Is that for a real reason or because the law requires the companies to put some expiration date on any Food sold to consumers? Because that’s what my outdoor store Claims regarding some Long-Lasting Food like Beef jerky or canned Food: they Claim that it lasts longer than the “best before date”, but they have to put some date on there, so they pick an arbitrary one.
Our ministry for Food etc. has started to try to get consumers to learn that the “best before date” is mostly meaningless. The “Must be eaten before” date for fish and meat is important, because those can spoil after; but for milk or cheese you can use eyes (is there mold?) and nose (does it smell bad?) and a small nip for taste to figure out if it’s still good (because too much Food that’s still good, just past the official date, gets thrown out). The trick is to not cross the line where People eat Food actually gone bad (like chicken in summertime or eggs outside the fridge) and get Food poisioning.
And run out of gas on day 3 of apocalypse? That’s why a bike is better (horses Need Food). Or a diesel motorcycle, since a robust diesel can run on any plant oil without processing. (Yes, that’s not good for enviroment, but if it is the end of the world, that’s a lesser worry than immediate survival).
Not only for heart failure - running away from the Zombies/ a grisly requires General Fitness, too. Oh, wait, they think they can shoot everything and drive everywhere and don’t have to run, right?
I don’t even Need bottled water (with plastic bottles, I don’t trust how Long they will Keep), my tap water is good enough I can just fill some glass bottles. But I can’t carry the Liters for more than 3 days on my back and still run away from the hurricane. (Okay, I’m lucky, we don’t have hurricanes or serious earthquakes here; and if the Nepal supervulcano blows up, we’re fucked anyway, I don’t think 3 or 10 days of water will make a difference in that case).
And in my mini-Apartment I don’t have room to store Food and bottled water for several months.
I expect my govt. to warn People in advance and provide evacuation to Schools, like they do when bombs from WWII are discovered and similar situations. Food and water would be provided at those places, and I would only Need the small bug-out bag mentioned above: meds, papers, etc.
A two-foot hunk of 3/4 inch rebar (rebar ‘pins’ - available in most big-box hardware stores) with about 8 inches wrapped in electriacal tape will do brilliantly. It’s basically a ‘bar mace’ and will break heads and limbs quite effectively. you can sharpen the distal end to a point, if you feel you need a bit of ‘pokey’ action. It will swing hard and fast and not exhaust you, nor is it likely to get tangled or grabbed out of your hand.
People forget - you don’t have to head-shot a zombie to make them low-risk. Smash their jaws, and they can’t bite you. Break their shoulders or arms, and they can’t grab you. Knee-cap them and they can’t chase you. ‘Mission Kill’ is good enough, most cases.
Depends on what it is. Orally consumed medicine for pills that don’t require refrigeration? Most pharmaceutical substances are so stable that they will be good for many decades after the official date. Sure, if you have a choice, take the freshly made stuff, but the long expired stuff is probably fine.
Bottled water? What, you think the bacteria can just phase through the walls? I would say that if there is still water in the bottle, and the cap is still sealed, you can drink it. After perhaps centuries the water might evaporate through the walls.
Honey? Apparently that stuff is so stable you can eat the honey the egyptians left in their tombs.
Cheese squeeze in an MRE? Turns out, that stuff actually does decay. The MRE expiration dates of about 10 years are not completely wrong. It’s still safe to eat probably decades afterwards, but the taste and possibly the nutritional value does decay. Same with vitamins and other essential nutrients in preserved food. Turns out it does degrade over time - this is why Soylent has an expiration date of about a year.
There’s a youtube channel where a guy eats old military rations. One time he ate some leftover from the Civil War. It wasn’t very tasty - some kind of hard-tack, but he didn’t keel over dead. And yeah, Vietnam K-rations are edible but probably not great.
To Wit: How Not To Be Seen.
I have two worries about bottled water:
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if it’s a plastic bottle, the plastic doesn’t hold the original composition very Long, but starts releasing chemicals into the water. The process is quickest with sunlight and acid (like citric acid in Coca-cola etc.), but over a few years, I’m not sure about water, either.
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If I fill tap water into a normal glass bottle and let it stand for a few weeks, the bacteria and algae that were already inside will have started to grow, esp. if there is any light. (That’s why the drinking water on board ships in the sailing Age also “fouled” and why beer was preferred as cleaner.
Of course there is a Gradient: if I’m Close to starvation, I might risk some Food that’s very old. (Or the risk might be greater if my health is already compromised from starving before)
But every serious Manual I’ve read that suggest storing water and canned Food always includes the line “once a month, buy new cans, put them in the back, and use up the oldest, but still good, cans”.
Yeah, in a hurry I’m not going to pick and choose.
But if I’m thinking about preparing for survival, an axe is useful for chopping firewood, not just Zombies.
I think People want to kill Zombies instead of cure them because they are mooks - you don’t have to feel bad for killing them. Hence, less thinking about other strategies of disabling.
I thought about this a bit more, and if one were to make a list of local to global catastrophes, how likely they are to occur, how prepared the govt. is for it, and what a single individual can prepare for:
e.g. local/ likely/ prepared: Finding a WWII bomb; flooding; Tornado; earthquake up to 5 or 6
- guns not necessary, water and Food good enough
global/ likely/ unprepared: Eruption of supervulcano like yellowstone; Asteroid Impact;
- guns won’t help at all; only help is a bunker with air Filtration for several weeks (pyroclastic), plus canned Food for a few years
global pandemic (deadly like avian flu, transmitted through air like human flu: likely because Asia has millions of humans and birds living Close together = breeding ground, planes transmit worldwide)
- guns won’t help at all, neither will canned Food or water by themselves: if you happen to get infected, you have bad luck. If you are out in the boondocks and manage to barricade yourself in before you get infected, you can survive, but mostly it’s a game of Chance.
I was thinking more about efficiency - Headshots with melee weapons are harder than limb shots. Basically, anything your mythical zombie pokes towards you gets broken. Once you’ve broken themsufficiently, you can wander off about your business. Trying for a head blow every time puts you in reach of their grabby-bits. So, break the grabby-bits.
Or maybe I’ve waaaay over-thought this…
You have.
IMO
The whole and entire point of zombie scenarios is the ability for the not-yet infected to kill in as grisly a manner as possible in as great a number as possible with as much gleeful joy as possible.
A disturbing number of people really get off on that scenario.
Absent the guilt-free glee of sustained splattery slaughter it isn’t a zombie movie/game.
So thinking about how to calmly & efficiently perform mass mission kills is an irrelevant buzz-kill.
That’s what I do. 
Except I’m pretty damn competitive, and my object is to win. So figuring out genre-breaking out-of-the-box techniques is what gives me the giggles. 
Since this thread has drifted further than a plastic bag in a hurricane, I’ll chime in.
I highly recommend taking a local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training course. They teach you what the hazards are in your area, how to build a community plan to respond, and very basic training in first-aid, triage, and search-and-rescue.
I live in the middle of nowhere, but have half a dozen neighbors within a mile. Several of us have gone through the training and we are able to pool our resources in the event of a personal or neighborhood emergency.
Realistically, the biggest threats locally are flood, heavy snowstorm, and long-term power outage - likely caused by one of the other two. There HAS been some localized crime sprees (theft, burglary) attendant on any of the above, but standard common sense precautions work quite effectively on that.
Hmmm, are you my neighbor? Those are the likely emergencies here as well (add tornado, I suppose).
We had a rash of burglaries in our township a few years back, the County Sheriff had a town hall meeting to discuss. Some of us talked about things we had done, such as positioning trail cameras to cover driveways, motion lights, etc. The Sheriff then asked if anyone had any questions for him, specifically. The first question from the crowd was “When can we shoot them?”.
The burglaries stopped.
Yeah, maybe? Northern Delaware - If not neighbors, certainly similar profiles - though I suspect you’re more rural than I.
Yeah, tornadoes are a possiblity - We had an F-0 a few years back, and I not-so-long-ago had the spine-chilling opportunity to look straight up into a rotation as a ringwall was forming. Fortunately, it fizzled.
Heh. Yeah, the local punks would respond positively to that, sure enough. Instead, the neighborhood has grown a remarkable number of very big dogs. Same effect.
FYI, you were responding to a guy who lives in Germany.
The US CERT course (or its local equivalent) is still a good idea wherever one lives.
I’m not a guy.
And I don’t live in the sticks, but in a Major City. Living in the Countryside, it might be a good idea to know some Basics; in the City, we do have emergency Services.
More important, I think, is that we have a Federal Office for “Katastrophenschutz” Homepage - BBK. Origins are related both to fire, flooding and war (hence funding during Cold War), which means it covers both natural catastrophes and possible Terrorist dangers. It’s mostly preparing plans and Training exercises for communication and coordination between fire Brigade, Police, local authorities, health emergency Services and the Population.
So that’s what I rely on. Sure, first-aid-Training is good. Thinking about and planning/ preparing - taking into consideration limited storage, Funds, etc. - for some emergencies is good common sense and rational thinking. But most bad things either don’t happen here (elsewhere) or are too big to really prepare for (supervulcanoes).
Yes; several of the charities I Support have after the Christmas Tsunami in Asia introduced “disaster courses” in the local Schools (because they can reach the Population easiest that way) where the Kids discuss:
what dangers could happen? (Mudslides, flooding, Tsunamis… depending on Region)
how can we prevent them? (re-forest a hillside to prevent mudslides; post guards at the river after rain to warn for flooding…)
how do we react properly when an Alarm is given? (Go to higher ground/ safer place, collect clean water, collect Family, …)
sometimes combined with Basic first aid and evacuation exercises.
Since poor countries often don’t have federal disaster prevention Offices (who would normally watch and Alarm and evacuate) this is a good ground-level way to at least lessen the Impact of small-scale natural disasters which will continue to grow with climate Change.
That would be this guy, I think. He doesn’t snarf down everything but just those that look remotely edible. One episode a can of Viet Nam-era beefsteak hissed a bit when he opened it and he, quite sensibly, wouldn’t even touch it with gloved fingers, never mind sample it. Reactions range from “Hey, this is pretty good,” to “Oh, God! (retch) This is nasty!” He samples the cigarettes and, stating he doesn’t smoke every day any more, finds some of them particularly powerful by today’s standards.
Natick Labs, who among other things checks the various rations out there, says MREs can be stored from three to eight years depending on the temperature but that’s based on palatability, not nutritional or hazard issues. MREinfo.com has more information on these things than most people would want.
My apologies for my mistake.
No Problem.