Posts Tagged mres

Long term survival food preps

When someone says “survival food preps” or “stockpiling survival food“, what do you think of? Do you think of tons of dried rice and beans stored in mylar bags? How about a basement full of #10 cans, does that come to mind? Or is it a combination of several things?

When I was thinking of writing an article about survival food preps, the first thing that popped into my head was – MREs, canned goods and garden seeds. But where does perishable goods fit into that narrow picture? For the first week or so people are going to be eating stuff out of their freezer. For the sake of discussion, lets move past that first week post SHTF. Something bad has happened, the food in the grocery stores has dried up, people have gone through their immediate perishable food items,,,, now what?

A book about the Roman military I just finished reading contained a quote from an ancient historian – “nothing caused as much stress within the troops as the lack of supplies.” Just like it says, when the supplies started to run low, the stress level went up. 2,000 years later, and nothing has changed.

When people worry about paying their house note, stress goes up.

When people worry about not having the money to pay the rent, stress goes up.

When people worry about having food to eat, stress is “really” going to go up.

People are visual animals – we like to see stuff. There has been test that showed that just the sight of food can relieve stress. When I open an empty cabinet, my stress level instantly goes up. Thats why I think it would be a good idea to have food out where people can see it post SHTF. Maybe not food that can spoil, but leave some cans of chili on the cabinet, leave a few MREs out, leave a bag of rice out,,,, stuff that bugs can not get into, but gives the members of your party something to look at.

Types of survival food preps:

MREs / Pre-Packaged Meals

Examples can include the Just in Case Meals from Prepared.pro, the good ole military Meal Ready to Eat, Eversafe Meals, Sure-Pak MREs, Mainstay meals and everything in between.

One thing that I really like about the pre-packaged meals, they can be handed out members of the group, and eaten when their ready. Communal cooking and eating is good, but not everyone is ready to eat at the same time. Having their own meals allows people to snack or eat their meals when their ready – on top of the communal meals.

A case of MREs contains 12 packaged meals. Because each package contains so much food it in, each MRE might contain 1.25 – 2 servings. Depending on the activity level of the person, they might eat more or less of the MRE. But for the sake of discussion lets say that the average person only eats 75% of everything in the MRE – leaving the desert, beans, cracker, snack bread or peanut butter for later. This means that a case of MREs might feed 1 person for 5 – 7 days.

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Posted on September 2nd, 2011 in Preparedness Articles, Survival Gear

MRE shelf life

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…

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Posted on March 13th, 2010 in Survival Gear, urban survival