3 ms·

Well, food is easy enough - canned food doesn't take up much space and is easy to keep stocked, assuming you regularly rotate through it so that it doesn't expi

by zyxley 10y ago

Well, food is easy enough - canned food doesn't take up much space and is easy to keep stocked, assuming you regularly rotate through it so that it doesn't expire. The harder part is water, as just a few days worth of drinking water for one person can take up a huge amount of space.

hga 10y ago
The harder part is water, as just a few days worth of drinking water for one person can take up a huge amount of space. Eh??? A generally "comfortable" minimal budget for water is 1 gallon per day (3.8 liters, call it 4), although you might need more on hot summer days. A 5 gallon container is, with all the plastic and features for stack-ability, going to take up less than a cubic foot (19,000 cc). It's not compact like food, but it's pretty easy to store enough so that you can ride out a short disaster and pick your time to get more for a longer one.
- EGreg 10y ago
  You can get a portable desalinator! Why not?
  - hga 10y ago
    I was born and raised in, and have retired to a town famous for its distance from any large body of water, let alone salt water (Joplin, MO), and most Germans aren't on their coast as well. Here, if I run out of stored water, along those lines I need purifying capability, such as coffee filters for coarse filtering, then any one of a number of chemical methods, e.g. plain household bleach, or a serious small pore filter such as Katadyn specializes in.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  I disagree, you can get by on 2 litres of water per day. You're obviously not going to be having showers and brushing your teeth with it, but that's not the end of the world. Hell, I go through only about 6 litres of water a day while climbing mountains in the summer. Remember that food also contains water when looking at minimum intakes.
  - hga 10y ago
    That's why I qualified 1 gallon/3.8 liters as a "comfortable" minimum, if you're planning water storage for your dwelling, given the size of containers and your not needing to carry it anywhere, you might as well initially splurge. If the disaster lasts long enough, and you can't get more, you can cut down to ~2 liters/half a gallon some time before you run out. And I like to brush my teeth....

by zyxley 10y ago

hga 10y ago

The harder part is water, as just a few days worth of drinking water for one person can take up a huge amount of space. Eh??? A generally "comfortable" minimal budget for water is 1 gallon per day (3.8 liters, call it 4), although you might need more on hot summer days. A 5 gallon container is, with all the plastic and features for stack-ability, going to take up less than a cubic foot (19,000 cc). It's not compact like food, but it's pretty easy to store enough so that you can ride out a short disaster and pick your time to get more for a longer one.

EGreg 10y ago
You can get a portable desalinator! Why not?
- hga 10y ago
  I was born and raised in, and have retired to a town famous for its distance from any large body of water, let alone salt water (Joplin, MO), and most Germans aren't on their coast as well. Here, if I run out of stored water, along those lines I need purifying capability, such as coffee filters for coarse filtering, then any one of a number of chemical methods, e.g. plain household bleach, or a serious small pore filter such as Katadyn specializes in.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
I disagree, you can get by on 2 litres of water per day. You're obviously not going to be having showers and brushing your teeth with it, but that's not the end of the world. Hell, I go through only about 6 litres of water a day while climbing mountains in the summer. Remember that food also contains water when looking at minimum intakes.
- hga 10y ago
  That's why I qualified 1 gallon/3.8 liters as a "comfortable" minimum, if you're planning water storage for your dwelling, given the size of containers and your not needing to carry it anywhere, you might as well initially splurge. If the disaster lasts long enough, and you can't get more, you can cut down to ~2 liters/half a gallon some time before you run out. And I like to brush my teeth....