Big Country has an excellent post about inflation and how it is making food much more expensive. He makes a really important point:
If you haven't started building a baseline food supply, you a dumb motherfucker.
Peter adds some important thoughts and tips, and concludes:
The more I read about food shortages and rising prices, the more serious I get about our backup food supplies. I hope you're doing the same. They're like a fire extinguisher, or a parachute, or a gun. You may never need one; but if you ever do, at that point it'll probably be far too late to go out and buy one.
The only thing I would add is that you need to know your goals. Do you want to ride out a hurricane or tornado? Do you want to ride out a 3 week series of blackout/brownout? Do you want to ride out a solar flare that takes the power grid down for 6 months? Do you want to ride out the collapse of Western Civilization?
Each of these has a very different time horizon.
The Queen Of The World and I have our own goals (not saying what; OPSEC is a virtue), but we've picked ONE of the choices above. I think we're pretty well prepared for that, although water storage/purification is something that I think most people - and maybe us - skimp on.
But this is probably something you should think on. Being prepared is a Very Good Thing Indeed but you really, really need to know the answer to the question: Prepared for what?
But you should really go real both Big Country's and Peter's posts.
10 comments:
Honestly riding out a Nor'easter and losing power in subzero temps is routine in NE. Around here we make it a point to visit our older friends (BTW I hate snowshoes) to make sure they are OK.
The same preps made it just a generator runtime schedule (thank goodness for wind up clocks here) and we got through a major Nor'easter that did real damages to the tune of two weeks. Had enough fuel to do an extra week if we had too. Had to share fuel with neighbors.
Solar Flare I'm more worried about the feral human aspects as if I have to my solar panels and back up faraday cage supplies would carry me through. But a lot of my neighbors would die off as their meds ran out. My two fridges (assuming they survived, they should) would become one fridge working. Working on increasing that solar array. The electric bicycle and electric chainsaw are pretty handy.
Being an old hippie sort with gentleman farmer as my hobby most things aside from Feral Humans would be survivable. But I have good neighbors that respond to each other's issues to include "Bumps in the Night". We don't get too much strange cars and petty theft out my way because we hunt a lot.
But Mr. Murphy is a bastard and I'm over 60 so a major injury would be bad.
As it's almost Easter remember that spiritual preps is as important as food or defense. We will all die, best be on good terms with your God.
I would suggest 6 months' supplies as a bare minimum (anything shorter than that is an inconvenience; anything longer is a catastrophe), and a full year's worth would be wiser still.
Ultimate goal is multiple years' worth.
Imagine the happy French, Belgian, or British farmer with a well-hidden and liveable root cellar grand deluxe, and seven years of food and necessaries, who went under in '39, and didn't come out until '46.
There are many ways of "going south for the winter", and all sorts of possibilities when it comes time to "be somewhere else".
Concur with both.
Tote #3 of 4Patriots food is on its way to my apartment as I type this. I'll probably buy a few more soon.
@Michael
Is your solar controller proof against a solar flare? I have not been able to find anything on this topic.
Make sure that you don't just have food and guns, but also ways to cook the food, procure and sanitize water, and keep warm.
Richard I don't know if a Solar Flare (Quite a different beast than an EMP) will disable my solar controller. That's why I keep spares (plural) in my faraday cage.
I know that solar panels powering satellites for decades do well enough against the solar wind and flares without the protection of the earths magnetic and atmospheric attenuation so they seem safe enough.
However Feral Humans and their tendency to destroy stuff keeps me storing some replacement solar panels.
When the solar electric powers a couple of water wells you tend to have backups. Humans, critters and truck gardens don't accept a lack of water while waiting for Amazon.
Previously, before we moved to Montana, water was an issue so we had 200+ gallons of stored water. Now we share a well with five other neighbors, plus have a Creek (that’s normally running 9 months) through our backyard. Still have the storage drums as backup.
To your scenarios, we are currently more like the blackout/brownout, but checking the excel sheets more like 8+ weeks. Looking to increase that a bit more. Medical related, fuel, ammo, auxiliary transportation, we are closer to your solar flare.
We keep food, water (for ourselves and pets) for 6 months plus medical supplies and fuel. If things were really bad, we'd likely want to be out of the city and would head to a family member's farm with a truckful of supplies.
After prepping for quite a few decades my wife and I are pretty well set. One thing different that we did this year is to buy three hams instead of our usual one for Easter whenever they went on sale for $1.29/lb. After baking the ham, I pack all the extra slices in vacuum bags and freeze them. They taste like they are freshly made after they're thawed. Something quick and easy without cooking. I did find something a few years back when I got on a big, jerky making kick. Top round London broil. I never bought one of those in my life until I started experimenting with different cuts of beef. Being one of the cheapest cuts, it also turned out to be one of the best. I also found out that it makes wonderful breakfast steak strips or steak sandwiches. I preslice them and pack in vacuum bags for the freezer. They cook so quickly that you can save a lot of fuel during a grid down situation and have something really tasty to lift your spirits.....
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