Posted on 05/27/2022 3:56:49 AM PDT by MtnClimber
What if the lights go out this summer? How much food gets lost?
In February 2021, I wrote on the near collapse of the Texas electric grid and asked this rhetorical question: "how would you and your family like to be trapped in your car at 16 degrees below zero?"
Given that it is summertime, and the living is theoretically easy, let me ask another one. If the lights go out, how much refrigerated food will you lose? Similarly, will you be able to replace lost food?
We have all seen huge food price increases and heard media reports of the potential for massive food shortages. Among the many reasons, the Russian-Ukraine war taking out the "breadbasket of Europe" and simultaneously dramatically reducing critical fertilizers products looms large. With no end in sight, this war will significantly impact global food supplies for some time.
Other global factors are also in play. Flooding in China has had a detrimental impact on Chinese crops, and China has limited fertilizer usage in some fields. Also, China is still recovering from a dramatic loss of its swine herds due to swine flu epidemics, creating a potential protein shortage. No idea what the lockdowns will do.
India, one of the larger grain exporters, has placed severe restrictions on its exports to ensure adequate domestic food supplies. Food riots in Sri Lanka are occurring.
Globally, the prices of grains are rising dramatically, creating the potential for almost unimaginable misery among the world's poorest.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“Wild game won’t last long in a prolonged outage.”
This is a fact. Most deer would be dead within a month. Squirrels, rabbits, turkeys and anything else that moves shortly after that.
Turkeys were basically extinct in New England because of hunting in the eighth and nineteenth centuries. This was accomplished with primarily single shot black powder rifles and muskets. The human population was significantly less.
They were not repopulated until the 1970s.
Based upon our available weaponry and the fact that turkeys are not as afraid of humans, they would all be dead in a few weeks.
I bought some deep cycle batteries on Amazon and a couple of 100 W portable solar cells. I have calculated the wattage pulled by the small fridge and freezer in the garage. Should be able to keep them both going off of the batteries if power goes out. Probably cost me less than $500. I also bought two, 2 cycles generators for about $120 each. One of them will power a small window A/C unit if we are stuck without power for an extended period of time (I live in Texas). These little generators sip gas. People should plan for losing power at some point this summer.
Game meat is going to go fast. A lot of people will take up hunting who have never done it before. They'll watch a couple of YouTube videos and go out and kill wild game. They won't be very good at it. They won't know how to properly dress their kills so a lot of meat will go wasted. Wounded animals will die untouched by amateur hunters sho shot them and didn't know how to track them.
Nonetheless, they'll rapidly disappear.
Those untold millions of Canadian geese? They'll disappear as well.
Eventually, dogs and cats will vanish and before you know it, you can't recall the last time you've even seen a squirrel.
And then your neighbors will disappear.
My portable generator will keep my refrigerator going for two days at least. I can connect my Traeger to the generator too.
I have an old Swing-A-Way can opener that I bought with green stamps back in the late 70’s. It still works better than any of the modern manual ones.
Never had a problem with my trusty P38. Veterans know what I’m talking about.
When you don’t have real milk available, I bet some evaporated milk (in a can) would work as a substitute.
By the way, your recipe sounds just like my Mama’s. I watched her do it a hundred times growing up.
While stationed in Alaska back in 1969, we were told to always keep two wool blankets, two cans of Sterno, matches and hard candy in the car in case we got stopped in winter.
I have always remembered and kept that advise.
For home use if the power goes out I am prepared with oil lamps. If I lose natural gas, I have propane backup I can use.
Lack of food isn’t the problem.
Remember the Rule of Threes? You can live for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food.
Water delivery from water towers is gravity-fed but the water utility needs electricity to replenish the supply, and what’s in the towers won’t last forever.
All the food in the world won’t do you much good if you’re dying from dehydration, and as we saw with the toilet paper hoarding at the beginning of The Plandemic, most of the sheeple will default to Panic Mode at the first sign of a natural disaster.
The moral of this story is, be sure to stockpile water enough to outlast your food.
I know what your talking about!
There is nothing to worry about. I will just go to the grocery store to get food. Duh.
Since reading this post a few hours ago, I’ve been looking up small, solar, or wind generators to power essentials. Fridge, freezer, electric frying pan, small AC maybe. I’ve read a lot but since I’m not an electrician I don’t understand how these small units get connected to the items I’d like to turn on.
Who among us has wisdom to share on these matters?
Not gas or propane generators - just solar or wind.
Is what I’m looking for possible to do? Can you do it yourself if you’re not experienced?
Thanks for any helpful input.
I usually keep an extra or two; but I’ve only had to replace one I was using once in 15 years.
I remember my elderly grandmother using one of these until she was into her 80s - then we finally got her to learn the newer type:
https://images.can-opener.org/l-m/manual-metal-can-opener-side-cut-stainless-v-710204628.jpg
Maybe lose a little mayo in the fridge
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Mayo is acidic enough to survive safely.
A generator & fuel to run it. Keep the freezers full. Use frozen water made while using the generator to replace volume eaten. Smoke & dehydrate as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
Interesting note: there are You Tube videos from the Caucasus showing people canning w/o pressure over wood fires. Takes 6 hours for 4-5 quarts. So, it is being done to this day. They say the food lasts a year and it’s best if the meat contains sufficient fat to form a airtight seal under the lid.
In the Third World, it will be more like, time to eat grass.
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I have made it a point to watch food preservation videos from the 3rd world. Some are temperate, some tropical, some at high altitude.
They are using techniques used for at least a 100 years and appear accomplished and successful. The only question is what food is available to start with.
It will be the sophisticated urban dwellers of the world who graze on restaurants who will suffer. And even there, given the influx of successful 3rd worlders, I expect to see wood-fire grills in the streets cooking whatever can be found. Pigeon kabab, anyone?
Another good reference is Selco who survived in Yugoslavia during their 4 year war.
When we have an outage, first eat the ice cream.
Next, all perishable refrigerated food goes in the chest freezer. Chest freezer is the covered in blankets and sleeping bags. Every extra one we have.
We had a week long July outage and lost no food.
...a week long July outage and lost no food.
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A 5-day large plastic cooler full of frozen, dense food, will last as advertised. Good for keeping a portion of the freezer contents frozen while using the alt power to make frozen containers of water, if space is at a premium.
I save large qt yogurt containers to use for plant start cache pots/planting containers. They make good-sized ice chunks (before drainage holes are created), which fit into odd nooks in the chest freezers.
Good to insulate it as detailed above w/the chest freezer. or, dig a hole on the shadiest side of a building and bury the cooler.
With ice chunks, the 5-day cooler functions as an emergency fridge.
Went thru a nine-day mid-summer outage and with judicious moving of food between various freezers/coolers and 2-hour power use every 5-6 hours, we did fine.
But have you ensured your stove is convertible to propane, and your furnace. Most stoves are convertible and have the means to do so already on the stove. Furnace? No so sure.
Great story. Back in the day as a teenager the local gargae mechanic would allow me to borrow tools - things I had rare use for like bearing puller.
I’ve had similar “awesome assist” from strangers, events that will stick with me forever.
Flew into Mosinee, WI for business. Had not reserved a car. None available (Oshkosh fly-in underway). Hertz guy asks what am I doing there? work, fellows just across the street. He gave me use of his personal car. Would not take money.
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