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Stockpiling Food


DV
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There was an article on stockpiling food that appeared on Yahoo.com today and I think it's worth acting upon. When my grandmother was young, everybody stockpiled food but they called it preserving or "putting up" food for the winter months. A vegan diet is the perfect diet for stockpiling.

 

Regardless of the investment aspect of stockpiling, you become self-sufficient in a disaster if you stockpile food and (especially) water. I don't know how many of you have disaster-preparedness backpacks for 3 days of survival in case of evacuation or enough food/water for 30 days of house arrest in case of an epidemic. If you do not, you should look into this.

 

If there is a catastrophe that overwhelms your regional emergency response system then you could be looking at weeks without running water or electricity. In an epidemic, hospitals will be the worst place to turn - we don't have enough beds as it stands now and many (if not most) of us healthcare workers will not show up for work if catastrophe strikes.

 

Additionally, money is worth nothing if there is no food or water to purchase. At any point in time, a city or town only has enough food and water in stores for a limited number of days. For those of us who have lived in heavy snowfall areas, we know how quickly the shelves of a store become empty when there is prediction of a city or town shutdown.

 

(I was at another of Portland's conferences on civilian emergency response today. I am horrified by the lack of attendance at these free conferences. My neighbors are perfect examples of those who truly believe "someone" will take care of them in a crisis. But for a country in debt, why save for the future? Okay, now I'm finished. If anyone wants to know where to purchase the best/cheapest water storage containers in Portland just pm me).

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I was thinking about this last night because I live in an earthquake zone. There is a small fault line running through my town and it's not a matter of "if" but "when" disaster will strike.

As far as hoarding food goes, I'm not too prepared for it, to be honest. It's definetly something I need to get done. I need to prepare a disaster kit.

Thanks for putting that link up, I'll give it a read and get some pointers ^^

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The United States I grew up in did not have "terror alerts" or articles about hording food for scarcity. It seems like in 2000 prosperity was coming out of every crack in the wall. I can't think of one our lousy president and his staff has improved or kept from laying waste to in the last 8 years.

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We've got tons of water(just a coincidence), and like most Asian families we always have a 50lb bag of rice...sometime more than one bag. We always have at least 15 boxes of pasta to ship to family overseas, and lots of canned veggies. We also have a full size freezer in the basement but thats full of mostly icky non vegan stuff...but also frozen OJ concentrate. Lets not forget peanut butter...we always have at least 5 jars hanging around.

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Storing food is one thing but how do you prevent it from going bad? And what kind of foods can be stored? How would you prepare such foods in this kind of situation? And for those that eat Raw if they were to store fresh fruit and veggies in a freezer how would they thaw it out to eat if the electricity did go out?

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The foods mentioned won't go bad anytime soon...just keep it in the box or can and your good to go. Grains also last a long time so long as you keep the bugs out. As for frozen stuff...you just hope for the best. If you lose electricity too...just make sure you eat those things first. Also if you didn't have access to any other food I don't think you'd care all that much about what you ate so long as it was vegan food. As for thawing...I think losing electricity would solve that problem for you...everything will thaw in the fridge without electricity.

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That's not something worth stockpiling. There's very little nutrients in those foods.

 

As for the term stockpile. Are you being literal in the sense that we need to keep the food we stock in cans in our basements are can our fridge be used to stockpile?( The only stockpiling I know of is for a nuclear war )

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They wouldn't be able to cook if the electricity was kaput. Maybe it's time that all homes come with a built in generator.

 

I think Raw Foodists could survive. They'd just need to freeze everything and then thaw it out in the heat of the nuclear war.

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You can always rig a bike up as a generator...thing is you'll need to burn 500-800 calories an hour to make enough electricity to keep a fridge running...you'll be better off fasting.

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As I recall there's something called fire that does not require electricity.

 

I totally loled . You have a point. I guess if people were dying they could always hide in there basements and make fires out of there homes.

 

But here's the question. Since this problem with little food in a disaster has happened before to people and will happen again. What would you all do if there was no food?

 

Say you were in a Donner Party-like situation. What would you do?

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The city of San Francisco has a good site here. However, it's only a 72 hour emergency site. Some parts may only be relevant to those in San Fran but there are other areas relevant to all. If you are going to do it then do it right and stockpile for 3 to 4 weeks.

 

The American Red Cross has information here.

 

FEMA is here.

 

That is enough to get you started. My/your generation in most developed countries have not experienced extended periods without municipal utilities and a ready supply of food. To ignore this is to ignore human history and suffer the consequences of being unprepared. Also consider that an epidemic could result in quarantined communities for weeks or months. Some communities remained isolated during the 1918 flu epidemic by stationing armed men at road blocks. Don't think the same thing wouldn't happen today. Part of my training involves always being prepared for disaster and having a few different backup plans. I see situations turn bad when you least expect it at work and without disaster preparedness I would see more people die. This is no different. Except that this is your life and you won't be able to pay someone to take care of it for you.

 

People change very quickly when they are hungry and frightened, even towards their own family members. Don't be a Grasshopper.

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Thanks for posting the links & sharing your thoughts DV!

 

Emergencies frequently bring out the best in people. That said, it's dangerous to be overly reliant on others and depending on "the professionals" to defend, rescue or provide for you is particularly foolish! At best, they will likely be short-staffed, overworked and undersupplied...

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Thanks for posting the links & sharing your thoughts DV!

 

Emergencies frequently bring out the best in people. That said, it's dangerous to be overly reliant on others and depending on "the professionals" to defend, rescue or provide for you is particularly foolish! At best, they will likely be short-staffed, overworked and undersupplied...

 

Yeah, we see how well the New Orleans police department did in "defending" the citizens. That is if your definition of "defending" is mugging and shooting.

 

Now that we have a home base again, we're rebuilding our supplies of beans, rice, flour, oils, nutritional yeast etc. We need a new water filter, so we can use the creek in our back yard if needed. For cooking we have a camp stove and five gallons of propane. We're going to add another tank soon, we like to cook outside during the summer anyway.

 

LoveLiberate, we were just talking about you recently. I haven't owned guns in almost two decades and Tiffaney hasn't ever fired a shot. But, all the food storage in the world isn't going to do any good if a neighbor just decides to shoot you and take it, which is highly likely in our neighborhood. It's an integrated neighborhood, with an equal number of poor white redneck types and poor black gangster types. Stereotypes? Yes. Armed like a small army? Yes! What are a couple of peaceful hippie food stockpiling types to do?

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I think you'll be fine so long as you don't have cupcakes lining your windows...I bet half those people would come in and leave after seeing a vegan refrigerator.

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I think you'll be fine so long as you don't have cupcakes lining your windows...I bet half those people would come in and leave after seeing a vegan refrigerator.

 

Damn, you're probably right, I didn't think of that. They wouldn't consider brown basmati and black beans to be food. I doubt you could find two people on my block who would even know what basmati is.

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