Sequential food storage – Part 2 Assessing your family’s needs.

N/A | Dec 17, 2010 | Doctor Prepper

[Doctor Prepper]

Introduction.

Part one of these articles introduced the concept of sequential food storage. This will deal with how you can assess your lifestyle so that if the TSHTF you will have a relatively new stock of food and supplies that will be useful to you and your family.

Some have compared this process to doing the laundry. It is an ongoing process that is vital to you and your family’s survival in an emergency.

I realize that it’s that this isn’t as interesting as it could be, but as Napoleon Bonaparte once said “An army marches on its stomach”. It won’t matter if you’ve got a rifle that chambers in .308 or .223 if you starve to death, so pay close attention.

Assessment basics.

The two most important factors in evaluating you personal situation have to be where you live and how you live.

Where you live could be the subject of a whole different thread, but the Local Population Density (LPD) and your primary domicile type (Detached dwelling, townhouse or apartment for example). Will determine what you will need to do should TSHTF, both of these factors need to be considered in your overall plan.

The LPD and type of dwelling will determine whether you can plan on sheltering in place or if you will have to evacuate as a matter of course. This alone will determine the types of foods you should stock – if chances are you are going to have to bug out, lightweight freeze-dried foods may be your choice. The downside of this is the expense and whether you will want to eat these foods in addition to increased water requirements. Conversely, if you are in rural area and have the storage space, you can stock up on regular canned and bulk foods.

Ideally, you should plan for both eventualities in the long run, but for starters, consider one or the other.

Geographical factors have to also be taken into consideration – for example, if you live in the Southwest you will need to put added emphasis on your water supply. Up North, heating supplies will be more of an issue.

The main part of this discussion will be how you live. How many times a week do you go out to dinner? How often do you prepare your own meals? These are all things to take into consideration when making you plans or adapting your lifestyle to a SHTF scenario.

The 0 –100 scale of readiness.

For the sake of discussion, we’ve decided on a 0 –100 scale to guide you in what you need to do. The higher the score, the better off you are.

Heavily urbanized areas with high Local Population Density (LPD) will be at the lower end of the scale. Rural areas with a low LPD rate higher on the scale.

The more self-sufficient you are, the higher you will be on the scale. The more you can do for yourself – growing and cooking you own food, the better. Other factors: Number of people in your family and the number of young children in the household, the possibility of extended family members or friends sheltering in place with you.

Again, this is simply a guide to so that you can begin to plan what you may need to be ready.

Clearly if the Schumer hits the fan, it would better for you to be a rural area and be as close to being a self-sufficient as possible. At the other end of the scale, if you live in densely populated area (and the population is also dense) and you couldn’t find your kitchen if you life depended upon it, the worse off you will be.

Make no mistake, you’re in big trouble if you’re used to getting your mocha fluffacino latte at the local coffee house every morning and are on a first name basis with every maitre-de in the area. This is the time to begin planning on how you would survive in an emergency situation.

Refrigerator reconnoitering, Pantry perusals.

Take a look at you kitchen cabinets and your freezer – what do you normally stock?

What types of meals do you normally have?

For various reasons you shouldn’t plan on having any type of long term refrigeration. Even if you have a generator the noise will attract unwanted attention and you can't be assured the food will be safe without power 24/7.

Again, were talking about you evaluating you own situation – but assuming that this planing is for the long term emergency, the first thing you may want to do would be clear out your freezer and have a feast. You may be able to have short periods of refrigeration to cool off a beer or two, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Take a look at what you normally eat and see how you could substitute refrigerated items for products in your pantry. Powered milk can’t compare to fresh but, as they say, it’s better than nothing is.

Adapt recipes for a more self-reliant lifestyle. Learn how to make bread and pasta from whole grain. This all about planning and adapting ahead of time and surviving.

There are calculators on the web you can use to determine what you need:

http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm.

(Thanks to FrogMom)

But remember these are just for the basic foods, you’re going to need to know how to prepare these ingredients and part of the whole reason for sequentially storing them. If you are used to preparing and eating these ingredients you will be way ahead of the game if needed.

If you can’t resist having fast food, one option would be to make you own at home and adapt it to pantry ingredients.

http://lifehacker.com/5665491/top-10-fast-food-recipes-you-can-make-at-home

Folks, it vitally important for you at least begin planning on what you should stock and how to use it to survive.

As they say, “It’s better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.”

Next week, Buying your food and supplies.

[Doctor Prepper]

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