Survival Food - Freeze Dried & MRE

The narrative is that “there are troubles ahead, but ‘just right’ troubles, the kind survivalists have the means to confront … imagined troubles always match the means at hand — or what is for sale to solve the problem.

Richard Mitchell Jr., professor emeritus at Oregon State University and author of “Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times.”

Two people concerned about risks in life and active in preparedness efforts for their families are Bob and Gary.

Bob has created a food storage room. It has racks stocked with canned food, shelves with carefully stored bulk grains, sugar, etc he and his family needs for survival. He has planned and worked this out over a long time and has built up a 6 month supply of food.  He has 30 and 55 gallon drums of water that store enough to supply drinking and hygiene water 6 months as well.  Bob carefully manages his inventory and makes sure the family eats the food regularly so that nothing expires and goes to waste.

Gary, who is also very concerned about preparedness and risks, did some research. Gary thought through what were the best and appropriate choices for his family. Gary decided to buy 6 months worth of freeze dried food which amounted to two pallets he stored in his house. He decided not to buy drums for water but instead purchased and stored five 100 gallon pillow tanks and a 5 gallon collapsible container. Gary also had a water purification filter and a rainwater collector. He had an attachment for downspout collection of water.

A crisis occurred (what kind does not matter if you are prepared for anything) that caused both Bob and Gary to be thankful they had prepared. Bob continued using food from his storage. Gary started to use his food reserve when food supply became intermittent. Both were able to help family, friends, and neighbors who were not prepared at the times when they were in dire need.

Then power from utilities started to become intermittent and fuel was scarce. Bob and Gary both had solar ovens they used to cook and heat small amounts water and store in insulated containers. However Bob and his family were challenged because at night and cloudy days the hot water they stored could not cook the food in their reserve. They began to grow worried. Gary and his family only really needed the hot water to make their freeze dried food hot, a real morale booster.

Due to the stress of shortages, social order was starting to destabilize. As the risk of staying where they were grew higher both Bob and Gary thought about their options. Fortunately both had remote cottages several hours drive away where they had long term relationships with other cottagers that would be a safer place to be.

Unfortunately as is the case in a prolonged crisis, events become unpredictable. One day it became urgent to leave their locations for their cottages immediately. Within an hour the highway would be jammed with drivers in a state of desperation, highly stressed out and emotionally charged.

Bob needed to pack as much food and water in the family van in next 30 minutes. Bob and his wife had packed clothes and essentials for the kids in case they had to leave quickly, so that was in the van in minutes. However Bob’s food reserve of canned food was large, heavy, bulky. Worse water weighs 8.3 lbs per gallon so Bob’s filled 55 gallon drums weighed 458 lbs each. Bob had no idea what to do in this short time. He decided to drain one of his tanks but there was no easy way to do this and avoid electrocution. So he shut the power off and dumped the water out on the floor ruining some grain, after removing enough with a hand pump to tip the tank over. This still took 40 minutes and when he put the empty drum in his van it took up too much room. All he could do was take his 5 gallon collapsible tank and fill it. Meanwhile Bob’s wife was loading cans of food in the in the van but was unable to choose a balance of food they needed. She hurt her back trying to lift bulk bags of wheat and was now writhing in pain. In the end they were only able to get effectively 3 weeks worth of food in the van but drove off because they had no other choice, leaving 4 months worth of food behind. Bob also did have a weeks worth of MRE which hopefully will buy them enough time to figure out how to survive at their cottage.

When Gary realized he only had 30 minutes he knew exactly what he and his family had to do. They had also packed an emergency clothes and supplies bag to leave quickly. Since the boxes of freeze dried food weighed little, with 98% of the water in the food removed, Gary was able to cart out his remaining 5 months supply on a dolly in 15 minutes. There was just enough room in the Van for this much food. More importantly his wife had already brought out an empty 100 gallon pillow tank and put it on the floor of the van (2 seats removed) and filled it. Gary had put the food, solar oven, rain water equipment, empty pillow tanks, and emergency supplies on top of the filled pillow tank and next to it.

25 minutes later Gary and his family were in the Van on the road to their cottage.

Flexibility and mobility are important to preparedness.

Even the experts don’t quite know what’s going on.

- Paul Volker former chairman of the Federal Reserve and current economic adviser to President Barack Obama. (February 20, 2009, reported in Associated Press “Volcker sees crisis leading to global regulation”, Eileen AJ Connelly )

Is that uncertain enough for you?

You can wait for the “experts” to figure it out and do nothing hoping for the best.

On the other hand you can be certainly prepared for anything, even a crisis worse than the Great Depression.

Survival food preparedness can be accomplished in a very short time, in one week without reorganizing your life. Effective and certain food preparedness means having a food reserve that is ready to eat when you need it.

If you buy a lot of bulk foods now and you don’t need to use it for 6 months or a year or more, much of it may go to waste. Then if you and your family do desperately need that food reserve after that time it won’t be there.

For the majority of people the most effective long term food reserve is freeze dried food. If stored in a cool dry place it can last 25 years.

So a freeze dried food reserve will be there for you this year, next year, 10 years from now, 25 years from now if your family needs it.  

You can order a 3 month supply for a family of four and have it delivered and stored in less than a week.  No adjustment to learn how to cook your food reserve is required, just add water and eat.

After you have your food reserve it stays in reserve. Your family goes on with life until you need the reserve.

If you want to go the bulk food rotating inventory route and are determined to make it a success, there is an excellent video and website for you.

The name of the website is Food Storage Made Easy.

Amazing amount of great information on food storage is there. The proprietors of Food Storage Made Easy, Jodi and Julie have laid out some great tools with spreadsheets and video tutorials on how to create your own 72 hour kits, 3 month storage and shelf racks and more.

On the site you start with “Getting Started” of course, and then there are 9 “baby steps” you take on your way to going beyond food storage.

Here is a video of Julie explaining how to use the 3 month food supply spread sheet;

More than just spreadsheets and videos, there is a lot of great advice in regular blog posts such as the recent “How To Build Your Own Can Rotating Rack”.

There appears to be a good group of people following judging by the comments to blog posts there. There is a forum as well but that has not seemed to evolve yet.

I checked the site visitor stats on Compete.com and they surged to over 20k per month in January 09;

No doubt due to the great content there.

I still recommend freeze dried food and MRE reserves as the most effective and fastest way to be prepared.

If you are someone who is ready for the commitment of managing a bulk food rotating inventory system then I strongly recommend you start with Food Storage Made Easy.

News broke a few days ago that Panasonic had advised employees overseas to arrange for their families to return home by September 2009 as part of influenza pandemic planning.

See the story at CIDRAP.

The WHO (World Heath Organization) was perplexed at the action by Panasonic.

A Panasonic spokesman quickly issued a statement that Panasonic had no “proprietary” information on an elevated risk of an influenza pandemic.

He also denied it was related to cost cutting.

In my humble opinion - this “pandemic planning” is related to costs as well as concerns over social unrest in China and other countries as the threat of a global economic depression looms.

However it is always best to be proactively prepared so that when any news comes you don’t need worry and react hastily and make poor decisions on how you are prepared.

But if you are not prepared now with the small but very significant risk of an economic depression then it is likely you will not be prepared for a sudden disaster or pandemic. Now is the time to be prepared for anything as there will be no time and little to get prepared later.

Here is a video from the NBC program “The Office” which shows that good preparedness can only result from planning and practice.

Let’s hope our emergency preparedness efforts have better results if they are one day required.

Plan, Practice, Prepared.

The ReadyStore has an online offer to save $100 on new products when you order over $1000 of new products until February 16th, 2009.

Some of the new survival food and products include;

Quad-X-treme Auto Emergency Fuel & Survival Kit

ULTIMATE 3-Month Supply of Freeze Dried Food - #10 CANS

1 Month MRE Supply

3 Month MRE Supply

6 Month MRE Supply

1 Year MRE Supply

MSR Reactor™ Emergency Stove

The 3 month MRE would be a great compliment to a freeze dried food reserve for a family of 3 or 4. Freeze dried food is the best choice for cost and taste.

However MRE has added benefits of

• flameless heater pouches available that, with a little water added, heat the meal in 10 minutes
• No drinking water and nothing else needs to be added to prepare meals
• ideal for trips longer than a few hours becuase they need zero preparation

I found an excellent food storage resource titled “Food Safety and Storage for Emergency Preparedness” on Colorado State University’s website.

One important area often overlooked in food storage is humidity control.

As stated by the Front Range Healthy Lifestyles Issues Team at Colorado State on food storage areas;

The storage area should be dry (less than 15 percent humidity), and adequately ventilated to prevent condensation of moisture on packaging material. Food should not be stored on the floor; the lowest shelf should be 2-3 feet off the floor. Date and rotate food every 6-12 months.

Also important was the information on “Optimum Length of Storage for Quality and Nutrition” for long shelf life and canned foods which shows most of these foods have less than 24 months, even dry milk products.

It is important to have carefully managed rotation system if you using these foods for long term food storage.

The Defense Logistics Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are shipping 660,000 military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) to Kentucky and Arkansas storm victims. The MREs, designed for use by the military, are safe to eat and will replace the commercial meal kits that have been distributed to the storm victims.

All military MREs are safe. While many of the meals contain peanut butter, they do not contain peanut butter products recalled by the Food and Drug Administration, according to the manufacturers of the MREs. DLA’s Defense Distribution Center, New Cumberland, Pa., is arranging shipment of the meals, scheduled for delivery today.

In addition, 1.5 million self-contained packaged meals, a commercial version of the military MREs, are being readied for distribution to FEMA. Although some of these meals also contain peanut butter, the manufacturers have certified that the meals do not contain products recalled by the FDA.

The recall has prompted the Defense Logistics Agency and its industry partners to increase surveillance of the peanut butter suppliers to ensure the products are safe to consume.

The Defense Logistics Agency provides the military services, other federal agencies, and joint and allied forces with a variety of logistics, acquisition and technical services. These include procuring and distributing food, spare parts, clothing, medical supplies, construction material and fuel. Headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., DLA is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations. For more information on DLA visit www.dla.mil

SOURCE Defense Logistics Agency

Family food reserves for disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemics, and ice storms have recently been sought after as an investment against an economic depression.

The threat of prolonged economic hardship is becoming more real each week. Last week more than 100,000 jobs were lost in the US.

The fact that these troubles are being driven by a lack of stability in the financial system has created a great concern on how we should invest our resources for a more and more likely ‘rainy day’.

Freeze dried food reserves are getting a lot of attention as an attractive investment for economic depression survival for some important reasons;

• You do not need to change your cooking and eating habits. You keep the food reserve that stores for up to 25 years in reserve.  You do not need to eat from the reserve until you need it.

• You draw from your reserve as you need it. If there is no food shortage or budget crisis, you do not draw from your food reserve. You only need to stock up one time with a 3 month or a one year food reserve and then you use that reserve only when it is needed.

• Meals versus raw ingredients. Freeze dried food in Mountain House #10 cans consists of cooked entrees and side dishes that you only need to add water (hot or cold) to eat.  In tough times you want to conserve as much of your time and energy as possible to support your family.

• No Waste. People who try buying bulk food often are not prepared to adjust to the new cooking style and do not store the food properly. The end result is what appeared to cost you less ends up costing you a lot more when you throw a lot of the bulk food away.

• Freeze dried food costs about the same in a reserve as most people spend normally on groceries for the same number of meals. The upfront cost of buying a 3 month or one year food reserve is money well spent when you realize that you will have the flexibility to use your investment when you need it. The fact that freeze dried food has a long storage life and is very easy to consume means little waste.

Freeze dried food reserve sales have skyrocketed in the last 4 months as the economic crisis has evolved and it’s impact is becoming clearer. Many see the benefits of freeze dried food and understand the value.

Freeze dried food reserves represent a long term ‘bank’ of food that actually increases the food supply for all. Buying tons of bulk food and then throwing a lot of spoiled food away can be considered a wasteful hoarding of food on the other hand.

While we can all hope and work hard for things to get better, it is best to be prepared for the worst.