19 year old MREs

"shelf life"? Thinking more like a "half life", like plutnium. Though I think that has to do with deacy and it appears MRE don't decay? The outer plastic sack/bag seems to be irrelevant. I ate the ones that had some holes in them figurin they may have been compromised, they weren't. I stuff just shy of a couple dozen in a 5 gallon bucket for storage. Catch some plastic in the seal now and again and rip them. So the components themselves are capable of long term storage in the individual wrappers. Mine have been in storage over 10yrs in the buckets in an open storage shed. Freezes evey winter and gets to 110ish at least in the summer. Dang metal roof is like an oven. I'm pretty impressed.

 

I saw a chart on the shelf life of MREs which, I think, ran from six months to twenty years, depending upon the temperature at which the MREs had been stored.

 

When an MRE does go bad, you don't want to be near it......