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

by James Wesley, Rawles

  In the southern parts of the country there are more insect problems, so much of the seed wheat is treated with pesticides. The good news is that if you can smell, you will easily recognize the pesticides on the wheat. The feed variety of wheat isn’t cleaned as much as “triple-cleaned” wheat, which is normally what is sold for human consumption. Quality typically varies from one source to the next. Buy one bag to start with after telling the store owner you need nontreated wheat for animal feed. You could always winnow this out yourself if you so desired. It does offer a cheap alternative.

  While animal feed at this time is not on a par with food-grade grain, these rules will be changing. The FDA is pressuring producers, storage facilities, and feed mills to bring their standards up to human-food-chain levels. We will see this transformation in the next three to five years as laws are brought forth to force the process.

  A Little More on Corn

  Corn is a valuable food to store, although it is not quite as versatile as wheat, nor does it store for nearly as long. Corn does store fairly well if its moisture content is low. Like wheat, once corn is cracked or ground, its nutritive value starts to drop rapidly. Therefore you should buy your storage corn whole, and then grind it into cornmeal in small batches as needed.

  Corn stores best in whole kernels. Once it is cracked, the inner germ is exposed. This decreases its storage life and nutritive value by 80 percent. Running whole corn through a grain mill at a coarse setting to make cracked corn is quick and easy. A finer setting will yield cornmeal.

  I’ve found that the least expensive place to buy whole-kernel corn is Walton Feed, in Montpelier, Idaho. Be careful about the moisture content—mold is the greatest bugaboo with bulk corn. Never, ever eat moldy corn. It can induce mycotoxin poisoning that is potentially deadly!

  A Closer Look at Fats

  An issue that is often overlooked in long-term survival/ preparedness planning is the necessity of fats and oils. I believe that fats and oils are consciously ignored by food-storage vendors, because vendors love to market their “complete” three-year and five-year food-storage packages. The problem is that those food assortments do not include the requisite multiple-year supply of essential fats and oils. These vendors are doing their customers a huge disservice with this omission. Fats and oils are a nutritional necessity.

  For urban or suburban preppers who don’t hunt, don’t fish, don’t have the room to raise livestock, and don’t have the room to grow peanuts, olives, or sunflowers on a large scale, there are precious few options for long-term sources of fats and oils. The first option is expensive but viable: Continuously and completely rotate your supply. Donate the unused portion of your stored stock of cooking oil and shortening/lard to your local food bank—or if it has gone rancid, set it aside for making biodiesel, candles, or soap.

  The other thing that you can do is buy a case or two of canned butter once every three years. Canned butter is available from Best Prices Storable Foods and from Ready Made Resources.

  Be very selective about the fats and oils that you store. Some that you buy from your local supermarket are borderline rancid and unhealthy even when “freshly made.” I prefer olive oil over corn oil. I also prefer storing canned butter over Crisco-type shortening or canned lard. For those who do prefer shortening, its shelf life can be extended by repacking it in mason-type canning jars. Some brands of lard are still packed in all-metal cans, which provides a longer shelf life. Look in the ethnic-foods section of your grocery store for cans marked Manteca, which is Spanish for “lard.”

  Keep in mind, too, that a diet that has too much lean meat can lead to severe digestive problems and even malnutrition. If you plan to depend heavily on wild game or livestock that you raise, then be sure to include some bulk fiber in your diet. To provide this fiber, you must either sprout it, grow it in your garden, or store it. Don’t overlook this aspect of preparing your survival larder.

  Supplements and Short-Term Emergency Foods

  MREs

  At a fixed-site retreat, prepacked meals (such as MRE and Meal, Alternative Regionally Customized [MARC] rations) don’t make much sense. But when you’re operating in the field, they save time, obviate the need to carry a stove and cooking utensils, and reduce the noise, odor, and light signatures of a campsite. I recommend the retort-packaged Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) as a supplement to a well-rounded food-storage program. Because they are fairly compact and lightweight, and require no cooking, they are ideal to pack in your G.O.O.D backpack or BOB.

  My old friend who has a SurvivalBlog profile under the pseudonym Mr. Tango had a round of correspondence with the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center, in Natick, Massachusetts, on the potential storage life of MREs. Like all other storage foods, MREs must be stored at low temperature to maximize their shelf life. The data that they sent him was surprising. Here is the gist of it:

  The figures above are based on date of pack, rather than inspection date.

  MREs near the end of their shelf life are considered safe to eat if:

  1. They are palatable to the taste.

  2. They do not show any signs of spoilage (such as swelled pouches).

  3. They have been stored at moderate temperatures (70F or below). Not enough data has yet been collected on storage below 60 degrees F. However, projections are that the 130-month figure will be extended.

  Time and temperature have a cumulative effect. For example: storage at 100 degrees F for 11 months and then moved to 70F, you would lose 1/2 of the 70F storage life.

  Avoid fluctuating temperatures in and out of freezing level.

  The above-cited figures are for palatability, not nutritive value. Most of the fat, carbohydrates, and protein will still be available in MREs, even after many years of storage, but the vitamins will not. Plan accordingly.

  Because MREs and other emergency foods are relatively high in bulk and low in fiber, I highly recommend also storing a fiber supplement with each case of MREs.

  Energy Bars

  Commercially made “energy bars,” “emergency-ration bars,” and “sports bars” can provide a useful adjunct to a storage-food program. Nutritionally, energy bars alone are inadequate. But they do make a useful supplement to your food-storage program, both to provide variety and flavor in a bland diet and to serve as a very compact short-term food supply for your G.O.O.D. kit.

  These bars can easily be packed in Ziploc bags (or better yet, vacuum-packed with a Tilia FoodSaver) and stored in a chest freezer. This will greatly extend their shelf life, especially in hot climates. Just don’t forget to pin a prominent note on your G.O.O.D. rucksack, reminding you to retrieve them from the freezer before you head out the door.

  Jerky

  Nearly all of the energy bars on the market are fairly expensive. One good alternative is making traditional jerky and pemmican at home. The cost per ounce can be very low, especially if you hunt or raise livestock. But keep in mind that, just like with energy bars, if you store dried meat you will also need to store a good source of dietary fiber.

  Ramen Noodles

  The nutritive value of ramen is marginal, so it should not be considered a primary storage food. But there is wisdom in having some on hand as a food-storage supplement, especially in lean times, when hunger pangs will be a distinct possibility.

  Cooking Facilities for Grid-Down Living

  Plan ahead for cooking in grid-down circumstances and to cook over open fires if need be. Buy several cast-iron pots and frying pans, a Dutch oven, and a large kettle. You should also be prepared to cook in larger quantity. It is difficult to predict the exact circumstances, but chances are you will be cooking for far more than just your own family. At the minimum, this will require a couple of huge stew pots, two large frying pans, and lots of extra bread pans.

  How to Store Food Safely

  You can “do it yourself ” for nearly everything required for home food storage with the notable exception of canned powdered dry milk. (It’s messy to repack yourself, and becaus
e of milk’s butterfat content, it stores well for long periods only with commercial nitrogen packing.) Commercially canned “year’s supply” type units are needlessly expensive. Even the salt comes canned. Talk about overkill packaging. In the instance of wheat, you are paying two to five times as much for the product because of the packaging. You are better off buying your food in bulk (honey, whole grains, beans, and rice) and canning or otherwise containerizing it yourself.

  Unless you have large-scale grain bins, one of the most efficient means of storing wheat and corn for small-scale animal feed or human consumption is to buy galvanized trash cans with tight-fitting lids. If they will be on a damp floor, put the cans up on two-by-four blocks to prevent rust. When galvanized trash barrels go on sale, buy a bunch. Another good storage method is five- or six-gallon food-grade plastic buckets with gasketed lids. These stack well, but be advised that they are not as vermin-proof as galvanized steel bins or barrels. Determined rats have been known to gnaw their way through plastic food buckets. So if you choose this method, be sure to set traps, and check the buckets every few weeks for signs of damage.

  Crucial Equipment for Storage

  Food-Grade Plastic Pails

  Bulk wheat, rice, and beans are best stored in five- or six-gallon food-grade plastic pails.

  If you use your own pails, make sure that they are certified food grade (most buckets made for paint are not). And if you reuse food-grade buckets, make certain that they were used only for non-smelly foods. Reusing pickle pails for rice can give you pickle-flavored rice!

  Walton Feed has excellent prices and top-quality products. Pack bulk grains and legumes in plastic buckets yourself and you will save a lot of money. Note: Make sure that you use oxygen-absorbing packets (available from Walton) or the dry-ice displacement method to kill all the bugs and larvae before you seal up each bucket.

  Food-grade five-gallon buckets can be found cheaply or for free from bakeries. For any buckets you acquire that are missing lids, I recommend that you buy Gamma Seal lids. These lids are threaded, making them very convenient for accessing the storage foods that you use most frequently. Gamma Seal lids fit standard five- or six-gallon buckets, and they seem to last forever. We’ve been using some of our lids on a daily basis for more than twenty years. In addition to our storage-food buckets, we have them on buckets for poultry feed, wild birdseed, and dog food. They are available from Ready Made Resources, Safecastle, Nitro-Pak (nitro-pak.com), and several other vendors for around six dollars each. If you want to buy twenty or more lids, you can get them directly from the manufacturer, at gammaseals.com. Many of the above vendors also sell a “lid-lifter” tool, which is very helpful in prying open sealed buckets that are not yet equipped with Gamma Seal lids.

  Keep in mind that plastic food-grade buckets are oxygen and gas permeable and will not store food for a long time by themselves. A Mylar liner will greatly slow down this process. (It will not stop it entirely.)

  What Determines If a Storage Bucket Is Food Grade?

  I’ve seen considerable confusion both in print and on the Internet about whether all HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastic buckets are food grade. The number 2 (inside the “chasing arrows” recycling symbol) refers to HDPE, but not all “2”-marked plastics are food grade. The “food grade” designation is determined by plastic purity and by what mold-release compound is used—not by the plastic itself, since all virgin HDPE material is safe for food. For paint and other utility buckets, manufacturers sometimes use a less expensive (and toxic) mold-release compound for their injection-molding machines. For food grade they must use a nontoxic formulation, which is more expensive. Unless the buckets are actually marked “food grade” or NSF-, FDA-, or USDA-approved, you will have to check with the manufacturer’s Web site to see if all their buckets are food grade.

  Malcolm from SurvivalBlog provided some data for oxygen permeability for various materials. For long food-storage life, the lower the number, the better:

  Grain Mills

  Storing wheat and corn requires a good-quality, durable grain mill. I don’t recommend electric-only mills because they will become useless ornaments once the power grid goes down. An inexpensive hand-cranked mill such as the Back to Basics or Corona might suffice for a short-term disaster, but in the event of TEOTWAWKI you will want something built to last.

  We use a Country Living grain mill. It is a superior machine. With just about any mill, you will have to cycle the grain through several times to get fine flour. I recommend that you get the Power Bar handle extension for extra leverage. Country Living grain mills are available through Ready Made Resources and several other vendors. Like any other quality tool, they are expensive. But it is better to buy just one machine that you know will last you a lifetime, rather than a succession of “bargains” that turn into disappointments.

  Because they have V-belt wheels, Country Living grain mills are readily adaptable to an electric motor for day-to-day use, or in the event of a grid-up scenario. For someone who has some mechanical acumen and time on their hands, it is also possible to convert a bicycle frame or perhaps a piece of exercise equipment to power a Country Living grain mill. If you have a background in welding, building such frames might make a good niche home business.

  To make flour that is fine enough for bread baking, you need to run wheat through a mill twice. The best mills use stone burrs. Some of the less expansive mills use metal burrs. These are fine for making cornmeal. The metal-burr mills such as the Corona are less expensive but more labor intensive. With these you might have to grind wheat three times to make fine flour. Metal-burr grinders are available from Nitro-Pak, Lehman’s, and several other vendors. Stone-burr grinders are available from Ready Made Resources, Lehman’s, and many other vendors.

  Home Dehydrators

  Home dehydrators are very useful. Over the years, we have used ours for everything from drying venison jerky and apples to “reanimating” silica-gel rust-prevention packets. Used dehydrators are easy to find for reasonable prices, via newspaper classifieds or a localized Web service such as Craigslist. Dehydrators are a bit bulky to buy through mail order, so try to find a local source. If purchased new, they can be quite expensive. The one that we use at the Rawles Ranch is an Excalibur brand, with a variable temperature control. They are very sturdy and typically have several trays, so they can hold a lot. Ours is circa 1980 and still going strong, with no maintenance. They require AC power, so in anticipation of the grid going down, you should already have a backup solar dehydrator, or at least all of the materials that you will need to fabricate one, after TSHTF. See: snipurl.com/hoqdx, snipurl.com/hoqf4, and snipurl.com/hoqg8.

  FoodSaver Vacuum-Packing Systems

  One very useful tool for storage is a home vacuum-packing and heat-sealing machine, sold under the trade name FoodSaver. Yep, it’s the one that you’ve seen on those late-night infomercials. They really do work, both for evacuating and sealing plastic bags and for evacuating mason jars. To save money, it is probably best to buy one of these used, through eBay. Just be sure that the seller guarantees against it being dead on arrival. Test it thoroughly immediately after you buy it. Be advised that FoodSavers are designed to seal only one particular thickness of plastic bag, and they have a limited maximum width. You should shop around for bags and bag material on the Internet, as prices vary dramatically.

  Here at the ranch, we have a large number of No. 10 cans of freeze-dried food. The disadvantage to opening a can to eat something is that once you open it, the clock starts ticking for how long it will stay fresh. Our solution? We use widemouthed mason jars, pour the No. 10 can’s contents into the jars, and use a FoodSaver V2830 to seal the lids onto the jars. This means we can take our time eating the contents, as opposed to eating the same thing day after day before it goes bad. Small quantities can also be stored in heat-sealed vacuum bags.

  Freeze-dried Versus Dehydrated Foods for Storage

  Because of their lower cost, here at the ranch we store ne
arly all bulk grains/legumes/honey and various nitrogen-canned dehydrated foods. We have just a few freeze-dried items, such as fruit and some peas that we got from Freeze Dry Guy (FreezeDryGuy .com). At a fixed-location retreat with copious storage space and plentiful water from a shallow well, dehydrated foods make more sense. If we were planning to G.O.O.D., then logically we would want more freeze-dried items—to take advantage of their reduced weight and volume.

  Do-It-Yourself Bulk Food Storage: Buckets, Oxygen Absorbers, CO2, and Desiccants

  To save money you will probably want to buy rice, wheat, and beans in fifty-pound sacks. Sacks are problematic, since what you really want is a vermin-proof, moisture-proof container that is airtight and preferably evacuated of oxygen. Those are the keys to true long-term shelf life, and none of them are provided by a cloth, paper, or woven-plastic sack. The solution is to repack bulk foods in food-grade plastic buckets. Here is how to do it:

  Bucket-Packing Method

  Line a bucket with a large food-grade Mylar bag and pour in the wheat, rice, or beans, shaking the bucket and tapping it on the floor several times to get the bag completely full. You don’t want any air gaps. Fill the bag so that the bucket is filled to within one inch of the top. Then toss two oxygen-absorbing packets (available from Nitro-Pak) into the bag.