Really Long Emergencies

For really long emergencies (many, many months maybe years) you and your family are going to need to store whole foods. Whole food are foods that haven't or barely been processed.

An example is wheat.

For short emergencies (a few weeks) storing flour is o.k. For a year-long emergency, flour will go bad before the end of the year, so you want to store wheat berries. Wheat berries will store for 30 years, if they are packaged correctly. Flour will not.

So how much?

Before I answer that question for my family, I have to tell you that I was born a survivalists. My mother and father were storing water, food, guns/ammo, modifying our family home before my brothers and sisters were born.

So, for my family, we started out with the Mormon Basic Four

365 pounds of Wheat per person
(Some folks say to store less for women and kids. I disagree because my wife works as hard as I do and the kids are going to grow-up within that 30-year shelf life)

140 pounds of Sugar per person

25 pounds of Salt per person

Boxes and Boxes of Rice and Soy Milk
(Only enough for a few months because we aren't big milk drinkers)

and

One multivitamin per family member per day for two years
(The kids get a kid's chewable and my wife and I get a generic-brand)

Next, we added to that food

150 pounds of Enriched Long Grain White Rice per person
(This is the only food, that I know of, that last longer after your process it. Brown rice will only last a few week or months before going rancid)

150 pounds of Various Dried Beans (Black, Chickpea, Small Red, and Red and Brown Lentils, so far)

We are adding more beans and rice as money allows. We will stop buying beans and rice when we have 350 pounds per person in our family.

Next, we are adding to this food.

We are buying freeze dried and dehydrated veggies. We plan to have enough to serve everyone four servings a day for one year when we are finished.

Next, we plan to add to this food.

By buying, storing, and using freeze-dried/dehydrated eggs, textured vegetable protein (TVP), and other long-term food from food storage companies like;

Walton Feed

Honeyville

Safe Castle
(I suggest paying the one-time membership fee to join Safecastle Royal)

Ready-Made Resources

and many others

Lastly, you will have to wait for the next post ; - )

Link:
Family Survivors - LDS Food Storage: Mormon Food Storage
http://familysurvivors.com/lds-food-storage.htm

P.S.
If I link to someone, I don't get anything from them unless they're family and these folks aren't family.

Longer Emergencies and Rotating Your Food

For longer emergencies (more than two-week), you and your family will want a little more variety in your meals. Just like before, all you do is prepare the meal, record the quantity of food needed for the meal, and buy the food at the local market. Lastly, you place this extra food with your other stored food.

Now, you and your family are going to have to rotate this food. If you eat the meals you have stored, you can easily rotate the food.

To rotate the stored food:

First, choose the meal you're planning to eat. Go to the local grocery, buy the food, and bring it home. Next, take this food, you just bought, and take it to your food storage area. (For me and my family, it is in the basement)

Place this new food in the back of the shelf, then take the ingredients (the older food) off the front of the shelf. Take the food from your food storage area (mine is the basement) to the kitchen and make the meal.

This method insures you and your family have fresh food and that you are eating that food.

When my wife decided to become a vegetarian, we had to re-plan our food storage. We redid our menus (taking out the meat and adding new meals) Next, we went to the store and bought the "new" types of food and started using the "new" food in our "new" meals.

Most folks ask if this was/is a big deal because the kids I still eat meat. It isn't. I add canned meat to our plates after we have cooked the main course. I also do this when the kids and I have eaten PB & J for the last three days.

I like PB & J for about three days straight. On the fourth day, I have to have something different, so we plan for this in our menus. For me, we have a very small canned ham in our food storage. I slice it up and have ham sandwiches for lunch as the kids and my wife eat PB & J, again! The extra ham is used in the next dinner, so we don't have to refrigerate it.

Expedient Water Collection, One Method

Welcome Preppers and Survivalists,

It is very important for preppers to store water, but sooner or later your family's stored water will run out, so you will need to collect water.

There are many methods of collecting water for your family to use. One of the easiest ways is to collect rainwater. In most cases, rainwater is ready to drink.

One way of collecting rainwater is to use a blue trap. Now, you don't have to use a blue tarp; you can use a sheet of plastic or a poncho to collect the rainwater.

First, you will need to collect your supplies. You will need a sheet of plastic or a tarp, 4 pieces of strong string, four poles/posts, and a bucket. Pretty simple especially if you click on the picture on the left for a larger view.

To build, sink the four posts into the ground. You need to make sure the posts go in pretty deep. The posts and the string will have to hold the weight of the rainwater and also survive any wind gusts.

Next, tie the two high corners to the post with strong string. I used 550 cord. You don't need to use 550 cord; any strong string will work. After that, tie the tarp's two lower corners to the posts. Notice I tried to form a 'V' at the bottom. The 'V' directs the water into the bucket.

If you don't have a bucket, place the posts closer together and make all four corners the same height. The tarp will hold the water until you can empty it. Make sure you use strong string because a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds (4 liters weigh about 3.6 kilos)

Possible Modifications

Poles/Posts
You don't need four poles; you just need four places close enough together to tie the string to hold the tarp up. I have used trees (watch out for leaves and sticks), a fence and two poles, and ... your imagination.

Tarp
As I wrote in the article, you can use a poncho, sheet of plastic, metal roofing, or anything that can be cleaned enough to collect water. Be reasonable with your imagination; you don't want to use anything dangerous that will leech chemicals into you collected water.

Bucket
Kiddie pools, food-grade 5-gallon buckets, a hole lined with another tarp are some of the things that could be substituted for a bucket. Heck, if you don't mind getting wet, you could fill individual canteens as the water flows down the poncho.

String
550 cord, shoe laces, an electric cord from a lamp are some substitutions. If you use wooden poles, you could use nails to hold the tarp to the poles.

Lastly, if your plastic sheet or tarp doesn't have holes along the edges (grommets), you will have to use a technique I learned from M4040's "Tarp Shelter" page.

First, lay out your tarp. Next, put a stone or rock in the corner.

After you do that, fold the corner over the rock and tie a loop around the plastic sheet

Then tie it to your post.

Yes, I know; I used a bed sheet for my explanation but it works for plastic sheeting, too.



Link:
M4040 - Home
http://www.m4040.com/

M4040 - Tarp Shelter
http://www.m4040.com/Survival/Skills/Shelter/TarpShelter.htm

Deliberate Water Storage, Part 2

Welcome Preppers and Survivalists,

A couple of weeks ago, I gave you some tips on Deliberate Water Storage. I would like to add some more information.

First, any #1 or #2 plastic beverage bottle will work; color doesn't matter. As you can see in the picture to the left, I have three soda bottles, two water bottles, and one Gatorade bottle.


Next, if you can, use only clear plastic beverage bottles. I know, I just said any color will work. That's true.

But

A clear beverage bottle will allow you to easily see the water in the bottle. When a bottle of water is exposed to light, any light, algae will start to grow. The algae will give the water a light green tint. In a green or blue bottle, you won't notice the water change color.

Next, I used a clean 48 quart cooler to disinfect my containers. First, I washed the cooler with soap and water, rinsed really well with tap water then filled with tap water. Next, I added 12 tablespoons of bleach, since 48 quarts equals 12 gallons.

If you are using your sink to disinfect bottles, you need to wash the sink with soap and water first, rinse, then fill with water and add bleach. Just like above, but watch your amount of chlorine.

Remember, 16 drops of bleach for each gallon of water.

After you make up the sterilizing solution, you need to submerge the bottles and caps (don't forget the caps) in the bleach water for 30-minutes. Make sure there are no air bubbles in the bottles. Air bubbles will allow microorganisms to survive. Yes, this includes the little itty bitty bubbles that seem to form after you have walked away because you have better things to do then look at bottles soaking in a bleach solution.

This

Not This

Next, a full five-gallon container will weigh 40 pounds (18 kg). You will need an adult or an older teen to carry it from place to place. A 2-liter bottle only weighs 4 pounds (2 kg), so a child could carry the bottle for you.

In the above photo, there are three 5-gallon containers, two jugs and one bucket. The blue jug has a neat feature. It has a spigot that is stored inside the cap, but there is a problem with the design. The cap has a recess that allows dirt and dust to collect in the cap.

To stop the possible contamination of the cap/spigot from dirt and dust, I placed some tape over the recess in the cap.

Lastly, you are going to need something to remove the water from your jugs and/or buckets because a full jug is hard to empty when it is full.

The pump on the left; I bought from Walton Feed for about $13. (You have to download the catalog then search for "pump") The pump on the right; I bought from our local farm and home store for about $3.00.

Expedient Water Storage, Part 2

Welcome Preppers and Survivalists,

In the last article about "Expedient Water Storage" I told you about places in your home to store water and collect water.

In this article, I am going to highlight a few containers you and your family can use to quickly store water during an emergency and some 'Dos and Don'ts' in water storage.

The first container is the five and six gallon white plastic bucket. Just like I mentioned in "Week Four - Food" these plastic buckets must be food-grade plastic. If you are planning to use used buckets, the buckets must have had only food in them. Some examples are cake icing, pickles, or cherries.

Another bucket is the simple water bucket for watering animals. In the above picture, it is the purple bucket; we bought it at our local Farm and Home Store.

Another container is the five-gallon water jug. If you watch sports, especially American Football, you usually see the team dumping the contents of the jug on the coaches head.

The last container, I will highlight, is the plastic picnic cooler. Most families have one or two for holding food, on ice, for camping trips, float trips, or other outdoor events.

Expedient Water Storage Containers

And this leads to my 'Dos and Don'ts.'

Do

* Identify containers that you can use in an emergency, now

* Use only clean containers

Don't

* Don't use containers that have contained nonfood items like oil, waxes, or other chemicals

* Don't use old chlorine bleach bottles for water storage. Remember, too much chlorine in your water can kill.