Gyroscopic Investing

I'm unsatisfied with the high price of freeze dried emergency food.  For example, it would cost approximately $1200 just to have enough food for 3 people for a month.  That is just ridiculous!

I don't want to "get involved" with neo-survivalist and "prepper" forums to figure out the best lower cost alternative as my time is better spent on more profitable interests.

I'm all eyes as to what fellow PPers have figured out in this regard.  Anyone?

MG

I'm no double-thread nazi, but there's a great survivalist thread somewhere in here...

Doesn't Costco have good prices on this kind of thing?

Why not just get big bags of rice and beans?  The best dried food money can buy - granted, it's not as easy as just adding water but it's much less expensive and more nutritious.

If all I could eat for the rest of my life was wild rice I'd be a happy man...

Don't listen to the survivalist nutjobs. They all think they can live on freeze dried stuff and MRE's. Prepping is so much easier than that.  Concentrate on the basics.  Consider that canned food is good for several years so stock up on canned meat and fruit. Pasta will store for years.  Sealed containers of flour, beans, rice etc are also good for a couple years.  Powered milk stores a long time too.  If you buy yeast, store it in your freezer for years and it will still be good. 

Obviously you should try to store this stuff in a reasonable place that doesn't get too hot, like a garage.  Our pantry probably isn't that much different that yours and we store probably 6 months of food, not because we're preppers, but because my wife has the "Costco Curse."

Also, store what you actually like to eat.

I took a trip to Yellowstone a couple of years ago and we started out by visiting my wife's cousin in Salt Lake City who married a devout Mormon. I came to understand that this is a big part of their religion for those who are truly devout. In the children's bedroom where we slept there were stacks of nothing but toilet paper piled all the way up to the ceiling in several rows. It occurred to me that if you needed a roll you would have to be very careful to get a ladder and reach all the way to the top and not take it off the bottom as it could all come crashing down on you pretty easily. Not that toilet paper crashing down on you would be that disastrous but it would be a pain stacking it all up again.

They had a living room and a family room but the family room was totally unusable because of so many canned goods stacked up to the ceiling, not to mention all the crawl spaces down in the basement.

Being a Christian myself, though once much more devout than I am now, and knowing Mormons also claim to be Christians who follow the teachings of Christ, I couldn't help but wonder how this squared with what Jesus taught about considering the ravens and how they don't build storehouses or barns and yet God feeds them. Even though I am no longer devout, that teaching of Jesus still seems to be part of me and I have no inclination to store food. If we really do reach the kind of SHTF situation where you would need survival food to last a long time and your neighbor doesn't have any, what are you going to do about that? Are you going to buy enough to feed your neighbor too or watch him starve to death?

I enjoy stocking up (modestly) on durable stuff like pasta, flour, beans, rice and junk food (its not me that eats junk ) whenever there are "two for the price of one" offers and such like. For me its not a survivalist thing but rather just a way to savour the cheapness.

I guess if you did want to be a survivalist, a water filterer, a woodburning stove and lots of lighters (or flints or whatever) and seeds and tools for growing hardy, easy to grow food might prove useful (probably barley, potatoes, kale, sweeds and peas in the UK but things like millet or something like that in much of Texas or somewhere like that that gets droughts). I think a lot of people in the former USSR had to resort to such living off the land strategies when they screwed up their economy in the 1990s.

I heard one of the "NatWest three" on the radio saying that he trained himself before going to prison by not drinking any tea or coffee, sleeping on the floor, not listening to music etc etc. I guess a true SHTF devotee would get training ASAP eating slugs and moths, drinking pond water, sitting awake all night in the rain on guard duty etc etc.

MachineGhost wrote: I'm unsatisfied with the high price of freeze dried emergency food.  For example, it would cost approximately $1200 just to have enough food for 3 people for a month.  That is just ridiculous!

I don't want to "get involved" with neo-survivalist and "prepper" forums to figure out the best lower cost alternative as my time is better spent on more profitable interests.

I'm all eyes as to what fellow PPers have figured out in this regard.  Anyone?

MG

Freeze dried food is pricey, but not THAT pricey (especially if you shop around.) Try Costco, as others have suggested, or a store called Emergency Essentials. And be sure to stock some 20LB bags of rice, beans, sugar, etc in addition to the freeze dried. And think about how you will get water. If there is no natural source nearby, all your food will be useless without enough water to accompany it.

One final thing, without any guns, all above supplies will soon belong to your neighbors (or others who DO have guns) in a crisis, likely just about the time they are needed most.

Freedom_Found wrote: One final thing, without any guns, all above supplies will soon belong to your neighbors (or others who DO have guns) in a crisis, likely just about the time they are needed most.

Well hell yeah! And even better, with enough guns and ammo you don't even need emergency food supplies. You could just eat your neighbors...
Tongue-in-cheek, of course.

MediumTex wrote: Doesn't Costco have good prices on this kind of thing?

No they have B.S. "300 servings" buckets which amounts to 100 calories per serving and is mostly water-based soups or relies heavily on mashed potatoes in 1 or 2 meals for calorie content.  The real stuff is expensive, as I previously mentioned.

MG

FarmerD wrote: Don't listen to the survivalist nutjobs. They all think they can live on freeze dried stuff and MRE's. Prepping is so much easier than that.  Concentrate on the basics.  Consider that canned food is good for several years so stock up on canned meat and fruit. Pasta will store for years.  Sealed containers of flour, beans, rice etc are also good for a couple years.  Powered milk stores a long time too.  If you buy yeast, store it in your freezer for years and it will still be good.  

Obviously you should try to store this stuff in a reasonable place that doesn't get too hot, like a garage.  Our pantry probably isn't that much different that yours and we store probably 6 months of food, not because we're preppers, but because my wife has the "Costco Curse."

How do you store pasta safely?  I have my eye on 10lb boxes of soba noodles (B vitamins vs pasta), but dont know if it'll "keep".

What kind of sealing would that other stuff require?  Nitrogen flushing, mylar bags?  Or something much simpler?  Whats the estimated lifespan of food sealed that way?

Are 20lb bags of bulk foods ready or do they need further preparation?  I once bought a 50lb bag of golden flaxseed from ConAgra but never got around to opening it.  Eventually I had to throw it out as there were dead bugs in it, probably weevils.

I do not have a pantry and storing outside is too hot.

MG

MG, do you normally eat non-perishable food? If you do, then just have a largish stock in hand and rotate it. Things such as grains, pulses, nuts etc if you like that kind of food.

I'm intrigued about you thinking this is such an issue. Do you see a catastrophe on the horizon?

stone wrote: I'm intrigued about you thinking this is such an issue. Do you see a catastrophe on the horizon?

No, but I am concerned that people are going to freak out and panic about Dec 21. 2012 and drive up inflation in the food supply due to hoarding.  I want to be way ahead of the curve if Y2K was any indication.  Just-in-time inventory just does not work in a crisis, real or imagined.

Besides, I live in earthquake country and need to be better prepared than 99% of the population.  The tsunami in Japan was a wakeup call.

MG

MachineGhost wrote:

stone wrote: I'm intrigued about you thinking this is such an issue. Do you see a catastrophe on the horizon?

No, but I am concerned that people are going to freak out and panic about Dec 21. 2012 and drive up inflation in the food supply due to hoarding.  I want to be way ahead of the curve if Y2K was any indication.  Just-in-time inventory just does not work in a crisis, real or imagined.

MG

I received my new auto registration tag in the mail the other day and when I saw that it will take me through February of 2013, I thought to myself "that will be almost two months after the world ends."

Have you seen those "Y2K survivor" T-shirts ?

Check out that new show coming on discovery next week called "Doomsday Preppers." Looks like fun

Doomsday Preppers?  That is going to be good.