Survival Saturday #1

Dry Rations... It's what's for dinner.....

Welcome to our very first Survival Saturday letter.  We all know that in an emergency, be it a tornado, hurricane, blizzard, or the collapse of western civilization as we know it, to survive you need a few basic things.  Water, food, shelter, and in extreme circumstances a way to protect yourself, the ones you love, and the things you have prepared for your family.  These things are the minimum requirements for survival.  Some include air\oxygen, but if that isn’t generally available then survival over any period would be almost impossible.  So, I exclude it.  Note, all of this information is based on my experience and research.  I am sure there are other ways of doing things and maybe even better ways for you.  My goal isn’t to be the end-all-be-all, authoritative source for knowledge on survival\prepping, but to be a resource to help you get started, spark ideas to help you continue, or inspire you to go out and learn, finding the best solutions for you.  I am going to skip over producing and preserving your own food at this time for the most part as I plan to cover that in several future posts.  I do not expect this paper to be exhaustive but a starting point for discussion.

Today, we are going to talk about food and food storage.  I think this is one of the most important topics in survival even if it isn’t as sexy as talking about guns (it seems prepping talk often devolves into a chat about guns or shooting zombies [anyone who isn’t prepared and is trying to take your stuff by force]).  You have to eat and what you eat can have profound effects on your morale and the morale of your group (anyone who is surviving with you).  While rice and beans are the least expensive preparation, and easy to put back, a constant diet of those, coupled with whatever you can wild source or hunt, is going to wear on people in relatively short order.  You are going to want variety.  Other considerations are:

1.       Where will you be? Are you bugging out, hunkering down, waiting to see the nature of the emergency to decide?

2.       What if your location is compromised?

3.       How will you move some or all of your food?

4.       How long will the food last in storage?

5.       What kind of rotation do you need?

There are other questions as well, but these are a good start.  Often people try to toss ‘What will my kids eat?’ or ‘What do we like to eat?’ in the mix, but I don’t because universally the answer is anything after going without for a day or two.

There are lots of ways to preserve your own food and lots of options for off-the-shelf survival foods.  We are going to touch on several of these and probably skip some as well (So, if I miss something that you have been thinking about, don’t fret. It probably was excluded for brevity or if it is particularly esoteric, I may not have heard of it). Let’s start at the store, since that is the easiest place to begin.

Dry rice and beans are probably the least expensive options and easiest to put back in large quantity.  That being said, while it is better than going hungry, they are boring and will probably have a negative effect on morale if this is all people eat.  They make a good core or base for preparation, and stored correctly generally don’t care where you toss them, unlike other food stuffs that need cool, shaded places to last as long as they should.  Many people like to store their dry rice and beans in big 55 or 30 gallon drums. While this is efficient, they are also almost impossible to move as they weigh hundreds of pounds.  I prefer to store mine in 3-5 gallon buckets for portability.  While we all would like to think our location is safe, in the event that you are forced out for any reason you have a much better chance of making off with at least some food if it is stored in portable quantities.  My favorite method of storage for dry rice and beans is to CO2 pack them.  I like this because they can be opened and repacked at need and works well in buckets to store quantities easily.

To properly CO2 pack dry beans, rice, or really any other grains, you need a clean food-grade container with a water and air tight lid, dry ice, and desiccant bags, about an oz per gallon (optional).  Note: Do this is in an open, well-ventilated place or you will suffocate yourself and die, defeating the point of food storage.  Fill your container to about 2 inches from the top (drop in desiccants, if using, at the midpoint of the fill), and place a very small piece of dry ice on it.  Then set (do not seal) the lid in place.  At this point you will be treated to a fog waterfall as the CO2 fills all the voids between the stored material and forces all the air and water vapor back out of the container.  Once this is done, and the fog waterfall has stopped, without removing the lid, seal it in place.  Now you have a container all full of food that will stay good forever, until you want to eat it.  While dry rice and beans are very long-lived with no extra treatment, they can contain bug eggs, are sensitive to moisture, even high humidity, and several other dangers that CO2 packing protects from.  I think the biggest advantage is safety from bugs.  If you go looking on the prepper forums, you can find tales of woe where grain, beans, rice or some other dry good was stored in a bucket with just a desiccant and when it was reopened at some future point it was full of bugs and the husks of the food that was once stored because the prepper had inadvertently created a bug paradise with all the food and sex the bugs could want and no chance of predation. If you look through the FDA guidelines for dry grains, rice, beans and what-not, you will see that a certain number of bug eggs are allowed in the consumer product.  Usually they are killed in processing, but not always.  By CO2 packing your bulk dry grains, you create an environment where if a bug does hatch it suffocates and dies before it can cause any harm to your food stores.

Another option is freeze dried foods. These come as prepared meals or as bulk single item containers and can be vacuum sealed, canned, often in big #10 style cans, or stored in large sealed buckets.  These can be a great addition to your prep (Unless you have your own freeze-drying machine, then I say make it yourself, it is cheaper).  While the full meals are very expensive compared to most other stored foods, the bulk products can add serious diversity to your food storage and preparation.  This allows you to have meats, cheeses, various fruits, vegetables, and even commodities like milk and butter. Another thing you can get from these suppliers is bulk prepared foods like 35# of chicken and rice, beef stew, or spaghetti. Just add water. While more expensive than buying single items in bulk, they are less expensive than single-serving meals, and can be a great supplement to add variety to your meals.  There are literally dozens of providers for this type of food, but I am not going to recommend one.  I have, in my larder, products from several and have tried them from more.  I will say, I haven’t ever come across one I would say was bad and if I am being fully honest, I haven’t really noticed a huge difference between similar products from various vendors.  These foods do need to be stored in a cool (under 85 degrees) dry place, out of direct light, for them to last as long as possible.  Nearly all of these are rated to be good for 15 to 30 years.  The only down side is they are highly susceptible to humidity and once opened you need to use them up because there isn’t an easy way to reseal them to protect against the environment.

After that, we have good old-fashioned canned goods.  For this category, I am including anything not dehydrated or otherwise preserved and packaged in a heat-sealed container. So, it will include jars, cans, and other such products.  They say canned goods last 2-3 years in most cases.  I have found that if the can is intact and not bulged they are fine significantly longer. I think my record is eating 15-year-old canned goods.  The flavor was a little off, sort of faded, not bad just not as fresh tasting.  I can’t speak to nutrition content, just that I didn’t get sick or die.  The upside of canned goods are that they are very portable, there are huge varieties of meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, fruits, soups, stews, and fully prepared meals.  The downside is that they can be heavy, and while the cans are lined, after a period of time acidic foods like tomatoes and fruits can rust through their own cans from the inside out.  Typically, canned goods do better if stored in a cool dry place, just as freeze-dried foods do.  As a last aside before we leave the world of canned goods, let’s talk peanut butter, provided you are not allergic (my favorite miracle prep food).  The sealed plastic containers are vacuum sealed, the product is hot packed resulting in it being sterile before it is opened, and it contains a fair amount of salt. This results in a very portable, very calorie rich, and reasonably nutritious emergency ration that stays good forever as long as the seals are not broken.  I have personally eaten peanut butter out of a WWII ration pack, that was nearly 80 years old, and it tasted just like it was made yesterday.  The reason is that the fats only spoil by oxidation and the rest by the action of microorganisms.  Since the contents are sterile and in a vacuum, the clock on peanut butter has stopped so long as the container seals are not broken.  While some might say this is true of other canned items (and it may be) most of the others have components internally that can and will eventually break them down, even in a sealed state.

This brings us to ration bars.  These vacuum sealed clods of kind of sweet saw dust stay good forever, or nearly so.  The advantage is that they are very light weight and each 5x2x6 inch (approximate size) are a full day’s ration of 1800-3500 K calories, depending on brand.  Ration bars also last forever, so long as the vacuum sealed foil package isn’t ruptured, even though the manufacturers claim 20-50 years, depending on brand.  They tend to be vitamin fortified but poor in macro nutrition as most of them are mostly just carbs. So, they are good for short periods of time to keep you going.  They are good for get home bags, and emergency kit, but not for long term survival.  Just make sure that you buy Coast Guard certified bars, as they tend to provide more calories and better vitamin balance.

Lastly, we will talk about Meals Ready to Eat (MREs).  There are several companies now selling MREs and they are available as full military rations, paired down kits, and even third party MREs under various brand names.  In most cases, they all have contents from similar manufacturers.  You can also buy parts of MREs like the drinks, main meal, snacks, or accessories separately.  These are generally the most expensive option and have a listed shelf life of 5-10 years (I have eaten 25-year-old MREs with no ill effect, but they did take on a mylar after-taste from their packaging).  Full meals frequently run $75-120 for a case of 12.  The important thing is to carefully read the description, so you know what you are going to get, and the package date on the enclosed items.  I have seen cases of full military rations for sale as low as $50. However, in these cases they are usually 8-10 years past their pack date and have very little reliable life in them.  Also, with the number of companies re-packing or packing their own MREs you will need to make sure you know what you are getting.  I have both regular military and international aid meals put back in my stores. The primary difference is the aid meals don’t have any snacks and have an abbreviated accessory pack with a spoon, napkin, and salt and pepper only, and they only include the meal, bread, a spread (usually peanut butter, jelly, or cheese of some kind), and a dessert.  The standard military MRE contains all of that as well as candy, a snack of some kind, usually several drink mixes, and sometimes water tablets.  Both products contain a flameless heater.  The upside of MREs are that they are reasonably portable, are very much like a prepared meal, can be rationed at one-a-day and broken up to feed a person all day (at reduced calories, I think they run 1200-1600 calories each, depending). Also, they have some morale boosters in the drink mixes and candy.  The downside is the cost, the relatively short shelf-life compared to other options, and the number of companies re-packaging and self-packaging their own brands can make it hard to be sure what you are getting.

I think I have covered the basics of the main types of long-term storage foods available over the counter.  They all require water and I will cover strategies for procuring that in a future letter.  Until then, just make sure you are storing a variety of items in quantity so that meal times can remain something to look forward to, rather be a necessary chore to stay alive.

-Sam