Food storage

[The Hibernigger]

Has anybody started putting away food for the possibility of a disaster? If so, what have you put back?
People always talk a lot about stashing a shitload of noodles, rice, etc. Not a bad idea, but you need to have food that you can eat in the event that you can't safely light a fire, etc.
Putting back a shitload of canned food isn't difficult. Do you have a discount grocery store near your house? If so, look for deals, check the cans for dents and to make sure that the expiration date isn't too soon, and load up. Keep adding to your supply, mix it up, and keep in mind that you need to blow thousands of dollars on those 'survival food' websites, when you do it yourself way cheaper. Pick up a little food whenever you have a chance. How much is a 20 pack of Ramen noodles, like a dollar? Grab ten, stash them at home. Load up canned meat, canned fruit, canned veggies, whatever you feel like.

[Yakub Israel]

Aye, I got a cellar full of potatoes. My woman grows a good garden. To put it frankly though, if the shit hits the fan and society collapses, I don't plan on trying to survive and then slowly die, I'd rather just go out with a bang. What's the point of trying to survive like 20+years in a bunker? Who cares about repopulation? The world is already so far gone I've lost hope, I have my reasons for living but if I didn't I would of gone on a shooting spree and then shot myself at the end already.

[The Hibernigger]

That's nice. I'm not saying 'get your asses out there and stockpile food, assholes'. I just thought I'd start a discussion about it. Some people have families, or care about their family line not needlessly dying off, or maybe just like eating.

[gonna]

for the short term, use peanut butter, tang, gatorade, and instant oatmeal, along with mulitvitamin and mineral pills. Just mix tang and gatorade in your water. mix tang and oatmeal in the peanut butter, eat it like it was cookie dough, with a spoon. Cheap, no cook, no spoil, no freeze worries.

For the Long term part of prepping, cheaply,, snare deer, make jerky, and cache it. Buy almost "gone" fruit by the bushel, very cheaply from a farmer's market or supermarket. Half of the fruit will be usable for dehydrating, making "fruit leather". Stow some sealed cans of Crisco for your fat needs. REALLY long term, store some grain. Mostly hard winter wheat, but SOME corn (with lye to help you digest it) lintels or soy beans, some wild rice, and some oats. Google for Mormon, Latter Day Saints food sources. the mormons have to store a years supply of food for each family, so some of them run bizes supplying this need. Do not make pemmican from the fat, fruit and jerky until a little bit of time before you want to eat it. It can be eaten raw, you know.

You want to make your own "can-candle" for stealthy, efficient cooking. Paraffiin is about $1 a lb on the Net. Mop wick strings can be coiled up and used as wicks. You want one can nestled inside of another, with holes in the sides and bottom of the outside can, in the sides of the inside can, above the top of the wax.

Fill the inside can about half full of paraffin. A number 10 can, inside about a 2 gallon can, with 5 wicks, will boil a gallon of water in about 5 minutes. Very little flame or smoke. A half a drum full of paraffin will do all of one person's cooking for a full year. Cook only in the vertical shaft of your dugout, only at dusk, and only once a day.

This is AFTER using up most of your peanut butter and pemmican. So it'll be 6 months or so after shtf, with nearly everyone dead. That means that the smell of your cooking is unlikely to be detected and your dugout found, before dark makes them stumble around, making a lot of noise and letting you silently shoot enough of them to make them leave(ie, 5 or more) Then YOU leave the dugout, and don't go back. the survivors of those you shot up might set up fairly long term ambushes, or periodically "check" the site, understand?

Dig another dugout, if you have not already done so. It can be done in 2 nights of pick and shovel work, assuming that you already have a covered/concealed spiderhole to start from. You should have stashed such tools not too far from your first dugout. You can return for them in the dark, and access your (scattered, buried) drums of food from afar, too. the new dugout need not be all that far away from the first one, 10 miles is plenty, 5 probably suffices, since you will be coming out only at night, and not leaving any tracks, making any noise, or showing any light.

Yeah, I DO know all this stuff inside out, upside down, and backwards.

[brother number three]

Make a habit of buying a package of rice and a couple of cans of vegetables every time you go to the store.

Some of the stores around here are selling meals ready to eat for hurricane survival more than shtf scenarios, rice, oatmeal and meat substitutes, no actual meat, enough for a family of four to survive for three days for over 60 dollars. One can do that themselves for way less than that.

[Yakub Israel]

Originally Posted by brother number three

Make a habit of buying a package of rice and a couple of cans of vegetables every time you go to the store.

Some of the stores around here are selling meals ready to eat for hurricane survival more than shtf scenarios, rice, oatmeal and meat substitutes, no actual meat, enough for a family of four to survive for three days for over 60 dollars. One can do that themselves for way less than that.

family of four equals one man, 3 tasty meals.

[Macrobius]

Let's get practical here. SHTF is one thing -- but far more frequent and common are garden variety power outages.

(We just had a 1-1/2 hour power outage here, as a gentle reminder of how fragile the power grid is, when certain very serious people go on vacation in August).

What's the #1 problem in a power outage? You can't open your refrigerator -- it's worth 100s of dollars in lost stuff not to open that door.

And what's inside? Your beer dammit. And when do you want a cold one? When the friggin' power goes out. Toilet works, check. You can even take a shower. You live with indoor plumbing, in the height of 21st century luxury ... you have camp lights, batteries, candles, and you can live like a prince still ... and you can't get your own fucking beer out of the fucking 'fridge.

There's preppin' and then then there's preppin'. Real preppin' is owning a second, quarter size 'fridge, where you put the things you want immediately when the power goes out -- without risking the things you want to store long term.

Remember ... if you can't last 3 days, you probably won't be making it 6 months.

[gonna]

and pack it in ice, drink quickly. :-) I've known men who liked hot beer and cold pizza, too. Personally, I dont drink. A good gas generator can often be had on Craigslist for $300 or so, plenty big enough to run a fridge. Pack extra insulation around it, like sawdust or wads of newspaper, inside a box made of partical board or drywall, and you wont need to run the frig more than half the time, or the generator, natch.

[The Hibernigger]

This technically isn't 'food storage' but it is related: stock up on fishing supplies, nets, traps, seeds, plant growth aids and SURVIVAL GUIDES. Everyone always thinks the at they're going to hunt and bag enough meat for their family everyday. Basically, once you've got a decent supply of put back food, a mixture of different things hopefully, remember that is going to have to last you as long as possible. Have you ever been hunting? Sometimes you just strike out, and don't get anything. Now, obviously if you're hunting after shtf, you won't see a squirrel and be like "shit, they're not in season." Of course not.
But anyway, hunting won't fill all of you and your family's needs, but if you get something, eat it so that your stored food lasts longer. Have somebody fishing.
Set some traps, if you can afford them, or if you've been able to take time to acquire the know how, make your own. Make sure that everybody in your group, especially any children knows exactly where any traps are.
The kids might find it fun to tend a vegetable garden, fishing, etc.
Try to always have one armed adult near any small children. There are disgusting filth that prey on children in the world we live in now, I don't even want to think about how many of those pieces of shit will be on the prowl after SHTF. And if you've left your house for some reason to camp in the wilderness somewhere, some animals may attack a small child.
Sorry I got off topic with this post, just some thoughts.

[Sam Crow]

If you want to get serious about stockpiling food for long term storage buy a dehydrator. I easiest and cheapest way to dehydrate veggies is to buy frozen vegtables on sale. With frozen vegtables you can put them staight in the dehydrator with out any other prep work.Then store them in a mason type jar with 1 or 2 food grade dessicant packs to remove any other moisture. For extreme long storage the can be stored in mylar bags and are supposed to be good for a decade or two. We cook using dehydrated veggies pretty often when making stews and soups and such, just a table spoon or two of dehydrated carrots, celery, corn and green beans and you are good to go.I usually just buy dehydrated onions and garlic, because that stuff is cheap anyway. There are lots of good videos on you tube about dehdrating and cooking with dehydrated foods.