Posted on 03/01/2012 10:29:42 AM PST by blam
No Matter How Much Food You’ve Got Stored, It Will Eventually Run Out in a Full-Blown Collapse
Joe Alton, M.D.,aka Dr. Bones
March 1st, 2012
The following article has been generously contributed by Joe Alton, M.D., aka Dr. Bones, of Doom and Bloom Nation where you can find strategies to stay healthy that include traditional medicine, alternative remedies, and medicinal/survival gardening. For the best in emergency and long-term disaster medical preparedness we encourage you to check out The Doom and Bloom Survival Medicine Handbook and follow Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy on their weekly podcast.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Survive, How Much Land?
Have you ever wondered how likely it is that you’ll be able to produce all the calories you’ll need on that piece of land you have? How much land for livestock? How about those solar panels you were thinking about? How many square feet of panels will provide you with the electricity you’ll need? There are ways to figure this out, and the answers may surprise you.
Let’s start by talking power. In a collapse situation, you’ll probably be able to rely on the sun and wind and not much else, unless you’ve built a watermill. The best answer might be installing some solar panels on your roof. This is a commonly available option that many people are considering nowadays. Let’s say part of your roof is facing south (the best place for a solar panel) and you get 7 hours or so of sunlight, on average. To get the amount of power that an average home uses in a year, you’ll need 375 square feet of panels. These things aren’t cheap, and that much hardware is going to be beyond the average family’s financial reach. This means that you’ll have to make decisions regarding how to ration the power you ARE able to produce. Look around the house, and you’ll probably see lots of things that are plugged in that you can eliminate if the stuff ever hits the fan. This is part of the planning you’ll need to do now, so that you’ll be better prepared for times of trouble.
How about food? If you have a family of four, you’ll want to provide at least 2000 or so calories per adult, more if you’re a big guy, maybe a little less for kids. The formula is simple: At least 30 calories per kilogram of body weight. One kilogram equals 2.2 pounds, so an 80 kilogram adult would weigh 176 pounds. 30 x 80 = 2400 calories/day. Less for kids, of course. All in all, you’ll need to provide 8000-9000 calories a day to maintain your family of four’s weight. So, let’s talk about some hard realities. No matter how much food you’ve got stored, it will eventually run out in a full-blown collapse. For your future success, better get that garden growing. Anyone who’s done it will tell you that there’s a learning curve, and you sure don’t want to plant that first seed in the midst of the Zombie Apocalypse.
Now, let’s separate your garden out into three categories: fruits, berries, and vegetables, then wheat, then corn. If you went totally vegetarian, you would need a little less than half an acre per person to provide all of those calories. That means a family of 4 needs almost 2 acres of farmable land!
The majority of this land will go to fruits, berries, and veggies. You’ll get the most nutrients in terms of vitamins and minerals from these. To decrease the amount of land you’ll need, consider companion planting. Some organic farmers will plant sunflowers, and then plant peas that will grow up the long stalks. The same goes with corn, squash, and pole beans. Squash will grow low to the ground, pole beans will take the intermediate area, and corn up high. Make sure you don’t put plants in the same family together, such as dill and carrots. They will share the same pests and diseases, which could possibly spread from one crop to the other.
If you stock up on wheatberries and use your handy dandy Wondermill, you can cut the land requirement down a bit. A mix of prepared food storage and gardening will keep you healthy and fed for a longer time. Corn isn’t a very land-efficient crop, but you might need it for your livestock. An alternative if you need to trim that acreage down a bit more is to stock up on bushels of corn feed; that’s about 55 pounds of feed for about $9-10. This is a good idea, but you’ll use a lot of it. It takes 10 bushels of corn to get a hog from weaning to slaughter. Btw, corn prices are going higher; they were less than 5 dollars a couple of years ago.
Don’t forget, you’ll need some land for hog wallows, goats, rabbits and chickens. All of these animals can be raised in relatively small amounts of space, and provide important protein. You’ll need a good 200 square feet for 3 hogs, more if they have piglets. You can get away with less for each of the other animals.
You might have to forget about cows; they aren’t land-efficient. If you want milk, think about goats, especially Nubian Goats. This variety can produce 1800 lbs. of milk a year, according to various sources. That’s a lot of milk! How about eggs? The average family of four will eat 1000 eggs or so a year. To reliably get this quantity, you’ll need about 10-15 birds in your henhouse, depends a lot on the breed and the ingenuity of the local foxes and raccoons.
You could probably squeeze this all in with an acre and a half of land. If you don’t have that much property, now you know you’ll need that much more food storage to make up the difference. This is information I thought was important for me to know, and now you know it too.
Yes, That could be your fate if you don't do something about it now.
Small cities have a 20-25 mile danger zone. Medium size I'd say 50 miles. Big cities 100+ miles, but most big cities are surrounded themselves with medium and smaller cities.
Dangerous indeed will be all of San Francisco bay Eastward to Sacramento, Eastern Puget Sound, the Los Angeles basin and beyond, Southern Florida, anywhere from Boston to Richmond Virginia, Northeaster Illinois through Northwest Indiana; all victims. Throw in all the rest of the big cities not touching another and consider the whole lot Post-Apocolyptic Hell.
I agree wholeheartedly with your post. All the "survivalists" here yapping about their generators, livestock, stores of food and ammunition and whatnot are going to be among the first to die in a true TEOTWAWKI situation.
It's one thing to brag from your keyboard about how you will sit on your front porch and mow down would-be looters with your automatic rifle. It's quite another to actually do it and think you are going to get away with it. Eventually you are going to need some sleep or you are going to run out of ammo Then you will be overrun by the hordes with their pitchforks and torches and whatever is left of your "stash" will disappear down the throats or be carried off by your killers. And if you leave behind a wife or kids, they will soon be dead or wish they were.
Not a pretty picture but that is the reality. Now don't get me wrong, it's a great idea to be prepared to ride out a short-term disaster such as a hurricane, an earthquake or an extended power outage. I have myself a good supply of flashlights, batteries, firewood, canned goods, bottled water, candles and a generator ready to go - so if I lose power for a week or so, I'm in fairly decent shape. But anybody attempting to ride out the apocalypse by filling their cellars and sheds with years worth of supplies are wasting their time and money.
For when the crap hits the fan and you end up being the only one around with lights on at night and livestock running around the place, people are going to very quickly be beating a path to your door and word will spread around like wildfire that you have stuff worth stealing and it doesn't matter if you have a private army of snipers encircling your place 24/7. The well-stocked compound you spent so much time preparing will eventually get overrun by the hungry and desperate masses, even if they have to climb over a stack of dead bodies to get to you.
So that said, what is the best way to prepare for a TEOTWAWKI event?
Learn as many specialized skills as you can. The more services you can provide to a society forced to start all over again, such as carpentry, general repair, doctoring skills, rudimentary dentistry, etc., the more valuable you will be and the less likely you will go hungry as you will be able to barter these specialized skills for food and/or shelter.
I have serious doubts the hungry hoards will be hot footing it 2 miles to get to me.
It could very well be the police looking for hoarders.
bfl
So, what do you do when you run out of your one week of supplies?
Sheriff’s dept. knows better than try that around here.
Not about to get themselves bloodied up over a sandwich.
Your pretty smart if you prepare as much as me, but you’re crazy if you have more.....
:-/
Hopefully I will never have to find out!
The smart FReeper folks aren't going to tell you where, when and how.
Bunnies and venison? I hope so! [I have that problem with my berries now, but I imagine it would be solved if we needed more meat.]
The young spring poke is a delicacy.
Have used the fish shop meds a few times in the past. They work...
Thanks for the link...stay safe !
Avid bow hunter an a builder of my own archery tackle in the form of recurves an long bows.....
A quiet sustainable form of harvesting meat for the pot.
Osage orange is great bow making material....:o)
But yew knew that....lol !
I've used them for years and have a good stock on hand in the refrigerator out in the shed.
I'm afraid the government will eventually cut our access to this source for antibiotics.
I've a take down recurve now...and a compound.
BTW, I've some brand new compound bows for sell....
If you know anyone interested...let me know. I will give you the spec's....
Grandma was from Alabama and she’d make fried poke when dad was a kid.
I’d never use it in SHTF anyway because it takes too much water to fix. It’d be pigweed or lambsquarters instead.
More in the am Buddy.... Off to bed. Oh early thirty wakeup....:o)
Nite...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.