How do you keep really, REALLY long term food....CHEAP!!!?

Question

A friend and I have been tossing around ideas about the future of the human race, and are coming more and more to the conclusion that we're all going to h**l in a handbasket.

Virtually ALL religious writings make reference to pockets of humans living past Armageddon even though "civilization" itself is pretty much gone. Humans will continue on the level we were on several hundred years ago, in small farming communities, doing most work by hand. The problem is to survive long enough to establish such communities.

MRE's and other long-life foods are fine, but pretty expensive. If you're talking about feeding hundreds or thousands of people for several years, we have to get back to something like dried beans and rice. The government does it. How?

What is the best way to store grains and beans? Metal drums rust. Plastic drums are succesptible to rodents. Are silo's necessary? If so, what is the LONGEST rice and beans will last? Years? A decade?

What do you think?

Answer 1

KRAFT DINNER!!!!

ravioli

mr noodles

pasta stuff

you could even get a bunch of spaghetti noodles and spaghetti sauce (no meat though)

Answer 2

I suspect you have a deep seated survivalist complex as I do. I built myself a survivalist kit to alay my nagging worries & it includes.  1.) an over/under shot gun/ rifle, with 3 boxes of ammo.  2.) a 3 month supply of antibiotics.  3.) a 3 month supply of rice, beans & beef Jerky.  4.) A diesel generator that runs on biodiesel.

I've stored these items in a steel building that should be somewhat fire resistant.  The food & antibiotics are packed in plastic containers because I couldn't find the proper metal containers, but they are sealed inside a larger metal covered box I constructed.  I am thinking of adding canned goods to the mix, but spraying them with a laquer, to prevent rusting, might be a good idea in retrospect. We live in a very rural area, & my wife & I chuckle a bit about my fears, but it makes me feel better to prepare as well as possible.

All the above items should last more than a decade if properly sealed from moisture.

I'm not religious, but Katrina taught me that I cannot depend upon the government to help if a disaster happens.

Edit:

Pots built with a strainer top can easily be made into a still to produce distilled water. Simply cover the holes with duct tape (it will hold past 212º), then bore a small 3/8" hole in the top for a 1/4" copper tube, sealed with a small rubber gromet.  If desperate, you can distill urine to produce drinking water.  Be sure to include duct tape & rope in your kit.

Another means of distilling water is to take a #3 wash tub & place a small weighted bucket in the center. Fill the tub 1/4 full of bad water, place a transparent plastic sheet over the top with a weight in the middle.  Water will evaporate & collect on the plastic when in the sunlight, then drip into the bucket.  This produces about 6 oz per hour when used on a beach with good sunlight.  A rectangular sheet of plastic can be used to collect dew too.  Simply hang it with a bucket at the bottom of the lowest corner & dew will run to the lowest corner & drip into the bucket. Chuckle, so add some large sheets of plastic to your equipment.

Answer 3

ask.metafilter.com/34701/The-Mormons-and... - 26k - Cached

www.providentliving.org - 15k

Ask the Mormons.

Answer 4

Vacuum packed rice grains and beans seems to be ideal.

All you need is water and a source of heat.

Answer 5

Well, if you're serious about it, you only need the rice and beans for a year or two.  You need seeds, though, and a good book on farming.  You and your friend can get a pretty good farm going on your own and grow more food than you need by yourselves while you wait for others to join you.  You should look up sustainable farming and research into what the Native Americans were doing before we got here.  There's no sense in starting up a new civilization  with the same old bad practices of the one that just fell.  You could also get some books on edible plants in your area and the areas around it.  Global warming and pollution may kill off a lot of the plant life, but there will always be the perfectly edible dandelion.  Anything that kills off all the plants is also going to kill you, so you might as well know how to supplement your diet with fresh stuff.

With your surfeit of food in the new landscape, you'll probably want to invest in walls and maybe guns.

For storage, you could always go old-fashioned.  The link below has a lot of great resources for the pre-Industrial Revolution minded, but it also tells you how to make storage bins.  You could also look up bell-shaped storage pits, which are another favorite method of storage, and one that was remarkably effective.

Heh, I've thought about this a lot, too.  Can I join your group if disaster finally falls?