How To Store Your Survival Food Supplies
- By Luke Campden
- Published 10/20/2011
- Food and Drink
- Unrated
If an urban survival situation is desperate enough, looters may break into homes seeking food and other emergency supplies. Any food stored in the pantry will be at risk. Families can help mitigate this risk by squirreling supplies away throughout the home.
Slide small food-grade plastic storage bins under beds in the children's room. Layer a row of small cans in the bottom of toy bins and in the back of book shelves. Items can also be concealed in the back of linen cabinets behind sheets, blankets and towels. Avoid storing food items in obvious places where looters may search for valuables.
An interruption to water and sewage services during a disaster situation is even more deadly than a shortage of food on grocery store shelves. Surface water becomes contaminated with human waste and is unsafe to drink. Desperate with thirst, many will drink anyway and become ill, starting a vicious cycle that leads to further dehydration and eventual death. Your family should have enough bottled water in storage to meet drinking needs for at minimum three days to a week. Hard-core survivalists may store as much as three months in underground cisterns or food-grade steel drums.
It is recommended that a family have enough survival foods to be able to feed everyone in the household for 72 hours following an emergency or natural disaster. Essential to this plan is remembering to include a can opener with the survival food supplies in case some cans do not have tops that can be popped open.
Be sure to keep them in a place that will not be damaged by wind
or water and that will be accessible. The family must also be vigilant about making sure the foods in the emergency kit remain usable. This may require periodically checking the supplies and replenishing anything that has gone beyond its safety code date. In addition to non-perishable items for sustenance, a survival foods kit also needs to include enough water or other liquid to keep family members alive.
Long-term food survival solutions of 3 month or more require greater amounts of storage space. Some families have set aside an entire room for an extremely large survival food supply. These rooms are often organized with shelving, with newer items being unloaded into the rear and older items being moved to the front of shelves.
Families that do this constantly live off of their long-term food storage to keep their supply fresh. In an actual emergency, food may be more carefully rationed but it consists of the same items the family is already used to eating. This is a great way to handle food survival when children are young and may be unwilling to eat things, especially in emergency situations, that they are not used to eating already.
No survival food supply is complete without a stockpile of water purification tablets. Clean drinking water is one of the most precious and rare resources in a disaster situation. Most families can only store three to seven days worth of cleaning drinking water in their homes. Once that supply is exhausted, family members may need to scavenge for surface water. Surface water often contains contaminants that can cause illness in humans. Water purification tablets can be used to cleanse surface water of deadly microorganisms that can cause illness.
Slide small food-grade plastic storage bins under beds in the children's room. Layer a row of small cans in the bottom of toy bins and in the back of book shelves. Items can also be concealed in the back of linen cabinets behind sheets, blankets and towels. Avoid storing food items in obvious places where looters may search for valuables.
An interruption to water and sewage services during a disaster situation is even more deadly than a shortage of food on grocery store shelves. Surface water becomes contaminated with human waste and is unsafe to drink. Desperate with thirst, many will drink anyway and become ill, starting a vicious cycle that leads to further dehydration and eventual death. Your family should have enough bottled water in storage to meet drinking needs for at minimum three days to a week. Hard-core survivalists may store as much as three months in underground cisterns or food-grade steel drums.
It is recommended that a family have enough survival foods to be able to feed everyone in the household for 72 hours following an emergency or natural disaster. Essential to this plan is remembering to include a can opener with the survival food supplies in case some cans do not have tops that can be popped open.
Be sure to keep them in a place that will not be damaged by wind
Long-term food survival solutions of 3 month or more require greater amounts of storage space. Some families have set aside an entire room for an extremely large survival food supply. These rooms are often organized with shelving, with newer items being unloaded into the rear and older items being moved to the front of shelves.
Families that do this constantly live off of their long-term food storage to keep their supply fresh. In an actual emergency, food may be more carefully rationed but it consists of the same items the family is already used to eating. This is a great way to handle food survival when children are young and may be unwilling to eat things, especially in emergency situations, that they are not used to eating already.
No survival food supply is complete without a stockpile of water purification tablets. Clean drinking water is one of the most precious and rare resources in a disaster situation. Most families can only store three to seven days worth of cleaning drinking water in their homes. Once that supply is exhausted, family members may need to scavenge for surface water. Surface water often contains contaminants that can cause illness in humans. Water purification tablets can be used to cleanse surface water of deadly microorganisms that can cause illness.
Luke Campden
For more information about protecting your survival food and water for use in an emergency visit: www.urbansurvivallife.com. While you're there go ahead and take opportunity and read our latest posts on survival food supplies .
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