The Food Storage Blog

(And now back to our scheduled programming of the ‘basics’ of prepping!)

While many survival stores on the ‘net necessarily try to sell lots of ‘beans and bullets’, in the end supplies may be the least important part of prepping.  However, because gear is the easiest to acquire, requiring only a credit card, sometimes it is the aspect of prepping most people relate to, because it is something they can immediately jump into. I’ll admit that I was part of this group, and I acquired a whole lot of stuff long before I knew what to do with it.

I’ve since come to understand that acquiring skills is of far more value.  Using a chain saw, running a trot line, knowing CPR and basic first aid, being able to change a flat tire or clean your battery posts, are all examples of useful skills. Robert Heinlein in his book Time Enough For Love says:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

As a specific example, let’s talk about starting a fire.  While I have many ways to start a fire, including bic lighters, magnesium fire starters, and waterproof matches, none of those would replace or be more valuable than the ability to start a fire without any of those things.  Any number of things can happen to our stuff, but its much harder to take away our natural abilities and skills.  The important thing to remember is that any of us can learn to start a fire the ‘old-fashioned ways’. (And it’s one of the thousand things on my list!  As I will go into detail in a future post, in a longer-term disaster scenario, supplies main use is to buy us time for our skills to come into play.

So if you’re just starting out on the prepping path, find out those around you who have skills you might one day need and ask if they would be willing to teach you. Most times they will be, as it is human nature to want to share what we know.  Also check out your local Red Cross Courses or your local community college, as many offer one day or multi-day courses in practical skills. In future posts we will cover must-have and good-to-have skills and where to learn them. If you would like to discuss something in particular, please let me know!

Our next several posts will discuss the other 2 fundamental aspects of prepping: fortitude and supplies.

Alright, one more post on water and we will return to our regularly scheduled programming! 

Water weighs more than 8 pounds per gallon, and is bulky.  Thus, any storage program is eventually going to run up against challenges.  Large amounts of water are generally not portable, and different solutions need to be examined for people who need potable water on the go.

Water filters and purifiers, while similar, have some important differences.  A filter is likely to be more portable, though slightly less effective, as they do not rid water of viruses.  You can find water purification methods from a 20-gallon filter straw suitable for your Car Bag or 72-hour kit to a 12000 Gallon Big Berkey Household Filter System.

While boiling is still the #1 method to guarantee perfect drinking water, a water purifier such as the Berkey’s (with the black filters) will remove most of the heavy metals and other contaminants that a filter will not. Thus, if you don’t have the ability to boil water every time you need some, a gravity-fed home purifier  is a good solution to provide sufficient water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning.

While I don’t have a Berkey system yet, it is on the top half of my list of supplies I’d like to.  In a pinch, I have a Katadyn Hiker Pro in my hiking/camping gear that would provide the wife and I sufficient water in an emergency.  I also have Potable Aqua (Iodine Tablets, basically) in my Car Bag; I wouldn’t rely on it as a primary source of drinking water, but it provides some redundancy as we talked about yesterday (The Rule of 3).

If you want even more information regarding water, this article by Grandpappy is one of the most thorough I’ve ever read.  Even though I don’t agree with everything he writes on his site, his basic survival articles are well-written and heavily researched and I could likely spend a month on his site absorbing quality information!

Finally, one of the great folks on the Survivalist Boards found this item on creating your own Berkey Water System using just the filter elements and 5-gallon plastic buckets (saving about $100 in the process!).  I’ve printed it out and am moving toward making one as a podcast project for Advice and Beans!

Within an hour of the water main break in Boston, many grocery stores had sold out of bottled water. There was an altercation at the local BJ’s over water.   A couple of million people who are now on a ‘boil alert’ are discovering the foundation of modern prepping is adequate access to clean water.

To be clear, I’ll say it again!  Water needs to be on the top of your list of preparation supplies.  As I mentioned yesterday, Ready.gov suggests having at least a 72 hour supply of water, with 3 gallons stored for each person in your home.  I’d more than double that and suggest a seven day supply, or seven gallons for each person in the house.

My wife and I currently store 30 gallons of stabilized water and we keep at least another 10-15 gallons on hand in either bottled water or one-gallon jugs in a little cooler we have in our basement.  We use the bottled water regularly and buy more as needed.  My goal is to double the amount of stored water we have over the course of the next year.

However, as one of my friends (I’ll refer to him as Scout on the website, as he is an Eagle Scout, and quite proficient in the ways of the wild!) says quite often, every prep we make should contribute to ‘The Rule of 3’.  Simply, this means that we should have 3 sources of every item or supply we are counting on in an emergency.  For example, when it comes to being able to start a fire, 3 sources might be a Bic lighter, a magnesium fire starter, and a Fire Piston. (Nice article here on the fire piston, h/t Instapundit)

So how do we do that with water?  Well, after storing water, a good suggestion is to store a gallon of plain bleach, without any of the scents available nowadays (As Clorox once advertised a gallon of their bleach is the equivalent of 3800 gallons of drinking water!).  First, find a clean container, such as a gallon jug that held water previously.  Fill with your suspect water.  Then add 8 drops of bleach per gallon of water, and double that if the water is cloudy.  You can use a handkerchief , a washcloth or even a t-shirt as a pre-filter to remove any large debris.   Wait 30 minutes or so before drinking to let the bleach do its thing.

The drawbacks to bleach disinfection of water is that it doesn’t kill everything.  Additionally, most water purification methods don’t do anything about chemicals and heavy metals that might be in the water.  With this warning, do not ever use flood water as your base, as flood water can contain a gajillion chemicals, fuel, and other toxic items! 

That being said, in a water emergency your hot water heater can be a source of a significant amount of water, assuming the incoming lines are still clean (or haven’t been used since the event requiring you to search out water!).  You can still treat this as suspect water and disinfect as you would above.

The oldest method of water purification also remains one of the best ways to decontaminate water:  boiling.  While many suggest different boiling times for water, I agree with this post at SurvivalTopics that if you bring water to a rolling boil, you’ll have killed 99% of bacteria.  If you still have power or the ability to hold the boil longer, feel free, but in many cases if you are boiling water for drinking, fuel could also be a priority.

As this has gotten a little long, we’ll discuss another option for water purification, and that is filtration, in our next post!

Update:  The conservation of water efforts in Nashville are not having enough of an effect, says the city.

It’s also interesting to note that the average water usage daily is 170 gallons.  Remember that when deciding how much you can store:  more is better!

A high-five to my friends at Mafiaoza’s Pizzeria and Pub mentioned in the article for their good efforts!

One of Nashville’s water treatment facilities is down due to the flooding, and local government says water should be used for cooking and drinking only.  Boston had a water main break that had officials suggesting people boil their tap water to be sure it was safe to drink.  Many things can go wrong with a water supply, and the time to prepare alternate water sources is now, not when something bad happens.

Thus, while it was going to be at least another week before I got into posts on water storage preparations, I think it’s important enough to move up the schedule.

At a bare minimum, Ready.gov suggests having one gallon of water available per person for 3 days.  As a minimum, I would suggest enough for 7 days (28 gallons for a 4-person family) to handle events like the two described above. 

An easy way to do this is to buy spring water at Walmart, usually at about a dollar a gallon.  However, be prepared to rotate your water at least once a year.  Meaning, drink water from your water storage, and when you finish a gallon, fill it back up with good tap water (or replace it, if you like), and repeat.

So I don’t have to fiddle with rotating, I use specific water storage containers, similar to these. Then, I add a water saver solution that allows the water to be stored safely for up to 5 years.

I’ll discuss other options tomorrow, such as where in your home you can find water that you might not think of, as well as using bleach, boiling, and other methods of making water safe to drink.

All that said, I highly recommend everyone go out today and stock some water away now, before you need it.

So what is a basic definition of prepping?

A basic definition of prepping is ‘Gaining the skills, supplies, and mental and physical fortitude to be prepared for any circumstance.’ While it is likely impossible to be prepared for ‘any’ circumstance, such as the moon careening out of orbit or a large asteroid strike a la Armageddon, that is the goal we shoot for. 

When I discuss being prepared, I don’t just mean in terms of a major disaster, but also each little emergency in our lives. For example, can you change a flat or jumpstart your car? Do you know how to safely deal with a wasp’s nest underneath your porch? How to safely put out a stove fire?

So while yes, we’ll talk about being able to deal with a power outage lasting 30 days on our own store of supplies, being a prepper means being self-sufficient wherever we can. I’ll be straight up with y’all.  For most of my life, I was a chain-smoking, video-game playing, indoor-dwelling, TV-watching sloth. My opinion of a trip outside was running to the convenience store for more Amberbock. My method of changing a tire or jump-starting my car was calling AAA.

However, somewhere along the line about 7 years ago, I started controlling the elements of my life, instead of having them control me. I quit smoking cold turkey, and I was smoking 3 packs a day. I got out of debt, even though I was only making a very average wage. I started to get back into shape after having abused my body with smokes and alcohol for many years.

So please believe me when I say anyone can do this, and needs to!  My family were laughing at me recently as I struggled to dig a trench for my wife’s tomato plants.  I was actually a little hurt, but to be honest they were right to laugh.  They have never known me as anything other than a couch-dwelling, coffee-swilling layabout. 

So digging ditches was not something I had ever done before…but guess what?  It is now. I’ve learned quite a bit about good technique and not so good technique.  And as a side benefit, because so much of what I dug up was rock, I decided to kill two birds and use the rock to help with a grade I am going to build up under my porch.

If something needs to be done around my house, it is my responsibility to do it, especially if it doesn’t require specialized skills (and sometimes even if it does).  The reason I started Advice and Beans is because I believe it is time for every person to make self-sufficiency part of our lives, and to not expect others to do for us what we can do for ourselves. 

If we make it a habit to try to resolve any situation prior to calling in the cavalry, eventually we’ll find that most of us can do many tasks we used to rely on others for.  That ability to function consistently without outside assistance will help in the most critical times, because we will have conditioned ourselves to act, not react. 

So What’s Next?

Our next 3 posts will cover the individual components of prepping:  skills, supplies and fortitude.