What is a reasonable amount of food to have stored?

[Bankai]

With storms Beast from the East and Emma hitting Scotland and a good part of Europe, people realised that it’s a good idea to have some food at home in case stores are closed, and emptied shelves in many supermarkets, as reported by the press here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... ery-chaos/

This made me check how much food we currently have stored. Just counting dry foods, we have:

9.5 kg of whole grains (rice, pasta, oats) = 36000 kcal
3.5 kg of nuts and seeds = 21000 kcal
7kg of lentils = 25000 kcal

For a total of 82000 kcal.

Considering average consumption (2000 kcal for me and 1500 for my wife), we have enough calories for 23.5 days. If we include fresh and frozen fruits and veggies, canned and jarred foods, oil, cocoa etc. this will easily be enough food for around a month. Now, we are not trying to stock up on anything, it’s rather a side effect of buying things in bulk. Also, if anything, we are now on the low end of our usual stockpile (i.e. we usually buy 10kg of rice at a time and we only have 3.5kg left, we have exactly 0 cans of beans while we usually have up to 50 cans stored), so on average, we usually have probably closer to 1.5 months of supplies.

With this in mind, what do you think is an appropriate amount of food to store? I personally have a hard time imagining an emergency lasting for more than a month without stores being restocked, and if it does, we are likely to have more pressing problems to deal with (i.e. riots).

[jacob]

Before going any further ... do you have enough water to cook all those dry goods? After that, do you have enough heat sources for all the boiling?

[George the original one]

The water required was my first thought, too!

Jacob posted some good estimates for worst case, but I haven't found the thread yet. Here's an earlier thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2750&hilit=food+storage

[George the original one]

Couple more threads:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6636
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9468

And a single post concerning the food network under stress:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4654&p=66265#p66265

[Bankai]

Regarding water, assuming one needs c 2x the volume of water for rice/pasta/lentils, I should be fine. Also, at the first sign of trouble with water (i.e. supply being rationed etc.) I'd fill every container I have at home including the full bath. However, if water gets cut down without warning, things would get difficult. We certainly don't have anywhere close to a month worth of water stored, although it rains here very often so we could potentially use rainwater.

Heat sources - not really. Maybe getting something like caravan butane gas bottle* would do the trick. However, this introduces the risk of it blowing up, which might be more serious than not having it in the first place if the probability of emergency requiring me to use it at any point over my lifetime is small (which I believe it is).

In case of supplies of water and/or food being cut off for a prolonged time (more than a week?) people are likely to start killing each other anyway. So, is the best strategy then to move to a less populated area? And if yes, how would you know in advance how long the emergency is likely to last (storms are easy, on Monday it should be back to BAU, however not all emergencies are like that)? Also, running away from the city is probably best done at first sign of trouble (before roads get choked), but if you want to take any supplies, you'd really like a car, which is anti ere?

* looking up butane on wikipedia, I came across this:
Butane is the most commonly misused volatile substance in the UK, and was the cause of 52% of solvent related deaths in 2000.[16] By spraying butane directly into the throat, the jet of fluid can cool rapidly to −20 °C (−4 °F) by expansion, causing prolonged laryngospasm.[17] "Sudden sniffer's death" syndrome, first described by Bass in 1970,[18] is the most common single cause of solvent related death, resulting in 55% of known fatal cases.[17]
Little did I know...

[Fish]

@George - Are you referring to the food storage discussion in the “hard skills” thread starting here?
viewtopic.php?p=135717#p135717

[theanimal]

You don't want to be scrambling around trying to find resources when you actually need them. In the case of water rationing, what happens if your city just turns the water off? How are you certain that you'll be able to discern what the first sign of trouble is? You mention rainfall, do you have a system set up to capture any of that rain?

Just some push back that you may find helpful. There are a few here that keep a surplus of water in storage. The stored water is incorporated into the daily routine so there is a regular cycling of the water. Something to consider.

With regards to heat sources, look into getting a propane camp stove. Propane is relatively cheap, available in bulk and widely distributed. The stoves themselves are safe and easy to use, coupled with a 5 lb propane tank you'll have a means of cooking for months.

[Kriegsspiel]

I think it's pretty trivial to stockpile food/water/fuel. My fridge and freezer are filled mostly with containers of water, and some extra water filters. A Primus camp stove with some cans of fuel is in case power goes out. Dry goods, cans of tuna, protein powder. Plus stuff I'd eat soon anyways like meat, milk, and eggs in the fridge/freezer. About 30 DOS.

My brother eats delivery and at restaurants and has a fridge filled with expired condiments. Lives in the Snow Belt. Not a great stack.

[George the original one]

@George - Are you referring to the food storage discussion in the “hard skills” thread starting here?
viewtopic.php?p=135717#p135717

Nah, I think it was the individual post from a climate change thread that I linked in my last post.

[George the original one]

When we're talking about a month of food supplies, we always are considering full rations. We should probably keep in mind that it is possible to cut rations and thus lengthen the food supplies for shorter durations (1-2 months). Not as practical to cut water rations.

So criteria for cutting rations and how long to cut them could be a useful guide?

[Sclass]

Before going any further ... do you have enough water to cook all those dry goods? After that, do you have enough heat sources for all the boiling?

Faced with the same question I got this. It uses unleaded gasoline.



I have one of these in the garage. It carries anywhere from 10-20 us gallons of unleaded gas at any particular time.



It’s amazing how much energy we have stored on wheels. All you need is a cheap Coleman dual fuel stove and a little tubing to siphon it off. An outdoor gas grill with a few propane tanks is another option if you want to keep your gasoline for an evacuation.

[jacob]

@Sclass - We used one of these (the white gas model with the red tank) for the first 7 months we lived in this house. This included pressure-cooking rice and beans outside sometimes in snow and rain. We used less than a gallon of fuel (note, we used the microwave to reheat, so we only needed to use the coleman every few days). What I didn't expect is just how much harder it became to heat up half a gallon of water to pressure for the beans as winter approached and it got colder. It's doable though.

Apparently the main difference between the red and the grey dual fuel model is that the red (we scored a like-new one for $25 on craigslist) model just gets dirty and needs more cleaning. See https://landcruisingadventure.com/the-g ... man-stove/

I've used unleaded gas with my MSR whisperlite and it's a nasty (lots of soot) affair compared to white gas. Also I feel like the little whisperlite is actually faster than the coleman. That doesn't really make sense based on numbers. I haven't raced them though.

PS: I think you can also reheat pizza if you put the frozen pizza on the engine block after your evacuation

[Sclass]

Honestly I’ve never cooked a meal on my dual fuel stove. I lit it up on white gas once and it stunk up the house so bad it got banned. Thanks for the data points.

I prefer to use my cleaner burning butane stove now. But that one isn’t really appropriate for a survival situation given its little tanks.

I’ll probably die with this stuff unused. My parents had quite a cache of wheat I recently disposed of. The grain was intact and outlasted the 1970s plastic buckets it was stored in. The rats had a feast on it as the buckets disintegrated. It looked edible.

[Jean]

In this particular case, can't you just melt snow?
And Dual Fuel Stove are really great, I cooked exclusively with one for more than a year. BUT
If it's cold outside, and you keep all your windows closed, and you burn fuels without a proper exhaust pipe, you will kill yourself much quicker than you imagine. Carbon monoxyde is a serious threat, and many people die of it every snow storm.
Maybe everybody knows this, but I'de rather say it once too much.

[RealPerson]

We live an easy walk from a fast flowing easily accessible river. We have a high capacity manual water purifier. I don't believe water will be a problem for us.

We also have a camping stove like a whisperlite. It burns with pretty much any type of liquid fuel. I never tried gasoline but I think our car contains enough fuel to last for quite a while. The soot would require cleaning but I am happy to do that in order to eat.

I also have a gun to keep unwanted people away from my stove, water and food, but I truly hope it never comes to that.