08:52 – I got an interesting email yesterday from a woman who wanted to know what she and her husband could do this weekend to jump-start their prepping. They’re both about 40 and both have professional incomes. She drives a late-model full-size SUV and he drives a 4WD pickup. They live in an exurban home with a woodstove and a decent woodpile, so heat isn’t a problem. There’s a pond on their property. Both shoot sporting clays regularly, and each has a Remington 870 shotgun. Neither has any health problems.
She and her husband are becoming very concerned about civil unrest. Her older brother, sister-in-law, and their two teenagers live in a suburban area half an hour or so from her home, and the four adults have started talking about what they’d do if rioting and looting affects their area. They concluded that the best option was for the six of them to gather at the exurban home, where they’d hunker down and wait out the disturbances. The big problem, she said, is that their food would last maybe a week. There’s a Sam’s Club in town, half an hour or so away, and she asked if I could give her a shopping list that they could go out and fill this coming weekend.
So I sent her a list to get her started. It had the things on it that you’d expect, including a pickup load of bottled water; half a dozen 50-pound bags each of white rice, sugar, and flour; a hundred pounds of instant mashed potatoes; half a dozen cases each of canned chicken, tuna, Spam, and other meats; a bunch of soups and stews that can be used with rice or mashed potatoes as meal extenders; a dozen 3-liter bottles of olive and vegetable oil; half a dozen cases each of #10 cans of beans, vegetables, and fruits; herbs and spices; half a dozen 3-pound jars of peanut butter; several large boxes of Ritz crackers; cases of toilet paper and feminine hygiene stuff; FRS/weather radios, flashlights, lanterns, and lots of batteries; a trip to Dick’s or Gander Mountain to pick up 1,000 rounds or more of buckshot/slugs for their shotguns, not to mention spare shotguns for her brother’s family; and so on.
None of this is rocket science. Buy lots of water and lots of shelf-stable food. Go home, unload it, stack it, and head back for more. I told her that if they filled up all four of their vehicles on each run, they could get a very good start in one or two runs. She’s going to email me early next week to let me know how they did.