Who buys Emergency Food Kit?

@Thumperchick Oh yea, I mean people who are "non-preppers". I've seen Dooms day preppers on Netflix. I guess this is easy solution?

@nathanK Yes, I'd say this is more for the casual prepper, or even the Zombie Apocalypse bandwagon prepper.

@Thumperchick Some of us living in Florida, the hurricane capital of the world, need to prepare for natural disasters. When a hurricane strikes, we can go a month without electricity and water. I keep several canned foods available for emergencies but not a kit like this one from Costco. I'm a gluten-free vegetarian and none of those kits are made for people like me.

@Thumperchick I am sure there is a quite a market for this with Mormans and other religions that either preach having a year's supply of food on hand to not share with your neighbors or that when the revolution comes, the sky falls, the zombie apocalypse hits be prepared… not to mention the survivalist kooks who hide out in Idaho (when I lived there there were some real nutcases around), Montana...

@cengland0 I life in FL too.. Should I be a prepper? I guess it's life here

@Thumperchick Living in hurricane zones having a stash of stuff you'd use in "regular" life that you rotate through the rest of your food makes sense - as someone else said it is prudent to have a supply on hand during hurricane season however you can do that without a pile of freeze dried military rations (which if you don't hydrate adequately can give major constipation and if you are needing that you are probably needing water and canned goods work better as you don't need to, usually, add water).

@cengland0 one month is a lot different than 1 year, besides those hurricanes are your fault anyway. What makes you think you get to survive?

@RedHot I'm only to blame for meh related hurricanes -- like those that occur during FUKU events.

@cengland0 No, no, I'm pretty sure the scapegoat title extends outside of Meh. Especially to weather related events.

@cengland0 @kidsandliz @RedHot Growing up in fire/earthquake country, we did have a full family emergency kit that included food, water, clothing, first aid, tools, shelter, basic hunting equipment, etc. I don't qualify that as "prepping" or even close to buying a year's supply of food that will likely go back before you ever get to it. I think having an appropriately stocked emergency kit for your household is just common sense. Especially if you have kids.

@RedHot Nope. The scapegoat title only extends to meh. It doesn't even follow to mediocre. Taking blame for all of the crap here is more than enough to lay on someone.

@RedHot I believe @Thumperchick said she was blamed for things that happened on Woot when she was scapegoat of the month.

@cengland0 Yes but just as you discovered you have no goat badge on medicore.com's forums and I'd bet she had no goat badge on woot… BUT blame the goat on forums where the goat icon shows up and it is far game to blame the honorable temporary owner of the goat badge for anything you want to. I think those are the "rules".

@RedHot I blame @cengland0 for the lack of global scapegoat coverage..

@Pony We don't quite have a bug out bag, but we're cool for a few days if we're near my car.

@SSteve What you said. I think we're effed!

@SSteve Just buy this and you won't have to go shopping for a year. Problem solved.

@neuromancer this is exactly why I posted this. I'm curious if it's worth it

@nathanK It would only be worth it if you used it… otherwise hundreds of dollars of food would expire… so you'd have to eat that crap on a regular basis rotating it through your regular food supply in order not to eventually waste it all. Sure it takes up less space than canned goods, but it needs a lot of water to rehydrate properly, and when civilization collapses I'd suspect if you were looking well fed and everyone else was starving you'd need a small army to prevent being robbed.

@SSteve me too

@SSteve Well, consider this fact. Most grocery type stores have about a 3 day supply on hand. If they aren't resupplied then they will rapidly run out. After 5 days or so, the shelves will be more or less bare.

@Kidsandliz How much do you spend on insurance that you may never use? This is insurance; when the policy ends its even more useless than dated freeze dried food that is likely still edible...

@wilfbrim I hear that statistic a lot from preppers. Any actual source for that?

@neuromancer I live in a large, geographically isolated city that gets most of its food by truck or train. When we have had disaster-level weather events, I have seen the store shelves go empty for key things like bottled water, less expensive cuts of meat, baby foods and formulas, diapers, toilet paper, etc in about 48 hours. If the disaster lasted more than a week or two and we could not get trucks or trains in here I have no doubt the shelves would be truly empty. We got snowed into our neighborhood 28 years ago (our city is not built for snow) and the only store in walking distance was a 7-11. Within 24 hours that store was completely empty except for one bored clerk who lived a coupe of blocks away and was ordered to come in and open up for 8 hours every day so they wouldn't have to report a shut-down to corporate.

@duodec I'd rather buy food that has an expiration date far in the future that I'd actually eat on a regular basis and rotate it into the food I eat than let nasty stuff I'd otherwise normally not eat sit for a year and then expire.

@wilfbrim When I lived in northern ID, we got snowed in for 8 days - nothing in and nothing out. The TWO grocery stores we had in that university (about 11,000 students) town did not run out. Now gasoline was running low (3 gas stations) but everyone was driving around with a full tank since there wasn't much distance anywhere you could drive.

@The_Baron I keep a lot of bottled water on hand but not that much. For long term use, I have a plan (let me know if this is crazy). My 50 gallon water heater should still contain fresh water even during a catastrophe. I can just shut off the water to the house and drain the tank and have 50 gallons of clean water to use.

@cengland0 Municipal or public water suppy is usually fine with that method. If you are on well water, then you will have to treat the water and sanitize your containers before storage. Good info from the Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4440181_Food_and_Water-English.revised_7-09.pdf

@cengland0 - Not sure where you live, but in earthquake country you'd want to be sure that water heater is strapped to the wall.

@KDemo Live in Florida so we only have hurricanes and unbearable heat.

@cengland0 and meth.

@The_Baron We had a 72 hour freeze a few years ago that collapsed our desert infrastructure quite thoroughly. Our electric turbines froze, we were buying power from out of state so they implemented rolling blackouts as we couldn't get enough. No one realized that the blackouts were long enough to freeze the pumping stations, so we lost tap water for a week. The stores sold out of water instantly and the city was having to truck that in. I was worried about my pipes freezing at the start of it, so I filled two five gallon containers with tap water. By the third day even the animals wouldn't drink it. I don't think I could stand water that had sat for months. I guess if it was that or die of thirst... (Yes, I know a 72 hour freeze is nothing in other parts of the country, I grew up back east. Our infrastructure is built for extreme heat and aridity, we can't handle cold and wet.)

@moondrake Look up "WaterBOB" for water storage if you have warning and time to fill it. We keep cases of bottled water, and several 20 liter water cans with bleached tap water, rotated each year. Even if it starts to taste stale, you can boil it, then pour it back and forth between containers to re-aerate it (the latter will also remove bleach smell and flavor). Or you can use it to flush the toilet.

@duodec I ended up pouring it back and forth and then boiling it and making tea for my own drinking water, and mixed the boiled, aerated water 50/50 with the small supply of bottled water I had on hand for the animals. I also put water on my dog's food, I had a stockpile of canned chicken broth that I mixed with the water for that. I keep about a 2 month supply of dog food on hand as he can only tolerate one scarce brand . But I live in a small home with a 9CF refrigerator, stockpiling food for me is not practical.

@moondrake Kudos for your actions and prepping for your dog!!! We use a spare bedroom closet as a pantry for canned and freeze dried food.

@kuoh Its not "the end" until Schlock Mercenary misses an update.

@OldCatLady I am a role-playing gamer, and in a lot of the post-apocalypse games I have played, the three most sought after items were: a reloader to match your gun, books on how to make things with basic tools, and seeds.

@moondrake I was thinking of a very special kind of seed.

@OldCatLady Yeah, I figured. But in a survival situation I don't expect that kind of seed is going to buy you a lot of food.

@moondrake You never know, I would imagine the desire to escape from reality would be even higher in a survival situation.

@JonT I'd imagine any survivalist who wanted to have an herb supply would have stocked up on that as well. I don't see anyone who had a stockpile of food in a genuine survival situation trading bacon for grass. If you are hungry or at risk for hunger, you aren't likely to trade real calories for a little pretend comfort-- especially the kind that will just make you even more hungry when it's gone. Unless you are giving up and would like to go gently into that good night.

@duodec I think it's fair to expect that we provide people affected by horrific natural disasters food so they don't, ya know, die. I guess I'm just one of those crazies in that way, thinking it's okay to spend money on people to keep them from unnecessarily dying.

@JonT Who said otherwise? But when disaster strikes the people who didn't (or couldn't) do anything to prep for themselves can (and have) overwhelmed the immediate ability TO provide succor. Its better NOT to be that person. And its best to try not to be the person who does nothing to prepare, or take care of themselves always assuming someone else will do it for them.

@JonT FYI we have provided help for neighbors who hit hard times out of our well stocked pantry; fortunately we've never been in a disaster worse than a 3 day power outage with travel restricted, but if it did happen we might be in a position to help our neighbors somewhat, rather than be a burden. That is a good thing.