How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It

by James Wesley, Rawles

  • For the top cap, drill a hole in the center and insert a threaded eyebolt with lock washer and nut to hold the lifting/lowering rope. Use PVC cement to attach the pipe cap. Be sure to use sturdy nylon rope. Recovering a bucket if the rope breaks would be problematic, to say the least. In the bottom cap, drill a centered hole and install a foot valve. This will be open when floating and allow water into the bucket. The valve will automatically close when the bucket is pulled up. Foot valves (also called “check valves”) are available in PVC construction as well as brass and cast iron. Depending on the type of valve you buy, you will probably have to screw a threaded pipe adapter (male-to-male short coupling) into the top of the valve and then glue it into the appropriate-size hole that you have drilled into the end cap. Needless to say, you need to be sure that the valve’s flapper is oriented in the right direction before you attach it to the bottom cap. You need the bucket valve to hold rather than release water when the bucket is raised!

  For anyone who would rather buy a commercially made well bucket, they are available from ReadyMadeResources.com (search for “well bucket”) and from Lehmans.com (search for “galvanized well bucket”).

  Transporting Water

  You need to plan ahead for transporting your water, even if fuel for vehicles is not available. Think in terms of a two-wheel garden cart or a bicycle cargo trailer with “Slimed” tires—or better yet, foam-filled “airless” tires (available from PerformanceBike .com or Nashbar.com). A cart or trailer can be loaded with five-or six-gallon plastic buckets or water cans. Each five-gallon water can will weigh about forty-two pounds, so you’ll want a cart or trailer with at least two-hundred-pound capacity. Oh yes, and if times get really bad, then you’ll need to plan for a security detail to protect the water detail. This is starting to get complicated, isn’t it? All the more reason to get started right now!

  5

  THE DEEP LARDER Your Family’s Food Storage

  Getting Started

  TEOTWAWKI will certainly mean a disruption in food production and distribution. As you prepare, plan to have enough food stored for your family to last a year, and much longer if you can afford it. It may seem excessive, but you won’t regret it when you are able to live with a full stomach WTSHTF. Keeping a deep larder has numerous advantages. By buying in bulk, you will be eating less expensively, and you will be able to provide for your family during a crisis. Just imagine how much extra food you will need to dispense as charity to your head-in-the-sand relatives, neighbors, friends, fellow church members, and refugees, so store lots of extra food, especially wheat, rice, beans, and honey. These items are cheap now, but may be very expensive later.

  When storing foods, moderation and variety are the keys. Your staples will be dried goods such as corn, wheat, rice, and beans, but you will also need to stock up on canned fruits and vegetables, powdered milk, and lots and lots of salt. Include plenty of different foods to keep your bowels moving properly. This is a serious issue. Constipation that progresses to fecal impaction can be lethal, particularly in situations in which strong physical exertion is required.

  As you plan for your larder, it will be important for you to calculate precisely how much food you will need for each member of your family for one year. In the following list, I provide recommended quantities, but you may want to do more specific calculations based on your family’s situation. While I do not share the religious beliefs of the LDS (Mormon) church, I commend them for their food-storage philosophy, practice, and infrastructure. Your local LDS ward probably has a dry-pack cannery, and they will let non-LDS members use it on a space-available basis. Members are usually on hand to train newbies on how to operate the equipment.

  The real key to self-sufficiency is having both storage foods and the ability to grow your own grains and vegetables. If you are worried about nutritional value, then nothing beats freshly grown. You should consider storing non-hybrid seed of equal or perhaps greater importance than food storage. Growing a garden and raising livestock are the main things that will provide our sustenance in a very long-term grid-down scenario. See Chapter 7 for more details.

  What to Keep in Your Larder

  Your larder should consist of three basic categories: dried foods, canned foods, and supplementary foods. For canned goods, consistently use FIFO (First In, First Out) rotation. Always place the newest cans at the back of the shelf and move the older cans forward. Eat the oldest foods first. It’s a good idea date all of your storage foods. I use a medium-point Sharpie pen. If you have a lot of canned goods to mark, then use a date stamp. To stay current, keep a multi-year rotation calendar.

  In addition to the items mentioned in Chapter 2, here are a few more things you’ll want in your larder:

  • Canning lids and rings. Buy plenty of extras for barter.

  • Salt. Stock up in quantity, particularly if your retreat is more than thirty miles inland.

  • Sulfur for drying fruit

  • Vinegar. Buy a couple of cases of one-gallon bottles.

  • Spices

  • Baking soda

  • Yeast

  • Food-storage (freezer and vacuum) bags

  • Aluminum foil. Buy lots—there are 101 uses, including making improvised solar ovens.

  • Deer bags

  The Top Ten Essentials

  1. Salt: Salt is important to store, both for flavoring and preserving food and as a practical means to attract wild game. In many locales, natural salt licks are off-limits to hunters, since hunting there is too easy and hence not considered sporting. That ought to tell you something. I recommend that you store several times more salt than you think you’ll ever need.

  Unless you live next to a salt lick or salt marsh, I cannot overemphasize the importance of storing salt. Salt is cheap and plentiful now, but in the event of TEOTWAWKI it will be a scarce and valuable commodity in most inland regions. Salt also has a virtually unlimited shelf life. Do some research on natural salt deposits near your intended retreat. That could be quite valuable knowledge in the event of TEOTWAWKI.

  Lay in a supply of ten pounds of salt per member of your family. This figure may sound high, but, again, it includes extra for attracting wild game. The portion for cooking and table salt should be iodized.

  2. Rice: I prefer brown rice for its nutritional benefits, even though its storage life is shorter than that of white rice. The combined weight should be about thirty pounds per adult, per year. Storage life is around eight years.

  3. Wheat (or substitute grains, for celiacs): Grain storage is a crucial aspect of family preparedness. Grain may soon no longer be cheap or plentiful, so stock up. Buy 220 pounds per adult, per year. (Part of this can be in the form of pasta.) Storage life is thirty or more years. I also recommend buying plenty of extra for barter and charity.

  I do not recommend storing flour, since it keeps for only two or three years. Whole wheat stores for thirty-plus years, maintaining 80 percent or more of its nutritional value. Buy whole grains and a hand wheat grinder.

  Don’t overlook the easiest preparation method of all: soaked wheat berries. By simply soaking for twenty-four to thirty-six hours, whole grain wheat plumps and softens into “berries.” When then heated, wheat berries make a nutritious breakfast cereal.

  4. Corn: Whole corn stores much longer than cracked corn or cornmeal, so store whole corn and grind your own. Get fifty pounds per adult, per year. The storage life of whole corn is eight to twelve years, but cracked or ground corn stores only eighteen to thirty-six months.

  5. Oats: Lay in a supply of twenty pounds per adult, per year. The storage life of oats is three to seven years, depending on variety and packing method.

  6. Fats and Oils: I recommend storing primarily olive oil (frozen, in plastic bottles), mayonnaise, canned butter, and peanut butter. The combined weight of these should be about ninety-six pounds per adult, per year. (Four gallons is about twenty-four pounds.) The canned products must be continuously rotated, or else donated to charity bia
nnually. The frozen oil should also be rotated, or donated to charity once every four years.

  7. Powdered Milk: Buy the nonfat variety. Store about twenty pounds per adult, per year. For the longest storage life, it is best to buy nitrogen-packed dry milk from a storage-food vendor. That type has a shelf life of five or more years.

  8. Canned Fruit and Vegetables: It is most economical (and good practice) to can your own. As long as you rotate continuously, you should lay in a two-year supply per family member. Quantities will depend on the ratio of fruit and vegetables in your preferred diet.

  9. Canned Meats: Again, you must rotate continuously, and don’t store more than you would use in two years. I like the DAK brand canned hams.

  10. Sugars: I prefer honey (except of course for infants), but depending on your taste, you will also want to lay in a supply of sugar, molasses, sorghum, maple syrup, and various jams and jellies. The combined weight of these should be about fifty pounds per adult, per year.

  Nitrogen Packing

  Nitrogen packing is good for roughly eight to ten years for most foods, and much longer for whole grains. I recommend buying commercially nitrogen-packed cans only for the items that don’t store well otherwise, e.g., dehydrated peas, powdered milk, peanut-butter powder, and textured vegetable protein (TVP).

  Other Musts for Your Larder

  Retort-Packaged Ultrahigh-Temperature Pasteurized Milk

  For a short-term supply (up to six months), UHT (ultrahigh-temperature) pasteurized retort-packaged milk makes a lot of sense. For longer term, you should store nitrogen-packed canned powdered nonfat milk from a competent and reliable vendor such as Ready Made Resources or Walton Feed (waltonfeed .com). I have found that the nonfat variety stores the best because it is the butterfat in whole milk that goes rancid, significantly shortening the shelf life.

  Rice and soy “milks” store even longer than cow milk. Like any other storage food, be sure to store retort-packaged “bricks” in the coolest (but not ever below freezing) part of your house, and away from vermin. Never stack individual retort bricks horizontally more than five bricks high, or vertically more than seven bricks high. Or, if storing them in their original factory shipping cardboard cases (of vertical bricks) no more than five cases high.

  Multivitamins and Other Food Supplements

  You should plan to supplement your foodstuffs with a good quality double-encapsulated multivitamin, a good-quality B-complex tablet, and a five-hundred-milligram vitamin C tablet. See Vitacost .com for some of the least expensive vitamins and nutritional supplements available via the Internet. Unconsumed vitamins should be replaced at least every three years. Store them in a cool, very dark place. Light kills vitamins quickly.

  Store as many vitamins as you can rotate without exceeding expiration dates (roughly three to four years’ worth, unless you have an ultracold medical freezer). My only strong proviso is to avoid overdosing any of the fat-soluble vitamins (vitamins A, D, E, and K—best mnemonically memorized with the word KADE.)

  Natural Laxatives

  Your diet may shift heavily toward meat, and this could cause problems. Plan ahead. Bulk Metamucil is one option.

  Vitamin C

  Vitamin C is crucial for healing following trauma, and it minimizes trauma-induced bruising. There is little harm in megadosing vitamin C, since any excess that the body does not need is passed through the urinary tract. Cumulatively, however, if megadosing is done frequently it might be hard on the kidneys, so be careful.

  Peanut Butter

  There are few sources of protein that are more compact for use in a Get Out Of Dodge (G.O.O.D.) bag than peanut butter. Survival Blog reader H. Hunter mentioned, “In a 40-ounce jar (typical large jar from a grocery store) of reduced-fat peanut butter there are 6,100 calories. Of course full-fat varieties would have more (about 7,000 calories). Beans, in the same container, would contain 1,200-2,000 calories. That makes peanut butter a very calorie-dense food. It doesn’t require hours and hours of prep time as beans do, and a jar can easily be thrown in your Bugout bag. The reduced-fat variety has a stamped shelf life of a little over two years.”

  One other important proviso involves digestion. A diet that is heavy in peanut butter or meat is likely to induce constipation, so, again, vary your diet.

  Blue-Green-Algae Tablets

  This is both a primary food and a vitamin/mineral supplement. It is one of the most compact forms of storage food for a short-term Bugout bag.

  Sprouts

  Lay in a supply of three pounds of sprouting seed per adult. Before you buy in quantity, try several varieties to see which you like.

  Coffee

  There is no perfect way to store coffee long-term and still maintain connoisseur’s taste quality, but for the purposes of average coffee drinkers, the vacuum-packed “bricks” of ground coffee beans store fairly well. Just be sure to protect them from vermin.

  Special Considerations for Infants

  Breast milk is best, and of course obviates the storage-life issues with formula. But if formula is used, it must be rotated like any other storage food. Transitional baby foods can be stored in moderate quantities, but my general advice is to buy a baby-food grinder and simply transition your infant to normal kitchen-table foods very gradually.

  Special Considerations for Pets

  Stock up on food for your pets, and rotate it religiously. Date-mark every can and bag. Bagged dog and cat food can be bucket-packed, just like human foods. (Use the same vermin-proof packing-methods available for bulk grains.) Keep in mind that the lower the fat content, the longer the shelf life for dry dog and cat food. Hence, low-oil kibble-type foods are best, but be sure to test a small quantity first to see if you can transition your pet’s diet. You can supplement with a bit of your canned butter or other stored fats and oils.

  Additional Storage-Food Details

  Hard Red Wheat Versus Soft White Wheat for Storage and Baking

  I’m often asked the difference between varieties of wheat, particularly hard wheat and soft wheat. Soft white wheat has a lower nutritive value (protein) than hard red winter wheat. Although they are both categorized as hard grains, the hard wheat varieties store better than the soft wheats (thirty or more years versus fifteen to twenty years for soft white wheat). For both of these reasons, hard red winter wheat is better for home food-storage programs. The following is a quote from the excellent wheat article at the Walton Feed Web site:

  The hard wheats generally contain smaller kernels and are harder than soft wheat kernels. They contain high protein and gluten levels primarily designed for making bread flours. Depending on variety and growing conditions, hard wheats can have vastly different protein levels. For bread making, your wheat should have a minimum of 12 percent protein. The hard varieties of wheat can have protein levels up to 15 or 16 percent. Generally speaking for bread making, the higher the protein content the better. Hard white wheat is a relative newcomer that tends to produce a lighter colored, more spongy loaf of bread and because of this, it is gaining quick popularity among home bread makers. However, we have talked with bread makers who prefer the hard red wheat for its more robust flavor and more traditional textured loaf of bread it makes.

  Whole Grains Versus Milled Grains for Storage

  Once they are ground, wheat, corn, and other grains begin to lose their nutritive value almost immediately, and their shelf life is shortened drastically. Once the outer kernel (bran) of a grain is penetrated and the inner germ is exposed, the inevitable degradation begins. Here are some rough storage-life figures to consider:

  Whole corn: eight to twelve years. Cracked or ground corn: eighteen to thirty-six months

  Whole wheat: thirty or more years. Flour: two to three years.

  If you were to bake all of your own bread each day and religiously rotate your supplies of flour and cornmeal every eighteen months, then you could get by without owning a grain mill. But if you want to store more than an eighteen-month supply of grains or have extra on h
and for barter and charity, then the only viable alternative is to buy whole grains and a grain mill.

  Is Grain Sold as Seed or Animal Feed Safe to Eat?

  Typically “seed” grain is treated with insecticides and fungicides, but “feed “grain is not. Any whole grain (without fillers, additives, or by-products) sold as animal feed is probably fit for human consumption, but don’t count on it. The FDA food-handling standards for human consumption generally don’t apply. Thus, there could be excess pesticides, insect parts, insect excreta, or other contamination, including mycotoxins. This is not to say that grains packed for human food are perfect—I’ve found much more than just chaff in the wheat that I bought from food-storage vendors over the years, including pebbles and small dirt clods—but at least the screening is more thorough with these grains than with animal feed. The only way to be sure about safety for human consumption is to check with the feed mill/packaging company for each product.