IMO a generator for the fridge is a waste. Spend $1500 to save $250 worth of food. OK for hurricanes but not for survival type situations. Being without electricity sucks in Florida but they just use too much fuel for long term usage.
We use the canned goods option since we’ll eat the stuff anyway. Planning to buy some freeze dried foods though.
The grill and extra tanks are good. I used that during the hurricanes so we could eat something hot. Planning to get a bigger tank and keep it full.
I agree. Non perishable foodstuffs and the ability to cook is far better. I imagine that the generator idea would be better in a compound/camp designed for survival, with serious fuel storage capabilities.
One thing we did in FL was buy battery operated fans. Not practical for long periods, but a very welcome luxury with no power for five days.
>>> “IMO a generator for the fridge is a waste. Spend $1500 to save $250 worth of food. OK for hurricanes but not for survival type situations. Being without electricity sucks in Florida but they just use too much fuel for long term usage.”
Good point. Plus a noisy generator can draw unwelcome attention. There ARE propane-powered refrigerators, tho I can offer no personal experiences with them.
I agree with you.
ALL of my emergency provisions are of the canned or dried variety.
Indeed, I won’t even purchase any frozen foods unless they are on sale, and unless I can seriously say to myself that if it thawed out and had to be tossed away, that it would not upset me.
So of course I don’t own a freezer.
And in the small freezer that is part of the refrigerator, I have at least half of it filled with large frozen blocks of ice — I slowly freeze small quantities of water in used wax cartons, of the kind which Florida Orange Juice is sold in.
I never worry on the occasions when the power goes out, because I’ve never even had the tiny ice cubes melt, so whatever food I have in there, admittedly little, can’t possibly go bad, as it stayed VERY cold the entire time with all those “giant” blocks of ice.
I’ve read so many disaster stories online where people find all their freezer goods thawed out. Unfortunately many of these online accounts include how they simply re-froze everything, and that it was all still “good.”
Those kind of stories scare me enough that I don’t like to eat food from people who own large storage freezers, there are simply too many stories about RE-freezing all that food which experts claim should be destroyed.