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.
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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.
From all the silly posts that appear here on the subject.
All the game will be gone real quick.
Your meat will come from what you can raise yourself or trade for.
I was being sarcastic, Bryan.
It’s pretty boneheaded to think somebody spends all their resources to buy a house without ever considering what they need to finish and maintain it.
Sorry.
Nevertheless, your post is spot on! The ability to produce necessities apart from modern methods would be absolutely inestimable.
Best advice on the entire thread. The cities aren’t a good place, but a small community might be. You can survive alone if no one finds you, but there is strength in numbers.
Ultimately, though, no one gets out of here alive.
IF the SHTF
1. Any gun is better than no gun as long as you have ammo. (see #2)
2. The 22LR will be the most useful weapon of all. You can buy years worth of ammo now for a small investment. They are accurate, and It will bring down all small game, wild and domestic (there won’t be much big game to bring down after a few weeks). Though they are not the best choice for home defense after the SHTF, the bad guys will have a hard time getting bullets for their guns in a short time, while you have thousands. Nuff said on that. The report does not carry far, giving away your position, and all members of the family can use it. (see #3). Oh, and you can still have your large bore defense weapons if it comes down to “them or you” situations.
3. Children need to learn how to shoot and defend themselves early on.
4. Big cities will become kill zones. Get away from them early.
5. Evil people without any fear of authority or restraint will become more evil.
6. Some medical training and knowledge would be beneficial, even if it’s just first aid.
7. Disease will become a part of life. Keep wounds clean and covered.
8. Learn how the American Indians survived in your area. The plants or roots they ate and used for medicine, how they trapped and cooked fish. Lots of books available now on the subject. Buy them now.
9. And for God’s sake learn how to obtain and sterilize water .
Grrrrrr....Walking Dead....love to hate that show! First, the "women don't need guns because they aren't a trained professional" (Season 1), and the last week's episode was "we need to be using more knives!"
FACEPALM!
This group literally walks right by military-grade weaponry perfect for zombie defense....Heck, I'd try to outfit my group with suppressed .22's anduse captured liberals as zombie bait.
Good advice.
I learned about aspirin from one of the Doomsday Preppers episodes.
"The father of modern medicine was Hippocrates, who lived sometime between 460 B.C and 377 B.C. Hippocrates was left historical records of pain relief treatments, including the use of powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree to help heal headaches, pains and fevers."
I have a willow tree.
The survivors will be the people on the move. Hike the Appalachian Trail for a few months, scoping the food sources. The Zombies won’t go deep into the woods. When the smoke clears, you find a safe place.
I live in a warm climate. The gator population will be a lot smaller.
The cold weather folks will just have to start cutting down trees and scrounging for burnable materials. Doors and furniture would make passable firewood, enough to last at least the first winter. Siphon gas and diesel from abandoned vehicles and gas stations etc.
Reloading components including lead casts for at least 3 calibers, one of which is blackpowder. Making new brass or primers is still beyond current capabilities, but I'm working on it.
Yeah... We've been planning all this for a while now... Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
The big stuff, for sure. Before long, the pellet rifle will be more valuable than the .243.
ROTFLMAO!
SHTF (((ping)))
I need to buy a few more tins of .177...
I have a single shot break-barrel that shoots at over 1000 fps.
That should do in a squirrel or bunny real good... :)
You're right ...
I have an old Marlin 22lr and two 22lr pistols, but befor I use them I can kill small game with my Pellet rifles. Pellets are cheap and don’t make much noise. Cats taste like rabbits and dogs taste like beef. Yum Yum.
I have an old Marlin 22lr and two 22lr pistols, but befor I use them I can kill small game with my Pellet rifles. Pellets are cheap and don’t make much noise. Cats taste like rabbits and dogs taste like beef. Yum Yum.
LOL! I like the way you think!
Shoot, there’s too many people who think potatoes grow above the ground, like an eggplant. Or that owning a pig means getting free pork and sausage forever, without ever killing the pig. I had someone try to convince me once that gooseberries were poisonous. And another person tried to claim that you can eat any plant in the world “as long as you eat it slowly enough.”
Urbanites will eventually come looking, but I think the herd will be drastically thinned by that point. Unfortunately, it’s the most dangerous ones who will be left.
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