The Food Storage Blog

Just a couple of thoughts for Sunday! 

First is this article, which puts into words the self-sufficiency many in the prepping community strive for…describing all of Nashville, in response to the flooding this week.

2nd, after our yard sale yesterday, Scout and I went to Goodwill to drop off the remainder of the items that didn’t sell.  One of the volunteers helping to unload the minivan pulled me aside (presumably after seeing one of my wife’s bumper stickers) and said ‘This sure is different than Katrina, isn’t it?  We’re dealing with it on our own, the way it should be.’

I just have to say, ‘Well, yeah.’

(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!

Another good article from Popular Mechanics on the Nashville Flood.

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!