What types of foods should I store for an emergency (eg. war?). How much for a family of 6 with a 1 year old baby? Also take in account that there might be no electricity or firewood readily available so at least some of the food should be ready to eat. What other supplies should I keep at hand?
Thank you.
Buy a lot of these.
Don’t forget the water.
and rotate your stock, meaning eat some and buy new periodically.
How about some grains and seeds that can be planted out - depends on whether you will have access to any land during this time?
Are you thinking short-term emergency, or total breakdown of civilization?
How much experience do you have with farming?
Likely to end up in IMHO.
Some bottled water isn’t a bad idea, but it’s hard to keep enough on hand for long-term and still keep rotating through your stock to keep it fresh. The best advice I’ve heard is to keep a couple of bottles of chlorine bleach (unscented), which you can use to sanitize whatever water you come across, provided it’s not too turbid. Search the web for recipes; I think it’s something like 1/4 teaspoon of bleach per gallon of water, which (if accurate) means a gallon of bleach can provide you with 750+ gallons of potable water. If this seems repellent, keep in mind that your tap water is typically sanitized with chlorine.
Other than that, I’d suggest canned food (and a couple of can openers), dried/vacuum-packed trail mixes. Some dried foods, like backpacking meals and pasta dishes. They’ll store well for the long haul, which means you won’t need to rotate stock as often, and you probably won’t be totally without fire.
Lots of toilet paper. Shitloads of it, no pun intended. TP doesn’t expire, and if you can’t get more of it, you’ll be scrounging around for stuff to use, so there’s no good reason not to have a lot of it stored away.
How much to store? Well, how long a period of civil breakdown do you want to be able to survive? Do some basic math on how much food/water you and your family consumer per day, and multiply by # of days you think you might need to be self-sufficient.
If you’re serious about surviving the kind of collapse that requires you to feed/water your own family, you’ll probably also want a couple of guns and a lot of ammo.
I really like these guys and they have amusing emails of specials sometimes =)
Mormons [and I am pretty sure these guys are mormons] are big on readiness.
I have a #10 can of the potato dices that I have been playing with lately, as well as the diced onions and asparagus cuts, strawberries, blueberries and cinnamon apple slices. I like having stuff around that I can cook with while we are out camping, or without electricity over a fire/woodstove, even though we have a small generator for electricity it is fun to experiment with stuff when you don’t actually need to.
The potato dices are pretty decent - we made a german style hot potato salad with them by adding the vinegar and oil and seasonings to the right amount of boiling water to rehydrate the potato dices, mixing them all together and letting the dices rehydrate. I could see making a very respectable casserole with dehydrated whole milk, the potato dices or slices, the onion dices, and canned chicken and some cheese. I have already used the potatoes, onions and asparagus with dehydrated whole milk and some chicken meat glaze [stock base in paste form not cube form, it is less salty] to make a respectable soup.
That company also has total main and side and dessert dishes that are dehydrated - the scrambled eggs and bacon are edible, I have had them while out camping.
Eat a lot now. Eventually, you’ll have a totally portable store of food/energy that no one can take away from you (well, I guess a cannibal or a zombie could). Water and TP supplies are still necessary, and maybe a mulit-vitamin.
And another thing, what do you know that I don’t?
Don’t worry–no “need answer fast!” tag.
If you’re getting dehydrated meals, I recommend also getting food that you’ll eat on a regular basis anyway, otherwise you’ll have to buy a whole new batch every few years as it gets old. We always have at least a week or two’s worth of food in the basement just as regular rotation. Canned baked beans and chili are good options.
Good, I was worried that he knew of an asteroid or something.
This. Even dehydrated and canned foods WILL go bad eventually. There are very few foodstuffs that can be stored indefinitely. Every now and then, you’ll hear about how archeologists or other diggers have found honey or wheat that’s been stored for hundreds of years, and is still edible. I always wonder who eats that stuff. Surely they test it on rats or something before a human tries it?
My husband and I like some canned foods, although in the past few years we’ve found that we just don’t like canned chili any more. I enjoy canned tuna, and we usually have one or two tuna meals every week, so rotating that is no problem. Mostly, though, we have a lot of shelf stable ingredients like pasta, rice, and beans, which could get us through a few weeks. If an emergency lasts longer than that, I’m not likely to live through it, because of medical conditions.
I like to have some “emergency” foods just in case we have severe weather conditions and I prefer not to go out. Every now and then, this area gets hit with snow and ice storms. Fort Worth doesn’t have the equipment to quickly clear our roads, because this happens only every decade or so. I prefer not to go out on the roads with a bunch of crazy people who don’t know how to drive on snow or ice unless I’m out of medicine. In this case, having the ingredients for Tuna Noodle Casserole in my pantry can help me stay inside and do my part to lessen the congestion on the roads.
For the 1 year old I would recommend getting some Second-Stage type powdered formula. It is packed full of nutrients, and will last for a long time.
Only Twinkies.
I was 18 years old before I ever saw toilet paper. I’m guessing one might survive for the better part of two decades with toilet paper.
Yes, Twinkies, and Tang.
Also cockroaches. They will eat the glue off the packaging and any spilled food becoming a ready source of protein. Also, nothing can kill them or so I’m told. “If you see one cockroach, there’s another hundred behind the wall”. Similar to bible stuff concerning loaves, fishes, and wine.
Yes, some good wine too. If it goes off taste - now you have vinegar.
Sorry, nothing serious to add - back to the OP.
You can survive, sure - animals do fine without it - but life will be significantly less unpleasant with a steady supply of it.
Story please? My imagination is running wild:
Raised by wolves? Raised in the back country? Always got the Monkey Ward catalog? Tarzan was your dad? (this fits with the Username). Raised in a 50’s bomb shelter by people who ran from War of the Worlds while still stocking up? Part of the Dharma Initiative? Deep Ecologists? Anti-pulp and paper activists? Blind? Lights were off in the outhouse? Religious prohibition? Toilet paper moved to fast to see? Poltergeists? Colostomy reversed in time for senior prom?
What?
If you’re storing food, make sure it’s food that you actually like and know how to prepare. If you buy cases of canned goods, just put the new cases in the back of the pantry and the old cases in the front of the pantry, and just use them as normal.
There’s no reason to buy dehydrated food unless you think you’re going to have to carry stuff on your back for long distances. And remember that dehydrated food doesn’t do you any good unless you’ve got safe water to rehydrate it with. If you have to carry the water with you it doesn’t make any sense. I remember going camping with a friend, and his dad packed in freeze-dried stew. And canteens full of water to make it. Easier and simpler just to bring a can of stew.
Still and all, I guess I can’t understand the people who run out of food if they can’t leave the house for a day. Don’t people have cans of beans and pineapple and tomato sauce and soup? And bags of rice and pasta? Sure, it might suck to have to have noodles with canned spaghetti sauce when you really wanted shrimp scampi and baked brie, but it doesn’t make any sense not to have a few nonperishables around. How can you cook otherwise?
Peanut butter. Shelf stable, high calorie-to-weight ratio and easily rotated. I live in earthquake country and this is my primary emergency reserve (together with water).