09:40 – Many preppers work on tight budgets, so I’m writing a large section right now in the Getting Started Chapter about Prepping on a Budget. It assumes a prepping budget of $50 per week, although that can be moved up or down according to individual circumstances.
The top priority is to begin accumulating empty 2 liter soft drink bottles from family, friends, and neighbors. These are used to store both water and food for the long term. The next priority is to get 60 of those bottles filled with water for each family member. That provides about 30 gallons of drinking water per person, or a month’s supply.
The next eight weeks is spent accumulating a basic food supply, which can be done in weekly $50 shopping trips or, more practically for most people, a monthly $200 Costco or Sam’s Club run. In fact, if you have an SUV or pickup, you could do one $400 run to Costco or Sam’s Club and get the whole eight weeks’ purchases all at once.
Week 1:
General purpose white wheat flour, Gold Medal, 50 lb.
Granulated white sugar, Domino’s, 50 lb.
Beans, dry, 10 lb.
Salt, iodized table, Morton’s, 12 lb.
Week 2:
Rice, white, 100 lb.
Bouillon, beef, Knorr, 2 lb.
Bouillon, chicken, Knorr, 2 lb.
Shortening, Crisco, butter flavor, 3 lb. can
Week 3:
Milk, instant non-fat dry, Carnation, 4.4 lb. (2 kilos)
Oil, olive, Kirkland, 3 liter bottle
Shortening, Crisco, butter flavor, 3 lb. can
Chili powder, 20 oz.
Yeast, Fleischmann’s Instant Dry, 1 lb. bag
Week 4:
Oats, Quaker Quick, 10 lb.
Cornstarch, Argo, 2 lb.
Pancake syrup, Mrs. Butterworth’s, gallon
Garlic powder, 20 oz.
Onion powder, 20 oz.
Cinnamon, ground, 20 oz.
Vanilla extract, pint
Pepper, black, ground, 20 oz.
Week 5:
General purpose white wheat flour, Gold Medal, 50 lb.
Granulated white sugar, Domino’s, 25 lb.
Rice, white, 50 lb.
Yeast, Fleischmann’s Instant Dry, 1 lb. bag
Week 6:
Milk, instant non-fat dry, Carnation, 4.4 lb. (2 kilos)
Milk, evaporated, Carnation, case of 24 12-ounce cans
Beans, dry, 10 lb.
Week 7:
Oil, olive, Kirkland, 3 liter bottle
Oats, Quaker Quick, 10 lb.
Beans, dry, 40 lb.
Week 8:
Milk, instant non-fat dry, Carnation, 8.8 lb. (4 kilos)
Shortening, Crisco, butter flavor, three 3 lb. cans
The interesting thing is that after eight weeks and $400.25 you have a full one year supply of food for one adult. Not very interesting food, it’s true, but all of the nutrition necessary–calories, carbohydrates, protein, and lipids. No fruits, vegetables, or meats, but those can be added incrementally once you have the iron rations taken care of.
“Pancake syrup, Mrs. Butterworth’s, gallon”
Heresy! Blasphemy!
Not here. No way. We’ll pick up several gallons each spring of genuine local maple syrup fresh from the sugaring shacks.
16 this morning and sunny with blue skies and very windy again, so there’s that nice chill factuh again bringing it below zero.
Mrs. OFD is enroute from Pasadena, Kalifornia to Tampon, Florida but she doesn’t like the latter very much. Temps around 70 in Kalifornia this past week but the folks in Florida told her to bring a sweater and dress warm ’cause it could get very chilly this next week with temps in the 60s. We found that amusing.
She’ll be home for a week and then has a week down in Concord, NH; her training partner will be coming from Kalifornia and has never seen snow nor experienced a northern New England winter, so that should be fun.
The cover story in the current Gun Digest is on the Ruger AR-556 and now after reading several reviews it’s apparent that it is a good, solid and inexpensive AR, that maybe, after acquiring a couple of decent shotguns, the aspiring prepper may want to consider.
Remember, this list is for preppers on a tight budget. We stock real maple syrup, although I also have a gallon or two of the fake stuff on the shelves. Better a gallon of that than a pint of the real stuff.
As to the new Ruger, I’d buy a Ruger AR-556 if I didn’t already have a Ruger AC-556.
Yeah, I was just goofin’ around; that’s a pretty good list of basics. Just about anyone should be able to get crankin’ on it, even the denizens across the street who probably easily spend that much per week on ciggies alone. They’re the type who not only won’t do this, but it hasn’t and won’t even cross their minds. If stuff ever blows up or we have a month of being shut in with blizzards, subzero temps and no electricity, they’ll be forced to either beg or rob. Multiply them by many tens of millions across this vast nayshun, soon to be, if not already, the third most populous country in the world. With most of the pop concentrated in the coastal and central urban metropoles.
A huge percentage of the country is simply dependent on Our Nanny the Almighty State for pretty much everything. When the State can’t or won’t provide stuff anymore, what then will happen here? We may start seeing examples over in Europe; Greece is about to blow up and faces the very real likelihood of another civil war.
“Gut Fauna”
http://xkcd.com/1471/
The preferred way is horrible and the second way is nasty!
Milk, instant non-fat dry, Carnation, 4.4 lb. (2 kilos)
What about us people who cannot drink milk unless it has been cooked in something else? I have yet to try Lactaid as the penalties are rather severe (a complete reversal of all intake in the next 30 minutes back through the intake).
I can drink Soymilk and awesome Soynog all day long.
New Ruger 22 charger pistol with a 10-22 receiver and 10 inch barrel!
http://www.gunsandammo.com/first-look/first-look-new-ruger-22-charger-pistol-22-charger-takedown/
I have to have written permission to buy new guns now. But, she who must be obeyed did not say anything about ammo or accessories.
I’m not getting this whole rifles-as-pistols thang at all. A rifle is a rifle and a pistol is a pistol and n’er the twain shall meet is my mantra. Sure, carbines in various pistol and revolver calibers? No problemo, senor. An AR pistol? No thanks.
“I have to have written permission to buy new guns now.”
You’re joshing us now, amirite?
Related to our recent mini-discussion on The Good War:
“The reality of the Second World War is not so quaint, and does not need a refresher: hundreds of thousands of airplanes produced by the US alone; tanks of immense size and speed; carpet-bombing of civilian targets; the atom bomb. Where the Great War put in knife in the idea of civilized warfare, the Second World War witnessed the obliteration of this concept – rules of warfare developed over centuries, having reached fruition in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. By the end of the war, nothing mattered but heavy power and volume – fought as the North fought against the South under Lincoln.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/bionic-mosquito/wwii-dramatically-changed-america/
I can’t recommend the late Paul Fussell’s book enough, or its predecessor, “The Great War and Modern Memory.” They were crucial to OFD’s understanding of the shit he and his uncle, dad and grandfathers went through in the last century. Crucial.
And both books should be required reading for any kid now considering signing up for the military, in any country. For today’s kidz I’d throw in the films “Hurt Locker” and “Stop-Loss.”
Wow, if there ever was a case for Climate Disruption then we now have it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11337617/Jet-stream-blasts-BA-plane-across-Atlantic-in-record-time.html
NYC to London in 5 hours 16 minutes. Ground speed of up to 745 mph. Now that would be a nice trip across the drink.
Milk, evaporated, Carnation, case of 24 12-ounce cans
I do not see any cans of pumpkin for pies? Surely preppers eat pumpkin pie, right?
The wife’s sister, her husband, and her two kids are down from frigid north Texas to spend a belated Christmas with us. One of their sons, 25 years old, is 6 ft and approaching 400 lbs and cannot find a job. There is a disaster coming down the road when my BIL retires from UPS in two years.
Again, this list is for BUDGET prepping on $50 a week. The idea is to get as much nutritional value as possible first and worry about more expensive stuff like meats, fruits, vegetables, prepared foods, etc. afterwards. Also, this is only the first eight weeks of a 52-week list.
As far as the milk, I can’t take personal health/preference issues into account for obvious reasons. Same deal on gluten and so on.
“…as an Italian analyst memorably put it, jihadists don’t attack a vulture hedge fund; they attack a satirical rag. This is not religion, but hardcore geopolitics.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/no_author/cui-bono-2/
Blowback is a bitch. I suspect our globalist lords temporal have once again bit off far more than they will be able to chew. They have sown the wind and we shall reap the whirlwind.
“One of their sons, 25 years old, is 6 ft and approaching 400 lbs and cannot find a job.”
What, in Texas?? Can he drive a truck, at least? Get him a trucker license and put him to work in those vast fossil energy fields from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle. Big bucks, easily six figures, amirite?
Either that or he’ll eventually end up being turned on a nice homemade primitive BBQ spit in some Houston or Dallas slag heap as the eager drooling revenants there dance and sing to salsa and hip-hop.
Economy here in the U.S. of Amnesia doing swell now? Unemployment down? Jobs coming back? Everybody happy?
“Banks in the USA now are required to report any wire of $3,000 or more and any cash withdraw as well. If you want to withdraw $5,000 in cash, you have to now fill out a form. Your money is no longer yours. Big Brother and his entire Family is now here to stay. Little by little, government needs money so desperately to keep funding their pensions at the expense of the people that they have now put in place a stranglehold on the global economy. This is setting the stage for the worst economic decline since the birth of Capitalism during the 14th century. It does not get any worse than this. They are destroying everything that has been built in a fraction of the time it took to create it. This is what happens when lawyers control the state. They know how to write laws, but not run a country.
Our crisis is simply Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. Government also acts only in its self-interest and therein lies the problem. They are INCAPABLE of even contemplating that what they are doing is killing the world economy. Pure BRAIN-DEAD management.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/no_author/the-worst-economic-decline/
Mr. Lynn, I here there is an opening in the fashion blogger community after the departure of one long haired, freaky person, who did not apply. Nor conform. Spring loaded to the cynical position, etc.
“…who did not apply. Nor conform.”
Only a part-time, volunteer basis. Unpaid, of course.
For this year some nifty analysis and predictions from a resident of north-country Vampire State:
http://kunstler.com/forecast/forecast-2015/
Kunstler lives very near to where Mrs. OFD grew up; in person he’s kind of an arrogant little snot but much of what he writes seems to resonate. He is also a prepper, of sorts, and has been working on it at his little house down there.
What, in Texas?? Can he drive a truck, at least? Get him a trucker license and put him to work in those vast fossil energy fields from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle. Big bucks, easily six figures, amirite?
Nope, he is mama’s precious. He is too fragile to do anything like drive a truck, bus tables, dig ditches, or load UPS trucks like his dad. Or shave his face or cut his hair since last August or so. He has flunked out of four colleges that I know of. I look at his broken down 59 year old dad and shake my head. This disaster is coming down the road at 90 mph and his mama says “my poor, poor baby” while her husband works himself into an early grave. I just do not understand and my door is not open when the disaster comes.
The wife made me a 12 inch pumpkin pie yesterday. I had to share it with seven other people though. That pie was gone in three minutes when the wife said that we could eat it. And she did the cutting for “fairness”.
If your slice was not as large as all of the other slices combined, it was manifestly unfair.
We used to have the family Thanksgiving dinner at my house. I’d provide most of the food and some of the others would bring various sides. My mom brought two pumpkin pies, one for me and one for everyone else. That didn’t work out so well, so then she started bringing three, one for me for that day, one for me for the next day, and one for everyone else to share. There were some complaints about this arrangement — complaints mainly arising from me, I must admit — but the family Thanksgiving tradition petered out before she brought four pumpkin pies.
” I just do not understand and my door is not open when the disaster comes.”
There is only so much you can do for people; clearly the parents enabled that behavior and decline, the mother actively, and the dad passively, and both through neglect. It’s a form of child abuse when parents let their progeny become grotesques while still living at home. Not to mention what it does to them and how it bounces off everyone else who comes in contact with them, like, say, you and your family.
“The wife made me a 12 inch pumpkin pie yesterday.”
Mrs. OFD makes those here, and the best ones seem to be the so-called Long Island Cheese variety, that are pale yellow in color and round. OMG, like chiffon! She did several of those between T-Day and Xmas and a couple of others from another pumpkin she picked up from her little trip to Maffachufetts earlier. I happen to adore squash pies, however, nice and dark. We will be growing our own again this year next to our gravel driveway.
“If your slice was not as large as all of the other slices combined, it was manifestly unfair.”
Indeed. I can eat one all by myself, quite easily.
If your slice was not as large as all of the other slices combined, it was manifestly unfair.
Yes. If only I could get the wife to see this. My whining does not work anymore.
There is only so much you can do for people; clearly the parents enabled that behavior and decline, the mother actively, and the dad passively, and both through neglect.
Yup but I blame the SIL the most. My SIL is 5’2″ and weighs around 300. Anytime my BIL tries to do anything, my SIL gets in his face and tells him to back off. He has been threatening to move home with his 84 year old mom and SIL says no way, since he is their only income. He and she both turn 60 this year which is interesting. I do not know how he continues working at UPS, bloody hot in the summer and bloody cold in the winter. Ah yes, we have our own soap opera here in The Great State of Texas.
Week 1:
General purpose white wheat flour, Gold Medal, 50 lb.
Granulated white sugar, Domino’s, 50 lb.
Beans, dry, 10 lb.
Salt, iodized table, Morton’s, 12 lb.
Nice list but where do you store this in Texas? We do not have basements due to the high water tables. I guess that I could get a large freezer chest (or two for redundancy) for the garage?
http://www.lowes.com/pd_660539-83-FCM11PHWW_0__?productId=50318127&Ntt=freezer+chest&pl=1¤tURL=%3FNtt%3Dfreezer%2Bchest&facetInfo=
Good list. It will help me round out my list with my own preferences. I’m assuming you are specifying white rice over brown rice for storage reasons. How long would you expect brown rice to last vacuum packed at room temp?
I’ve been lucky for storage containers of water and other things. At my work we get sterile buffers shipped in 55 gallon food grade plastic barrels with tight sealing tops and pour and vent openings. The same material as soda bottles, just bigger and thicker. The RULES (FDA and our own) say we can’t reuse them so I and others at work pick em out of the trash. They can be filled with water or dry goods.
For a few years, al Jazeera has been a useful source for mid-east news. They’d hired a bunch of European reporters in order to gain broader appeal. But now it looks like they’re showing their true colors. I don’t think I’ll bother reading them any longer.
Yeah, I dumped Jazeera a while back; their true colors were always there but they had some good vids and pics going and covered stuff the ass-hats in the Western media did/would not. I still check RT on the net but gave up on the tee-vee version; they have some stunning photography and videos quite often and also cover chit our bozos won’t.
What to do, what to do; I keep looking for a really good objective nooz source, and the best I’ve come up with so far is the Christian Science Monitor. I of course don’t buy their religion, but they minimize that in their paper and magazine and site anyway. Pretty dahn good worldwide coverage, though with the usual Northeast libtard slant. For conservative stuff I read Chronicles and have since the 80s but it’s a monthly, ditto American Conservative, which occasionally has disturbing libtard tendencies, and Taki’s site. At home the local rags for the DUI and dope arrests and what the local hack pols are up to, the CSM, a couple of Catholic papers, and the shortwave and scanners.
Wow, that’s a lot of flour and powdered milk. I’d be subbing lentils and split peas for a fair amount of the flour and beans. Easier to cook/prepare and I assume that fuel supplies for cooking are finite.
I very rarely post long articles here but I think this one is worth it; I’d link to it but you have to be subscriber to read it at the site.
First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Sharia Law
Gary North – January 09, 2015
Freedom of the press is now a moot point in Europe. Freedom of the press is related to the right to keep and bear arms: Amendments 1 and 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
If you don’t have the right to keep and bear arms, you don’t have freedom of the press. The state cannot protect you. It can only try to find your assassins.
Liberal democracy is committed to freedom of the press. Islam is not. Here is an editorial that was run in USA Today by a man identified as a teacher of Sharia law in Great Britain. This man has clearly set forth the principles of Islam as they apply to freedom of the press. He was given freedom of the press by USA Today. We read: People know the consequences: Opposing view. He took this opportunity to send us a message about consequences.
Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.
Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, “Whoever insults a Prophet kill him.”
However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.
Within liberal democracies, freedom of expression has curtailments, such as laws against incitement and hatred.
The truth is that Western governments are content to sacrifice liberties and freedoms when being complicit to torture and rendition — or when restricting the freedom of movement of Muslims, under the guise of protecting national security.
So why in this case did the French government allow the magazine Charlie Hebdo to continue to provoke Muslims, thereby placing the sanctity of its citizens at risk?
It is time that the sanctity of a Prophet revered by up to one-quarter of the world’s population was protected.
Here is the title of the editorial: Why did France allow the tabloid to provoke Muslims?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/
Got it? He blamed the French authorities for not passing laws against cartoons ridiculing Mohammed.
Such laws do not exist in Western democracies. But Sharia law exists. Editors had better get the message.
If you are an editor, and you run cartoons like this, carry a gun. Hire guards who carry guns. Arm your staff.
Europe will not allow this. There is gun control in Europe. Here is an article about AK-47’s in France. The article shows how easy it is to buy them in France. Then the article ends with this obligatory comment, which has nothing to do with France.
U.S. Laws
The issue has poignancy in the U.S., where Adam Lanza used an American-made semi-automatic rifle known as an AR-15 to kill 20 children and six adult educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. The gun had been legally acquired.
Gun control is liberal, you see.
Sharia law is not liberal.
AN UNARMED POPULATION
It does not matter whether the French police catch the murderers or not. It doesn’t matter whether French politicians label them terrorists or not. It doesn’t matter how many vigils are held by voters. Four masked men with AK-47s have settled the issue. There will not be many more cartoons ridiculing Mohammed. If three more magazines do it, and three more AK-47 attacks follow, there will be no more cartoons. I don’t think it will take three more attacks.
The murderers killed 12 people. Ten were employees of the magazine. Two were police. They did not single out the editor. They just went in and sprayed the room full of machine gun fire. But the editor was killed.
Let’s say that you are an editor. Will you run cartoons ridiculing the prophet Mohammed? Probably not.
Let’s say that you’re a low-level employee with a newspaper or magazine. Are you to put pressure on the editor if the editor announces his intention of running cartoons ridiculing Muhammad? If you want to survive, you will. Or you will quit.
Editors can proclaim their commitment to the freedom of the press, but only if they are alive. It is now clear that they will not be alive if they practice what they preach.
The level of confrontation has gone up. The stakes have gone up.
The terrorists are going to get away with this. Those radical Muslims who are willing to take up machine guns against unarmed employees of publishing houses will see what has happened, and they will cheer in private. When you’re dealing with people who are willing to die in a war, and who see this as a war, there is nothing you can do to stop them if you are unarmed. They can kill you at any time if they want to. All they have to be willing to do is pay the price. The murderers who killed 12 innocent people have made this clear. This is not patty-cake. The stakes are life and death. If you are an employee of a magazine that publishes cartoons ridiculing Mohammed, you had better have a substantial life insurance policy. Anyway, your heirs should. Your risks of an early death just went up on a statistically meaningful scale.
Gov. George Wallace had a phrase when he ran for President in 1968: “Send them a message.” The murderers just sent a message to editors. We are now going to see if the editors got the message. I think we’re going to see that they did.
The authorities may catch the murderers. There will be a trial. The trial will attract millions of Muslim viewers. Within those millions of Muslim viewers, there will be men who are perfectly willing to imitate the murderers. For them, the murderers will become martyrs. Because of the trials, there will be a larger number of potential volunteers to pick up AK-47s, and march into editorial offices for a showdown — a very one-sided showdown.
On this issue, the Muslims have won. “So, you think you have freedom of the press. I’ve got an AK-47 that says you don’t.”
There is an answer to this: an armed population. Liberals don’t like this answer. They want laws to make this answer illegal to implement personally. In Europe, they will throw you in prison if you implement this answer. In some states in the United States, they will do the same.
Liberals will assure you that you have freedom of press. You also have the right to die for this principle, unarmed.
© 2015 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2015 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.
“My 2015 Predictions for the Technology Industry”
Posted on January 10, 2015 by avram miller
http://twothirdsdone.com/2015/01/10/my-2015-predictions-for-the-technology-industry/
Definitely looks like 2015 could the year of the hack.
Nice article, Mr. OFD.
Now if only the Citizens of the US get the point and vote out the libturds in Congress.
Nah, better buy more ammo tomorrow. The Welfare State we’ve become is a cancer which will slowly consume us. Then the reboot. Or as Dr. Bob once said, a redo on the Constitution.
Mr. Lynn, I here there is an opening in the fashion blogger community after the departure of one long haired, freaky person, who did not apply. Nor conform. Spring loaded to the cynical position, etc.
Sorry, I do not have a clue? Other than the obvious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYsBDmqJfjQ
My son took me shooting tonight in the new indoor gun range in Rosenberg on I-69. Had a great time shooting a couple of hundred .40s between the two of us.
http://g2grange.com/
We decided that between my XDM .40 4.5 and his Glock 22 .40, the XDM is a smoother weapon. But I had three misloads and he had none. The XDM really requires a firm handling and the Glock just seems to shoot with no problems at all. However, I did not like the grips on the Glock and the dadgum trigger safety pinched my index finger a couple of times.
I was going to take my S&W 629 but all my .44 special ammo is aluminum cased and the range does not allow non brass ammo casings. Makes it easier for them to sweep and sell the brass. So, I need to purchase some .44 special ammo with brass casings. Academy does not have any if I remember correctly.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/462521/cci-blazer-ammunition-44-special-200-grain-speer-gold-dot-jacketed-hollow-point-box-of-50?cm_vc=ProductFinding
Sorry, I do not have a clue?
A job for the 25 year old. Vacated by Mr. OFD. No heavy lifting involved other than raising the carcass up to get some beer.
Many preppers work on tight budgets,
That they do, and that also means that day-to-day saving is desirable, or even more so, as well as saving on the cost of stocking up. It also means you need to economise on cooking, both day-to-day and for during “straitened times” (i..e. after TSHHTF). Beans as a storage food need some thinking about – they take a LOT of cooking, and hence a lot of fuel needs storage as well.
One of those ways of saving is to buy grain cereals, rather than flour or pasta. You can cook whole-grain wheat just as well as you can pasta, it’s cheaper, and whole grains have lifetimes which can run up to centuries or even millennia longer than milled grains. In fact, you can also cook whole grains as a breakfast cereal a heck of a lot cheaper than purpose-built breakfast cereals as well.
Check out http://www.survivalplus.com/foods/Saving-Money-With-A-Thermos-Bottle.htm , or run a search on “Kurt Saxon thermos cookery”. The man is definitely not PC in his political views, but he has some decent ideas on prepping and saving.
It’s also well worth looking into growing sprouts. That can turn a dry long-life storage food into fresh green vitamin-rich vegetables. Equipment used can be as simple as Bob’s 2-litre drink bottles, tops chopped off; some retired gauze, stockings or pantihose to cover the end, and some rubber bands to hold the two together. Replacing some of the storage beans with mung or adzuki beans, lentils, chick peas or garbanzos, or peas, gives you legumes you can sprout (ordinary beans contain a poison that needs cooking to inactivate). You can also sprout cereals. With sprouts, you can cut the greens, then cook the rest of the grains and plants in soup or stew.
Another comment, Bob. Food fatigue, where the survivors just get the blahs with same old same old day after day after day, get bored, and don’t eat enough to maintain health, is a real problem. You have made a good start on it with all the spices you list. However, I don’t see much in the way of herbs. I would suggest that you also look at getting, as soon as may be, bulk herbs. My suggestions would be oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, basil, chives, fennel or dill or chervil, parsley, tarragon, and lots of mint (makes tea as well).
…And, if your preppers have access to ethnic markets, they should entertain themselves spending some Saturdays looking through them. You can pick up a lot of stuff there, some of it MUCH cheaper than standard supermarkets. Middle Eastern, Middle and South American, and Asian markets can all give eye-opening options and prices.
I am a bit concerned about the effort of repackaging. Refilling flour or whatever into PET bottles is a non-trivial exercise. First, accumulating the bottles, then cleaning and drying them, finally actually filling dry goods through that relatively narrow neck. Then, you need to rotate stuff in your stores – so you have to get the flour or whatever back out of those bottles, through that narrow neck.
What a pain! Is there an alternative?
A minor note: If you put any dry good into a container – most especially flour – it is very poorly packed. For flour, you can approximately double the quantity the container will hold by packing it down. The best way to pack it is by repeatedly inserting a chopstick or the handle of a wooden spoon.
Good points, and all are or will be covered in the book.
@Brad
Yes, but remember this is for people on tight budgets, for whom saving money is more important than saving time. We buy stuff pre-packaged for long-term storage from the LDS store, Augason Farms, etc., but that costs at least twice as much as doing it yourself.
Is there an alternative to 2-liter bottles? Sure. I bought a pack of 250 one-gallon 7-mil foil-laminate Mylar bags from the LDS store, but those run $0.40/bag, plus $50 to $100 for a good sealer (unless you want to screw around with a curling iron or clothes iron). For many preppers that’d be a major investment that they might otherwise spend on actual food.
As to getting it out, cut the top off the bottle and transfer the contents to a temporary storage container. I’ve never had any problem packing. Stuff like sugar and salt fills very densely just by pouring and tapping the side of the bottle with a mallet once or twice. Low-density stuff like flour does require more tapping.
“Definitely looks like 2015 could the year of the hack.”
The Truth About Guns site was down for 40 hours this weekend thanks to a DDOS attack; their web host/provider has them back up now and is researching the provenance; they’re not even sure at this point if they were the specific target. And we’re told in the IT field year after year that IT security is the ballz and we should all learn it, live it and love it, and that’s where the hot jobs are, etc., etc. But PHB manglers don’t wanna hear it; it’s an overhead expense and nearly always bad nooz to them. Actually paying someone to be on top of it makes them squirm and twists their panties up into sweat- and blood-soaked wads as they grind their teeth and moan.
Nice list but where do you store this in Texas? We do not have basements due to the high water tables.
Well, Lynn, for these “iron rations”, you could manage with a concrete pad and a garden shed. Put the spices (and herbs, if any), and the fats, inside the house. The rest would survive just fine in a back-yard solar furnace. A “cool, dry, dark place” is usually desirable, but in fact, here the excessive heat would help to kill vermin and would work for most of the bulk stuff (except maybe flour). Incidentally, the backyard tool-shed would also do fine to store tools, and for a bucket with lid (not necessarily food grade – carpet or floor-tile adhesive or paint bucket is fine), cinder blocks, a couple of planks, a toilet seat, and a couple of bales of peat moss and some garden lime as a “sawdust toilet” in case anything goes wrong with any part of the sewer or septic system.