Best foods to stock up on?

RicknLauraplus8 said:

The thing we keep the closest eye on in our food storage is our water. With 10 people in our family we have A LOT of it! I know that's probably not the answer you were looking for but I thought I'd give my thoughts on it. After water is canned vegetables and dry rice, to us anyways.

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Is your problem the likely shortage of ANY water or just PURE water? If just pure, I would look into purification systems, there are many different kinds researched by the military and simple systems researched by NGOs for third world use.

Our biggest worry is water. There is one spring 15 or so miles from us and the next above ground source is the Rio Grand 65 miles from here. Can't even imagine the filtering that would have to go through.

Any chance you could make some type of solar sill so you could reuse gray water instead of storing as much?

We don't stock a lot of wheat, rice or dried beans and we have no buckets of anything. We just stock regular foods and dry other things ourselves. We live in the city so storing water is very easy. We can fill empty juice or soda bottles with tap water because it is already treated. I rotate the water by drinking it when I work out. We also collect rainwater for the garden and raise both chickens and quail.

Depending on the level of preparedness that you are striving for, keep in mind that in an all out SHTF scenario, there won't be much successful hunting, even if you own your own land. Hungry people will not respect land boundaries and the countryside will be overhunted as more and more folks are forced to hunt for survival. In a general situation like a depression, hunting and fishing are a more plausible solution.

Remember, there are two issues with water, filtration and purification. While both can be fairly easy, they are different steps. Water is too valuable in any serious situation to be considered unusable. You can filter wate with lots of options. Purification requires some additional step, the simplist and cheapest of which is unscented chlorine bleach. Once you have the sediment and garbage out of the water, proper use of the bleach will do the trick. Put some resources into proper containers to do this and you will feel more confident, regardless of the size of your household.

The more creative you can be, the better you will feel and the better off you will be!

Get an old milk can and make it into a still. That will be one of the best options you can use. While it won't remove volatile chemicals, it will get most everything else out, including salts of all descriptions.

I am still a big advocate of storing large volumes of dry goods,both grains and beans. You can cook them or sprout them as long as you have water, but the storage of them is the most efficient for any long term considerations. Oils are the next most valuable item because you need them to survive,regardless of how much grain and beans you have.

Hope this helps!
Trim sends
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Sorry Trim But liquid chlorine bleach will degrade fairly rapidly and IMHO is not worth the effort rhere are tablets [based on iodine?] that take less space and weight. What would be killed by the bleach is likely th be killed by boiling [gets rid of volitiles too]. So a decent filter and a good boil leaves only toxic or unpleasent solubles to get rid off and that would require a still. The Navy used to equipt life rafts with solar stills which was just a sheet of thin plastic and instructions how to rig it. So if staring home i have my charcoal filter and my still ready to go.

What about the chlorine tabs in the pool section? Would that be a viable type or way to store chlorine?

~gd said:

Sorry Trim But liquid chlorine bleach will degrade fairly rapidly and IMHO is not worth the effort rhere are tablets [based on iodine?] that take less space and weight. What would be killed by the bleach is likely th be killed by boiling [gets rid of volitiles too]. So a decent filter and a good boil leaves only toxic or unpleasent solubles to get rid off and that would require a still. The Navy used to equipt life rafts with solar stills which was just a sheet of thin plastic and instructions how to rig it. So if staring home i have my charcoal filter and my still ready to go.

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Actually,~gd I was referring to powdered bleach rather than liquid but as you said, distillation is still the "king"
Trim sends
//BT//

Berkey water filters take out chlorine. I am looking into getting one of these.

water is key for storage. big time. you can live without food for a bit but water you are not lasting many days.

and number one rule with being prepared is not to expend too much energy to survive. traveling far distance for water is bad use of energy for the body.

when one has to truly survive....it is best to have it all in one place.


that is what I am making sure of right now. all preps needed to survive in one place.

recommended is one gallon per person per day. and then think of critters.

homemade filters can be easy as activated charcoal and then layer of sand. anything can act as a filter. gotta kill those bugs so fuel is needed for boiling water if you are using just a regular old filter system handmade.


boy, hand pumps are stinking expensive looking into those now for my well. yikes