occurred in both wars and could be, considering the situation in hinterland and food security among the civilians, seen as a general state in the land. Ljubljana and its inhabitants were, thus, left isolated and were forced to come up with their own creative solutions on how to survive