It’s been said that most American households only have enough food on hand for 2-3 days worth of meals. We tend to see this as factual, because of the run on grocery stores and corner markets that occur as even something as mundane as a winter storm approaches. In my experience though, glancing into the cabinets and pantries of people’s houses over the decades, while visiting, I tend to think this supposed “fact” is overblown. To be sure, there may be only a few days worth of the components of the meals the family is accustomed to eating, but even in the least prepared households, I’ve almost always witnessed enough foodstuffs to feed the family for at least a week of 2-3 meals per day, contingent only on how that family defines “meal.” Most people today, after all, would not consider a bowl of oatmeal porridge to be a “breakfast.” Few people would consider a sandwich with a slice of bologna and a slice of cheese, with a smear of mustard or mayonnaise on it, to be a “lunch,” once they’re past grade school age. Most middle-class Americans would no longer consider a pot of beans to be a supper for their family. A significant portion of the problem with short-term emergency preparedness, in terms of food storage then, is not a lack of available calories, or even variety, but rather, the spoiled attitude of modernity. Just a Minor Inconvenience Over the last decade and a half, or more, despite their absolute shit performance after disasters like last year’s hurricane Helene, FEMA has at least done one thing right: they’ve begun to focus, in press briefings, and on the agency website, on the passing on the importance of disaster preparedness for self-reliance. This started out, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, twenty years ago, with the recommendation that people build simple 72-hour kits for every member of their family, but in more recent years, has progressed to further recommendations towards increased self-reliance with suggestions like having a two-week supply of food and water on hand at home, as well as having vehicle emergency kits when traveling. For all the—sometimes tremendous—flaws inherent in that federal agency—this at least, is a solid, valid recommendation, as a starting point for short-term preparedness. Given human nature, and the ever-American quest to “make a buck,” price-gouging is not only the be expected, but has been witnessed in the near past, even absent scarcity.1 Any kind of localized disaster will almost certainly see severe deleterious impacts on many families, from an economic perspective. Not having to deal with “scalper” prices on essential survival items like foodstuffs, can keep those impacts from being ruinous. Recent history has illustrated that, even in the most calamitous localized disasters, the worst of the emergency—at least to the point of outside assistance beginning to arrive—is largely past within about two weeks. That doesn’t mean everything is back to normal, and peaches and rainbows, it just means additional assistance is generally available by that time. Having a plan to subsist for that two weeks—aside from the obvious black swan events like your house being buried in a mudslide, or a tornado flattening your apartment complex, or a wildfire actually turning your house, specifically, into a pile of cinders and ash—will allow you not only the ability to survive without ruination, but will also often provide the psychological and physical security buffer to allow you to be useful to your friends, family, and neighbors. The common recommendation among preppers—especially the typical middle-class, soccer Mom turned preparedness guru, by virtue of a YouTube channel—is to simply stockpile more of what your family already consumes. While broadly good advice, there are a couple of considerations that should be kept in mind that I suspect their inexperience with actual field or disaster living conditions results in them overlooking. https://www.patreon.com/posts/gener...paign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Continue reading...
