Fresh thoughts on keeping a fully stocked pantry of food and supplies: Emergency Preparedness and ready for good times too

thanks

Glad I could help mate!
CROW

Look, when the S@$% hits the fan there will probably not be many luxuries.

Power will go out - water will stop flowing - gasoline will be non-existant!

Heres the skinny -
1. Stock up on bulk dry goods - i.e dried beans, 50 lb bags of rice, Ramen noodles.

All of the above are CHEAP, full of carbs (for all that manual labor you will have to do) and easily transportable!

2. For a little flavor get bulk salt, pepper and bullion cubes (chicken and beef flavored). Thats all you need.

3. Forget about battery powered stuff!
Get the flashlights and radio's that have the "crank" on them. Many types of electronics gear is available that uses "magneto power".

4. Get a 1 gallon "Camelbak" or personal hydration system for each member of your family.

5. Basic Medical supplies!
Just a small first aid kit from Wal-Mart will do (located in the automotive section).

6. One Large pot or pan to cook in
over an open fire (dont forget matches)

Rule of thumb:
BE READY TO MOVE YOUR FAMILY ON 30 MIN NOTICE!!!
AND BE PREPARED TO MOVE ON FOOT!

Move your family to a place of YOUR choice - not where the Gov't tells you.

Remember, your ancestors lived on less
that what I have reccomended above.

NOW FOR THE HARD PART:

PET's:
We all love Fluffy and Spot- but face it, they have been pampered all their lives and probably could not survive in the wild. Only if you are willing to haul the food and water can you take them with you - and eventually that will run out!
Put them down!!

The Elderly:
This is your judgement call!
Do what you think is best!
I am NOT reccomending harming them -
maybe a member of the family can stay with them and then join you later.

I know I will probably get flamed and hammered for this post - but if you want to survive ....
Take it or leave it - I give it to all as an option!

Peace All!

The advice in the above post will see you dead in a month...bulk grains are ok, but without the protein, your body will break down, you will get sick and die.
Stock up on Spam and other meaty goodies...Ive eaten canned cheese from 1992 and it was great!..Spam has a shelf life of at least 35 years.
Battery appliences are fine...get a solar charger and a whole bunch of rechargable batteries..
hand crank torches have a lifespan of 500 hours, give or take...then thats it.
Good advice on being prepared to move...a good idea is to have burried caches in likely evacuation routes..just the basics.
CROW

Buy comfortable walking/hiking shoes. A backpack and a sleeping bag, too.

I keep my loaded backpack near the door. A full tank of gas can't hurt either.

peace to all

This is a great thread..full of information.

I especially like the real life experiences that have been related here...like hauling one's preps across country.

I have used up my preps twice in an emergency situation and I can tell you that if I had not had my supplies I would have gone very hungry.

Don't discount the value of having a mini-grocery store in your own home.

Walmart just simply isn't going to have food when you need it the most in a societal/national/even local crisis situation...so don't plan on.

Think ahead while there is still a day even to do so.

side note:

When leaving your area during an emergency on foot, seek out the railroad tracks and follow them out of town...rail line right of ways are always clear of trees and provide a good path out of a major city...

...know which tracks lead out of town and head toward that line with your backpack and such...

A lot of good advice in this thread, and a lot of nonsense too.The brown rice thing is so important--why would you want crap like white rice and pasta in a survival situation where you need to be well nourished? The biggest favor any of you could do yourselves would be to never eat non nutritious, poisonous crud like white bread and it's analogs,white pasta and rice,ever again.

In an extreme emergency, the main thing is filling your stomach and calories. Brown rice, white rice, whatever. If I was desperately hungry, I'd be thankful for some of that nasty Minute rice!

At the very least, get some rice, beans, oil or lard and multi-vitamins. You need oil in your diet too. Lard will keep about forever with no refrigeration, and adds flavor to those beans.

We have brown and white rice, pinto and small white beans and lentils. Lentils and rice together make a complete protein.
So do corn and beans. I have masa and lard for making corn tortillas to use with refried beans and seasoned rice as burritos. Lentils and rice and some chicken broth (canned or boullion cubes) and a few herbs make a really good, filling soup. You can cook white beans with some sage and dried garlic and mash them with some olive oil for a wonderful dip with wheat crackers. Kind of like an Italian 'hummous'. I have about 5# of hummous mix in a spare refrigerator with some other dry goods, that's another good emergency food. Mix with water and a little oil (olive if you have it), add a couple shots of Tabasco and that's wonderful with wheat crackers also.

"Brown rice, white rice, whatever."
There is no "whatever" operative here, and whether or not you would eat minute rice has nothing at all to do with the subject at hand.
You pay your money, and you make your choice.You can choose intelligently, or you can eat filth like lard.

Rear View:
Excellent note about the rail lines.I would advise everyone to become intimately familiar with not only the rail lines, but the paths that lead to them.
In urban areas,usually there are whole webs of interconnected trails that lead to and from the railways, almost like freeway exits.
Near some of my favorite "rail trails" there are a LOT of good things to eat.Berries, wild garlic, all sorts of stuff.

380, I am only making a few suggestions here. And eating Minute Rice if I was starving has EVERYTHING to do with the subject of this thread, which is eating under emergency circumstances.

You a little angry today?

Peace

myself and my friends/family, have made a commitment to camp as much as possible this summer, to test out everything you are talking about, improving camping conditions, and different methods of cooking

same thing applies to the food you have stashed, you have to figure out a way to eat it, which may not be as easy as it sounds, depending on the severity of the conditions we are thrown into

a survival situation is much easier in groups, than alone, if you are prepared, many hands make light work,, or something like that :)

oh btw,, go here and check out this site, tons of information for free:

[link to www.fema.gov]

51258 says:

"Rule of thumb:
BE READY TO MOVE YOUR FAMILY ON 30 MIN NOTICE!!!
AND BE PREPARED TO MOVE ON FOOT!"

Unless you have another place with food and shelter waiting for you -- like a cabin in the high country with a well that doesn't require grid power -- you would be better staying in your home.

And any place which would be safer than your home (if such a place exists) would almost CERTAINLY not be within walking distance!

It's a whole lot easier to prepare your home (a place you're familiar with) than it would be to cut your support infrastructure down to what you could put on your back, and then go out for a walk with thousands of other people -- none of whom have a chance of hiking more than ten or twelve miles.

You'd die of a heart attack or a stroke within a day, if someone with a vehicle and a gun didn't kill you first and take your stuff.

Even if you have no military background (and I'm assuming that 95% of you have never been in the military), you should realize that a defensive position is a lot more feasible than an offensive one, especially if you have food, water, batteries, firearms, ammunition, and neighbors you can trust to help you.

i agree with you duncan, unless you live in a big city, if you do, i would pre position some supplies, with friends or relatives that you can trust

i live in a fairly small community, and intend on staying put, unless it gets so crazy that they are sweeping homes for patriots, ex military, gun nuts, like myself, fortunately, i have many places to camp and not too far away, and my truck is always loaded and ready to bug out

"380, I am only making a few suggestions here. And eating Minute Rice if I was starving has EVERYTHING to do with the subject of this thread, which is eating under emergency circumstances.
You a little angry today?
Peace"
Peace to you too,but the ONLY thing I could even vaguely qualify as anger is frustration in trying to get a simple thought across.I really thought I did it well enough before, but apparently not, so...
I do NOT agree that deliberately deciding to eat crap has anything to do with preparedness.
I am NOT saying I wouldn't eat minute rice if that's all there was.I'm saying there is NO reason it should be there in the first place.The capital letters are for emphasis, not anger. .
Personally, I think Minute Rice, which is simply white rice that has been cooked and then dried again,tastes every bit as good as regular white rice.It's just that they both taste like what they are:death in a pot.
The title of the thread is"Emergency Preparedness",not emergency eating of whatever crap you can find.

Well, I guess we have food storage snobs just about everywhere. Look, if you buy what you eat, you'll be better off. Brown rice is very good for you, but I don't happen to like it all that much. I'll eat white rice, but I just don't enjoy brown rice. I dunno. That's just me. Now, if I were very hungry and all you could offer me was brown rice, you can bet I'd eat it.

LARD...
It's an excellent storage item for all the reasons already listed here, and I'd like to add one more -- illumination.

When your batteries are depleted, and your candles are melted, a jar of lard with a cotton wick in it will do in a pinch.

We buy lard, of course. I don't cook with lard, but I know I can.

LIFE SKILLS 101?

However, this year I also rendered beef fat tallow myself, and it turned out surprisingly well. We don't intend to eat this rendering --- I was just trying to learn how to do it should I need it for illumination or to make soap, etc. I put the rendered fat into canning jars and it's out on my storage shelves.

We buy sirloin butts and cut our own steaks. This last time, my meat source didn't have any trimmed butts, so we got a great deal in untrimmed. Ended up with buckets of beef fat, and rather than stick it in the trash, I decided to boil it down. It took 3 days total (okay, I'm on a learning curve here. LOL), but I reduced about 40lbs of fat to 4 qts.

I cut the beef fat into chunks and boiled it in water. While the water was hot, I skimmed off the ugly floating stinky stuff. I let the water cool, and the fat congeal. I scooped out the very gross congealed fat renderings, and put that into a pan of clean water, and start boiling all over again, then let it cool, scoop out the fat, drain the pan...the idea is to get all the grit and bits and pieces to sink to the bottom of the pan. That left only fat.

I repeated this until all the fat was clean and white. I scooped the stuff into jars.

It was a messy, nasty, smelly exercise, but now I know I can do it.

My great-grandmother used to do it over a wood fire, but then, she used to boil her wash on a big fire out back, too.

Frankly, I'm not in the mood for a self-taught lesson on wash boiling.

Redhead

"When your batteries are depleted, and your candles are melted, a jar of lard with a cotton wick in it will do in a pinch."


Someone on a prep forum gave the opinion once that you could probably stick a wick in a can of Spam, and it might burn quite well. :)

380

when you are starving, you will eat anything that is put in front of your face
how can you possibly know how long to prepare for? do you have enough seeds and preservation equipment to survive forever? i don't,,,,, i have enough seeds for three years, for ten people

if i see a deal on minute rice, i am buying it, it uses little fuel to cook, and i am going to mix meat and veggies with it, calories are important, period, rely on a good multi vitamin to help keep you healthy

remember,, food will be a good bartering tool, feed them the white rice

good advice redhead,, i like down and dirty survival myself,,, speaking of which,, a 50 pound bag of dog food is all you need to survive, for months

woof

Malu,
LOL! I hear ya!

Speaking of dog food...we have about 3 months worth of dog kibble stored for our critters. When we tabulated our own food needs, we treated the dogs like people and added them to the tabulations. In a pinch, we can reduce their kibble and extend it by adding cooked grains, etc. Buying extra grains was cheaper than buying enough kibble to last a year.

Redhead

a dog is a very good animal to have, for an early warning system, and companionship,,plus they taste good *just kidding* they have some sweet back packs for dogs, so they can help carry supplies

i did not see anyone mention books also, there are lots of good survival books, and i really enjoyed the foxfire series, lots of practical information, that few people know about these days

Malu,
One of my very favorite books is BACK TO BASICS (Readers Digest). It looks like a big coffee table book, but it's jam packed with tons of useful and important information -- from buying land to foraging for food. I've had my copy since 1981. It's not something you'd want to carry in a bug-out bag, but it's an excellent guide for "how to learn and enjoy traditional American skills" (from the cover). I've used it for all sorts of things.

My well-worn copy of PASSPORT TO SURVIVAL by Esther Dickey is with me. I also have THE DOCTORS BOOK OF HOME REMEDIES.

I have a ton of other books...self-help books on building, repairing, growing, cooking, baking...We have been gathering our "library" for several years.

It's nice to have things on CD, but if there's no electricity, there's no CD.

Redhead

that is awesome red head! i have read the same books, i love going to garage sales and used book stores to look for self sufficient books

knowledge is power, and 90% of our population is not going to have a clue, if things get really bad, i think we will have some tough times ahead, but order will be restored, before we ultimately crash, imho

gotta love the amish

My favorite 'how-to/self sufficiency' book is The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery.

This book has everything from homebirth to gardening (and how to save seed), how to grow crops and harvest, raising farm animals (and vetting them), building a root cellar, herbal info, just about everything.

This discussion is bringing up so many good angles on preparedness! I enjoy the argument about what to store, whether it should be the most nutritious possible or the cheapest most convenient thing, I am sure both can be true and a little of each wouldn't hurt. I like brown rice but it takes a lot longer to cook than white rice, that is why I fall back on white rice most of the time. If we were concerned about fuel shortages, in the short term things that don't take a long time to cook are a better choice for your first phase of getting some food set aside.

I bet there are a lot of people reading this thread who don't post who are getting nudged to maybe pick up a few things next time they go to the store. Just a little here and there is so helpful.

I think for people who are maybe thinking about these ideas for the first time, it is important to make the distinction between getting ready for a temporary glitch like a big storm and power outage, where you might be confined at home and not want to go out, stores might be closed, that kind of thing; call it Phase One preparedness, perfectly sensible and for a short term emergency. Then a lot of you are way past that, and thinking in terms of six months or a year's worth of supply, and even moving towards total self sufficiency if possible. A lot of people just aren't ready to make those kind of long term arrangements, I for one live in a very small apartment and my small amount of extra I am keeping around has caused problems already trying to figure out where to put any of it. I wish I had more camping equipment though.

Anyway I was saying in the beginning of this thread that there are more reasons to keep extra food and supplies around than just getting ready for something awful to happen. It really is like having money in the bank and could be seen as a money management tool that I don't see discussed much in the personal finance books. It freees up your cash when you aren't always having to run go get things that you are out of and need today. It gives you flexibility to take advantage of other opportunities that might arise. Okay, I am speaking from the perspective of someone on a pretty tight budget, I realize not everyone is.

Hey I appreciate the people who said get good hiking boots. I need some and it's easy to put it off. I ought to move that higher on the priority list for purchases this year.

Well for all my rambling maybe I just am trying to say that there is kind of a continuum of preparedness, there could be shades of gray in terms of how far people are ready to take these ideas and how much resources they can devote to them. I think it could be daunting or discouraging to present it in black and white terms only, that you would be preparing for a total end of the world scenario or nothing. Don't want to discourage people from just doing what they can. Having a little extra in the house is way better than not having any extra, and you know a lot of people don't have anything extra from one week to the next.

In the food storage pages I have read on the web, the main thing they stress is "eat what you store, store what you eat" and I thought that was a very good idea when I first heard it. For people starting out I would stick with buying multiples of things you normally use. And maybe branching out into the convenience version of a few things, like instant mashed potatoes, since actual potatoes will sprout, and powdered milk, for obvious reasons. I would never normally use things like that, but since I bought them for storage I have gotten a little experimental. I only make coffee occasionally in the morning, so I don't keep milk around for it, so I have used the powdered milk for that. Usually I drink black tea.

Mainly I am just pleased with all the sensible and well thought out ideas being discussed on this thread. Thanks for all the good posts. My next step in preparedness is to buy enough vitamins and supplements to last me the rest of the year. And some larger quantities of rice and beans. And enough stuff like deoderant, toothpaste etc to last the year, I hope. I am thinking I won't have a lot of cash for those cash intensive things like vitamins. I am stocking up for the emergency of going part time at my job and starting a business on the side. It might be a cash crunch for a while.

<<<Anyway I was saying in the beginning of this thread that there are more reasons to keep extra food and supplies around than just getting ready for something awful to happen. It really is like having money in the bank and could be seen as a money management tool that I don't see discussed much in the personal finance books. It freees up your cash when you aren't always having to run go get things that you are out of and need today. It gives you flexibility to take advantage of other opportunities that might arise. Okay, I am speaking from the perspective of someone on a pretty tight budget, I realize not everyone is.>>>

Mercury,
You make an awesome point here. It really is like having money in the bank.

In these days of high gasoline prices and rising food costs, it has made my life easier to have food on store. Now that my husband has lost his job, our monetary resources are very tight. It so often feels like everything is out of our hands, ya know? I'm not real fond of change and disruption. Managing my food storage gives me a sense of control over some part of my life.

Your friendly control freak,
Redhead

See, redhead, it was the same way for me, I had a strong gut feeling to stockpile stuff last fall, and I just went with my gut and did it, then this February I had an unexpected drop in income, and it really took the sting out of it that I had a lot of food in the house. It made a big difference.

Now I am looking at going part time in about a month, so that I can devote more time and energy to starting a business. Before my income goes down to where it just covers my rent and bills, I want to get a whole lot of regular supplies in place to get me through the initial development before any income is coming in.

The more people talk about this, the more angles it brings up. It's a cool subject for exploration and learning! Like all the skills you say you've been trying out. That's cool when an interest gets you to try new things. Me too!