There are several questions that are repeated on the forums, one of them being about MRE shelf life. On the bottom of the case of MREs, there should be a red sticker – with a 2 red circles inside of a red square.
Both of these two red circles should be a different shade of red, the closer the two reds are, the sooner you need to open one MRE out of that case and see if its still good.
On the bottom of the case, there should be two dates – a manufacture date and a test date. However, some cases will use a different form such as “1068″. In this case, the first number “1″ stands for the year (2001) and the next three numbers indicate which day of the year (365 days in a year) it was packed. So “068″ would be day 68 of the year 2001…or March 9, 2001.
MRE’s are VERY sensitive to temperature. One day over 100 degrees takes about one month off the shelf life. Store the MRE’s in the coolest part of your house, maybe a closet or a basement.
This article is being posted as a topic for discussion, more then anything else. In the freezer we have:
Top shelf:
Seed storage box
Deer sausage
Deer hamburger
Beans – frozen to kill weevils
Rice
2nd shelf:
long package on the top is 3 racks of baby back ribs.
Pork chops
Deer hamburger
Door:
frozen coke bottle has catfish in it
Red bag in front of coke bottle has wild berry seeds in it.
more deer sausage
Not in the picture:
Bottom shelf full of deer meat – hamburger and sausage, more beans and rice.
The seed storage box in the top right hand corner is full of squash, corn, beans, peas, okra, radishes, watermelons,,, and all kinds of other types of seeds.
The beans are rice are being frozen for at least 2 weeks to kill any weevils. From the freezer the bags are spread out on the kitchen table, allowed to thaw, and then moved into storage boxes.
When the power goes off, we cook the meat first. When the meat runs out, then we will start cooking the beans are rice.
Post your comments in the freezer picture thread of the forum.
If your family has to evacuate – who is your common contact person? In other words, if your brothers family, your mom and dad, and your family has to evacuate, who is outside the affected area that can relay messages?
There is no use in everyone calling everyone else and telling them where they are at. Call one person, update your situation and location. Then, that one person can relay everyone else’s messages. Then, if someone wants to get the updates, they can call that one person to check in.
One thing to consider is that during a disaster (such as a hurricane), phone lines will be overloaded. The fewer phone calls you have to make, the better.
Besides phone calls, other forms of communications are text messages, emails, instant messenger programs, and social networking sites.
Maybe create your family a community page on a social networking site – then share the username and password with the other family members. Instead of having to call several family units, post an update to your social networking page. This can give the families a central point to share information. Most modern cell phones are built in browsers. As long as the cell phone can connect to the internet, hopefully everyone can post situation updates.
My family has 3 different people in 3 different areas of the nation we can use. These three people live in Washington state, California and Georgia. We also have our personal pages on facebook and myspace.
After hurricane Rita passed through, there were stories going around of peoples generators going off in the middle of the night, by the time they got outside all they saw was the tail lights of the truck leaving with their genny in the bed.
Do not let this happen to you.
When you buy your genny, also buy about 20 feet of chain and two locks. My genny was chained to an oak tree about 3 feet in diameter.
Then my truck was backed up to the genny so no one could see it from the road. Use your trucks or cars to block the view of people passing by.
Take the wheels off your genny. Do not make it any easier for the thieves.
Keep your genny in the back yard, or where ever you might have a fence up.
If you have a fenced back yard, put locks on the gate.
Do not keep your genny in the garage while running – fumes will still get into the house.
I built a portable shed about 4 feet tall, 4 feet wide and about 3 feet deep out of debris from the hurricane – three sides were closed, one side was open. This helped keep the genny out of thew weather and helped dampen the sound of the motor running. Now that the genny in stored in the shed, I turned that portable three sided shed into a wood shed for my bar-be-que pit.
Something you should not do – do not keep your generator in your house, do not keep it in your garage,,, of anywhere else that it can not vent the exhaust fumes.
After Hurricane Rita, there was a story going around of a family that was running the generator in their apartment. Out of 5 family members, only one was not killed by the exhaust fumes. Do not become a victim by your own hands.
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During a stressful situation, food could be used as a comfort blanket.
After hurricane Rita blew through 4 1/2 years ago, we returned home from the shelter only to find the yard covered with tree limbs. One tree in the back yard had blown down, but landed away from my house. Some of our group started cleaning up the yard, and piling the limbs up. While this cleaning up was going on I started cooking. The pit was fired up, some sausage and steaks were cooked and we all had a feast right before dark.
It was of great comfort to have a good hot meal after a stressful event. The night before, it sounded like we had a train sitting on top of us for about 8 hours. The next morning everyone was stressed out, and edgy, but the hot meal was like a turning point for that day.
After a stressful event, plan on the group using a feast to comfort and reassure them that life will return back to normal. Then is not the time for powered eggs and freeze dried foods. Pull the steaks or ribs out of the freezer and cook them up.
The food in the freezer should be eaten before the packaged stuff anyway. So its a win win situation. The group gets a good hot meal and the perishable foods are eaten before they spoil.
Never underestimate the power of a good hot meal. It can really help with the moral of the group.
In February 2008, some thunderstorms rolled through the town I live in, knocking out power to thousands of the local residents. During the storm a bolt of lightening hit a transformer at the local Wal-mart. In a larger town this might not be a problem, but in Jasper, Texas there are only 2 grocery stores – Wal-mart and Brookshire brothers.
Within hours of the power going out, the wal-mart employees were throwing away meat and other products that can spoil. What gets me, why did the store throw the meat away? Why not give it to the community? I guess if they throw it away, its counted as a lose and insurance will cover it.
The store was closed and locked down. So 1/2 of the food in this town was cut off. Just one lightening strike did all of this.
This is a good example – when there is a disaster, companies will be looking at how to protect their profits, not how people can work together.
A lot of people focus on having to “bug out”. But lets talk about just the opposite just for a minute – hat if people are bugging to your house?
Are you ready to accept 4, 6, 8 or even 12 8 people into your house? Would you be able to find a plce for them to sleep – even if it was on the floor, do you have extra blankets, pillows and are you able to cook for several people?
Lets talk about your ability to cook for people that might have to evacuate to your house. How will you be able to handle it? Will your guest be standing in line at the microwave, or will you be able to serve them a good hot meal?
When my family and I have a get together, the bar-b-q pit is the center of the entertainment. Its what cooks the ribs, brisket, sausage and pork chops. When the power goes out for extended periods of time, its also what my family uses to cook on.
The wood for this pit is kept in a small wood shed behind the house. Well, I had just enough wood to cook maybe 2 or 3 more times. The last truck load lasted about 2 months, the load before that lasted about 6 – 8 months. About 15 miles from my house I have a stock of about 1.5 cords of wood. This picture is about 1/3 of my stockpile. The other cord is mostly pecan used for smoking.
So I made a trip to my stock pile and grabbed 1/2 a truck load. Well, it may not be quit a 1/2 a truck load, maybe just under half a truck load. This should last a couple of months of bar-b-q’ing.
Is your bug out location or camp located on a dirt road? If so, do any streams run under that road? If so, what is the possibility that the road could be washed out during heavy rains?
A couple of years ago some heavy rain came through and washed out a culvert on my mom and dads land. This left about 20 acres of land that we could not drive to. The only access we had was by foot.
So keep in mind natural disaster that could affect your bug out plans, or even how bad weather can affect your plans after the fact. Is there a possibility that bad weather could wash out any roads or bridges along your route?
Luckily for us the county came though a few weeks later and fixed the road. If we would have been in a long term disaster situation, my family and I would have had to fix the culvert by hand. It would have taken a little while, but we could have fixed it. This small stream empties into a larger creek about 100 yards from the road. If nothing else, my family and I could have packed 5 gallon buckets of sand to fill in the holes around the culvert.
Please post your comments in the washed out roads thread of the survival forum.
There are several questions that are repeated on the forums, one of them being about MRE shelf life. On the bottom of the case of MREs, there should be a red sticker – with a 2 red circles inside of a red square.
