Survival food.
Another big one is heading for the Gulf Coast of the US. Rita is her name. Will people be better prepared than with Katrina? Will the government pull some kind of miracle and save everybody?
Probably not.
A few posts back I talked about water and survival. Today it's food.
To call yourself prepared for a disaster you need to have at least a 3 day supply of food in your house at all times. More would be better.
Before the disaster hits.
The first step is to look in your pantry and see what you have in there that you could eat if a disaster struck.
Canned foods are the first thing to look at. Even if your house is blown down the canned goods are still edible. Floods won't hurt canned goods. Most canned foods can be eaten cold. So canned foods should be the staple of your disaster preparedness plan.
I tell you to look in your pantry for a reason. Because the foods in there are foods you are accustomed to eating. There's no use having foods in your emergency preparedness kit that you won't eat.
Now buy enough of those canned foods to feed your family for several days. If you can't afford to buy that much all at once then buy a few extra cans of food each payday and put them in your pantry or in a box in the closet. Having even those few cans of food is an improvement. And. soon you will have enough food to survive until help can arrive from outside.
Some suggestions beyond your pantry
soups, preferably with meat in them
beef stew
spam
canned beans or peas of your favorite type
canned fruit
canned vegetables of any variety
If it's edible and canned it's good
Walk up and down the canned food aisle at you store and see what appeals to you.
Some other things you can do is buy extra boxes of crackers (crackers can be bought in metal boxes) and your favorite dry cereals and store them either in a water tight container or right next to your other cereal, and rotate stock. When you buy a new box put it behind the others and open the oldest one. Cereal keeps for months in a cool dark place, check the use by date on the box. And cereal can be eaten dry.
Things like rice and oatmeal, instant or not can be eaten after soaking in cold water for a time. And they give lots of calories from the carbohydrates.
Dried milk is a good thing to have. And it goes good with that cereal above, or with the rice.
Dried beans can also be eaten after a long soak in water. Be sure they are stored in a water proof container un till needed.
A quick pointer on storing these dried items. Put them in you'r freezer for a few days before storing them away. This will kill any bugs or eggs that may be in them. In fact that is a good thing to do with any dried seed food, even those you are not storing away.
Potatoes can be eaten raw for much needed nutrition and energy. They don't keep long unless you have root cellar, but if you have them on hand eat'em.
If you take a daily multivitamin, keep on taking it.
Canned fruit drinks are also good to have on hand, they provide water and energy. Even canned soda or beer can be stored away. Dried fruits keep quite a long time too.
How much food should you have per person? If you are just sitting and waiting your caloric intake can be about half of what you normally eat. If you expect to have to work during the disaster then you may want to double the planned calorie intake. By "work" I mean you may be called on to clear debris, or search for other survivors.
After the disaster has struck.
When the power first goes out you should look in the freezer. Whatever is in there needs to be eaten first. It will spoil soon. Other items in the refrigerator should also go on your eat it early list.
Cooking after a disaster is something you should consider. So far I have talked about food that needs no heating, but heated is better especially in the winter. Probably the best idea would be to get a small camp stove, I prefer the one that uses bottles of compressed gas. Again if you can't buy ten bottles of compressed gas all at once buy one per payday. Buy the stove After you have plenty of water and food on hand. Be sure you have proper ventilation.
Many people have charcoal grills, or even better gas grills. Cook only outside with these.
An axe and or a hatchet can be used to cut fire wood. You can build a wood fire in your fireplace if you have one. And wood burns just fine in a charcoal grill.
If you have a bit of spare cash you can go to camping stores or Army Navy Surplus stores and buy freeze dried foods. These things last for years and come in water proof packages. The main benefit of this sort of food is you can buy it, store it, and forget it. No need to rotate stock monthly, just stuff in the closet and it will be there when you need it.
Update from my friend from Long Beach MS
BTW, in case I haven't mentioned it before Long Beach is a Suburb of Gulf Port MS.
We Coastians are the proudest and most resiliant people in the world. We lost it all but WE WILL REBUILD and THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!
I'm personally sick and tired of the attention New Orleans is getting. They got very minimal damage from the hurricane itself.
They got their damage from the water after the levee breached.
They had ample time to prepare. They have officials that are retards. The Mississippi Coast took the full brunt of the storm, leveling damn near everything, yet we get very minimal coverage.
I can say this because Saturday I rode the length of the coast in the"militarized zone" South of the tracks, all along highway 90, escorted by the US Army and the American Red Cross.
I saw the stuff the news doesn't want you to see. I saw and smelled the STILL rotting corpses in the rubble that was once our homes and our friends and families. I saw the devestation way too close and personal and I was not prepared. For hours I cried. For hours I vomited. The sheer devestation and despair that permeated the air was simply overwhelming.
But you know, all along the beachfront I saw and stopped and talked to now homeless residents and military alike.
I spoke to a soldier that was recently back from Iraq and he told me that Baghdad was a walk in the park compared to what he was seeing on the coast...the sheer and utter absence of anything remotely resembling civilization. That soldier and I cried together and he assured me that he would not leave the coast until the job of reconstruction was complete. I thanked him and he gave me a hug and wished me luck and vowed his promise would be fulfilled. I gave him my last cold Mountain Dew and got back in the car, but before I pulled away he said something that will always ring loud and clear in my head and my heart..
Standing amid the rubble and debris and shattered lives and dreams, that soldier said.."Americans believe in America, God Bless America" I drove away with tears pouring down my face as he saluted me.
This friends PayPal address is fantc@cableone.net.
He would apreciate any help you might send.
Also please give to the agencies that are helping.
Mississippi Hurricane Recovery Fund
Mississpiip Recovery
1-866-230-8903Volunteer localy with the Red Cross
Red Cross local chapter list
Cash donations and volunteers Salvation Army
BTW There's something I have been wanting to say.
The slowness of Katrina relief in New Orleans had nothing to do with race.
Two things prove that that is a race baiting lie
1. When Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida a few years ago it took 5 days for federal aid to show up. Same as Katrina for New Orleans. The areas of Florida hit were a mostly white area.
2. The areas of Mississippi and Alabama that were hit by Katrina were the last to see federal aid. Many New Orleans refugees were already, evacuated, and set up in new apartments before fed aid arrived in Mississippi.
The counties in Mississippi were some of the whitest counties in Mississippi.
With those two facts under your belt, if you still call the federal response to New Orleans racist, you're delusional.
Of course when it come to racial relations in this coutry there are a lot of delusional people, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton being at the top of that list!
Here's an interesting little (Ok, not so little) rant about the what people are really all about.
Tribes
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