Emergency Food Storage - Emergency Preparedness Guide » disaster food storage

Emergency Food Storage: Why All the Fuss?

admin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:02:19 +0000

If you take the average Joe on the street and ask him if he has any emergency food storage, you probably won’t get an answer in the affirmative. Why bother when most folks in modern suburban living circumstances can just jump into their car and be to a supermarket in less than 10 minutes? The obvious answer to that is the first word in the phrase “emergency food storage”. In an EMERGENCY, you may not be able to go to Wal-Mart, and if you were able to, you may not find what you were looking for!

Emergency food storage is not about fear mongering or scare tactics. It’s about emergency preparedness. You are preparing in advance so chaos and scarcity won’t ensue should a real emergency occur. But, these are the days wherein things that are right are called wrong, things that are wrong are called right, and the political spin doctors are working overtime. No wonder emergency food storage may be seen by some (who hang on every word of the mainstream media) as being “extreme”. When you live in a country that has a deficit of over $14 trillion, has over $75 trillion in unfunded liabilities, whose real unemployment is over 20 percent (Shadowstats.com), and where gold is over $1,200 denominated in the country’s currency, how would anybody with a little horse sense construe having some emergency food storage as being extreme? Unless they just don’t interpret the above figures as extreme!?

Common sense has become a very uncommon commodity. When bills more than a thousand pages long that are not even read have passage through Congress even considered, this is a huge red flag, and should give rise to concern and action on the part of individuals for protection. What more important action could we take to preserve our lives and freedoms than to protect ourselves from gross departure of our sacred constitutional principles by being self reliant and obtaining for ourselves and our families an emergency food storage supply to take car of our survival needs, and to secure our financial situation with constitutional money (gold and silver)? Common sense dictates: if you don’t take care of yourself, why should anyone else? What’s more – the future is uncertain – to beware and to prepare is nothing else if not logical.

Food Storage: Is it Only for The Apocalypse and Armageddon?
Disaster Survival– Food for Thought and Belly
The Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Survival Readiness Pyramid
Self Reliance and Disasters: Does Money Stand In Your Way?

Emergency Food: Your Saving Grace

admin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 03:07:43 +0000

Emergency food is so important that everyone should have some stored. In today’s world it isn’t a question of if you will need to draw upon your emergency food resources, but when. How many 7-plus magnitude earthquakes have you read/hear about lately? It seems like they don’t make earthquakes the way they used to. They are of greater and greater magnitude with more and more destruction and loss of life. And don’t for one second believe that those survivors involved in these catastrophes who were unprepared didn’t wish that they had access to emergency food supplies. When I say emergency food, I am also including water with that because the elixir of life is even more important than solid food for sustaining life. But, having emergency food isn’t weird, it isn’t excessive worry, and it isn’t hoarding. And none of that would matter anyway if you were in an emergency situation going hungry.

One of the reasons for storing emergency food is that food not only sustains us nutritionally, it is also great “normalizer” and an excellent balancing factor in the face of hardship. In the aftermath of an emergency if you are not cut off from a food source, your mind and spirit can be at least buoyed up and your power to endure enhanced. Think about it– people just tend to be in a better mood and more emotionally balanced when they have food in their bellies. I know a few people who when they get hungry are rather grumpy! Multiply that by a factor of 10 or more if you are hungry and despairing in the aftermath of a disaster. The tears would come a lot more easily. On the other hand, with food, the situation becomes more manageable. There is something about being satiated and our appetites being fed that counts a lot in “cooling our jets.”

Some think since our civilized society is so advanced that we would be able to weather any kind of emergency without disruption. Ask the Hurricane Katrina survivors if that’s true or not. It’s more close to NOT when it comes to hoping that Big Brother (Uncle Sam) is going to meet our every rescuing need. The government is woefully unable to fill such big shoes on such a wide scale. And we shouldn’t wait around expecting them to. Darwin had a few things right with his Theory of Evolution and Survival of the Fittest. In the case of having emergency food, you will be the “fittest” of a great number of people if you have it. There will be no regrets. Even if it only ever brought you peace of mind, emergency food would have done its job in my way of thinking.

You have the whole world at your feet right now at this moment. Yes, times are hard, but you have access to more food right now than you could ever consume in a lifetime. How sad would it be if you didn’t at least begin to obtain emergency food that could sustain you for a few week’s time? I dare say your WalMart is full of food enough for everybody right now, but in event of a major societal disruption (human caused or natural) it wouldn’t matter. Remember, it wasn’t raining when Noah built his ark. He was seen as a kook, but this shouldn’t bother you as much as your will to live should carry you forward to life sustaining emergency food accumulation.

Your emergency food supply can be very, very simple. Start out with a goal of a couple of weeks of emergency food. You can expand as resources allow. What is emergency food exactly? Emergency food may be nothing different from what you already eat on a daily basis. To make things simple it can be canned foods and items that require only easy preparation. You may also want to acquire some dehydrated and freeze dried emergency food selections. These two food choice types usually require only water and a heat source for reconstitution and they take very little time and effort to make ready for consumption. They also have the added benefit of storing for 5-plus years in many cases. A lot of people choose to add freeze dried and dehydrated foods to their emergency food storage pantry because they may not want to maintain/rotate them. They use them as an insurance policy. Whatever emergency food you should decide to gather, the important thing is that you get a start, even if it is slow and steady. Don’t be embarrassed or think you are under-doing it if it is only a can or a package at a time. Slow and steady wins the race!

Food is one of the main expenses of a family budget. If you can accumulate enough emergency food for both the short term and the long term (one year), you can weather many of life’s storms. If you should become financially strapped, such as a layoff, income loss due to physical illness that disables you for a time, etc., wouldn’t it make sense to have prepared in advance with emergency food “insurance”? You pay for health insurance and life insurance, why not look at food in the same light? Emergency food can in many different ways be your saving grace.

Food Storage: Is it Only for the Apocalypse and Armageddon?
Emergency Food Storage Essentials
Disaster Survival- Food for Thought and Belly
Adding to Your Emergency Food Storage- Building Without Burdening (That’s a Promise!)

Food Storage Seeds: Why You Should Add Survival Seeds to Your Food Storage

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:47:19 +0000

Food Storage Survival Seeds

Sometimes when you are going about your ambitious task of obtaining a full one year food storage supply you are so involved that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Of course, almost anything edible and nonperishable that you put in your food storage will be of benefit to you, but there are some things that get overlooked. I’m not suggesting that you aren’t smarter than a whip or not thinking hard, it’s just that you may not be thinking outside of the “food storage box”. Remember the whole purpose for having food storage items under your stewardship is so that you can sustain yourself for varying periods of time from the short term to the longer term.

What better idea for a long term food storage solution that food storage seeds (better known as survival seeds)? Food storage seeds are a perfect addition to your food storage supplies because they can sustain you indefinitely with nutritious garden produce (and how much of that do you have in your food storage room? It doesn’t store very well.)! I say indefinitely because the smartest idea for securing food storage seeds for you and yours is to make certain they are heirloom seeds. These survival seeds are not genetically modified and are unpatented. Because they haven’t been modified genetically (this means they are not hybrid), you can plant the seeds that come from your first harvest, your second harvest, your third harvest… you get the idea. These food storage seeds are called survival seeds because you can dry out the seeds from your harvest and plant them the following year. That’s the disadvantage of a hybrid seed. You can’t do that with a hybrid seeds because it is essentially sterile. Sure, hybrid seeds might sometimes be BMT (bigger, meatier, tastier), but what’s more healthy for you and more prolific in the long run? Science hasn’t even proven whether GMO (genetically modified) foods are even healthy for you or what the long term side effects may be. Messing with nature is a crap shoot at best and a disaster at worst.

You can buy food storage seeds, set them, and forget them. Of course, you are not counting on Doomsday or hoping for it to happen. You just want to be prepared for come what may. There are a variety of the most healthful heirloom seeds available—almost anything you can think of. For a very reasonable price you can obtain enough seeds to plant a full acre! And remember, this food storage seed investment pays big dividends in fresh garden fruits and vegetables year after year! You would be well advised to get some seeds for food storage and some to “practice” with for the next growing season. See if they don’t taste even better than the hybrid because they are natural. If you are a gardener it’s a no-brainer. Gardeners are always looking for and wanting to try new things with their green thumbs. And think what food storage seeds (heirlooms) could be worth someday if there were food shortages as has been predicted. It’s an investment and a safety precaution. And just a smart choice for your health, too!

Food Storage Bartering: My This for Your That
The Utility of Heirloom Seeds
A Simple Sample of an Emergency Food Storage Solution
Using GPS for Survival Geocaching

Food Storage: Is it Only for The Apocalypse and Armageddon?

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:53:26 +0000

Mention the words food storage and many people’s eyes glaze over, waiting for some subject that is more “relevant” to their everyday lives. Why would one need to stockpile food, especially in such an advanced civilization as ours is? It reminds me of the time I went to the office of the Economics Department head at the university I studied at before the bursting of the housing bubble. During our conversation I mentioned I thought we were headed for another depression, the likes of the one that started in 1929. “The Fed is too sophisticated now to allow that to happen,” was his reply. And here we are today—maybe because of too much sophistication.

Our civilization is quite advanced, making it even that much more important to prepare for any number of things that could go awry, and calling upon the use of something as simple as food storage. See, when any system gets so far advanced and inclined towards such high levels of technological specialization in so many varied facets, it becomes increasingly more susceptible to a breakdown or interruption, because when just one part of the whole becomes dysfunctional it creates a domino effect throughout. Just as happened with the housing market. And to make an analogy most can appreciate, how helpless do you feel when your car gadgetry malfunctions? When you car windows won’t roll up nor down with just the click of a button, do you sometimes long for the manual window-roller-uppers?

Although not caused by a defect in the normal “man”-aged workings of society, we can see how a “change” in the status quo will cause mass chaos, as witnessed by a series of big hurricanes a few years back. What happens? Many basic essentials are the first to fly off the store shelves, and this surely includes food. Food storage, water storage, 72 hour kits, and other emergency supplies collected far in advance could prevent this mad rush to a grocery store—only to find that crowds of people made it there before you did, leaving very little left of the significant items for you to purchase. Remember, this is not an apocalyptic event, just nature taking its course. Recall also the pictures on television those people who waited until the last minute before evacuating and being stranded on freeways for hours at a time because of overtaxed capacity. If you are going to get out of Dodge, do it before everyone else decides to!

In his book, “Making the Best of Basics,” author James Talmage Stevens speaks of an in-home food storage convenience store. Aside from disastrous situations, how nice would it be to never “run out” of an ingredient needed for a recipe, not having to run to the neighbors for an item to complete the mix? What if you should forget that you have no more diapers in the home and your baby has a bout of diarrhea? Even if the store is close, it’s nice to have a backup supply.

We have learned in recent years that the unexpected can and does happen. “Nobody saw it coming!” was the common refrain in response to the economic crisis. In times of volatility and uncertainty, could there be a trucker’s strike, or exceedingly high gas prices that cause a disruption in the supply chain delivering food to the marketplace? This and many other unforeseen scenarios could happen, thus bringing to the forefront the need for food storage and emergency supplies. With the advanced JIT (Just-In-Time) concept of inventories, it is said that grocery store shelves could be emptied in 3 days or less. But, if you have an in-home food storage convenience store as part of your wise and prudent emergency preparedness efforts, you’re not among those who panic. We’re not talking about Armageddon or the Apocalypse here. We’re just talking about good, old-fashioned common sense.

Food really can go missing from grocery storage shelves as attested to by even recent articles found here and here. Got food storage?

Emergency Food Storage Essentials
It’s a Fact: Everybody Eats!
Adding to Your Emergency Food Storage- Building Without Burdening (That’s a Promise!)
Disaster Survival- Food for Thought and Belly