Food stock at home ! WW3

[Davi Meireles]

I know some guys who have started storing grains like rice and pasta in empty 2L soda bottles. What I see is that people around their circle of friends see them as crazy people with serious psychological problems.I went to ask one of them why the hell he was doing food storage in home; he honestly told me with conviction that he believes in WW3 and that this will reach every country in the world the repercussions of the war . To me it sounds a bit exaggerated on his part, I think he's too worked up about it.

[Honkey_Kong]

I know some guys who have started storing grains like rice and pasta in empty 2L soda bottles. What I see is that people around their circle of friends see them as crazy people with serious psychological problems.I went to ask one of them why the hell he was doing food storage in home; he honestly told me with conviction that he believes in WW3 and that this will reach every country in the world the repercussions of the war . To me it sounds a bit exaggerated on his part, I think he's too worked up about it.

I could understand having some food and water at home for things like in case of a hurricane or earthquake (or some sort of realistic natural disaster like that), but going all crazy with the preps is way too far. I used to be in to doing "prepping," so I'm not saying I was ever free from sin. But realistically, if WW3 were to happen and nukes were flying everywhere, we'd probably all die from either the blasts or the resulting radiation poisoning within a few days.

And on top of that, we probably wouldn't want to live in a post-apocalypse world anyways. If I had to eat nothing but canned foods and unflavored rice for the rest of my life and didn't even have a flush toilet to take care of the "aftermath" of eating canned food, count me out.

[JTP$]

I agree it is a very good idea to have things on hand including 25 year shelf life MREs and bottled water. There are other things that should be included though, like a small gas powered grill with extra propane, a stash of lighters, solar powered phone charger, a high power suppressed pellet air rifle for hunting small game & various canned food items like chillie and tuna.

ive also got multiple 5 lb bags of protein powder & some paper plates, plastic cups & plastic forks & knives from costco so in the event that power/water goes out and the stores are closed for an extended period of time i wont have to waste water cleaning dishes.

dont get me wrong though, im not living in some kind of fantasy world where i think a SHTF scenario would be cool and id live off my prep stash, but the covid lockdowns were a real eye opener for me. you need to have things on hand because its entirely possible something similar could happen again where the stores would be cleaned out the option of buying fresh food would not be available

[Davi Meireles]

I could understand having some food and water at home for things like in case of a hurricane or earthquake (or some sort of realistic natural disaster like that), but going all crazy with the preps is way too far. I used to be in to doing "prepping," so I'm not saying I was ever free from sin. But realistically, if WW3 were to happen and nukes were flying everywhere, we'd probably all die from either the blasts or the resulting radiation poisoning within a few days.

And on top of that, we probably wouldn't want to live in a post-apocalypse world anyways. If I had to eat nothing but canned foods and unflavored rice for the rest of my life and didn't even have a flush toilet to take care of the "aftermath" of eating canned food, count me out.

Do you think there would be use of nuclear weapons in WW3?

[almostgone]

It never hurts to keep the pantry stocked. Freeze dried food are convenient and last for a long time

It doesn't have to be a war that would necessitate the need for a food and medicine stash

A truckers' strike or dockworkers' strike could potentially cause shortages.

[Honkey_Kong]

Do you think there would be use of nuclear weapons in WW3?

I don't believe we're ever going to see "nuclear war," unless we count what the US did to Japan in WW2. No country with nuclear weapons is set to gain anything by using them or even by conquering the other "nuclear powers" with a conventional war.


Realistically, a natural disaster or what Almost Gone said is a hell of a lot more likely than a nuclear war. Having power and/or water knocked out or limited access to food and TP for a few weeks to a few months is more likely than the end of the world.

And like I said, if the apocalypse came, why would you even want to live in that world?

[wango]

Do you think there would be use of nuclear weapons in WW3?

All it takes is one or two rogue nukes from a loose canon like North Korea and possibly Iran, to set off a domino effect that really doesn’t require a WW3 to have preceded it. And once that starts, it’s game over for the Northern Hemisphere. And from what I’ve read, trying to ride it out is not that desirable. Why worry really, lol?

[Davi Meireles]

All it takes is one or two rogue nukes from a loose canon like North Korea and possibly Iran, to set off a domino effect that really doesn’t require a WW3 to have preceded it. And once that starts, it’s game over for the Northern Hemisphere. And from what I’ve read, trying to ride it out is not that desirable. Why worry really, lol?

The Koreans are on Russian soil, it seems to me that now Joe has released long-range missile strikes against Russian territory. I'm not really worried about this war and I'm not even paranoid about hoarding food. That makes me look crazy. I would even agree to stockpile food if it were a COVID situation or a new pandemic. BUT it seems that South America is the safest area to live in a world conflict, I even think that many Europeans etc would take refuge here


In a nuclear attack on Europe everyone would immigrate here, at least that's what I think.

[Davi Meireles]

All it takes is one or two rogue nukes from a loose canon like North Korea and possibly Iran, to set off a domino effect that really doesn’t require a WW3 to have preceded it.

Is it true that what they are saying is true? Hearing that the US and NATO are looking to send nuclear weapons to Ukraine

[almostgone]

Actually, Ukraine is proposing the they be allowed to join NATO and try to negotiate a cessation of hostilities with Russia.

Will it happen? I'm not confident that Putin would accept that.

Also, I really don't believe that Ukraine would be provided with nuclear weapons not even tactical nuclear weapons.

There's just too much of a risk of nuclear reprisal and that would probably lead to MAD as Honkey K and Wango mentioned.

You have to really scrutinize the info that media is putting out there. The vast majority of media quit reporting actual news and are posting anything to generate more income and views.

[almostgone]

All it takes is one or two rogue nukes from a loose canon like North Korea and possibly Iran, to set off a domino effect that really doesn’t require a WW3 to have preceded it. And once that starts, it’s game over for the Northern Hemisphere. And from what I’ve read, trying to ride it out is not that desirable. Why worry really, lol?

I agree. If a nuke/nukes were launched at the US, I really hope I'm at ground zero.

[Davi Meireles]

I believe that with Donald Trump's return to the US presidency, he will be able to resolve this conflict between Ukraine and Russia. He has already mentioned this, but it seems that Biden is going for it. path in reverse with long-range missile shipments and released to attack Russia. I honestly don't watch videos on YouTube about WW3 anymore because most of the crap there is a lie so the channels can get views.

[Davi Meireles]

Koreans are being massacred in Ukraine, they are being served to Putin as butcher meat. The crazy fat dictator of North Korea still continues to send his army to die without any mercy.

[wango]

The Koreans are on Russian soil, it seems to me that now Joe has released long-range missile strikes against Russian territory. I'm not really worried about this war and I'm not even paranoid about hoarding food. That makes me look crazy. I would even agree to stockpile food if it were a COVID situation or a new pandemic. BUT it seems that South America is the safest area to live in a world conflict, I even think that many Europeans etc would take refuge here


In a nuclear attack on Europe everyone would immigrate here, at least that's what I think.

As it’s been said above; it’s always smart to be prepared for emergencies & natural disasters, that’s not crazy at all.

Australia would be another “safe” area. But honestly, the stockpile of food and fresh water would have last for years. And survival would seem to be every man for themselves - not an enviable way to live. Like AG stated, my wife and I would prefer to go out fast.

[wango]

I believe that with Donald Trump's return to the US presidency, he will be able to resolve this conflict between Ukraine and Russia. He has already mentioned this, but it seems that Biden is going for it. path in reverse with long-range missile shipments and released to attack Russia. I honestly don't watch videos on YouTube about WW3 anymore because most of the crap there is a lie so the channels can get views.

Davi, the USA has a very long history of resisting communist expansion, Biden is performing business as usual. Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Central America, assisting Afghanistan against Russia, siding with Taiwan - it’s who we’ve been as a nation. Let’s see what happens with Trump. My guess is seceding land & a Trump guarantee that we wound not vote to let them into NATO would do the trick for Putin. If we stop sending military aid, it’s likely the best scenario for Western Ukraine as well, imo.

[Davi Meireles]

Davi, the USA has a very long history of resisting communist expansion, Biden is performing business as usual. Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Central America, assisting Afghanistan against Russia, siding with Taiwan - it’s who we’ve been as a nation. Let’s see what happens with Trump. My guess is seceding land & a Trump guarantee that we wound not vote to let them into NATO would do the trick for Putin. If we stop sending military aid, it’s likely the best scenario for Western Ukraine as well, imo.

I certainly think it would be a lot for Ukraine if Trump could calm the situation down. I think Putin would agree to stop the war if there was an agreement that prohibited Ukraine from joining NATO. Ukrainians also have grievances from the past, the Soviet regime was merciless. Rumors that NATO countries such as France, England, Germany, Poland, Sweden, etc., are wanting to take WW3 seriously with the threat of sending fighters to Ukraine. Man, I know Putin is a little crazy, but what impresses me is self-control and emotional balance that he has as a leader he could press the button to destroy the world in less than 2 seconds but he knows there would be retaliation. So, I see him as a madman still with sanity, but if they attack within Russian soil I think his patience may run out. IT WOULD be better to resolve this conflict within the diplomatic field

[Davi Meireles]

I was seeing in the newspapers doing my own research, that Asian countries are wanting to invent an Asian NATO. To protect themselves from Russia, North Korea etc. I think that wouldn't be a good thing idea.another big problem for Russia, since they don't want Ukraine to join NATO.

[Davi Meireles]

Japan after years will wake up, and they are arming themselves warily

[Beetlegeuse]

Obs will have my ass for saying this but WWIII started on August 6, 1945.

Dave, all grains (corn, rice, wheat, corn flour, etc) MUST BE VACUUM SEALED or it WILL GET weevils. Weevils lay eggs on the crop in the field and the stuff you buy comes complete with weevil eggs already installed. All they need is time and the right conditions and they WILL infest your stockpile.

You can sterilize the eggs with radiation or kill them with heat in a pressure cooker, but not many have the equipment at home to irradiate their food, and pressure canning pre-cooks the grain. In the case of flour, that makes it unsuitable for breads and the like, so the there are drawbacks. It's simpler and more economical to buy sealable food-grade 5-gallon plastic buckets with one-way air-check valves in the lids. Most consumer-grade vacuum sealers have an attachment for a hose so you can apply a vacuum to an external container like a 5-gallon food bucket.

Or you can put in vacuum-sealed bags. Bags are smaller than 5-gallon buckets, which is bad for bulk but good for transporability.

So filling old soda bottles with rice or flour, the putting the cap on it and praying there's no weevils inside IS NOT a Beetlegeuse-approved method.

Also remember the Rule of Threes. You can survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter (in broiling heat or bitter cold), three days without water, three weeks without food and, some would add, three months without hope. So your first stockpiling priority is ALWAYS water.

For bulk storage I use 7-gallon Reliance Aqua-Tainers (~$20). Including the container that's almost 60 pounds, which is as much as any normal man would want to carry very far in such a bulky container. So if you need it to be portable (which you do, even if you don't realize it), you wouldn't want to go much larger. Water won't spoil but for an added measure of safety add a Tbsp of chlorine bleach to each 7-gal jug, and store them somewhere sunlight can't reach.

And get a Berkey countertop water filter ($400). Stainless steel, makes ditch water safe to drink, filters seven gallons in an hour, and the two included filters can clean about 6000 gallons of water between them.

Figure a gallon per day per person for as long as you anticipate potable water not being available. As soon as you know there's an emergency coming, fill your bathtub(s). You might not want to drink it but you can wash in, boil eggs or potatoes in it, or fill the toilet tank with it.

And NEVER RATION WATER. Ration work instead. Never exert yourself beyond what water you have available.

A doomsday food stock doesn't have to be fancy. The pioneers crossed the American plains subsisting on little more than dried beans and rice. They didn't understand the nutrition but beans (navy, pinto, red, white) are very high in protein for a vegetable source, and beans and rice together provide all the essential amino acids. A little chicory weed or coyote backstrap for flavor and you're dining at the Ritz!

If you're getting serious about a survival larder, a pressure cooker and a vacuum sealer are indispensable. Between them they dramatically increase your ability to DIY food storage with a very long shelf life.

Stockpiling store-bought and canned goods is easy, if you have a system. I figured this out 45 years ago when I was being shipped to my first 3rd-world shithole. I made up a list of stuff I use regularly but couldn't be sure I'd have access to where I was going (toothpaste, shampoo, deode, staples, rubber bands, etc) and for the six months before I shipped out, every time I needed one of anything on the list, I bought two. One was for here and the other was for shipping to my new home in Gondwanaland. So the stuff I shipped down had all the "luxury" items I'd need for six months. Use the same strategery for your doomsday larder.

You can spread the costs out by buying one for the survival pantry for every two ( ... or three, ... or four ... ) you buy for the kitchen cupboard. That way you're only spending 50% more for your prepper staples but you're also only accumulating them at half the rate they'll be consumed.

Same with all your other staples. Peanut butter, honey, pasta, canned vegetables and fruits. Buy extras a little bit at a time to take the bite out building a stockpile. But the risk in that is that you could have a food emergency before you're properly stockpiled for it.

I'm blessed to like Spam, so Spam is my primary prepper protein. "Buy three/stash one" means that after I've been at it for a year, I've got enough Spam in the larder to last six months at our normal rate of consumption. Or you can do "buy three/stash two" and have a one year stockpile of Spam in six months.

Meat/protein choices are pretty slim. Besides Spam you've got potted meat, jerky, canned tuna, chicken, sardines, but not a lot else.

That's partly why I raise quail and rabbits in my urban back yard. Might not be the answer to your prayers if you've been nuked but would be really handy if food distribution was interrupted by civil disturbance.

Domesticated Quail are the fastest-growing farm animal. Mine weigh about 1/3rd of an ounce at hatching and they're about 12 ounces (and ready to harvest) at six weeks. So on average they're putting on about 85% of their birth weight every day until slaughter. However, in that 12 ozs is only 4-5 ounces of skinless, boneless meat, so you need a lot of quail to feed a family. Fortunately, each hen lays about 300 eggs a year, so "mass-producing" large numbers of baby chicks is a cinch. With ten hens (and, of course, two accompanying roosters) living in two 2-foot by 3-foot cages, I can produce about 600 baby chicks a year (= ~150 lbs of meat). Quail are much quieter than chickens, the roosters do crow but it isn't loud, shrill or annoying, and they don't take up much room. If you have a NYC apartment with a balcony big enough for two chairs, you have enough space to raise quail.

Rabbits convert feed to meat more efficiently than any other farm animal. A 10-week-old 5-lb meat rabbit makes about 3 lbs of meat on about 25 lbs of feed. On even a 'mild' breeding program, and even with a not-so-outstanding doe, she can birth 24 kits a year, which comes to about 75 lbs of meat. Breed a really good doe so frequently it will wear her out before her time but you could double that figure. And one buck can service eight or 10 does.

I'll not get into the details here but neither rabbits nor quail take any great deal of farming experience, and they're hard to kill off. Both can be fed off the land if shit goes sideways and the Co-Op closes down.

At first I raised them to learn the process and to see how much food it would be possible to produce if we needed it to survive. Once I figured out how best to do all that shit I dialed back production and now I'm basically raising them in "maintenance mode," just doing enough breeding to keep the numbers stable. They're almost pets, especially the rabbits, but it would take about three months to ramp up production to get meat output back to full scale. So there is risk in turning the dial back to idle. But that's where I am now, at idle, waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

Most days it only takes 15-20 minutes to take care of the quail AND the rabbits. But one or two days a week you have to deal with all that shit (literally, animal feces), and that costs between 30 minutes and an hour. Even if you're doing full-scale breeding, rabbits don't demand a great deal more time than when they're at idle. Quail, on the other hand, do. The birds take care of the breeding and egg-laying parts all by themselves, but their human partner has to take care of the hatching and the brooding. Raising large numbers of young quail to harvest age takes dramatically more time than adult quail in "maintenance mode." I frequently have had as many as ~120 chicks at different stages of development from only a dozen adults (10 laying hens & two roosters).

And speaking of shit, quail shit is very high in nitrogen, even "hotter" than chicken shit, so it needs several months in the compost heap to "cool off" before use. Rabbit shit, on the other hand, is one of the best natural fertilizers known to man. It's so low in nitrogen that you can put it directly on plants (but first it needs a day or two to dry out to let the urine evaporate). If you have a vegetable garden (and what prepper doesn't?) or if you're just growing roses, you could do worse than keeping a rabbit just for its poop.

You might be thinking, if rabbits are in general less work, make more meat and "better" fertilizer, why bother with the quail? It's the same logic as the gun guys who say, "Three is two and two is one and one is none." Rabbits AND quail gives my survival plan significantly more depth than either one alone, because whatever calamity could come along and wipe out the rabbits probably wouldn't affect the quail. And vice-versa.

Believe it or not, I didn't start the rabbits and quail for prepping. I started them because I wanted my farm dog to get off his lazy ass and do something to justify what I spend on feeding him. So now he has a job.

Years ago I bought MRE-type food, enough for the family for two meals a day for each for a month. "Real" MREs aren't available in stores but the mimics usually have roughly the same calorie count as the GI stuff so as long as you're buying quality, two imitation MREs/day should be adequate calories for wimmen, chillen and fat old men.

MREs have an expiration date but in my humble but unerringly accurate opinion, freeze-dried food might not remain prime quality indefinitely but it won't out-and-out "go bad" in my lifetime. They're the ultimate portable food supply but they're also spendy. And a single case of them takes up quite a bit of space. The ones I have are only for disasters of biblical proportions. I wouldn't eat them unless I had no other choice, but if you can afford them, after water, MREs are the best way to start your doomsday stockpile.

Except for water, We could probably go six months on what I have in the house without touching the cache of MREs (and the Berkey filter has potable water covered). We could live at least two months alone on soups, stews and gumbos I made and canned myself. And another three months on the ground beef and cubed chicken I also pressure cooked. It would be possible to make enough of any of them to last us a year. Or three. It's just a matter of spending for the ingredients and devoting the time to the food prep, cooking and canning.

Bread is so perishable that store-bought will be gone fast so I home-make sourdough bread. Sourdough starter is a culture of wild yeast, and yeast is a beneficial bacteria. So starter is actually a culture of living bacteria that has to be fed and maintained like any living thing. But so long as it gets fed and well-cared for, that bacteria will continue to live and reproduce, so the same culture can be kept alive indefinitely. There's a San Francisco bakery that's been using the same starter since 1849. You put it in your bread dough instead of store-bought yeast to make it rise and give it a wonderful flavor.

Yeast burps CO2 and pisses alcohol, so depending on what ratios and formulas you're using, you can use it to make leavened bread or to ferment grain. That's why bread and beer occurred side-by-side and roughly simultaneously about 14,000 years ago. So besides bread you could use sourdough starter it to make beer or kombucha.

I also have a couple of alcohol stoves for the home because if there's no alcohol left, I don't want to go on living. I stock gallon cans of denatured alcohol from Home Depot to run them on. I also keep one, a Trangia Spirit Burner, in the "adventure box" in my truck, along with two yellow (NOT RED) bottles of HEET fuel de-icer. It's more expensive than gallons from Homies but the smaller bottles are leak-proof and more convenient than gallon cans.

I also have a double-burner Coleman stove but I don't count on fuel always being available for it.

You can't eat without the inevitable consequences following, in which case you need ... toilet paper. Idiots stripped the shelves bare of TP paper because of the Coronapanic, so imagine what they'd do in a REAL emergency. I took that to heart and once the stores got restocked, I started buying a 24-roll pack of Charmin every week. I've got 12 packs of them in the "Open Only In Case Of Emergency" bin, which comes to 288 "Mega"-rolls, allegedly the equivalent of 1000+ single rolls of 'old-fashioned' TP. Should last the family a week or two, plus it'll make a fine barter item, if it comes to that.

It bears mention that apart from those first 30 cases of MREs, I didn't do any of this for prepper-ish reasons. I still don't consider myself "a prepper." I just bought a little extra stuff now and again over a lot of years until now my house looks like the grocery section at Costco.

But the most important step is the first one. Once you've accepted that you're a conspiratorial nut-job ;-) and started buying toilet paper by the gross, it's all down-hill from there.

[Obs]

I know some guys who have started storing grains like rice and pasta in empty 2L soda bottles. What I see is that people around their circle of friends see them as crazy people with serious psychological problems.I went to ask one of them why the hell he was doing food storage in home; he honestly told me with conviction that he believes in WW3 and that this will reach every country in the world the repercussions of the war . To me it sounds a bit exaggerated on his part, I think he's too worked up about it.

We pretty much kicked this around on this site a long time ago.
All I really have to say is that:
If there's a nuclear weapon set off I hope it hits my house first. I hope it kills me and my children me and my family first, so we don't have to endure the hardship that will come after. It sounds cold it sounds mean but I really do hope so.
People stock up like they're going to survive for eternity and they stock up with guns and ammo in the US like they're going to fight an army or like their Rambo or some shit.
"Oh I'm going to help my neighbor."
No you're not.

If things get even softly bad people start pulling away from each other. If the world were thrown into sudden chaos 2020 just gave us a little taste of what it would be like. That was just a fake little toy crisis.

If something really bad happens (I mean this nicely) I want to die.
If life becomes hide and eat then I don't want to live.

I had doomsday prepper buddies and I told them this is the way I doomsday prepped.
"I have a rifle that will touch you from 1200 yards, I have 20 bullets, I have the addresses of five Doomsday preppers. When the world goes to crap as soon as you poke your head out everything that you've bought and stored away is mine."

I'm not particularly sure I want to hide away and eat.
But if you do it'll be nice to have your stuff when the world comes crashing down.

I like to eat chicken and tomatoes and rice. I like to buy them from a store. I like going to stores and the interactions with people that I have there.

If that goes away from the general public for more than a couple weeks it becomes something I don't want to live in. My doomsday plan is I hope I die.

[Honkey_Kong]

We pretty much kicked this around on this site a long time ago.
All I really have to say is that:
If there's a nuclear weapon set off I hope it hits my house first. I hope it kills me and my children me and my family first, so we don't have to endure the hardship that will come after. It sounds cold it sounds mean but I really do hope so.
People stock up like they're going to survive for eternity and they stock up with guns and ammo in the US like they're going to fight an army or like their Rambo or some shit.
"Oh I'm going to help my neighbor."
No you're not.

If things get even softly bad people start pulling away from each other. If the world were thrown into sudden chaos 2020 just gave us a little taste of what it would be like. That was just a fake little toy crisis.

If something really bad happens (I mean this nicely) I want to die.
If life becomes hide and eat then I don't want to live.

I had doomsday prepper buddies and I told them this is the way I doomsday prepped.
"I have a rifle that will touch you from 1200 yards, I have 20 bullets, I have the addresses of five Doomsday preppers. When the world goes to crap as soon as you poke your head out everything that you've bought and stored away is mine."

I'm not particularly sure I want to hide away and eat.
But if you do it'll be nice to have your stuff when the world comes crashing down.

I like to eat chicken and tomatoes and rice. I like to buy them from a store. I like going to stores and the interactions with people that I have there.

If that goes away from the general public for more than a couple weeks it becomes something I don't want to live in. My doomsday plan is I hope I die.

Yeah I agree with you, I'd rather not live than live in some post-apocalyptic dystopia. But I don't think that's going to ever happen in our lives.

I said it before and I stand by it, I agree with having like 10-20 gallons of drinkable water at home and some nonperishible foods, but that's for things say a strong earthquake or a hurricane that makes it impossible to go to the store or the water isn't safe from the faucet. Some sort of disaster that might ruin our days for a few weeks, but things will go back to normal soon enough.