PREP SERIES: PART 34 A NEW WRINKLE

OK, we have had 2 back to back disasters in this country that have given us a real fright. The chances of things getting worse are really starting to sink in, even to the sheeple. Scarcity of fuel, scarcity of groceries, the poverty that ensues if people cannot work due to the above. Lawlessness and being on your own. Stripped stores due to looting, everything from cloth for making clothes to no pots and pans or nails or lumber or medicines......there are some very real possiblities that we may not see the inside of a store due to looting and closures in the near future.

So, Splicerswife and I are proposing a new twist to the PREP series......we will be presenting scenarios that might occur of TSHTF in earnest. Things that make you go HMMMMMM. This is a good opportunity to check on our status...not just our physical preps, but how prepared we are to survive. We will discuss everything from how to protect yourself in dangerous situations to helping a sick child when medicines are not available. We are looking to discuss how to improvise in many scary sitiations that are not beyond the realm of possibility.


So to start off lets start off with food rationing. If another disaster occurs, lets say a major earthquake in Califonia or a terrorist nukes a major city......our countries resources are already stetched thin from Katrina and Rita. Most of the MRE's in the country were used up in those disasters....oil production is already low.
The Government has announced that everyone is on their own for at least 2 weeks but the truth is, it will really be more like 3-4 months.
Now, most of the folks here are preppers and will say, 'that's easy'. But, what if the help never came.....what if the 'Fall of Rome' really occured and there wasn't going to be any recovery.....not for years?
How will you ration food for your family? How long will it take you to realize that you need to start rationing? What would you feed them, how much and why? How would you assess how much you had, how many calories a day you can get away with? How would you stretch it to make it last longer? Which family members would get more calories and why?

OK folks....have at it!

If I eat two meals a day (Which is normal for my wife and I) we have about a years worth of food here now.. When I am busy (as in a post SHTF) event there are many times where I will eat only once.

While I have racks of canned goods stored, One MRE keeps me going all day and I have a very decent amt of them as it stands now.

We don't have any kids so it would be split equally as far as calories go. As for producing more food post TEOTWAWKI, today I am getting top soil for our garden out back so we will be good on that for a while. So far we have grown with success, Corn, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce and basil. We will try some other stuff as well once we have the dirt in this area in the back yard and see what we come up with.

I have food for us until next harvest. I hav seeds saved, so we can grow them next spring , for the following years supply. I have goats for dairy and chickens for meat and eggs.dh and I , have been thinking of this for a long time. It has taken a few years, but we have wood now, for heating , as well as for cooking, with propane back up. and two wood lots.
I think people must get ready to be on their own for a long while. IF we have another cane, or a terrorist attack, this country will stand still. It is up to each family to make the arrangements, to take care of your family.

A couple of things

The people in the pictures found here are basically on their own for quite a while.
http://cryptome.org/rita-01/rita-01.htm

It takes a while to load, but puts quite a face on the disaster that his hit our country.

There are a couple of things I noticed. Water is everywhere, drinking water is in short supply everywhere. I think a brush up on construction of solar stills and a prep. kit of a steam distiller is a must have for any prepper, in addition to the water filters and jugs.

The despair in their faces is a harbinger of things to come.

I pretty much have the means to survive for 2-3 months. Beyond that I have amassed enough data to transition to a more mobile hunter/gatherer mode (at which point my vegetarianism would likely go out the window). The scenario that most worries me is a convergence between an economic collapse (brought on by Peak Oil, govenmental economic mismanagement, or god-knows-what) and some highly virulent enviromental pathogen that could persist for years (avian flu) and thus prevent that transition. At that point it seems that the only people who would do well are the ones that are living in a very isolated, well-stocked, and environmentally contained setting. If those people who have acreage are afraid to utilize it for fear of dying from a random sneeze from a sparrow (do sparrows sneeze?) things could get really interesting.

One of the most important things that can be said here:

Get out of the cities.

You address short term survival first, before addressing the long term.

In your scenario, before the first week is even out, there's going to be rioting, looting, rape, blood in the streets and anarchy. You MUST assess and prioritize your threat levels, and eating is going to be a preppers lower concern at first. If your unable to secure your area of operations and perimeters, long term plans are moot.

Houston demonstrated that MOST preppers "bug out" plans are unviable. Not one prepper I knew who lives in the city, who's plan A is to "bug out", did so on 911. IF that event didn't get a person headed for their retreat, their plans seem to me to be undoable. People who plan on bugging out will usually miss their window of opportunity. Houston showed us evacuees weren't securing their situation, they were at best making themselves refugees, and at worst making themselves targets to be victimized.

If you can make it hunkering down thru the first week or two, other options are going to open up to you. Try to lay low and let the herd cull itself out. let things settle, then assess where you are at. THose preps you have now are buying you OPTIONS on decision making, and should be giving you a advantage that most republican/democrat sheeple don't have available to them.

momof23goats said:

I have food for us until next harvest. I hav seeds saved, so we can grow them next spring , for the following years supply. I have goats for dairy and chickens for meat and eggs.dh and I , have been thinking of this for a long time.

Click to expand...

Mom, you are luckier than most.....but, what if things were really bad? When will you ration and how will you know how to do it?
This is what I am looking for...rationing food.......knowing how many calories you need and who needs extra and when....
We all have preps, hopefully, but they won't last forever. We may need them to last much longer than we had originally planned for.

We have over a year's worth of food for six in storage ... probably a lot more actually.

We have all this acerage located out here in the middle of nowhere where we live.

We've got a pond full of fish and a lake even fuller if we care to hike a couple of miles over to Lake Murray.

We've got three wells .. all of which we can pull water out of in any number of ways.

We've got a small armory and family members that know how to use the stuff.

I feel good about our situation.

Now, if it were to be a dirty bomb in Atlanta let's say, with fallout and all that stuff that floats easterward and directly over us like most storms do it seems ... that would change things. But anything other than that, we are pretty well prepared and we could last indefinitely.

We've got a nurse in the family ... we've got a small hospital's worth of medical supplies. We've got food covered. We've got educational material for the kids covered. We've got shelter covered. We've got the animals covered. Protection is covered short of a small war. We've got freshair covered. Property is paid for. We work out of our home so that would last as long as it would last and then we'd move on to something else if need be ... selling apples on the streetcorner or perhaps just existing within our family unit, who knows.

The one thing I worry about some time is pain killers. We've got the usual stuff. But if something more were needed for whatever reason ... small surgeries, internal problems, etc., I do worry about pain killers. Modern day, or even old timey remedies such as cocaine and/or heroine ... that stuff is not exactly something you want to have on hand regardless of your excuse for having them. If I am hit with trygliceride induced pancreatitis ... pain killers save my life. I've got the prescription drugs saved up for a few months or more worth ... but the pain killers, or lack thereof, could be a problem.

I wonder how others address this sort of thing?

Poppies are an indiginious species around here. I've wondered at times that if things are knocked back to another age in terms of medical availability, etc., if these North American poppies could be cultivated into pain killers of any sort?

Touchy subject I know. But you'd have to depend on pain killers once in a blue moon to save your life to understand.

Russ

Worrier King said:

You address short term survival first, before addressing the long term.

In your scenario, before the first week is even out, there's going to be rioting, looting, rape, blood in the streets and anarchy. You MUST assess and prioritize your threat levels, and eating is going to be a preppers lower concern at first. If your unable to secure your area of operations and perimeters, long term plans are moot.

Houston demonstrated that MOST preppers "bug out" plans are unviable. Not one prepper I knew who lives in the city, who's plan A is to "bug out", did so on 911. IF that event didn't get a person headed for their retreat, their plans seem to me to be undoable. People who plan on bugging out will usually miss their window of opportunity. Houston showed us evacuees weren't securing their situation, they were at best making themselves refugees, and at worst making themselves targets to be victimized.

If you can make it hunkering down thru the first week or two, other options are going to open up to you. Try to lay low and let the herd cull itself out. let things settle, then assess where you are at. THose preps you have now are buying you OPTIONS on decision making, and should be giving you a advantage that most republican/democrat sheeple don't have available to them.

Click to expand...

Worrier....your scenario will be covered in a later post. Right now we are looking for rationing. How will you know when this is going to be necessary? What plans do you have for stretching the supplies you have?

LilRose said:

How will you ration food for your family? How long will it take you to realize that you need to start rationing? What would you feed them, how much and why? How would you assess how much you had, how many calories a day you can get away with? How would you stretch it to make it last longer? Which family members would get more calories and why?

OK folks....have at it!

Click to expand...

Its just DH and I.

Start by cutting my meals in half. I would keep DH's meals the same. We Americans typically eat too much.
I would start rationing after about 2 weeks, depending on what's happening.
I would make a lot of soups and breads, beans, rice, pasta (very filling, very cheap)
I would show DH EXACTLY what I had on hand. Most guys just want food on the table, and dont know exactly whats in the pantry, etc...
I would give DH a lot more calories than me. He's a tall thin guy (needs to gain some weight). I'm smaller, and could stand to lose a few pounds. He does a lot more of the physically demanding work too.

I have enough food to last me a long, long time plus I have been saving seeds.
I have the means of making rain water from my rain barrel into drinking water
or use the water to water the garden. I also have the means to protect
what I have so it isn't taken.

I have gallons of rice, noodles, flour, sugar and all pastas stored in five gallon drums as well as a full freezer plus vegetables and fruits that I have dehydrated. I have enough canned goods for an indefinite period of time. . I also
have 546 lbs of dog food stored plus if I ran out there I could make my own. I rotate all of my food preps which I keep on a spread sheet.

I could and will last a long time when it is necessary. Since I am single I only have to ration myself.

I don't talk the talk without walking the walk.

Great post ,Lilrose. Question--are you suggesting the whole USA in the same predicament or just isolated areas like we have now. Although what is happening down south is definitely affecting us all they still have it much worse than the rest of us.

What comes to my mind immediately when I hear people talk about gardens, livestock for meat and milk and chickens for eating and eggs---how would you keep it all from being taken from you by the hungry?? When would you sleep--how would you ever be able to leave for any reason unless you had a bunker and armed guards all of the time!!!! For some that might work but for others they are on their own when protecting what they have.

Then we have the hunters that think they are going to live off of the land. Well, we hunt and I know that if everybody that is hungry started hunting there wouldn't even be a sparrow left flying around.

I am not trying to run down the things that you are talking about. We have gone the same road. We bought acreage, raise animals, garden, we store and prep, we have self protection, wells, generators etc etc etc. and still it doesn't seem to be enough. Evidently prepping is a constantly evolving thing-no matter how much a person does there are new things to do. Probably the very first and most important thing to do is to get out of debt!!!!!!! Then there are more funds available for other things.

This should be a very interesting thread that you have started.

wasabell said:

Its just DH and I.

Start by cutting my meals in half. I would keep DH's meals the same. We Americans typically eat too much.
I would start rationing after about 2 weeks, depending on what's happening.
I would make a lot of soups and breads, beans, rice, pasta (very filling, very cheap)
I would show DH EXACTLY what I had on hand. Most guys just want food on the table, and dont know exactly whats in the pantry, etc...
I would give DH a lot more calories than me. He's a tall thin guy (needs to gain some weight). I'm smaller, and could stand to lose a few pounds. He does a lot more of the physically demanding work too.

Click to expand...

Excellent Wasabell....good thinking!
I agree that after about 2 weeks if no improvement in the situation was on the horizon, I would start serious rationing. Beans are very filling and have good nutirion so we would be getting a lot of bean stews and soups. My canned meats would be eaten only every third or 4th day. I was thinking about this scenario a few months ago and decided to can all my meat in pints instead of quarts because if there is no refrigeration there would be no loss or waste.
More oatmeal and whole grains.....barley and kamut. Things that are filling but don't need a lot to fill you up. Soak the grains overnite so they require less cooking time.

cvk said:

Great post ,Lilrose. Question--are you suggesting the whole USA in the same predicament or just isolated areas like we have now.
This should be a very interesting thread that you have started.

Click to expand...

For discussions sake, let's say we are all in the same boat....we will talk about dealing with looters in a different thread.
So, CVK, how and when will you ration?

Roxann said:

I don't talk the talk without walking the walk.

Click to expand...

You GO GIRL!!!!!!!!

We probably have close to 2 years worth of food for 2 people if we could use everything in the freezer (or can it up). My thought is that we would go to rationing fairly quickly, since you don't know how long the problem will last. My GF has lost a lot of weight and is at a maintenance level, while I have a lot that I could lose. She eats a lot less than I do (obviously).

I would probably do something like oatmeal or toast for breakfast, a decent lunch with meat, carb and veggie, and a dinner of soup and crackers or bread, with an occasional snack of fruit. Limit desserts to once every couple of weeks or so (I have lots of mixes). Obviously if we were working outside a lot, there would need to be more food for energy and strength.

I have a small (very small) square foot garden and have raised tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, squash and broccoli. Lots of bugs in Florida and the temps are really high, so I have a hard time, especially over the summer. I have lots of seeds and this would provide some fresh veggies, but not enough to can for later. If I was really worried about long term (ie-wheat crop destroyed, famine predicted) we would work the long term stuff in from the beginning, meaning the wheat and rice and dehydrated stuff. If we went over 6 or 7 months, we would also be using our stored foods to feed the pets, as we only have that much stored for them because of space limitations.

Hi LilRose,

This is a great idea!

I have thought for a long time that some rethinking of our way of eating needs to be done for times when we will need to rely on our preps. Instead of 3 BIG meals a day with a main dish, side dishes and dessert, we should be thinking of each of those components as potential meals. Perhaps we should be focusing on stretching our prep foods, especially if we are in a situation of unknown duration. Instead of thinking up ways to cater to finicky eaters, we should be thinking that there will be no place for fussy appetites or particular diets and educate those in our families that might be problem eaters. I am a vegetarian, but I am aware that there MAY come a time when I would have no choice. However, I think that my vegetarian diet is more sustainable than a meat centered diet. I can forage and garden, though I am completely aware that a harvest is highly dependant upon the weather. We would continue to eat carefully, even in gardening months, until there was a harvest in storage. I think - and this is strictly my own speculation - that animals, either home raised or in the wild are susceptible to many of the same ills and fates that we are and may become scarce or unsafe to eat. Fish might be a safer option, but they would be susceptible to water contamination and weather problems.

We will not ration food, but from the moment that we begin to rely solely on our prep foods we will be careful about how much we eat. If we are sedentary as in a housebound situation we will eat less than we will if we are out and about the property and doing physical labor. The one who is using more energy will get larger portions. We are not big "snackers" and we will snack even less. What would be considered a snack will become a meal. A slice of bread or a few crackers, some dried fruit, a handful of peanuts. I don't think that many of us will have the time or resources to calculate whether or not we are getting the RDA of every nutrient in the proper combination.

Many people will be in for some hard lessons, children that will only eat MacDonald's, for example, will soon learn to eat a bowl of rice or a potato and if they are lucky they will have some beans with it. I have a nephew that will get very hungry...

As others have stated before, mental preparedness is a very important part of prepping and that is especially true of eating differently in times of emergency. I know there are some here that are prepared to eat exactly as they do now, but I think that a lesson that we should all learn from the hurricanes is that no matter how well you are prepped it could all be gone in a moment. Years worth of groceries will do none of us any good underwater or blown to kingdom come.

Hard words for potentially hard times...

spinner

LilRose,

I was also thinking (Danger!, Will Robinson!) that if we could drink more water, it would help fill us up faster. Especially with something like cornbread. That'll blow you up. Didn't they used to do that, especially during the Depression, for the kids? Have them drink a glass of water 1/2 hour before dinner so they wouldn't eat so much?

I'm not recommending we do that to kids nowadays, but if it truly is TSHTF, it may be better than having them go to bed with empty bellies. At least they'll feel full.

Ruckmanite, the link says "Forbidden" you do not have permission to enter this site.

I do believe that "self-suffiency" will take on a new meaning in his country. For many it will mean gtting up to speed on preparing their famiies to deal with what ever comes next. For a few it will mean getting in more alcohol and smoking material and a few videos. Then there will be that small percentage that will try to take whatever they want/need from others that did bother to prepare.

As you prepare it might be better to NOT indicate how well you are prepared. We have already heard on tis forum as well as othersthat some co-workers and DGI relatives have said they were going to someone's house where hey knes there were preps made in advance.

When I was a kid we never had a great deal of money but we always had food and much of that was canned and stored for the future. My mother and grandmother put up applesauce, peachs, pears, beans of different types, corn, yams, and tomatos and many other items either from the garden or produce places nearby.

During WW2 we had a Victory Garden and my small section had mostly radishes. has anyone here ever eaten a radish sandwich? You spread oleo on a slice of bread, place sliced radishes on it and either fold it over or add a second slice of bread. Not as good as PB&J but not bad either.

don't forget to add grains to those legumes to make complete proteins
lentils are good, but add rice and they make a complete protein

Like Roxann, I live alone, with dogs.
I won't have a problem rationing, as I've learned how to discipline myself, as far as eating goes.
Also, I'm satisfied with a can of corn, or one ramen noodles pkg. for a meal.
I think it's easier, in a way, for those of us who live alone to ration. It's hard when you have lots of food stocked, to have others complaining about being hungry, or just helping themselves.
The main complaint I hear from friends who try to prep, is their husbands/kids eating their stocked up canned fruit, chunky soups, or dinty moore stews while they're gone.

My answer to when I would begin to ration is this--the second that I am unable to replenish what I am using!!!!!!! In other words if I go out and get a deer and they are still walking around my house I won't ration my meat. If my garden is producing I will eat as much as I want as long as I have enough to also store. If for any reason we begin to use and cannot replace then we will cut back immediately to only what is necessary for our activity level at the present time. Seems that we would need at least 2,000 calories each while we are making wood, gardening etc. while somebody in town in an apartment getting little exercise would need alot less.

Well, Rose, my wife and I live next to a very clean lake, with ample fishing opportunities to supplement the stock we have, which I think would last at least six months between the two of us. Stretching that would only have to happen under circumstances where resupply or supplements could not be obtained, either safely or at all. Where we are, this should not be of concern, unless many things all went wrong simultaneously, in which case we're screwed anyway.
A great deal of the answer to your 'when would you know to start rationing' would depend on the season. Our plan has always been to hunker down and not leave the res for about thirty days, allowing things to settle somewhat. If, however, we were doing this in the winter (here in Canada!!) then we'd be hunkered down for longer than that, which would change the rationing equation in various ways.
Careful attention to consumption, resupply as necessary/possible.

Stay away from the cities!

Even though I have a years+ of food, I would start my rationing from day one, as I would not know how long the current situation would last. The two males in the household would get more calories than the females as I plan on working them alot harder and expect more out of them.

I plan on two meals a day and two light snacks a day to keep the energy levels up. I would rotate through my foods using a combination of dried and canned food combinations and save the MRE's until absolute last as they can be packed up and taken on hunting trips by the males.

I also plan to continue supplimenting my stash with foods grown on my land in warm weather. We should be able to continue our growing of food (berries, fruits, vegies) and add rabbits, deer and what ever else wanders by. I am not eating my laying hens unless they were the only source of food for miles and weeks. I would try hatching out eggs and adding the eggs and extra chickens to my meals.

The person/people doing the most physical work would get the most food. It's that simple to me.

Btw, I found it VERY interesting that the Glenn Beck radio show yesterday spent a great deal of time on the value of preparedness. In fact, he went so far as to say that even a year's worth of food wasn't good enough unless you have seeds in storage to grow more food. {good food for though}

Thanks for pointing out that many, or most, of the MRE's in this country have been used in these storms. That hadn't sunk in with me.

Options I have (depending on where I've positioned myself or got caught at) in this case assuming I'm in my city residence:

Before reducing caloric intake, you can actually increase caloric intake by eating "less healthy" ie: those fats we used to strain off bacon or canned meats will be left on and consumed. Kids won't notice, might even help them with french fry withdrawl... LOL. There will certainly be no more "leftovers" that ever end up spoiling.

Leave a little more fat on hunted/trapped game and make better use of organ meat, bone marrow and other consumable innards. More broths. Stray domestic pets unkown to your mutual assistance group become fair game, as do pigeons, squirrels, etc.

Start leaving the skin on veggies, ex: don't peel those potatos. Eat the seeds from edible produce that aren't saved to be replanted. Compost acquiring, pay more attention to no fat organic material that can be used as compost.

You can also try to expend LESS energy instead of rationing.

As you secure your AO, take inventory of whats locally available by whats been left behind by those who "bugged out" months before. Yes, this means going onto other peoples ABANDONED "private"property. In most cases, it wasn't "their" property anyways, it was the BANKS or a CORPORATIONS, and bankers were a prime cause for this meltdown. Your the one who's making a stand in that AO, they are either with you, against you, or not present. That includes dealing with the "authorities" the republican/democrat sheeple inflicted upon us with their idiot "voting" taht created this mess. At this point the rule of law is broken, the thin veneer of civility has vanished, and most people are leaving their psychological ethics and "religion" behind, merely trying to satisfy physiological requirements. Its a fair bet those 10's of millions of "evacuees" who left the urban area left quite a bit of calories behind them.

No matter how ethical or religious you think you are, you can all take this to the bank: as available calories become more sparse, people will become MORE AGGRESIVE in fulfilling physiological needs.

yellowsprings said:

The two males in the household would get more calories than the females as I plan on working them alot harder and expect more out of them.

Click to expand...

Why?

Are the females too young/old and frail to work?

My rule is simple: If you don't work, you don't eat.

Wow, each and every one of you guys have such wonderful ideas! You noticed I sat back and sucked up all those ideas before I posted.

If things were bad enough that food was "temporarily" rationed, it would set off alarms to me that temporary often has a way of becoming permanent. Don't know if we'd eat as usual for a while, and then start figuring what we have and how long we can make it last, or just start right from the beginning with household rationing. It would cause major hard feelings if we rationed and Splicer quietly finished someone else's portion of Death By Chocolate ice cream.

If food rationing happens, the first week I'll just spend in a corner curled in a fetal position babbling, food, foood, we need food. After that, Splicer will nudge me with the toe of his boot and see if it's safe to speak, and will ask where the food inventory sheet is. I'll tell him, and remember the times I used something that I didn't mark off, and try to remember if I replaced it.

The realization has already hit that Splicer has no conscience when it comes to food, and he will look out for number 1. Though statistically speaking, he and DS would need the most calories, stress and extra work might speed up my metabolism so that I'd burn more calories. But, we'd probably start out with them getting the most, and alter the plan as time passed and we saw who was doing the most work, requiring more calories,

The minimum daily requirements would need to be considered since different vitamins are more important to one sex, age group, etc. It would be nice to have the requirements printed out ahead of time so if you were short of a particular thing, to allocate that to the most needy.

Spinner, I like your idea of rethinking the way we eat, and the point about picky children. Most parents will now have to deal with problems as a result of that.

Brutus, your point about leaving the cities could be one of the best ideas presented for stretching food. And if you don't work,you don't eat is a good policy that should be implemented in every home.

It might even be a good idea now for parents to accustom their children to not having snacks while watching t.v. with a remark that the more you do, the more you need, and when you're just sitting, it's not healthy to just have whatever you desire. A small step taken now might make it easier on the little ones later, and accustom them to associating lack of physical effort means you get less.

Wasabell,it's interesting you mentioned that about the cornbread and water. I believe people traveling long distances at one time mixed meal with water and just chugged it down to fill their stomachs. And a full stomach for children will add greatly to the comfort of everyone. And, from what I've read, cornbread and milk, or water, was often the only thing some had to eat during the depression.

Vere My Sone, your suggestion about the complete protein is good, too, and it's all also very filling.

Worrier King, you make a good points too. At some point, nutrition is going to take
a back seat to simply filling your body with food. And fats and sugars will be needed for energy.

I'd hope that we'd implement right away, a method to stretch food. For example ...one chicken. In a family of 3 or 4, a Sunday dinner could consist of a drumstick or thigh for the two members needing the most, with the wings for the other two. Half of the breast could be used for chicken and noodles, the other half for chicken
gravy over mashed potatoes, The back, ribs, and giblets could be used for another
meal of chicken soup, with the skimmed fat being used for dumplings.

Anyone have any ideas about stretching, say, a roast, hamburger, or another food?

If you go back through crisis periods in history, after maybe six months trade was restablished. Personally I think there will be some semblance of trade in less than a year no matter what. Now you might have a very different lifestyle.....corn and soybeans as staples at a high price, and one family in each room of a house sharing the kitchen and bathroom, for example.

What you need to do is be ready to lay low for months, and then be mentally adaptable to a whole new way of ( third world) living.

I am within biking distance of silos full of feed corn for cows......if the farmers can actually keep on farming ( seeds? fertilizer? diesel fuel? no fallout ?) the corn will go a long way for many people. We have plenty of items to barter.

exe, I was wondering why one mre kept you going. Is that because of the calories, the bulk, that it tastes so bad you don't want more, or what? That's one thing that we don't store. Wondering if it's something to be reconsidered. Definitely sounds like it would stretch food if you only needed one.

When to start is the hardest part to answer. Assuming to grid stays up we have a couple of years worth. With the drought this year and all of you scaring me some I put in a two year garden, doubled the size of what we eat in a year so if the garden fails next year, we would have what we stored this year. This means in the coming years we will be eating canned vegtables that are a year old. I have to buy hundreds of extra canning supplies for this.

After reading the article about the other country's eating habbits, I realized we could eat alot less meat. I would start by rationing the amount of meat eaten each day and supplement our diet with more vegtables. I would also try to find some chicks or grown birds to raise. Also I would try to find some goats or a cow if I could quickly at just about any price because the milk would be so nice to have. Mare's milk is scanty in comparison.

I know what I have on hand including calories divided into general protien, fat and simple and complex carbs. If we are extremely active we horse and I need about 8,000 calories a day which allows us to gain weight and build muscle. Surprisingly we have a tendency to lose weight being extremely active, generally too tired to cook and eat. We need 6,000 calories being active and 4,000 being sedentary. We could go down to 2,000 calories per day, but we both lose weight and as I stands now we don't have it to lose. I purposely gained 20 lbs.

person.......................Horse, 6'4" 220 lbs...................Hammer, 5'2" 110...................
...................................................................................................................................
extreme active...........5,500 calorie per day......2,500 per day.................8,000.........
...................................................................................................................................
very active..................4,000...............................2,000.............................6,000.........
...................................................................................................................................
active...........................3,000...............................1,000.............................4,000..........................................................................................................................................
survival mode...............1,500..................................500..............................2,000......
...................................................................................................................................
What I don't know how to realistically do this is how to prevent theft of the garden and fruit trees? I guess this would be a source of protien?

splicerswife, don't forget that bone marrow in those chicken bones. Vitamin A, protein, fat and IRON.

Also, a lot of people seem to think there's going to be a great amount of WORK to be done. Very possibly so, but do people think maybe NOT? The amount of energy your expending, and calories being burned have to be justified. Whats the return your getting on that energy your expending? Is it returning yoiu additional energy back? If so, go for it. But the conditioned American response is to "get out and do something". But if your well prepped in advance, at a certain point other than your initial event actions to exploit what opportunites or resources exist, there will be a lot of situations were it would be better to expend less energy, remain low and not make a spectacle of yourself, just generally taking it easy and trying to relax. Especially if its winter, for example your NOT going to be cultivating gardens/fields. Also, if your going to do big projects, plan it for when the crops are coming in and game is more abundant, NOT when your foods dwindling and your 6 or 7 months away from your first harvest.

If there was a pregnant woman in the group, maybe the men need to cool some of the macho, non-productive activites that gives them a appetite. If your hunting and trapping a lot, you need to be bringing equal or more calories back to the table than what your consuming.

One more thing to make this realistic...about 2 or 3 weeks into such a crisis, I fully expect a gaggle of relatives to descend on me.

If I had a moat full of gators and could pull up the draw bridge I can easily feed my immediate family for a year. We decided about 8 weeks ago that it was prudent to keep a 3 month pantry above and beyond the survival stores. So we will eat relatively normally for months...baring an endless parade of relatives and friends showing up at the door. No real changes to our diets till we have to dig into the survial freeze dried stuff and grain stores somewhere around 3 months after the onset of a crisis.

Now a lot of hungry neighbors around while we are well fed is recipie for our deaths, I am afraid. Maybe not the neighbors, but the fringes of their circles. I am now trying to refine some sort of action plan. A few thoughts concerning the neighbors...

1) Have bulk foods that can be handed out easily. Rice, beans, wheat.

2) Be an organizing force behind getting the neighborhood (this is a rural neighborhood, 6 miles from the nearest town) to hunt, fish and trap and then presserve every bit of meat protien we don't consume. Plenty of deer, turkey, fish, frogs, pheasant within a mile or two of all of us. Hopefully we won't be hunted out and having to hunt cats, dogs and rodents.

3) Be an organizing force behind gardening and small farming, both off season in peoples indoor window boxes and sun rooms and in their yards/gardens in the spring. I have a lot of seeds and intend to help everyone to use them to feeding themselves.

4) Set up a barter system immediately. Yes, give extras intially to those in need, but work with people to trade what they have for what I have extra. In most cases I am going to probably not be needing what the other neighbors have to trade, so will trade for labor in the garden, canning, pulling guard duty, fixing stuff that I can't, etc.

5) Do my part to instill a sense of communitee and "we all survive together or none of us do." Do what ever I can to make people feel a part of each other and help everyone check up on everyone else that is within walking distance. Quickly start a neighborhood prayer time which may grow into some kind of neighborhood church. Quickly see to it that the children are educated via homeschool. Quickly engage the youth in the neighborhood in such a way that they are vital to the communitees survival. Quickly engage some of everyones skill sets so that everyone feels and is a part of everyone elses survival.

Now I know the risks in getting others involved in our survival. This has been hashed out many times on this board prior. For me, and my family, I can't conceive of how to survive the fall of the empire without a community. I would not be able to stand before my Lord without trying to feed ...the least of these, my bretheran.

Consider growing amaranth. Great people food and animals will thrive on it too.

45Lb buckets of seed from Walton Feed.

Worrier King said:

splicerswife, don't forget that bone marrow in those chicken bones. Vitamin A, protein, fat and IRON.

Also, a lot of people seem to think there's going to be a great amount of WORK to be done. Very possibly so, but do people think maybe NOT? The amount of energy your expending, and calories being burned have to be justified. Whats the return your getting on that energy your expending? Is it returning yoiu additional energy back? If so, go for it. But the conditioned American response is to "get out and do something". But if your well prepped in advance, at a certain point other than your initial event actions to exploit what opportunites or resources exist, there will be a lot of situations were it would be better to expend less energy, remain low and not make a spectacle of yourself, just generally taking it easy and trying to relax. Especially if its winter, for example your NOT going to be cultivating gardens/fields. Also, if your going to do big projects, plan it for when the crops are coming in and game is more abundant, NOT when your foods dwindling and your 6 or 7 months away from your first harvest.

If there was a pregnant woman in the group, maybe the men need to cool some of the macho, non-productive activites that gives them a appetite. If your hunting and trapping a lot, you need to be bringing equal or more calories back to the table than what your consuming.

Click to expand...

Worrier King, great idea on the chicken bones. The scenario I envision for having to use a lot of energy, is splittingwood.Though it's cut and stacked, not all is split into smaller pieces and was thinking a fire would burn more efficiently if cut smaller. If wrong, maybe someone will correct me. But, if a fire is needed for cooking those bones, it's going to take some energy to produce it.

That's a good point about not expending more energy than it will than it will return, and doing it before your foods are dwindling.Very good point. That alone would conserve food.

Notred, what good ideas. Knowing a few are very likely to descend upon us is probably in the minds of many, and if we allow it, food would have to be planned carefully. Your idea of beans, wheat, and rice are wonderful. I've often thought of keeping a pot of bean soup,or scotch broth simmering for situations like that. A slice of bread would even stretch the soup. Sometimes people can be a lot more reasonable after they've had something to eat. Other times, .......well, I guess I don't want to think of the other times.

Great idea on amaranth, Oreally; it even grows wild in many places. How would you use it to extend your food? Grind it for breads, or what?

splicerswife said:

exe, I was wondering why one mre kept you going. Is that because of the calories, the bulk, that it tastes so bad you don't want more, or what? That's one thing that we don't store. Wondering if it's something to be reconsidered. Definitely sounds like it would stretch food if you only needed one.

Click to expand...

GEE SPLICERSWIFE....MRE'S are actually tasty..I was leary of them till hubby opened one and made me taste it. Now, I consider them a welcome addition, should we be on the run or weren't able to cook.

Worrier King said:

Before reducing caloric intake, you can actually increase caloric intake by eating "less healthy" ie: those fats we used to strain off bacon or canned meats will be left on and consumed. Kids won't notice, might even help them with french fry withdrawl... LOL. There will certainly be no more "leftovers" that ever end up spoiling.

Leave a little more fat on hunted/trapped game and make better use of organ meat, bone marrow and other consumable innards. More broths. Stray domestic pets unkown to your mutual assistance group become fair game, as do pigeons, squirrels, etc.

Click to expand...

Remember not to deplete your fat stores too quickly. This is the one item that will be the hardest to replace in a survival situation. Unless you have a cow and can get cream to make butter, fat is going to be at a premium.
But, I like the idea of going ahead and eating hte fat that you would normally throw away, like bacon fat and the fat on a pork chop. Those calories will be worked off later anyway. Get those calories while you can.