07:45 – I get a lot of email from new preppers, and one of the most common questions is what to do with those 50-pound bags of flour, sugar, beans, and other dry staples that they’re buying at Costco or Sam’s Club. The good news is that they don’t have to do anything at all immediately other than keep the bags in a cool, dry place where insects and rodents can’t get to them. The bags themselves are usually pretty resistant to water vapor and air. If you check the best-by dates on these large bags of bulk staples, you’ll usually find that they’re at least a year or two out.
But when you have time, it’s a good idea to repackage these foods in containers more suitable for long-term storage. Use oxygen absorbers if you have them, other than for sugar, but if you don’t have oxygen absorbers don’t worry too much about it. There really isn’t all that much oxygen in a full container anyway.
Clean, empty 2-liter soda bottles are a popular choice because they’re free and readily available, and do an excellent job of protecting against oxygen and moisture. The downsides are that they provide no protection against light, little protection against rodents, and are a pain in the butt to fill. We consider this the fourth-best method, and recommend that you save those bottles and use them for water storage instead.
Another popular choice is 5-, 6-, or 7-gallon plastic pails. You can often get these at little or no cost just by asking a restaurant to save their old buckets for you. Alternatively, you can buy them relatively inexpensively from Home Depot, Lowes, or a paint store. Don’t worry about them being rated food-grade, because you need to use a foil-laminate Mylar bag as a pail liner. These cost about $2.50 each, including a 2000cc oxygen absorber, less in quantity. The food itself comes into contact only with the food-safe Mylar bag, so whether or not the pail is rated as food-safe is immaterial. I wouldn’t re-use a pail that had contained paint, solvents, insecticides, or similar toxic materials, but otherwise you should be fine.
Most bulk dry staples stored in a thick foil-laminate Mylar bag inside a plastic pail with an oxygen absorber should remain good for at least 10 to 20 years. This method provides excellent protection from light, oxygen, moisture, and insects, and reasonable protection from rodents. You can simply fill bags with the bulk staple. Just before you seal the bags, toss in an oxygen absorber and then seal the tops of the bags using an old clothes iron set on high (no steam), making sure the edge to be sealed is free of food dust or other contaminants. When you’ve finished that, squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag and seal the small remaining gap. Depending on the type of food and its packed density, you’ll probably be able to fit 25 to 40 pounds in one 5-gallon pail. We consider this the third-best method.
Another method is to use one-gallon foil-laminate bags and oxygen absorbers and then, optionally, store those bags in a new steel trashcan. The one gallon bags will typically hold 5 to 8 pounds of food, and you should be able to fit about 25 of those bags into a $25 32-gallon steel trashcan. This method offers excellent protection against light, oxygen, moisture, insects, and (if you use the trashcan) rodents. You can purchase 7-mil (very thick) foil-laminate one-gallon bags and oxygen absorbers from the LDS on-line store for about $0.45 each in quantity 250. We consider this the second-best method.
So what’s the best method? For items they offer, we recommend buying bulk staples in #10 steel cans from your nearest LDS Home Storage Center. You’ll pay more per pound than buying the bulk staples in 50-pound bags, but it’s already packaged for long-term storage. If you have more money than time, this is definitely the way to go. If money is tight, go with the one-gallon Mylar bags.
My time this week was occupied almost exclusively on science kits and relocation issues, but I did spend some time in the evenings doing prepping research.
- We put in an offer on a house in the mountains. The asking price was way high, and the house has been on the market for a couple of years. We made a reasonable cash offer, and they came back at only about 3% below their asking price. It’s a nice house, but their asking price was about a third higher than it should have been for that neighborhood. Oh, well. We’re in a strong position because we’re paying cash and we’re not in any hurry.
- I read the rest of the post-apocalyptic novels in Angery American’s Going Home series. Books 1 and 2 were okay; books 3, 4, and 5 less so.
- I was able to get an hour or so in on the prepping book, again mostly just jotting down notes about stuff I want to write about in detail.
- I ordered one or two minor long-term food storage items, including four pounds of yeast.
So, what did you do to prep this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
09:26 – One of the signs of a chemistry geek is that they often use lab beakers with handles instead of normal drinking mugs. I’ve always thought that was a really bad idea. The last thing a working chemist should make a habit of is drinking from lab beakers. Otherwise, one day in the lab he’s likely to grab a beaker off the bench and take a big gulp of whatever happens to be in it.
That said, one of the items that arrive yesterday from one of our lab equipment suppliers was some one-liter polypropylene beakers with pouring spouts and handles. Normal people would call them measuring cups. They’re pretty heavy-duty plastic, are reasonably light, semi-nesting (the handles don’t allow them to nest fully), and graduated. I decided to add a couple of them to each of our car emergency kits. They’re tall-form rather than short-form, which means they have the form factor of a regular mug. They’ll work fine as drinking mugs or as bowls, come to that.
Ah the weekend approaches, so off to the yard and estate sales for me. There are a few close by sales, and they look good in the pictures.
Of course, I have to fix an AC unit at my rental house first.
Which brings up a couple of prepping things.
The ability to repair stuff on your own will be increasingly valuable. The person who can get more life out of mechanical items and electrical items will be in demand in any sudden or slow collapse. One of the indicators to me that it is coming, is the proliferation of TV and electronic repair shops, some of which appear to be franchised operations. Not too long ago, most people would have simply replaced a gadget with a broken screen. Now enough get them fixed to have spawned a couple of franchises.
Most modern consumer electronics are built from tiny surface mount components, and multi-layered circuit boards. Fixing those gadgets is limited to replacing broken parts, like a screen glass or a battery. But many bigger items, like washing machines, tvs, monitors, furnaces, and fridges have easily repairable electronics. MOST failures of these items are in the power supplies, almost universally “bad caps” or leaking capacitors. Power supplies and even power supply sections on main boards still use ‘through hole parts” ie. easily soldered parts, and when caps go bad, you can often tell by looking at them.
If you have any skill at all with a soldering iron, you may want to add a stock of capacitors to your preps. For power supplies, you will need a bunch of large caps, and some small ones. Open a couple of dead devices up to see what it typical. Or you can stockpile some likely electronic junk, UPSs and pc power supplies have great parts in them. Try your hand at repairs, after all, the device is already broken, what do you have to lose?
The second part is income during an economic collapse. My wife and I decided that an important part of preserving our wealth (such as it is) is owning real things, and real estate. [Leaving aside philosophical questions brought on by property taxes.] Rental properties often do well in a downturn as people can no longer buy a house, or their credit is shot. In an upturn, rental property can do well if people are priced out of home ownership, or choose not to be shackled to a particular city. Either way, if you chose location and tenants wisely, a rental house should be a good store of value (possibly appreciating asset), and provide a stream of cash for you that is independent of any job you might have and lose. Something to think about. Note that it is much more work, and much less profit than most people expect.
I’ve been sick this week and a bunch of stuff needed fixing, so not much prepping got done around here, other than commenting! I did identify some stuff to add to the todo list. I need to update BOBs as the kids have grown. I need to update my 5/15/30 bug out list. I need to add plastic utensil packs to my boxes of Mountain House (sounds minor, but the intent was that each box has been added to so that it is a complete 6 day, 4 person pack. Take-out restaurant utensil packs will make that more realistic.)
keep plugging away at it,
nick
Get better, Mr. Nick. Your posts are awesome.
Your posts are also awesome, Dr. Bob.
I learn a lot at this site.
Maybe some day you can teach me to fly an attack chopper, although I’m not sure I’m coordinated enough to have all four hands and feet doing different things at the same time.
I can get all four doing DIFFERENT THINGS, the trick is getting them to do COORDINATED things 🙂
nick
Well, the saying in flight school was, you could teach a chimp to fly a helicopter with enough banana. 🙂
Reading and watching clips of last nights debate, I’d say The Mighty Trump ™ did not fail to deliver. If only his weave fell off he’d be President right now. lol I read “the Fox moderators” used 31% of the time talking. WTF, over? And Megyn Kelly’s question to TMT about misogynist remarks was ridiculous. Who cares? Fix the country idiot.
My guess is that in 2016 we’ll see Scott Walker against Clinton, with Trump running as an independent, which will throw the election to Clinton.
Heh. I just realized that in addition to the case of 1-liter beakers with handles, I also ordered cases of the 2-liter and 5-liter variants. I’m going to present one of the 1-liter models to Barbara and tell her this is her new girlie-size mug, as I show her my 2-liter man-size mug and finally the 5-liter model for large men like me.
I’ll get back to you guys on this after I recover.
Someone just emailed me and recommended the PA series written by Joe Nobody. Anyone have any thoughts on this series. It sounds much like A. American’s Home series, but before I buy any of these I wanted to solicit other opinions.
File under, they really aren’t like us.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3188198/Three-Greensboro-teens-charged-murdering-74-year-old-Larry-Brown.html
$3
Blow to head.
Walking to busstop at 530am
The suspects are juveniles “the suspects as a 14-year-old female, a 15-year-old male and the 16-year-old that we announced””
And yup, the named suspect is one of obola’s sons.
nick
Situational awareness and concealed carry–ALL the time.
Even if it’s a while before we find a home up in the mountains, I’ll be very, very relieved when Barbara no longer has to go to work downtown.
Thanks to the government, there are underclass people not far from this neighborhood, but at least the neighborhood itself and the places Barbara goes shopping and so on are reasonably safe.
Someone just emailed me and recommended the PA series written by Joe Nobody. Anyone have any thoughts on this series. It sounds much like A. American’s Home series, but before I buy any of these I wanted to solicit other opinions.
I assume that you are talking about Joe Nobody’s “Holding Their Own” series?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/061556965X
I loved it until the 6th or 7th book when it gets mired in the details of rebooting Texas , then the USA. Here is my review of the first book:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2Y3HFCW1OOJ10/
“First book in a series of seven books about the economic collapse of the USA in 2015.”
“Umm, this book was published in 2011 just as the shale oil and gas boom was really getting cranked up. The book has crude oil at $350/barrel and gasoline at $6/gallon in 2015. Not gonna happen so the major driver of economic collapse in the USA is invalid for the book.”
“That said, the book is a good story about the collapse and failure of the government in the USA. The writing is a little flat and I hope it gets better in subsequent books. The book is centered in Texas which makes it very interesting to me since I am a Texas resident. I have ordered two of the subsequent books.”
The story is way different from the Angery American books in that the two protagonists, a husband and wife, try to sit things out in Houston while the USA is falling apart. After a month or two, their neighborhood in Spring gets over-run by gangs foraging for food, women , and guns so they bug out for their property in West Texas. Just the bugging out is eye opening.
I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. There are now nine books in the series and I have read all of them in dead tree format (trade paperback). The books are actually POD (print on demand) out of Amazons huge press in Kentucky.
Thanks.
And Trump has broken away from the pack! He is coming around the first bend and …
If it really comes to it, the GOP should nominate Trump simply to prevent him from pulling enough votes from their nominee to throw the election to Clinton.
One way or another, I believe he’ll run.
“Maybe some day you can teach me to fly an attack chopper, although I’m not sure I’m coordinated enough to have all four hands and feet doing different things at the same time.”
Ditto. I used to see them chopper pilots at work under extreme stress and it was fucking awesome. Several of the ones I knew should have got the MOH, no question. But didn’t. I was just a lowly gunner but they appreciated having me aboard a few times. Imagine my surprise after I’d been home a while and got very interested in church organ music and watched those guys going at it; also awesome; both hands, both feet and head bobbing away while some drone turns the music sheets for them.
“Walking to busstop at 530am…”
Yep, gotta have eyes in the back of yer head and be in Condition Yellow at the VERY LEAST when out and about. Three juvies suddenly in my field of vision at 05:30 means Condition Orange. What to do with juvies convicted or homicide/robbery?
“My guess is that in 2016 we’ll see Scott Walker against Clinton, with Trump running as an independent, which will throw the election to Clinton.”
Ima gon guess that the GOP ass-hats will simply turn it over to the Jebster, as he has the money/dynasty thing going, and run him against Empress Cankles. They’ll find a way to get The Donald to quit, rather than go third party; I dunno what it will take, not money, of course, but something. They got to Roberts on SCOTUS so I’m betting they’ll get to Trump. And Cankles will win anyway; she has the demographics: women, minorities, immigrants and underclass. Jebster has the dwindling Stupid Party adherents who will be whining for us to vote for him in a last-ditch effort to avoid eight years of Field Marshal Rodham. He will fail.
The ability to repair stuff on your own will be increasingly valuable. The person who can get more life out of mechanical items and electrical items will be in demand in any sudden or slow collapse. One of the indicators to me that it is coming, is the proliferation of TV and electronic repair shops, some of which appear to be franchised operations. Not too long ago, most people would have simply replaced a gadget with a broken screen. Now enough get them fixed to have spawned a couple of franchises.
Sounds like Cuber.
If it really comes to it, the GOP should nominate Trump simply to prevent him from pulling enough votes from their nominee to throw the election to Clinton.
One way or another, I believe he’ll run.
Yup and yup. The question is, does he have the state organizations to run independent? The answer is no as Ross Perot found out. If Trump did not start an organization in all 50 states at the last election, he is too late. Takes years to build those. Hillary already got those up and running with a total employment of 7,000 lawyers from what I read a while back.
It is beginning to look to me that the Tea Partiers will swing behind Trump. That will force Trump to the forefront in the southern states. Not sure about the Yankees and the west coasties. Kalifornia still has a strong Repug presence and will matter at the convention.
Ima gon guess that the GOP ass-hats will simply turn it over to the Jebster, as he has the money/dynasty thing going, and run him against Empress Cankles
Sounds like a shootout coming at the Repug convention. Gonna need lots of popcorn. Maybe a beer.
Why would anyone care who they run?
It’s not like it’s going to change anything if they run one person versus another.
“It’s not like it’s going to change anything if they run one person versus another.”
But…but…but…it’s your civic dooty to vote!
We HAVE to vote for ANY Republican or it will be OUR FAULT if Cankles gets in!
Only a Republican can SAVE the COUNTRY!
Etc., etc.
As Obola doubled down on both Bush regimes, so will Cankles double down on him. Double down on what? The destruction of the remaining vestiges of a constitutional republic, which are far, far gone already. And the the remaining flotsam and jetsam of our civil liberties. While leaving the borders and coasts and air space wide open at the same time as ginning up more ruinous foreign wars and raising our taxes to even further debilitating levels. With the final tanking of the economy, no matter how much worthless fiat currency they print up or how many gushers they hit or earth’s mantle sections they bust open.
A criminal corporate fascist oligarchy is what we have for the foreseeable future here.
Elections, parties and voting are all just a circus sideshow, full of sound and fury and signifying….nothing.
Re troubleshooting electronics … Dave Jones, the proprietor of EEV Blog, has made a number of troubleshooting videos. Mostly he’s able to fix the fault; but sometimes he fails. His efforts are mostly in test equipment problems, but he has also documented his repair efforts at for consumer electronics.
Also worth viewing are his teardown videos.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/
Also available on You Tube if you search for EEVBlog.
OFD wrote:
“Only a Republican can SAVE the COUNTRY! ”
Nah, too late. The US needs to rescind their supposed declaration of independence and beg Her Majesty to be taken back as a British colony.
300 bureaucrats in Whitehall could do a better job than the current political class.
Re: Yeast.
About 3 years ago I bought a 1 lb. package of yeast and gave away some of it because I was using the sponge method which only requires 1/8 teaspoon at a time. Shortly after I started using a sourdough starter and have only used the dry yeast three times since. I bake about once a week and keep the starter in the refrigerator until the night before I’m going to bake. Without refrigeration or for longer periods between use one would need to feed the starter occasionally. Point being that with minimal care and planning there is no need to store quantities of yeast.
Unless one really doesn’t like the taste of sourdough bread.
“300 bureaucrats in Whitehall could do a better job than the current political class.”
Like they have in the U.K.??? R U joking, sir? Or Oz? Where they’re now gonna outlaw LEVER-ACTION rifles? Yikes.
I loves me the sourdough bread, pancakes, muffins, etc.
I tightened up all net connections at modem/router area earlier and the net came back up for a couple of hours, and now it’s back to up for an hour, down for three. Swapped out the router w/negative results. So it’s THEIR signal to the house that’s the problem. Gotta get a tech out here to personally fiddle with their stuff. I see nothing wrong on our end.
Only a Republican can SAVE the COUNTRY!
Only Trump can SAVE the COUNTRY!
Fixed that for ya!
I do not know what Trump’s social and fiscal beliefs are but, I think that they are not mainstream Repug. And, that may be a good thing.
I’ve been supervising up to 11 brickers, plumbers and air conditioning men all day for the addition to our home. When the so-called master plumber comes back, me and him are going to have words. He cut four of my side wall studs in half without any replacement support at all. Anyone walking above there on the roof might get an exciting ride down to the ground if the header collapses due to lack of support.
Then the a/c guys got mad because the plumber tried to tie all the vent pipes together where they needed to run their new copper lines to the new outside compressor. It was not … pleasant. I exerted my authority as payer of the services and told the junior plumber that they were going to have three vents pipes, not two. That freed up a space for all the a/c pipes and wiring. Mr. Master plumber worked another job today and never showed up.
So what’s the best method? For items they offer, we recommend buying bulk staples in #10 steel cans from your nearest LDS Home Storage Center. You’ll pay more per pound than buying the bulk staples in 50-pound bags, but it’s already packaged for long-term storage. If you have more money than time, this is definitely the way to go. If money is tight, go with the one-gallon Mylar bags.
How do you feel about the Auguson farms basic food in bulk?
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Long-Grain-Brown-Rice-26-lb/22001477
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Hard-White-Wheat-26-lb/22001478
Our LDS store is up by the Bush International airport which is two hours away from here nowadays.
@jack smith,
Dave Jones is a fascinating guy and I’ve been watching the eevblog for a long time. He still had a full time job and was doing them from his garage when I started watching.
That said, he has one of the most annoying voices on youtube! It’s a testament to the content that anyone watches with that voice.
For a great guy repairing radios, cbs/ham/etc I like watching this guy
https://www.youtube.com/user/TRXBench
His voice is very calming and he is very thorough. Even if he thinks he knows the problem, he walks you thru the whole process.
For a nice change of pace and just a good all around handy guy, I like youtuber poroldchap. He’s super creative with scrap. Strange accent, but very pleasant to watch his ‘workshop waffles’. Any of his home made tool vids are worth watching.
Just got back from replacing the AC condenser motor and fan at my rent house. I bunged up the fan so much getting it off the old motor, I thought it best to just buy a new one. Five minutes to five oclock, and $25 later and I had my fan. Less than 10 minutes of actual work if I’d not tried to save the old fan. Spent just under $200 on parts, and I’m sure a service call would have been at least $100.
Assuming $50 for each service call on appliances, and $100 each on AC, I’ve saved $300 in the last month and a half by being able to do the work myself. The real savings are probably more than that, and I know we saved money on the fridge control board and the washer pump vs wholesale.
Hit 2 estate sales on the way. Just got some household stuff. I passed on a nice, extra big colman stove 🙂 and I passed on an old Radio Shack handheld scanner ’cause the $10 price was too high (given that I have a bunch of scanners.) At the one sale, if the prices had been better, you could have gotten a scanner, a tent, water storage and gas cans, a sleeping bag, and a scout mess kit and camp cookware set. I’ll check back on the last day and see if any of it is left at 50% off. Some would be reasonable then.
May hit some sales tomorrow, may husband my strength or do house work.
So freakin’ hot….
nick
Per their website, the nearest LDS store to me is 5+ hours. But I have neither the current income nor the storage space available right now to do anything additional towards prepping. Anyone know who might want to hire a 50 year old whose MIS degree & skills are out of date because he spent more than 10 years trying (& failing) to save the various parts of his family?
“I do not know what Trump’s social and fiscal beliefs are but, I think that they are not mainstream Repug. And, that may be a good thing.”
As RBT sez, what doth it matter, Grasshopper?
He could be a Zoroastrian magi or solid atheist or, look out, a Methodist, but that and supposed political beliefs on social and fiscal policy don’t mean squat once these geniuses get a whiff of the vapors down in Mordor.
“How do you feel about the Auguson farms basic food in bulk?”
Augason Farms makes good stuff. Their bulk stuff in pails should be fine, although I’ve never bought any. It does cost noticeably more per pound than the LDS store.
I may order a couple of pails each of various items.
The only person here who regularly says that non-sarcastically also says things like
when talking about Hillary Bitch Clinton or Chelsea Bitch Clinton. (Yah, I know that second quote was from someone else, but work with me here.) We may conclusively conclude that the purveyor of such wisdom is around-the-bend insane. And not in the crazy-uncle-who’s-fun-at-parties way but in the likely-to-stab-you-for-no-reason way.
“Anyone know who might want to hire a 50 year old whose MIS degree & skills are out of date because he spent more than 10 years trying (& failing) to save the various parts of his family?”
I wish you the best and much better times to come. I don’t have an MIS degree but I do have 13-15 years of IT experience with OpenVMS, Windows, UNIX and Linux and I can’t get the time of day at 62; recruiters email or call me, I send in all my stuff and that’s the last I hear from them. Not to be discouraging but it certainly seems like the older we get, the less we’re wanted around anywhere. Tough shit; I’m staying until they kick me out.
Anyway, I’ve tried to keep up with skillz via online courses and tutorials but so far that hasn’t got me the price of a cup of whatever. So I’m working on other stuff; at 50 you’ve got twelve years on me so you most likely have more time to figure it all out. Again, best wishes.
@Mr. Lynn; best wishes to you also, sir, dogging all those guys on that project down there. Yikes.
As RBT sez, what doth it matter, Grasshopper?
Because the coming civil war in the USA will have 10 million soldier deaths and 100 million civilian deaths (mostly due to exposure and starvation). I would like to put off that civil war as long as possible and maybe not even have it. And, if you think that no one else will join in the fun, I’ve got some nice swamp land in Florida to sell to you. Russia, Iran, and a few other special friends would like to add to our pain whenever and wherever they can.
Note, my numbers are pure SWAG (scientific wild assed guess and are worst case – I hope).
Despair is a sin and I am trying to stay on the right side of the forthcoming XXXXXXX ongoing craziness.
“Want an IT job? Then best get some Docker skills”
http://www.zdnet.com/article/want-an-it-job-then-best-get-some-docker-skills/
I’ve never even heard of Docker.
“How to make money as an independent developer”
http://www.itworld.com/article/2957215/development/how-to-make-money-as-an-independent-developer.html
Um, yeah. Good luck with that.
I do not know what Trump’s social and fiscal beliefs are but, I think that they are not mainstream Repug. And, that may be a good thing.
Trump is in favor of single payer (like Canada) or national health (like the UK). He is pro-choice. (Those two positions alone should sink him in Iowa and New Hampshire.) He is a crony capitalist just like Mrs. Clinton.
“Augason Farms makes good stuff. Their bulk stuff in pails should be fine, although I’ve never bought any. It does cost noticeably more per pound than the LDS store.”
I’m wondering how someone would use a 26 pound pail of brown rice before it went bad. I think the initial storage would be fine, but once you break the seal, I have to wonder how long it would last.
Want to see what a nuke would do in your town? Go to:
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
and play around.
@miles, @ofd
There seem to be a bunch of app makers who are capable of being a one man band. Or at least that was the folklore a couple years ago.
Got any talent for writing documentation? NO ONE likes to do that…
Got any project management skills or credentials? Sideways move, but pays well. And what programming team WOULDN’T like to have an actual programmer running the project?
I’m just thinking that if there aren’t programming jobs are there any jobs doing the OTHER parts of it, that you’ve done for free in the past or have experience doing?
Hard tech skills are for youngsters. You have experience in the “real world application of those skills” and presumably a whole lot of soft skills.
What are your networks like? Every job I’ve had since college involved a friend or a heads up from a friend. Every Monday I’d call a couple of people, ask what they were up to, say hi. Basically just kept my name in their mind. I know it was a different industry and times have changed with anti-social media, but there must be a way to stay front of mind with the people who might know where the work is.
Is there any volunteer effort that would get you in front of people? I had a nice multi-year chain of work that all came from one free gig I did, in a town where I didn’t know anyone in the biz.
Can you do hardware? Local networking or AV contractor need help? Security cameras are almost all IP based now, and need networks and configuration, and the big systems have server farms and SANs….
If what you’re doin’ ain’t workin’, it’s time to try sumpthin’ else.
Or explore turning a hobby into a job to change fields. (do you have an expertise that you could leverage buying and selling on ebay?)
nick
I’ve had 3 distinct but related careers so far. Don’t know what the next one will be. In the mean time, I’m buying and reselling stuff, while occasionally doing old, and some new, things from my last career.
ADDED: I’ve pointed other programmers, especially anyone with gui or HMI experience at learning about Crestron or AMX programming for AV companies. Good amx/Crestron programmers charge $1200-$1500/day for onsite work. (Maybe more now, I’ve been out for a couple of years.) Many are freelancers, some work for the same AV company all the time.
AMX.com
Crestron.com
@bill
“I’m wondering how someone would use a 26 pound pail of brown rice before it went bad”
I’ve often wondered the same thing. I think it’s down to the bunker or compound idea. Somehow, even for those who don’t consciously plan for it, there is this idea that post SHTF meals will be in a mess hall at the compound.
I’ve commented before that I don’t think #10 cans are a good deal for everyone, no matter that the unit cost / ounce is lower. I buy small cans, basically one meal each can for our family. Double the number of people that I’m feeding and I double the cans I open (or more likely stretch the meal with rice or noodles.) This has the added benefit of letting me eat my stores as part of my normal diet. From a cost perspective, I can call stockpiling ‘dollar cost averaging’ with my investment food. 🙂
One thing for sure though, if it gets dismal enough, we’ll be eating a TON of rice. Think subsistence manual laborer in china or india. Rice for every meal with some small amount of veg or meat and a fat added.
If you are cracking open the bulk, and the #10 cans, things have probably gotten pretty bad.
FWIW, my shift to long term preparedness (feeding my family primarily from stores for more than a month or 2) has been relatively recent. I don’t have any #10 or institutional size cans. I DO have bulk rice, several hundred pounds, I think, bulk flour (not nearly as much), salt, and sugar. MOST of it is in the big black storage bins from Costco, with the yellow lids, in original packaging. Some small amount is in 5 gal buckets with Gamma seal lids. If we needed to eat it, we’d eat from the gamma sealed buckets, refilling as needed from the real bulk.
All that said, I asked one of my LDS friends about our local cannery. I’m considering SOME #10 cans as my food security horizon extends….
nick
Augason Farms rates the shelf life of their brown rice in pails as 7 years sealed and 1 year open, and their wheat as 30 years/1 year. All of the long shelf-life stuff that LDS Home Storage Centers sell has pretty long shelf life even once opened. You just use a plastic cap to reseal the can once you’ve opened it, and it should stay good for at least a year if not several. That’s generally true of any dry bulk staple.
The issue is with #10 cans of wet stuff. For example, we have #10 cans of Bush’s Best Baked Beans. Their shelf life is essentially unlimited until they’re opened, but once they’re opened they need to be used quickly. That’s why we also have the 16.5-ounce and 28-ounce cans stocked in large numbers.
Oh, yeah. How could I have forgotten the 55-ounce cans?
@nick
Incidentally, don’t forget that “protein” is just shorthand for amino acids. Our bodies can synthesize most amino acids, but the so-called “essential” amino acids must be obtained from our diets. That’s why you’ll starve to death eating just rice or just beans. Their amino acid content differs, so you need to eat a combination of these long-term staples. That’s why beans-and-rice, beans-and-corn, etc. have always been such a common diet.
The LDS recommendations nail that. That’s why they recommend a one-year store for one person contain 300 pounds (originally 400) of grain, 60 pounds of beans, and 16 pounds of powdered milk, not to mention 10 liters of oil and several pounds of salt. In combination, those quantities meet (barely) all human nutrition requirements.
It sounds like you have about one person-year of rice on hand, but are short of the other stuff. I’d recommend that you add 60 pounds or so of beans, 10 liters of vegetable and/or olive oil, and several more pounds of salt. Also add a large bottle or two of soy sauce, a quart or two of hickory smoke liquid, garlic and onion powder, and assorted bulk herbs and spices.
After that, I’d recommend you focus on adding at least some canned meats, a lot of canned fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, and something to diversify your grains storage. Pasta and oats are pretty cheap and store forever. Once the prices drop, I’d also add at least 5 pounds of dried eggs. Bouillon in at least beef and chicken is also cheap, stores forever (particularly the TVP variety), and goes a long way toward making rice and pasta appetizing. In vegetable stuff, I’d get lots of tomato sauce or paste, or perhaps canned pasta sauces.
Anyone know who might want to hire a 50 year old whose MIS degree & skills are out of date…
I second the vote for a job as a project manager. That’s how I got back into the job market at the age of 48. Dunno what you’ve been doing the past few years, but if you can sell it as management, by all means do so. There are very few people our age who still work as developers. Young developers are generally pretty happy to have a manager who understands the technical side.
@RBT, thanks for the specifics.
I’ve got the supplemental meat and veg, just in small cans and pouches. Not a year’s worth yet, mainly because we don’t normally eat meat from cans. Same with canned and shelf stable fruit. We don’t eat it, when fresh is available, so I have to add it slowly as a pure prep. I’ve been adding bulk beans slowly. They are something (like potatoes) that we just don’t eat, so it would be a pure prep. I think of all the bulk as pure preps though, so that is a minor (but real) stumbling block. Buying and stocking long term storage food has political and social costs here at Casa Nico.
During a normal year we MIGHT use 5 pounds of flour. Mostly that comes from using the bread machine on special occasions. And I’d be surprised if we normally use 2 pounds of salt. We might eat a couple of pounds of rice, but only in the prepackaged convenience form.
I think that will change post SHTF of course.
In my sudden or long decline scenario we are using stored food as supplements to whatever is available. Using FerFal and Selco’s experiences as a guide, it would be foolish to NOT show up at food distribution points, or to eat so much that we were noticeably better fed than the neighbors. At that point, depending on the political climate, you are going to get dimed as a .gov stooge or as a hoarder. In one, you get beaten to death and all your food stolen, in the other you get jailed and all your food stolen.
In a quarantine scenario, I’m hoping for only a couple of months total isolation. (note to newbies- the ebola scare finally got me to ‘panic buy’ some bulk. That’s why I don’t have any problem with panic buying. It gets you off your @ss, and gives you the stuff, but it can’t be ALL you do.)
In a TEOTWAWKI I’m still way under what I should have stored, but if I survive the event, there should be looting and resource collection from the massive die off…
The worst case is Mad Max, where there are enough survivors to eat up all the supplies before they die off, and an unstable social situation that precludes growing food.
As practice for cooking from bulk, I’m going to try some bread from scratch. It will be indian NAAN as that is something we eat a lot of. It freezes and reheats really well. It’s more complicated than you might expect though. I’ve made tortillas from scratch, they are very simple. I’m emphasizing bread from primitive cultures because it is much less fuel intensive than baking. I have a pasta machine (yard sale item) but haven’t tried it out yet. That will involve the kids, and hopefully be fun and useful.
So, how do they store the fats? Oils go rancid with time, I thought. I’ve got 5 liters of peanut oil in small bottles and most of a 5 gal jug, but it will be a pure cost to replace it over time, as we don’t use enough to rotate it normally before it expires. I don’t throw any out, figuring there are other uses besides human consumption (animal feed, soap making, lamp oil.)
I’ve been adding sauce mixes as they are cheap, quick, and conveniently packed in individual foil envelopes. I just yesterday added some liquid smoke. We grow most of the herbs we use daily, so I haven’t been stockpiling spices. My other concern is that spices fade pretty quickly, even in the jar. Heard any tips for preserving their vitality?
What about storing protein powders for those supplemental amino acids? I already store multivitamins with the bulk as supplements.
nick
NB- when I say ‘bulk’ that is shorthand for anything intended specifically as long term storage food. This is outside of your normal pantry and living. Also, for me, ‘pure prep’ is something that is NOT an extension to my normal life. Something that is only useful to me if SHTF like a #10 can of powdered eggs, or a 12 pack of sutures, or an autoclave.
Got any talent for writing documentation? NO ONE likes to do that…
Our technical doco is about 1,500 pages of which I wrote about half over the last 25 years. It shows. Every time I look something up, I shake my head.
https://www.winsim.com/doco.html
Rancidity in oil is, afaik, just oxidation. If the oil is packaged so that little or no oxygen can get to it, it won’t go rancid. The packaging material is obviously important: glass or oxygen-impermeable plastic, and a full container, well-sealed.
@RBT, and anyone planning on feeding more people post SHTF than they do currently
Serious question.
How do you plan to feed all those people? RBT’s comment that his potential new home could house 50 really stuck in my head last night. I haven’t seen ANYONE talking about actually FEEDING the whole crew. Talk about how much food and water, sure. BUT!!! Does your bug out location have a commercial kitchen? I’ve worked in kitchens. It takes, space, specialized pans and utensils, specialized equipment, and a LOT of energy to cook for a large group, not to mention time.
A restaurant will start prepping for dinner before lunchtime!
A commercial or institutional kitchen has lots of sinks (set up to prevent food born illness) large prep areas, storage space for work in progress, storage space for FOOD, specialized equipment (large grinders and mixers, proofing cabinets, high BTU stoves with tons of burners, griddles, steam tables for holding prepared food, specialized -mainly large- bowls, utensils, can openers, cleaning supplies, and multiples of each.
Is your bug out locations set up with multiple knives and cutting boards? Large bowls? Huge pots? Do you have FUEL for all the hot water you need for sanitation and all that cooking?
In the past, outbuildings were used on plantations and estates. The ‘summer kitchen’ kept the heat, noise, and activity out of the main house. Do you have an outdoor area or an outbuilding that can be set up as your kitchen?
Simply getting food from bulk storage to the prep area can take some work when you have 50 to feed. Who’s doing the cooking? Any experience in a large kitchen?
Even cooking for 10 people is a big deal for most. Holiday dinners are multi-day affairs in the kitchen.
For a while, or in a purely refugee situation, you can cut corners with prep and the type of food served, but long term, you need to really COOK.
Do you have a pot big enough to make rice or beans for 10? How about 30? A big stew pot? Is it appropriate for your fuel source? (cooking over a grill, or open fire will destroy most cookware) Could you even make more than one loaf of bread at a time? Where do you put 4 loaves to rise? Where are you cooking dinner while the bread is baking?
How much firewood is required if you are cooking 2 meals a day for 10 people over open fires? How much propane?
There must be some army manuals, but you never hear anyone say “Field Kitchen Setup, Use, And Provisioning” should be on a MUST have list. (Contrast this to the SAS survival manual, or the SF Manual…..) Yet which is more useful for more people?
If anyone has thought it thru, please share.
Maybe I’m the only one who hasn’t considered this? But then, I only plan to provide for my family….
nick
I just finished my first Sam’s Club run. We now have $50 of food and water stored for an emergency. I was surprised at how few items you can get at Sam’s Club with $50. After buying the rice, I realized the flaw in my plan. Junior doesn’t like rice much. So I’m giving a bit of thought to changing the plan.
So I am sitting at the computer eating lunch, when Junior comes over for a couple of bites. Which surprised me because there is a lot of rice in my lunch. My next purchase may be the stuff to make macaroni and cheese. Which Junior favors over spaghetti, which had been my next planned food purchase.
@nick
I was thinking of trying tortillas as my first flour recipe as well. It’s simple, it doesn’t have to rise and you can cook it anywhere. Including a grill outside or a fireplace.
Pardon me, but I will state the obvious. If you are over 40, there should be nothing on your resume to identify you as over 40.
Regarding oil, I’ve never had a problem with rancidity. Brad is right, it’s essentially oxidation, although hydrolysis also plays a role. Keeping your lipids away from moisture and oxygen is the main thing, and typical glass or PET packaging does a good job of that. Exposure to light, more specifically to short-wavelength light and particularly UV, is also important.
Basically, there’s nothing special about oils and fats in terms of long term storage, EXCEPT that some of the breakdown products are strongly flavored. In other words, a level of oxidation that you wouldn’t even notice in grains or beans or other non-fatty foods will be very noticeable in anything that contains lipids.
The type of oil or fat also matters. For example, I have a couple dozen 3-pound cans of Crisco shortening sitting unrefrigerated on the shelf. Crisco doesn’t even recommend refrigerating them after opening. Their rated best-by date is something like 5 years (I’d have to check), but the real shelf life is much longer. OTOH, I have several 3-liter bottles of olive oil in our vertical freezer. Best-by generally means “indiscernible from new”, and on that basis olive oil is probably good for one to two years at room temperature. In the freezer, it’s good for (conservatively) 15 or 20 years, and that’s assuming you won’t tolerate any noticeable taste difference. If you’ll put up with minor changes in taste, that stuff should be fine frozen for 100 years.
The important things for storing lipids, as with other long-term food storage, are to minimize temperature (below freezing is ideal for most things, assuming the packaging can take it), exposure to oxygen, moisture, and light. (And, of course, insects and rodents.)
In particular, don’t underestimate the importance of dryness. Most biological breakdown processes can’t operate in the absence of water. That’s the main reason our foremothers rendered fat into lard and tallow. Heating the fat strongly drives off water, without which the fat can’t become rancid. Until a couple hundred years ago, the most common way to preserve bacon and other meats was to interleave chunks of them in a barrel with rendered fat. The exposed surface went rancid, so they simply scraped that off and got to the still-fresh meat and lard beneath the thin top layer they’d removed. Same thing with hanging game. The spoilage actually improves the flavor, and thorough cooking destroys any harmful bacteria and other microorganisms present. That’s one reason why it was popular to keep a large pot of stew on the fire for weeks and sometimes months on end. The heat kept the stew safe to eat.
Incidentally, rancidity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People pay huge bucks for rancid cheeses BECAUSE they’re rancid. It’s safe to eat rancid lipids, which are just as nutritious as unspoiled, and cooking can go a long way toward making them more palatable.
@bill, try a traditional recipe with lots of fat in it. The reason restaurant tortillas are so tasty is the lard.
Prepping with kids adds a whole ‘nother dimension. On one level, if they are hungry enough, they will eat. On the other, why not try to make it as pleasant for them as possible? Try a few different ways of serving it, like asian chicken fried rice (a good use for canned chicken). I’ve tried several of the ‘hamburger helper’ style meals that use rice instead of noodles, and chicken instead of hamburger. They are my go to for quick, low energy cost meals during a short to medium event. They work great when you are just too tired or busy to cook during normal life too.
The cost of large purchases is one reason to just buy a few extra of the things you use anyway on each grocery trip. The incremental cost in time, fuel, and even money is small. It takes longer to build up a reserve, but it has the advantage of being food you eat anyway (helps with rotation) and spreading out the cost. You can compensate for the additional weekly cost with reductions elsewhere if money is tight. Practice cooking from your pantry instead of fast food, make and take lunches instead of purchasing, cut back on drinking/smoking/soda/etc.
Prepping doesn’t have to mean privation, and soon the short term rewards of some of the discretionary spending are replaced with long term rewards of having food security, and making progress toward a goal.
You’ve taken the first step!
nick
@nick
Regarding cooking for a large group, you’re looking at similarities between that and running a restaurant, when in fact they’re more different than similar. Yes, you’ll need things like 5- and 10-gallon pots and so on.
But a restaurant is demand driven and offers (usually) a large menu. At any given moment, a restaurant may have 50 diners seated, all with different foods on their plates. Feeding 50 in an emergency is more like a nursing home kitchen where there’s no choice of menu.
For breakfast, you might make up 20 pounds of oatmeal or several gallons of pancake batter. For lunch, 10 gallons of beef with barley soup. For dinner, a 10-gallon pot of chicken and vegetable noodle stew. And so on.
Barbara’s sister has run three or four different food service operations. You should see her recipe book. It’s full of ingredient lists that include stuff like “3 #10 cans” of something or other, a cup(!) of garlic powder, and so on. She can cook for 50 without breaking a sweat.
“Pardon me, but I will state the obvious. If you are over 40, there should be nothing on your resume to identify you as over 40.”
I didn’t think to state this so baldly, but it is probably true.
I worked for an entertainer who had a video roll we played as introductory material while she took the stage. One of the clips was from “The Dinah Shore Show”! I gently suggested we remove that clip as there was no value to being an entertainer for “a long time”, it didn’t resonate with the audiences, and it had NEGATIVE value as she didn’t look anywhere near that old to anyone who did recognize it (booking agents, etc.)
Since the normal career path is out of the trenches and into management, the folks in management who are doing the hiring may wonder why you haven’t made the move yet.
Unless you are applying for jobs with legacy language support, 40 years of cobol experience is probably not a resume’ enhancer.
Is there professional coaching available to you? Guys that will shape your resume’ the right way?
nick
Speaking of which I just added two of these to my Amazon cart:
http://smile.amazon.com/Bayou-Classic-4060-60-Quart-Aluminum/dp/B0000BXHL4
Never know when I might need a couple of 15-gallon stock pots.
@RBT,
Ack on the restaurant comments, but I was mostly thinking about institutional kitchens. In an institutional kitchen you are doing everything to meet a limited time window. UNLIKE the restaurant where you are doing entrees, at least, serially. This makes having the large size equipment even more critical. And you need space and stuff for more than one person to work at the same time.
Once thru the emergency phase, and into ‘the new normal’ you will quickly see a revolt if the food isn’t varied, and well prepared.
If the event is ongoing, and never stabilizes people may be willing to put up with a bowl of soup or stew a day, but for any situation better than Selco’s, that is going to get old quick.
Having a tribe member with institutional cooking experience is awesome. How much of your food storage preps is based on her input? What about kitchen supplies?
Have you done the fuel math? Has anyone?
nick
OFD wrote:
“I don’t have an MIS degree but I do have 13-15 years of IT experience with OpenVMS, Windows, UNIX and Linux…”
In the early 80s I had experience with NOS/BE (may peace and blessings be upon it) and various CDC languages, but no degree. A position was advertised at the University of Adelaide that I would have loved, but they insisted on a degree. (Later, I saw this outfit whining that they couldn’t get experienced people in NOS/BE.)
I then made it a priority to get my peice of paper (I was one subject short.)
Sure, but in the New Normal, food is going to consist mostly of one- and two-pot meals. There’s simply not raw materials to do much more than that. Little or no fresh food, at least for a time. And as I can tell you from experience, it’s possible to make very appetizing simple meals.
I think the best way to get your family used to eating stuff cooked from food storage is to offer to make dinner, and then try out some recipes. Barbara bitched like hell the first time I handed her a can of Keystone Meats pulled pork to make barbecue sandwiches, all except the buns from long-term storage, but she liked the results well enough that she asked me this morning if we have any more of that canned pork left or did I just buy one sample can. I did only buy sample cans, but four of the 28-ounce ones. I wish now I’d ordered four or five cases of them when Walmart still had them in stock for about $75 per case of 12, including shipping. They’ve been out of stock on almost all of the Keystone Meats for a couple of months now. My guess is that the free shipping was killing them. But the West Jefferson super Walmart is listed as carrying them, although they’re out of stock on all of them and have been since May or so. If necessary, we can drive up to Lima, Ohio and buy them right at the plant. A case weighs 21 pounds net, and probably 24 or 25 pounds gross, so we should be able to haul back 50 or so cases. It’s an 8-hour drive one-way, so I’ll have to think about it. It’s probably not worth the time or gas, since Keystone will ship those 50 cases to me for just over a grand, at $21/case.
Or I may just start canning meats, although the USDA and all the other authorities recommend not doing so. It’s too dangerous for people who don’t know what they’re doing. Botulism isn’t something to mess with. I’m not a biologist, but I’m enough of one that I should be able to can meat, eggs, etc. safely.
Items like that are some of the few items that it makes sense to can at home from a financial viewpoint. Not even counting time, fuel, and infrastructure equipment, a canning jar, lid, and band runs about $1.25, which doesn’t make sense to use to can vegetables and other cheap stuff. I can get a #10 can of vegetables that was professionally canned for $3 or $4, and it’d cost me that much in supplies to do it myself.
Incidentally, I have WWI and WWII US Army field kitchen manuals, as well as one from the Wehrmacht. They may come in handy.
I got input from both Frances and Mary Chervenak, who’s an excellent vegetarian cook. I would love to have one or both of them in our group if push comes to shove, but if they aren’t there I think I can manage myself. The input I solicited was which and how much of each herb, spice, flavoring, etc. to stock, in case we find ourselves cooking without a whole lot of variety. There really is a lot you can do with just simple rice and pasta, beans, etc., as long as you have lots of herbs and spices. Don’t worry too much about them aging. In glass (or foil-laminate Mylar) they stay usable essentially forever. Even in PET bottles, they stay usable a long, long time. The problem is that the flavors they provide are mostly volatile oils that dissipate if the product is exposed to air. They don’t really break down in sealed containers, or at least not much. (I’ve had various herbs and spices that were in glass bottles packed 50 years before, and they still tasted fine to me.) Worst case, you may have to use a bit more to get the desired effect, but these products are amazingly cheap at the moment, so who cares? Just stock two or three times as much as you think you’ll need.
Oh, as far as fuel, yes I’ve thought it through. I’ve also cooked over an open fire, which is why I have a lot of cast iron pots and pans on my to-buy list.
Any home we buy *will* have a wood/coal cookstove. If there’s not one already there when we buy it, I’ll have one or two installed.
@nick
My skillz are, to some extent, 30 years out of date. Not that it matters as I don’t have a financial need to work. IT started going down hill in about 1990. That’s when we started phasing out our CDC Cybers (may peace and blessings be upon them) in favour of IBM compatible mainframes running MVS/XA – a huge step backwards IMHO. Management also started becomming arseholes.
I may get a BSc in P&I Chemistry, BE and PhD in Chemical Engineering and come to work for Mr Lynn. Then I can get all these guns I’ve been hearing about… 🙂
Oh, there aren’t that many firearms here. I’d guess there are maybe 100 people in the whole US who own personal guns, and they probably don’t have more than about 500 or 1,000 firearms among them.
Too bad Australia never had a 2nd Amendment. Look what’s come of that. The UK and Canada, too, for that matter. I think the main difference is that most Aussies, Brits, and Canadians have historically trusted their governments (more fool they), while many Americans from the Founding Fathers on have never trusted government at all. At all.
@miles, your hard tech skills may be out of date, but how are your soft skills?
People aren’t much different than they were 30 years ago.
Can you get a group of people to work together toward a goal?
Can you research and write a thoughtful and accurate assessment?
Can you develop a budget or project timeline??
There are a bunch of skills that only come with experience.
Technical mastery of a particular subject may take time, but it is fungible, and there are always hot young up and comers nipping at your heels. None of them are capable of running a 50 person project or a department, nad most wouldn’t want to.
nick
Bill wrote:
“If you are over 40, there should be nothing on your resume to identify you as over 40.”
Although I look young for my years and am still devilishly handsome, my hair gives me away. Very grey…
@RBT
How do you boil water or heat oil to frying temperature in a 15 gallon pot?
Better yet, how do you move a full one?
I don’t think it occurs to many non-farm Aussies to own guns. I don’t trust the government but don’t hanker for guns – and haven’t touched one for over 40 years.
If I moved to the US I’d make it a priority to buy and learn to use a shotgun (at least one), rifle (at least one) and at least three handguns. (Slabsides, Lynn’s XDM .40 and a revolver.)
@nick
I know Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, CDC assembler (may peace and blessings be upon it), PL/1 and many others. I enjoyed writing doco and reports but never liked project and people management. My PC skills are pretty low.
My basic problem is that I don’t like people. I’m an Aussie version of SteveF.
Well, you don’t move a full one other than to dump it and clean it. With oil presumably in short supply, you’re not going to do a lot of frying, either.
Water weighs about 8.3 pounds per gallon. Assume you’re starting with 10 gallons of water at 62F in your large pot. That’s about 83 pounds of water, and you want to increase its temperature by 150F to 212F. One BTU is need to heat a pound of water by 1F, so you need 150F * 83 pounds = 12,450 BTU to do that.
The heat content of wood varies a lot, but let’s assume you’ll get 8,000 BTUs gross from a pound of wood. That means you’ll need just over 1.5 pounds of wood to bring that 83 pounds of water just to a boil, but that assumes 100% efficiency. In reality, you might get efficiency of 20% to 30%, so you’re going to need 3 to 5 times as much wood, or 4.5 to 7.5 pounds.
The heat content of propane and other flammable gasses varies somewhat, but it’ll be somewhere in the 18,000 to 24,000 BTU/pound range. Conservatively, a 20-pound propane cannister should provide 350,000 to 400,000 BTU gross. Typical gas burners are more efficient than burning wood, so let’s assume 40% efficiency in terms of how much of the heat produced actually goes toward heating the water. That gives you 140,000 to 160,000 net BTU per cannister, which should suffice to heat roughly 112 gallons of water from 62F to 212F, or about 11+ large pots.
Incidentally, both wood and propane are commonly used for heating homes in the mountains, so lots of people have multiple cords of wood in their sheds and 275 gallon or larger propane tanks. There are also a lot of other fuels that aren’t hard to come by in an emergency, such as methanol (wood alcohol, which is great for stoves other than its invisible flame) and biogas (converting animal shit to methane via a generator).
If that was trolling, congratulations. You’re now on my list.
@RBT
“Oh, as far as fuel, yes I’ve thought it through. ”
Anything you can share?
“I’ve also cooked over an open fire,”
Possibly the least efficient way to use wood for cooking, but the simplest. I’m planning to use a rocket stove from concrete blocks if it comes to that. You can burn sticks and twigs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmDYUrVHPWc
One of the things I did buy yesterday’s sale was a pair of those long handled basket things you can use to cook food over a campfire. To really cook over open fire you need a tripod or jack or spit. (and cast iron)
Poor and rural indians (dot not feather) have some more efficient ways to burn wood for cooking, but I’m not familiar with them.
I watched some reinactors use a technique the pioneers used on the prairie. It was simple and efficient. You dig a foot or slightly more, deep hole in a rectangle about 12 or 14″ x 18″, build a fire in the hole, lay some iron rods across the top, and cook on that. When you are done, fill the hole in. They had a specialized iron rod setup to make it easier, basically one 24″ long rod, with about 8-10 rods attached loosely, and perpendicular. Picture 10 needles threaded onto another needle thru their eyes. The long rod went on one side of the hole, the perpendicular rods made up the ‘grill’. Because they were loose on the long rod, they were easy to move slightly aside when you needed to poke or arrange the fire and coals. Very simple for a blacksmith to make.
The park service hated those holes as the heat sterilized the soil and left a dead patch. You could use it as a latrine and then fill it in, to help with that, I guess…..
“which is why I have a lot of cast iron pots and pans on my to-buy list.”
Cast iron cooking has made a comeback so new USA made (Lodge) is widely available. Costco had a 2 pan set that was cheaper than buying used! The new ones claim to be pre-seasoned. DO NOT waste your time and money on the (unmarked) chinese ones. The casting is very porous. They rust outrageously. Take the time to properly season them. There are many good methods online. I use the ‘oil and bake’ method. I bought all of mine at estate and yard sales. In every case, they are USA made. Any uniform rust can be quickly removed and the pan can be re-seasoned. One advantage to older is the tighter grain of the casting. DON”T pay ‘antique’ prices for old.
“Any home we buy *will* have a wood/coal cookstove. If there’s not one already there when we buy it, I’ll have one or two installed.”
It’s my understanding that a Rumford style fireplace is very efficient (as far as fireplaces go) for heating. Likewise, there are scandinavian style fireplaces that rely on mass that are good for heating.
The EPA has mandated a bunch of cr@p that is affecting woodstoves. I don’t remember the details, ’cause I don’t have one and didn’t plan on one soon. You may have to look around and find an old one. Oddly enough, there were stoves at several sales recently in various stages of repair. Even 2 of different design but new manufacture.
The youtuber I mentioned earlier “poroldchap” has a design for a vertical stove he uses to heat his shop and his fishing boat using scrap lumber. It’s pretty straight forward to build from junk.
nick
BTW youtube has some vids of a ‘dakota fire pit’ which looks pretty cool, but is not the thing I described above.
Have you done the fuel math? Has anyone?
Not at all. But that is really bad news. We have spent decades as a society putting together three “grids” in the USA. An electric transmission grid, a natural gas delivery grid, and a gasoline and diesel distribution network. All are professionally and extremely well run in the USA. All totally awesome with very rare spot shortages. So reliable in fact, that no one understands the level of convenience and labor saving that it brings to our lives.
People have no idea how much natural gas, uranium, coal, lignite, oil, and water (hydro) is needed for making electricity. When I worked at TXU, we spent 2.2 billion dollars per year out of our 5 billion dollar annual income on fuel for our boilers and combustion turbines. In other words, a tremendous amount of effort is expended to get these items to the power plants.
That all said, I have a dozen Coleman propane bottles (1 lb each) and three large 20 lb propane bottles. I have a Coleman propane stove and a propane grill. I have no idea how long these will last in a grid down event. I also have a 1/4 cord of wood. I just hope that these will last a month unless I try to use them for heating rather just cooking.
My current goal is to make it a month in a grid down event. Anything longer than that and I figure that everything is down with a total reboot of society. OFD’s band of scavenging savages will be running around the place long before the end of that first month.
@bill,
“How do you boil water or heat oil to frying temperature in a 15 gallon pot?
Better yet, how do you move a full one?”
This is my technique, at least until the propane runs out.
http://www.amazon.com/Masterbuilt-MB15-15-Inch-Cooker-Burner/dp/B0000BWGRW/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1439065287&sr=8-11&keywords=propane+turkey+fryer
google “propane turkey fryer” for a nice set of burner stand, and big pot.
I’ve got a couple of pots for mine (yard sale items, natch). They are very common around here as turkey fryers, and crawfish boilers. On the east coast they may be sold for a clam boil or for ‘steamers.’
They are not super efficient. One thing that helps is keeping the flame small enough that it only hits the bottom of the pot. I haven’t tried it yet, but a wind shield like for a backpacking stove might help too.
It seems like it took about 20 minutes or more for my pot of water to boil. I don’t remember how long it took to boil 4 gallons of oil for the turkey, but once boiling, the turkey cooks pretty quickly.
I figure I can mainly use it to boil water for sanitation as long as I have the propane. I don’t plan to feed the multitudes. You could super size a rocket stove to fit the big pot. And two people could carry mine full, but it would be dangerous. ALOT of things will be dangerous post SHTF, which makes your medical preps even more important.
nick
“Pardon me, but I will state the obvious. If you are over 40, there should be nothing on your resume to identify you as over 40.”
Duly noted; I should have done this long ago. Nothing happened before 1996 except college. No military, no factory jobs, no cop work. And only Linux, network, and security jobs since then, no Windows.
I can do shell scripting stuff with bash and vim but have no programming, although I’m working on a Python course now, along with CCNA and RHCSA/RHCE. I’ll just make shit up about projects I managed. Nothing to lose at this point. And I’m only 42, not 62. No gray hair except facial and I can fix that in a jiffy. I do not look 62 anyway; I see guys ten years younger who look twenty years older.
Prepping this week? I finished dunging out the cellar, a nasty job that took me five half-days, and started assembling shelving down there. Got two scanners programmed via the Winblows machine and they’re up and running; pretty good reception with long whip antennas; I’ll try external next. Kept up the raised beds, mowed the lawn, weed-whacked and sussed out perimeter fencing and other external security concerns. Got more canned goods and ammo.
And Mrs. OFD will be ramping up on firearms stuff with me while I learn to ride big-ass war horses. Mutual instruction.
Tomorrow afternoon a Comcast tech is coming out to look at why our service has been down more than up for the past couple of weeks. On a Sunday! So I got that media center corner cleaned out and the spaghetti tangle untangled for the most part. It’s not exactly prepping but it’s our landline phone and internet, and the latter is needed for work, online courses and business. Plus prepping research.
One of my memories from childhood were the annual summer vacation trips to visit my parents relatives – in a mountainous part of one of the Appalachian mountain states.
At that time (late 1950’s and early 1960’s) several of my aunts and uncles had wood or coal burning kitchen stoves, and between their families and visitors, it wouldn’t be uncommon to have 15 or more people for lunch or dinner. A few didn’t have electricity and most didn’t have indoor plumbing at that time.
In any event, with an outside temperature (in the mountains, or at least what passes for mountains on the east coast) the temperature would be 80 or so. Inside the kitchen, after the stove had been stoked and running for an hour or two, the temperature was well over 100 degrees and the women in there had sweat rolling off them.
There’s a reason that southern plantation houses had a separate cook building – it might be 100+ deg F in the cook shack, but the main house would remain habitable.
I also recall the piquancy of visiting the outhouse in July or August. At that time, no one used lime; you just live with the smell. Mostly, the legendary Sears and Roebuck catalogs as toilet paper had passed by that era, but not 100%, so we always brought a few rolls of store-bought toilet paper along.
@lynn
propane lasts a long time running the grill. If you are careful it will last even longer. (ie never over heat, start cooking while still under temp, turn off flame and let the heat ‘coast down’ while finishing cooking.
I haven’t looked at the rated consumption for my burners, but I use the grill a couple of meals a week, running all 3 burners full out for 10-20 minutes, and I refill about once a month. I’ve left it with all three burners on low, and it ran for more than 24 hours before running out (I forgot it.) I never had to refuel my colman stove during Ike, and we used it at least 2 meals a day while the power was out for 14 days.
In weeks of camping as a kid, using the liquid fueled colman stove to cook dinner every night, I don’t remember my dad ever “re” fueling. e.g. he fueled at the beginning of the week and that was enough for the week. This guy has done math, but I don’t see if he followed up with actual tests. Who has the time??
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/alternative-energy/how-much-coleman-fuel-do-i-need/
nick
I’ll admit, without hard math to back it up, you are just swagging it. But some is better than none and a lot is better than some.
@miles
“My basic problem is that I don’t like people.”
In that case, you need to be an absolute rock star at what you do, because at a certain level, ‘talent forgives a lot.’ (I was advised by a college prof who knew me well that I should pursue a career in film, vs. theater, because in the film industry ‘you can be an @sshole as long as you are good at your job.’) Oh how right he was. [although I didn’t appreciate it at the time.]
Baring being an acknowledged rock star in your field, you are kind of limited. There MIGHT be a career on a help desk if you find the right company 😉
I think your best course of action is to work for yourself, producing something only you can produce (art or craft, or some clever gadget), or producing something that doesn’t require you to interact with people in person.
Selling craft items on Etsy comes to mind. Any artistic talents?
nick
@jack smith
“you just live with the smell” How funny, I was just thinking about that particular and peculiar smell the other day. I was remembering camping at state parks as a kid. They were almost all pit toilets, even in the developed parts of the campgrounds. I bet they are all flushing porcelain now.
In one of my careers, I spent a lot of time in places with portajons. Getting the blue water splashed on you was NOT fun. I’d make an island of paper to avoid that. I didn’t care how much paper I’d use. For the unfamiliar, once it had been used enough that the water wasn’t blue, a couple of sheets of TP would be enough to keep from splashing. The blue water was very hard on electronics too. NB, if you drop a $2000 motorola radio in there, you ARE going fishing. If someone else drops a cell phone in and comes to you with instructions regarding the need to retrieve it, offer them a stick and a plastic bag.
It was during that period I got in the habit of emptying my pockets before entering a bathroom. Still do it to this day, even in my own home.
nick
At Front Sight gun training school, they begged us to unload before going into the portapotties. Our senior range instructor described the experience of fishing for a loaded handgun as exhilarating.
https://www.frontsight.com/
nick wrote:
“there MIGHT be a career on a help desk”
I liked doing help desk work, but not all the time. 20 years ago I was on the software section’s HD roster, but only one day in about 10-15. I liked 2nd to 3rd tier support, I hated being on the first rung, getting all the stupids.
“Any artistic talents?”
I’m interested in stained glass but no experience. May learn one day, but as I said, I don’t need to work.
I keep thinking there must be a way for me to make some beer money off of some sort of crafty or gadget-y thing.
I know someone who made good money off a ‘drum key’ for adjusting the tension in a drum head. Seems her’s was enough better that people spent a couple of bux on it.
I have a friend’s father who made a nice income off of decor birdhouses made from old fencing and scraps of rusty metal. Sold them online.
Whether kitchy hand made folk art or some useful but not mass market gizmo, there are people making money from home on this stuff. The net makes it easy to connect to a market if one exists.
nick
I was thinking if you don’t like people there are a few companies who don’t seem to like their customers very much, so help desk would be a good fit, :wink :nudge :wink
In reality, phone support was one of the most difficult parts of my job. I had the advantage of installing the systems and training their staffs, so that could make it easier.
added: realized I have no idea how to spell kitchy.
Kitschy.
Awww, you beat me to the correction. And I was gonna throw in some mean-sprited mockery along with the correction. Now I’m gonna feel all correctus interruptus-y all day.
Now that I have started prepping, I’m starting to figure out what is wrong with my plan as implemented:
1. I’m betting on having electricity to boil water.
2. I’m betting on having water to boil.
3. I’m betting on having the time to boil water.
4. I’m betting on our mutt being able to handle our defensive needs.
5. I’m betting we won’t have to leave.
We are far more prepared than we used to be. Ironically, it is become more obvious to me how unprepared we are.
The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.
“”The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole” (V.i)”
Bullshit. The truly wise man will know himself to be wise, at least in comparison to the fools with whom he is surrounded.
Oh crap, another microaggression; it could be a wise woman, or a wise Latina. My bad.
I’m past the betting stage on the water, but probably have it going on with some other issue. And I am betting that most derps fail to realize just how much our civilization, such as it is, depends utterly on electricity. And think it’s always gonna be ON.