With all of the prepping I have done, there are still a few last minute items I would want to run out and pick up when I heard of sustained H2H - hopefully outside the U.S.
If I had to lock our doors right now (me, my wife, 2 children and our dog), I think we’d be fine, but here is the list I have ready just in case I get a chance to add to our preps. I’d like to hear any and all comments:
Costco:
Diapers X 10 Boxes Wipes – 2,000 X 5 A+D Ointment, etc.
Paper Towels Kleenex Garbage Bags Bleach Soap Shampoo Kids J&J Body Wash Razors & shaving cream Bath gel Tampons Toothpaste Toothbrushes Floss Deodorant Hand Sanitizer? Detergent – laundry and dish Clothes Pins Hair Gel Oil of Olay Moisturizer First Aid Kit Vitamin D Comfort Foods you’d want if sick – clear soups, Jello, etc. Gatorade Powdered Drink Mix Chicken Nuggets Ketchup Mayo Pizza Bread mix Mac and Cheese Cream of Wheat Peanuts / Nuts Trail Mix Peanut butter Cereal Egg Beaters Cases of Soy Milk Salt Sugar Cooking Oil Canned meats / hams Cream soup mixes Soups Canned vegetables Canned Fruits Chips
Portable Flood Lights 3 Day Cooler? Light Bulbs Rechargeable Batteries
PetCo/Vet:
Dog Food X 6 – do they deliver? Heart Guard Flea/Tick Medications
Menard’s:
Kerosene Lamps, wicks, kerosene Camping Heater Camping fuel Florescent paint – “You loot we shoot…” Sprayer(s)?
Other:
Solar Panel(s) Battery Recharger Toilet Blue ACUs Flares Smoke Grenades More Safety Goggles More Masks Police Scanner + extended antenna Malice Clips from Tactical Taylor Fire Pit/Hibacchi Dutch Oven More Hand Sanitizer Wonder washer Scanner Book
Pharmacy:
Antibiodics/Penicilin Pain killers Amoxicilin Cipro Doxycycline Influenza Meds?
Note on # of Meals
4 people X 3 meals a day = 12 meals/ day X 180 days = 2,160 meals
+ Dog food X 6 40 lbs. bags
If 2 cans of hungry man soup = 1 meal for four we’d need 4, 320 for 3 meals a day for 6 months
Sorry about the formatting, I haven’t gotten a grasp on that yet.
I did my bulk stockup in 3 days (after 2 weeks making the list and researching). Now I just have to fill in a couple gaps and make a list for my last trip for fresh items. I’ve also been making a point to hit the grocery atleast once a week and stock more fresh foods just incase I get blindsided.
I hope you didn’t buy 4000 cans of the same soup :)
I am at 3 months and may add some more week to week once I get to a “finished” point.
nopower – at 10:36 - LOL. Nope, didn’t buy 4,000 cans of soup. It was just a formula to put 6 months of self-quarantine in perspective. : )
We are pretty prepared. We have a H2H hotlist that we will drain our accounts to fill at the last minute. Things like gasoline and extra propane. We have worked hard to get about three months worth of preps. I can tell you on our budget that is a small miricle and the menu will mostly be rice and beans but I read once that people in Stalingrad (sp) lived off wallpaper paste and rice sounds great compared.
Urban Outfitter — that’s a good “topping off” list. To add to it or to further consider, since we often have to “top off” before every hurricane, you may want to consider fresh foods that you would go through first — vegetables, fruit, bread, cookies (we also have children), meats, chicken, frozen items etc. I have all non-perishable items now. My list for the final shopping spree is always in my purse and ready to go be it for a hurricane or pandemic. You’d be amazed how many people wander in a panicked daze not taking what they really need because they didn’t think it through before they left for the store. Good luck on your preps!
Urban Outfitter, I’m wondering why you plan to wait to buy the things on your list. Most of them are non-perishable, so why not get them now and save the last-minute trip for things like milk and fresh vegetables? But then again storage might be an issue for you; those diapers (not to mention the soup!) would take up a lot of space.
I could survive for a couple of months on the food I have, but I need more paper items. I have a pet gecko, so I don’t need dog or cat food. Geckos eat worms and other insects, and are designed to go days without food in the desert. I have enough food for her right now.
I’m more worried about water than I am about food, but I’ve got a bottle of bleach to purify it if need be. I’ll get a few more. My pantry is well-stocked with canned soups, veggies, and fruit, so I could live off the liquid in them if I had to.
I have enough odds and ends here at the house to last approximately 2.5 to 3 months with a family of 7. That is bare minimum survival though. I have a fairly long list of “wants” that I’d like to get to flesh the menu out a bit.
My husband and older son will be gone for a while at the end of June and I will be doing the last of the major prepping then. But I’m also going to be doing some big house projects. Interior painting, reorganization of stuff, the type of slash-and-burn cleaning that it is simply easier to do when most everyone is out of the house, etc.
We had thought about preparing two places … our “stay put” place and out “bug out” place … but the increase in gas prices is eating into our ability to pull that one off. The second place has more than it did, but we really don’t plan on “bugging out” any longer because it simply isn’t as practical as our other plan.
I too need more diaper wipes but more than anything I need to get seasonings, gravies, syrups, jell-o, and the like so that I can stretch what we have.
I’m doing good though. I’ve got nearly 400 recipes and counting that will work with canned/dried foods only. Many of them are available here on the fluwiki in that thread … but I have a ton more as well.
In addition to house projects, my next “big” prep is to do more canning. Finding the time is my current problem.
For us the big problem is money. Buying stuff on our hotlist would drain all of our accounts so we would have no backup for daily emergencys. I hope if it does go H2H we have the time to get those last items. At that point we would rather have the supplies than the money in the bank.
I have done the serious stuff (extra meds, H&B, masks, gloves, food that stores a long time, TP to last the next millenium). Then I have an intermediary list - shorter shelf life like cereals, crackers, dry milk that I will buy if things are heating up. Last minute list if we are going to cocoon will be gas/propane, extra cash, all fresh items - apples and oranges (last a long time), as much as dairy as we can use up, fill freezer with meat, frzn. fruit and veggies, etc. The flaw? If I can look at things that clearly and there is enough time before TSHTF.
PS I found it really helpful to keep a master list with exp. dates. I have some food items I wouldn’t normally use that I might forget about so I plan to check my list once/month to make sure nothing is about to go.
Finally - A CAUTIONARY TALE: a story in the paper about a mom who made her son panckaces from an expired box of panckake mix. The son went into anaphlicatic (sp?)shock because he had a mold allergy and evidently pancake mix can develop mold once it is past its date. Lots of food items can go well past their dates without problems, but that one surprised me.
Laura B love the idea of the master list with expiry dates
I need to do that! rotating them is a real hassle
what a great tip thanks so much NPB - Australia
LauraB,
thanks for the info on pancake mix…….I’ll bet it could be the same way with muffin mix, brownie mix, etc. I’d better go check some dates!!!
Pancake mix is on my last minute list because it has a pretty short shelf life and I won’t make a lot of pancakes in real life.
I feel that I am at the point where I could bunker down today with the food in my fridge + preps and make it 3 months, so I have kinda relaxed a bit. I’m just filling in the gaps like:
AA batteries from fye.com (100 for $17.99, buy 200 and get free shipping), 5 gallon gas cans at lowes for $5.00 (leaving them empty since I have 6 full already).
What Urban Outfitter posted at the very top just sank in:
“Note on # of Meals
4 people X 3 meals a day = 12 meals/ day X 180 days = 2,160 meals”
Since there are 5 people in my family, I need approx. 2700 (!!) meals to keep us fed for six months.
I’m speechless; I thought my preps were going well and now this… Do others have enough for THOUSANDS of meals?
would love to hear what others have to say on this! thx
Well, I have 3–4 months of meals stored. However some of those meals will be Ramnen noodles, crackers and peanut butter. Towards the end those meals will be a serving of rice and a serving of beans.
I guess I can say the same — except instead of crackers and peanut butter it will be zwieback and nutella, and maybe a plate of sauerkraut, and rice and beans. And then what?
delphina – at 14:21
I have a family of 7 … 2 adults and 5 kids. I’m the lunatic lady that posts all the stuff in the recipe thread(s). I’m slowly working my way up to 6 months of food storage.
Now, that’s not to say that it has been easy. It was a challenge … before all of this prepping began … for me to fit 1 month’s worth of groceries in my house at any given time. I thought I would go nuts trying to store 3 months. But I’ve just gotten creative. <grin>
I’ve found and been experimenting with a lot of recipes that will give us enough variety that we won’t have too much monotony.
I’ve also stocked extremely versatile items like diced tomatoes, rices, pastas, dried beans, etc. Some of the more versatile canned veggies are also high on my list. I’ve got a “top off” list for canned gravies and other type items … but if I don’t get to them it won’t be a problem.
Veratility and redundancy is what I am for and what I think is working. I do need to store more rice but not until I have containers to transfer it to. That is one of the projects that I’m currently working on.
Water is actually a bigger worry for me than food. Cooking fuel is another concern. I don’t care how much food you have, but if you can’t cook it it isn’t any good for you.
Try and plan out menues over a month’s period of time. Break out all of the ingredients you will need for the month and see how close you are to storing an adequate amount of each item. Then if you don’t want to create any new menu items for further variety, you can simply take the monthly menu you already have and multiply it by the number of months that you want to store. That will tell you how many cans, boxes, etc. of any given item on your grocery list that you will need in the long run.
Hi Delphina, We didnt think in terms of total numbers of meals, but what sobered us and made us realize we didnt have nearly enough was thinking in terms of calories/day. We used a very basic one pound/day of basic carbs such as rice or beans of flour. One pound of these will yield about 1500/1600 calories per day. That is minimal, and we would each lose over a pound/week if that was all we ate. But its a starting point to calculate. So, for 3 months of a basic 1500 cals/day, one person would need about 90 pounds of basic carbs. We of course dont intend to eat only carbs, but realizing we didnt have nearly as much food as we needed in our preps for 3 months drove us to the store to buy much more food.
Kathy in Fl said:”I’ve also stocked extremely versatile items like diced tomatoes, rices, pastas, dried beans, etc. Some of the more versatile canned veggies are also high on my list. “
I totally agree. One of our biggest prep items is Costco canned diced tomatoes. They go so well with just about any kind of basic carb meal. Rice with tomatoes. Beans with tomatoes. Pasta with tomatoes. Almost any canned soup or canned meat with an added can of tomatoes or other canned veggie. Add a few herbs and some dried onions with any of these, and you can vary basic meals tremendously. Yum.
Yes, Delphina, I had my own “Ah ha” moment when I realized how many packs of tuna a family of 4 was going to go through in three months. We had a little fun on one of these threads calculating how many cans a shopping cart could hold, how much all of it would weigh, and whether or not the cart would collapse. It was good for a laugh. However, that exercise made me shift my storage into more ingredients and less prepared food. I stocked a lot more flour, sugar, rice, dried beans, lentils etc. and less cans and boxes. Those will be used to add variety, but I will not be relying on the Campbell’s soup company for the majority of our calories. I’ve come to a new appreciation of the value of a loaf of home made bread.
For my wife and I, we have canned/dry supermarket food that we eat regularly that will serve for at least 3 months for the two of us. We also recently reviewed the book “Making the best of basics” by Stevens which is VERY thorough. Anyone prepping who has not read this should do so immediately. We decided to invest in about 2 1/2 tons of dried food, mostly grains and legumes packed for longterm storage.
This will provide at least 8 person-years of food at a “normal” rate of consumption, or the two of us for 4 years at least. If supplemented with fresh meat, fish and fresh vegetables grown in our garden I expect we have at least 6 years supplies for the two of us. We are planning for the ability to support invited guests and family members, and with the food they’ll bring this allows us about 1 1/2 years of stored food with no supplementation. Gardening, trapping and hunting will add to that.
We cross referenced lbs/ calories/ meals to come up with our totals.Some plans are lacking in fats, some in sugars. Some of the commerically available “ one year of food” are a bad joke and the people that depend on them will get to 6 months and be in trouble. We stock a year for 5 people and, yea, that is a lot of food. Enough that I have built a new storage building to put it in. Kelly
Thanks to all of you for responding to my rather desperate-sounding post! Actually, I am someone who generally cooks everything from scratch; I had to overcome strong reluctance to buying canned soup and canned meals because I thought it would be good to have them if I got sick and nobody was able to cook. My “normal” pantry is full of simple basics like pureed tomatoes and raw potatoes (I don’t think you can even buy potatoes in a can or cream of mushroom soup where I live!)But in the case we are all prepping for I think it would be best to have a mixture of really “raw” materials and ready-made meals (doubt we’ll ever eat those if the S doesn’t HTF!)It’s the required amounts that are truly staggering…
OMG!! I haven’t calculated ‘how many meals’ — I did want to point out to everyone (as someone here on fluwikie already said) that you’re almost certain to need more carbs if you’re having to do extra things like gardening, hauling supplies, using tools frequently that you rarely ever use under normal conditions, etc.
I know fitday.com can help with figuring out a healthy balance of carbs to proteins to fats, etc.
I’m-working-on-it and others- Why reinvent the wheel? Making the best of basics-MTBOB (Stevens) has already done all of that for you. It’s all already done and laid out in neat checklists. And we did allow for a significant increase over present needs.
2 1/2 tons of food does not take up much space packed in 5 gallon pails- about 42 square feet (3 pallets) total. The hit on the wallet is severe, but wheat properly stored keeps almost forever. I may not need this and may be grinding this grain when I’m 80. So what? BTW, for the benefit of those who don’t know, bread made from fresh ground whole wheat flour has a flavor and scent that is so much better than with store-bought flour; you won’t believe till you try it. Then there are all the sprouting possibilities…..
If you cannot get to the 2000 pound threshhold for an order from Walton Feed, contact the nearest Church of Latter-Day Saints. The Mormons have a long history of promoting personal preparedness, and most churches will let you participate in their food purchase arrangements if asked politely. If you are going the “grains and beans” route, think about how you are going to grind the wheat, oats and such. There are several good alternatives; as one would expect, the better ones cost money. The best price I’ve seen for the Family living grain mill is over $300, but my judgement was that this was a good value.
We do keep MREs for bugout packs and caches and such, but they are the third choice. They do beat starving.
I’ve got that book in my attic….I’ll get it down and review!
Sorry, my comment at 14:55 wasn’t very clear. I have switched from prepared food to basics like flour and rice not because I dislike canned soup and boxed mac ‘n cheese, but because I have an extremely limited space and basic ingredients provide more meals in less space.
Based on my own experience with hurricane prep, I can tell you to avoid Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sam’s and Walmart. I actually witnessed a fight break out between two women in Sam’s over WATER last fall!
Checking out of Kroger’s was an hour and a half ordeal fraught with dealing with very panicked people. Folks were pushing and shoving over bread, rolls, cereal, peanut butter, etc. Not a pleasant place to be.
I plan to top off my stores with fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs and that’s it. I already make sure that I have these items in my fridge on a weekly basis.
I plan on making a last minute run to Sam’s and getting lots of fresh produce and vegetables, milk, bread, eggs, cream, lunchmeat, and cheese. Hopefully, I will be on target with everything else by then. I do not want to be in line for hours or get in the middle of a fight. Which is why, of course, we are all here doing this now!
more vacuum sealer canisters for the fridge. I figure if they can extend out fresh vegetables and fruit thats gotta be a good thing :)
I’ll be putting my dehydrator to good use during any “topping off” period. I’ll dry as much as I can of the fresh stuff I can get, if I can get any at all. Or I’ll leave it fresh until it looks like it is at the end of its freshness and then dehydrate it.
I Put back a lot of salt. There are antelope, elk, deer and free range cattle here. I would have to dehidrate what I could and salt helps.
Due to rodent problem, I need to wait to the last minute to really stock up on TP and paper towels. Some might say…why bother with paper towels! Well, they will work very well as a pre-filter for water from the pond. Then the water can go into the berkey. Also, to help eliminate cross contamination in drying hands, or even bodies, if water is an issue and I can’t use the washing machine.
Also will need to do a top off for cat and dog food. Fresh things would be nice, but may not be worth dealing with the hordes in the stores, so keeping on top of the news developments will be key.
Just to pass along a story of 9–11 (sorry to those who have read this already!)-- the morning of 9–11 no one knew how serious the event would become or how many cities might be targeted or what was coming next. As soon as I heard from my husband, (who immediately left work since I wasn’t answering the phone), he was ‘dispatched’ to retrieve the two teens from their college classes while I hit everything else: The bank for several thousand dollars, the grocery store for water, and canned goods, Dick’s Sporting Goods for lanterns and batteries, Home Depot for a generator and gas cans, Radio Shack for radios, the gas station to fill the cans and the car. Guess how long this took me? 4 hours. I was able to get everywhere and do everything in super quick time because everyone was glued to the boob tube. The roads were abandoned like it was Christmas, the stores and bank and gas stations were nearly empty. By 3 o’clock that afternoon, things were beginning to sink in with the ‘masses’. The line at the gas station was 1 mile long and tempers were way more than flaring. The banks were limiting cash withdrawals (slow rolling people), the bottled water was gone (according to neighbors.) The key here is to keep your ear to the ground, and top off early and often if necessary!!! The early bird gets the worm and all those sayings are very true in these types of situations.
Note: I wasn’t a prepper before 9–11. I had a reasonable pantry but not a prepper. That instant made me a prepper instantly and thence forward. It’s a lifestyle now and that makes it easier to live with instead of prepping for one event that may not materialize. If Iran goes ballistic (bad pun)-- we’ll be ready short of a full out nuke war. Gas prices through the roof? We can eat cheap via our dry foods and help balance out the budget. Terrorism— we’ve got it covered in most instances. No plan if fool proof, I know that. But I sleep better and my family has come around to all be preppers to some extent. Even my naysaying parents decided it was beter to be safe than sorry and have made some use of the area under their beds and in the nooks and crannies of their tiny condo in CA. Everyone can do something…even a gallon of water is better than nothing.
The ABC movie may make preppers out of a lot more folks. That is both good and bad. Good for people to be self sufficient. Bad in that the overstressed long term food providers will be backlogged for months possibly. Order before May 9 if you are contemplating an order.
NEMO,
very smart of you to be able to recognize the danger and move so quickly! I have a Berkey water filter-big investment for y2k, but worth it & used often, and if using stream, pond, lake, gutter water, put a coffee filter in a big funnel to strain out debris — takes up lots less room & is very efficient! thanks for sharing your 9–11 experience.
I have changed my mind on topping-off. Put another notch in your belt for a little belt-tightening and hole in. If the “experts” can’t detect bird flu in Great Britian, they can’t tell you with any certainty whether panflu has reached your environs once THEY DETERMINE that it has started anywhere in the world. Panflu by that time will have had a BIG headstart. It will be dicey even without dashing out in a crowd.
It would be a shame for any of us to acquire all of this knowledge and material and then be lost in one last greedy grab. This isn’t a “blue light” special.
Medical Maven has a good point. Is the topping-off trip worth having to wear mask and gloves and bleach your shoes and clothes (and car??) when you get home? Also people would look at you funny. Not to mention how your being in protective gear might change the behavior of people around you, get them panicked? make them strangely interested in you- and your address?
Many people have mentioned rodents and TP. We live in a 180 year old farm house. Mice and field rats come with the package, but none are in our house. We use an exterminator service (I know this may not be available if TSHTF), an outside mouser ( 8 years old and going strong) and hardware cloth. Hardware cloth is called chicken wire to some, but the holes are much smaller (.25″). This stuff will defeat any mouse. Heavier gauge will defeat field rats. I have made shelves of 2×4s in our hand-dug basement and covered them with 23 ga. hardware cloth. This may sound like we live in a tenament, but we don’t - it’s just an old house and old farm houses were never rodent proof. Everyone used mousers.
You need to make a barn door with latches at the top and bottom that pull tightly. This will keep TP and similar items safe. See http://www.twpinc.com/twp/jsp/product.jsp?type=4 (Sorry for the url, I do not know how to use tiny urls)
Bump