Sandy Gee - Economic Food Storage Strategies for Disaster Survival: Start Today and Have Enough Food Your Family Will Eat to Survive Any Disaster without Going Broke

Copyright

Economic Food Storage Strategies for Disaster Survival: Start Today and Have Enough Food Your Family Will Eat to Survive Any Disaster without Going Broke

First Kindle Edition, June 2013

Published by Howson Books

HowsonBooks.com/SandyGee

Copyright 2013 Sandy Gee

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part,

without written permission from the author.

Contents

How prepared are you?

Youre in the middle of your hectic evening schedule, preparing dinner for the family when theres a knock at the door and youre informed by the authorities to evacuate. How soon could you go? What would you take? What would you leave behind?

Or maybe youre advised to batten down the hatches and shelter in place. How long would your stores last?

Floods, fires, hurricanes, earthquakes; they all happen. Burying your head in the sand and thinking it wont happen near you is no survival strategy; its naivety.

You dont have to be paranoid or buy into every conspiracy theory to see the sense in being prepared.

Of course, theres more than food to think about. Theres clothes, medicine, emergency shelter, and a whole host of other survival skills you could learn. Although well look briefly at these, theyre really beyond the scope of this book.

Here, were going to focus on how you can start today and have enough food your family will eat to survive any disaster, without going broke.

Why should I Start Storing Food Today?

Lets take a look at that last sentence again. Start today and have enough food your family will eat to survive any disaster without going broke. Lets break it down.

Why start today? How much can you realistically achieve in one day? Perhaps not much, but you can evaluate what you already have, estimate your needs and draw up a plan to fill the gaps. Besides, if you dont start today, when are you going to start? Tomorrow, next week, next month, or when you get the five minute warning?

Why start with food? Well, its one of our most basic needs, and the one most likely to be affected by natural disaster. Our modern food chain is notoriously precarious. Were used to being able to get everything we need at short notice, and rely heavily on convenience food.

What if the transport system was crippled, though, and food couldnt get to the stores? Wouldnt you like the peace of mind of knowing when the poop hits the HVAC, you can at least keep your family fed while you figure out what to do about cleaning up the mess? The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) advice?

(FEMA Ready.gov advice for emergency preparation and food storage)

Of course, ensuring your family eats well hinges on storing the right foods (and water) in the right quantities. A common mantra among preppers (the communities of people who take disaster preparedness seriously) is, Store what you eat and eat what you store. It makes sense, especially if you have children or teenagers to feed. Theres no point storing buckets of rice and beans if your meat and dairy fast-food loving crew wont touch them with a barge pole.

Sure, when they get hungry enough theyll cave in, but the whole point of food storage is to make disaster survival as bearable as possible. So, you should probably at least store some of their favorite foods with reasonable shelf lives to help them through the early stages with minimal stress. Minimal, of course, being relative.

When youre drawing up your food storage plans, youll come across a whole host of possibilities to prepare for. FEMA lists natural disasters on its Ready.gov website:

As if that wasnt enough to consider, there are also a whole bunch of manmade disasters to prepare for, as well as home fires and pandemics. Technological disasters include blackouts, hazardous material incidents, household chemical emergencies and nuclear power plant meltdowns. The terrorist hazards list is even scarier, consisting of biological and chemical threats, cyber-attacks, explosions, nuclear blasts and radiological dispersion devices.

Obviously, disaster preparedness isnt a one-size-fits-all issue. For some scenarios, being able to grab your 72 hour kit and bug out is the top priority. For others, you might take shelter locally in a group setting, or hunker down in your own home. Some disasters present an immediate threat to life thats quickly over, others may be more survivable but might take months or years to overcome.

The message from authorities is to be prepared to make it on your own for at least three days, because when resources are stretched thin, you cant rely on help arriving to rescue you.

You could be forgiven for going into a blind panic at this point or feeling fatalistic and deciding if disaster strikes youre just not going to make it. Especially if youre already on a tight budget and cant see how youre going to stock up enough food to make it through some of those scenarios.

Dont be discouraged, though. You dont have to prepare for every eventuality. Start small, with the short term scenarios, and get that 72 hour kit (frequently referred to as a bug-out-bag) ready. Then find out which of the natural disasters are most likely in your area, and think about preparing for those. Think in terms of food you can eat on the go, food you can eat without cooking, and cooking methods you can use if the utilities are out.

Most importantly, remember you dont have to be ready today. You only have to start getting ready today. Do what you can, when you can, and live in the real world in the meantime.

You dont have to go off grid

If talk about self-sufficiency and prepping for survival fills your head with images of selling up and shipping out into the back of beyond, relax. You dont have to go off grid and cut all ties to the modern world in order to be ready for an emergency. There are plenty of urban preppers.

Prepping isnt about giving up your life and living off the land (unless you want to.) Its about knowing what to do if the worst happens, and having plans in place to take you and your family through the transition phase.

The first step in any prepper survival strategy is to evaluate what you have, and create a list of what you need, and that part you can start today, without making any changes to your lifestyle.

Next, put your 72 hour survival kits together. Ideally, these will consist of a bug out bag with enough supplies for the whole family in a readily accessible place, and an in-place survival kit. You might consider creating multiple kits for different locations, such as work (or school) home and vehicles. This stage might mean making some changes, but again, you dont have to make them all at once. Just do what you can, when you can.

When youre happy with your short term supplies, you can think about long term storage. Youll have to decide how much you want to store. Enough for a month? Three months? The first year? Longer? Whatever you decide, youll need to calculate how much you can store, choose the foods that will survive long term storage, and allocate storage space.

Whether you choose to store commercially produced foods or prepare your own is another personal choice. Well be looking briefly at your options, and the pros and cons of different food and storage choices.