Posted on 06/29/2010 2:53:52 PM PDT by Kartographer
I did a rough estmate a while back and had the same reaction. I figure that my subsistence diet is about 2 lbs of food per person per day. (I eat more than that but figure I could survive on 2 lbs.) That's 730 lbs per person for a year. That's a lot of food.
It helps to store dried food, which increases in weight when cooked. This reduces the space required for storage.
Amazing isn't it?
I thought I was prepared for Hurricane Andrew when I lived in South Florida. I planned for five days: food, water, and the like for myself, the wife and four children
We made it two days and that was being careful.
Thank God, our power come back on the end of the third day. I was not really sure what I was going to do next. The cat was looking real tasty :)
In that phrase lies some tough decisions that a lot of folks won't be prepared to make.
I live in a mixed semi-rural area, we live on a few acres down a dead end road abutting forestland and a creek. We have our own well, four working fireplaces, firearms, and neighbors with sheep, chicken and cattle. My main area of concern would be how much food to store, which I have not begun.
But other than moving out of the Washington DC area before hand, I can’t see leaving and walking anywhere, I’d think we’d be safest staying put. Our road being a dead end, seems easy to protect if necessary.
I built up a store of mres and freeze dried.
I have 60 gals of water..planing on more
How did you test? Eat it?
We have a lot of canned stuff, but we’re not relying on that for most of our sustenance. It’s bulk dry grains, beans and pasta that will make the most difference. We’ve been trying out rice and lentil recipes of late and with good success. It’s amazing what a little hot sauce can do for what would be an otherwise bland dish.
Sounds good. How about your neighbors? Reliable?
well, honestly speaking, so does any of the preparation that would lead someone to make those decisions.
When you make those decisions during preparation, it is called planning.
New Orleans was chaos before the hurricane, it just wasn't under water. I lived in New Orleans in the seventies when the police went on strike. The crime rate went down. I agree with your premise, but New Orleans isn't the best example. That place was third world before the Hurricane.
Seriously, I say this as a person who lived there. The police force was totally irrelevant to life in New Orleans. I had three encounters with the police, there. Once, I was mugged. I reported it to the police. I'm not kidding on this. The mugger was more polite than the cop. The first thing he said to me was "Shut up. I'll ask the question, you answer it." No, I wasn't screaming or hysterical.
There was a wreck out in front of my house. My vehicle wasn't involved. A fairly good looking girl, drunk, ran a stop sign and hit a car with a pregnant woman and her husband. The girl was clearly drunk, she clearly ran the stop sign and hit the other vehicle. The cop made a date with her and refused to issue a ticket or arrest her.
I worked in a corporate office. I assisted a New Orleans cop in a dispute with one of our dealers, making an adjustment for him. He told me if I ever got a ticket to call him and he'd take care of it.
I met several New Orleans cops and I never met an honest one.
The press didn't report this a lot, but all those NO cops that supposedly walked off the job didn't really exist. Approximately 1/3rd of the NO cops weren't real people. Their paychecks were apparently deposited to shadow accounts but "no one could figure out where the money was going."
ping backup food
I’ve bought several 10# cans of freeze dried food here. They seem to have a good variety.
http://beprepared.com/Default.asp?bhcd2=1277851656
Now I’m not a big milk drinker but alot of recipes call for it.
So I got some Non-fat dry milk and decided to try it. Works fine in most recipes.
But it’s very bland to the taste. So I went back and got a one pound jar of non-dairy dry coffee creamer.
Mixed up a glass of the milk. Then added about a teaspoon of creamer and shook it vigorously.
Tasted great!!
One of the many really great things about living on a family farm is that our emergency food supply would last just about for the rest of mortal time.
http://www.survivalblog.com/ Lot’s of good info.
I think numbers was part of my problem. I had used the tactic of buying extra each time we went to the supermarket. Our shelves were full so we felt like we had a good start. For our test we purchased milk, eggs and a little meat but didn’t buy anything else.
By the end of the month our shelves were pretty much empty. We would have been on beans and rice for another month, maybe.
My lessons:
1. Don’t underestimate the serving size. I counted a can of tuna (plus sides) as a meal. In reality we used two cans and got really tired of tuna quickly.
2. The importance of variety is not to be underestimated.
3. An inventory would have helped us figure out what we really had.
4. Its harder to bake tasty bread once you run out of sugar.
5. My wife made some pretty good dishes out of the freeze dried food we bought.
On the plus side we now have our old stuff gone. Moving forward I’ll count serving sizes more closely and watch staples like sugar and flour. Things like if you want a canned vegetable each day then you need 365 cans of em, sounds simple but we overlooked it.
Also, many of the 1-year supply kits you can buy are short on calories so be careful with what you buy.
Book mark
(6 year old wants the computer:)
Some extensive writings are available on this subject. The real answer is, it depends. There are so many variables and much of it depends on chance.
Staying in place may very well be safer if you don’t leave early. Getting stuck on the highway is probably the worst option. Keep in mind that hoarders will likely be viewed with disdain. It could be your country sheriff, pastor, mayor who comes and “asks” for your hoard. They may be smiling but will be ready to use force.
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