Tag Archives: SHTF

Momma Bear: Figuring Out How To Make Food Storage Work

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At our house food storage is a complicated issue. We all face obstacles to our prepping, whether it is financial, lack of family support, or just being unknowledgeable. I grew up poor, so you might say I have “food issues.” And when I say poor, I mean that I really only finished my senior year of high school because they provided low-income families two free meals a day; for me the school part was just the filler between my meals.  But what I did not realize until recently, thanks to the article: The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, is that growing up that way affects how I shop for food even today. After 20 years of marriage, with a much more substantial income, I was still shopping paycheck to paycheck. I had the mentality of only buying exactly what we immediately needed.  But once I became a prepper, I had to retrain myself to “buy extra.”

One obstacle of the ‘poverty cycle’ I was able to break, was my love of packaged foods. Packaged foods are cheap, have a long-shelf life, and feed more people than fresh foods do. Poor people eat lots of these, essentially training their bodies to expect high fat, high carb, and high sugar as the core of their diet. This causes their bodies crave these foods and, as a result, they tend to be frequently overweight, even obese. I was able to overcome this and have raised my children on fresh, home-made meals with plenty of vegetables. Though the flip-side of this is that it’s really hard to reconcile my love of fresh foods and wanting to stock my long-term food storage. To combat this personal conflict, we have been gardening and canning foods at home. I feel that at least then I can control exactly what ingredients are in my “canned” foods. (It has also been a great teaching tool for my children.)

I do not believe that there is only one way to have/create/do food storage. I believe that how we choose to store food needs to be a reflection of our families and who we are as preppers. Here is my take on different types of food storage:

Food Storage Theory 1: Most preppers live by the simple motto “store what you eat, eat what you store.” This is the simplest way to store food, one giant pantry that is in a constant rotation as part of your daily household diet. Most commonly you will see shelves filled with canned and packaged foods, and buckets of rice and beans. It makes prepping very easy because your goal is to store the same things in increasingly larger quantity, and you never run the risk of waste because you know you will use it. I applaud people who do this because they are able to use everything without risk of waste.  Although I have increased the amount of beans and other previously unknown foods my family eats, they will never be lovers of beans or packaged foods. This storage method simply doesn’t work for our family.

Food Storage Theory 2: This is the idea of having two separate food “pantries”, one that is for your regular rotational use and one that is exclusively long-term food storage (that you won’t eat unless the SHTF). The rotating pantry contains basic items that wouldn’t be the core of any diet, but that you do regularly eat, and could enhance the longer term food storage. At our house this is condiments, oils, canned vegetables, powdered broths, etc. The long-term food storage then consists of large quantities of beans, pasta, rice, TVP, and an assortment of canned and packaged foods that are NOT even part of our regular diet. This is a more expensive way to prep because you run the risk of possibly never using that long-term food storage and at some point you will have to decide what to do with it as it ages. This is how our family is storing food.

Food Storage Theory 3: This is a combination of the first two Theories, plus fresh foods from a garden and a renewable protein source raised at home (chickens, rabbits, goats, etc.). These are the people that are pushing for the greatest level of self-sufficiency should the SHTF. Many of us may never be able to attain this goal for a number of reasons. For instance, local ordinances restrict us from owning chickens, and although we are allowed to have rabbits, “processing” them at home is illegal. Even if we could, I’m not sure we would chose some of those options; I applaud those that can achieve this level of self-sufficiency.

My post next month will focus on specifics of food storage: container choices, canning and dehydrating, and purchasing bulk items from Costco or Sams Club. I would love to hear feedback from other preppers as to how they store food.

Book Review: Holding Their Own

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Holding Their Own, by ‘Joe Nobody’ was a fun survivalist/prepper, post-SHTF book to read. Written in 2011, and set in 2015, it is very timely. There are many situations, in the book, that aren’t far from things that could happen in our own very near future.

The book begins as the nation is entering it’s second Great Depression. Iran, seeing the weakness and, finally, an opportunity to crush the “infidel beast”, activates sleeper agents in the United States. They unleash a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the population and the nation’s infrastructure. The U.S. government responds by closing down highways and bridges, declaring martial law and inadvertently pushing the nation toward collapse.

Our protagonist, Bishop (named by his chess loving father), is a former Army peace-time administrative officer. After his discharge he was unable to find work as a chemical engineer and is recruited by an old friend to work for a civilian security corporation (think Blackwater). Bishop had been a competitive shooter prior to working for the company; that, and the additional security training, weapons and equipment he was issued from the company, made him exceptionally well prepared when things began to deteriorate.

As the local troubles in the Houston-area worsen Bishop, and his wife Terri, suddenly find life as they knew it seems to be gone, possibly forever. At first the couple assumes (hopes) that it’s just a short-term situation and they band together with the neighbors to keep their homes safe. But soon the severity becomes undeniable and they must make a decision: Should they stay where they are and hope for the best; report to the established military checkpoints for “temporary housing and duties”; or attempt to drive 600 miles to Bishop’s old family ranch where they use to go to get away from it all–and where he’d established his bug-out location (BOL)?

They leave, after struggling between loyalty to their neighbors and their own self-preservation instincts. They know they don’t have enough fuel, any longer, to make the trip and are planning to be able to barter or scavenge resources along the way. The book describes their trip west across Texas; doing their best to keep their heads down and keep moving; occasionally being forced to stop and do what they believe is the right thing and helping others when they are able. Early on, the book establishes that Bishop doesn’t tolerate ”personal injustice . . .[it] started in elementary school with playground bullies, and I just have always been that way. It gets me into, um, well, uncomfortable situations now and then.” Those “uncomfortable situations” almost always turn out worse for the “bullies”.

The story moves along well and is very readable. Some of the dialogue was corny, and the few attempts at sexual innuendos were almost painful. The characters were mostly cardboardish, either good guys or bad. As a former medical professional I found the medical treatments, and recovery, inaccurate. Bishop–though not invincible because he gets hurt several times–recovers way too quickly; he is always ready, despite serious injuries, to charge forward. And while I think there’s a lot to be learned from the author about equipment and tactics, very little advice should be taken from the first aid described.

But I really enjoyed it overall. Because of it I have added night vision equipment and ballistic body armor to my ‘security wants list’. It also has provided me with my favorite new quote, “I will personally tie your body into knots, dip it in salt, and eat it like a pretzel while enjoying a beer.”

It is definitely as good or better than any of the post-apocalyptic books that I’ve read. I plan to give copies to a couple of my prepper friends, and as soon as I finished reading it I ordered the sequel, Holding Their Own II: The Independents.

(Wednesday: Sarah’s View)

Book Review: Alas, Babylon

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Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank, was among the original TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know it) novels. It was written in 1959 about 1959. It was a time of national prosperity, racial segregation, and during the peak of the Cold War. A time of peace, but when people lived daily with the threat of global nuclear war looming.

Then it actually happens, with almost no warning, the Soviets launch a preemptive full-scale nuclear strike against the United States and its allies. To the survivors, including the people in the small Central Florida town of Fort Repose, it was just known as “The Day.” The day when everything that was and everything they knew, changed forever.

Our protagonist, Randy Bragg, is the scion of a once prominent local family. Before, he was living a quiet life with very little purpose. After, he struggles to find his role as he becomes responsible for his brother’s family, then the neighbors – both white and “colored”, and ultimately the town. Randy has a couple of days warning (from his high-ranking military brother) and tries to stock up on extra supplies. It was insightful to see what he thought was important and what he didn’t get. He also tries to warn some close friends, but the response he receives, “So here comes our local Paul Revere . . .  What are you trying to do, frighten my wife and daughter to death?”, would probably be similar to the denial we’d see from family and friends.

For me, with my medical background, it was very interesting to read about Dr. Dan Gunn, the town’s only medical provider. About his initial struggles to take care of so many people, most of whom are still in denial. His knowledge that he has so little equipment and supplies and that once they’re gone, they’re gone. How he, the caregiver, pushes himself to almost complete physical collapse. And watching his naivety about his own safety, until he’s targeted for the drugs and supplies he might have.

As resources become scarce, cash becomes valueless. Even early on when it was still accepted for payment, stores quickly sold out and nothing new arrived. People barter for what they need; food, gasoline, ammunition, alcohol, precious metals, and even coffee become currency.

When the initial food stockpile is depleted, they struggle to produce their own. Randy laments, “The end of the corn and exhaustion of the citrus crop had been inevitable. Armadillos in the yams was bad luck, but bearable. But without fish and salt their survival was in doubt.” Some of their needs were obvious, of course they had to quickly locate a sustainable source of drinking water. But no one thought of what would happen when they ran out of salt, and the dire consequences. They had to provide their own security, not only against humans but also animals. They were creative how they rationed energy–fuel and batteries–and how they reacted when it finally, inevitably, ran out.

This book illustrated that mental and physical preparation are what are necessary to endure. Randy sums things up, “Survival of the fittest . . . The strong [and prepared] survive. The frail die. The exotic fish die because the aquarium isn’t heated. The common guppy lives. So does the tough catfish. . . . That’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s going to be.”