Depends on what kind of disaster you're prepping for. In a severe disaster, you may not have power/gas for cooking, may not have much access to clean water, an

Depends on what kind of disaster you're prepping for. In a severe disaster, you may not have power/gas for cooking, may not have much access to clean water, and may not be able to leave your home or have assistance come to you if roads are out. MREs don't require any water to prepare the main entrees, don't require any cooking, and have shelf lives of at least 5 years from the packing date (longer if stored at low temperature), and are meant to be easily transportable if you do have to evacuate in a hurry. That being said, MREs are kind of overkill. The US military also uses called first-strike rations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Strike_Ration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Strike_Ration) each of which are half the weight of the 3 MREs they replace and that are mostly centered around stabilized sandwiches and wraps. The manufacturer of those sandwiches, Bridgford, also sells to the civilian market: https://www.bridgford.com/readytoeat/ https://www.bridgford.com/readytoeat/ If you don't mind the much more limited menu (it's a disaster after all), a case of those sandwiches will keep a person fed for a couple weeks for much less than the cost and space of MREs.