A food storage calculator can be found here: https://providentliving.com/preparednes ... /foodcalc/Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 1:00 pmWater and tools are important, but food is too. Which reminds me of this post from a couple years ago.
I believe the food storage info I got was from a book by Howard Ruff. Howard Ruff was a Mormon who wrote some best selling books in the 1970s. The times might be kind of similar with the shortages and high inflation but the reaction to them seems to have been different because of the generational aspects. In the 1970s people like Ruff had lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Probably anybody looking for practical advice could get some by going back to what was written in the 1970s by the hero generation.Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:03 pmLightbulb wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:55 pmMy wife wondered why I was buying a generator in the summer. I told her it was just in case. In case of what she asked? In case the power grid goes out. I told her it was like insurance. I bought it and hoped I would never have to use it. I left the generator in the shipping box and put it in the garage.
This post has some good advice about how to deal with family members who haven't gotten to the stage of accepting that collapse is coming.
I had read an old book from the 1970s that told how to store food according to the Mormons. I bought some food they recommended that could be both stored long term and provide complete protein, enough food to survive for about a year and about 20 5 gallon pails from Sherwin-Williams. To store the food properly, I rented a nitrogen gas cylinder. I put the hose from the cylinder into the bottom of the bucket, put the food into the bucket, then put the lid over it, turned the valve on, which displaced the air out of the bucket with nitrogen until a match would go out when placed near the bucket, pulled the hose out, and snapped the bucket shut. Then put it all in the back of the closet.
One day, my wife was cleaning out the closet and she asked what was in the buckets. I said it's food storage, just in case. Like just in case the grocery stores are closed and there is no food available. She looked at me like I was nuts. She said this doesn't belong in a closet. I said, well, we can put it in the garage but the summer heat will degrade it more than it being in this closet and if we really need it, someone might see us carrying buckets around when they don't have any food. It went into the garage.
This week we had an ice storm, similar to what you described. The roads were too icy to get to the grocery store safely, many grocery stores were closed, and those that were open had long lines and reduced hours (noon to 5 in this area).
I asked my wife whether she thought that food might be better in the back of the closet. I said what would you do if you were out of food and saw someone carrying a 5 gallon bucket? She said she would ask them for some food, then agreed that the back of the closet is now the best place for that food.
I almost forgot to mention. When I returned the nitrogen gas cylinder, the owner of the gas company asked what I was doing with it. I told him. I asked him if anyone had ever rented a nitrogen gas cylinder for that purpose. He said no, not in the 25 years he'd been in that business had he ever heard that.
The food storage isn't for the kind of crisis that happened in Texas this week. It's for the kind of crisis that could have happened if the power grid had gone down for months (the news says that it came dangerously close to doing that) or more likely the crisis that is coming our way after the financial system collapses.
Also, the Mormons sell bulk stored food. I believe it is packed in nitrogen.
You can enter the number of adults and/or children and number of weeks and it will calculate the number of lbs of grains/legumes/fats etc you need. This is super basic, but a great “apocalyptic” supply. Some items can be stored for 20+ years (wheat, sugar) and others have a much shorter shelf life. But I agree, it’s like insurance.