A fast sand water filter

Posted on August 3, 2018 by BigDuke6

One of the things I definitely needed as part of my big plan was a way to prefilter raw water. In treatment plants, water is pumped into settling tanks with aeration and flocculant to get all the particles out, then it goes to finer filtration and chlorination. In my scheme, I didn’t have anything ahead of my Berkey ceramic filter which would tend to limit the throughput for drinking water (clogs from sediment). It also didn’t allow for a source of filtered but non-potable water for washing.

The usual solution for filtering is a “slow sand” filter, it’s a large column of sand with a diffuser on top and a drain at the bottom. It’s big and heavy, they need to be at least 55 gallons to allow the bacteria to trap and digest any harmful impurities. It is also slow, just a trickle, and also needs to be run for a while to develop the native biofilm. Rather than do all this, I made a smaller version that just traps particles. The goal was to pour asswater in the top, and get clean non-turbid stuff out for either bleach treatment (washing) or for the Berkey and Pur filters for drinking and cooking. Here’s a few pics:

Empty plastic bucket with the copper manifold and outlet

A couple of notes. I used 40 grit paper on the sides, this is to trap the sand grains and not let any water past the sides. This is a big deal with the slow filters, so I went ahead and treated it. The pipe manifold is copper, there are a bunch of 1/8″ holes underneath that let the water out. I used copper for the antimicrobial properties and easy assembly, but plastic would be fine. I added a 3″ layer of pea gravel on top of this, to prevent the sand from migrating out the manifold.

Here it is with the pea gravel and play sand fill. I left about 1 1/2 gallons of headspace to give it some working volume, but still have a filtering action.

In action. You can see the fine sand it spit out on the first fill, that went away quickly and the rest was crystal clear. Playsand is very fine, almost dust like, and seems to do a good job filtering sediment. I pulled a bucket of pond water, let it sit a few days, then poured it in. Out came nice clear water, albeit with a faint musty lake smell. This will be run through my other filters soon, and I’ll see how it is. I think using an aquarium bubbler on the filtered water might eliminate the odor, will probably try that as an experiment.

So far, so good though.

Filling in the preparedness plan gaps

Posted on July 26, 2018 by BigDuke6

I’m sort of done with the big picture planning, and now I’m going back to see what sort of gaps exist in my 1 year plan. I did this by creating a master Excel sheet with every plan item listed, with the quantity/storage location/justification for the amount. Once I did that, it was apparent which things were either missing or short. For instance, I had toiletries and hygiene items but had missed on the amounts and type. Toothpaste and floss was short, and the wrong type (need powder for long term storage). Toilet paper was another. Once you get it all on paper, you can mentally run through everything you use regularly and see the issues. Calculating your usage is a must, and can be done within the sheet which is handy. One thing that tripped me up is my kid’s needs, when I first started they were preschool/elementary age but now are teenagers. That add two adults to the list, with different needs.

I am getting close to finishing up the 1 year prep plan, most things are in place and it’s a good feeling. There is the question of how long to plan for, there’s nothing magic about a year but LDS uses it and it is a reasonable time frame. Anything longer than that would either have to be dealt with by going full homesteader or going nuts on the amount of stored items. I just can’t see a reasonable scenario where I’d need 3 or 5 years with no outside supply or ability to grow food.

As a note, it’s time again to purge and check stock on my 2005 and 2013 items. I had socked away some things long ago that weren’t really meant to last, but they seemed to hold up OK externally. I’ll be sampling things and reporting back, stay tuned for that….

Breakfast in America (freeze dried)

Posted on October 1, 2016 by BigDuke6

I finally got around to trying powdered eggs. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, and got a bit of time to experiment. I’d always heard powdered eggs were bad, and I see why. To start, I bought a #10 can of Scrambled Egg Mix from BePrepared. I followed the instructions, made a small batch that looked great but tasted nasty. I can’t really say what specifically makes it bad, maybe salt but it’s just this weird unnatural flavor combined with a rubbery texture. I tried using less water to combat the latter, and it improved things but only marginally. It went from vile to “no seconds for me, thanks”. It was like a dry Egg McMuffin egg portion, puck like but oddly far more edible. You could make a sandwich out of it and it would be OK.

The Contenders

I read some Amazon reviews of powdered eggs, and the consensus was “Ovaeasy” is the best. Got a small packet of those, and yes we have a winner. They are very close to real eggs in taste and texture, and pretty good to eat. I fed some to my wife, who said “I’d eat them if I was starving” which means they were OK. I finished the whole portion, which I could not do with the other product. Glad I didn’t buy a lot of those!

Speaking of breakfast, I also tried the Mountain Home Bacon and Eggs in a pouch. That was fair, I ate it but it’s not quite as good as Ovaeasy. It’s way easier to prepare, no dishes or fooling with whisks and pans.

The Big Gas Crisis of ’16

Posted on September 19, 2016 by BigDuke6

We are in the middle of a gasoline shortage, caused by a POL pipeline leak. It had to shut down for repairs, which causes a hiccup in the supply but should not cause a total lack of delivery. Turns out the news media started running stories about how prices were going up, which caused everyone to rush out and fill up, which then led to stations running out and so on.

Now there are very few places in the state that still have fuel, and it’s a crisis. As I posted long ago, I store 10 gallons of gasoline in sealed jerry cans so we are OK for a few weeks, plus I have 50 gallons in my pickup that I can drain out if needed. This was another wake up call, I didn’t anticipate the need for that much fuel to be stored. I figured if something happened I’d just need enough for a few car trips and then the generator for battery bank charging. Based on this event, I think I need at least 25 gallons stored plus truck tanks for 55-60 total.

It’s not the supply itself, rather the panic buying that causes the issue. I can see how any little disruption in fuel/food/supplies will get amplified by the media, so it’s best to have plenty on hand of whatever you may need. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts, in a actual crisis things would take forever to recover due to the lack of backups and people’s behavior. I can totally see rioting happening, it probably wouldn’t take much esp. if food was involved. Case in point: 22 LR ammo. Back in 2012 there was some talk of tightening up gun laws, which somehow led to a run on 22 ammo. It took over a year for the supply to get to above zero, but in 2016 we are still on allocation with high prices in place. Unbelievably, people are STILL trying to amass 10-20K rounds which is just killing the supply chain.

Cash in an emergency

Posted on February 7, 2016 by BigDuke6

A few weeks ago, we were out and about and stopped by an Arby’s to pick up food for a sick relative. When we went to order, the cashier said their POS (point of sale) terminal modems were down and they could only accept cash. This rarely happens, but luckily we had sufficient cash on hand to pay. It was interesting to see how many people didn’t, I’d say maybe 1 out of 4 or less had even 10-15 dollars on hand. It was a stream of people in, then out when they found out it was cash-only.

I had added paper money to my emergency check list, but never had time to get to the bank to make a withdrawal. I finally did this, it’s something that you would definitely need even in a very short duration power loss as with windstorms or ice. I forgot how much people have moved to electronic payments, if for some reason communications are interrupted you have NO way to pay for ANYTHING. If there’s some sort of major outage for any reason, including a coordinated attack on comms or the electric grid, it would be catastrophic solely due to the lack of commerce let alone anything else. It’s just another thing that you don’t want to have zero reserves of. I’m sure business would be able to conduct local transactions manually, but if you don’t have money there’s no way to make withdrawals. The banks wouldn’t be able to debit accounts without access to databases, nor would B2B work as that is all electronic. There would be a window where things would work more or less normally, but when restocking was needed it would get interesting.

Progress on the sorghum, corn, and sunflower plot

Posted on July 25, 2015 by BigDuke6

The small plot I made at work is doing well (mostly). I planted about 50 oil seed sunflowers, 25 Sugardrip Sorghum (milo) plants, with Tophat and Painted Mountain corn. These were a few of the essential crops I needed for long-term use, so I wanted to see how they faired in an area similar to a suburban front yard. That’s pretty much what this land is, so it was a perfect proxy for the experiment. If hard times occur, we would need to plant every usable square foot in order to get by. Here’s the pics:

Sorghum

Beautiful!! nice tall stalks, big seed heads which is exactly what you need. It didn’t need much care, just some water in the beginning and a small shot of nitrogen. I need to get a few stalks out and press them for juice, I may have gone past the optimal syrup point but it might work. The seed will be kept for planting, and the rest milled into flour. I’ve never eaten millet, but apparently it’s a staple in developing countries. Sure is easy to grow, so mark this as a win. Flour and syrup from the same plant, what more can you ask for?

Sunflowers

All the plants are growing well, but they are short compared to what I’m used to. This is a new variety, so maybe that’s the way it was bred. I had a problem with deer cropping the leaves, they pushed the fence in and over the plants, and where they couldn’t do that they leaned over and did it. I ran three strands of barbed wire up some posts, fixed that problem. You can see it in the pic, works great but is a killer to work around. I see how a spiral of this loosely staked would stop intruders, the barbs are sharp as hell and snag anything. You would be totally stuck hitting this stuff, and I am keeping a roll in stock just in case. Good luck getting past it.

Corn

Sadly, the corn is not doing that great. All the plants are stunted, and the ears that made seem to be small and partially developed. There was a lot of fungus in the ears, and a lot of them were sprouting when I pulled them. I have plenty of seed now, but eating would be problematic. I don’t know exactly why this happened, but I think it’s a lack of nitrogen (corn is a grass) coupled with the wrong variety for this area. I think these were developed for places like the Pacific Northwest, or cool short seasons. I’ll try this again, using a different one and of course dressing the shit out of the fertilizer. I’m amazed how much you need to grow wheat and corn, I didn’t think it was that critical but it is. Which is an important lesson; make sure you have a big barrel of fertilizer on hand or you can’t grow the traditional cereal grains. Maybe you could use dung or compost, but that’s a luxury and won’t be handy initially.

Scythed Wheat

Winter variety. This turned out absolutely perfect, great yield and well formed heads. No rust or smut. Win!

Spring Variety. Started out well, but didn’t grow as robust as the winter and developed a slight dark coloration on the heads. I think it’s a fungus, it wasn’t wet (actually dry) but it appeared when it was ripening. It seems to be just the husk, the kernels are OK but I’m leery of any grain fungus. Ergot is a common rye problem and causes horrible health problems if consumed.

Miscellaneous stuff

The herb garden is rocking. Basil, oregano, thyme, chives, dill, etc. All doing well, and boy they sure taste good. I never had fresh spices, these are the best. I added a blueberry bush to the berry patch, yielded a good crop and I learned that you need plastic mesh if you want to keep any. Catbirds and robins go for any berries, so lesson learned. Broccoli is still sucking, I gave up trying to spray for caterpillars. I think the only way to stop it is to make a house screened enclosure over the plants (next year).

Lots of plants made seed; I harvested onion, kale, broccoli, wheat, bell pepper, and now carrots and basil (waiting for them to dry). I need to successfully grow a crop from seed before declaring victory, that is in progress. Already did hot pepper and cherry tomato, the trick was to let the fruit drop and overwinter in the dirt. Drying them didn’t work, supposedly there’s a coating on the seed that needs to be there for it to germinate. More work needed on those, I guess.

Wheat is on!

Posted on May 10, 2015 by BigDuke6

Wheat

The winter wheat has done very, very well and has headed out:

The trick was adding straight nitrogen grass fertilizer when I plowed it up, and then “top dressing” more when the flag leaf appeared. Being related to grass, it likes the same conditions and you can get everything at the hardware store to take care of it. Around July it should ripen and be ready to cut and thresh.

Summer wheat is following the same path:
The flag leaves are appearing, tillering fine and looking fabulous. You only need to plant a single seed every 8-12″, the plant “tillers” and spreads out. Sowing broadcast style (I did this last year) wastes seed and seemed to starve the plants.

Other developments

Sunflowers and the oil press

I secured an area around work that is open and unused, I put in around 50 oil seed plants so I can get a gallon of seed for the oil press. I fabricated the press last year but haven’t had to time to squeeze the small batch of seed from last years crop.

This is a modification of the old 70s article design, I used a special top plate (on the left) with a sleeve to fit the Harbor Freight hydraulic press pilot rod. The ram (on the right) fits inside the cylinder, and rests on the metal collection pan which is on top the big baseplate supplied with the press. Note the nuts welded to the cylinder; those allow easy cleanout of the compressed seed bolus which is a major PITA on other presses. Been too busy to try it, but it should work. Side note: it takes FOREVER to drill all those 1/8″ holes in 1/4″ steel, gotta buy 2-3 carbide die drills and use a drill press with V blocks if you value your sanity. I guess you could do it with a hand drill and plain drills but I wouldn’t want to.

Carrots

The damp sand mini root cellar worked awesome, I filled a big Tupperware bin with play sand and set 10 carrots in it last October. I pulled them out this March, most were just fine but some rotted. The taste was sort of funky, they should have been outdoors but they were in my basement at 55-60 degrees. They weren’t nearly as good as the ones I left in the pots, but would have been fine cooked in a stew. For survival = win.

My existing plants overwintered OK, and are sending up new growth. So I guess you can use this mode of propagation vs seed, which is cool.

Potatoes

I ordered 200 seeds from a guy in Wisconsin, planted two and I have a robust seedling coming up. This is the start of the Great Spud Experiment, it’s in a big pot for now but will go to a tower to see how many pounds I can get out of a 2’x2′ footprint. Stay tuned.

Bread et al

I made two batches of wheat bread using purchased hard wheat, the grinding went flawlessly but the bread was right out the Stalag Luft 17 ration bucket. Flat, dense, and heavy as a lead bar.I didn’t knead it long enough the first time, then didn’t use enough dough in the loaf pan the second time. I’m trying it again, this time 2 1/2 cups of flour per pan and 12 minutes of kneading. Tortillas were a smashing success, turned out great but were kinda oily for my taste. But OMG they good right off the griddle.

Corn and Sorghum

Put these in the same area at work, corn will be hulled and dried for meal and seed. The sorghum (also called milo where I’m from) can be used to make syrup. The oil press will accept cut up cane stalks, the juice is boiled down to make the the syrup. The plants are already up, very excited to harvest all the produce.

Geiger counters and Black Swan events

Posted on December 21, 2014 by BigDuke6

Now that I have a lot of my mid term plans and supplies done, I’m looking at long term, mobile operations, and “second-order/Black Swan” scenarios. By that I mean things that can happen, but are not as likely and not worthy of attention until everything else is done. One of these is a nuclear exchange or a long term loss of grid power (nuclear fuel fires). For that, I still need everything I already talked about but also a way to detect gamma/beta radiation and some type of fallout shelter.

Detectors

There are three types of radiation detectors on the market; new lab grade survey meters, low cost Geiger counters, and government surplus. The problem with the first is expense, to cover the range expected in a crisis would take thousands of dollars. You can’t get a decent instrument that will cover 1 mR to 500 R/hr, the closest I found was Ludlum’s in Texas but they are not really customer focused and you’d need add ons to get the range. Plus it’s expensive.

Amazon/Ebay stuff is usually gimmicky/low cost with a low max rate, usually less than 0.1 R/hr which is OK for things like high school science lab but not for even low levels of fallout. You have no way to know whether or not you’re getting 1 R/hr or a 1000, which is the difference between living and dying.

And then there’s CD surplus. It seems there are large stocks of 60s/70s Civil Defense meters being released into the surplus channels, so one can pick up bargains. BUT, these things have been sitting around for 50+ years with a lot of it inoperable. I was lucky to find this guy:

http://www.uraniumrocks.com/

He has repaired and checked CD-700/715 meters and dosimeters, plus I scored a complete NOS shelter kit:

This covers all bases, from low level to lethally hot AND has the dosimeters. Price was right, too. You need a check source, you can use uranium ore or Peerless lantern mantles which are commonly available.

OK so what about shelter? Well, that’s one of those things that people just love to debate and go for the overkill solution. Most hard core peppers end up building versions that will ride out a near-miss from a surface burst. Unless you are within 75 miles of a hard target and expect a full up exchange, I’m not sure this is appropriate. Fallout tends to disperse in high concentrations close to the source, and decays exponentially with time. Most people can get by with less protection. The rough rule for exposure is keep the dosage to less than 125 rads in a month, and it’s probably going to be less than 100 rads/hr for the initial rates. Doing some rough calculations says you need to reduce that by a factor of 16 to keep from getting ill. That takes 4 half thicknesses of shielding (2^4=16), which can be obtained by about a foot of earth or 10 inches of brick or cement. A typical frame house will give roughly one half thickness, if you shelter in the innermost lower part OR the basement/crawl.

You need three additional half layers, the old CD books say pile up dirt but that’s impractical. My solution is: Sandbags. I have an 8″ brick walled above ground basement , so I only to add bags above to get the protection from the fallout coming from tree foliage and the roof. When I first started thinking about this, I was focused on digging something but then realized that wasn’t practical. Not only would people think I’d totally lost it, but it’s not needed and would be a PITA to keep free of water, ventilate, and would be claustrophobia inducing to boot. Not to mention a tough thing to remove if I move. Polypropylene bags come in white, OD, and beige and are 37 cents a pop in lots of 100. They store small, can be filled when needed, carried, and can be used to create a defensive fire position if that’s ever needed. I want the stuff I buy to serve multiple purposes, which these do.

The spinach bolts..and the need to try things out

Posted on May 28, 2014 by BigDuke6

The wheat is now 6″ tall, it looks just like fescue and seems to be doing well. Sun flowers all came up fine, BUT some of the babies got scythed down by the multitude of rabbits roaming the ‘burb. I sprayed ’em with hot pepper solution, it didn’t really do much except to stain the leaves and make them sad looking. Some survived and have decent stems, I think the rabbits only liked the new growth ( mature stalks are really tough). I went ahead and planted 8 each in long planter boxes on the back patio, it gets 5-6 hours of sun and is pest-free so maybe they will do better initially.

Onions are being difficult. My starter pot is full of spindly babies, they supposedly love light but seem also to fall over in full sun. I’m trimming them to 4″ to foster stem girth and basically pampering them full tilt. I have 5 more started in the ground, out front by the sunflowers, so it’s Darwinism time. They may need to be outside in dirt from the get go, we will see.

Lettuce is small and slow growing, they are getting there but they might bolt before I get enough to make a small bowl of greens. Spinach is over, bolted, so we are eating what’s left and letting the rest go to seed. I discovered spinach likes cool weather, so that means I get like 2-4 weeks after the last hard frost and bolting (spring), and who knows in the fall. This area flips to hot and stays there until October, so salad greens may be highly seasonal or just a buttload of small stuff when I can grow it. Hot peppers? Hell yeah, they are booming so there’s gonna be plenty of fiery “apocalypse produce”. That was supposed to be a occasional spicy treat, not sustenance but I’ll take it. Thank God something’s actually yielding. Broccoli looks good so far, carrots OK but small, bell peppers in the Jalapeno category i.e. rocking. Those were seedlings, but I also have seeds coming up as well.

The lesson is to ALWAYS TRY THE PLAN BEFORE THE CRISIS. There’s so many things that go wrong, there was no way I could simply dig up my yard and plant random Home Depot seed and expect a cornucopia to blossom forth. Yeah that sounds retarded but seeds are a part of most survival packages, sort of pointless really without the practical experience of actually growing things. I’m learning a TON of things about gardening, I grew up on a farm and we had one but I didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on. I actually was more into my Mom’s activities, pressure canning and sewing but i didn’t pick up that much there either. More than gardening, sadly.

Last random topic: sugarcane. I was thinking about how to make sugar, checked into bees and decided that was a bad idea. But, you can raise sugarcane here and it grows like weeds. You cut the stalks, press, then cook the juice and voila it is syrup. I’m trying this next year, along with raising rice in a mini-paddy. This is a lot of fun, plus I get valuable survival skills just in case. And it baffles the neighbors.

Mid-term emergency planning

Posted on October 26, 2013 by BigDuke6

We’ve discussed short term planning and prep in a previous post, the next phase begins roughly 20-30 days after the event and lasts until you can achieve sustainability. Recall that the short-term will be covered by a relatively moderate amount of preparation and supplies, augmented by whatever you have on hand or can grab prior to the depletion of local stores. That will represent the last link to normal and familiar existence, after that runs out you will need to shift to a much more labor intensive routine. Most of us take advantage of prepared foods and many modern conveniences, none of which will exist. There are a number of categories to consider:

Heating
Power
Cooking
Water
Food
Sanitation
Self-defense
Shelter
Fuel
Transportation
Human interaction

It’s sort of a “OK I made it this far, now what?” scenario. Up to that point, chances are it will seem like a camping trip or the aftermath of a hurricane; not a lot of work just consuming supplies. The next phase will need to last long enough to get things ramped up to allow existing on what you can grow and collect in and around your dwelling. That’s the Day366 idea, maybe it’s Day183 but same principal. At some point, no matter how much stuff you hoard you will run out. That will be primarily food related items, the rest is less critical and beyond the scope of this blog. To a large extent, other things will become available as people move on (both figuratively and literally). For instance, say 5 months later you need some nails. The local Home Depot will probably have lots of them, you can’t eat nails and they are useless to looters.

I’m going to cover the last item of my list first, Human Interaction. This might be the most important one, since your survival could depend on who shows up at your place.

Human Interactions

There’s a new movie out called “American Blackout”, I don’t plan on watching it but the plot revolves around a cyber-attack on the power grid. It covers the first 10 days, but I’m not sure if it assumes the blackout lasts longer than that. This made me think (again) about how people would respond in a crisis, and how my planning would be affected. Frankly, I have a very tough time imagining what others will do. We all tend to assume people will behave in a certain fashion, either like us, helpless incompetents, or as criminals. That’s the sense I get visiting prep sites, maybe that’s correct but no idea, really. I’m going to try to be open-minded and think this one through.

Neighbors

These folks are, by virtue of proximity and familiarity, going to be the first to come a ‘knocking. I expect them to be out and about and seeking help and information from the start of the crisis, it’s only natural but begs the question of how to respond. On one hand, if outsiders cause trouble you may want to band together for protection. On the other, chances are they will only drain what limited resources you have and expect you to help even if you can’t. My position is to offer guidance, information (you may be the only link to the outside), and assistance defending against outsiders. Say nothing about what you have, that will create a terrible problem later. I’d like to be able to function as Farmer Bob and feed the subdivision, but that’s not practical. So, the only reasonable path is to defer food requests and make them find it themselves. I could probably provide clean drinking water, assuming they bring it to me for filtering and treatment. I could also give them a few seeds, if they can plant and maintain a garden. You have to force people to shift for themselves, otherwise they will do nothing and expect to be taken care of. Sound harsh, but there’s no other way to handle it. It’s the old saying about teaching someone to fish rather than giving them one…

The exception to this is block defense, if strangers begin roaming and looting houses you may need to form a team to repel them. I suppose it would be like a tiny version of the Minutemen, those who own firearms respond to the call. That assumes your neighbors are not royally pissed off at you and/or are the ones doing the looting.

What I’d really like to do is organize the nearby homes, pool resources, and get cranking on the gardening/farming/wood cutting/improvising. Whether or not I can convince people to follow that is a big question, but they’d have few options. Beats me if this is feasible, or it breaks down and we end up in Mad Max mode after all.

Outsiders

This is the land of pure speculation. I’m not sure if too many outsiders would show up, given the difficulty of travel and resupply. If they did, I would stay quiet and wait until they left. If they caused trouble, warn then dispatch. I don’t see how you could tolerate any form of looting, that defeats the whole purpose of prepping and would cause you to lose everything you worked so hard to put in place. ‘Nuff said there. One complication would be cops and armed forces, if they started commandeering private property under some bullshit law it would put you in a real bind. I could just see the local doughnut eaters trying this, although I doubt it would be successful. If the armed forces do it, maybe better equipped but still facing resistance from heavily armed homeowners. Same approach, hide then attack if they persist.

Food

Learning from my storage experiments, here’s what I recommend as the food options:

Freeze dried entrees, veggies, fruits. This stuff is reasonably priced, stores for up to 25 years, and has enough variety to prevent food monotony. How much is up to you, but I suggest at a minimum three meals a day per person for 3 months. This, added to the short term stock plus things I list later, should get you to the 6 month or beyond mark. http://www.beprepared.com is a good source of these items, I’ve been very happy with them.
Freeze dried basics. You will want to augment the entrees with some staples, like potatoes, soy protein meat substitutes, powdered eggs, powdered milk/butter/sour cream/tomato paste, etc. These allow you add in simple sides and also make things like pasta sauce from long term stores. This will stretch out your entrée selection and use things like rice, beans, and pasta in normal dishes rather than prison camp fare. What’s for breakfast? Beans. Lunch? Beans. Dinner? Get ready….RICE! Yay! Need to avoid that trap. http://www.rainydayfoods.com/ is a good source for all this.
Grocery Store items. You don’t need to buy everything in sealed cans, here’s a sample of what can be safely stored in Ziplock bags and boxes:
1. Pasta.
2. Rice
3. Baking powder
4. Yeast
5. Salt
6. Sugar
7. Spices
8. Cocoa
9. Dry soup mix
10. Potato flakes
11. Canned meat. Note: this needs to be stored separately, rotated and checked. The cans do corrode and the result is a disaster.
Grains and legumes. Sold as a kit by BePrepared, contains a years supply of misc grains. Highly recommended, but note requires a grain mill for the wheat and oats.
Oils. I’m still working on this, but so far the leading candidate is coconut oil. It’s almost fully saturated, is a solid below 75 F, and is said to keep for 6+ years if kept cool, dark, and unopened. Plain corn oil is OK if you check it, but this is a work in progress. BTW you MUST have some kind of fats and oils in your diet, plan on looking like the Olsen twins without it.
Powdered drink mix, coffee. This falls under the monotony rule, it is said that drinking just plain water leads to dehydration, esp. with kids. Packets and jars of Koolaid and chocolate milk store well and are easy to make.

Heating and Cooking

Really the same thing, you probably will be using the same item as a heat source and for cooking. The best approach is a propane burner, this can be run indoors with no smoke. Downside is the need to stockpile gas, but some quick ciphering leads you to about 8-10 15 lb cylinders as a minimum. That’s not bad at all, and highly recommended. Using a Coleman camp oven on top the burner gives you a small volume stove.

Alternately, you can purchase a cheap wood stove and pop for the Lehman’s Amish oven. This is a lot more hassle, you have to run a chimney, cut and season wood, and will create a giant signal that says “go here to pillage”. It’s totally non-stealthy, and really belongs in the Day366 section but thought I’d mention it.

Stay tuned for more when I get motivated to finish this post….

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