8 ms·

If you're in the West, it doesn't hurt to buy a couple big bags of rice from the local Indian market, and have some dried or canned beans handy, and cycle throu

by mbg721 4y ago

If you're in the West, it doesn't hurt to buy a couple big bags of rice from the local Indian market, and have some dried or canned beans handy, and cycle through them as you cook. A pallet of bottled water and a bag of charcoal don't hurt either. A dumb power outage or a downed wire or a tornado or something is much more likely than Red Dawn, but you'll still be happy to have all that.

Scoundreller 4y ago
I wanna add a solar panel. Having 50 or 100w is going to make my life a lot better than 0w.
- mbg721 4y ago
  If you have the setup where you've got that connected and make it work, that's a great idea. The neighbors next to my building have some on their roof--it's not too different from having batteries for your radio.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    You can get 100-ish watt solar panels on Amazon surprisingly cheaply, and they're small enough to take car-camping. https://www.amazon.com/PROGENY-Portable-Kickstand-Flashfish-Generator/dp/B0969Y2KLW/ https://www.amazon.com/PROGENY-Portable-Kickstand-Flashfish-... https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-SolarSaga-Portable-Explorer-Foldable/dp/B07Q71LX84/ https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-SolarSaga-Portable-Explorer-F...
    - psd1 4y ago
      I've just specced up a system to deliver 1-2 KWh per day off-grid, and there are a lot more parts in the system than just the panels. Apart from anything else, if you save on costs by sticking at 12v, you run quite high current. That 100w panel can fuck you up.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        Sure, but the parent poster just wanted 50-100 watts to charge a phone. This just has a USB hub on the back you plug into.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    A lot of the grid tied systems don’t even support off-line use, but you could always bodge something together during prolonged outages.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      I was just researching this and the new Enphase IQ8 microinverters will run without grid power. You are correct though it is common for microinverters to require grid power to operate, which seems pretty surprising!
      - lazide 4y ago
        It's usually a safety feature. If there is a downed power line and you lose grid connection, energizing your (otherwise dead) side of the downed lines could easily kill the lineman who comes to fix it.
        TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        Oh certainly it is important to have some kind of cut-off to prevent back-feeding the power lines, but I thought that would just be part of the system design.
        lazide 4y ago
        It is! The easiest design is to require existing grid stable power and supplement it. :) Anything else is difficult to do reliably, and would generally require some kind of smart monitoring system, electrically actuated mains rated switch (not easy, cheap or durable it turns out), additional sensors, etc. The design we're talking about just doesn't output power unless there is an existing sine wave to follow. Pretty foolproof, since anything that provided it would also be the one responsible for electrocuting the worker.
        TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        That makes sense! I guess being new to this it is just counter intuitive to think that you could install a big solar panel system and still suffer power outages. But I see what you mean.
carom 4y ago
The whole reason I wanted to take up camping was to understand what I can eat in an emergency situation. Now I own a camping stove, a few fuel canisters, some boil in bag rice, and a few large cans of plain freeze dried chicken and beef. Add in the charcoal BBQ and I'll have a feast the day the power goes out.
- aksss 4y ago
  The benefit of backpacking as a hobby is not only testing gear and learning how to use it, but also having a means/excuse to rotate through an emergency freeze-dried food supply or MREs and/or learn how to forage and hunt/prepare small game. MREs are reasonably cheap, high calorie, long lasting, and if you strip them down to essentials can be reasonable weight. They don’t last forever on the shelf, but again, camping/backpacking/kayaking can give you an excuse to cycle out the oldest stuff.
corrral 4y ago
Rice will be full of pest insect eggs. They'll hatch after a while (smallish count of months, likely). You've got to freeze it (to kill the eggs) and then seal it (to keep more pests from getting in) and/or add stuff that'll kill anything that hatches very fast (IIRC diatomaceous earth is popular for this) Other grains have similar pest problems, plus if it's wheat or similar and ground into flour (not e.g. whole wheat berries), it'll get worse over time from air exposure. Anything with the germ still on/in it will go rancid after a while, and the germ's full of nutrients so you really want that part if you can keep it.
- sva_ 4y ago
  Small (1kg) vacuum-sealed bags should be fine though.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Correct—it's doable, it just takes more material and planning than "buy bag of rice, stick bag in dry place in basement". Do that, you'll be sad when you try to use it in a year or three. The alternative is maintaining a stock but constantly drawing it down & replenishing it, but it gets difficult to maintain a substantial reserve that way, unless you already eat your "apocalypse" diet most of the time, so go through a lot of the same things you've got in storage even during normal times—say, if you already eat rice & beans 5+ dinners a week. You're capped by the rate at which you go through those things in non-emergency times. Plus it takes some planning and ongoing monitoring/inventorying, which is a non-zero amount of work.
    - sva_ 4y ago
      Maybe I'm ignorant of this, but it was my impression that vacuum-sealed white rice should pretty much last indefinitely?
      - corrral 4y ago
        I'd expect a couple years at least. A quick Google gives common wisdom that you still want anti-weevil measures (bay leaves in the bag, the aforementioned diatomaceous earth) with that method. My point with that part was just that you have to do the vacuum sealing (unless you're buying a product with all this taken care of, which I'd assume is expensive) and such, at least, which means more equipment and material than simply buying sealed (but not vacuum sealed) bags at the store and putting them on a shelf. Getting grains ready for long-term storage means more than just keeping mice and bugs and water out—you've gotta worry about oxygen, and about insect eggs already present in the grain, too. Just stuff one might not think of if one were to make the wrong assumptions. [EDIT] Incidentally, trying to store all one's calories, at least more than enough for a week or two, might not be the right idea anyway, short of a truly horrible catastrophe like nuclear war—my great-grandparents and grandparents, who lived through the depression and World War II, respectively, didn't seem to be all that in to storing lots of grain. What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables. I'd guess that's the result of some hard lessons about how to make it through hard times—plus, just, times before modern shipping and refrigeration when food availability dropped a whole bunch in Winter.
sva_ 4y ago
I recently looked into how much rice I'd need to survive for a year. The results were fairly surprising. A kilogram of uncooked rice only provide you with about 3500 kcal, less than you'd use in 2 days of time (for the average human). So you'd need quite a lot of rice. Beans are similar, they just have more protein (not a complete protein though). I concluded that while it is definitely advisable to have some number of days/weeks in storage, it doesn't seem feasible to store enough food to last a prolonged period of time (unless you go all-in on prepping, which has its limits). We humans are as successful as we are because we cooperate with other humans, and on our own we're pretty powerless. So fostering community might be the best way to advert crisis.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  You don't need 2k calories a day in an emergency. You can survive on 1200-1500 calories a day. I still don't advise going in 100% on rice as beri-beri is an issue (or heavy metal issues if you go all brown rice). A good mix of canned goods, dried goods and reliable water will help. Even in a shortage you will probably have some access, but limited access. I strongly advise against bottled water for emergencies. It is the worst possible solution for cost/size/availability. You can buy 6 gallon aquatainers and fill them with tap water for an easy (and useful for camping) solution. Rotate every six months and you don't need secondary treatment. Otherwise a food grade 55 gallon drum is $100 and you can fill it from your tap. You will want secondary treatment options if you plan to rotate just every 2 years, and you still need a smaller intermediary vessel.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Speak for yourself! I’m biking distance from a lake, so I’m going to focus on having enough bleach around. Bottled water is great… for bottles to do solar disinfection with. Though I guess I should really be worried about an algal bloom… ugh. 220gal IBCs should be $100 too, but maybe they’re more now.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      you can buy handheld, portable, battery-powered, solar-recharging devices that electrolytically produce bleach from salt and water
nosianu 4y ago
Buy some MREs. They are made to last and to have everything essential for survival. Shelf life is about 5 years, depending on how it's stored: https://www.mreinfo.com/mres/mre-shelf-life/ https://www.mreinfo.com/mres/mre-shelf-life/
- lazide 4y ago
  Make sure to pack some fiber though too! They'll plug you up something fierce if you eat them a lot.
  - geoka9 4y ago
    Bran is cheap and should last a long time.
    - lazide 4y ago
      For sure. When making my emergency kit (my oldest has severe food allergies and I live in a major earthquake zone), I ran across some issues with things with high fat content though (which I believe bran might be). Unless you’re very careful with removing oxygen, the fat can go rancid after awhile (from months to years depending on the specific oils). So best to do some research beforehand.
- d110af5ccf 4y ago
  If you're going for shelf life I've eaten canned chili that was more than 15 years old and it was fine. Most things seem to change texture in unpleasant ways sitting in a can that long but chili doesn't. Not that it's viable to live off of in terms of calories and storage space, just an interesting observation about shelf life.
MrFantastic 4y ago
Rice will keep you full but our body requires protein and fat to live. Carbs are optional. I Olympic lift so I always have whey.
- brandonmenc 4y ago
  Carbs are not optional for survival. MREs are overwhelmingly carbs for a reason. Pure protein sources lack carbs. Beans and rice don't have this problem.
_8j50 4y ago
Bottles water takes up too much space and is a logistic nightmare. Just get brita filters instead.

by mbg721 4y ago

Scoundreller 4y ago

I wanna add a solar panel. Having 50 or 100w is going to make my life a lot better than 0w.

mbg721 4y ago
If you have the setup where you've got that connected and make it work, that's a great idea. The neighbors next to my building have some on their roof--it's not too different from having batteries for your radio.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  You can get 100-ish watt solar panels on Amazon surprisingly cheaply, and they're small enough to take car-camping. https://www.amazon.com/PROGENY-Portable-Kickstand-Flashfish-Generator/dp/B0969Y2KLW/ https://www.amazon.com/PROGENY-Portable-Kickstand-Flashfish-... https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-SolarSaga-Portable-Explorer-Foldable/dp/B07Q71LX84/ https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-SolarSaga-Portable-Explorer-F...
  - psd1 4y ago
    I've just specced up a system to deliver 1-2 KWh per day off-grid, and there are a lot more parts in the system than just the panels. Apart from anything else, if you save on costs by sticking at 12v, you run quite high current. That 100w panel can fuck you up.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Sure, but the parent poster just wanted 50-100 watts to charge a phone. This just has a USB hub on the back you plug into.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  A lot of the grid tied systems don’t even support off-line use, but you could always bodge something together during prolonged outages.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    I was just researching this and the new Enphase IQ8 microinverters will run without grid power. You are correct though it is common for microinverters to require grid power to operate, which seems pretty surprising!
    - lazide 4y ago
      It's usually a safety feature. If there is a downed power line and you lose grid connection, energizing your (otherwise dead) side of the downed lines could easily kill the lineman who comes to fix it.
      - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        Oh certainly it is important to have some kind of cut-off to prevent back-feeding the power lines, but I thought that would just be part of the system design.
        lazide 4y ago
        It is! The easiest design is to require existing grid stable power and supplement it. :) Anything else is difficult to do reliably, and would generally require some kind of smart monitoring system, electrically actuated mains rated switch (not easy, cheap or durable it turns out), additional sensors, etc. The design we're talking about just doesn't output power unless there is an existing sine wave to follow. Pretty foolproof, since anything that provided it would also be the one responsible for electrocuting the worker.
        TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        That makes sense! I guess being new to this it is just counter intuitive to think that you could install a big solar panel system and still suffer power outages. But I see what you mean.

carom 4y ago

The whole reason I wanted to take up camping was to understand what I can eat in an emergency situation. Now I own a camping stove, a few fuel canisters, some boil in bag rice, and a few large cans of plain freeze dried chicken and beef. Add in the charcoal BBQ and I'll have a feast the day the power goes out.

aksss 4y ago
The benefit of backpacking as a hobby is not only testing gear and learning how to use it, but also having a means/excuse to rotate through an emergency freeze-dried food supply or MREs and/or learn how to forage and hunt/prepare small game. MREs are reasonably cheap, high calorie, long lasting, and if you strip them down to essentials can be reasonable weight. They don’t last forever on the shelf, but again, camping/backpacking/kayaking can give you an excuse to cycle out the oldest stuff.

corrral 4y ago

Rice will be full of pest insect eggs. They'll hatch after a while (smallish count of months, likely). You've got to freeze it (to kill the eggs) and then seal it (to keep more pests from getting in) and/or add stuff that'll kill anything that hatches very fast (IIRC diatomaceous earth is popular for this) Other grains have similar pest problems, plus if it's wheat or similar and ground into flour (not e.g. whole wheat berries), it'll get worse over time from air exposure. Anything with the germ still on/in it will go rancid after a while, and the germ's full of nutrients so you really want that part if you can keep it.

sva_ 4y ago
Small (1kg) vacuum-sealed bags should be fine though.
- corrral 4y ago
  Correct—it's doable, it just takes more material and planning than "buy bag of rice, stick bag in dry place in basement". Do that, you'll be sad when you try to use it in a year or three. The alternative is maintaining a stock but constantly drawing it down & replenishing it, but it gets difficult to maintain a substantial reserve that way, unless you already eat your "apocalypse" diet most of the time, so go through a lot of the same things you've got in storage even during normal times—say, if you already eat rice & beans 5+ dinners a week. You're capped by the rate at which you go through those things in non-emergency times. Plus it takes some planning and ongoing monitoring/inventorying, which is a non-zero amount of work.
  - sva_ 4y ago
    Maybe I'm ignorant of this, but it was my impression that vacuum-sealed white rice should pretty much last indefinitely?
    - corrral 4y ago
      I'd expect a couple years at least. A quick Google gives common wisdom that you still want anti-weevil measures (bay leaves in the bag, the aforementioned diatomaceous earth) with that method. My point with that part was just that you have to do the vacuum sealing (unless you're buying a product with all this taken care of, which I'd assume is expensive) and such, at least, which means more equipment and material than simply buying sealed (but not vacuum sealed) bags at the store and putting them on a shelf. Getting grains ready for long-term storage means more than just keeping mice and bugs and water out—you've gotta worry about oxygen, and about insect eggs already present in the grain, too. Just stuff one might not think of if one were to make the wrong assumptions. [EDIT] Incidentally, trying to store all one's calories, at least more than enough for a week or two, might not be the right idea anyway, short of a truly horrible catastrophe like nuclear war—my great-grandparents and grandparents, who lived through the depression and World War II, respectively, didn't seem to be all that in to storing lots of grain. What they were into, big time, was canning vegetables, and gardening (to grow stuff to put in the cans). Man, were they ever into canning vegetables. I'd guess that's the result of some hard lessons about how to make it through hard times—plus, just, times before modern shipping and refrigeration when food availability dropped a whole bunch in Winter.

sva_ 4y ago

I recently looked into how much rice I'd need to survive for a year. The results were fairly surprising. A kilogram of uncooked rice only provide you with about 3500 kcal, less than you'd use in 2 days of time (for the average human). So you'd need quite a lot of rice. Beans are similar, they just have more protein (not a complete protein though). I concluded that while it is definitely advisable to have some number of days/weeks in storage, it doesn't seem feasible to store enough food to last a prolonged period of time (unless you go all-in on prepping, which has its limits). We humans are as successful as we are because we cooperate with other humans, and on our own we're pretty powerless. So fostering community might be the best way to advert crisis.

vorpalhex 4y ago
You don't need 2k calories a day in an emergency. You can survive on 1200-1500 calories a day. I still don't advise going in 100% on rice as beri-beri is an issue (or heavy metal issues if you go all brown rice). A good mix of canned goods, dried goods and reliable water will help. Even in a shortage you will probably have some access, but limited access. I strongly advise against bottled water for emergencies. It is the worst possible solution for cost/size/availability. You can buy 6 gallon aquatainers and fill them with tap water for an easy (and useful for camping) solution. Rotate every six months and you don't need secondary treatment. Otherwise a food grade 55 gallon drum is $100 and you can fill it from your tap. You will want secondary treatment options if you plan to rotate just every 2 years, and you still need a smaller intermediary vessel.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Speak for yourself! I’m biking distance from a lake, so I’m going to focus on having enough bleach around. Bottled water is great… for bottles to do solar disinfection with. Though I guess I should really be worried about an algal bloom… ugh. 220gal IBCs should be $100 too, but maybe they’re more now.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    you can buy handheld, portable, battery-powered, solar-recharging devices that electrolytically produce bleach from salt and water

nosianu 4y ago

Buy some MREs. They are made to last and to have everything essential for survival. Shelf life is about 5 years, depending on how it's stored: https://www.mreinfo.com/mres/mre-shelf-life/ https://www.mreinfo.com/mres/mre-shelf-life/

lazide 4y ago
Make sure to pack some fiber though too! They'll plug you up something fierce if you eat them a lot.
- geoka9 4y ago
  Bran is cheap and should last a long time.
  - lazide 4y ago
    For sure. When making my emergency kit (my oldest has severe food allergies and I live in a major earthquake zone), I ran across some issues with things with high fat content though (which I believe bran might be). Unless you’re very careful with removing oxygen, the fat can go rancid after awhile (from months to years depending on the specific oils). So best to do some research beforehand.
d110af5ccf 4y ago
If you're going for shelf life I've eaten canned chili that was more than 15 years old and it was fine. Most things seem to change texture in unpleasant ways sitting in a can that long but chili doesn't. Not that it's viable to live off of in terms of calories and storage space, just an interesting observation about shelf life.

MrFantastic 4y ago

Rice will keep you full but our body requires protein and fat to live. Carbs are optional. I Olympic lift so I always have whey.

brandonmenc 4y ago
Carbs are not optional for survival. MREs are overwhelmingly carbs for a reason. Pure protein sources lack carbs. Beans and rice don't have this problem.

_8j50 4y ago

Bottles water takes up too much space and is a logistic nightmare. Just get brita filters instead.